Kudzu City

Synopsis of Kudzu City:
The Little family has 11 members, not including Grandma Little and the animals, and they are amazingly self-sufficient. They never shop in town, keep to themselves, and are annoyingly happy. Kudzu City folks are inquisitive and find it unacceptable that the Littles stay to themselves. The townspeople hold a town meeting and decide to send someone up the hollow to find out how the Littles get along so well. Then the fun begins!

Introduction:
Sitting on the sweltering pavement of the state road bridge, Jay was watchful for signs. He slurped loudly on a grape sno-cone. The soggy paper wrapper was nearly as melted as the ice. Jay was patient. He believed in signs. Grandma Fitzgerald always said, "John, the Lord gives us signs. Watch for them; they will always steer you right." Mother Fitzgerald admired President Kennedy and named him -- her first-born son -- John Kennedy Fitzgerald. Jay's full name was the cause of much teasing in school, that and his avid attention to signs. Nowadays everyone called him Jay, except Mother and Grandma Fitzgerald.

He knew signs were real but they came true in their own time. He hoped the sign he was watching now, "Watch for ice on bridge" would come true soon because he was about to faint from the heat. The only place to see the sign was right on the bridge and there was no shade to shelter him. It didn't really matter; it was sweltering in the shade too.

It seemed to Jay some things happen so fast or slow we just can't see them. Falling Rock sign, for instance -- maybe rocks fall as leisurely as they form so humans can't see them when they fall. And maybe the ice on the bridge formed and melted so quickly he couldn't see it. That would explain the humidity.

Satisfied with his rationalization, Jay settled back against the bridge's retaining wall in hopes the ice would cool him off before it evaporated. He finished the last soupy remains of his sno-cone and chewed on the mushy wrapper as his mind wandered.

Mother never went out these days. She sat in her room and scribbled in her journals. Doc Lowe said she had something called schizophrenia, but Jay figured Mother was the same as she'd always been. He couldn't tell any difference. Jay figured Mother wrote nonsense in those journals to play tricks on anybody who sneaked and read them. He’d snuck into her room one day a few years back when Mother was feeling better and had gone to the store. He’d found a journal with roses on the front under her mattress, and he’d tried to read a few pages. None of it made any sense. It was written in the same language Mother used to speak when she was wound up.

Jay knew somewhere in all that nonsense was wisdom. Some say it’s nonsense, but Jay knew better. People don’t understand anything until they’re shown how to, Grandmother always said. Not the alphabet, not math, nothing. So he waited and watched for a sign that he’d learned what he needed in order to understand the rambling in Mother’s journals.
(c) 2005 Clara Chandler