“You bought a what?”

“A rat, Dad. His name is Rocky and he’s white and I’m going to feed him cheese and I’m going to hold him and he’s totally awesome!”

“Well, that’s, um, well. A rat? Really? Hey, put your mother on.”

“He’s very sweet, honey” his mother explains. “And just wait till you see his testicles. They’re so big they drag the ground.”

“A well-endowed rat,” I say and exhale deeply, loudly, deliberately. “That’s just we need.”

“See, that’s my thinking, too. I’m glad you understand.”

“Wait. Hang on. That’s not really what I meant.”

And that’s how it happened, how Rocky—full name: Rockford Ignacio Lesley, but only when he’s in trouble—became the family rodent:

I’d include a picture of his testicles, but this is a family site, and all the shit here is G rated.

“What’s It wearing?” Sally asks Tuesday evening as Slade wanders around the living room with a dog food bowl on his head.

“It’s my hat, Mommy,” Slade answers.

And then Wednesday evening: “Did you hear that?” Sally asks after we put the boys to bed.

“That what?”

“That Thud.” Sally looks slowly left and slowly right like she’s about to share a secret and adds, “It’s still awake. . . And I’m pretty sure It’s up to something.”

***

Early today, at 3:00 or 4:00 this morning, It slides out of its bunk bed, waddles down the hall, and climbs in bed with Sally and me.

“Ouch, Slade,” Sally grumbles. “Be still.”

And later, “No talking, Slade. It’s night night time.”

Later still, It sticks a finger in my ear. I grunt, lift my head off the pillow, and peek at the clock. 5:05. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

“Hi, Daddy!” It whispers.

I grunt again, which makes It giggle, and It hugs or maybe tackles me.

For an instant, I go back to three years ago, almost to the minute. I go back to Sally waking up in drenched sheets, to Sally telling me to call the doctor, to pink blood on the carpet, the bed, the tile, the wall, and all over the toilet. I go back to driving to the hospital, almost certain the baby is dead.

Then I fall back asleep.

“Slade, do you know what today is?” Sally says from inside the bathroom.

I glance at the alarm clock. It’s 5:55 now. Swell.

“Today’s my birthday!” It exclaims in the bathroom.

I slip back in time again, to three years ago, to the waiting room, to the nurse who says placental abruption and C-section and significant blood loss and NICU. I slip back to Eli telling me we should name his brother Pick Pack while we sit, we wait, we hope. I slip back to Sally shaking in the hospital and a 3-pound baby wired to strange machines.

I get out of bed, three years almost to the second that Sally was cut open and our unnamed son was pulled into this life. I make my way into the bathroom.

“It’s my birthday!” It proclaims when It sees me, grinning, raising his arms like It’s won something.

And, you know, maybe It has.

***

Slade. It. Slader Tot. Your Son. Slader Tater. House Tornado. Feral Toddler. We have lots of names for our child, but whatever we call him, we’re grateful to the bone that he pulled through three years ago today, even if he sometimes sleeps too little and ends up in time out almost daily and has a thing for silly hats.

Happy Birthday, Slade/It/whatever. We sure are glad you’re around.

Picture a dinosaur toddler and a zombie 7-year-old eating candy and eating more candy and staying up past their bed time.

Picture a wiped out mom and dad, stretched out on a couch and recliner after the dinosaur and zombie bathe and brush teeth and put on PJs and fight sleep. Picture open windows in a still house, the thick night seeping in.

Picture the wiped out parents turning off night lights and pulling up covers and feeling something gentle and shared and fleeting in the zombie and dinosaur’s bedroom.

Picture crickets and white stars somewhere outside. Picture deep sleep.

Wait. What? Don’t look at me like that. I don’t have a drinking problem, okay? I mean, sure, I start my day with three Coors Lights and a pint of Dickel and sometimes a bloody mary, but who doesn’t?

Damn it. Stop it. I can see you sitting there with your mouth open, slowly shaking your head, your right eyebrow raised in disapproval. I can quit anytime. I mean it. Anytime.

And besides, the write up isn’t just about liquor. It’s also about flyswatters, and I know you adore flyswatters.

You can find my review over at Lake Travis Moms, a blog run by Kim, a neighbor and pal who vacationed with us in New Orleans this summer and still seems to tolerate us.

