The Cheshire Mama, part two

There was one day when I was at school that my mother took my toddler brother for a walk down the sandy dirt road away from our house.  The sky's exorbitant blue and drifting puffs of cloud gave no compas indications, and the fields of sandy peanut rows and acres of coastal pasture stretched on in every direction.  Tiny black helicopters began to sink from the sun and float just outside of my mother's grasp.  A static noise came from them, trying to communicate garbled signals from elsewhere.  Bits of speech, exclamations, pleading voices appealing for help, stern reprimands, and whispered intimations of dire circumstances spoke to her, whirled around her, here, there, that side, this.  A disorienting jumble of plans gone wrong, betrayed friendships, self-serving power figures, and valiant pawns within the game treatised her, called to her, begged for her help, chided her, slapped, and ultimately led her astray.  She was miles away from home.  The sun was now high, bearing down, no longer an ambivalent force behind sheep-like puffs of white.  Gnats buzzed, and bullnettle whipped her ankles.  There were no cows.  There were supposed to be herds of cows grazing peacefully on either side of the road, but no other living being was within sight.  Quiet descended, without even the whir and whip of the helicopter blades, and the full horror set in that she was not only lost in native lands, not only absent of familiar sights, not just disoriented by hallucinations, but she had lost her child.  She ran in the direction she thought was towards home.  She ran a tangent of it when it did not seem right.   She ran without plan or reason on any compelling path.  She was fly fishing, casting herself, floating briefly, pullling in and casting in another direction, trying to find a bite, to land something that would reel in, that would be real. 
*pop*poppop*pop*pop*
Her gait slowed and eyes turned toward a lane in the woods.  Bullets?  Firecrackers?  Something fired repeatedly, quietly, steadily.  Her mind wanted to drift to holocaustal horrors.  The tiny black helicopters whirred nearby in her mind.  An enormous yellow school bus, Bus #12 driven by Vietnam veteran Ray McLearen, emerged from the line of trees at the riverbed, bringing me home from school just as her three year old stepped out of the wooded trail with his popcorn-popper push toy.
She dropped to her knees, then sat in the sand.  With her in the open, her children made their way towards her, each thinking they had been adrift in the world and grateful to find their touchstone waiting for them.