The girls and I, out walking in a park. A tree-filled park. We walk through the shade of countless branches and limbs, linked above our heads. Down the path we go, to the river.
We each have a stick for poking things.
As we approach the water, there is a scent in the air. A scent that fights for dominance over the lush green mossy earthy scent I have come to associate with Oregon. The scent fights for dominance and then . . . wins.
Kallan is ecstatic, “I smell death! Come on! I smell dead stuff!” and she runs ahead, dropping her stick behind her as she runs.
I throw up a little prayer that the death is of an animal sort and hurry after her.
Maj hangs back. She is more sensitive to smells lately, and this? Is not a good one. She makes her way to a sandy stretch of beach where the air is fresher and begins to gouge messages into the sand with her stick. I know without looking that her messages are all pleas for help . . . big messages of frantic emergency scrawled across the sand in hopes of catching the attention of a low-passing airplane.
I follow Kallan, “Ewwww, babe! It smells really bad, whatever it is. Do we really need to know?”
She is crashing through the underbrush, pushing bushes and wild blackberry thorns aside. We do need to know, apparently. I glance back at Maj, a stranded girl all alone in the world, carving out messages of hope.
OK, Maj is fine.
I crash in after Kallan, who is yelling at me from up ahead on the barely discernible path, “Its guts are out! Bring me your stick!”
Really?
Really?
Kallan is crouched happily over the death. A very large fish. Dragged here by something that did not get to finish its meal. There is a gaping hole ripped in the side of the fish, a messy window into what used to be life. Kallan is gleeful and reaches her hand behind her for the stick she has requested.
I hand it to her.
“Ewwww . . . look! Some of its organs are still here! Is this its stomach? I think so. And intestines. And liver. Everything’s all slippery! And look! One of its eyes is pulled out!”
She pokes and picks apart the fish in a crude autopsy.
Tries to gauge who has taken the first big bites before her stickish nibbles. Her guess is a raccoon. She also guesses that it was hurt or sick before it was captured, because it’s a very large fish to have been lingering healthily along the shores. And it’s not so long dead that there’s much chance it was dead before it was captured.
She’s like a fish Quincy.
Wait. Not so long dead. So then what’s that hideous smell?
I jump into the air to see if I can spot Maj over the tops of the blackberry bushes. Yup, she’s still there. Still unrescued and alone.
Look around. And not very far away, I find another large dead fish. All swollen and bloated and about to burst with the excitement of decay. Kallan is right behind me, with her fish-glistening stick.
“Oooooh, can I poke it?”
Not even.
“Please? I’ll hold my nose so I don’t smell it too much.”
Not even.
Kallan is all filled with longing.
Not even.
I take the stick from her hand and toss it high and into the weeds, “Come on. Your sister needs rescuing.”
We pick our way through the brambles and back to the beach.
Kallan runs ahead, reading Maj’s messages as she goes, flailing her arms above her head in exaggerated joy as she approaches her sister, “You are saved! You are saved! We have found you! We thought you were lost and gone forever! But you are saved!”
Maj looks up in alarm as her rescuer approaches, “What are you talking about?”
Kallan kicks in the sand at the letters of . . . Please send help!
And now it’s just . . . end help!
“You don’t need these messages anymore, Maj! We are here to save you!”
Maj is furious, “Stop messing with my words! Stop it!”
We are not the rescuers Maj imagined, apparently.
Maj swings her stick in front of her in a big wide arc over her artwork, “Back away! Leave my words alone!”
Kallan turns back to me, “She has gone crazy in the wild, mother. I am here to rescue her and she is threatening me with a stick. Does she not want to be rescued?”
“Come on, Kallan. Leave her be.”
“But I want to tell her about the dead fish!”
Maj is all sarcastic as she fixes her message, “Ooooooh . . . a dead fish. That’s almost like you found treasure.”
Kallan is stung, “Whatever,” and she walks to her own section of the beach, collects a new stick. Writes her own messages in the sand.
I sit in the middle. Run the sand through my fingers. Watch as the river undulates before us.
And then it’s time to go.
