PapaDum’s sort of a reformed bad guy, because he used to run huge construction projects that turned fields into strip malls, but now he uses his powers for good.
Aspen pretends to be gutted. “What, that was funner than the time you spent with us?” she asks PapaDum.
“Hey, that’s one of the pluses of a four-parent family,” says PopCorn. “We each get to spend some time being something other than a dad or mom.”
PapaDum grins at Aspen. “But brushing your hair was definitely the most relaxing thing I did.”
That’s the only time Aspen sits still, when PapaDum’s getting all her tangles out with what he claims is his magic brush.
“My funnest thing, I guess, was … acing my Rules of the Road test!” Sic does a little victory dance in his chair. “Now I’ve started a program on state-of-the-art defensive driving techniques. Backing up, checking your blind spot —”
Sumac peers into her brother’s chocolate-brown eyes. “I didn’t know you had a blind spot.”
“All drivers do,” says PapaDum, jerking his thumb behind him, to the left. “It’s the bit you can’t see in your mirror.”
“Changing lanes, braking smoothly” — Sic’s large right sneaker rotates and paws the air — “staggering in traffic …”
“When you say a program,” says PapaDum, “do you mean actual lessons?”
“Well, self-taught,” says Sic. “It’s virtual driving software.”
PopCorn rolls his eyes and slides down in his deck chair.
“But it’d be totally legal for me to practice driving for real if there was an adult beside me,” Sic assures him.
“An imaginary adult, like Mario?” asks Wood. “Because there’s no real adult who’d let you behind the wheel of an actual car.”
“Given enough time,” Sic quotes, “a stream can split a mountain.”
“Yeah, maybe you’ll be driving by the time you’re Grumps’s age,” says Wood.
“Where is he, by the way?” asks PopCorn, looking around.
“Brian took him for a walk in the Ravine,” says PapaDum. “The creek’s dry, but …” He rubs his beard as their eyes meet.
PopCorn stands up, Oak on his hip. “Maybe we’ll go see how they’re —”
That’s when they hear the wailing, and Brian comes tearing down the Wild in her shorts.
PopCorn tries to be heard over the shrieks. “What’s the matter, honey?”
But they can all see the streaky rash on Brian’s arms and chest, the red bumps already swelling. Poison ivy! Sumac hisses in sympathy. That’s going to turn into weeping blisters.
Grumps strides up the garden behind Brian. “Got the bairn out the minute I could.”
“Thanks, Iain,” PapaDum tells him. “Hose!”
PopCorn’s already running for it. “Have to wash the resin off, Brian, the sticky poison.”
She shrieks under the cold water.
“Here, boots off so I can spray your feet,” PapaDum’s telling Grumps.
“Dad! Your feet,” says PopCorn.
“Don’t scratch,” PapaDum advises the old man, tugging off his steel-capped boots. “The thing is to rinse it off and then sit in a lukewarm bath.”
“Let’s get your socks into a garbage bag, Dad.”
“I’m not throwing out my socks,” says Grumps in a shocked tone.
“We just need to wash them.”
“Those are perfectly good socks.”
“What about yogurt? Or chamomile tea,” says PopCorn, yanking off Brian’s shorts and underwear. “That can be soothing.”
PapaDum snorts. “Hydrocortisone and antihistamines are what they need. I’ll check the medicine cabinet.”
“Socks, Dad,” pleads PopCorn.
“The boy,” says Grumps, staring.
“Wood?” says Sumac, looking around.
“The wee baldy one.” Grumps is pointing at naked Brian, who’s shuddering under the hose. “He’s a girl.”
A silence, which Brian breaks. “I not a girl!”
Aspen titters. “Didn’t you know?” she asks Grumps.
He gives her a fierce look.
Sumac’s staggered. How can the man have spent nearly two weeks here thinking Brian’s a boy?
“At the moment, Brian’s preferring not to be called that,” murmurs PopCorn.
The stubbled ridges where Grumps’s eyebrows are starting to grow back go up. “Not to be called a girl?”
“Not a girl,” shrieks Brian.
But then again, Sumac realizes, the Lotterys are a big mob, and they talk a lot and often all at the same time. Grumps must have heard she sometimes, but not known that it was this particular bald four-year-old being talked about.
“Why did you name her Brian, for the love of God?” he demands.
“It was actually Briar,” says Sumac, “but she changed it when she was three.”
“Ye are all out of your tiny minds,” says Grumps, and stomps away to the house in his dripping socks.
*
After the moms get back, Wood proposes a game in the Ravine called Friend or Foe, so that nobody else will get hurt this summer. (Grumps doesn’t answer when Aspen knocks on his door to ask if he wants to come along.)
Wood points to a jagged leaf.