CONCENTRATE

Banana Pancakes, Jack Johnson 

en V.F. chez GAllmeister : ICI

At the grocery I told the guy in the white apron that I wanted oranges, boxes of them. He rounded up a couple of baggers and we filled the back of my little wagon. Cheap as they were, I was still about cleaned out at the cash register.

The man in the apron wanted to know what I was planning to do with all those oranges. "You can't freeze them," he told me. 

"I know," I said.

"Making marmalade?" he wanted to know.

"No," I said, "that's been done before."

"Well what are you going to do then?"

I smiled at him, sweet, and said, "None of your beeswax." Tommy giggled.

Riding home, the three of us cramped in the front seat, the whole car filled with the smell of those oranges. It smelled like a vacation, like Florida or something, and the kids were excited and laughing all the way.

I rumpled up Tommy's hair. "Running away!" I said. "Where'd you ever get an idea like that?" But he was embarrassed about that now and wouldn't say a word. He just pretended he didn't know what I was talking about. I never once thought of running away. But now the idea was there - foreign, but bright kind of, and shiny, like that of the smell of all those oranges, and I knew it wouldn't get away.

reading Dry Rain, Pete Fromm (Chinook, trad. Marc Amfreville, Éd. Gallmeister) - more later