Prose…2005 – 2008

Prose ramblings…

PROSE 2005 : “His Smile”

Dust coated Nergie Lee from top to toe the moment they met.  Not the thick, black, coal dust of everyday life, but the soft, gray dust of the freshly quarried granite he carried and thoughtfully placed along the emerging foundation of the newest house of worship to call the mountain town home.  His dearly departed mother often wished aloud that her son might be a man of God, and do some good in the world.  The young man smiled, believing that wish granted in both respects.  The young man’s older brother returned to the town the pair began to call home, wearing the collar of the newly ordained minister, full of aspirations and a focus on the task the two performed.  The small stone church began to arise out of the earth as the pair toiled side-by-side, beginning with the quarrying of the stones that now found themselves thoughtfully laid into the earth.

A gentle tapping on a labor weary shoulder alerted the young man to the presence of another.  The young man turned around to see whosoever happened to be tapping, and his gaze became transfixed upon the eyes of a girl that captivated him in an instant.  The brilliance of Nergie Lee’s smile took her aback, especially as that smile shone against the dust covering the rest of him.  That smile captivated her, as her eyes captivated him in an instant.  The minister, otherwise known as the older brother who always knew what to say, broke the silence as he thanked Delphia for the lemonade she brought with her and inquired as to the health of her mother, who had recently been unwell.

Nergie Lee quickly removed his cap as he drank the lemonade, but the smile never left his face.  As the two exchanged “thank-you”, “much obliged”, and “goodbyes”, the swell within his heart grew tenfold, as the young man watched Delphia walk away, knowing those eyes were the eyes of the girl he would marry one day.

Delphia never stopped thinking about that smile, either.  The young man carefully approached her mother first, asking if there were anyone else who might steal away that heart of hers.  Hat in hand, Nergie Lee then asked her father for his approval to see her, and later, to ask for her hand.  Though his reservations were many, her father said yes on both occasions.

The courtship was brief, and the proposal memorable.  The young girl held that memory close, and repeated the details of the moment often in later years.  The couple began married life together in a cozy house not far from the little granite church.  For a few years, the couple lived the quiet life of newlyweds, and then children came.  The children filled the once quiet life of the couple with great happiness, and some sorrow.  Eight children passed through over the threshold of the tiny house.  Three boys, and five girls, but only three of the little girls came home to stay.  The other two quickly returned to the place from which they came, leaving only a memory and a small, irreparable break upon the hearts of the young couple.

The years came and went so quickly, too quickly.  That day was like any other.  There was a dusting of snow on the ground in the days before Christmas.  Delphia awoke early, tiptoeing down the stairs to the kitchen, taking out the lunch box and thoughtfully packing her husband’s favorite things into the tin box.  Carefully were the ham and cheese sandwiches, an orange, two jars of milk, and a piece of freshly made apple cake wrapped up and tucked into the box along with a note.  Little notes often found the way into the lunch pail.  Sometimes the notes were reminders of errands in need of running, sometimes not.  The note laid atop the rest of the box’s contents simply said, “I love you”.

Tiptoeing back up the stairs, Delphia slid back into the warmth of the featherbed and quilts after placing the lunch box, full to bursting, into the icebox.  Awaking an hour later to the ringing bell of the alarm clock, as always, Nergie Lee told his dear wife not to bother with getting out of bed to see him to the door.  Always concerned, he feared the chill the rapidly dropping temperature left hanging over the house might worsen her cold.  An instant refusal met a brilliant smile as her husband pleaded again out of his concern, and she relented.  Delphia drifted back to sleep as the sight of his smile and the sound of his footsteps on the stairs were fresh in her memory.

When Delphia awoke, the day went along as any other.  There were few chores these days, as most of the children had spouses and homes all their own, with a few grandchildren as well.  Only the youngest child, a son, remained at home, months away from high school graduation.  The day passed quickly, punctuated with a phone call here or there and the return home of her son from school.  There was not a moment out of place, until Delphia would later recall, as she stood at the sink washing the breakfast dishes she felt as though her heart skipped a beat, so much so that she lost her breath.  The moment meant nothing until afterwards.

