SPN FIC - Finding Wednesday (Part 2 of 2)
Part 1 is here.
FINDING WEDNESDAY
By Carol Davis
Part 2
Saturday morning the kitten opened one eye.
She was lying on her washcloths on Dean's lap, and he was petting her while he watched cartoons with Sammy. After the second time she had peed on his clothes, he'd learned to always have the old washcloths there for her to lie on, and she seemed to like playing with them and snuffling them like they were some kind of toy. If he slid his hand underneath and wiggled his fingers she would bat at them and bite them, or sometimes back off and hiss.
He was doing that, poking her with his fingers underneath the washcloth, when all of a sudden her left eye popped open halfway.
"Hey!" Dean yelped.
It took half the day for the eye to open the rest of the way. By dinnertime the other eye had opened a little.
That day, too, Dad sat at the table to eat dinner with everybody for the first time since they'd gotten to Blue Earth. After dinner he sat on the couch for a while, watching the kitten, petting her a little and smiling when she purred.
"She's gonna be okay," Dean told him.
Dad didn't answer that; instead, he studied the kitten for a long time, and he'd stopped smiling. Then he got up from the couch and went out on the front porch, where Pastor Jim was sitting and drinking a glass of iced tea.
There was gonna be more yelling, Dean figured.
He sat close to the shoebox and played with the kitten, who still couldn't see him (according to Pastor Jim, at least) but definitely knew when he was there. Every time he put his hand up close to her she would sniff it, lick it a little bit, and curl up so he could pet her. She knew him, he thought. She knew the person who had saved her from being eaten by something out in the woods.
That figured, didn't it? Dad saved people. Dean saved tiny little cats.
"This sucks," he blurted out.
Sammy, who had lost interest in the kitten days ago, looked up from the picture book he was studying over in Pastor Jim's recliner. "That's a bad word," he reminded Dean.
"I don't care."
He thought about running again - either climbing the tree or just running - but before he could get up from the couch all the energy drained out of him and he couldn't do anything but slump back against the cushions.
Dad never stayed with the people he saved, of course. They didn't need him to, or want him to; after he'd gotten rid of the bad thing, whatever it was, they could go right on with their lives and they didn't need some guy with two kids hanging around. They wouldn't want Dad to check in on them and make sure they were still okay after a week or a month or a year. But that was people. They could take care of themselves. The kitten couldn't take care of herself, and Pastor Jim hadn't said anything about maybe wanting to keep her. Neither had Mrs. Lundquist.
Once Dad's ribs were better, he and Sammy and Dean would be hitting the road again, and there was no chance, no chance at all in a million years, that he would say, let's bring the cat with us.
But I saved her, Dean thought.
As if she'd heard that and was glad about it, the kitten started to purr. Right then, it was the last thing Dean wanted to hear.
Nobody ever asked him, he thought. Nobody ever asked him squat.
Dad found him out back a little while later, sitting on the bottom step outside the kitchen door, peeling apart a blade of grass.
"What's going on?" Dad said from up on the top step.
"Nothin'," Dean muttered.
Moving slowly, Dad came down the steps and sat down beside Dean. After a little bit of consideration he plucked a blade of grass for himself and started to tear it down the middle. "Got something you need to say?"
"No."
"Now'd be a good time to say it."
"I don't need to say anything."
"Fair enough, then." After a second, Dad went on, "Figure we can hang out here for a few more days. Haven't heard about a job yet, so there's no need to head out. That okay with you?"
"Whatever," Dean mumbled.
"Give you a little more time with your little buddy."
"It's not my buddy. It's a cat."
"Watch your tone," Dad said mildly, then went back to tearing up his blade of grass.
It was clouding up to rain; a lot of the sky was still blue but coming closer and closer from the west was a big bank of clouds that was dark and threatening. If it was a thunderstorm, that'd be cool - Sam hadn't been afraid of thunder for a long time, and maybe they'd get to sit out on the porch and watch the storm, if it didn't blow so the porch got wet. Dad loved a good thunderstorm, if they could just sit and watch it and they didn't need to be out driving around in it, or worse yet, running around in it. Something about a good storm got his imagination going, he said.
"I found her," Dean said after a minute.
"Her lucky day."
"Sam thought it was a bear."
That made Dad chuckle. "Got kind of a vivid imagination. Some days he thinks a creaking door is a bear."
"I didn't think it was a bear."
"Good to know."
They peeled grass for a while, working their way through most of what was growing at the foot of the steps. The wind picked up while they were doing it, and it felt and smelled good, fresh and clean and a little bit cool. Dean turned his face into it and closed his eyes.
"Smell the rain?" Dad asked.
"Yeah."
Dad liked it here. In Blue Earth. He did. There wasn't anyplace else, not even Uncle Bobby's, where he'd sit and just be like this.
So maybe…
Maybe…
"Dad?"
"Hmm?"
"Someday?" Dean said softly. "I know not for a long time, but someday could we -"
Dad cupped his hand around the back of Dean's neck and rubbed it with his fingers, the way he used to do when Dean was a lot littler and had gotten upset about something. It was a special thing he did, just for Dean; Sammy didn't like it, would rather have his back rubbed.
"Not sure I see an end to this anytime soon," Dad said, and it sounded like a sigh.
"But someday?"
"I don't know, Dean."
He said it in the way that meant not to ask him again, so Dean didn't. Instead, he leaned in close to Dad and closed his eyes again. Like that, he could remember what it felt like to sit on the couch in between Mom and Dad, when they would watch TV or listen to music or Dad would talk about what had happened that day at the garage. He would tell crazy stories sometimes, about people who had messed up their cars, and Mom would laugh or say, "Oh, John."
He remembered a time when Dad had climbed up the ladder to do something up on the roof. Remembered standing down on the ground with Mom, and Mom saying, "John? Be careful. Do you hear me? Be careful up there."
Like Dad was some little kid.
He wished he could say that now. Be careful, Dad. Please be careful. When you hunt the bad things. Don't let them hurt you.
Instead, he simply leaned against his father as the storm clouds moved in from the west and let his father gently rub the back of his neck.
~~~~~~~~~~
On Sunday, Dad read the newspaper. He read it on Monday and Tuesday, too, and in between he made phone calls. When he wasn't doing either of those things he took walks. Sunday afternoon Dean and Sammy both went with him, but by the time they'd gotten back to Pastor Jim's Sammy had decided that walking was boring. After that Dad went by himself, or with Dean. Dean watched him carefully for signs that he wasn't getting better, that he was faking it, and instead of getting ready to hit the road again, he ought to be getting more rest.
