A Watched Kettle

None of the local children knew how the remains of a tank ended up here. It was half-driven into the ground with a distinct tilt and a bent main gun. They called it The Kettle, and it smelled like rotten rubber and earthy rainwater. A smattering of craters led up to where the tank was now.

A little girl named Asta sat inside the Kettle with Cunobeline, a flying squirrel that could talk. Asta wore a rumpled purple tartan dress marred by ashes as well as some rips and frays. Uniform shoes, one green and one brown, had their buckles crimped at different lengths. Like she’d had to clamber into them in the dark. Her hair was a kicked rose bush: chopped by her own hand.

“We shouldn’t be here,” the flying squirrel chided.

“Keep watch, Cunobeline,” she said with too much command for a child.

She hadn’t used the whole of his name in years. It touched something inside and he moved on, swinging his fluffy tail over the back of her neck. “We shouldn’t stay here. I could scout…”

They were surrounded by tea cups and framed photos.

There was nowhere to run.

“Y’know, it’s rude to just not answer people talking to you.”

“Are you people, Obie?”

“That’s just mean,” Obie said.

Asta stared at her hands in her lap for several ticks of an imaginary clock. “I’m sorry,” she said, without looking up. “None of this is your fault.”

“It’s okay,” Obie said. Then he glided into the side of her dishevelled head. “Splat!” he declared.

Asta couldn’t giggle. She didn’t have it in her. But her spirits rose and she didn’t need to show it. Obie knew. Her right hand held him to her head in the best hug a girl could give a flying squirrel. Her left made adjustments to her setup.

Chipped and cracked teaware shouldered picture frames like people in a subway. One saucer was left like a broken cookie in the bottom of her bookbag in the corner. The teapot lacked a lid and cracks leaked from its lip like rainwater. Nothing was level.

BOOM

Her mother’s frame was already down. Saucers rattled, the tea pot was silent, and her father’s photo fell. She righted it.

The picture of her brother stayed up because it was wedged between a corner and a teacup. That it couldn’t stand on its own was somehow appropriate.

Asta believed with all her heart that tea had rippled in the cups.

Obie leapt into the loading barrel and ran the length of The Kettle’s “handle” to see what he could. When he returned, he went to the photo of her brother. “I’m sorry,” he said. Asta watched him put the frame down. She drank imaginary tea from her brother’s cup.

“We should go,” Obie said. He trembled. “It’s so quiet I can hear this thing rusting.”

“I can’t fly,” Asta said. She sat with her arms on the rests and her feet awkwardly dangling.

“I can’t either, you know,” Obie said. His squeaky voice was as brave as he could make it. “I just fall sideways.”

“Me, too,” Asta said as The Kettle rattled. There was nothing to steam. They were both thirsty.

The flying squirrel swallowed hard. “The dust won’t last. It’ll rain again.”

There was a third boom. Wordlessly, Asta stood on the chair and climbed it to peek out from the hatch. She could see where it had landed this time. She climbed back down.

She lowered her father’s frame and drank his imaginary tea.

Obie skittered over to the picture of Uncle Silas, standing guard as though he could stop the fall of the man by propping up the image. “We’ll have their tea, too,” he said. “But let’s go. They can’t burn every tree.”

Asta put the empty tea cups inside each other, setting them in a hole. She didn’t know what that hole had been built for. For that matter, she didn’t know what any of this had been built for. She held a cup she pretended was full.

Obie watched. Danger was an organ to him. He knew where the next boom would land. He glided to Asta’s shoulder.

“Is that a calendula tea?”