Bull Nettle
Logan Stallings Maggie, Della, Tallulah, and me went flower-hunting in the mornings. We’d be flower-hunting while breakfast cooked over the campfire. “Honey, mind the time and the thorn bushes,” Daddy said when he gave me his heavy scuba watch. “Be back by 9:50, alright?” I nodded. We walked single file away from the campsite, following the skinny dirt path that cut through the tall grass waving in the crisp morning breeze like rippling water. The smell of our campfire breakfast as it cooked wafted down to us on that same breeze. We walked sure footed on the soft dirt trail. The goal was to gather the prettiest wildflower bouquet and then compare at breakfast, but we weren’t competitive. It wasn’t a race. We helped each other find the flowers we needed and sometimes we traded them too. “And, Honey, don’t touch the Bull Nettle,” Daddy had said, and I had nodded. He always told me the plants not to touch. I could spot poison sumac a mile off. Tallulah was the first the Bull Nettle caught. None of our bouquets had any white flowers. It was taller than other wildflowers. Tallulah picked it and we were halfway back to the campsite when she started crying. She threw down her bouquet, and I saw her hands were red and splotchy, tiny hairlike thorns poked into her fingers and palms. I felt guilt rise in my belly. I hadn’t known Bull Nettle could blossom. “Everyone listen, please,” Daddy said at breakfast. He was always hike-leader. He could spot rattlesnake holes a mile off. “Listen, girls, don’t touch the white flowers. They’re Bull Nettle.” Tallulah’s daddy sat with her across the campfire, a magnifying glass over her swollen hands. He was using tweezers to pull out the tiny thorns. The next day when we went flower-hunting, Tallulah wore cloth on her hands like the kind they wrap mummies in. Maggie was next to pick the Nettle, and Della shortly after. Maggie found the tall blossom with the white petals, and picked it. It was off the trail, and I didn’t follow because of my
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