Jesse James and the Dragon's Egg

An Unexpected Woman

"Maybe it's an alligator or something," Jesse said.

"Dude, an alligator couldn't swallow that thing, let alone squeeze one out of its butt." Brad replied around a mouthful of waffle.

"Could you be any grosser?" Kate asked.

It was early Saturday morning, and the kids had barely slept. The previous night, they had pulled the egg from the barn, braved the storm, biked it home and squirreled it away in a box of old rags in Jesse's garage. Lamar, John, Brad and Kate all returned home to grab a few hours sleep. They then, upon waking, had all returned here, to Jesse's house, showing up just after sunrise.

Jesse had barely slept. Instead, he sat in the garage with the egg, listening to the trilling and hoping the thing didn't hop out of the box. It didn't. On the trip back from the barn, the egg trembled a few times, but the farther away from the barn they traveled, the calmer the egg seemed to get.

Usually, when the boys were over, Sarah would make them a big breakfast. Jesse had grown up with these boys and she had come to think of them as her own. But this morning's visit had caught her by surprise, so instead she offered them their choice of instant hot chocolate, coffee, frozen waffles, warm toaster pastries and apple-juice-from-concentrate, all of which they accepted and devoured. Jesse's mother promised the boys and Kate, whom she had taken a liking to, a good, home-cooked meal the next time they returned. As soon as she left for work, conversation turned to the egg.

"I'm telling you, its gotta be like an emu egg or something." Brad was barely intelligible through a mouthful of waffle. An amber smudge of syrup rested at the corners of his mouth.

"The emu that laid that would have to be, like, the size of a small car." Lamar was sipping from a steaming cup of coffee. "I think it's probably some kind of sculpture or something."

"Jesse, what are you going to tell Jake?" Kate, just finishing her own last bite of waffle, asked.

"That's simple. I'm not."

Jake was a good kid. Right now he is at a friend's house, as he often is when their mother has to work weekends. But he is a good kid and all of them would have admitted to this in a second. The problem was the boy couldn't keep a secret to save his life.

~

Early last year, just before the end of spring break, Jesse and John decided they were going to build a balloon chair. Jesse saved the money that his aunt had given him for Christmas and the idea was he was going to use that money to buy as many balloons as he could. He and John would fill them with helium, tie them to an old lawn chair his mother kept in the garage, and Jesse would sail across the world. They had planned it out to the letter.

Jesse bought all the balloons he could find, waited for his mother to leave for work, and had a local party supplier deliver not one, but two full size helium canisters and he and John started filling balloons. They had probably half the work done when Jake was dropped off by the sitter. He was very interested in what Jesse and John were doing and was really anxious to help.

Roughly three-quarters of the work was done when Jake had a sudden change of heart.

The three of them had filled probably 700 balloons, and they were having difficulty finding enough weight to keep the chair from floating off. Jesse asked Jake to go grab his father's old tool box. Jake had said "sure" and turned to walk to the garage.

He stopped.

The little boy stood there in the Jones' backyard a moment. He looked at the house and listened to the hollow sounds of the balloons rubbing together in the wind.