Yard War by Taylor Kitchings

the important question—what
kind
of syrup?”
    “What kind do
you
want?”
    “Well, if you ask me, nothin’ tastes better on a pancake than molasses. Farish puts maple syrup on hers. I call that Yankee syrup.”
    “I don’t want maple syrup,” said Dee.
    “Heck no.”
    I got down the molasses and we sat at the kitchen table and went to town. Then we made three more apiece.
    “What in the world are you boys up to in here?”
    Willie Jane set down the vacuum cleaner and looked around the kitchen like a miracle out of the Bible had just happened.
    “We made pancakes,” said Dee.
    “You want us to make you some?” I asked her. “There’s plenty of batter left. Sit down and let us make you some.”
    “Child, I don’t have time to eat pancakes.”
    “Dee said y’all didn’t have breakfast this morning. Come on and sit down.”
    “Eat some pancakes, Mama.”
    She eased down at the table and watched us with a big, soft smile while Dee reheated the skillet and I restirred the batter and he spooned them in and I flipped.
    “You want molasses, don’t you?” I asked her.
    “Goodness, yes, let me have some molasses.”
    Dee handed her the plate full of steaming pancakes. She took a bite and looked like she was thinking about it. Then she looked at us and said, “I tell you what, these may be the butteriest, sweetest, tenderest, best pancakes I have ever tasted.”
    Dee grabbed my hand and raised it with his like we had both won a boxing match.
    “Winners and still champions!” he said.
    “The Pancake Brothers!” I said.
    Willie Jane said now that he had something in his stomach, it was time for Dee to do his chore. She took him out to the shed and showed him the mulch and the trowel and showed him what my mama wanted him to do. She said it wouldn’t take nearly as long as mowing and raking. I said I would help him so we could get it over with, but she said Dee was getting paid for this job and he oughta do it himself.
    I was kind of sleepy, so I went back to my room and lay down. The next thing I knew, Willie Jane was waking me up and telling me that Dee was almost finished.
    Stokes was visiting his cousins in Bay St. Louis, and Andy had told me he had to do something on Saturday. I asked him what, and he said
“Something!”
like it wasn’t any of my business. Calvin said he hadsomething to do, too. So we couldn’t have had a game today anyway.
    Mama reminded me to keep Dee out of the front yard, but when I asked her how I was supposed to explain it to him, she said, “You’ll think of a way.” So I just didn’t mention it. How do you say to a person, “My neighbors hate you so much, they told my parents not to let you play football with us anymore and even threw a bomb in our yard”?
    Now, whenever I saw a neighbor, I wondered if they had called about Dee.
    When Dee finished his mulching chore, I told him the guys couldn’t come over today, and we oughta go in the backyard and see if that snake was still down by the creek. I told him I really wanted to see it again, which was sort of a lie and sort of not. He said he hoped we didn’t see it, because he hated snakes, but he wasn’t afraid to go down there. We walked the whole length of the creek on my side and then on Mr. Pinky’s side and didn’t see anything but a school of minnows. After a while the pancakes wore off, and we started getting hungry. Then I had an idea.
    Papaw had told me that if I found an upstanding Negro who was hungry and wanted to eat in the Golliwog, he would buy him lunch. I didn’t know where Papaw was more likely to be on a Saturday afternoon than the country club.
    “I know where we can get some real good food,” I told Dee.
    I thought it was better not to tell him exactly where we were going. I just said we could ride our bikes there and it would be fun. He wanted to go into the kitchen and ask his mama to fix him a ham sandwich first. I told him that would defeat the whole purpose of the trip. He said he’d go