Jackson
Odessa meticulously straightens a white-and-blue tea towel draped over her makeshift tree stump table, then slaps a paper plate covered in mud down on top of it.
Stepping back to admire her work, she gives a little nod before spinning to face the row of lawn chairs me, my brothers, Red, and my dad are sitting in.
When we set them up on the grass an hour ago, Denny said we looked like a bunch of suburban dads, just needed white New Balance sneakers and to cut our jeans into shorts.
With all the wives in Wells Canyon for Cecily’s baby shower, us guys figured it might be more fun to sit in the sunshine and let the kids run feral for a few hours.
Besides, Kate was hesitant about leaving me alone with the kids for the first time, so I hope she’s able to relax and enjoy herself knowing there are multiple capable adults here.
“The restaurant is open,” Odessa announces, brushing her dirty hands across the front of her pink T-shirt.
“What are you serving?” I ask hesitantly from my lawn chair.
“Anything you want.” She beams at me. “We have pies and pizza and hamburgers and…”
Denny leans over in his chair to talk to me out of the side of his mouth. “And anything flat and patty shaped.”
“Rhett and Hazel are my chefs.” She gestures to where the two younger kids are sitting in a pile of dirt, garden hose running between them to create a thick, goopy mud for their pies. “And Avery’s my taste tester.”
Denny’s attention bounces between his niece and his infant daughter, who’s content in her bouncer chair. He shakes his head. “No feeding mud to the baby, got it?”
“Fine, you can have her share.”
“I’m actually on a no-mud diet right now,” he replies. “But you go ahead and make your dad an extra-large pizza, he’s still trying to make up for all that weight he lost eating hospital food.”
“The mud pie’s probably more appetizing.” Austin stretches his denim-clad legs out in front of him.
“Nothing beats farm to table,” Red says with a chuckle.
Dad adds, “Plus the chefs at this place are cute.”
Rhett and Hazel sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the ground, mottled sunlight illuminating them through the branches of a nearby tree.
Hazel’s gleefully patting a pile of mud in an overturned Frisbee.
Rhett rips up a handful of grass and sprinkles it over his own pie with a concentrated look on his face.
Odessa strides toward them and waits impatiently—hand on her hip and the ball of her left foot tapping the earth—as Rhett adds his final touches.
Then she’s headed in my direction with what I assume is meant to be an extra-large pizza.
The hose has been running a little too much, so the mud’s real sloppy, threatening to spill over with every step she takes.
By the time she’s crossed the lawn, the paper plate is nearly buckled in half.
I wince, prepared to be covered in slop when she hands it over to me. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen, and I balance it on my lap while smiling up at her.
“Looks great, Princess. What’s on it?”
“It’s made with cheese”—she points to three sunken dandelions—“and peppers and love.”
The last word slams into me, and I blink down at the plate of mud decorated with grass and dandelions because I refuse to cry right now. It’s silly to be so affected by this.
For so long, I couldn’t see any way to where we are right now, with me doing more than watching them play the way I have so many times before—disconnected and uncomfortable. Today I’m back in their world, and there’s no place I love more.
So cleanliness be damned, I scoop a handful of mud and bring it to my face, pretending to take a massive bite. I munch and crunch on nothing for a few seconds, then with a dramatic swallow and a lick of my lips, I discreetly drop the mud to the ground and give the kids a dirty thumbs-up.
“Best pizza I’ve ever had.” I grab another handful. “Compliments to the chef.”
Hearing that, Rhett rushes to bring me even more mud. No need for a plate this time, he’s carrying it in two widespread hands. When it splats on my plate, half of it sloshes over the side. Immediately I feel it oozing through my jeans and running down my leg, but I don’t care.
“Great work, buddy. If becoming Spider-Man doesn’t work out, I think you’ll make an amazing chef.”
Once Austin, Red, and Denny have their own specialty dishes, the kids wait eagerly for their reactions. And because I set the bar pretty high with my pretend eating, if I say so myself, they put on a show for the kids, too.
“Think the girls are having this much fun today?” Red asks, wiping mud from Hazel’s lips and offering her a drink from his water bottle. Leave it to the toddler to miss the memo that we’re all pretending to eat it.
“Not a chance,” I say. “They’re going to be so jealous they missed out on trying the best pizza in town.”
At that, Odessa’s eyes go wide, and she orders the littler kids back to their faux kitchen with a clap of her hands. “C’mon chefs, we’ve got more orders to make. The moms are gonna have a feast.”
Once the kids are out of earshot, Denny leans back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. “Remember when we were the ones running around like that all summer?”
Austin grunts. “By the time we were Odessa’s age, Grandpa and Dad had us doing chores all summer long.”
Dad scoffs, shuffling forward in his chair to shake his head at Austin. “Now, now. You did a normal amount of chores and you had plenty of time for running around.”
“Only because Mom made sure of it,” Denny says. “She always came up with the most ridiculous games for us.”
Dad laughs under his breath, and the relaxed summer air suddenly develops a rough edge. “That’s the real reason why it felt like you were working all day—she’d keep you boys so busy doing silly shit, the chores took twice as long as they should’ve.”
A smile erupts on Austin’s face, and he tips his head toward the kids. “Guess we’re keeping the tradition alive, making them do silly shit and calling it work.”
I glance toward the kids, catching fleeting glimpses of the childhood memories they’re referring to.
“Well, look at how good we all turned out,” Denny says.