Mom would make him get more rest, Dean thought. Or try to.
Maybe Dad wouldn't listen to her either.
Tuesday afternoon the kitten seemed like she could see a little bit. When Dean wiggled his fingers in front of her, she would move her head to track the movement, or would reach for him with her paws and swat at him.
"She's a sweetheart," Mrs. Lundquist said.
People said that about Mrs. Lundquist, too. Sammy hung around with her a lot, Dean noticed. He seemed to like having her do things for him and answer all his dumb questions. She never yelled, and she never looked like things made her sad, and that was a definite plus.
The thing was, she wasn't their mom.
Nobody was their mom.
She was somebody good to learn from, though. Dean kept a close eye on her while she was doing the laundry, and while she was cooking. Dad had been letting him use the stove for a long time now, and he figured it'd be good if he could cook something that didn't come out of a can. Home fries, for instance. All you had to do, Mrs. Lundquist said, was boil the potatoes until they were soft, cut them into little cubes, and then fry them with some butter.
That would be good. If he could make home fries. And hamburgers, maybe.
For Dad.
Mrs. Lundquist had her own husband and a daughter (Emily, who was Dean's age) and a house and everything, but two or three times a day she came over to Pastor Jim's to fix him lunch or supper, do the dishes or the laundry or clean up or whatever needed doing. That was her job, she told Dean, and yes, she got paid for it.
"Wouldn't you rather have, like…a real job?" Dean asked.
"This is my real job."
"Doing Pastor Jim's laundry?"
She smiled, and laughed, and pushed the plate of cookies she'd baked over closer to where he was sitting at the kitchen table. "Taking care of Pastor Jim."
"But…if you want to take care of people, wouldn't you rather be, like, a doctor?"
"Because it pays better?"
Dean hadn't thought of that, but she had a point. Dad never got paid at all for what he did, not any more, and having money was definitely useful. Having a bunch of it could be even more useful.
"I'm taking care of people I love," she said. "I can't think of any better way to spend my time. Huge paycheck or not."
"You love Pastor Jim?"
"As a dear, dear friend. Yes, I do."
"What if you didn't get paid at all? Would you still do it?"
She looked toward the living room, where Sammy was playing with some Matchbox cars on the floor, making vroom vroom noises while he rolled around on the rug. "Have you heard people use the phrase 'loving care,' Dean?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"Yes, I'd do it if nobody paid me a nickel. It'd make paying the bills a little bit more interesting, but a little creativity can be very fulfilling."
She started to hum while she was wiping off the countertops and the stove. She did that a lot, and it made Dean think sometimes that she was the happiest person he'd ever met. Or the craziest.
"What about you?" she asked. "Would you want to be a doctor?"
"I don't know."
"Because you're right - loving care doesn't need to be restricted to members of your family, or good friends."
He thought about that for a minute, fiddling with the plate of cookies and watching Sam push the Matchbox cars around on the rug. "If you saved somebody," he said hesitantly. "Somebody you didn't know? And they didn't pay you. Is it loving care when you do that?"
"It could be, yes."
"So you could love somebody even if you don't know them? And if you only saw them that one time, and never again?"
Dad would have asked him, What's your point? Uncle Bobby probably would have, too. But Mrs. Lundquist was around Pastor Jim all the time.
"It's the best kind of love there is, Dean," she said.
"But how can you love somebody if you don't know them?"
For a second he thought she was going to say something like what Pastor Jim said in his sermons, about everybody being God's children, or everybody being responsible for everybody else or needing to be like Jesus or something. Instead, she smiled like she loved him and said, "Sometimes you just do. Sometimes you just want that other person to be well and happy, and there's no explanation for it other than that you do."
Dean frowned, "I don't get it."
"You will."
"But I don't want to get it someday. I want to get it now. I want to get -" And before he could stop it, he'd blurted out the rest of it. "I want to know why my dad goes around helping people he doesn't know and gets hurt and what if he died? I want to know why he would do that, and nobody tells me anything that makes any sense."
Nobody had ever said Mrs. Lundquist knew anything about the hunting. Dean had always figured she didn't have a clue, because Dad had always said We do what we do and we shut up about it and Dean figured Pastor Jim felt the same way. But Mrs. Lundquist didn't look at him like she didn't understand. She just stood there with the cleaning sponge in her hand, looking at him like she felt a little bit sorry for him. Or for somebody.
"The world has its heroes, Dean," she said after a minute. "Large and small."
"But -"
He'd been reading a comic book, and it was lying on the kitchen table next to the plate of cookies: an old issue of Detective Comics he'd found in one of Pastor Jim's bookcases, with Batman flying across the cover. Mrs. Lundquist looked at it and smiled a little, as if she knew all about Batman and maybe kind of liked him, which was a little puzzling, because as far as Dean knew, moms didn't read comic books and didn't know about stuff like Batman, who…
"Oh," he said.
Right there in that issue, Batman had been rescuing a guy who'd been trapped in a blown-up building. And he got pretty banged up doing it - so bad that Alfred the butler had to patch him up and drive the Batmobile back to the Batcave. Batman hadn't known the guy he rescued. He didn't know any of the people he saved, except for when he had to save Alfred or Commissioner Gordon or somebody like that, but he got the crap knocked out of him on a pretty regular basis.
That was kind of a cool idea, Dad being like Batman. Especially since it meant he, Dean, was sort of like Robin.
Without the stupid outfit, of course.
The trouble was, Dean wasn't saving people from blown-up buildings. He was saving cats.
When the two hours was up he wandered into the living room to give the kitten her bottle of kitten food.
They could take her in the car, he thought. They absolutely could, because they could put a litter box on the floor in the back seat. He could clean it every time they stopped for gas or to eat or to go to the bathroom, so it wouldn't stink. And she could sleep back there, with him and Sammy - he'd make a bed for her on the other side of the floor, and he and Sammy could play with her and feed her and pet her and make sure she was happy.
They could keep her in the motel room with them, too. She wouldn't make any noise, like a dog would, and she wouldn't eat much, and they could keep the litter box in the bathroom. Sam would like having her around - what he really wanted was a puppy, but a cat was better. Nobody would need to take a cat for walks in the middle of the night. And Dad liked cats. He'd told Dean that one day, when Dean found him petting a cat that had wandered up to him out of nowhere. He liked cats just fine, he said.
