I probably already told y’all that Shady has a big, big imagination. He doesn’t need anybody really to play with, because he makes up all the characters and has conversations with them, and is very happy all day just carrying on all by himself. Anything can be a toy too; a can, a stick, an old bottle or even a dog pan. He can make up stuff to do with it almost better than any kid I ever met.

Now he likes to tell on me. – a lot. He does it so much that I can’t even breathe wrong, and there he is tattletaling to Mamaw or Uncle Muddy. I can’t break him of it neither so I am always having to come up with ways to pay him back for that nonsense. I know Mamaw says you supposed to “forgive and forget” but I just can’t help myself. An idea to get even with him just comes to me like an evil miracle, and I just have to get him back with it.

This one day, I was supposed to spend all morning raking leaves, while he picked up sticks. He picked up about ten sticks total and announced “I am done.” And you can’t tell him no different – in his mind he had done all the stick picking he was going to do. So I kept raking leaves but I didn’t do the side yard. I put the rake up and here comes Shady; “I picked up all the sticks Pete, and you didn’t rake the side yard. So I am telling Mamaw now.” Off he goes in the house to tell on me.

I hate that! He didn’t do all of his chores, and there I am knocking off early and he tells on ME?! I still have to feed all the animals too. No sir, I ain’t standing for that one lick. Two weeks later it was dark outside, and we were out on the back porch. He was playing with his race cars, and I was sitting there listening to crickets. It was then I started telling him about “The Pretend People.”

I told him, “Hey Shady, have you ever heard that little noise when you lay down in your bed, but ain’t nobody there?” Shady looked up and said, “You told me it was just the wind rustling the pipe up the side of the house?” I replied, “No sir, that ain’t what is causing it. That gutter pipe ONLY makes noise when somebody brushes against it. C’mon to the side yard under the night light, and I will show you how it sounds.”

So me and Shady went to the side yard where the broken gutter was, just outside his bedroom window a little, and I made it squeak a few times. It was rusty and old and it moves real easy. “Hear it squeak squeak squeak? I told you a lie, so you would not be scared, but I felt guilty lying to you, so now I am telling you the truth about it. It can only do that if a man moves it, and I am pretty sure we can’t see the man that does that.”

Shady started looking a little scared after we went back on the back porch, and I wound him up some more. “You hear the barn make noises in the tin roof too when your window is open, don’t you?” I kept going. “That is the little people that the Indians on the reservation talks about. Some calls them Sprites, or Fairys. I just call them the Pretend People, because you ain’t supposed to see them.”

I continued with, “They go in the roof of that old barn, because its warm, and they can get spiders, and even mice to eat. Sometimes they get naughty and build a nest in your hair, and that’s why your hair, and probably my hair too is all messed up in the morning. They like to eat people’s toes, but you have to be careful and they won’t.”

Man Shady’s eyes got big and he almost shouted, “Pete you told me the tin in that barn popped and all because of it was too hot in the day, and it got cold at night!” I replied quickly almost in a whisper, “Nah, I lied to you about that too. I didn’t want you waking up all night, just a listening to that roof pop. I didn’t want you scared.” My baby brother swallowed the whole thing, hook line and sinker. He immediately took his toys and went inside to put them in his bedroom.

I had put a small little gnome doll on his pillow to where he would find it, just under the covers; I got it one year for something or other as a present, and when he went into his bedroom he screamed loud enough for everybody to hear. He was hollering and crying; “The Pretend People Sprites are in my room to eat my hair!”

Well Mamaw came running to see what was wrong; “Boy what in the name of Jesus, Mary and the whole Trinity has got into you, to be wailing so blessed loud at this time of night?!” He pointed to the pillow, white as a sheet and said, “Mamaw its the Pretend People Sprites coming to get us! Look at my pillow!”

She answered sternly, “Boy that ain’t nothing but Pete’s little troll doll I got him for his birthday to go with his other figurines he likes to put on the shelf. Now quit hollering and behave yourself, before I send you to bed early after supper!” She chided him a few more times, and didn’t let him say a word back. You see, he does stuff like this all the time, without me even saying anything to him. I knew Mamaw would do this, that’s why I chose this way to get him back.

He likes to cry wolf, and that is his weak spot. Tonight I made that wolf into a Sprite. I will teach him to keep telling on me for nothing.