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LACY DAWN ADVENTURES

 

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Rarity from the Hollow
from Chapter Five

”The counter top was covered with leftover linoleum pieces that used to match the floor. The heads of the tacks that held it down had rusted but the flowers on it were much brighter because they had not been walked on. Lacy Dawn wiped.

 
I know more about post-traumatic stress disorder. I've got it too. Like DotCom said, I'll turn it into an advantage when it's time.


Lacy Dawn threw away the envelope for her father's VA check that had been left on the counter and got the cutting board off the wall. It was a wobbly square that he wouldn't let them burn because it was made in ninth grade shop class. She tried to whistle Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers of America."


$1,724.58 a month ain't enough disability check for what he went through.


Jenny left the kitchen to check on her husband. Lacy Dawn sliced potatoes, cut bacon from the slab they'd been given by a neighbor who raised pigs for slaughter, peeled onion, and cooked. Aroma filled the space. She gave up on the tune.


I'm depressed. I hope DotCom can help. I wish he could smell.


He's breathing, Jenny yelled from the bedroom.


That's a good sign, Lacy Dawn said.


War is bad.


DotCom and Lacy Dawn had discussed how this or that politician thought this or that war was either good or bad. It was part of her Earth World History plug-in lessons and included how some people made money off war and others paid. Despite her best efforts to start an argument about war, DotCom, like Switzerland, always maintained neutrality on the topic.

 
It's not fair if you don't pick a side, she said to the skillet of potatoes.


Just turn them when they brown, honey. I'll be there in a minute.


Okay, Mommy.


Nothing's fair in love or war. I hate it when DotCom says that.


Put in a little more bacon grease if you need to.


Okay, Mommy.


I'd better turn down the burner to reduce my moral anger. I get so emotional and he always stays so calm. I guess it's in his programming.


She flipped the potatoes.


Since he won't take a side, I'll never win an argument about war anyway.


Nothing's fair in love and war, she said to the skillet, turned to the open kitchen window and yelled loud enough for the maple tree to hear, He loves me!


Are you okay? Jenny asked from the bedroom.


I'm just playing with Brownie.


It's his way of telling me he loves me. Just like war, our love ain't fair either. One of these days, I'm going to tell him that I love him back.


Lacy Dawn flipped the potatoes again and started the bacon. Almost immediately, it competed with the redolence of frying onions. She grinned for a moment.


Sometimes love ain't enough. There's got to be something practical or magical that DotCom taught me that'll make me feel better about missing school today.


Most of her plug-in lessons were presented by DotCom because Lacy Dawn kept asking one question: Why? He would plug her in to the next lesson plan. A tiny port had been installed on her spine below her shirt collar. She could reach it when she stretched. It was the exact same color as her skin.


Why is blood red? she asked the bacon.


Because God made it that color, Jenny answered from the bedroom.


Lacy Dawn gave Heaven the finger.


That ain't why. It's because of the iron in it. DotCom told me so and he would never lie about bacon or anything else.


Lacy Dawn checked to see if the potatoes were browning and flipped the bacon.


DotCom knows everything about everything. But, sometimes he's like the psychiatric manual that Daddy stole. Knowing everything doesn't mean that a person has a true answer to an actual question. He's been doing the same thing since I was five—telling me why even when I don't ask.


She flipped the bacon again.”

 

 

 

©2016  Lacy Dawn Adventures

 

 

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