the missing campfire

The Missing Campfire

fiction
edward w pritchard

The Mother glanced anxiously across the neighbor's yard, dropped into the driver's seat, and backed the station wagon onto the road. Accelerating slowly, so as not to attract attention, she backed onto the street. Once perpendicular to her drive, she avoided the rear view mirror out of habit so as not to see the Lake, or the sunset across it about a half a mile away.

Weaving through the suburban neighborhood, she stopped carefully and a little longer than necessary at each intersection, until after about 6 stops she reached the open road heading for the Lake.

A funny looking man in his boxer's shorts leading a miniature dog by a silver rope nodded as she pulled into the tenant's only parking space at the apartments in front of the Lake. She walked the familiar route along the overgrown shrubs, around the second apartment building, down the sloping grass belt to the log rim separating the grass from the beach.

There facing North silhouetted against the last beams of the pink sunset sat her son starring across the Lake.

She sat quietly with him for a while and then said kindly:

"We had better get on Home"

Mom, he said as they rose, still looking across the Lake:

" Can we make a fire again like we used to?"

"Maybe another time honey, " she said, to her grown son as they started for the car.