“Shhh son it’s ok. I checked the closets and I checked under your bed. Monster free zone, Ok? Now please child, go to sleep.”
“Thank you Daddy.”
“Tomorrow I’ll make something just for you, ok?”
“Love you da da.”
“Love you too son.”
In the morning, after a hearty breakfast of ham, eggs and pancakes, all farm fresh, their own farm, well, except the pancakes, Marjorie told her son to go pack for grandmas. Alex helped load the trunk of the Buick, prematurely aged by the wagon ruts they called a driveway.
“Aren’t you coming with us to grandmas?” his son asked.
“No, I have to keep the farm going. Who’s going to milk Millie? Feed the Chickens? Build your gift?”
The boy lit up, hugged Alex’s neck as bent down to receive the hug and stood up with the boy in his arms.
“You mind your ma and your grandma, ok?”
“And I’ll get a treat?”
“Yes, you’ll get a treat.”
Alex watched the Buick bounce along the driveway, banging the muffler and undercarriage every few feet. The morning chores were done already, the sun young on the eastern edge of the field. He considered filling in the ruts, weighed his time, decided against it. He’d work on the boys room.
He put a false wall behind the boys bed, two feet deep. It was a large bedroom for a farmhouse, the last owners were childless and the room had been a den. He raised the bed. He put in another false wall on the western wall. Every few feet he put in a closet door. It had taken two days. They were coming home the evening of the third. He had just finished filling the last of his old overalls with straw, putting a scarecrow behind every door and two under the bed.
“Time the kid either learned there’s no such thing as monsters or how to really be afraid. No kid of mine is going to half ass it.”
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