"There is water at the bottom of the ocean! Water flowing underground!" - Unknown
There lived a family in Nowhereinparticular, New Connecticut named the Pokeys that were a humble group of farmers: the father, an old and surly but well-meaning man named Okie Arnold Pokey, was a man of few words with a scruffy beard.
He was known for the large straw hat he'd wear over his head even during the cold, and his abnormally muscular build despite being well over 75.
The next member in the family was the wife Dee-Dee "Doki" Pokie, a middle-aged woman with short, soft curls of hair who managed the cooking and the cleaning and whatnot of the farm. She was often a voice of reason for the hot-headed Okie, who'd sometimes get into it with the newcomers visiting Nowhereinparticular.
She was also the one their little son, and the last human member of the Pokey family, Hokey was closer to.
Speaking of Hokey, who was a small and short little boy with bright red hair who never said much (just like his father), would never be seen in anything other than his blue jean overalls and brown mud boots- both of which seemed too big for him and threatened to slip right off of him any minute.
And much like his "pa," he had inhuman strength; one time, the spoiled neighborhood brat saw him lifting a tin pail of milk over his shoulder like no big deal, despite the bucket being twice his height and ten times his weight.
But it didn't end there.
As newcomers moved in and made Nowhereinparticular their new home, many of their kids would see him hauling Old Betsy, their family cow as well as Glutton, the farm's oldest pig by their tails as if they were water bottles.
"What a freak!" one of the kids spat at him before they threw some mud (at least he hoped it was mud) at his face.
The kids often threw things at him and isolated themselves from Hokey out of fear, thus making him reluctant to go to school or any place with the kids for that matter.
"Ah, don't worry 'bout dem brats, Hokes!" Okie told him one day after cranking Old Betsy, which required him to turn the cow's tail for milk instead of pulling its utter.
"You've got the heart of a hard worker! 'Sides, you don't need no damn school noways! Them books'll make ya soft! If those brats give ya any kind 'o trouble, just bash their brains in!"
"Bash their brains in…?" Hokey asked, the idea of punching each kid to the point where their head exploded, making him uncomfortable.
"Yeah-!" his father said as he made a muscle with his arm before he got hit in the head with a rolled-up newspaper by his wife, Dee-Dee.
"Okie! Imma bash your brains in if you don't stop teachin' that boy violence!"
"Aw, quit that woman! If he don't learn how ta fight, he ain't no better than them chicken-hearted brats."
"Not while the good Lord's lookin' down on us! You ought to be shamed!"
He waved her off as she kept attacking him with the newspaper, which had little effect in hurting him, but got him away from little Hokey.
She sighed before she sat down on the old tire with him and embraced him.
"I know your father means well, but just punchin' away at yer problems ain't gonna make 'em go away."
"How come, mama?" Hokey asked as he looked up at her with his big blue eyes.
"Not everything can be solved with violence. Sometimes it takes a good ol' count o' brains to take care o' some stuff."
"But them kids throw stuff at me! A-and...they call me a monster, and it makes me awful mad! But I don't do nothin' 'cause I don't want the teacher to paddle me an' send me home…"
"I'm sure you can find a way to get 'em to understand, Hokey. Oh! That gives me an awful good idea!"
So she whispered in Hokey's ear and told him of her plan.
The next day, Dee-Dee walked to school with her son while he carried a large wooden crate that was as big as him.
The kids hid around the teacher, Mrs. Beetle, scared of what would possibly be inside the crate.
"Uhm, pardon me, Mrs. Pokey," the teacher said as she huddled her arms into her body as if bracing for the impact of a large object, "but what on Earth is this?"
"You'll see! Show 'em, Hokey!"
He opened the box and took out some juggling balls and began to, well, juggle!
As the kids watched in awe as he caught and threw and caught and threw the balls without dropping any of them, his mother would add another thing for him to juggle.
First, it was relatively tame, like a stick or slightly bigger ball-but as time went on, she threw chainsaws and even baby lions at him, and yet he juggled them all without a problem, without so much as skipping a beat.
The kids watched in awe as he caught and threw and caught and threw whatever wild thing imaginable.
******
Hokey smiled to himself as he sat in the fields with Old Betsy, thinking about how he ended up making some friends with the school kids.
They wanted to learn how to juggle too, and he was even able to play games with them.
The sky started to become cloudy, but the temperature was still warm, a sign that a rain shower was afoot.
Back in the house, Okie looked at the sky while Dokie was cooking dinner.
"What's wrong, Sweet Pea?" Dokie asked her husband. "You've been starin' at that sky mighty fierce like."
"A storm's comin' soon," he answered quickly.
"Hokey better get his butt in the house."
He went out and called for him.
"Hey, c'mere boy! Get in this house!"
But Hokey was too distracted with tending to Old Betsy, petting her side as he merrily thought about the events at school.
When the sky turned dark and the roar of thunder turned vicious, Okie's calls became aggressive, laced with a hint of panic.
"Hokey!"
Sensing the distress in her husband's voice, Dokey put down her cooking utensils and joined in on calling him back.
Finally tuning out of his thoughts, Hokey poked his head out of the flowering field and immediately responded to the yelling far behind him.
"Comin', Ma! Comin', Pa!" he called back as he beckoned Old Betsy to follow.
He sprinted a good way and covered a lot of distance between the field and the farm, his parents happily waving him to come closer and cheering.
As soon as the toe of his mud boot hit the front of the porch, a yellowish-white beam of light swallowed their son as quickly as a sneeze.
All that was left of him were yellow particles of light with the grass and porch he covered burnt to a crisp.
The two Pokeys' eyes widened in horror, their mouths agape in shock without a word being spoken.