The deadline for completing. . .

. . .TISHA AND THE GIANT has come and gone.  What's nice about self-imposed deadlines is that you're the only one who gets upset with you.  I have been working.  I just completed a chapter, but the rewriting has taken on a life of its own.  What was to be the final chapter, will end up being 3 chapters in the final version.   I even know what the chapter titles are going to be and almost all that will happen within them, save for the surprises I'll discover along the way.  The chapters are titled "Can a Bicycle Fit into a Camry?," "Come Saturday Morning," and "Denoument Almost."

          My last blog seems to have spawned a bunch of interest and response.  Thanks to all and especially to Stacey, and Kelley and Lora.  I thought some more about REMAIN IN MY LOVE and wrote a second chapter.  I already did some rewriting of Chapter 1, also.  Dwayne is nownamed  Joshua.  The "dappled horses" are now "dappled ponies."

           Here is Chapter 2:

II

Joshua told us it was time we should all get up, so together, we yawned and stretched and stuff.  Joshua had gas really loud and said, “Well, that’s working good this morning.” Then we went to the bath houses to wash.  I stuck my hair under the faucet, which had only cold water, and soaked my hair, and used some soap from the little dispenser to wash it.  After, I put my head underneath the hand dryer on the wall.  I let Sarah borrow my toothbrush because she didn’t have one.  We both brushed our teeth with dispenser soap because we didn’t have any toothpaste, and we spit really fast and thoroughly.  In that bath house, the toilets didn’t flush.  You had to sit on them and just go into a stinky hole in the ground, which I thought was disgusting.

Without even thinking about breakfast, we got into the station wagon and pulled out of that campground pretty fast because we had intentionally not paid to be there the night before.  Out on Highway 1, the world wasn’t dappled anymore.  It was all sunshine.  Like a palomino maybe, if I thought of ponies.

I loved Highway 1 that day because it was so sunny and twisting and exciting and dangerous.  Joshua drove with one hand.  He drove fast and grinned and sometimes pointed out things for us to see.  Once he said, “Look there children,” and pointed to the sky.  A pelican was swooping down to the ocean.  If we hadn’t been going so fast, we might have seen it splash into the sea and emerge with its beak full of fat fish.

I was glad we were going north because on the east side of Highway 1, the hills are going up, but on the west side they are cliffs and fall off to the Pacific.  Riding south would be scarier, especially riding with a driver like Joshua, who always drives with one hand and sometimes with only one finger.  One time that morning, when no cars were coming toward us, he drove over into the wrong lane on purpose, and we swooped along, almost grazing the guard rail.  If he had just flicked his one finger a bit, we would have crashed off the edge and gone flying just like that pelican diving for his fish.  

Almost to Monterey, we pulled into a gas station that was also a little grocery store.  We stopped at the pump, where the gas was  29.9 cents per gallon.  It was Texaco gas.  “How much we got?” Joshua grinned at Sarah, who grinned right back and went exploring with her hand in the glove compartment, and came out with our money.

Sarah counted our money.  “$72.62,” she said.

“We’ll have breakfast,” Joshua smiled, and that really made me happy.  Billy, too, because he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek as if to say, “Thank goodness, we’re going to eat something.”

Right then the gas station guy came walking up to Joshua’s window.  He was frowning and wiping his hands on a greasy rag.  I could tell he didn’t like us when he looked in and said, “Yeh?”

“Fill ‘er up,” Joshua said back, and although I couldn’t see it, I knew he was smiling a smile so broad and beautiful that the gas station man wouldn’t be able to say no.  He didn’t say no, either.  He didn’t say anythng.  But he pumped our gas which cost $2.85, and while he was pumping, Sarah went in the store and came back with breakfast.

It was one of my favorite breakfasts ever.  As we drove through the sun on Highway 1, we drank freezing cold orange juice, the kind with the pulp, from a two quart carton.  We passed it back and forth and around the car taking big slugs and grinning.  It made me laugh, and a little juice bubbled out of my mouth, and I had to wipe it off my chin with the back of my hand.  

Not only did we have orange juice, but Sarah also brought a dozen Hostess powdered sugar donuts.  That meant 2 for me, 2 for her, 2 and 1/2 each for Billy and Thomas, and 3 for Joshua.  Sarah took a bite of one of hers, and turned back to look at Billy and me.  Her mouth was wearing a powdered sugar halo.  “Forgot napkins,” she laughed.  In a minute we all had white haloes around our mouths, but Joshua’s was the best because the powder was so very white and his skin was so very black.