Lorrainery
"Follow the Sun!" The sun glinted in the sky and across the entire landscape. I had to squint back to see where she'd gone. "Follow the Suuuuuuun!"
I nearly fell over.
You see, it's best to start at the beginning. I mean, I was there, and this stuff doesn't make sense to me. So back to the beginning.
We were sitting at the top of a lovely hill, a really nice place where you get a good vantage point over the entire valley. We were seated on a fallen log we'd brushed the snow off of and were taking advantage of the vantage point, you know, looking around at stuff. At the top of the hill with us there was a small cluster of trees and some old hut that leaned away from the trees as if to say "I don't want anything to do with those damn trees, all covered in their needles that get all over the carpet and sting when they get blown around in those dry winds of the summer." Or perhaps it wasn't. Perhaps it desperately wanted to be young and healthy like those trees, able to stand up in the wind instead of tilting away in it like the folding chairs stacked neatly at home in the garage, waiting patiently for the ice to melt off the roof into the cracks around the eaves and all over until the door was thrust open and the sunlight was let in and the summer air...
And it was sorta cold. Like my hands, I couldn't feel them so well. Which is probably why I started to talk about the hut, because I was a little worried about my hands. And I'm not the sort to blab about stuff like that. Once I was told by a teacher that I'd die of frostbite and no one would know until bits of me started cracking off because I was so damn shy. It wasn't shyness, I said, I just didn't want to be a burden, I said. Okay, so I might not have said it out loud. I thought it, though. I suppose that's why I employed that kind of double positive "I said ... I said" regarding my response to this teacher. Oh well. Maybe it was a little shyness, too.
From somewhere behind the trees there was an unearthly howl, the kind to put goosebumps all over your skin.
"What the hell was that?" she said.
"What the hell was that?" I said. A tacit agreement. Well, not literally, obviously. An agreement.
"I betcha those are FunSuckers," she says.
"What?" I said. Now, I realise this is sounding like we're two teenage girls chatting back and forth, but we're not. Well, I suppose technically we are, because we're both girls and, I suppose, if you get literal about it, teenagers. But just barely. But anyway, that's not the main part of the story. It's just a thing.
And she was looking way too calm for someone who just heard something that sounded like a werewolf getting its' fingers caught in a car door.
Then the howl again. And we were off and running, like mad, neither of us looking particularly calm.
So we're caught up now, in the story, running down into the valley. I was always a fast runner, as a kid, so I was in the lead, my arms and legs whirling, only occasionally in sync, as I rumbled down the hill, and the howling came at closer and closer intervals.
She was trucking down the hill, as well, just a little bit behind me, keeping shouting about following the damn sun. Whatever that meant.
She screeched it the last time, her very last time, and I twisted back to see if I could get any more info about following the sun out of her; maybe a pointer or an arm gesture or something.
Let me tell you: those stories in the Bible, about not turning around to see whatever's behind you? There's some truth to those. And no harm following them. Whereas not following them have occasionally caused me some big problems. Definitely. Now, I'm no Bible-freak, but, you know, it's a history we share. We met at Sunday School (not the one that serves ice cream and ice cream floats down in Dennis, in Cape Cod, unfortunately).
I ate it. Smoked it. Bit the dust. Trounced the flunky monkey. Whatever. I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes being chucked on a snowy hill. There was this pothole, or a branch sticking out of the snow or something and down I went. Much like she went down, I suppose, because she was lying face down on the hillside, slowly sliding down to the soles of my boots, which were facing up the hill, toe-down in the snow. As was my face. Which had last glimpsed my friend tobogganing down the hill on the tip of her nose, arms splayed out to the side, like she'd had the basics of making a snow angel explained to her but didn't quite get the mechanics of it.
When the dog caught up with us it didn't have one of those rum casks tied to its neck. It just howled holy hell, and sooner or later someone would have found us. If we hadn't just gotten ourselves up, slightly redder and ruddier than when we hadn't been planted face-first in the snow, that is. Well, we had to get up, the dog was chewing the hell out of both of our sleeves, which made sickly noises when the soggy patches would slap off the snow as we tried to bat away the furry ball of pure, howling energy.
The dog left when we trudged down the hill, and it wasn't nearly big enough to bring either one of us down. It found a squirrel, or the faint memory of one, around about the bottom of the hill and rocketed off into the woods, still howling.
But we walked back towards home, parting at the row of battered mailboxes at the foot of the hill we lived on either side of, and never spoke of the incident again. But every time I run down a hill now I look for the sun and I keep my feet firmly in it.
disclaimer:
It's here! Possibly our most announced issue in years!
We hope you've enjoyed it.
Next week, well, next week who the hell knows what we'll do?
This issue has been dedicated to our little ski chick.
By the way, Sundae School in Dennis has a website. If you want to order any online and send some our way we won't complain.