The Canna Bed (standard:non fiction, 1869 words)
Author: Jamiel	Added: Mar 31 2005	Views/Reads: 3169/2166	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
An antique memory of my first and unfortunately not my only brush with the game of baseball as a participant. Fortunately there were not that many more brushes, nor other sports. I became reconciled, if not, content with being a dork.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

the room.  I could not tell what kind of damage had been done.  I only 
knew I must turn off the gas under the pot.  Nor do I remember how, but 
it was turned off before I escaped the smoke. 

Again I found myself outside, coughing and choking until I was able to
breathe normally.  Kerry Wilson had disappeared and Annie was nowhere 
to be found.  Where was everyone suddenly?  I ventured back into the 
house to see if Annie was inside, perhaps overcome by the smoke before 
she had noticed something was amiss.  I could not find her.  Annie was 
not in the house.  That reassured me, although a part of me suspected 
that regardless of her assurances at the time, she had had no intention 
of coming back out to resume her game of pitch.  She had quite probably 
gone to the house of the friend who had called, I reasoned. Now what to 
do?  Every other consideration was gone.  Who was where and what they 
were doing were irrelevant compared to the more urgent a question of 
when was mother coming home?  How much time did I have?  What could I 
do to prevent the punishment I knew would be coming should they learn 
of my carelessness. Not only had I burned the family's supper but also 
I had almost burned down the entire family home along with all of their 
possessions. 

I reentered the house.  The first order of business was to check the
time.  How much did I have?  Who would be home first?  Mother?  Someone 
who would tell? It was 4:40 pm.  Anytime now. 

In a desperate effort to minimize the punishment I knew would be coming,
I flew through the house opening all of the windows in order to let the 
smoke out.  Even though it was spring and still somewhat cool I flipped 
the switch on the air conditioning unit to pump in fresh air and move 
out the burned, smoke filled air.  I then set about making whatever 
repairs I could to conceal my error. The pot was still too hot to 
touch, so I postponed dealing with it.  I located and wet down the 
biggest towel we had, then I ran through the most affected rooms 
fanning at the smoke with all my energy, energy born of fear.  The air 
stood still, the heavy dampness of the fanning towel seemed to have 
little or no effect in moving the gray-black air.  Still I waved. 

When the air conditioner, or the breeze from the open windows or the
dampened towel had cleared out the worst of the smoke, I finally ceased 
efforts at manually moving it.  Dropping exhausted arms, I returned to 
the kitchen to see what needed to be done there. 

The formerly white kitchen range was smeared with black soot around the
principal burner.  That area now matched the newly black, formerly 
hammered aluminum pot.  The surrounding area blended to increasingly 
lighter shades of gray rippling out from the burner.  Using every 
potholder I could find I lifted the still hot lid and inspected the 
stew meat.  As I lifted the lid, new smoke poured out into the room.  I 
dropped the lid.  That brief glance showed me that the contents, 
regardless of what it had been was indistinguishable from the blackened 
interior of mother's favorite cooking vessel. 

A quick glance at the clock revealed it to be 5:00 pm.  On one hand it
seemed as if I had been working to repair the damage for hours and on 
the other time was running out, fast. 

I wrapped the pot and charred contents in several layers of toweling and
carefully carried it outdoors.  Almost as if I had preplanned it, I had 
the burned pot under the new growth of foliage in the canna bed 
fervently hoping it would not burn the canna leaves and reveal my 
'sin'.  Then I returned to the kitchen and put away the towels and 
scrubbed the stove concealing as much of the evidence as possible.  I 
even had the time to mop the kitchen floor using a strongly scented 
pine cleaner, to disguise the telltale odor. 

My mother did not arrive home until about 6:30 that evening.  She said
nothing.  She did not ask where the stew was, why the house smelled of 
smoke, nor did she appear to notice any of the other signs that were so 
obvious to my guilty mind.  Instead she set about preparing supper 
herself.  It wasn't over however. A week or so later she asked for the 
whereabouts of the stew pot.  No one knew, of course, so the answer was 
not forthcoming.  Several weeks later the question was raised again.  
The results were the same.  No pot.  There had been little opportunity 
to scrub away the evidence of damage to the pot and return it to its 
former glory and proper niche unobserved. 

It wasn't until fall that the 'whereabouts' of the missing pot was
revealed.  The canna bed was cleaned because the plants had returned to 
dormancy and the foliage had died away for the winter.  There was the 
pot, exposed.  Except for the not unnoticeable niggling in my 
conscience no one ever discovered how the heavy-duty stew pot managed 
to find it's way into the canna bed.  Of course the 'weather' had 
affected the hammered aluminum finish considerably but a remarkably 
thorough scrubbing soon fixed that.  Mother never learned nor could she 
understand the lack of strenuous objection to my being assigned that 
particular task. 

At one point, I had asked Annie why she left me taking her place with
Kerry Wilson.  She told me that Kerry made her too uncomfortable and 
that she too had been praying for a graceful exit.  It seems that she 
had learned answers to too many of the Wilson family mysteries.  
Kerry's little sister was also her daughter, with all that the 
statement implied.  Annie, street wise as she was explained the 
mysteries and suggested and even darker secret that I wouldn't want to 
know.  Even though I had reason to know better than to trust Annie in 
matters of escape, I trusted her to have a grasp of what I wouldn't 
have wanted to know.  I required no further explanation. 

That incident is four decades gone, views have changed, and a lot of
water has passed under the bridge.  Everyone has forgotten a very late 
supper, and a missing stew-pot, once upon a time.  All except one who 
still remembers Kerry Wilson and her little twelve-toed sister, and who 
does not play baseball because of a cramped place still living in the 
secret closet of her conscience. 

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