Logan was asleep when I came home from school and I had to shake his toe before he woke up. Then I kissed him, even though he had some truly atrocious morning breath, or late afternoon breath in this case. He sat up and stretched. Sweat made a moist shadow on the blanket where he’d been sleeping. His skin stuck to me when we hugged and his unshaven face scraped my cheek.
“What day is it? It’s so dark in here, I never know if a nap was all night or five minutes,” he said. “I think I’m getting a heat rash.”
“I’ll get you some baby powder.”
“Honey, sweetie, what I need to do is get out of here.”
When he asked about his clothes, I told him I hadn’t had time to bring them in that morning after I dried them, so I stuffed them all in a black plastic trash bag and tucked it behind the washer. My mom, I explained, must of found them and thought they were trash or some of my dad’s old clothes and thrown them out.
“They’re gone? They’re really all gone?” His voice went from soldier to little boy to girly whine.
“Snap out of it, soldier boy. I looked in the cans out back of the carport, but they’d been emptied. She hasn’t said anything, though. That’s good at least, isn’t it?”
“Some of them were clean!”
“I didn’t know which were which, so I did them all. Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out.”
“Oh, shit.” Logan squeezed his eyes closed hard enough to make the lids wrinkle. “I didn’t give you my car keys and my wallet, did I?”
“No, they’re right over there in the corner.”
“Shit,” he said, but his voice was softer.
“Listen here now,” I said, trying to keep the mad out of my voice. I knew that showing how angry I was would only rile him up that much more. And to no good account either. But I didn’t forget about how he was acting. I only pushed it off to the side. “Don’t fret over this. It ain’t nothing we can’t figure out together. Come over here and rest your worried brain.” I patted my legs and he crawled over and put his head in my lap. I stroked his hair and lowered my voice, sweetening it up as much as I could. “My friend Dani has an older brother who left some clothes behind when he moved out to college. She’s going to look for them tonight and call me. I think he was smaller than you, though.” I pulled this right out of my ass. Dani’s an only child. It was scary how easy it was for me to make all this shit up the way I did. By my count, this was lie number nine.
Logan pointed the flashlight down at his legs. Puffy red patches stretched from his crotch down along his inner thigh. He shook his head when he saw them. His cheek stubble rasped against my jeans.
“Shit.” He poked at the red spot on his left leg.
This went a long way toward ironing out the wrinkles from his temper tantrum. Poor little guy, I thought.
“That does look like heat rash,” I said. “Does it itch?”
He grunted. But I could tell my taking an interest and feeling sorry for him had already helped calm his nerves some.
I gave him a pressed beef sandwich with mustard and American cheese and a cup of Sunny Delight. Later, back in my own bed, it occurred to me that Desitin, the ointment moms use for soothing particularly angry flare-ups of diaper rash, might do him a world of good. I bet I could get some down at the Piggly Wiggly.