So they could keep her. Take her with them.
Except…
Except that they couldn't.
Batman never did, he told himself. He just walked away from the people he rescued (or Alfred carried him away, or drove him), and so did Dad. Maybe that was part of being a hero - you did what you did and you shut up about it, and you went right on to the next thing, the next person, the next job. The whole thing pretty much sucked for Batman too, except that he was really rich and had that big mansion. Like Dad, he couldn't go to the hospital when he got hurt; Alfred had to take care of him and feed him and drive him around. And had to shut up about it.
When Dad came back from walking that afternoon, Dean brought him a beer and a bag of chips and sat with him out on the porch. Some guys were putting a new roof on the house across from the Lundquists', and Dean and Dad sat and watched them work while Dad drank his beer and shared the chips with Dean.
"Talked to Bobby," Dad said when his beer was almost gone.
He didn't sound like he meant Uncle Bobby says hi. Or Uncle Bobby says it's hotter'n-a-sumbitch out there.
"Do we have to go somewhere?" Dean asked quietly.
"Yeah, we do."
"When?"
"Tomorrow."
"Do you need to help somebody?"
"Yup."
There were more chips left, and Dean reached for a handful, then pulled his hand back empty. "Okay," he said.
"Gonna have to leave that cat here, son."
He could have argued with that. Could have told Dad all the good reasons why they could bring the kitten along with them, and he almost opened his mouth to try. But before he could start talking, he thought, Batman doesn't have a cat. Batman didn't have Sammy, either, but there was no way Dad was going to see the logic in leaving Sammy in Blue Earth until he got old enough to stop whining and pitching fits over nothing.
So all Dean said was, "Okay."
"You good with that?"
"Yeah."
"Jim'll find somebody to take it."
"Whatever."
Head down, Dean got up from his chair and went over to the porch railing and draped himself against it. That weird feeling was filling up his chest again; he'd started to feel like it was a regular thing. That maybe it would end up being a regular thing for the rest of his life.
"Dad?" he said before he could stop himself.
"What is it, Dean?"
"Do you feel bad sometimes?"
He thought maybe Dad would ask him to explain, that he'd say "Feel bad about what?" But he didn't. He just sat there drinking the last little bit of his beer, then he set the empty bottle down on the porch floor alongside his chair. Dean switched back and forth between looking at him and looking at the guys fixing the roof across the street, because looking straight at Dad started to feel like an impossible thing to do.
"Yeah," Dad said after a minute. "Yeah, I do."
"Does it last a long time?"
"Sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes it lasts long enough that I don't feel like I can see the end of it."
Those guys over on the roof looked like they were having a good time. They were laughing and throwing something back and forth.
"Dad?"
"Yeah, Dean."
"Does it hurt when you save somebody and then you have to just get in the car and go on to the next thing?"
Instead of answering, Dad got up from his chair. He stood next to Dean long enough to rub the back of Dean's head, then he started to walk toward the door into the house. He stopped halfway there and said quietly, "You make sure all your stuff and Sammy's is packed up before you go to bed, okay? We'll get an early start tomorrow."
"Okay," Dean sighed.
Dad took another step, then stopped. "It hurts a hell of a lot more when you can't save 'em," he said.
Then he went into the house.
~~~~~~~~~~
Nobody argued with Dean when he said, "I want to do it." Nobody suggested that he couldn't handle it on his own. Nobody said it would be better if a grownup helped him out. Nobody suggested anything at all. So he made up his bed on the couch with the pillows and blankets and carefully set the alarm clock for two hours. He watched everyone else go upstairs to bed, then he crawled in under the covers and lay there looking at that shoebox on the coffee table.
The kitten was already asleep. She slept a lot, but Pastor Jim said that was normal for babies.
Maybe she'd be asleep when he left.
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep but his mind wouldn't settle down. Dad hadn't said where they were going - which wasn't unusual; sometimes he did and sometimes he didn't - so Dean tried to decide which way they'd be headed, and how long they'd stay in that next place. Maybe only a few days, or maybe a couple of weeks.
Maybe there'd be a pool.
Maybe there'd be a kitchenette, and he could try making those home fries.
Maybe…
He woke to the soft beep of the alarm going off and found Pastor Jim sitting in the recliner with a blanket tucked over him. "I said I could do it," he complained.
"I know you did."
"Then how come you're not letting me do it?"
"Because I wanted your company."
Dean pushed himself up into a sit and scrubbed at his eyes. "Why?"
"Because I'm selfish. I've enjoyed this, and I wasn't ready to give it up."
"I thought you weren't gonna write your new sermon until Thursday or Friday."
Jim smiled as he pushed his blanket aside. "Never hurts to get an early start. But that's not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean?"
"I enjoy sitting here with you. I enjoy having you boys here. It makes the house seem a lot less empty."
Dean thought about that for a minute, then said, "Is it -"
"What?"
"Is it loving care? When you let us stay here, even if you and Dad yell at each other a lot?"
That seemed to take Jim by surprise. He picked up the little bottle of kitten formula and peered at it for a second, then handed it over to Dean. "Your dad and I have been friends for a long time. The yelling - it's just head-butting."
"A lot of people butt heads with Dad."
"So I've heard."
"He just yells because -"
"He yells for a lot of reasons, Dean. And I think I understand most of them. Don't worry about it."
Dean hesitated, then asked, "Will you always be his friend?"
"I will."
"Even if he swears at you?"
Jim took a long, deep breath. "I could do without that. But - let's say I try to let it bounce off me."
"Like…Superman, with the bullets?"
Jim chuckled softly. "Something like that."
It took a while, but the kitten ate almost the whole bottle of formula. She peed a little, and purred a little, then curled up on the washcloths to go back to sleep.
"She needs a name," Jim said.
"The new people can give her one."
"You found her. She's your little miracle, Dean."
There wasn't much about it that was anything like a miracle, Dean figured. She'd made noise, Sammy had heard her, and they'd tracked her down. On the other hand, maybe it was kind of a miracle that whatever had happened to her brothers and sisters hadn't happened to her. Maybe it was kind of a miracle that Dad had gotten tired at that exact time, in that exact place. There weren't any other cars around; the kitten could have made that Eeeeeeee noise for days without anybody hearing her, or trying to find her.
"I found her on Wednesday," he said. "It that a dumb name?"
