Dragon Hatchling
                   Gone but not Forgotten

His teeth gritted and lips clamped together in a hard line,
Kris peered through the crack between parted curtains
covering the window of his new bedroom. He searched
the fenced pasture below and to the right of the long nar-
row drive curving up to the house from Palmetto Lane.
Two goats and a pot-bellied pig shared the enclosure.
To the left of the lane was another pasture. It was in
front of Grandpa’s house and lower on the mountain. The
pasture was empty at the moment, but Kris knew it be-
longed to Ms. Lopez. Grandma told him that Ms. Lopez worked at the zoo and sometimes brought animals home if they needed special care after an injury or surgery. Sometimes they roamed loose in the pasture for a while before she had to return them.
New curtains and a new bedspread featuring baseball players
and equipment replaced the old ones in the room once belonging
to his mother. They transformed the room from a girl’s room to aboy’s
room. The changes made Kris feel welcome and wanted, butnot safe.
Nothing could make him feel safe after seeing what his uncle had done
to Aunt Katherine shortly after he and Grandpa left Kentucky two weeks before.
The bedroom held nice memories of visits he and his mother made before the accident that shattered his secure world. Sometimes he thought he felt his mother’s presence, but shrugged it off as wishful thinking.
Kris searched the rock and cactus covered yard closer to the house. Everything was still and quiet as far as he could see in both directions, but something had awakened him earlier. He forced his clinched fists to relax, then moved his arms trying to relax tense muscles. A final glance around the yard revealed no sign of anyone or anything that shouldn’t be there. I guess it was Alice in the kitchen or Manuel in the shed. Manuel usually works in the garden and yard before it gets hot.
A soft sound in the hallway yanked Kris back to times in Kentucky when Uncle Stan had silently entered Kris’s bedroom thinking the boy was asleep. Kris had been scared as he watched his uncle through slitted eyelids. The man had only prowled around touching a book or baseball or glove. Sometimes he just stood at the foot of the bed staring at him.
Kris whirled facing the door to his room. His heart raced and he forgot to breathe as he stood frozen, waiting for the door to open. The door remained firmly shut. The knob did not turn.
Without making even a whisper of a sound, Kris slipped to the door and listened.  It can’t be Uncle Stan.  He’s back in Kentucky. Isn’t he? Frowning Kris put his ear to the door and heard the footstep continue down the carpeted hall. Grandma said Uncle Stan should be in jail, but someone paid his bond, and he’s out. Kris turned the doorknob slowly. Aunt Katherine and I are safe here in San Diego. Grandma said so. Uncle Stan is back in Kentucky. He can’t hurt us anymore.” He opened the door a crack and saw Grandpa’s broad back turning into the kitchen.  Kris closed his eyes and released his held breath.
The smell of scrambled eggs, sausage, and onions wafted up the hall and through the door teasing Kris’s empty stomach. For a moment Kris’s hands shook, and his legs felt weak. He closed the door and sat on the bed. “Aunt Katherine and I are safe here in San Diego.” If I say it enough maybe it will be true.
Kris drew a deep breath before pulling on a pair of cut-off jeans and a T-shirt. He squared his shoulders, and hurried to the kitchen breakfast nook. Alice was just setting a plate of hot flour tortillas before Grandpa and Grandma.  Steam rose from a heaping bowl of scrambled eggs mixed with sausage, onions, and green peppers setting in the middle of the table.
Grandpa spied Kris coming through the doorway and boomed his welcome. “Kris!”
“Shhhhhhh!” Grandma hissed and waved her hands to hush her husband.  “Katherine’s still asleep. She was up and down all night. Her arm was hurting, I expect.”
“Sorry,” Grandpa ducked his head in apology. “Come, sit down to the finest breakfast in California,” he continued in a more subdued voice.  He motioned to a chair on his right, placed a flour tortilla on Kris’s plate, and a second on his own. “Now for the filling,” he grinned and dumped a huge spoonful of the egg, green pepper, and sausage mixture on the round tortilla in front of Kris. He placed an equally large serving on his tortilla then sprinkled a little grated cheese over the eggs.
“We fold one side up like this, to keep everything from falling out the bottom.  Then fold the sides over, one on top of the other, like this,” Grandpa demonstrated, forming a sack around the scrambled eggs. “Now we eat.” Grandpa used both hands to pick up his stuffed tortilla and bit into it. His eyes closed as he chewed. “Mmmmm, no one cooks like Alice.”
Everyone heard the toilet flush and water running in the shower announcing that Katherine was up.  “I will go help Ms. Katherine with her bath and to get dressed,” Alice said before sliding the skillet she held into the sink of soapy water.
Kris saw Grandma frown as she watched the stout housekeeper bustle down the hall toward Katherine’s bedroom.  “Will Aunt Katherine be all right? Her face is still yellow and blotchy, and her eye looks really awful.” Kris sat on the edge of the chair, his fist curled into tight balls.
He remembered how his aunt held her swollen stomach the night before.  “I think her stomach hurts too.  Will the baby be all right?” he demanded and looked from Grandma to Grandpa.  “Uncle Stan didn’t hurt the baby did he?  You said the baby was alright, didn’t you?”  Kris’s voice broke revealing his fear for his aunt and her unborn baby.  “Why would Uncle Stan hit Aunt Katherine?” Kris’s eyebrows drew together forming furrows above his nose.
The muscles in Grandma’s jaws flexed as she gritted her teeth.  “He’s a coward – a coward with a mean streak running through his sick brain.” Grandma glared at something over Kris’s shoulder but far, far away. “If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay away from here.”
Kris watched Grandma’s eyes close to narrow, twitching slits. Her normal laughing mouth was drawn into a tight, hard line as she slowly nodded her head up and down. Grandma’s dragon mode is surfacing. Kris almost felt sorry for his uncle.  Almost, but not quite.
Grandpa’s right. Kris studied the woman sitting in the wheelchair. Grandma can be a dragon sometimes.  A fierce protective dragon just like the one in the fairy tale Grandpa used to read to Mother and her sisters when they were little. Kris bit into his tortilla. ‘Little Dragon’ is a perfect name for her. He smiled at his mental picture of Grandma transformed into a fire-breathing dragon.  My grandma is a dragon, he decided. Sometimes, anyway.
Grandpa finished his egg tortilla and reached for his coffee. “He knows better than to show his face around here,” Grandpa rumbled. Kris heard the steel in the old man’s voice and wasn’t fooled by his grandfather’s next words, spoken lightly, lovingly, as he winked at his wife.  “The Little Dragon will get him,” he grinned.
“Burn him to a cinder with dragon fire,” Kris chimed in. But he knew, deep in his heart, they had not heard the last of Uncle Stan.

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