Still House Pond by Jan Watson Page B

ear, and we can get a pot from the shed. This will be fun.”
    Kate stuck out her tongue. “Told you.”
    Lilly blew a raspberry against Molly’s neck. Molly laughed.
    The day had turned out sticky and hot, but it was cool there on the flat rock overhung by the plate-size leaves of a sycamore tree.
    Kate settled down, arranging the stash of old kitchenware Lilly kept handy for making mud pies. “Find a piece of shale,” she bossed Lilly, “and mark off the rooms.”
    Finding the shale was easy enough, but marking the rooms was another matter. “This rock isn’t big enough for rooms. It’s only big enough for a kitchen.”
    Kate stood in the middle of the rock and looked around. “Well, let’s pretend it is. Mark it off exact—we need a kitchen, a parlor, and two bedrooms.”
    Lilly scraped a line straight down the middle of the rock with the thin, sharp shale, then dissected the line. There, four rooms. “Nobody has a parlor on Troublesome Creek.”
    â€œMy granny does.”
    â€œYour granny doesn’t live on Troublesome.”
    â€œYou know what your problem is? You don’t have any mind’s eye.”
    â€œI do too have a mind’s eye.”
    â€œDo not,” Kate replied, pointing to a corner of the kitchen. “Mark a P here. We have to have a pantry.”
    Lilly wanted to toss the piece of shale into the creek, but she scribed a big P instead. Despite herself, she always got caught up in Kate’s games.
    â€œNow, husband,” Kate said, “our children are hungry. We must think of dinner.”
    â€œDo our children have names?”
    â€œI think Amelia for Molly and August for Mazy. Those are my favorite names.”
    â€œDo I get a say?” Lilly asked.
    â€œNo, silly, you’re the husband.” Kate made like she was tying an apron around her neck. Reaching up, she pulled four leaves from a low-hanging sycamore branch. She put them neatly on the rock as if she set a table. “Children,” she said to August and Amelia, “you need to busy yourself in the other room. Mommy is cooking dinner.”
    Lilly stood there for a minute wondering how Kate would keep Molly and Mazy from tearing up the plates, but that wasn’t her problem. She was going fishing. With the heel of one hand, she shelled a few kernels of corn and then went looking for a crawdad hole. She found a fine, two-story mud stack near the creek bank, but she couldn’t bring herself to tear it down. Surely she could find one that the raccoons had already torn the top off of. Raccoons loved crawdads.
    Just a few steps away she found what she was looking for. She crouched and looked down the tower. Two beady black eyes stared back at her. Sensing a threat, the crawdad waved his claws and twitched his antennae. Lilly dropped a piece of corn into the hole. If a crawdad could look surprised, this one did. Lilly didn’t know if crawdads actually ate corn, but she knew it piqued their curiosity.
    â€œManna from heaven.” Lilly stuck another kernel near the top of the hole. Then she sat, positioning herself so she could keep an eye on her sisters, and waited. It took a lot of patience to catch a crawdad. She might not have a good imagination, but she had an abundance of patience. Kate was the baby of her family, so she probably didn’t have any. It took babies to teach you endurance. Sticky, crying, spitting-up, smelly babies. She liked being around them, though.
    Aha! Mr. Crawdad’s antennae poked into daylight. Lilly pounced. She pinched him right behind his head and lifted him out. “Oh, you’re a fine one.”
    â€œLook, honey,” she said to her wife. “I caught a fat fish for our supper.”
    â€œWonderful, husband,” Kate said. “Tear his head off and I’ll cook him.”
    â€œKate Jasper, I will not tear this crawdad’s head off.”
    â€œWell, I can’t bear