"Wednesday? No, I don't think so."
"I guess you could call her Whitey or Snowball or something like that."
"I think we'll stick with Wednesday."
"It's a dumb name, isn't it?"
"It commemorates a special day. That doesn't sound dumb to me."
She'd started purring again, curled against Dean's hand. He remembered that about Sammy as a baby: that he'd seem to be asleep, then awake, then asleep again. Gently, with the tips of his fingers, he stroked her fur and listened to her soft rattle of contentment.
"Good thing I didn't find her on Fourth of July," he told Pastor Jim.
The whole night passed like that. In a way that made Pastor Jim's house - the one the community let him use - feel like a home.
~~~~~~~~~~
The sun had just barely started to come up when Dean crawled out from under his covers on the couch. Pastor Jim was sound asleep in the recliner with a blanket pulled up around his shoulders. His head was tipped in a way that might mean his neck would hurt later on, but Dean left him that way and padded quietly, barefoot, through the house.
It was nothing like Batman's mansion. Everything was a little bit old, and some of it was a little beat up. But it was right in a way that Wayne Manor maybe wasn't. A good place to stay when you needed a break. Or needed to rest up and take care of bruised ribs.
Dad was still asleep, too, when Dean carefully pushed open the door of his room. He was smiling a little - dreaming of Mom, maybe. Dean stood in the doorway looking at him for a while, then gently pulled the door closed and moved to the room next door, where Sammy had again kicked his covers off onto the floor. Sighing, Dean picked them up and straightened them out, tucking them up over Sam's shoulders.
Without help, he figured, Sam would probably freeze to death in his sleep from lack of covers.
"We goin' now?" Sam mumbled.
"No. Go back to sleep."
"'Kay."
He stood there watching for a few minutes, waiting to see if Sam would kick the covers off again, but he didn't. He did start to drool, though, all over the hand that was lying flat on the pillow next to his face.
That cat, Dean figured, was a much better deal than Sam.
"The Johnsons are going to take her," Pastor Jim told him a while later. "They have other cats, and they said they'd be glad to have her."
"Will they take good care of her?"
"There's no doubt in my mind."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes," Jim said. "I'm sure."
It was still pretty early; Mrs. Lundquist wouldn't be over for a while. But they'd need sandwiches and snacks for the road, so Dean went from fridge to cupboard to table and assembled the ingredients for PB&Js and ham and cheese, some cookies, a big bag of chips, some juice boxes, sodas and Cheez-Its. As he worked he could hear Dad upstairs moving around, probably trying to get Sammy dressed and ready to go.
"I like being here," he told Jim.
"I'm glad."
"I wouldn't mind staying here," he went on, watching himself spread peanut butter on soft white slices of bread so he didn't need to look at his father's friend. "But we gotta go. You know. It's the job. Dad has to do his job."
Our job, he thought.
Because it was, wasn't it? Dad was Batman, and he was Robin, or Alfred, or maybe a little bit of both, and they did have a pretty decent Batmobile - black and everything. He still hadn't figured out where Sam fit into the picture…unless maybe Sam was Robin.
In that dumb red, green and yellow outfit?
Sam was definitely Robin.
Dad came downstairs and into the kitchen while Dean was packing the food into a big paper bag. Sammy was in his arms, draped over his shoulder and probably drooling on him, still mostly asleep. "Those provisions just about ready, there, dude?" Dad asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Let's move it on out, then."
He followed Dad into the living room and wrestled the strap of one of their duffels into position on his shoulder, got a good grip on the bag of food and carried it out to the car. After he'd stowed the duffel and the food he helped Dad get Sammy settled in the backseat with some comics, his coloring book and crayons, a couple of pillows and a blanket. They'd almost finished when Pastor Jim came out to stand alongside the car. Dean was a little surprised to see that he was holding the kitten against his chest. She hadn't been outside in a week, not since Dean had brought her here, last Wednesday.
She was home, he thought. Not at Jim's house, but in Blue Earth. The idea made that weird feeling crop up again.
"Want to say goodbye?" Jim offered.
Dean reached up and petted her gently, but she didn't seem to notice. She had a good, warm place against Jim's chest, and she seemed to like Jim's smell as much as she did Dean's. Maybe in a few days she'd get to know the smell of those other people, the Johnsons.
"She'll be okay?" he asked in a small voice.
"She will."
He didn't trust himself to say anything more without sounding like some stupid little kid, so he climbed into the backseat with Sam and pulled the door shut.
"Safe journey," Jim said through the open window.
That didn't seem right, Dean thought. Journeys had a beginning and an end, and this one seemed to just go on and on, with little stops here and there. From the look of it, this one might go on forever.
With that heavy feeling still nagging at his heart he checked around the backseat, making sure Sammy had everything he might need for the next little while. Dad seemed okay up in the driver's seat; he'd been moving around a lot better the last day or two and his ribs didn't seem to hurt him much any more. He might be faking - might need to have a beer later on to relax - but at least he could drive, and with any luck wouldn't need to stop someplace because his ribs were acting up again.
Someday, Dean thought, I can help. I'll be old enough to help.
Like Alfred.
As if he knew what Dean was thinking, Jim reached in through the open window with his free hand and ruffled Dean's hair. "You can visit her the next time you're in town," he said. "You did a good thing, Dean. Remember that."
Before Dean could answer, the kitten lifted her head and peered at him.
"Yes, sir," he told Jim. "I guess I did."
Then he reached over and tucked the blanket in close around Sammy's shoulders. Sammy mumbled something and snuffled, then settled in again. His fist moved close to his face as if he was going to suck his thumb, but Dean took hold of his hand and moved it underneath the blanket.
And thought of Sam in that red, green and yellow outfit.
The idea made him snort.
"You good back there?" Dad asked.
Dean looked around, took in every little bit of the car that was more familiar to him than any house could ever be. Ever could be, he supposed, but that was okay. If Dad and Sammy were here, that was okay.
Would be okay no matter how long the journey lasted.
"Yes, sir," he told his father, and it was true.
As the car began to roll down the driveway, he snuggled in close to his little brother and let himself drift toward sleep, feeling warm and safe in the cocoon of pillows and old wool blankets, smiling as he heard the click of the Impala's cassette player coming on, followed by the first few bars of classic Zep, soft until Dad turned the volume up and up and up.
* * * * *
The real Wednesday, discovered in the woods by my brother when she was only a few days old.