Red stops in the middle of picking grit from between his fingers to bark out a laugh. “That’s not the sales pitch you think it is, man.”
Dad clears his throat. “No, you should all be proud of the kind of men you are—I sure as hell am. That’s why these kids are so incredible.”
“Yeah, they’re something else,” I say hoarsely.
Then I pull myself from the chair without another word, focus homed in on my kids, and seconds later I’m plunking my ass down in the mud right next to Rhett.
“Mind if I be your sous chef?” I ask with a smile, then clarify when I remember he’s not quite four. “Your helper?”
The way he lights up makes up for the fact that I can feel the mud soaking straight through my pants and underwear, dampening my ass in the most uncomfortable way.
“You can put the cheese on.” He fishes around in the pocket of his hoodie for a handful of smashed dandelions and sets them on my lap.
“I can handle that, I think.” I pluck the thin yellow petals from one of the flowers, and when Rhett slides a mud pie my way, I get to work scattering them across the top of it.
“No, not like that.” He huffs, then grabs a single flower and presses the entire thing into the mud, a little off center.
The way I was doing it looks a hell of a lot more like cheese, but then again, I’m not the head chef, so what do I know? Scratching my scalp with the less dirty of my two hands, I follow his lead and earn a pleased head nod from my son.
For the next little while, the kids and I work quietly in our supply chain, with the sounds of birds chirping and my brothers talking in the background.
The moms better be real hungry when they get back, because soon we’ve not only covered Odessa’s tree stump table in pies, we’re close to filling a nearby picnic table with them, too.
“I need more danbylions,” Rhett announces, standing up and leaping off the mud pile.
He takes off at a run, dropping bits of mud with every step. At this point, he’s getting rinsed off with the garden hose and stripped on the front porch when we’re done out here. I glance down at my own filthy pants. I’m getting the hose, too.
With my cheese duties paused until he comes back, I turn and watch Odessa finickily arrange the plates on the table. At some point, she picked some spring blossoms from the garden and stole my water bottle for a vase.
Then there’s a shriek, followed by Rhett bursting into tears.
I’m instantly on my feet, racing over to him and falling to the ground next to where he’s staring at his hand and wailing.
“Are you okay? What happened?” Saliva pools in my throat as I reach for his hand. The feel of his tiny touch floods me with intense sensations of love and protectiveness, similar to what I felt when Odessa went missing a couple weeks ago. “Let me see.”
“I…I got…” He struggles to get the words out between sobs, shakily jutting his hurt hand toward me.
A bee sting.
“It’s okay, buddy. Just a little ouchie.” I try for a reassuring smile, but the pained looked in his eyes has moisture forming in mine.
Might be my eyes playing tricks on me, but I swear the bump on his palm is redder than it should be, then a thought rushes over me, making my chest tighten.
Without second thought, I scoop Rhett into my arms, letting him cover my shirt in his tears and snot, and I frantically head for the guys—still seated in their lawn chairs, unfazed by all of this. Rhett clings to me, and I press my cheek to the top of his head.
“All good, kiddo?” my dad asks. To Rhett or me, I’m not sure.
“I don’t…” My throat clams up. “Bee sting. Is he allergic? Does anyone know? I don’t—”
What kind of dad doesn’t know that sort of thing?
Austin calmly states, “No, he’s not.”
I let out a relieved exhale.
Dad motions his head toward the house. “He’ll be fine, son. Go get him cleaned up and slap some baking soda paste on the sting.”
My eyes cut to Odessa, and Dad adds, “We’ll make sure she doesn’t get in too much trouble.”
With that, I carry Rhett to the house, telepathically apologizing to Kate for the copious amount of mud I’m about to track inside, because a garden hose and stripping both of us naked on the porch isn’t a priority when my son’s in pain.
By the time I set Rhett down in the bathroom, his tears have mostly stopped, save for the few clinging to his soaked eyelashes. Salty tracks cut through the mud on his cheeks, and he has a snot bubble that inflates with every heaving breath.
I help him wash his hands in the sink, taking extra care around the angry-looking welt. Then he starts stripping out of his filthy clothes while I poke around in the medicine cabinet, exhaling some of my anxiety when I find children’s Benadryl on one of the shelves.
“It hurts.” He sniffs, making the boogers disappear altogether.
“I know, bud.” I study the label, then him, trying to determine how much he weighs. “This medicine should help though.”
“Bee stings fuckin’ suck.”
I bite my cheek to stop myself from laughing. There’s something kind of adorable about a tiny boy in his Spider-Man underwear dropping an F-bomb. “Don’t let your sister or mom hear you say that.”
He winces as I study the red welt on his palm, confirming the stinger isn’t embedded in his skin. I wish I could magically fix this for him. If there’s one thing I want, it’s for my kids to never know more pain after what they’ve been through with me in the last few months.
I dampen a washcloth and crouch in front of him to wipe the dried dirt and tears from his face. Then I brush a gentle kiss on the warm skin of his palm and pull him in for a really good hug.
“Spider-Man got his powers from a spider bite, right? I bet now you’re going to be a superhero, too.”
His arms tighten around my neck. “You think so?”
I cough, faking an inability to breathe. “You’re already so strong, you’re crushing my throat.”
He steps back to look at me with fire dancing in his big, brown eyes. And though he relaxes his hold on my neck, the way he’s still squeezing my heart is his real superpower.