What I Would Travel Ten Thousand Miles to See
by
JESSE COWAN

When I was a kid, my favorite story was The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. I loved that story. The water babies were the cutest things. I would travel ten thousand miles to see them.

They live in a fairy island far away in the sea and there are lots of sea caves where the water babies play. They love to swim in the water forests with the water monkeys and the water flowers. They play games with the lobsters and salmon and sometimes they ride on the backs of mermaids. Hundreds of water babies live in this deep part of the sea.

If I could go there, I would look for one special water baby. He has light brown hair that’s real thin and fine like corn silk. He’s pretty chubby and has a small pink birthmark on the inside of his right knee. I’d go ten thousand miles to see him.

THE END

P.S. Mrs. Noble, there are 153 words in this essay. I hope that’s not too many. Thank you, Jesse.

The day after I turned in my paper, a Saturday, Doris Ray was in the front yard flying around in her Christmas angel costume. Her idea of being an angel is to have everybody wait on her, so she was bossing Jimmy and Roy Dean around like crazy, making them pretend to bring her lemonade and cookies while she swooped through the drive kicking up gravel.

Her costume was just a plain white sheet with big paper wings Daddy made out of chicken wire and butcher paper, but Doris Ray put on like it was the real thing. You would’ve thought she had a real halo instead of just an embroidery hoop covered in gold tinsel.

At the Christmas program, she’d embarrassed our whole family. Mr. Scott had hauled all this hay from his barn into the church, and Doris Ray was supposed to stand in it in her angel costume and look down real sweet at Baby Jesus.

She did for a while. The kid reading the story, though, was taking forever and everybody was getting bored. Especially Doris Ray. Pretty soon, she reached down and picked up a long piece of straw. She fiddled with it awhile, then she put it between her fingers like a cigarette, brought it to her mouth and took a long drag. She took another puff, then another and another, pretending to blow smoke rings over the congregation. The whole church was snickering. Mama was mortified.

Doris Ray got in a lot of trouble and after that she said she’d never be an angel again, but she must’ve meant at church.

Anyway, the boys begged me to make Doris Ray stop bossing them, so I talked her into letting me help her up into the Cottonwood tree.

“You can boss the whole world from up there,” I told her. “Besides,” I added, “maybe you’ll see some other angels.”

Roxanne says there really are angels, everywhere—in the trees, on the roofs, sitting on the hoods of cars, even lined up on the telephone wires. You just can’t see them.

I want to know one thing. If that’s true, why don’t they do something besides sit around and watch people mess up all the time? They could’ve stopped Johnny from falling from that windmill. And they could’ve done something about Mrs. Arthur, and maybe even patched up Mr. Arthur’s mind. Most of all, they could’ve done something about William III.

I mean, where were they when William III got sick? Where were they when Mama and Daddy wrapped him in cold wet towels trying to get his fever down? Where were they when he had to get hooked up to that breathing machine at the hospital? Where were they when I didn’t pray the right words? The angels could’ve made the words right and taken them on up to Heaven before it was too late. But they didn’t. I guess they just sat out on the crape myrtle doing nothing.

I hollered up at Doris Ray and asked her if she liked those weevil bugs that live in the tree. She stuck out her tongue.

“I’m gonna live up here ever and forever where I can watch the stars at night,” she said. Then she said to bring her a hot dog because it was nearly suppertime.

I told her I thought angels were supposed to eat ambrosia.

She started whining and carrying on that she didn’t like “brosia,” and she wanted a hot dog and chocolate milk with a cherry in it.

Doris Ray is plain spoiled. I said if she didn’t hush I’d just throw some birdseed up there and she’d have to make do. So she shut up.

I went on in and Mama said for me to get the hamburger started so we could have tacos for supper. “I hope angels will eat tacos,” I said.

She gave me a funny look, but I didn’t say anything else. I took out the taco shells and chopped up some lettuce and tomatoes and grated-the cheese. No way would I fix Doris Ray a wiener. Mama wouldn’t be about to let her eat in the tree while the rest of us sat at the table. But in a way I wished she could have it. Pretty soon, she would be grown up like me. Life would not be simple anymore. She sure wouldn’t get to sit in a tree and be an angel eating a hot dog.