Original Summergen post
FINDING WEDNESDAY
By Carol Davis
Part 2
Saturday morning the kitten opened one eye.
She was lying on her washcloths on Dean's lap, and he was petting her while he watched cartoons with Sammy. After the second time she had peed on his clothes, he'd learned to always have the old washcloths there for her to lie on, and she seemed to like playing with them and snuffling them like they were some kind of toy. If he slid his hand underneath and wiggled his fingers she would bat at them and bite them, or sometimes back off and hiss.
He was doing that, poking her with his fingers underneath the washcloth, when all of a sudden her left eye popped open halfway.
"Hey!" Dean yelped.
It took half the day for the eye to open the rest of the way. By dinnertime the other eye had opened a little.
That day, too, Dad sat at the table to eat dinner with everybody for the first time since they'd gotten to Blue Earth. After dinner he sat on the couch for a while, watching the kitten, petting her a little and smiling when she purred.
"She's gonna be okay," Dean told him.
Dad didn't answer that; instead, he studied the kitten for a long time, and he'd stopped smiling. Then he got up from the couch and went out on the front porch, where Pastor Jim was sitting and drinking a glass of iced tea.
There was gonna be more yelling, Dean figured.
He sat close to the shoebox and played with the kitten, who still couldn't see him (according to Pastor Jim, at least) but definitely knew when he was there. Every time he put his hand up close to her she would sniff it, lick it a little bit, and curl up so he could pet her. She knew him, he thought. She knew the person who had saved her from being eaten by something out in the woods.
That figured, didn't it? Dad saved people. Dean saved tiny little cats.
"This sucks," he blurted out.
Sammy, who had lost interest in the kitten days ago, looked up from the picture book he was studying over in Pastor Jim's recliner. "That's a bad word," he reminded Dean.
"I don't care."
He thought about running again - either climbing the tree or just running - but before he could get up from the couch all the energy drained out of him and he couldn't do anything but slump back against the cushions.
Dad never stayed with the people he saved, of course. They didn't need him to, or want him to; after he'd gotten rid of the bad thing, whatever it was, they could go right on with their lives and they didn't need some guy with two kids hanging around. They wouldn't want Dad to check in on them and make sure they were still okay after a week or a month or a year. But that was people. They could take care of themselves. The kitten couldn't take care of herself, and Pastor Jim hadn't said anything about maybe wanting to keep her. Neither had Mrs. Lundquist.
Once Dad's ribs were better, he and Sammy and Dean would be hitting the road again, and there was no chance, no chance at all in a million years, that he would say, let's bring the cat with us.
But I saved her, Dean thought.
As if she'd heard that and was glad about it, the kitten started to purr. Right then, it was the last thing Dean wanted to hear.
Nobody ever asked him, he thought. Nobody ever asked him squat.
Dad found him out back a little while later, sitting on the bottom step outside the kitchen door, peeling apart a blade of grass.
"What's going on?" Dad said from up on the top step.
"Nothin'," Dean muttered.
Moving slowly, Dad came down the steps and sat down beside Dean. After a little bit of consideration he plucked a blade of grass for himself and started to tear it down the middle. "Got something you need to say?"
"No."
"Now'd be a good time to say it."
"I don't need to say anything."
"Fair enough, then." After a second, Dad went on, "Figure we can hang out here for a few more days. Haven't heard about a job yet, so there's no need to head out. That okay with you?"
"Whatever," Dean mumbled.
"Give you a little more time with your little buddy."
"It's not my buddy. It's a cat."
"Watch your tone," Dad said mildly, then went back to tearing up his blade of grass.
It was clouding up to rain; a lot of the sky was still blue but coming closer and closer from the west was a big bank of clouds that was dark and threatening. If it was a thunderstorm, that'd be cool - Sam hadn't been afraid of thunder for a long time, and maybe they'd get to sit out on the porch and watch the storm, if it didn't blow so the porch got wet. Dad loved a good thunderstorm, if they could just sit and watch it and they didn't need to be out driving around in it, or worse yet, running around in it. Something about a good storm got his imagination going, he said.
"I found her," Dean said after a minute.
"Her lucky day."
"Sam thought it was a bear."
That made Dad chuckle. "Got kind of a vivid imagination. Some days he thinks a creaking door is a bear."
"I didn't think it was a bear."
"Good to know."
They peeled grass for a while, working their way through most of what was growing at the foot of the steps. The wind picked up while they were doing it, and it felt and smelled good, fresh and clean and a little bit cool. Dean turned his face into it and closed his eyes.
"Smell the rain?" Dad asked.
"Yeah."
Dad liked it here. In Blue Earth. He did. There wasn't anyplace else, not even Uncle Bobby's, where he'd sit and just be like this.
So maybe…
Maybe…
"Dad?"
"Hmm?"
"Someday?" Dean said softly. "I know not for a long time, but someday could we -"
Dad cupped his hand around the back of Dean's neck and rubbed it with his fingers, the way he used to do when Dean was a lot littler and had gotten upset about something. It was a special thing he did, just for Dean; Sammy didn't like it, would rather have his back rubbed.
"Not sure I see an end to this anytime soon," Dad said, and it sounded like a sigh.
"But someday?"
"I don't know, Dean."
He said it in the way that meant not to ask him again, so Dean didn't. Instead, he leaned in close to Dad and closed his eyes again. Like that, he could remember what it felt like to sit on the couch in between Mom and Dad, when they would watch TV or listen to music or Dad would talk about what had happened that day at the garage. He would tell crazy stories sometimes, about people who had messed up their cars, and Mom would laugh or say, "Oh, John."
He remembered a time when Dad had climbed up the ladder to do something up on the roof. Remembered standing down on the ground with Mom, and Mom saying, "John? Be careful. Do you hear me? Be careful up there."
Like Dad was some little kid.
He wished he could say that now. Be careful, Dad. Please be careful. When you hunt the bad things. Don't let them hurt you.
Instead, he simply leaned against his father as the storm clouds moved in from the west and let his father gently rub the back of his neck.
~~~~~~~~~~
On Sunday, Dad read the newspaper. He read it on Monday and Tuesday, too, and in between he made phone calls. When he wasn't doing either of those things he took walks. Sunday afternoon Dean and Sammy both went with him, but by the time they'd gotten back to Pastor Jim's Sammy had decided that walking was boring. After that Dad went by himself, or with Dean. Dean watched him carefully for signs that he wasn't getting better, that he was faking it, and instead of getting ready to hit the road again, he ought to be getting more rest.
