“I’m just glad you both see Colt as the amazing man he is now, and not the f**k up he’d been. It means a lot to both of us.” India pushed to her feet. “Take care of yourself, old man. Give our love to your better half. And for god’s sake, eat something more than just candy bars for supper, will ya?”
“No promises.”
Carson dusted the Snickers and used the facilities. By the time he returned to the waiting room, the nurse was ready for him.
Inside the room, he parked the rolling stool next to Carolyn’s bed, placing one gloved hand on her forearm and covering her hand with his other.
“Hey, sugar. I’m sittin’ here beside you. I know you can hear me. I need you to hear me. Come back to me. I need you to know that I’m right here, I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
He launched right into his one-sided conversation. “It’s your lucky day. India stopped in. She was goin’ on and on about the new tattoo she designed for you. A gigantic bear, its jaws open and dripping saliva. She thought the image appropriate since you’ve always been a scary mother bear when it comes to your cubs—no matter how old they get. We were thinkin’ she could ink it above your McKay brand. That way you’d have a tat above and below your belly button. And you know how much I love tracin’ that tattoo with my tongue.”
Sometimes he still couldn’t believe his wife had gotten herself tattooed, between her hipbones right above her mound.
He laughed. “Okay, sugar, that was a total lie. Indy sends her love, as does Colt. I think she showed up because she needed someone to complain to about her kids bein’ pigs. Devil pigs in clothing, was how she phrased it. I know you felt that way a time or twenty when the boys were growin’ up. I told her about the time you hosed the boys down…”
As soon as Carolyn heard Carson’s voice she stayed still, soaking up every syllable. It seemed as if she hadn’t heard from him in days, but she knew it might’ve only been hours since she existed in the void of nothingness. The doors to her memories were no longer visible and randomly accessible. That scared her. Those memories were her only hope of staying tethered to the life she had and the world she needed to return to. Now the only time she could access those memories was when Carson spoke of the past.
She remembered the mud hole incident, but that wasn’t the memory that popped up first…
Boys.
Why did she have to give birth to all boys?
Five rough and tumble McKay boys.
Why couldn’t she have had a sweet daughter? An angel who didn’t have an aversion to baths, who wouldn’t wrestle in the living room, who wouldn’t constantly shove food in her mouth and five minutes later go looking for more? A little doll she could clothe in frilly dresses and darling hair ribbons. A quiet child.
But this is what she got.
Five destructive boys.
Who had wreaked utter havoc in the house in just four hours.
Someone had let the dogs in the living room—dogs with muddy feet.
Then the boys had left their manure-covered boots inside the kitchen door, so now her kitchen reeked like cow poop.
Dishes covered the counters. The last person who used the milk hadn’t bothered putting it back in the refrigerator.
Carolyn followed the wreckage to the living room. Dirty socks, comic books, Ag magazines, toys and more pieces of clothing littered the floor. Not to mention wrappers from Halloween candy were everywhere—on the couch and chairs, the coffee and end tables. She even found gum stuck to one of the lamps. In two places.
Gum!
The dining room table was piled with book bags, textbooks, crayons, coloring books, glue sticks, school projects and papers thrown haphazardly on the floor, on the chairs and on the sideboard.
With her blood pressure rising, she headed down the hallway and poked her head in the small bathroom. The toilet lid was up; it looked as if someone had sprayed the toilet, the walls and the floor with urine—oh, and then had forgotten to flush the toilet. The sink was covered in grimy soap scum and the bar of Lava was on the floor. She glanced in the mirror—not that she could see herself clearly because someone had smeared soap everywhere.
That did it.
She’d been gone since one o’clock this afternoon to work the election polls. This was how her sons reacted to being unattended in the house…for just a few hours? She shuddered to think what she would’ve found if she’d left them alone all day.
Enough.
She stormed out of the house and found her five little pigs between the machine shed and the barn, on the old barrel they’d rigged up for Colby’s bull riding practice.
“Cord, Colby, Colton, Cameron and Carter McKay, get your butts up on the porch pronto!”
When they weren’t moving fast enough to suit her, she barked, “Now! Or so help me God I will get a switch and use it on each one of you!”
Even after they were lined up on the sidewalk, the five of them were screwing around, pushing each other and shoving. Cam was trying to bench press Carter over his head.
“You will stand there like statues and listen to every word I say. Is that understood?”
Mumbles.
“I said, do you understand?”
“Yes, Ma.”
Carolyn glared at each boy in turn, from her oldest to her youngest. None met her gaze.
“My job is taking care of my family. It’s a job I take great pride in. Raising good boys, making our house a happy place to live and to come home to.” She paused. “Do you think I was happy to come home today and find that god-awful mess? It looks like I’m raising bears in that house, not boys. Bears! But I could forgive bears, because they are animals and do not know any better. But you boys are not wild animals and every one of you knows better. I will not let you disrespect what I do every day. I work just as hard as your father and you’d never do to him what you did to me. What do you think would happen if you just went into the barn and took his tack and threw it all over the place?”
They looked at each other warily but were smart enough not to speak.
“So why is it all right to destroy the inside of my house in four hours? Just because I’m not here to tell you not to? The don’t-be-pigs rule is the same regardless of whether I’m here or not! Did you assume I’d clean it up like I’m the hired help? Or do you think because you’re boys that you can just leave all the inside dirty work to women? I don’t appreciate…” She began to melt down.
Just as Carson started up the driveway.