Clubius Incarnate Part 8 – Dirt
August 11th, 2018
Killins Gravel Company
“I’m going to drive the car to get fresh dirt for the backyard. You want to come along?”
I nodded that I did. I was excited. This was what he called “an adventure”.
My mom was still sleeping. It was early morning. The light coming in through the windows in my room was different when it was early. It was fresher and softer. I took off my pajamas and put on my clothes. Dad made me a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast. We quickly ate and drank orange juice sitting at the kitchen table.
Outside the air was cool and quiet. The sun was a big orange ball just hanging there over the trees in the park. It was just hanging there over the trees and it was hard not to look at. Dad said not to look too long or it would hurt your eyes. That made the sun seem kind of scary. He put two empty trash cans in the trunk of our car but the top wouldn’t close so he tied it with a rope. He put the grown up shovel on the back seat. It looked kind of like my shovel but much bigger. I got to sit on the other part of the front seat of the car.
It was Wednesday December 19, and my radio, coaxed me to a waking state, tuned to the rock station WABX. I heard yet again the 
When I woke up this morning I could see out my window that it was raining again. I liked it when it rained. It made the house feel more like a fort where you were safe and “cozy”. That was the word my mom said. I liked being cozy inside when there was lots of weather outside. Bad part about when it rained was that I could not ride my tricycle outside. 
The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical version of the Cinderella story was the current production of YTU, in rehearsal for a January curtain. It was the first time since I met Angie and Lane three years ago that none of the three of us were in one of our theater company’s big musical productions. We were like alumnae now, moved on to other venues to pursue our continuing interests in theater. And with the departure of Robert this past fall, the theater company’s founder, and the recent untimely death of its musical director Tara, our youth theater group had acquired new adult leadership. YTU was now affiliated with the new Community High School, and CHS teachers Steve and Betsy, were playing the Robert and Tara roles. Beyond these two new adult overlords, most of the youth currently in the company were our friends and comrades.
It was Saturday, December 15, and I awoke from my second night in my basement “lair”, as my mom was now jokingly calling it. My clock-radio had been tuned to the Rock radio station WABX last night and the music popped on. As I was wrestling myself into consciousness I heard that great lyric from the 
Back from our tricycle adventure, we went in the front door of Molly’s house. I loved the inside of her house. It had lots of furniture unlike mine. But what I really liked the most was that it had many more choices and places to go than mine, and every room was up or down from the other rooms, with stairs everywhere. Where our house was simple, Molly’s was “complicated”, a word I heard my parents use. I thought it was like the pirate ship in the Treasure Island book my dad had read me. The book had pictures of the deck and inside the ship.
I quickly learned to ride my tricycle a long way. My dad would take me out on what he called “adventures”. I liked it because he let me pick which way we would go and I could go as far as I wanted. But if I went a long way, it would be a long way back too. I also liked it because he would hang behind me or walk in the street, so I felt on my own and could pretend what I wanted to. He did come closer to make sure I looked both ways for cars before I crossed the street. On this day there were clouds, but the sun was out between them, and the air was cool and full of plant smells and energy that got inside me. I was ready for a big “adventure”. 
I awoke knowing today was my third birthday. My whole body shivered with excitement. I heard my mom and dad in the kitchen talking about my birthday party. Rather than join them there, I stood in the back hallway by the door to the living room where they couldn’t see me and listened. It was always good to know what adults were really doing, and they generally said more about that when they did not know I was listening.
It was Thursday morning December 13, as I came to consciousness in my bed in what had been my bedroom and was now my mom’s office slash guest room. I woke up from a dream where I was still traveling except I had lost my plane ticket home and did not have the money to buy another one. I was grateful it was only a dream and that I was in fact home. The light through the casement window was more subdued this morning. Yesterday’s sunshine had given way to a more typical gray winter day. My stuffed full backpack was still there leaning against the side of the Herman Miller chest of drawers, like I was still backpacking and just spending a few nights in my host du jour’s guest room. My head was kind of stuffy and achy too, from smoking all that weed yesterday. But I was still glad I had, and looking forward to firing up the joint Clark had “lent” me, at least at some appropriate point on this day. My clock radio indicated it was 10:25, so getting to bed after 2 AM last night it was still a good night’s sleep. I noted that my clock radio had the same sort of electromechanical mechanism of flipping metal slats displaying the appropriate series of numbers – on mine, one to twelve on the hour slats and double zero to fifty-nine on the minutes – as the big boards in the European train stations that I loved to watch and listen to them clickity clack.
I could hear the rain continue to fall outside, enjoying the quiet sanctuary of the basement. It was a while before my dad came down the basement stairs and returned to his work at his desk. He was in the the opposite quarter of the basement from where I sat on the concrete floor looking at my box of plastic toy soldiers and a second box with trucks, cars and boats in it. I wanted to explore further that scenario I was playing out last night in the bathtub. The pirate ship in the hidden cove shooting at the ships out in the bay, whose captains were trying to figure out what to do to stop the pirates from killing their sailors and sinking their ships.