We climb out of the beach and back to the main path. We turn to take a last look at the girls’ handiwork in the sand.
Two halves of the beach.
Maj’s half is filled with the carefully aligned desperate pleas of a long-stranded castaway.
Kallan’s half is filled with flowers and suns and rainbows and two giant hearts traced into the sand. Inside the hearts? Two sisters’ names . . . Kallan. And in the other? Maj.
Sigh.
We set off, back the way we came.
The girls run ahead to each gather a new stick.
For poking.
Dang Mom – she may never get another chance to pop a dead bloated fish =[ !!
It’s Kallan.
Are you kidding me?
There will be other dead bloated stinky fish.
This is how I grew up. Poking dead things with my brothers. It’s so lovely.
Yes . . . agreed.
It is lovely.
High-fives!
Kallan would have loved the sight I saw a couple weeks ago. I was out bike riding and saw a vulture eating a cat on the side of the road. Definitely something smelling there!
Kallan would have jumped from her bicycle to shoo the bird away and check out the remains of its kitty feast.
She is weird and lovely, that girl.
As for me, I just pedealed faster. The smell was enough to keep me away!
I am certain that it doesn’t surprise you that I am aching–aching! for Sophie to grow into a poking-dead-things-with-sticks sort of kid.
Dead things are rather awesome.
Also, stinky.
Yum.
And now? I am going to go get my computer repaired at the ol’ Apple store, so don’t miss me too horribly while I am incommunicado the next few days.
Although I shall miss you painfully!
I have read enough about Sophie to be confident that dead-stuff poking lies ahead for you.
And it will be awesome.
Less awesome? You impending brief absence. I miss you already.
Seriously.
Sigh.
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Happy sighs.
My ridiculous desire to have another child is not helped by posts like this.
I have always wanted a sister and have always hoped to give Katie one. Sigh.
You are a lucky woman.
Agreed on the lucky.
So lucky.
But sons? Are also magic, I have heard.
Yes. Magic, boys or girls in any combination.
When I was 9 I don’t know if I could have resisted poking the bloated fish even if I was told not to do it.
That’s why I took the stick and threw it far away.
Because . . . yeah.
stranded waiting for imaginary rescue teams, poking dead things, making hearts and flowers all wonderful ways to spend a summer day! speaking of bad smells we have had trouble with flies more than usual i’m sure due to the weather, but also our neighbors chickens so greg hung this horse shit smelling bag of liquid by the back door to catch them. soooo now we have chicken (break to broker deal to play hungry hippos when i am done with this comment) feathers, shit and horse shit smell. (break to keep the little one out of the bathroom) so let me get this straight our small driveway smells like a farm, but no eggs and although it stinks like horse shit no sunset horse back riding?
The thought of the bag of shit at your back door to solve the fly problem?
Has me laughing so hard I cannot think.
I need to call you.
I was thinking that you have a future doctor on your hand…but Quincy….I loved Quincy! And Kallan would be perfect!
Jack Klugman was so adorable in that show!
Happy sighs at the memory.
Kallan would be a kick-ass coroner!
a bedazzled /vajazzled klugman!
Snorty helpless laughter!
Vajazzled Klugman.
Tears.
“I smell death! Come on! I smell dead stuff!”
I can hear my sister saying just that sort of thing! Me? I’d be on the beach, but I never went anywhere without a book. I’d be under a tree, reading and complaining about the bugs.
Maj doesn’t always travel with a book.
But her iPod Touch is always with her.
In case we get boring or stupid.
Which is often.
According to Maj.
I used to like poking dead stuff too as a child,
until I found a body.
I kid, I kid. But really, the last time I poked something dead, something alive came out of it…scared the shit out of me. Haven’t poked anything else since.
Here in the comments?
I will tell you that if there are live bugs and critters and maggots on the dead?
Kallan is fascinated.
Oh, this was much bigger than a critter. It had four legs and crawled out of a cow. Yes, my once fasination turned quickly after that.
Snort!
This is my favourite Maj/Kallan story. Nice to see that they do actually really like each other even though they’ll spend a lot of the time trying to prove the opposite.
They do love each other.
Differently.