Chapter 8 - The Green Grass
Two months later, the daffodils on the south side of my house were just starting to poke their yellow heads through the wet mulch of early spring.
The screen door on my front porch didn't stick anymore. I had planed down the bottom edge with a hand-block plane, replaced the rusted hinge with a heavy brass one from the hardware store, and coated the whole thing in three layers of white outdoor enamel.
It swung shut with a clean, satisfying click.
Inside the living room, the television was playing an old cartoon at low volume. Sissy was sitting cross-legged on the braided rug in front of the sofa, completely absorbed in coloring a picture of a blue cow with purple spots using three different crayons at once.
Her hair was clean and shiny, tied back with a yellow ribbon, and her cheeks had the round, healthy plumpness of a three-year-old who doesn't have to worry about where her next meal is coming from.
From the hallway came the familiar, steady thump-thump-thump of a wooden crutch hitting the pine floorboards.
Drew came around the corner, balancing carefully on his left leg while his right cast—now decorated with signatures from half the kids in his first-grade class and a very shaky drawing of a tractor drawn by me—swung out in a wide, controlled arc.
He stopped at the edge of the living room rug and looked down at his sister.
"You're going outside the line on the tail, Sissy," he said, using that small, serious tone of authority that made him sound ten years older than he was.
Sissy didn't look up from her paper. "It's a magic cow. Magic cows have purple tails."
Drew considered this for a moment, his dark eyes serious, before nodding slowly. "Okay. But give it some green grass under its feet. Cows need grass."
He turned his head then, looking toward the open front door where the spring breeze was blowing through the screen, carrying the clean, sharp smell of damp earth and budding maples.
I was standing on the porch, leaning against the wooden railing with a cup of coffee in my hand, watching the mail truck crawl down Elm Street.
Drew hopped over on his good foot, leaning one crutch against the doorframe, and stepped out onto the porch beside me. He didn't say anything for a long time. He just stood there in the warm March sunlight, looking out over the street where the bare maples were starting to swell with tiny, green buds.
"Uncle Julian?" he finally said.
"Yeah, buddy?" I asked, looking down at him.
Drew pointed toward the corner where Main Street met the hardware store—seven blocks away, hidden behind the brick facade of the downtown block.
"We don't have to walk back there anymore, do we?"
I set my coffee mug down on the porch rail, reached out, and put my hand on his thin, sturdy shoulder. I could feel the muscle beneath his shirt—firm, growing stronger every day, healed straight and true.
"No, Drew," I said, my voice steady and clear against the morning wind. "We're not going back there ever again."
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Drew nodded once, satisfied. He reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out a smooth river stone with a white quartz stripe, and set it carefully on the wooden railing beside my coffee cup.
Then he turned around, hopped back through the screen door into the warm living room, and sat down on the rug right next to his sister to help her color the grass beneath the purple-tailed cow.