The snow piled up on the walkway that led to the front porch of the tiny house and the swing the couple sat together in almost every afternoon.  In the swing, the pair recounted the time in the day spent apart, delighting in the time spent together.  The swing saw many evenings of talking softly, sipping warm coffee, and watching the sunset signal the end of the day.  When footprints marred the white blanket of snow of the walkway, the steps were not those of the one who tread the path everyday.

The man at the door held a hat in his hands, and politely asked to come in.  The officer was very sorry, but there was an indication of foul play, or abandonment, of where the truth lay, he was uncertain.  Delphia could not wrap her mind or heart around what the officer said.  The car found, the lunch box empty, but there was no trace of him.  No one at the work site spoke out upon initial questioning after the supervisor noticed his disappearance.

Her son quickly came to her side, answering all questions as she sank into his chair shaking with disbelief.  In an instant the smile and brilliance left her eyes.  The children all arrived as soon as possible.  Delphia refused to believe the idea that he chose to disappear, although the authorities pressed the notion in the following days.  Going on as though the walkway would welcome his footsteps at any moment, Delphia decorated the tiny house as she always did for Christmas, tree and all.  On Christmas Eve, Delphia took a package wrapped in bright paper and a satin ribbon out of the linen closet and placed the parcel gently beneath the tree, hoping her husband would be there in the morning to see what lay inside.

The package remained unopened, sitting in the linen closet for over thirty years.  Every Christmas Eve, the package left the shelf in the closet, taking a place with the other presents beneath the tree, and returned, unopened to the closet come Christmas night.  The children believed abandoning the Christmas Eve ritual would be good for their mother, although she believed the package kept hope alive in their hearts as much as in her own.  Delphia never believed that her husband abandoned them, not for a moment.  The lunch box was empty, which meant as always the note lay within his breast pocket.  Perhaps the last words he ever read were those of her simple note, “I love you”.  She began to believe that the moment her heart skipped a beat, his heart stopped beating.

After placing the package beneath the tree, as done on every one of the previous thirty-four Christmas Eves, Delphia slid into bed, the snows falling outside were a soft footstep on the roof, and she drifted away to the sound of the gentle pitter-patter.

The package held a soft brown cap, and of course, the cap fit perfectly.  His smile woke her as Nergie Lee took her hand and quietly led Delphia past their son’s bedroom, down the stairs, and out onto that front porch.  Her eyes captivated Nergie Lee now as always, the smile within as brilliant as ever.  Readjusting the cap, Delphia laid her head upon Nergie Lee’s shoulder as the sunrise attempted to compete with the brilliance of his smile.

Inside, their son softly wept, sitting in the chair his father once occupied, opening the faded package.  Looking to the cap within, the man found himself smiling as he caught a glimpse of the portrait that sat upon the mantel.  The smile upon the face of his father and within his mother’s eyes remained within him.  The smile upon his face softened again into tears, as he reached for the telephone.

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PROSE: 2006 : “Milk Crates and Mason Jars”

Earthen red dust swirled around Anna Mae’s white, patent leather Mary Janes as she skipped down the old dirt road.  The well-worn path looked as though the rains had stayed away for a month of Sundays.  Every step Anna Mae took created a whirlwind of dust- the red powder continually darkening her tiny, bright, white shoes.  Anna Mae’s every step was carefully placed to fall into the footsteps of her grandmother, Katie, as she held her hand and skipped just a little ways behind her, singing to herself as children do in moments of quiet when boredom makes way for imagination.

“One and two and three and four…how many steps till we get to the church door,” Anna Mae whispered again and again.   Just how many steps were between her aunt’s house up on the ridge and the church they were going to was anyone’s guess, since the size of the stride certainly changes the number of steps a body has to take to get from here to there.  Katie wasn’t exactly sure how much further the distance either, seeing as how she had yet to make the journey to the particular house of worship herself.  Katie reckoned that the little church was about three or four miles from home.  As best she could tell the congregation of the present was now calling home the tiny stone church that had once, and not so long ago been home to the hard-shell Baptist ministry.

Katie understood why the Baptist ministry hadn’t faired so well, with the pastor eventually giving up the post to seek a faithful congregation elsewhere.  Those hard shell Baptists, or so the folks liked to say, only held services on Christmas and Easter Sunday, because the sermons were so long that by the time the faithful returned home from the Christmas services the time had come to start preparing Easter baskets and bonnets.  Funeral services were three hours for the beginning hymnal devotion alone, and when the time arrived for baptisms the services were twice as long as funeral meetings, because there’s always more to say about being born or born again than about dying.

