Note: Last night at Write On, we used some old snapshots as inspiration to write a scene. I mixed in four different photos into the scene below. I have included those photos in the post. Thanks for reading.
The men chatted, like men do. About the engine. About the clutch that stuck. About long ago rides down dirt roads. About the crops, Yeah, could be a bumper year. About the weather. Glory, everyone knows it’s hot, does it take a dozen roosters clucking around an old truck to confirm it?
Not to be outdone, the hens sitting behind Charlotte under the tent were having their own session with feathers ruffled by Pastor Gene’s wife at the congregational meeting only minutes before. Imagine having the gall to suggest a catered meal at St. Paul’s after a service in two weeks presided over by the Bishop. Catered? Guess their home cooking wasn’t good enough anymore for the higher-ups of the Synod. Guess God doesn’t help those who help themselves. Catered! Might as well brand a big red “S” for shame on every woman’s forehead at St. Paul’s. They clearly didn’t know how to feed folks anymore.
Charlotte didn’t think it was such a bad idea. Meant she wouldn’t have to make deviled eggs; cause lord knows that’s what they’d want her to bring. Cause that’s what they always wanted her to bring. In fact, there were two dozen eggs slowly souring in the heat alongside a gluttonous bounty of breads and casseroles and salads and desserts on the other side of the tent for this congregational picnic. All that food over there, and these hens want to do it all over again in two weeks. How many times did we have to choke down Gloria Letcher’s seven-layer salad, or Marjorie Pruit’s yellow sheet cake with chocolate frosting? Charlotte was rooting for the catered meal of Fried Chicken, cheesy potatoes, and a slice of cherry pie, although it didn’t really matter. She suspected her cooking days were about up anyways.
She folded her hands under her chin, and considered bringing them together, hoping that folks would think she was prayin’ and thus leave her alone. Seemed blasphemous though, faking a prayer to avoid people. If that’s what it took, though, she’d do it today. Henry might be able to pretend things weren’t going sideways, but she couldn’t. She’d seen it enough times to know when the trouble was coming, and she wasn’t going to run this time. She was too old for such nonsense. Henry should be too. They’d been through this before. The signs. The blood. The death. They were old this time. It was their turn.
“You don’t know it’s the curse, Char,” Henry said that morning as they rode to church. “Could be sickness that killed the chickens.”
“And the headstones at Mulberry Cemetery? Was it sickness that toppled them all over in the night?”
“Could have been a wind.”
“Don’t be daft, Henry.” That’s all she said, watching the fields of corn pass her window. She’d dreamt of the tower the night before. The rusted steel spire with the platform at the top. They had chased the Crenshaw woman to the top of that tower all those years ago. Men and women just like the ones chatting away on this hot August day. Ones who listened to the Gospel and then wielded it clumsily like a dull sword against the Crenshaws. That’s when they were all cursed, the entire town for its part in it.
Charlotte remembered Abigail Crenshaw, her fiery red hair blowing in the wind, as she balanced fretfully atop that tower. Orville Litwiller with a pitch fork behind her. Myron Long with a torch. The women below shouting terrible things. Words you wouldn’t think any Christian woman would know.
“That was long ago and far from here,” Henry said when he had put the car in park in front of the church. “We was nothing but kids back then, barely had anything to do with it. Why would it find us here and now? What can it take from us that God won’t be claiming any day now?”
He closed the door, a frail-looking old man with a thin mop of gray hair and a pair of spectacles that barely stayed on his nose. He rounded the car and opened her door.
“I am scared it’s going to take the one thing that is supposed to be God’s,” she said.
“What’s that? Your life?”
“No, Henry, my soul.”
No comments:
Post a Comment