Mom would make him get more rest, Dean thought. Or try to.
Maybe Dad wouldn't listen to her either.
Tuesday afternoon the kitten seemed like she could see a little bit. When Dean wiggled his fingers in front of her, she would move her head to track the movement, or would reach for him with her paws and swat at him.
"She's a sweetheart," Mrs. Lundquist said.
People said that about Mrs. Lundquist, too. Sammy hung around with her a lot, Dean noticed. He seemed to like having her do things for him and answer all his dumb questions. She never yelled, and she never looked like things made her sad, and that was a definite plus.
The thing was, she wasn't their mom.
Nobody was their mom.
She was somebody good to learn from, though. Dean kept a close eye on her while she was doing the laundry, and while she was cooking. Dad had been letting him use the stove for a long time now, and he figured it'd be good if he could cook something that didn't come out of a can. Home fries, for instance. All you had to do, Mrs. Lundquist said, was boil the potatoes until they were soft, cut them into little cubes, and then fry them with some butter.
That would be good. If he could make home fries. And hamburgers, maybe.
For Dad.
Mrs. Lundquist had her own husband and a daughter (Emily, who was Dean's age) and a house and everything, but two or three times a day she came over to Pastor Jim's to fix him lunch or supper, do the dishes or the laundry or clean up or whatever needed doing. That was her job, she told Dean, and yes, she got paid for it.
"Wouldn't you rather have, like…a real job?" Dean asked.
"This is my real job."
"Doing Pastor Jim's laundry?"
She smiled, and laughed, and pushed the plate of cookies she'd baked over closer to where he was sitting at the kitchen table. "Taking care of Pastor Jim."
"But…if you want to take care of people, wouldn't you rather be, like, a doctor?"
"Because it pays better?"
Dean hadn't thought of that, but she had a point. Dad never got paid at all for what he did, not any more, and having money was definitely useful. Having a bunch of it could be even more useful.
"I'm taking care of people I love," she said. "I can't think of any better way to spend my time. Huge paycheck or not."
"You love Pastor Jim?"
"As a dear, dear friend. Yes, I do."
"What if you didn't get paid at all? Would you still do it?"
She looked toward the living room, where Sammy was playing with some Matchbox cars on the floor, making vroom vroom noises while he rolled around on the rug. "Have you heard people use the phrase 'loving care,' Dean?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"Yes, I'd do it if nobody paid me a nickel. It'd make paying the bills a little bit more interesting, but a little creativity can be very fulfilling."
She started to hum while she was wiping off the countertops and the stove. She did that a lot, and it made Dean think sometimes that she was the happiest person he'd ever met. Or the craziest.
"What about you?" she asked. "Would you want to be a doctor?"
"I don't know."
"Because you're right - loving care doesn't need to be restricted to members of your family, or good friends."
He thought about that for a minute, fiddling with the plate of cookies and watching Sam push the Matchbox cars around on the rug. "If you saved somebody," he said hesitantly. "Somebody you didn't know? And they didn't pay you. Is it loving care when you do that?"
"It could be, yes."
"So you could love somebody even if you don't know them? And if you only saw them that one time, and never again?"
Dad would have asked him, What's your point? Uncle Bobby probably would have, too. But Mrs. Lundquist was around Pastor Jim all the time.
"It's the best kind of love there is, Dean," she said.
"But how can you love somebody if you don't know them?"
For a second he thought she was going to say something like what Pastor Jim said in his sermons, about everybody being God's children, or everybody being responsible for everybody else or needing to be like Jesus or something. Instead, she smiled like she loved him and said, "Sometimes you just do. Sometimes you just want that other person to be well and happy, and there's no explanation for it other than that you do."
Dean frowned, "I don't get it."
"You will."
"But I don't want to get it someday. I want to get it now. I want to get -" And before he could stop it, he'd blurted out the rest of it. "I want to know why my dad goes around helping people he doesn't know and gets hurt and what if he died? I want to know why he would do that, and nobody tells me anything that makes any sense."
Nobody had ever said Mrs. Lundquist knew anything about the hunting. Dean had always figured she didn't have a clue, because Dad had always said We do what we do and we shut up about it and Dean figured Pastor Jim felt the same way. But Mrs. Lundquist didn't look at him like she didn't understand. She just stood there with the cleaning sponge in her hand, looking at him like she felt a little bit sorry for him. Or for somebody.
"The world has its heroes, Dean," she said after a minute. "Large and small."
"But -"
He'd been reading a comic book, and it was lying on the kitchen table next to the plate of cookies: an old issue of Detective Comics he'd found in one of Pastor Jim's bookcases, with Batman flying across the cover. Mrs. Lundquist looked at it and smiled a little, as if she knew all about Batman and maybe kind of liked him, which was a little puzzling, because as far as Dean knew, moms didn't read comic books and didn't know about stuff like Batman, who…
"Oh," he said.
Right there in that issue, Batman had been rescuing a guy who'd been trapped in a blown-up building. And he got pretty banged up doing it - so bad that Alfred the butler had to patch him up and drive the Batmobile back to the Batcave. Batman hadn't known the guy he rescued. He didn't know any of the people he saved, except for when he had to save Alfred or Commissioner Gordon or somebody like that, but he got the crap knocked out of him on a pretty regular basis.
That was kind of a cool idea, Dad being like Batman. Especially since it meant he, Dean, was sort of like Robin.
Without the stupid outfit, of course.
The trouble was, Dean wasn't saving people from blown-up buildings. He was saving cats.
When the two hours was up he wandered into the living room to give the kitten her bottle of kitten food.
They could take her in the car, he thought. They absolutely could, because they could put a litter box on the floor in the back seat. He could clean it every time they stopped for gas or to eat or to go to the bathroom, so it wouldn't stink. And she could sleep back there, with him and Sammy - he'd make a bed for her on the other side of the floor, and he and Sammy could play with her and feed her and pet her and make sure she was happy.
They could keep her in the motel room with them, too. She wouldn't make any noise, like a dog would, and she wouldn't eat much, and they could keep the litter box in the bathroom. Sam would like having her around - what he really wanted was a puppy, but a cat was better. Nobody would need to take a cat for walks in the middle of the night. And Dad liked cats. He'd told Dean that one day, when Dean found him petting a cat that had wandered up to him out of nowhere. He liked cats just fine, he said.
