The Drought by Patricia Fulton, Extended Imagery Page B

cruel as to draw these two boys into a friendship.
    She remembered the first time Barry showed up at her door. She had been half tempted to slam it in his face. With all the charm of a grown man he’d asked, “Is Jar here?” She had hesitated at the shortening of her son’s name, and before she could make up a lie, Jared was behind her, his voice raised in an excited pitch usually reserved for Christmas morning. Before she knew what was happening, a Tanner was in her house and her son was happier than she’d ever seen him. A Tanner has come for my boy . As ridiculous as it sounded, the thought kept going through her head.
    She couldn’t believe in such a small town, neither boy had been exposed to the rumors that had once swirled savagely through the town unhindered by truth or fact. Most people believed Robert Riley had run off with Barry’s mother. A twinge of pain just under her chest bone accompanied the thought.
    She picked up the damp cloth and began re-wiping the already clean counters. While the rest of the town gossiped over the two ex-lovers disappearing on the same day, Beth grieved. In her heart she knew Robert was dead. He was not the type of man who would abandon his wife and son. Over the past ten years she had never wavered in her conviction or her belief Griffin Tanner was responsible for the disappearance of her husband and Dora.
    She moved from the counters to the kitchen table, the dishrag never resting. It was at this table she had come to accept Barry’s presence in her home. He and Jared had spent long nights sitting at the table, playing cards. She had taught them to play Canasta and for an entire summer they were consumed by the game. She had seen Barry cheat on more than one occasion and waited to see if Jared would ever catch on.
    Realizing he was being watched, Barry would wink at her and in this way she became an unwilling co-conspirator against her own son. Jared was so involved in his own cards he didn’t notice until one night he pulled two red threes out of the deck and Barry already had three. Instead of assuming Barry was cheating, he’d said, “Hey, there are five red threes in the deck.” Barry had almost peed in his pants he was laughing so hard.
    Jared had leaned forward and saw the red two. Stunned, he said, “You’re cheating.” Unfazed, Barry threw down his cards and said, “You must be cheating, too.”
    “What?”
    “That’s right, I’ve been cheating all night and you’re still winning, so you must be cheating.”
    Jared’s face had turned red with disbelief, but even Barry’s most deceitful behavior did not alter their friendship.
    A slight tap of a horn brought her out of her thoughts. She smiled and sent up a silent prayer of thanks for her friend, Elsie Palmer. Unable to afford a car, she had always walked the two miles into town insisting the exercise helped keep her trim. In truth she didn’t like being beholden to anyone, not even her best friend. When the temperature spiked over 100, Elsie started showing up and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
    She paused on her way out the door, casting one last worried look in Jared’s direction.
    Jared, still angry over laundry duty didn’t acknowledge his mother’s soft, “Goodbye,” or her exit.
    *
     
    Jar rode his bike up highway 377 and took a right onto Main Street. It was a ride he took almost every day, but today he was pulling a baby buggy full of dirty laundry. The buggy alone could get him beaten up if he ran into the right kids, but the dirty laundry would be absolutely humiliating. He knew for a fact the Crawlie twins, Mike and Jason, had a thing for picking on middle school kids, and he was praying he wouldn’t run into them on Main Street.
    The thought of them flinging his clothes onto the street caused him such a panic a mile back he had pulled to the side of the road and stuffed whatever underwear he could find to the bottom of one of the bags.
    He didn’t mind helping his mom, but she was