Lake Travis Moms, incidentally, is loaded with useful stuff for Lakeway-area parents. Want to discover where kids eat free, for instance? Or when Elmo is making an appearance at the Hill Country Galleria? Or where you can get a jack-o’-lantern pizza for cheap? Lake Travis Moms will set you up. That blog will get you what you need.

Like booze. That’s what I need. Wonderous, amazing. . . Damn it. You’re looking at me funny again. I told you. No problem here. I mean, it’s not like I drink two bottles of bourbon for lunch. Sure, maybe I drink one, but that’s just because it’s good for my circulation. Everybody knows that.

Also, appearances to the contrary, I am not high on paint fumes in the picture they included. Honest.

“We should probably take a shot now,” Cord says after a few minutes.

“We probably should,” I say while Eli and Slade race around the deck and propane tanks explode across the lake and black clouds rise like mean skyscrapers.

We eat fish tacos and take a tequila shot there on Cord and Jamie’s deck, the smoke sometimes black, sometimes white, the children oblivious to the trees and cars and houses burning so close by.

“What would you grab if you had to evacuate?” Cord or maybe Jamie asks. Kids and pets, I say. A laptop, possibly. Important documents, if there was time.

But everything else, the furniture, Eli’s and Slade’s drawings, the flat screen TVs, the china we’ve never used, would be left to burn. Some of that stuff matters; most of it doesn’t.

***

The next afternoon, which is Labor Day, the phone rings.

“Your dogs are down at the lake,” a neighbor tells Sally.

“At the lake?” Sally says. “That’s just wonderful. We’ll be right there.”

From the waterfront park, smoke still snakes above the trees from the neighborhood just across the narrow lake. 24 houses have been destroyed, we’ve heard on the news. 30 more damaged. 4000 people evacuated. We swim at our waterfront park and laugh about our dogs escaping and watch Eli and Slade bound off the boat dock into green water.

“Helicopter, Mommy! Daddy! Helicopter!” Slade exclaims each time a helicopter buzzes us with a giant sack of water sloshing underneath it like a saggy boob.

By that afternoon, a wildfire is igniting houses 15 miles to the north of us, and another, this one to the west, has grown to over 6000 acres, and another, east of town, has roared to over 25,000 acres. In our front yard, the air is the color of copper, and flakes of white ash drizzle on the grass. From which fire, we can’t tell.

As hazy dusk settles, someone pounds on the front door just after we put the boys to bed. Sally and I look at each other.

“Fire at Running Deer and Jack’s Pass,” a woman we’ve never seen yells and runs up the driveway. Running Deer and Jack’s Pass. That’s a block away.

Horns honk outside and Sally gets the boys up and I push Snurp in the cat carrier and we grab the laptop and leash the dogs and locate birth certificates and find car keys.

“Fire at Running Deer and Jack’s Pass,” I hear again somewhere as I open the front door and step into purple twilight.

At Jack’s Pass and Running Deer, the spot of the fire, I see a jeep, a car, and a motorcycle stopped in the road, but nothing burning. A dozen or so people stand on the edge of the street, looking down a steep hill. Cord is among them. He’s holding a shovel.

“Where’s the fire?” I ask.

“We just put it out,” Cord says.

“How’d it start?”

“Some dude threw a bottle rocket out of his truck and then drove off.”

“You’re kidding me,” I say. “Some prick shot off fireworks? That’s not dumb; it’s deliberate.”

***

All this week, lying in bed, washing dishes, parking my car, I’ve been thinking this: What if the wind hadn’t died down just a few minutes before? What if nobody had been there to see the smoke in time at Jack’s Pass and Running Deer? What if that asshole in the truck had started a fire that swallowed Slade or Eli or Sally?

It didn’t happen, I tell myself. We’re all fine, I remind myself.

And I feel better then. But not much.

***

When I was in middle school, my father told me the story of Beowulf as we drove home from Des Moines on a black February night. My old man, an English professor, explained the notion of fate in that poem and how, in many ways, the story was existential. Existentialism didn’t mean much to the 13-year-old me.

But this did: “In Beowulf, it’s not if the monster comes but when,” my dad said that evening. “The monster always comes. King Hrothgar. The other characters in the epic. They all accept that in the middle of the night, the monster comes.”