The ministry there in the stone church had begun with the best of intentions, but things just didn’t work out betwixt the ministry and the rest of the community, as the length of the sermons resulted in, through a case of necessity as opposed to the distinct desire to do so, some very unsociable Baptists.  By the time the sermons were over on the day of rest, the time had already come for most of the congregation to resume their works.  The Baptists all but disappeared from the Sunday dinners of their friends and neighbors, and the rest of the community soon realized that while the faithful professing their faith was a wondrous thing to behold, those marathon sermons of the preacher were resulting in a lack of socialization between the Baptists and the community at large. Everyone knew that the best way to avoid making religious differences an issue betwixt friends was to simply put them aside over a fine fried chicken on a Sunday afternoon.  The Lord’s Prayer and Grace united the Baptists and the Methodists like nothing else in the wide world possibly could.  Moreover, if there were cherry or apple pie for afterwards, there was double the prayer and grace with laughter and smiles thrown in for good measure.

Katie normally took Anna Mae with her to the Wednesday evening services at the little church just a quarter mile or so from her daughter’s house up on the ridge, so she reckoned that bringing the youngling along to these services was a fine idea.  Katie wasn’t certain what sort of ministry was now calling the church home, as she hadn’t spoken to anyone who had attended the services there since the new pastor had taken up where the hard shell Baptist minister left off.  Her sister-in-law’s sister Lydia sent her a letter a month or more prior, inviting her to come and join in the worship services anytime she was inclined to do so.  The trip was a ways out of the way for Katie, but she certainly didn’t want to hurt Lydia’s feelings by refusing her sincere invitation to worship with her.

When she arrived at the stone church with Anna Mae skipping along behind her, Katie glanced about the mass of people outside the church doors, searching for a familiar face, especially that of Lydia.  Suddenly a hand on her shoulder alerted her to the presence of a man a bit younger than herself with tiny eyes, large glasses, and a fading hairline.

Quickly, and speaking with a drawl unlike any Katie ever heard before the man said, “Excuse me, Ma’am, but are you Mrs. Katie Logan?  A friend of Mrs. Lydia Donner?” Whoever he was, the fellow certainly wasn’t from around those parts.  Katie nodded in response to his question and then listened while he hurriedly explained that Lydia would not be attending the services that evening because a family across the way had been in desperate need of her midwifery skills.   Anna Mae giggled, imagining Miss Lydia “catching a baby” as though she were “catching a calf”.

Katie reckoned she’d just stay for the services, with or without Lydia. Katie knew if she tried to make the trek back to her regular house of worship at the other end of the hollow now, she’d surely miss the Sunday services altogether.  Taking a hymnal and a fan from the pile on the table just inside the church door, Katie quickly found a seat for Anna Mae and her toward the middle of the congregation, on the end of one of the stone pews.  Katie thought that the church was mighty quiet for the gathering that occurs before the services begin.  Katie also thought that it was mighty odd to have overturned wooden milk crates all about the preacher’s stand up at the front.  Perhaps they were for the singers to sit on or maybe even stand on during the hymnal devotion at the beginning of the services.

The man who had spoken to Katie outside the church now came hurrying up the middle aisle carrying a crate full of sealed mason jars, and set to lining them up across the front of the pulpit, opposite the milk crates.  As he sat out the jars, one at a time, Katie thought that it was right peculiar to be carrying in water when there was a perfectly fine well not two yards from the church doors.  Setting the final jar into place, the man called out to the congregation.

“Brothers and sisters, kindly turn to page thirty-two in the hymnals, so that our hymnal devotions may begin.”

Instantly, there was a sudden rush of noise, pages turning, books being dropped and retrieved, and throats being cleared.  Through the noise, and especially during the silence that followed before the hymn began, Katie heard that sound of a baby’s rattle, strong and constant, and she searched the crowd for the little one causing such a great lot of noise.  When the hymn was finished, Katie heard the rattling, clearer still, but she didn’t see a single youngling with a toy in hand.  As the hymnals were called out and sung by the group, the noise grew to be a more constant one, confounding Katie to no end, as she couldn’t find the cause of such a sound.  Then she saw it.