So they could keep her. Take her with them.
Except…
Except that they couldn't.
Batman never did, he told himself. He just walked away from the people he rescued (or Alfred carried him away, or drove him), and so did Dad. Maybe that was part of being a hero - you did what you did and you shut up about it, and you went right on to the next thing, the next person, the next job. The whole thing pretty much sucked for Batman too, except that he was really rich and had that big mansion. Like Dad, he couldn't go to the hospital when he got hurt; Alfred had to take care of him and feed him and drive him around. And had to shut up about it.
When Dad came back from walking that afternoon, Dean brought him a beer and a bag of chips and sat with him out on the porch. Some guys were putting a new roof on the house across from the Lundquists', and Dean and Dad sat and watched them work while Dad drank his beer and shared the chips with Dean.
"Talked to Bobby," Dad said when his beer was almost gone.
He didn't sound like he meant Uncle Bobby says hi. Or Uncle Bobby says it's hotter'n-a-sumbitch out there.
"Do we have to go somewhere?" Dean asked quietly.
"Yeah, we do."
"When?"
"Tomorrow."
"Do you need to help somebody?"
"Yup."
There were more chips left, and Dean reached for a handful, then pulled his hand back empty. "Okay," he said.
"Gonna have to leave that cat here, son."
He could have argued with that. Could have told Dad all the good reasons why they could bring the kitten along with them, and he almost opened his mouth to try. But before he could start talking, he thought, Batman doesn't have a cat. Batman didn't have Sammy, either, but there was no way Dad was going to see the logic in leaving Sammy in Blue Earth until he got old enough to stop whining and pitching fits over nothing.
So all Dean said was, "Okay."
"You good with that?"
"Yeah."
"Jim'll find somebody to take it."
"Whatever."
Head down, Dean got up from his chair and went over to the porch railing and draped himself against it. That weird feeling was filling up his chest again; he'd started to feel like it was a regular thing. That maybe it would end up being a regular thing for the rest of his life.
"Dad?" he said before he could stop himself.
"What is it, Dean?"
"Do you feel bad sometimes?"
He thought maybe Dad would ask him to explain, that he'd say "Feel bad about what?" But he didn't. He just sat there drinking the last little bit of his beer, then he set the empty bottle down on the porch floor alongside his chair. Dean switched back and forth between looking at him and looking at the guys fixing the roof across the street, because looking straight at Dad started to feel like an impossible thing to do.
"Yeah," Dad said after a minute. "Yeah, I do."
"Does it last a long time?"
"Sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes it lasts long enough that I don't feel like I can see the end of it."
Those guys over on the roof looked like they were having a good time. They were laughing and throwing something back and forth.
"Dad?"
"Yeah, Dean."
"Does it hurt when you save somebody and then you have to just get in the car and go on to the next thing?"
Instead of answering, Dad got up from his chair. He stood next to Dean long enough to rub the back of Dean's head, then he started to walk toward the door into the house. He stopped halfway there and said quietly, "You make sure all your stuff and Sammy's is packed up before you go to bed, okay? We'll get an early start tomorrow."
"Okay," Dean sighed.
Dad took another step, then stopped. "It hurts a hell of a lot more when you can't save 'em," he said.
Then he went into the house.
~~~~~~~~~~
Nobody argued with Dean when he said, "I want to do it." Nobody suggested that he couldn't handle it on his own. Nobody said it would be better if a grownup helped him out. Nobody suggested anything at all. So he made up his bed on the couch with the pillows and blankets and carefully set the alarm clock for two hours. He watched everyone else go upstairs to bed, then he crawled in under the covers and lay there looking at that shoebox on the coffee table.
The kitten was already asleep. She slept a lot, but Pastor Jim said that was normal for babies.
Maybe she'd be asleep when he left.
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep but his mind wouldn't settle down. Dad hadn't said where they were going - which wasn't unusual; sometimes he did and sometimes he didn't - so Dean tried to decide which way they'd be headed, and how long they'd stay in that next place. Maybe only a few days, or maybe a couple of weeks.
Maybe there'd be a pool.
Maybe there'd be a kitchenette, and he could try making those home fries.
Maybe…
He woke to the soft beep of the alarm going off and found Pastor Jim sitting in the recliner with a blanket tucked over him. "I said I could do it," he complained.
"I know you did."
"Then how come you're not letting me do it?"
"Because I wanted your company."
Dean pushed himself up into a sit and scrubbed at his eyes. "Why?"
"Because I'm selfish. I've enjoyed this, and I wasn't ready to give it up."
"I thought you weren't gonna write your new sermon until Thursday or Friday."
Jim smiled as he pushed his blanket aside. "Never hurts to get an early start. But that's not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean?"
"I enjoy sitting here with you. I enjoy having you boys here. It makes the house seem a lot less empty."
Dean thought about that for a minute, then said, "Is it -"
"What?"
"Is it loving care? When you let us stay here, even if you and Dad yell at each other a lot?"
That seemed to take Jim by surprise. He picked up the little bottle of kitten formula and peered at it for a second, then handed it over to Dean. "Your dad and I have been friends for a long time. The yelling - it's just head-butting."
"A lot of people butt heads with Dad."
"So I've heard."
"He just yells because -"
"He yells for a lot of reasons, Dean. And I think I understand most of them. Don't worry about it."
Dean hesitated, then asked, "Will you always be his friend?"
"I will."
"Even if he swears at you?"
Jim took a long, deep breath. "I could do without that. But - let's say I try to let it bounce off me."
"Like…Superman, with the bullets?"
Jim chuckled softly. "Something like that."
It took a while, but the kitten ate almost the whole bottle of formula. She peed a little, and purred a little, then curled up on the washcloths to go back to sleep.
"She needs a name," Jim said.
"The new people can give her one."
"You found her. She's your little miracle, Dean."
There wasn't much about it that was anything like a miracle, Dean figured. She'd made noise, Sammy had heard her, and they'd tracked her down. On the other hand, maybe it was kind of a miracle that whatever had happened to her brothers and sisters hadn't happened to her. Maybe it was kind of a miracle that Dad had gotten tired at that exact time, in that exact place. There weren't any other cars around; the kitten could have made that Eeeeeeee noise for days without anybody hearing her, or trying to find her.
"I found her on Wednesday," he said. "It that a dumb name?"
