It took us more time to make the shore than expected. The water pushed at us like a thug wanting our lunch money.
When we were finally on land, we loaded the boat on the rack in the pouring rain with the wind trying to lift it up and carry it away, and then we climbed into the truck. My feet felt like blocks of ice.
Mr. Candles turned on the engine, and the air from the heater was cold at first. We sat there while it warmed, listening to the rain smash, the lightning sizzle, and the thunder rumble. The wind was so fierce the truck wobbled.
Finally, we were moving, the wipers beating at the rain like a fool waving in a parade.
When we got back to the house, we unloaded the boat and rushed inside, laughing as we went. We toweled off and took off our cold, wet shoes, cleaned up where we had dripped on the floor, then had some corn bread that Mrs. Candles warmed in the oven. We buttered slices of the crusty, brown corn bread, crumbled it into glasses of milk, and dipped it out of the milk with spoons. When the corn bread was chewed up and tucked into our gullets, we drank the remains of the milk. We told Millie about the fishing and the rain and how Mr. Candles had struggled the boat ashore. The way we told it, it sounded like a great adventure.
“It wasn’t any big thing,” he said.
“You know better than to be on the lake with it raining,” Millie said.
“Wasn’t raining when we went out there.”
When we were finished eating, Mr. Candles told us to get ready for bed, he’d clean the fish. I wanted to help him. I had never cleaned fish before, and I wanted to know how, but he insisted our night was over.
I went into my little room and pulled on the pajamas the Candleses had given me, then went down the hall and into the bathroom. I brushed my teeth and did my bathroom duty and washed my hands.
When I came out, Ronnie, dressed in blue footie pajamas, her beautiful, wild hair tied up in a ribbon that couldn’t quite contain it, was coming out of her room and down the hall. She passed the doorway to the kitchen as I was turning from the bathroom toward my sleeping place. She rushed up and grabbed my shoulders and turned me, easy as a top, and kissed me.
It was a warm kiss and I liked it more than the one on the cheek she had given me before. I felt it all the way down to my toes and it made the milk and corn bread in my stomach spin around.
Wasn’t a long kiss, but it was strong kiss, and when her lips left mine, I said, “What was that for?”
“Because,” she said, and she turned and padded quickly down the hall, looking back at me once with a cute smile, then she went into her room and closed the door.
Hallelujah.
In my bed, I lay awake and thought about that kiss. Warmth and memory of it glided me into sleep. And it was nice for a while, until I felt the bed move, and I knew my father was back, and he reached out to touch my foot.
When I awoke from that shake, there was just the dark and the slight chill of the midnight room. It took me some time to get back to sleep.
* * *
Since it was Christmas holidays, for a few days following our fishing trip, Ronnie didn’t have school, and Mr. Candles didn’t have work. We stayed home in the warm house. I liked having Ronnie near. She smiled at me a lot during that time, in memory of our kiss, I guess, though she was the one that had done the kissing. I could have kicked myself for not kissing her back.