WIDE MEADOWS: WHO SHALL WE BE TODAY? (A CONTINUING SERIES)

Editor's note: This is a chapter from Jean Bell Mosley's book "Wide Meadows" that was first published in 1960.

Left to our own impulses and ingenuity, Lou and I devised our own diversions. Some called it deviltry.

When the role of being the Bell young'uns began to pall, we were never ones to take it sitting down. For if we did there was no community organization to round us up, pamper our whimsies and keep us out of trouble. And, if we evinced an over amount of apathy towards pulling weeds, hoeing corn, scrubbing, mopping, doing the dishes and other chores, we were running the risk of being rejuvenated with one of Grandma's revitalizing teas.

So we dispelled any gloom brought on by the sameness of our days by the simple expedient of being different people ourselves. We might be Napoleon and Josephine, Sammy and Matt, Baucis and Philemon or any number of characters with whom we were familiar.

"Who shall we be today?" Lou asked, as we crawled out of bed and pulled on our clothes.

"The Dutch Twins," I replied, ecstatically. Nothing, no life whatsoever appealed to me as much as the life of the Dutch Twins, portrayed in the series of twin books we had in our school library. To me their clean little home with tulips in the dooryard, as illustrated in the book, was the epitome of all that was good and clean and comfortable, and to desire any other mode of life was sheer nonsense.

"Aww, the Dutch Twins," Lou said, witheringly. "Let's be Damon and Pythias."

"Who were they?"

"Great friends."

"Well, gee, how can we play that -- just great friends?" I asked buttoning up my underwear.

"Pythias was going to die, see?" Lou squinted her eyes trying to remember so early in the morning.

"And what did she do? Damon?"

"She? They were boys!"

"Oh."

We worked in silence a while, trying to get our long underwear wound around smoothly. As winter waned the underwear legs stretched and stretched and by this time they would wind around two and a half times.

"I'm Pythias. I'm gonna die, see?" Lou explained.

"What from? Flu?"

"I'm condemned, see?"

"What's that?"

"They say I gotta die."

"Who?"

"Now, do you want to play this or not?" Lou's voice was getting impatient. "How do I know who says I gotta die?"

I nodded that I did want to play, but I'd sure like to know who it was that said someone else had to die. See?

"But I gotta leave town, and I say I'll be back at a certain time if they'll let me go, and you say if I'm not, you'll die for me, see?

"Let me be Pythias."

"Naw, you're Damon. I can't make it back on time so you're all ready to die for me, see? Then I come running back in the nick of time to save you, and the lawyer, or whoever it was, forgives me and wants to be friends with us, too."

By this time we have finished dressing and start for the kitchen.

"But where do I wait on you in we're gonna play it?" I ask.

Lou stops halfway down the stairs, suddenly inspired.

"I've got to write a theme before we go to school this morning. I'll write it after breakfast, before I go help milk. You'll wait and wait and wait at the barn, willing to milk my cows if I don't show up. Then I'll come flying just in the nick of time!"

"You'll come flying," I repeated, to add emphasis to the portion of the plan.

"Whaddaya gotta die for?" I ask Lou, around the biscuit and sausage in my mouth.

Mama looks up alarmed.

"Search me," Lou shruggs her shoulders.

"A game?" Mama inquires, hopefully.

We nod affirmatively, and everyone eats on in silence. After awhile, Mama talks about her latest project. Over at the Rooks Hole on the river she plans to have Dad build some picnic tables and rustic chairs and she's going to put an ad in the Farmington News about it, hoping to rent it as a campsite. Lou and I think maybe we might be Thoreau-on-Walden there later.

At the barn I wait and wait and wait. Long since I have finished my cows, Anabelle, Trixy and Tuddy. Lou's cows wait patiently in their stalls for Pythias. My feet are cold and my hands freezing and I warm them in the fuzzy hair on the cows' udders. Ain't I supposed to die, and cheerfully, I remind myself? I am Damon, the faithful!

"Where's Lou?" Grandpa asks, coming by with the bucket of bran.

"She'll be here in the nick of time," I explained, cheerfully.

"Is Lou finished?" Dad asks, coming down his row of cows.

"I'm holding on for her," I explain.

"Holding on what?"

"Well, I mean she'll be here in the nick of time."

I strip Old Anabelle again, stalling, waiting. She looks around inquiringly. Polly, in the next stall, moos questioningly. "Where's Pythias?" she seems to say with her big brown eyes.

I listen for footsteps to come flying down the garden path. No Pythias.

"All finished?" Mom asks, starting toward the house with her two pails of milk.

"Not quite," I say, intimating only two more quarters to go.

"Well," I tell Damon. That's me. "If Pythias hadn't come, wouldn't I have gone ahead?" So, talking fresh pails, I start in on Heart, Polly, and Primrose. Otherwise, the lawyer, Mom, will be waiting and wondering up at the separator. I am just halfway through the last, Primrose, when Pythias comes rushing into the barn.

"Well, I made it," she exclaims, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked.

"I'm already three-fourths dead," I reply, accusingly. "I can no longer be Damon."

"Then we'll be someone else," she plans, taking my place on the stool and finishing Prim.

"The Dutch Twins," I say, ecstatically, willing to forgive.

"Oh, all right, the Dutch Twins," Lou agrees, after glancing at the withered bags of my own cows and hers, too.

Up in the attic in the trunk is a picture with the word "Degas" down in the corner. It is a picture of dancing girls in short, fluffy skirts. Only on a summer day when the pokeberries are ripe can we be Degas' dancing girls. With the ripe pokeberry juice we paint ballet slippers on our bare feet and lace them up, clear to our knees. Such a beautiful color, the magenta slippers! We shed our dresses, stuff our underskirts down in our drawers, and pin row on row of sycamore leaves around our middles, giving the effect of a short ruffled skirt. Then away we go, whirling across the meadow, dipping and swaying, promenading, and dosi-doing, for we cannot stand on our toes like the girls in the picture.