Tea Party

I am farther from home than I have ever been before, but I don't feel afraid because I'm with my friends – Cowboy, Tubby, and the Skinny Kid. And the funny monkey, of course, but he belongs to Tubby. He never goes anywhere without the funny monkey. The monkey is loud. It runs in the trees, screaming. Tubby gives it sweaters and pants, but the monkey always tears its clothes off, naked and screaming.

I hate the funny monkey.

Tubby says the funny monkey does what we all want to do, deep down, in our heart of hearts.

I say that my heart does not have a heart. I have no heart of hearts. And I do not want to run screaming and naked in the trees. Maybe that's what Tubby wants, but not me.

At least I don't think so, but what if I'm wrong? So I think about it, seriously. I think about tearing my clothes off and climbing up a tree, wet moss and grass and ivy against my bare feet. Wind all over me. Unprotected. Unconcealed. I look at Tubby, at Cowboy, and the Skinny Kid. The four of us, deep in the woods, outside the law, naked in the trees. I guess it wouldn't be so bad.

But not with the monkey. I'd do it, I'd go primitive buck naked in a bamboo treehouse if Tubby would just get rid of that monkey. I'd kill it myself if he'd let me.

“Tubby,” I say, “Nobody wants to see you crouching naked up a tree.”

I wonder if we would still call Cowboy “Cowboy”, if we went primitive buck naked. No cowboy hat. No fake leather holsters. No red boots just like his dad's. How would we know who he was? Would we forget?

Cowboy is straddling a fallen log like he is riding it bareback. “Yee-haw!” He is waving his hat in the air. He will always be Cowboy, after all.

Anyway, we are wilderness explorers now, with a long journey ahead of us. We have wilderness to explore. We haven't gone primitive buck naked yet.

Seven weeks later, we are cold and smelly. Tubby ate both the funny monkey and the Skinny Kid when our rations ran low. If we were big enough to grow beards, I bet they would be pretty long by now.

Down in the woods, with no pith helmets, Tubby and Cowboy and I come upon the ruins of an ancient pawn shop. The walls are soft with rot.

There are a few old canes with rotten handles, and a clock, and furniture. Cowboy finds a six-gun with a rusty firing pin. Under the dusty glass counter, on shelves lined with decaying felt, there is silverware, cufflinks, and rings. The pawn shop had not been emptied before it was abandoned.

We are so far from home. This will have to be our new headquarters, for who knows if we will ever make it back? At least it will provide some shelter, for a while, until Tubby eats the rest of us.

On a mantle, I find a silver tea set, blackening with age. The kettle and cups are full of dust, of dried moss, and the rattling bodies of desiccated spiders.

I boil water from the cold stream that runs through the stock room. I pour the boiling water into the cups, and all the refuse dissolves in a sparkling instant.

We sit around a card table covered in dirt. Me across from Tubby, Cowboy on the left, a cracked china doll on the other side, for balance, where the Skinny Kid would be.

We have a tea party. Moss and spider tea, just like in the adventure stories. It is delicious, and we drink it until we are all grown up.