Forty Days and Nights: Love Stories. 4. Sugar

The little boy and the little girl were hunting for Easter eggs. There were lots and lots of eggs, they knew, somewhere, no one could remember where. Could be anywhere. They kept looking everywhere but they couldn't find eggs. Their mother had told them this was the day for eggs so they hunted. The eggs would be full of chocolate when they found them, full, or maybe the eggs would have money in them. They hoped it would be chocolate; you can't eat money and they were getting hungrier and hungrier.

The rabbit watched them from the long grass by the garden. Again. Every year. Every year with the eggs. The rabbit was mystified by the eggs and by the children who hunted and hunted for so long before they found the eggs right under their feet. Why scatter eggs just to gather them again? Especially if you had such a hard time finding them? The rabbit himself wanted nothing to do with hunting or with eggs, he planned to eat baby lettuces in the garden. As was sensible. The rabbit watched the little boy and the little girl disappear between the trees and forgot about them. No one else saw them go.

They hunted and hunted but after a very short while only the little girl was hunting for eggs, the little boy was hunting for anything that looked familiar to him. He knew he should know just where they were and it bothered him very much that he did not. When he stopped walking and looked and looked around him, the little girl stopped too. She stood quietly by him, leaning just the smallest bit toward him, her head tipped a very tiny way toward his. She waited for him to finish looking. She knew he had a good sense of direction and that she herself did not. Their mother found that out a long time ago. So the little girl waited while he looked around. She was pretending to be patient. After a little time he said, I don't know which way to walk, but I'll know as soon as the sun moves and it isn't noon anymore. We can look for eggs til then, and the little girl was very serious and nodded. Chocolate.

They hunted around one more thick stand of trees while time passed and the trees slowly grew the smallest of shadows and just as the little boy was looking up from those shadows to say he knew the way back, the little girl said, I smell cookies and fudge, and instead of saying the way home the little boy said, look! They stood very still and very close and looked carefully through the trees at the place they had come, at the house made of cake and candy and doughnuts. The trees were quiet and still and nothing was moving or talking. They stood still and amazed though not surprised, their empty baskets, slightly askew, hanging from their crooked arms. Amazed to see the house, not surprised to see it because after all, it must be somewhere and here where they were was somewhere. The little girl was very hungry now, much more hungry than when they had begun to hunt, hungrier than ever in her whole, whole life and she felt this was a terrible moment. She waited while the little boy thought and thought. He folded his arms so the basket stuck out at a stiff angle, tipped his head to one side with his heavy thoughts, looked at the icing and the spun sugar and the peppermints and the rows of lollipops and the brownie bricks and the nuts and raisins and he narrowed his eyes. It was the raisins that did it for him. What sort of normal person put raisins on the outside of cookies for children? Real mothers never did that anymore, he knew. Raisins were pure storybook. His own mother put raisins in oatmeal and in curry and on her own salad and many of them, most of them, ended in a pile on the edge of your bowl. He looked up at the sun and then he said out loud, sometimes people are in a tight spot. He had heard that in a book, a tight spot. He said it again. Sometimes people are in a tight spot, he said, and they have to do something dangerous. The little girl nodded and made her face look serious. We may have to walk back home for a long time, even though now I know the way. We need food because we're starving, so we will quickly grab just one thing. Yes, the little girl said, one thing and then we run. They knew this story. She's old, the little girl reminded the boy as they walked carefully over the green coconut grass and the crushed rock crystal candy path to the house. No frosting, the little girl said, we haven't had breakfast.

They pulled off a whole apple pie from right above the mailbox. It left a big hole and strawberry jam filling gushed out. It was like they had pulled off a scab. The pie broke between their hands as they pulled and they stuffed the pieces in their empty baskets and ran. They ran and ate pie and ran and the little girl suddenly darted away under the trees. She crawled around for a minute and held up three Easter eggs. She was always best at finding things, she was the first one their mother asked when something was missing. They followed eggs back to their garden and as they went the sun shifted and it wasn't afternoon anymore, it was morning again, the morning of hunting for eggs. Their mother met them between the beans and the carrots. She was pretending she hadn't come looking for them. The little girl held up her basket for her mother to see it full of eggs she had found, full. The little boy dropped his basket and ran to their mother and wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her stomach. She leaned down when he whispered, I don't like to be in charge. Me neither, the mother whispered back, and she smoothed and smoothed his hair. Breakfast? she asked them. Bacon, the little girl said.