Opening Saturday
I will not forget that Saturday as long as I live.
They came all day. Kids I knew and kids I did not.
The Websters again. The whole 4-H club after their morning meeting, in a wad, twelve of them.
Two carloads from the church. The Hoffmans, the Reindls, little ones I had to ask whose they were.
They came in jackets and they came in costume, early for Halloween. A cowboy and two witches.
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There was a pumpkin so round he could barely get through the tunnel. He got stuck and laughed so hard he could not back out, and Cole had to pull his feet.
They ran that fort until the walls shed straw like a shaggy dog.
The 4-H kids organized themselves into a game I never did fully follow, something with a flag and a jailbreak and a great deal of arguing over rules, and they played it so hard and so long that two of the mothers gave up waiting and went home to start supper and came back for them after.
That is the thing about children and a thing that costs nothing. They do not rush it. When a place is free they settle into it like it belongs to them, because it does, and they stay until the light goes, and nobody stands at the edge checking a watch against what they paid.
I watched a boy of about ten teach Cole how to run the top of the wall without falling, holding his little hand the whole length of it, a boy I had never seen before in my life. When they got to the end Cole threw both arms up like he had won a race, and the big boy laughed and said good job, bud, and went back to his flag game, and Cole came and found me and could not get the words out fast enough.
Wade stood out by the shed most of the day with his arms crossed. There was a look on his face I do not get to see often.
It was the look of a man watching a thing he built work. He kept the loose flakes topped up in the jump wagon.
He ran a hose for the muddy ones. A couple of the dads drifted over and stood with him.
They talked about nothing. About bearings and bean prices. The way men do while their kids holler.