Katie saw the milk crate nearest the edge of pulpit make the tiniest of movements towards the left. The movement was barely that, not even three inches, but the discreet movement of a purportedly inanimate object is enough to get a rise out of anyone.  Sitting her hymnal down beside her on the stone bench, she gathered Anna Mae to herself tightly as the little one sat on her lap, playing with the calico fabric of her grandmother’s dress.  As the hymnal devotion ended and the sermon began, the crowd let out an uproarious cry of “Amen!” and all jumped to their feet, if they were able.   At the next expression of fervor, Katie shouted along with them, jumping to her feet, and then stepping back to the pew behind her own.  Through six more shouts of “Amen!”  and “Praise the Lord!” Katie rose and fell with the crowd, each time hopping backwards a single pew with Anna Mae in tow.  As the crowd shouted “Hallelujah” Katie slipped, unseen, out the church door, whispering a “Hallelujah” of her own.

As they started down the dirt road towards home, Anna Mae looked up from her skipping and said,

“Why’d we leave church so early?”

Shaking her head and smiling just a little bit to herself, Katie said, “Well, darlin’, I reckon that if the good Lord intended for me to be introduced to any serpents, he would have done it a mighty long time ago and he surely would have named me Eve.”

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PROSE: 2007 : “That Hammer”

That hammer.  Of all the things in her many, years of living, loving, laughing, crying, now ultimately of dying, that hammer was the only thing that came to her mind.  A  tiny hammer, rust-worn by use and wear, the ball-peen’s two-pound head, spotted with  speckled red paint dwarfing the white birch handle streaked black with age and use, an “e” burned into the wood, denoting the first and only man to own that hammer thus far.  That hammer was all that Anna could see right now.

Had it really only been a month?  Just thirty short days ago, Anna had been home, in the home she shared with Elijah for sixty years: for better or worse.  These days were decidedly worse.  Elijah had done himself a favor ten years prior and made his way directly to the eternal beyond after too many years spent two hundred feet underground saw to it that he only needed six more feet of dirt to hold him down forever.

Only thirty days ago, that was all.  Then Anna had all her things, all her faculties, and all her limbs about her.

When Elijah had been quite near to his leave taking of her, Vera, and her husband, the lawyer, had a wondrous idea.  In the event of a full and speedy recovery, a trust for the entire of Anna and Elijah’s possessions and assets would take care of them.  Forever and ever and always.  Of course, this was because of while Vera was the baby of the family this was merely an arbitrary chronological titling.  Her siblings, each in their own way were equally as infantile.  As Vera and her fashionable husband made themselves a home far the mountains of her parents; thusly not monitoring Mother and Daddy’s money and how her siblings might encourage or discourage her darling parents from spending whether that be on items they needed or wanted without turning first to her irked little Vera to no end.  So, bullying their way through the document, which was only slightly shorter than War and Peace, Vera and her husband less than gently convinced a grief numb Anna and a medication addled Elijah; already with one foot out the door into the great beyond, to sign.  And that was that.

Vera and her purse holder of a man had brought along to the bedside a notary; a boy she had gone to school with who always had been willing to do anything for her.  All Anna could think at the time was “I’m calling his mother – again”.  She did.  As soon as they all left her alone with him to file their precious papers.  “Disgraceful,” screeched Thomas’ mother.  Yes, it was, she thought.  Of course, Elijah never got any better, until he raised up the energy to get better so he could fix to die.

Vera was very pleased with her handy work as were the majority of her siblings.  Chester, her only brother lived far away from Mother’s mountains as well.  He tucked himself as far inland as one could possibly be living in the sunny state of Florida.  Elijah used to say the boy must have know that if he got too close to it the sea was just itching for the chance to swallow him up to add a little more brine to the water.  A salty old cur he had grown to be indeed.  His father never thought Chester’s life so hard that he ought to have forgotten how to laugh, but somehow along the way he had.  As soon as his father had passed, he tried gathering up all of his father’s tools and making off with them.  Unfortunately, for Chester, he was as stealthy as a herd of drunken elephants.  Chester agreed with Vera.  The children should be in charge of Mother and Daddy’s money.

