When the Dillards get fed, and me and Sadie is in the truck heading back to my place for our own supper, I say, “Those folks got it bad right now and we brought merciful help. Horace Dillard can’t do nothing on account of bad lungs from working coal.”
Sadie stares out the window, likely pondering her own heavy load. Maybe she’s thinking bout Horace’s bad lungs from honest work and Roy’s bad heart for spite.
Later, we finish supper of corn bread and pinto beans, and I pull down the tin of molasses cookies to go with our tea. This is what I miss bout my Willis gone. A body to spend evening time with. Sadie’s quiet but got back that settled feeling bout her. I don’t want to push. I let her be till I say, “Roy,” and his name sits in the air.
Sadie says, “Roy Tupkin,” and he gets bigger in my little room.
“You afeard?” I ask.
“I be lying if I say I won’t.”
I look at that precious face grown old and weary already. “What can I do, sweet girl?”
“What you do right now. Give me a place to be that don’t hurt.”
“Wish you stayed longer. You could live here if you wanted.”
“It’d shame him.”
But tonight she stays and don’t pester me to go back to Roy’s place. When it’s bedtime, I blow out the oil lamp. The weak light of the woodstove pierces the dark. Sadie crawls into the featherbed beside me. She’s light as a feather herself, so I don’t hardly feel her there till she cries and rolls into my soft side. Ain’t had a body lay this close for a lotta years. I fold her in my arms and she shakes and sobs, broke and empty, and can’t hardly catch her breath. She loosens the hurt and sad that bout pulls her under.
If this be a night of wishing, then I wish Sadie was mine to keep.
I need Mother Jones’s backbone—God bless her mighty soul. If she was in my place and worried about Sadie, she’d nail Roy Tupkin’s sorry ass to the side of the Rusty Nickel so all Baines Creek saw his meanness. She’d show Sadie the truth. She’d help her break free from what’s already broke.
All I do is hold her, pull the chill outta her baines, and comfort her with warmth.
Next morning, I don’t wanna take Sadie back, but I do. Roy’s truck is still gone. When we go inside, the note is where I put it under the jar of watermelon-rind pickles and the pie sits on the counter. Sadie puts her rosebud on the window ledge. I give her a hug, then pick up my pickles. Roy don’t deserve no peace offering.
Before I head home, I make my way over to Preacher Perkins’s place and tell him my worries about Sadie, and together we wonder what we can do to protect her. The look on his face says it all: not much.
? ? ?
Today, Skeeter comes, and I got extra air in my lungs. Nobody brung word that he won’t coming so I let myself think it might happen for real. Skeeter’s my firstborn, a lot older now than when my Willis died at thirty-two years. No mama likes to say she’s partial, specially when both boys she births is good, but when one of em comes out like his daddy she loves, it happens natural.
I pick a fat hen off her nest, step outside the coop, give thanks to the Lord, then break her neck. I chop her head off with my ax, quick scald the body in a pot of water, pluck her feathers for pillows, and put the body in cool water to rinse off the blood. Inside an hour that hen has gone from sitting in a coop to being cooked, and I start fixing dumplings.
I’m rolling out the dough when I stop and say out loud, “Lord, I hope Skeeter’s wife can cook. A woman who can’t cook good misses the best part of comfort.” I set the table with my three plates and make sure I get the cracked one. Last thing, I fix a pan of biscuits ready to pop in the oven when they come. The extra can go home with em. I take off my apron, hang it on a hook, and check the clock.
It’s ten past nine.
It’ll be afternoon before Skeeter’s car comes down the road. Last time he stayed two hours and looked itchy to leave every minute of it. He looked old that visit. I want to know city living agrees with him. I want to meet his new wife. I want to see him treat her special. Like Willis treated me.
? ? ?
I got time between ready and Skeeter coming, so I take my chair to the front yard to wait and think on my other boy, Obie. Thirty-one years ago he come home for the last time in as fine a casket as these parts ever see.
Seemed after Obie went to soldier camp there was a accident. A uniform man drove up here with Obie in a long, polished box with a flag over it. That man stayed till we put Obie in the ground, then he pulled off that flag, folded it, and give it to me. I don’t want to keep it but don’t have the heart to tell him, so I put that flag in the bottom of the trunk Willis made me when I was a new bride.
It’s odd birthing two good boys and then one of em leaves life before he could hardly grow a beard. Obie loved to hear me laugh. One time at supper, he stuffed six biscuits in his mouth, then he crossed his eyes till I snorted buttermilk out my nose.
Twenty-two years. That’s all the time he got on this earth and I’m hard-pressed some days to recollect how he looked, and that shames me. The only picture I got of him is in his soldier uniform with his face serious and his eyes pretending to be brave. That picture is tucked under the folded flag.
Now there’s only Skeeter.
? ? ?
Mr. Turner, the mailman, drives down the road and sees me doing nothing and stops.
“Got a circular today, Miz Marris, my howdy for your Skeeter coming, and a little gossip, if you want.”
“What kind of gossip? I don’t like the mean kind.”
“This one’s funny. Bout Prudence Perkins.”
Prudence is the preacher’s spinster sister, and a more sour soul you’d be hard-pressed to find. “You got my attention. What happened?”
Mr. Turner shifts his truck into neutral and sets his arm on the window frame.
“Well, it won’t what she done so much as what somebody done to her.”
“Even better.” I stand up stiff and bend forward to touch my knees, but only reach halfway. I stand back up on the dizzy side.
Mr. Turner won’t a bit good at telling news cause he always blurts out the punch line before its time.
“Prudence Perkins got locked in her outhouse.”
Now he could have done a lot with that news if he told it slow, but it’s still funny.
“How long?”
“All morning, I guess. Preacher come home and can’t find her in the house. He yelled her name and she shouted out, ‘I’m in the privy!’”
“He tattled that kind of news bout his own sister?”
“Well, no. It was me who timed it right. I delivered mail when I heard her shout kind of weak and I heard the preacher shout back, ‘Let me get my wire cutters. Hold on to your britches!’ That struck me extra funny.”
“Who woulda done such a thing?” I ask, knowing there is lots of folks who got reason for payback to that sourpuss.
“Don’t know right off.”