I turned my pickup into the driveway and followed the cow trail, as Dad and Grandpa used to call it, as it wormed its way through the trees, which hid the house from the road that I grew up in. My sister and I both grew up in this old house that is hid from the dirt road by a whole lot of trees.
When I finally got through the trees to where I could see the house and yard around the house, I saw a car with a woman sitting in the car and as I cot stopped next to the car I saw it was Sue, my sister, sitting in the car. The first thing I know she noticed was the house wasn't the same old house that we grew up in. The house is a two story house like the old house was but this one is a brick house and looks to be bigger than the old house was.
Getting out of my pickup I looked over in the car to see Sue still looking the house over and as I stepped up to the car's driver's side, I opened the door, "Hi sis. Are you okay?" as she looked up at me.
"I knew that dad had the new house built and the old one tore down but, this looks nothing like I pictured it to look, when it was described to me on how it looked. We are at the right place aren't we?"
"Yes we are. I came back once to help get cattle rounded up for sale, and then doctor up some new younger cattle he had bought at the sale."
"That was what one and one half years ago, when he had the broken arm or something like that?"
"Yes, that is when it was. How long have you been sitting here?"
"I just pulled in maybe two minutes before you came around that last bend in the drive there."
"I take it you had a good trip getting here then."
"Yes I did. How about you, did you have a good trip getting here?"
"Yes I did. All nine hours of driving time for me."
"I had about the same amount of time as you had done then."
"Shall we go in and see how the inside looks, now that we've had a good look at the outside of the house?"
"I just wonder how dusty the inside is now since the funeral... I wish now I had come out to the house instead of staying at the motel."
"I wish you had come out here instead of staying in that motel as well. Now speaking about the dust, I'm sure it's not as dusty inside as the old house would've been by now."
"I remember the old house was pretty drafty for sure. I remember when mom and I would dust and sweep the old house to get the dust picked up; it was like in five minutes it looked just as dusty inside as if we didn't do a thing to get the dust out."
"Yes I remember that too. That is why dad had the old house tore down and this one built. Just so mom could feel like she accomplished something in her day of working in the house."
"She was so disgusted that it didn't look like she had done a thing, and I kind of felt the same way as she did. She knew she had accomplished something but to look at it, she didn't feel that she did then."
"I sure understand that feeling for sure. Seeing her in this house after dad got it built, she had more time for other things she liked to do and, she seemed to smile a lot more than she did before."
Once Sue and I had got to the door, I took the key I had and opened the door and let Sue step into the house first, with me right behind her. Checking to see that the electric is still on, I turned on the light switch next to the door, then off, after I saw that the light came on, "It is pretty hot and still in here being all closed up like it is. Let's air it out a bit before I turn the AC on." as I stepped over to a window and opened it up, then did the same to the next window. I went to each room and opened up the windows to let it aired out before we needed the AC turned on.
With all the windows opened up I went back down to the living room to find Sue slowly going around the room looking at all that mom had hung on the walls and sitting around for looks, and then taking in how everything was arranged in the living room for mom and dad to sit and watch television of an evening, which is what they did to relax some before going to bed. As I looked around the room I saw that three pictures had changed from older ones of Sue and I to newer ones, as well as the one with mom and dad in it together, "I see nothing has changed except for those three pictures there, next to you on the wall." pointing at them so she'd know which three I was speaking of.
"Oh yes. I sent that one of me shortly after you left here last year or whenever it was you were here. That one of you must have been while you were here when it got taken."
"Yes it was. Mom wanted to update those pictures and asked if I'd go with them to get them taken all in the same day, her and dad had theirs taken, so she'd have them. I left to go back home the following day and left money here for her to pick up my picture so that she'd have it. Dad didn't like the idea of me giving mom the money and she didn't either, so I had to leave it on the table here without them knowing I left it there. I told a little lie when she called and asked me if I misplaced some money and left it on the coffee table though."
"When she called to let me know that she got my pictures that I sent her, she told me you left some money on the coffee table for your pictures and wondered how to get it back to you and maybe make you think you had left it there, like you done here by putting it on the table the way you did." then we went to laughing at how we just couldn't pull one over on mom or dad, like we've tried to do so many times growing up.
"I never understood how in the world, they knew what we did or didn't do, with you or me covering for the other one, all of those years. Heck even when we didn't have the other one to cover for us, they knew somehow or some way. I don't know how they even knew."
"I never could figure it out either. I remember one time I wanted to see what it was like to slop the two hogs and you wanted to know how easy it was to gather the eggs and feed the chickens they had at the time, so we switched without saying a word to either dad or mom about it, but yet they knew it was me that left the gate open on the hog pen and you, had one of the horses get out of its pen because you didn't get it closed all the way. They were even out in the field when that all happened, feeding the cattle out over the country, and we had the horse and hogs penned back up by the time they got back to the yard here."
"We knew they would see the tracks that the horse left and the hogs had left on the ground but as for knowing, which one of us left the hog gate open, is beyond me, but the horse pen gate they would know since I had to feed the few horses we had at that time."
"I had no chance of saying anything and neither did you when dad asked us, what you did to let the hogs get out and he asked me the same thing about the horse, and we both looked at each other and asked how he knew it was me at the same time, and he answered back with 'I have my ways' and he said be more careful next time if we decided to switch jobs again."
"I thought we covered our tracks after we fed the animals."
"We did by helping each other get the animals back in their rightful pens. And the animals helped out with covering our tracks too. At least I was thinking they did."
"Somehow he knew though. Mom was just as bad as dad was about knowing which one of us did what or didn't do."
"Yes she did." I turned and started for the kitchen then.
"What are you doing now bro?" as Sue followed me.
"I think I want something to drink and thought I'd see if there is anything to drink and ask you, what you want if anything. After I find out if there is anything or not to drink." opening the fridge and looking in to find nothing there to drink.