Page 109 of Love Wells Kept

So cleanliness be damned, I scoop a handful of mud and bring it to my face, pretending to take a massive bite. I munch and crunch on nothing for a few seconds, then with a dramatic swallow and a lick of my lips, I discreetly drop the mud to the ground and give the kids a dirty thumbs-up.

“Best pizza I’ve ever had.” I grab another handful. “Compliments to the chef.”

Hearing that, Rhett rushes to bring me even more mud. No need for a plate this time, he’s carrying it in two widespread hands. When it splats on my plate, half of it sloshes over the side. Immediately I feel it oozing through my jeans and running down my leg, but I don’t care.

“Great work, buddy. If becoming Spider-Man doesn’t work out, I think you’ll make an amazing chef.”

Once Austin, Red, and Denny have their own specialty dishes, the kids wait eagerly for their reactions. And because I set the bar pretty high with my pretend eating, if I say so myself, they put on a show for the kids, too.

“Think the girls are having this much fun today?” Red asks, wiping mud from Hazel’s lips and offering her a drink from his water bottle. Leave it to the toddler to miss the memo that we’re all pretending to eat it.

“Not a chance,” I say. “They’re going to be so jealous they missed out on trying the best pizza in town.”

At that, Odessa’s eyes go wide, and she orders the littler kids back to their faux kitchen with a clap of her hands. “C’mon chefs, we’ve got more orders to make. The moms are gonna have a feast.”

Once the kids are out of earshot, Denny leans back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. “Remember when we were the ones running around like that all summer?”

Austin grunts. “By the time we were Odessa’s age, Grandpa and Dad had us doing chores all summer long.”

Dad scoffs, shuffling forward in his chair to shake his head at Austin. “Now, now. You did a normal amount of chores and you had plenty of time for running around.”

“Only because Mom made sure of it,” Denny says. “She always came up with the most ridiculous games for us.”

Dad laughs under his breath, and the relaxed summer air suddenly develops a rough edge. “That’s the real reason why it felt like you were working all day—she’d keep you boys so busy doing silly shit, the chores took twice as long as they should’ve.”

A smile erupts on Austin’s face, and he tips his head toward the kids. “Guess we’re keeping the tradition alive, making them do silly shit and calling it work.”

I glance toward the kids, catching fleeting glimpses of the childhood memories they’re referring to.

“Well, look at how good we all turned out,” Denny says.

Red stops in the middle of picking grit from between his fingers to bark out a laugh. “That’s not the sales pitch you think it is, man.”

Dad clears his throat. “No, you should all be proud of the kind of men you are—I sure as hell am. That’s why these kids are so incredible.”

“Yeah, they’re something else,” I say hoarsely.

Then I pull myself from the chair without another word, focus homed in on my kids, and seconds later I’m plunking my ass down in the mud right next to Rhett.

“Mind if I be your sous chef?” I ask with a smile, then clarify when I remember he’s not quite four. “Your helper?”

The way he lights up makes up for the fact that I can feel the mud soaking straight through my pants and underwear, dampening my ass in the most uncomfortable way.

“You can put the cheese on.” He fishes around in the pocket of his hoodie for a handful of smashed dandelions and sets them on my lap.

“I can handle that, I think.” I pluck the thin yellow petals from one of the flowers, and when Rhett slides a mud pie my way, I get to work scattering them across the top of it.

“No, not like that.” He huffs, then grabs a single flower and presses the entire thing into the mud, a little off center.

The way I was doing it looks a hell of a lot more like cheese, but then again, I’m not the head chef, so what do I know? Scratching my scalp with the less dirty of my two hands, I follow his lead and earn a pleased head nod from my son.

For the next little while, the kids and I work quietly in our supply chain, with the sounds of birds chirping and my brothers talking in the background. The moms better be real hungry when they get back, because soon we’ve not only covered Odessa’s tree stump table in pies, we’re close to filling a nearby picnic table with them, too.

“I need more danbylions,” Rhett announces, standing up and leaping off the mud pile.

He takes off at a run, dropping bits of mud with every step. At this point, he’s getting rinsed off with the garden hose and stripped on the front porch when we’re done out here. I glance down at my own filthy pants. I’m getting the hose, too.

With my cheese duties paused until he comes back, I turn and watch Odessa finickily arrange the plates on the table. At some point, she picked some spring blossoms from the garden and stole my water bottle for a vase.