I rise to my feet and walk towards my bungalow. A flock of chickens scampers ahead of me. Pamela, Dellas and Rhodesia wave sticks at them in a comical attempt to shepherd the errant fowl.
“You missed one,” I grin and point to a chicken making a run for freedom.
Pamela, looking tan and bemused, laughs. “I liked them so much better when they came skinned, deboned, and wrapped in plastic.”
I laugh in agreement. Gwen waits for me at the backdoor of our bungalow, and in her arms, our son: Phillip Jr. He has my eyes and my hair, and as he watches my approach, he smiles.
I hold my arms out to take him.
“You want to go to Daddy?” Gwen asks him excitedly, to which he squeals with delight. She gives me a quick kiss and gently places him in my arms. “Don’t shake him, Phillip. I just breast fed him and I don’t want him to spit up.”
I look him square in the eye. “You don’t want me to shake you?” I playfully bark, giving him a teasing jiggle. “Huh, no shaking de baby! Okay, no problem. Come with me,” I tell him, not that he has any choice. “There’s something I want to show you.”
I hold him under a palm tree and point at the sea. “Look at that. Do you see all of them? Aren’t they pretty?”
In front of us, cascading like a shower of white confetti, a stream of butterflies flutter by.
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Richard DuBois
First Edition, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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