"Wednesday? No, I don't think so."
"I guess you could call her Whitey or Snowball or something like that."
"I think we'll stick with Wednesday."
"It's a dumb name, isn't it?"
"It commemorates a special day. That doesn't sound dumb to me."
She'd started purring again, curled against Dean's hand. He remembered that about Sammy as a baby: that he'd seem to be asleep, then awake, then asleep again. Gently, with the tips of his fingers, he stroked her fur and listened to her soft rattle of contentment.
"Good thing I didn't find her on Fourth of July," he told Pastor Jim.
The whole night passed like that. In a way that made Pastor Jim's house - the one the community let him use - feel like a home.
~~~~~~~~~~
The sun had just barely started to come up when Dean crawled out from under his covers on the couch. Pastor Jim was sound asleep in the recliner with a blanket pulled up around his shoulders. His head was tipped in a way that might mean his neck would hurt later on, but Dean left him that way and padded quietly, barefoot, through the house.
It was nothing like Batman's mansion. Everything was a little bit old, and some of it was a little beat up. But it was right in a way that Wayne Manor maybe wasn't. A good place to stay when you needed a break. Or needed to rest up and take care of bruised ribs.
Dad was still asleep, too, when Dean carefully pushed open the door of his room. He was smiling a little - dreaming of Mom, maybe. Dean stood in the doorway looking at him for a while, then gently pulled the door closed and moved to the room next door, where Sammy had again kicked his covers off onto the floor. Sighing, Dean picked them up and straightened them out, tucking them up over Sam's shoulders.
Without help, he figured, Sam would probably freeze to death in his sleep from lack of covers.
"We goin' now?" Sam mumbled.
"No. Go back to sleep."
"'Kay."
He stood there watching for a few minutes, waiting to see if Sam would kick the covers off again, but he didn't. He did start to drool, though, all over the hand that was lying flat on the pillow next to his face.
That cat, Dean figured, was a much better deal than Sam.
"The Johnsons are going to take her," Pastor Jim told him a while later. "They have other cats, and they said they'd be glad to have her."
"Will they take good care of her?"
"There's no doubt in my mind."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes," Jim said. "I'm sure."
It was still pretty early; Mrs. Lundquist wouldn't be over for a while. But they'd need sandwiches and snacks for the road, so Dean went from fridge to cupboard to table and assembled the ingredients for PB&Js and ham and cheese, some cookies, a big bag of chips, some juice boxes, sodas and Cheez-Its. As he worked he could hear Dad upstairs moving around, probably trying to get Sammy dressed and ready to go.
"I like being here," he told Jim.
"I'm glad."
"I wouldn't mind staying here," he went on, watching himself spread peanut butter on soft white slices of bread so he didn't need to look at his father's friend. "But we gotta go. You know. It's the job. Dad has to do his job."
Our job, he thought.
Because it was, wasn't it? Dad was Batman, and he was Robin, or Alfred, or maybe a little bit of both, and they did have a pretty decent Batmobile - black and everything. He still hadn't figured out where Sam fit into the picture…unless maybe Sam was Robin.
In that dumb red, green and yellow outfit?
Sam was definitely Robin.
Dad came downstairs and into the kitchen while Dean was packing the food into a big paper bag. Sammy was in his arms, draped over his shoulder and probably drooling on him, still mostly asleep. "Those provisions just about ready, there, dude?" Dad asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Let's move it on out, then."
He followed Dad into the living room and wrestled the strap of one of their duffels into position on his shoulder, got a good grip on the bag of food and carried it out to the car. After he'd stowed the duffel and the food he helped Dad get Sammy settled in the backseat with some comics, his coloring book and crayons, a couple of pillows and a blanket. They'd almost finished when Pastor Jim came out to stand alongside the car. Dean was a little surprised to see that he was holding the kitten against his chest. She hadn't been outside in a week, not since Dean had brought her here, last Wednesday.
She was home, he thought. Not at Jim's house, but in Blue Earth. The idea made that weird feeling crop up again.
"Want to say goodbye?" Jim offered.
Dean reached up and petted her gently, but she didn't seem to notice. She had a good, warm place against Jim's chest, and she seemed to like Jim's smell as much as she did Dean's. Maybe in a few days she'd get to know the smell of those other people, the Johnsons.
"She'll be okay?" he asked in a small voice.
"She will."
He didn't trust himself to say anything more without sounding like some stupid little kid, so he climbed into the backseat with Sam and pulled the door shut.
"Safe journey," Jim said through the open window.
That didn't seem right, Dean thought. Journeys had a beginning and an end, and this one seemed to just go on and on, with little stops here and there. From the look of it, this one might go on forever.
With that heavy feeling still nagging at his heart he checked around the backseat, making sure Sammy had everything he might need for the next little while. Dad seemed okay up in the driver's seat; he'd been moving around a lot better the last day or two and his ribs didn't seem to hurt him much any more. He might be faking - might need to have a beer later on to relax - but at least he could drive, and with any luck wouldn't need to stop someplace because his ribs were acting up again.
Someday, Dean thought, I can help. I'll be old enough to help.
Like Alfred.
As if he knew what Dean was thinking, Jim reached in through the open window with his free hand and ruffled Dean's hair. "You can visit her the next time you're in town," he said. "You did a good thing, Dean. Remember that."
Before Dean could answer, the kitten lifted her head and peered at him.
"Yes, sir," he told Jim. "I guess I did."
Then he reached over and tucked the blanket in close around Sammy's shoulders. Sammy mumbled something and snuffled, then settled in again. His fist moved close to his face as if he was going to suck his thumb, but Dean took hold of his hand and moved it underneath the blanket.
And thought of Sam in that red, green and yellow outfit.
The idea made him snort.
"You good back there?" Dad asked.
Dean looked around, took in every little bit of the car that was more familiar to him than any house could ever be. Ever could be, he supposed, but that was okay. If Dad and Sammy were here, that was okay.
Would be okay no matter how long the journey lasted.
"Yes, sir," he told his father, and it was true.
As the car began to roll down the driveway, he snuggled in close to his little brother and let himself drift toward sleep, feeling warm and safe in the cocoon of pillows and old wool blankets, smiling as he heard the click of the Impala's cassette player coming on, followed by the first few bars of classic Zep, soft until Dad turned the volume up and up and up.
* * * * *
The real Wednesday, discovered in the woods by my brother when she was only a few days old.
Original Summergen post