Our family scattered around the house after church on Sunday morning. No one really had anything to do. Mom and Gary were watching TV. Dad was upstairs at his desk. Jeff and I were in the kitchen when he rifled through Mom’s wallet and grabbed four quarters. He stacked them on the edge of his elbow.
“Jeff, you’re not allowed to play quarters!”
“Yes, I am!”
“No, you’re not. Mom outlawed the game. I’m going to tell her.”
“Oh, yeah? How are you going to prove it?”
I looked at Jeff on one side of the kitchen. I saw Mom’s opened purse on the desk. It was closer to the door than Jeff was. No need to plan it ... I darted for the purse like Wile Coyote for an anvil. I ran out of the kitchen into the dining room – almost went right through the basement door, Jeff in hot pursuit six feet behind me – passed the dining room table, went around the stereophonic system, then into the living room right past the stone fireplace. Then I felt a tug on the back of my shirt. Jeff caught up with me and then it all went fuzzy.
I woke up crying in the bathroom, saw blood everywhere on my hands, on my face, and I had a terrible headache. I was sitting on the toilet and everyone stood around me, looking at my head.
Mom held a white – no, a red – towel on my head. “Looks like a deep cut in the head. He’ll have to get stitches. Jeff, how’d this happen?”
“Well, Jimmy was running around the house. He shouldn’t have been!”
“Allen, let’s get Jimmy to Columbia Hospital. This needs to be stitched up right away or he’ll bleed to death. I’ll get to the bottom of this when we get home.”
Mom got to the bottom of it, all right. She always got to the bottom of everything. Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Columbo, Jack Friday – they had nothing on Mom. For his punishment, Jeff had to play a game of “Landslide” with me after we got home from the hospital.
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