Their sister, Harriet, did not live as far from Mother and Daddy as they did.  She was only an hour away, over the mountain in the city.  Despite being married for forty years, raising many children, and by all outward appearances being a grown woman, she too, acted more like infantile than an adult.  When she returned home, she did not bring sacks of laundry like a floundering freshman home from college, but there were certain undeniable similarities.  Harriet and her husband always arrived in time for Sunday dinners; and miraculously left the instant the dishes hit the kitchen sink.  This behavior earned them the less than flattering nickname of ‘The Eat’n’Runs”.  Something was always broken.  Did Mother and Daddy have an extra one she could “borrow?”  Did they really need items a, b, c, on through x, y, and z anymore?  Make no mistake; Harriet was never at any point financially lacking.  She was merely skin-flintily cheap to the point of embarrassing misers everywhere.  At the only time she had ever been in need of any money, she had gone to her mother.  Anna had loaned her two thousand dollars for her business, a fortune in those times.  When she inquired after the money years later, as Harriet had always been so adamant that the money was a loan, not a gift, Harriet informed her of masterful plan for repayment.  ‘I’ll just pay two thousand dollars toward your final expenses, Mother, so you won’t have to worry about them quite so much.”  Anna, smiled, nodded, and never bothered to tell her miserly child that she wished to be laid to rest in memorial gardens next to her father, not in the pet cemetery next to Tom.  Ever trusting in her child, Anna had long since paid for and made all of those arrangements herself.  Harriet agreed with Vera.  The children should be in charge of Mother and Daddy’s money.

Noelle, the eldest, did not live far away from the mountains.  Noelle did not live away in the city.  Nor did she live far away and near to the sea.  Noelle lived with Mother and Daddy in the homestead.  Noelle did not agree that the children should be in charge of Mother and Daddy’s money, and presently as they seated themselves around the kitchen table, she refused to look or speak to them.  Instead, she found herself so earnestly applying the lemon oil to the oak table that any moment might have seen the furniture producing acorns as a humble cry for mercy.  Then the doorbell rang.  Mother and Daddy were home. Elijah had been bound and determined not to do one bit of dying in that sterile, white-walled, yellow light filled hospital room.  With a good deal of determination, he had gotten himself plenty better in order to die in comfort.  Noelle and Anna helped him to his bed while the others sat around the kitchen table.  After he was settled, Anna set to opening the mail and Noelle started in on the laundry, while the trio of siblings remained around the table, chattering away about the parents that bore them as though they were a pair of statues and could not hear word one.

As they chattered on and on and on Elijah began to call for Anna.  Elijah had heard more than enough.  He wanted her to send in first Vera, then Harriet, and lastly Chester.  After giving each and every one of them a brief piece of his mind, he intended to introduce them to the better side of his ever-faithful bedside guardian.  That hammer.  Whenever not in use the hammer found a home underneath the corner of his mattress.  Anna had insisted that he replace the old peacemaker with something a wee bit safer when the children came along.  Therefore, he had, and now he was intent on introducing that hammer to the side of three of those children’s’ heads’.  Despite the overwhelming urge to comply with Elijah’s wishes, Anna had taken the hammer from under the mattress and placed the tool in a kitchen junk drawer, without asking the children in to see their father. Three days later, in the comfort of his own bed, with only Anna at his side, Elijah had closed the door to this world.

Things immediately grew very difficult for Anna in dealing with those controlling, selfish children.  They picked over every single penny that came into her purse and often refused her wishes.  Mother never needed anything; she merely had numerous frivolous wants.  Of course, these wants were actual needs, but that made no difference to the children; who sought only to protect the future inheritance they so rightly deserved.  The decline of the last thirty days had been swift and sudden.  One tiny injury to her left foot had led the doctor to declare surgery was the only safe option at this point, given her diabetes and age.  The doctor recommended she have the procedure as soon as possible.  Anna could have flown to the hospital across state to have the procedure done, without waiting more than a day or two.  but Mother just wanted to hurry things up far too much.  Besides, that would have cost over one thousand dollars of [our] Mother’s money.  Instead, Anna had to wait almost a month while the children shopped around for a low cost car rental and found someone to drive her across the state.  Noelle could do nothing but watch and wait as her mother’s condition deteriorated and her siblings insisted they were always ‘working on it.’  The simple procedure by now was no longer enough.  First, Anna lost a toe; then one-third of her foot; then the rest of her foot; then her leg to the knee; and lastly the remainder of her leg to the hip.  Anna got an awkward satisfaction in knowing how much costlier this would all be for those greedy children, in the end….in the end. But now, there was nothing left.  As the light was fading fast from her eyes and her mind, in this, her last moments, all she could see was that hammer.  And all she could think was…I should have given Elijah that hammer….

