I mopped my brow with the bottom of my T-shirt. “I am sweating like a pig.”

“Nope.” Cousin Ollie shook his head. “Pigs don’t sweat.”

“Then how come we say ‘sweating like a pig’?”

“WE don’t. YOU do. Real farm kids know better.”

I sighed. “My mom says my room looks like a pig pen. Why are pigs so dirty?”

“They’re not, doofus. Pigs are clean critters. They’re almost as clean as cats, if you want to let that cat out of the bag.”

“Why was the cat in the bag?”

“Who knows why cats do anything? Or why grownups say weird things like ‘sweating like a pig’?”

I glanced at the hog yard on Ollie’s farm. A big, ol’ pink sow lay stretched across a pool of mud. “That’s clean?”

“You’d flop in the mud, too, if you didn’t have sweat glands.” Ollie snorted. “Unlike you and your pig pen of a bedroom, Gertie doesn’t have much of a choice. Besides, mud is a beauty treatment.”

“Your mom didn’t act like we were beautiful when we ran into the house after our mudball fight.”

“Moms ain’t pigs. And she’s always saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And she’s not crazy about mud in her eyes.”

“And they say we talk funny.”

I flopped down under the hickory tree, seeking refuge from the August sun. And hoped that hickory nuts don’t drop until autumn.

“It’s that why they call it fall instead of autumn, because the hickory nuts fall?”

“How’d you get to be so ignorant, Burtie? Fall refers to the falling of the leaves. The only nut that fell under this tree is you.”

Ollie dropped down beside me. Now I counted two nuts. “If you’re so smart, how come we don’t give winter a nickname too, like, say, snow?”

“Because if you live in Florida, it doesn’t snow. Snow wouldn’t be a very good name for winter in Florida.”

“I don’t think palm leaves fall, either. Maybe they don’t have fall in Florida.”

“They’ve got other trees.”

I yawned. “Speaking of crazy phrases, whoever made up the phrase ‘sleeping like a baby’ sure didn’t have a baby brother crying half the night.”

Ollie shrugged. “Old people wake up a lot, too. And then they limp around moaning and groaning. And their knees make weird noises. Maybe Grandma and Grandpa mean it when they say they slept like babies.”

“Maybe.” I chewed on a piece of grass. “Grandma said she was head over heels in love with my baby brother. What’s that mean?”

“It means she flipped.”

“No, it doesn’t. Your head is supposed to be on top. Your heels are supposed to be on the bottom. You’re head over heels just standing still.”

Ollie picked up a pebble and tossed it.

“It’s probably one of those things they keep saying we’ll understand when we’re older.”

“And another thing, Grandpa says you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Well, you sure can’t eat your cake if you don’t have it.”

“That’s like when Grandma said the proof is in the pudding.” Ollie stuck out his tongue. “All I found in her last pudding was raisins. Yuck. If proof is what raisins are called, I don’t want anybody proving anything to me.”

I nodded. “Right. Raisins aren’t my cup of chocolate milk.”

“Isn’t the phrase ‘cup of tea’?”

“Tea’s not my cup of tea, er, chocolate milk, either.” I wiped sweat out of my eyes. “I’m ready to go jump in the lake. Dad’s always telling his brothers that. At least that makes sense — jumping in the lake, I mean.”

“Or joining Gertie in the mud bath.”

“Grownups sure talk funny.”

“I can’t make hide nor hair out of what they say.”

I stared at Ollie. “What’s that mean?”

“No clue. It’s all horsefeathers to me.”

“Clear as the mud Gertie’s lying in.”

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