“Heck, let’s go,” he said.
“OK,” she said, suddenly brightening. “Why not?”
She got her boots and raincoat and considered the umbrella. “D’ya think we could swing across holding the umbrella?”
He shook his head. “Nah.”
“We better stop by your house and get your boots and things.”
He shrugged. “I don’t have nothing that fits. I’ll just go like this.”
“I’ll get you an old coat of Bill’s.” She started up the stairs. Judy appeared in the hallway.
“What are you kids doing?” It was the same words that Jess’s mother might have used, but it didn’t come out the same way. Judy’s eyes were kind of fuzzed over as she spoke, and her voice sounded as though it were being broadcast from miles away.
“We didn’t mean to bother you, Judy.”
“That’s all right, I’m stuck right now. I might as well stop. Have you had any lunch?”
“S’all right, Judy. We can get something ourselves.”
Judy’s eyes focused slightly. “You’ve got your boots on.”
Leslie looked down at her feet. “Oh, yeah,” she said, as though she were just noticing them herself. “We thought we’d go out for a while.”
“Is it raining again?”
“Yeah.”
“I used to like to walk in the rain.” Judy smiled the kind of smile May Belle did in her sleep. “Well, if you two can manage….”
“Sure.”
“Is Bill back yet?”
“No. He said he wouldn’t be back until late, not to worry.”
“Fine,” she said. “Oh,” she said suddenly, and her eyes popped wide open. “Oh!” She almost ran back to her room, and the plinkety-plink of the typewriter began at once.
Leslie was grinning. “She came unstuck.”
He wondered what it would be like to have a mother whose stories were inside her head instead of marching across the television screen all day long. He followed Leslie up the hall to where she was pulling things out of a closet. She handed him a beige raincoat and a peculiar round black woolly hat.
“No boots.” Her voice was coming out of the depths of the closet and was muffled by a line of overcoats. “How about a pair of clumps?”
“A pair of what?”
She stuck her head out between the coats. “Cleats. Cleats.” She produced them. They looked like size twelves.
“Naw. I’d lose ’em in the mud. I’ll just go barefoot.”
“Hey,” she said, emerging completely. “Me, too.”
The ground was cold. The icy mud sent little thrills of pain up their legs, so they ran, splashing through the puddles and slushing in the mud. P.T. bounded ahead, leaping fishlike from one brown sea to the next, then turning back to herd the two of them forward, nipping at their heels and further splashing their already sopping jeans.
When they got to the bank of the creek, they stopped. It was an awesome sight. Like in The Ten Commandments on TV when the water came rushing into the dry path Moses had made and swept all the Egyptians away, the long dry bed of the creek was a roaring eight-foot-wide sea, sweeping before it great branches of trees, logs, and trash, swirling them about like so many Egyptian chariots, the hungry waters licking and sometimes leaping the banks, daring them to try to confine it.
“Wow.” Leslie’s voice was respectful.