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PROSE: 2008: “Tap, Snap, Crack”

Tap, snap, crack.
Tap, snap, crack.
Tap, snap, crack.

Katey long ago developed that even, steady rhythm when snapping her fresh beans in their aged wooden bowl.  Tap the dirt off, snap the string at each end, and crack the bean at the exact center.  She never measured, and rarely looked down while she worked.  Katey had simply learned to snap beans like these when she was a little girl, barely older than Hannah.

Hannah…

This bowl of beans was to be special, just for Hannah.  Katey thought of this recipe a week ago, when she had sat just where she was now.

Tap, snap, crack.

The front porch of her daughter Christine’s house.  Katey and Hannah were staying with Christine and her husband Pete while Hannah’s parents were away in the city at the hospital on account of the new baby.  She had come too early, and her lungs continued to be mighty weak.

Tap, snap, crack.

Christine was very eager to be fashionable and therefore continuously ran about doing errands that never seemed to find her here nor there and always with little to nothing accomplished daily.  Pete was as slick as a snake oil salesman and Katey never had been exactly certain just what it was that he did to ‘earn a living’.  Not that Katey actually cared what he did.  She had never liked him, nor his incessant habit of calling her ‘Mother’.  The last time he did that Katey had snapped back at him.

“How many times do I have to tell ye Pete?  Your mother is dead and Lord bless her soul she can’t hear you!”

Tap, snap, crack.

Wednesday had been an unusual day for Katey and she just woke up with a feeling in her soul that something, somewhere, was wrong.

Tap, snap, crack.

That morning she had turned Christine’s boy, Billy, over her knee and paddled his bottom with the whole of her aged but strong hand; and but good.  He was twice little Hannah’s age and size and he had attempted to chase her about and steal her shoe as he shouted at the little one.

”Hey there, Hobbled-y Hannah!  Hobbled-y Hannah!  I’m a gonna take your shoe!  Then you’ll be Wobbled-y Hobbled-y Hannah!”

Tap, snap, crack.

Little Hannah suffered from a birth injury that gave her a noticeably slow gait, particularly for a four year old, and the heavy corrective shoes made her slower still.  As soon as Billy started his taunts, Hannah fled to her grandmother’s skirts.  And she was safe.

Tap, snap, crack.

Katey and Hannah were to take in Wednesday worship at the little chapel there in the hollow as they had been since their stay had begun, but Hannah’s supper soured on her stomach, and now she was sleeping.  With Christine and Billy at her other daughter Patty’s house, Katey sat down and set to reading her Bible at the house instead.  Just then, Pete stuck his head in from the garage.

“Go ahead to church, Mother.  How much trouble could one sleepin’ young’un be?”

Tap, snap, crack.

The service was the most dreadful Katey had ever sat through.  Both the pastor and assistant pastor were ill with chicken pox caught from their respective children, who were great playmates. The second assistant pastor, though not ill, sounded far more like a lost lamb than a man of God for all the ‘baaing’ and ‘maa-ing’ he did while he flustered himself thoroughly.  No one had the heart to tell him that Pastor Deen had covered the entire of the Book of Job that Sunday.  The humidity was almost unbearable in the small chapel, and just as Katey had steeped inside there came a great storm of thunder, wind, and lightning, that lasted the entire of the service.

Tap, snap, crack.

When Katey got back, Pete was whittling on the porch.

”I told you, Mother, a single, sleepin’ young’un ain’t no trouble at all.”

Tap, snap, crack.

Katey found Hannah curled up on one side of her bed and didn’t bother moving or waking her.  Putting that strange day to bed Katey slid in next to Hannah and went to sleep.

Tap, snap, crack.

