Her White Boots

The sky finished its flashing and booming, but the rain kept coming down. She had waited for a day like this so long she had stopped waiting for it, and she didn’t notice that it had come. Her mother said, “Wasn’t there something you wanted to um, to um…?” She gave her mother a look. And then she remembered. “Try out my boots!” She rose so thoughtlessly the colored pencils flew. “Don’t worry,” her mother said. “Just go. Go, go, go.” And she went. “Don’t stop,” she prayed to the weather. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.” She pulled them onto her feet. She ran through the house in them. Her feet stepped in place in then as she fastened the yellow hat. They made a little spitting splash as they landed together on the first square of cement outside the back door. “Put your slicker on!“ came the voice of her mother, already a bit distant behind her. “I know, I know,” she called, an arm in one of the sleeves, the other arm swinging backward, getting wet, working without eyes to help it, finally solving the sleevey puzzle. She buttoned as she passed from the walkway to the lawn, trotting until this necessary task was finished, and then she fully ran, elbows and knees forming square angles. Across the grass, splashing coldness up her bare legs, but her feet staying dry, the boots doing their job. Into the field that the neighbor with such a black beard and such silver eyes would harvest for them later, when Fall came. The green hay slapping her legs damply. Her stride was long. One boot’s worth of hay after another lay down ahead of her. “But maybe it won’t hurt the harvest,” she told herself. She stopped and turned. “Yes, it’s already standing back up. But even if it doesn’t, Daddy will say it’s okay. He believes in having fun.” Across the grand, flat field she ran in her new white boots until she came at last to the trees. She picked her way through them, sometimes ducking low to get past a young tree with its arms spread. She knew where to aim. She came through the trees and brush to a place where a very big and very old sycamore made two steps down with its roots that should be underground but weren’t, because it was a tree growing on the creek bank, half growing in soil and half in air, one of the wonders of their farm. She stepped down the bank and into the water. The creek came halfway up her boots, tightening them around her ankles. “Careful, now, Linda,” she told herself, remembering what she knew and what she had been told: that there could be slippery spots, and that the round rocks could sometimes roll underfoot. Across the big, shallow pool she waded, the pool where they had picnics, surrounded by the flat, clean rocks that were good for sitting, back and forth and criss-cross in her family’s favorite place in the creek, going a different direction each time, making the big pool an even bigger one. Her boots worked perfectly. Her feet felt perfectly dry. The rocks pressed their hard shapes against the rubber soles and some of them moved a little, but she was very alert, thinking as if she were more in her feet than in her mind, and she didn’t slip once, and each time a rock rolled underfoot she caught her balance with a quick movement like that of a ballerina, though she had never made that exact movement before. She and her boots were perfect together. She would show her parents next time they all came here. She knew how long to stay before her mother would worry, and she stayed just a little longer than that. Then she headed home the long way, around the field instead of across it, the way they did on nice summer evenings in the four-wheeler, taking it slowly now, looking down at her boots instead of ahead, proud of them. Even with her face down and her rain cap doing its job, some rain made its way to her eyes, and before she see could see what was happening, she was in the dark mud with both feet. “No!” she thought. She lifted one foot, then the other. Each boot was caked hideously, with spurts of mud making bloody lines up the sides. Her insides fell. She stood still and cried, her vision doubly watery now. A girl could only stand and cry so long. And of course boots get muddy. Of course they would clean up fine. As well as she could with wet hands, she wiped her eyes. It’s like the windshield wipers, she thought. For only a few moments she could see very keenly. She saw the precise, growing circles the rain made on the puddles, the sharp edges of a rock sitting cleanly in the mud. As the blurriness came back, she blinked, and for a surprising instant she saw a snapshot of raindrops in the air, a few individuals among the millions, noticed by her and her alone. Then back to the watery blur, and through the mudhole. “We had a scare, but Daddy’s fine,” she said out loud, repeating what her mother had said. And then, in her own words, “Things stay fine for a long time. Think about that instead.” She saw something vaguely that she wanted to be sure of. She had to blink many times before she had another instant of clear vision. It was a frog, watching her, evidently happy to be half in and half out of its puddle in the rain, in the mud, looking around.