Summer With Suzie

"I told you I wasn't bluffin'. Now, you better take your pants off, or I'm not playin' anymore."

There was no talking to Suzie when she made up her mind. Her pretty freckled face screwed up in mock anger and forced a pout to form on her rose-budded lips. Jake didn't want to stop playing with her. They were both ten this summer, and it stretched out before them like an endless horizon. Jake wanted to spend every moment he could with little Suzie Blake (even if it meant losing at poker).

"I will not take off my pants, Suzie." He said, firmly. "We said the rules were 'one lost hand equals one lost item of clothing', so I am taking off my baseball cap and adding it to the pile."

"That is cheating, Jake, and boys who cheat at cards get shot down, dead, in the movies."

All the fire had gone out of her argument though, and the pout turned into a grin. "Wanna play on the old tire swing over the pond?"

Jake grinned back, nodding, and the deck of playing cards soon lay disregarded with his cap. They ran like sheep, gamboling in a 'sheep stampede', as Suzie put it one time, they skipped through the green ears of un-ripe corn. Jake's senses wanted to burst with the smell of the warm, sweet, sap; the oranges, limes, and lemons of the corn whipped their legs and tugged at Suzie's skirt, as she ran ahead of him. Her soft lilting laughter carried to him on the breeze and Jake found himself laughing too.

They reached the pond and the old willow which spread its branches over the water. Someone, boys from another summer before theirs, had tied a good rope over the strongest branch which stretched out over the water. It was hot. They were sticky with humidity and sweat. Still wearing her summer dress, Suzie ran at the rope and let her motion carry her out over the pond, with a peel of laughter following in her wake.

Jake watched her swoop up, like an angel and descend on like a devil. Oh, she was the prettiest pendulum in the world, and from now on, he swore to himself, every time he looked at the old Grandmother Clock in the hallway he would remember Suzie as a better version of it. Her pale porcelain hands gripped tight as she leaned back with her eyes closed. The swing sent her locks flying and Jake breathed in her strawberry scented skin as she passed him. It drugged him, like mom's morphine had made her smile through the Cancer, and he realized right then and there, he would always love little Suzie Blake. One day, he thought, and smiled to himself, I'm gonna kiss that girl!

(469 words)