You Are My Sunshine [Paige, Lewis]

[Lewis Guthrie]

Paige was in a dark mood as she got back to the house. Going to her room, she took time to take a good shower, changed into her most worn out and comfortable pair of pajama bottoms, and crawled into bed, exhausted. But not too exhausted to cry, it seemed.

Waking the next morning, she felt considerably better, though a bit sick to her stomach over the whole situation. She wondered where Warren had ended up… likely at Alison’s place. Her stomach flipped. That girl just did not deserve him. And Bobby… well with any luck she could avoid him for the day. Things would likely cool off if they just had some time apart.

Seeking the familiar, she changed into a pair of jeans and a tanktop, wandering out into the hallway barefoot. Sam didn’t seem to be anywhere nearby- likely out in the garages working on his car- so she took to looking for the littlest Guthrie, her brother Lewis.

The sounds of a harmonica were drifting from the den. The TV was on, but muted, and Lewis Guthrie was the only one in the room. He sat sideways on the couch, his back against the arm of the couch, his legs stretched out and bare feet poking out the bottom of his overalls. He was playing ‘You Are My Sunshine’, a song which his mama had sung to each of the kids from the time they were babies, and which she continued to sing to them in the evening from time to time, when they were sick or distressed and she’d hold them to her chest and run her hand over their head again and again. That was what Lewis was thinking of right then – his mama. He missed home, and though he liked it here, there just wasn’t a substitute for his mama’s rocking.

He was becoming pretty good at the harmonica, though he still had to pause often to remember or locate the right note, making the tun sound slightly choppy. But he didn’t seem to notice, concentrating on his fingers as he placed the harmonica for each note.

Paige’s voice wasn’t anything like mama’s- she’d taken after her daddy. Now, her daddy wasn’t Lewis’ daddy- Mama had remarried a few years after Paige’s daddy died in the mine accident. Didn’t really matter that much to Paige, or to any of the Guthries really- they were family. Sometimes Sam liked to say if there’d been orphaned kids on the road outside the house Mama would have adopted them too.

But Paige’s voice was sweet nonetheless, plain and dry and light. She walked up behind the couch and leaned over it with her arms crossed over her stomach. “The other night dear, as I lay sleeping,” she waited for him to adjust to the surprise, and sang as he played. “I dreamed I held you in my arms, but when I woke up, I was mistaken, so I hung, my head, and I cried…” she reached down and tickled his tummy lightly.

“Hey kiddo. Homesick?"

[Lewis Guthrie]

When Lewis heard Paige’s familiar voice singing the familiar song, he shot up, looking over the back of the couch at her. He settled back down when Paige leaned over the couch, smiling widely at her before continuing to play. When they finished the verse, he took the harmonica from his lips, and defended his tummy from her tickling hands, laughing and squirming.

He shrugged when she asked if he was homesick, sobering slightly. “A little,” he admitted. He then looked to his big sister again, a smile growing as soon as it had started to fade. He launched into another verse, one which was more straight-forward and therefore easier for him to understand. His singing made the song very bouncy and fun. “Kentuckyyyy, my Kentucky, the place wheeeere I was born! White fields of cotton, green fields of clover, the best fishing, and long tall coooorn!” Their mama had changed that verse – it was originally about Louisiana, and not quite so fun – but Lewis didn’t know that.

He ended the song in giggles, as he always did, as he wiped his harmonica off on his shirt. “I’ve been practicin’. I wanna get to be as good as Joshua some day.” Joshua, the second-oldest-boy of the family, had a knack for music.

Paige vaulted over the couch and landed with a bounce next to her brother. Then she pulled him into her arms and tickled him a bit, mostly just hugging him close. It was nice to snuggle with someone that didn’t ask much in return. She loved her siblings with an intensity that was almost a given in the Guthrie household.

So she tipped back on the couch with him, and blew raspberries into his neck, laughing as he squirmed. “Gotcha!”

Reaching for the remote, she turned the TV to cartoons. “So I went to a big movie premiere last night. Sam tell you I was gonna do that? It turned out pretty spooky… some guy accused Alison of attacking him right there on the stage. Everyone was afraid of her because she’d just told them she was a mutant. Do you remember when I figured out I was a mutant? How I lost that friend of mine, Steph, cause she was afraid I was going to hurt her or something?” Paige sighed. “People are just so ignorant.” He would only have been about five years old, but who knows how much he recalled from those days.

Lewis followed most of what she said, though he didn’t know who Alison was and hadn’t really ever watched the kind of tv (he’d rarely watched tv at all back on the farm) that would make him familiar with what a movie premiere was. He snuggled into Paige when the tickle fight was done – though he was doing more defending than offending – and looked at the TV. “It’s cause they didn’t all have mamas that taught them how to be nice to ev’rybody,” he said. “Its like how some people didn’t like the African American people back home.”

“That’s why I like it here. Ev’rybody likes mutants cause ev’rybody is a mutant."

