“Erskine!” she called.  “Where’s that boy?  If he ain’t a magician I don't know what he is cause he sure can disappear!”

“You know where he is,” the man smoking in the living room said. 

“I don’t know where he is, that’s why I’m calling him.  Now, where is he?”  she retorted.

“Stuck away in some corner.  Or outside under some tree. Know what’s in his hands?”  the man asked.

“Hmph,” the woman grunted.  “If you mean a book, I wouldn’t be surprised.  I do have eyes around here you know.”

The woman continued looking from room to room.

“I Suwannee, if he ain’t the laziest…”

She went out the door leading to the side yard.

“Might be lazy physically.  Ain’t lazy ment’ly,” the man mumbled to himself.

“Erskine!”

“Over here, Ma,” the boy answered reluctantly.

“There you are!  I told your daddy you’d be under some tree a-holding a book in your hands.  What about these porches?  They got to be swept clean and the yard—front and back—raked.  When was you planning to start’s what I wanna know.”

“Oh,  just a few more minutes, Ma, and I’ll be finished.  It’s a good story—but almost thirty pages long!”

“Hmph.  You and your stories, boy.  How you ever gonna have a house and wife?  Feed and clothe your kids?”

“I will, Ma, I will,” he answered.  “Give me five minutes more and I’ll start sweeping like lightning’s struck me.  I promise.”

“Well, you got four minutes, and if you ain’t sweeping by then, it'll be this broom you’ll be struck by and more than once!”

Having said that, his mother turned and went back inside the house where his father, pipe in hand, sat meditatively in his easy chair. The aroma of cherry tobacco wafted from room to room. 

End of “Erskine”