Thursday came and went.  Strange thing was her chatty little Hannah never said a word.  She just stuck close by Katey’s skirts all that day and climbed into her bed again that night.

Tap, snap, crack.

Friday was half-gone and they were all alone, Katey sitting snapping beans with Hannah pretending to do the same when she suddenly ended her day and a half of silence.

“Iffen you die Grannie Kat – Momma an’ Daddy won’t love me no more will they?”

Tap, snap…

Crack…

Katey had stopped, shaken by the horrible idea.

“Of course your Momma and Daddy will always love you – even if your Grannie Kat ain’t here to make sure they’s behaving themselves.  What a notion child – Did that naughty Billy tell you that?”

Tap, snap, crack.

Hannah didn’t say a word, just shook her moppet of blonde curls violently ‘No’.  Drawing closer to Katey, as close as she could get and then all tumbled forth from her tiny trembling mouth.

“Peter told me.  Pete said you’d be so mad you’d die, iffen I told ya an’ then Momma an’ Daddy – they’d know I told ya an’ they won’t love me never agin, an’…”

Tap, snap, crack.

“One sleeping young’un ain’t no trouble.”

Tap, snap, crack.

“Don’t ya tell, Hannah, or your Grannie Kat’ll be so mad she’ll die. An’ your Ma an’ your Pa won’t ever love you again.”

Tap, snap, crack.
Tap, snap, crack.
Tap, snap, crack.

That evening Katey told Hannah not to worry about a thing.  This sort of thing was exactly why God made Grannies for little girls like Hannah – and it would be their secret.  She mustn’t tell Momma or Daddy since Grannie Kat was going to take care of things.  With a pinky promise Hannah’s worries were gone – but Katey’s had just begun.

Tap, snap, crack.

Katey knew that little girl would have a hard enough time in life as it was, and she sure didn’t need to grow up feeling her Daddy had killed a man on account of her. And he would – no doubt with help from her Momma.  No- that little girl needed them more than they needed vengeance.  Besides, being a woman of great faith, Katey was certain that the Lord would take care of him in the end.  Katey just meant to give the Lord a little help.  After all, He was a busy man.

Tap, snap, crack.
Tap, snap, crack.
Tap, snap, crack.

Now, sitting in the dark with Hannah’s bowl of beans in her lap she heard the screen door swing as Pete’s cry of ‘Evening, Mother’ pierced her eardrums, a more painful sound to them than ever before.  He sat down in the chair opposite hers and commenced to whittling.

Tap, snap, crack.

“Awful funny to be snapping your beans after dark, ain’t it Mother?”

Tap, snap, crack.

“Not looking up, Katey said –

“Well Pete – after what little Hannah told me I reckon I’m due to die any minute so I hafta snap these beans while I can.”

Tap, snap, crack.

Pete swallowed hard and stopped breathing for a moment all at once.  He stuttered, stammered, but he knew better than to offer any excuses.  But as he made all manner of uncomfortable noise, he never noticed the subtle change in the stead rhythm of bean breaking.

Tap.  (The tap of the revolver against the wooden bowl as Katey lifted it from her lap.)
Snap.  (The snap of the hammer as she drew it back.)
Crack. (The crack of the old, but trusty trigger.)

Tap, snap, crack.

“Damn opossums!”

Katey cried out as the muzzle fire created a brief moment of illumination, punctuated by Pete’s scream.  Christine came running as Katey sat back down to her beans.

Tap, snap, crack.

“Mama!  What happened?”  Christine shrieked as Pete incoherently wailed.

Tap, snap, crack.

“Durn opossum charged the porch!  Vicious critters they are!  I was fixin’ to get it with your daddy’s gun here when Pete went after it with his little whittlin’ knife – an’ he made me miss.  I reckon as you best take him to get sewed up proper in a hurry.”

Tap, snap, crack.

“Pete! Of all the idiot things to do!”  Christine cawed as she shoveled him into the backseat and sped away.

Tap, snap, crack.

Smiling to herself, Katey thought for a moment that it was a shame about Billy – growing up an only child now and what not.

Tap, snap, crack.

Then she thought –
“I reckon as this’ll be the best bowl of beans my little Hannah ever had.”

Tap, snap, crack.