And I think that’s what I’ve really been thinking about this week. The monster in the truck shooting the bottle rocket. The monster smoking in the woods. Smirking. Biding. Coming for you. Coming for them. Coming for me.

That’s right. Ice cream and Butterfingers. For breakfast. Christ almighty.

Whichever. Whatever.

I have been writing, though. I can’t help myself. Stories are a flooded river inside my head, and they pour out, in invitations to fictitious birthday parties that only I find funny, in stupid lists, in secret tales I type in the strong current of the night.

Here’s a sample of some of what’s seeped out. As with everything else here, some of this is very personal and most of it is very silly.

***

Some several days ago, I inquired of Sally, my wife, my delicate flower, my forever mate, which she might prefer for her birthday.

“An evening at the ballet?” I suggested. “Or, if you feel particularly adventurous, perhaps we might attend the opera? They’re performing Le nozze di Figaro in German at the Performing Arts Center. Yes! In German! Can you even imagine!”

Sally stared at me, slowly chewing a piece of gum. She sighed.

“Listen,” my beautiful daisy replied. “I want to get shit faced on my birthday. You understand me? I want to get polluted, loaded, plowed, pickled, fucked all the way up. Can you get that through that stone skull of yours?”

She exhaled noisily.

I replied, yes, that I quite well understood her intentions and that I could indeed arrange such festivities, adding that I was acquainted with just the respectable, responsible, upstanding citizens who would very much enjoy conversing with her and raising a glass of well-aged pinot in her honor.

“Whatever,” the love of my life said, scratching her arm pit and sniffing her hand. “I sure as shit don’t mind getting blitzed alone, but I guess it’s okay to have someone there to hold my hair if I puke.”

(Someone to hold her hair! My sweet thinks of the minutest of details!)

Thus, in honor of Sally’s forthcoming birthday, I would like to formally invite you—kindly neighbors, well-regarded friends, custodians of the greater good—to bless us with your presence at the waterfront park commencing at 5:00 this very Saturday. At my darling Sally’s insistence, we will provide an ample portion of an alcoholic beverage she’s dubbed “jungle juice.”

“Pray tell, what is jungle juice?” I inquired when she mentioned the libation. “Is that the vernacular for a martini?”

“Sure. Fine,” said my lovely lady. “Call it a martini. Call it a dingus. Call it whatever faggot name you want.”

(That gentle girl of mine! Inventing such colorful language! Such a card!)

We do so hope that you will be available on Saturday.

***

Slade’s new thing? Licking the floor. Sure. I know. The floor. The good news is that he only does this at day care and he only licks the bathroom floor.

Wait. That isn’t exactly good news, is it?

***

I wonder if I’ll catch that night flicker in your face again. I suspect I will. Some booze-blurry evening you’ll turn just so or giggle until you glow or sink a little, and I’ll glimpse it, electric as a full moon, that night, that kitchen, that pretty girl crying inaudibly on her birthday.

***

Slade’s favorite things:

• The golf cart. “Golf cart, daddy! Golf cart!” he exclaims over and over and over, which was sweet at first but isn’t now.
• Taco Bell.
• His three blankets. He lugs them up and down the stairs and into the kitchen and bathrooms and garage and sometimes out into the front yard.
• Doodle bugs.
• School buses.
• Rocks.
• Balloons.
• Grammy and Papoo.
• Bubbles.

***

I’m trying to get Eli down for the night when he tells me he’s seen a monster.

“Really, Dad. It was standing there.” He points out the bedroom window.

“I see. What’d it look like?”

“Like a monster.”

“You mean purple and breathing fire and tall as a tree?”

“Daaad.”

“What? Oh. That’s right. Monsters aren’t purple. They’re black and they smell like shellfish and they look like enormous poop lumps.”

“Daaaad, monsters don’t look like poop.”

“They don’t?”

“No,” Eli sighs. “Monsters look like monsters.”

Monsters look like monsters. I get that, I think, and I suppose he’s right. Monsters do look like monsters, even if most of the time they appear like you and me.

Which brings me to this:

And, yes, I know. Sally and I don’t play golf and don’t intend to start.