[Lewis Guthrie]

Paige smiled. “Yeah. It’s pretty swell here. I know it’s not like home, but we have a lot of opportunities here.” She sighed again.

Things had become really messed up with her time at the mansion. She’d come here to be an X-Man, and gotten tangled up with boys. Wouldn’t they just laugh, back home.

Frowning a little, she watched cartoons quietly with him for a while, pulling his hair back from his forehead and sweeping her hand across his hair over and over.

“Seen Sam round?”

Lewis looked up from Pinky & The Brain on the screen to Paige. He hadn’t been thinking about it, but Paige’s repetitive, rhythmic touch on his head was a lot like his mothers. Paige was a lot like their mama in a lot of ways. She was a good person.

“Uh-uh,” he said, shaking his head. “Not since yesterday.” He continued to watch her, and spoke after a short pause. “Did people being mean at the premiere thang bother you? You don’t look real happy.”

Paige half smiled, it didn’t really reach her eyes. “Eh… it did, a little. Something just wasn’t right about it. And I was there with a guy, we’re not dating anymore, but I think he still wishes we were.” She sighed.

“And I think I have a thing for one of my friends. He was there with this other girl. That’s called jealousy.” She smirked. “But it’s stupid, he’s just a friend.” Paige shrugged, and lay her head back on the arm of the couch.

“Boys are stupid.”

“No, girls are stupid,” Lewis said positively. “All y’all worry too much. Guys don’t even know what they’re gonna have for their next meal, and they’re more worried ‘bout that half the time than what a girl’s thinkin’.” The words were an exact echo of the kind of thing Sam would say – in fact, it was probably something Lewis had heard Sam say at one point and filed away into his memory. He, of course, was not involved with any females, nor worried about them.

Normally, Lewis would have teased Paige about having a boyfriend – he’d always been keen to tattle on her when he heard her talking about meeting a boy. But he could tell that his sister was feeling down. “Us Guthrie’s are go-getters, remember? So go on, git.”

A pause. “But I’ma still tell mama if I see y’all kissin’ up on some boy,” he added in an ornery tone.

[Lewis Guthrie]

Paige laughed. “Oh yeah? S’that right?” She lifted up his tshirt and gave him a big raspberry on his stomach, making all sorts of impolite noises in the process.

“I love you Lewie,” she said, kissing the top of his head. “You’re a pretty alright kid.”

“So have you had classes yet? What’s your favourite?”

“Art,” Lewis said decidedly, his hands remaining over his stomach after she released him from the giggle-inducing raspberry. “We got ta stick our hands in paint and make all these pictures, and we used brushes and made watercolor pictures, and made stuff outta popsicle sticks and marshmallows.” Upon remembering the project, he squirmed a bit to turn and look at her. “I can show yah – I made the chicken coop, with a bunch ‘a chickens in it, too!”

“If you have some marshmallows, you can make the horses with me – hey, I got to see the horses here the other day! They ain’t as big as our workhorses, but they’re the pretty kind Mel always likes to look at in pictures. Have you ridden 'em? Can I ride 'em?"

Paige grinned. “I’d love to do an art project with you, but it has to be okay with your teacher. We can ask sometime, maybe I can drop by your class and help everyone out.”

She yawned, comfy on the couch and warm with his little body next to hers. “Haven’t ridden the horses yet. Should likely talk to them about it. Yeah they’re not the same as the ones we have, they’re purebreds. Beautiful huh. I bet they’d let me take you on them… though that’s not really fair to the kids who don’t have their brother and sister here with em.” She smiled.

Lewis nodded, satisfied with that she had said, both about the art project and the horses. “I have school today. Do you? Mine starts at nine. And hey – did you know they don’t get school off here for huntin’ season?”

Paige chuckled. “That’s right, they don’t. But you do get to go home for Christmas, and next the summer you’ll still be able to make the blackberry festival. But I don’t take classes, I just train with Bobby and Forge. Well, at least I did. Things are kinda… weird, right now, so we’ll have to see how that goes.”

“Lucky,” Lewis murmured. He lifted his arm and looked to his watch – it was an electronic one he had got out of a cereal box some time ago. “Class starts in…ten minutes. Oh, an’ I talked to mama yesterday an’ she said when you got the chance you should call her. You an’ Sammy…tell him if you see him…”

Paige got up, lifting Lewis with her and setting him on his feet, then straightening his hair and tshirt just the way Mama would have done. “Good boy for making sure you get to class. I’ll make sure to tell Mama that when I call.”

Lewis grinned a toothy grin at the way Paige fussed over him. He made a face, but wasn’t really protesting at all. “Okay. I’ll see yah around later, right?”

Taking his face in her hands quickly, she gave him a bunch of kisses all over his face. “Mwa! Mwa! Mwa! There!” Swatting him on the behind, she stood up. “Git goin!”
Waiting until he was halfway down the hall, she smiled to herself, then went to sit down on the couch again.