“Very restful,” said the squirrel.
“Isn’t it wonderful? We just keep going….Who would have believed it?”
A small four-leaf clover under a bench laughed. “Not me. I always figured when your time was up, that was it, and it’s sure a lot of fun going from one thing to another.”
The dove said, “I agree. Whoever or whatever set this life thing in motion certainly knew what they were doing.”
“That’s for sure,” said the squirrel. “But I just wonder where we will go after we have been every living thing on earth.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” said the four-leaf clover (who used to be a science teacher in Akron, Ohio). “That process will take trillions of years, and…there are over eight million species of fish alone, not to mention all the insects.”
“I was a flea once,” offered a small grub passing by.
The gray squirrel bit into a walnut, spit out a piece of shell, and said, “But, still, it is something to think about. Who knows? Someday we could all end up on another planet, in an entirely new universe, and start all over again.”
“Ah, sweet mystery of life,” sang the old crow. The moon smiled and went behind a cloud, and pretty soon they all settled down for the night, looking forward to another day.
Meanwhile, outside of Oxnard, California, Luther Griggs (now a small green weed that had popped up in a crack in the cement out on the 101 freeway) was so enjoying watching all the different makes of trucks and RVs passing by.
Mr. Evander J. Chapman (presently a snail in Woodsboro, Maryland) was still at it, and as snails are among the slowest-moving creatures in the world, he pretty much had a captive audience. As the group leisurely slid along, headed for another leaf, he continued, “Yes, sir. There we wuz, just me and ol’ Andrew Jackson. Ol’ Hickory hisself. Why, we musta been surrounded by ten thousand Seminole Injuns, and they’s all mad….So there we wuz, back to back…and we fit them off right smartly, tilt we run clean out of ammunition. Next thing I knowed, I sawed a hole in the woods and hollered, ‘Run!’ Well, sir, I runned one way, and he runned the other….The next time I seed him, he says, ‘Evander, you done saved my life, boy!’ So I says…”
Though snails are usually slow moving, a little-known fact is that, if provoked, they do have the ability to pick up their shells and gallop away. And after listening to Mr. Chapman for a while, some did.
And somewhere in South America, two beautiful yellow-and-black butterflies were fluttering together in the bright sunshine—one named Gustav and the other Lucille.
And even though she was now a crow, Elner still had her memories and a few secrets. And if crows could laugh (which they can’t), she would have. Nobody knew it, but she had been the one who had flown into the kitchen window and pecked out that message into Ralph’s phone. Eating Ralph’s pie had been an afterthought. It was downright thievery, she knew. But then, she never could resist Edna’s apple pie. That gal could bake!
A short time after the arrests had been made, Hanna Marie’s original will was reinstated, and all the properties, including the dairy, went back to Albert Olsen and all of Hanna Marie’s nieces and nephews. And the Missouri School for the Deaf received an anonymous donation of $5 million for their scholarship fund. All compliments of Little Miss Davenport and one old crow.
—
SADLY, MICHAEL VINCENT WAS not serving time for the murder of Hanna Marie, like he should have been. However, while he was in prison, a fellow inmate had suddenly, and without any provocation, stabbed him straight through the heart with a knitting needle. How that knitting needle made its way inside of an all-men’s penitentiary remains a mystery.
Maybe it’s like Verbena Wheeler always said, “It may take a while, but everybody gets what they deserve, eventually.”
Of course, both Hanna Marie’s grandmother, Birdie Swensen, and her great-aunt Katrina Nordstrom had been quite the knitters in their day.