Excerpt from Hot Flashes: A Month of Mini Fiction
Age Old Lessons from a Grandfather
“There’s gonna be weathah,” Amos said, looking up at the bright blue sky.
The innocent looking clouds on the horizon must have been at least 50 miles away. Honey bees flitted purposely, happily, under the warm sunshine. The slight breeze wafting through the cherry tree orchard was too gentle to persuade fragile pink petals to fall to the ground. By all accounts it was a perfectly lovely spring day.
Rosie looked at the sky then up at her grandfather, puzzled. “I don’t see none,” she said. “How you know?”
“My knees’ a-tellin’ me.”
Amos’s knees on his 6’6” frame stood right at Rosie’s nose, so she looked at them intently. They were conveniently visible for examination due to the ripped out holes in his thin work pants. Putting her ear to his right knee, she tried to listen.
“I cain’t hear nuthin’.
“T’other one’s the loudest,” he said.
She switched knees, and listened harder, but still couldn’t hear anything. “Why it won’t talk to me?”
“It talks in pain, child. Aches and pains, sho’ ‘nuf.” Amos sat down on the steps to the veranda, and, putting his arm around Rosie, drew her close. Then he handed her half his sandwich, and made sure the glass pitcher of lemonade was far enough out of reach that the girl wouldn’t accidently bumped into it and spill the liquid on the porch.
Rosie knew better than to refuse food, but she carefully picked the spinach leaves off her half of the tuna sandwich before taking a bite. Amos shook his head, but said nothing. He liked substituting home grown raw spinach for lettuce on his sandwiches.
“Why my knees don’ talk to me?” she asked between bites, a little whiny. She didn’t like feeling left out of some special, secret talent.
“Well,” Amos searched for a good reason while he tried to explain the phenomenon. “I expect ya gotta get more years afore that happens.
“Where I can buy some, Grampuh?”
“Cain’t buy ‘em. Yer years comes from growin’. And,” he emphasized the word so his point wouldn’t be missed, “from eatin’ yer vegetables. ‘Specially the green ones.”
Rosie scowled. It was the first time in her five years of living that she’d been confronted with such an unpleasant dilemma. She wanted the magical ability to hear her knees talk, but she wasn’t sure that eating peas, beans, okra, and spinach was worth it.
By suppertime thunder shook the house and rattled Rosie’s eardrums. The noise and the lightning that followed made the old bloodhound bark incessantly from his hiding place under the old oak dining table. The heavy rain was pounding the roof mercilessly. Amos set a bucket in the middle of the supper table to catch the leak.
“Grampuh, more spinach, please.”
Prompt: weather 461 words
Hot Flashes: A Month of Mini Fiction is available exclusively at Smashwords.