Sharon Creech - Absolutely Normal Chaos

Oh yawn, yawn, yawn. I am so tired I could sleep standing up. I didn’t get any sleep last night.

First I had to wait until Sue Ann, Sally Lynn, and Brenda Mae were asleep (we’re all in the same room) so I could use the pot under the bed. Then I had one heck of a time trying to use that dumb thing, and just when I finished and I stood up, I tripped and knocked it over, and what a mess. So I had to sneak downstairs to find some rags to mop it up with.

And when I got downstairs, I heard Aunt Radene and Uncle Carl Joe arguing in their bedroom. Actually, I could only hear Uncle Carl Joe. He was saying something about “my blasted son.” I hope he didn’t mean Carl Ray, and I hope they’re not mad at each other again. I was afraid they’d hear me and think I was snooping, so I went back upstairs, and the only thing I could think of to mop up the pee with was my socks, so I blotted it all up and stuck the socks in the pot and pushed it back under the bed.

Then I couldn’t go to sleep because I kept thinking that the boy’s head was going to come in the open window (I sleep right next to the window), so I shut the window, but then I kept thinking that the head could still look in the window, and if it was a ghost-head maybe it could come through the window. So I put my head under the sheets.

Then I was pretty sure I could hear the head out there moaning. I thought I heard it say, “Oh, bod-eee, where are youuuu?”

I must have dozed off finally, because I had this awful nightmare. In it Mr. Furtz’s dead body was running all around the yard looking for his head, or at least that’s what I thought it was looking for, because it didn’t have a head on it. I was sitting in a tree (why was I sitting in a tree?) and then I happened to look next to me, and there, on the branch, was a head. The head fell out of the tree and landed on the body with a sickening glump, and I woke up. Thank the Deity!!! I was shaking to death. And then I noticed that the window was open.

I really want to go home .

Oh, and at breakfast this morning, cabbageheaded ole Sue Ann says, “Oh, Mary Lou, are you missing a pair of socks?”

“No.”

“Well, I found a pair of yours…”

“I’m not missing any socks.”

“…in the pee pot.”

Everybody started snorting in their oatmeal.

“ After I peed in it,” she said.

Everybody was rolling off their chairs.

Arvie Joe said, “Normally, we don’t put our socks in the pee pot….”

And everybody’s gagging and snorting and rolling around.

Aunt Radene finally made them all shut up.

Boy, I can’t wait to go home.

Lordie. The last day of July. Summer’s almost over.

About the most exciting thing that has happened so far today is that Arvie Joe took me along on his paper route this morning.

First, we got in this old truck that looks as if it was the first truck ever made, and we drove down to the general store to pick up the papers. Arvie Joe isn’t really old enough to drive, but he does anyway. He’s pretty good at it, too. Then we sat outside the general store folding the papers. You have to fold them in thirds and tuck one end inside the other so that when you throw them they don’t go flying all over the place.

It’s not like doing a paper route in Easton, where you just walk along and place a paper in front of everybody’s door. We’re so way out in the country here that you have to drive and drive—sometimes it’s at least three miles between houses. The houses are set pretty far back from the road, so Arvie Joe slows way down and then whips the paper out the window and up to the front porch. Boy, does he have good aim.

He did the first few houses himself, to show me how. If the house is on the left side of the road, it’s easy—he just whips the paper straight out his window. But if it’s on the right side of the road, he has to whip the newspaper up over the roof of the truck.

After he showed me how, he let me do the houses on the right side. I messed up the first few. I threw one in a birdbath, one about halfway up the lawn, and another one hit a chicken in the front yard. But Arvie Joe was real nice about it.

He said, “Don’t they teach you how to throw, up there in The City?”

I said that it wasn’t high on the list of things to teach kids, no.

“Well, it oughtta be,” he said. Then he asked me what was high on the list of things to teach kids. I had to think awhile. “I guess algebra and English and stuff.” (I didn’t think “sum and substance” would go over real well with Arvie Joe.)

“Besides school crud,” he said.

“Well, besides school crud, let’s see…swimming, maybe. Baseball, I guess. Tennis.”

“ Tennis ? God almighty.”

“Anything wrong with tennis?”

“Sissy game.”

“Ah.”

“What else?”

“That’s about it.”

“God almighty. What about your parents? Don’t they teach you stuff, like throwin’ and fixin’ cars and stuff?”

I had a hard time with that one. “Manners, I guess. My parents are big on manners.”

“ Manners ? God almighty, girl. Manners ? Manners sure ain’t gonna help you when you gotta fix a car!”

He was dying laughing.

Anyway, that was the big excitement of the day, Arvie Joe’s paper route.

I’ve hardly seen Carl Ray at all since we got here. He’s always off in his car, visiting his friends. He has a ton of friends here. That surprised me, I guess. And I keep forgetting to remind him about Beth Ann. I’d better do that. Maybe he’ll want to leave if I start reminding him about his Cleopatra back in Easton.

It’s funny, but the first day we were here, Carl Ray seemed so happy and excited to be back. But the last couple days, he seems so quiet when he’s here (which, as I said, isn’t all that much). He talks to Aunt Radene a lot, and ever since he and Uncle Carl Joe had their walk in the graveyard, they seem nicer to each other. But they still don’t actually talk to each other, in front of me, anyway.

Well, I’m going to stop for now. John Roy and Sally Lynn just asked me if I wanted to climb up Booger Hill (the hill right behind the barn) with them. I have no idea why it’s called Booger Hill.

I’m sooooo homesick. I really want to go home.

So I went, this afternoon, with John Roy and Sally Lynn to climb Booger Hill. They had packed some bologna sandwiches and Kool-Aid in a backpack, so we could have a picnic at the top.

John Roy was leading. He claimed we were following a path, but I couldn’t really see a path. On the way through the woods, they were telling me about a prisoner who escaped from a nearby prison two days ago. They were saying that he was armed and very dangerous. He’s killed all kinds of people, John Roy said.

“You don’t think he’d be around here, do you?” I asked.

“Naw,” John Roy said. “Why would he pick this hill? There’s millions of other hills he could hide out on.”

Sally Lynn said, “But he could have picked this hill, John Roy. He could have. Maybe he’s scared. Maybe he didn’t know which way to go. Maybe he’s starving to death.”

“Naw,” John Roy said. “If he’s such a good killer, he could kill all kinds of animals. He won’t be starvin’.”

“But he could be,” Sally Lynn said.

We climbed and climbed. I was getting a little tired, and my feet were killing me. I just had these cockamamie sandals on, but they were wearing work boots.

After we’d been walking for about an hour, John Roy said, “We’re almost to the cabin. We could eat there.”