We tell ourselves we bought the golf cart to tote the boys to the neighborhood pool, the lake, the trail, and the children’s park, all of which are less than a mile away but down and up a steep hill. We tell ourselves that we picked up the cart because it’s fun to putter around our neighborhood, Apache Shores, a floaty bungied to the cart roof, the cooler loaded with sandwiches, Lone Star, and juice boxes, the warm air soothing away the day.

And that’s all some of it, no doubt.

But most of it is that we like accumulating stuff more than we care to admit.

***

So Easter.

Both the boys woke up before sunrise to dig through their baskets and fill up on Peeps, jelly beans, and chocolate. Then they raced around the yard looking for eggs. It was wacky fun.

After breakfast, we joined the second annual Apache Shores Easter egg hunt. As with most things Apache Shores, the event, which featured mimosas, screw drivers, and a sad potluck, was as much a party for the adults as it was a gathering for the kids. The Easter Bunny made an appearance, too, riding into the park on a folding bike with tiny wheels.

That afternoon we ate ham sandwiches and yellow Oreos and stared at the lake with good people, including this dangerous family. And by 9:00 PM we were all dead out.

“Yes, Dr. Dan, I still have two boys,” I’ll tell him.

“Oh, that’s right, Lesley,” he’ll say, his hair gelled and immaculate, his teeth straight and very white. “I keep forgetting.”

Wednesday, I ended up in Dr. Dan’s office with an IV dripping narcotics into my veins. I was there for a dental implant to replace a tooth that had become infected at the bone and had to be extracted.

“How are you today, Lesley?” Dr. Dan asked, the IV already starting to make the room shine and hum.

“Fine,” I said and then blacked out.

When I came to, I was being rolled through a parking lot in a wheelchair and the sun was very bright.

Where? Wait? What? Ooooh, the sun. Will you look at the sun! Have you ever seen anything so pretty and powerful and magical? Oh, hey, I see cars! They’re like everywhere, dudes! Awesome! Cars are totally awesome!

The world had become fuzzy and was spasming on and off like a shorted electrical device, but I felt especially good in this hazy, sunny, new world.

As the day floated and flickered by, my head sharpened, and my gums no longer bled, and my mouth began to ache, and I stopped drooling over automobiles. The power outages in my short-term memory continued, though.

I remember, for instance, telling Sally that I was going to mow the lawn, and her telling me that I really shouldn’t, and me telling her that she shouldn’t worry so much, that I was perfectly capable of doing a little yard work.

When I awoke the next day, I didn’t think I’d mowed the lawn till I walked Eli to the bus stop and noticed that the yard had been cut and edged.

“Did I do that?” I later asked Sally.

“You really don’t remember?”

“Well, I recall unrolling the extension cord for the weed eater and blasting a dead caterpillar off the patio with the leaf blower, so I’m guessing I might have.”

Sally looked at me with her mouth open and sighed and patted me on the head. I’m pretty sure this means that, yes, I mowed the lawn stoned all the way out of my noodle.

After the surgery, I was on five different medications. That’s right. Five.

And I felt stellar.

At least, I think I did.

Four pills were to help me recover from the implant, and the other was for heartburn. The heartburn medication, I know, I was supposed to take on an empty stomach. One of the others I was to take after I ate. And there was one, the anti-inflamatory perhaps?, that I wasn’t to mix with something. Ibuprofen maybe? Caffeine perhaps? Pink peeps? LSD? I’m not sure.

I also have a foggy recollection of somebody warning me that if my stool turned green and became thick like peanut butter, that I was to contact the doctor. I wonder if I made that one up in my head. I mean, green peanut butter turds just doesn’t sound like a deadly side effect.

And, yes, I’ve inspected, and so far, five days later, no green dookie.

So I really can’t complain.

***

Saturday, Eli pedaled his two wheeler in his first mountain bike race. He got tangled up in a crash right out of the gate and came around the first corner in last place. Trying to pass a kid at the next corner, he bounced off the trail, which pushed him farther back.

“Keep your head up,” I remember thinking. “Don’t get frustrated. Don’t give up.”

And he didn’t. After going off the trail, Eli passed one boy after another and crossed the finish line somewhere in the middle of the pack. With another lap, I bet he would have contended for the win.

I asked him how it was when it was over.

“Cool,” he said. “Can I ride some more?”

I’m guessing that means he had a good time. I’m guessing that also means we’ll have to find another race for six-year-old to do.