Days
of Uncle Ernest -
Chesapeake City and the World – Billy, Chapter 1
The very next afternoon, Nina, after supper, I was
bouncing around in our hammock and, bored out of my mind waiting for Uncle
Ernest to come out and continue his weird story about sailing up that river
with Lizzie, I hopped on my bike and spun on down under the towering, awkward
osage tree in the middle of our garden. As I stood, straddling my bike, I
looked up into its twisted branches and then down at the area around it. And,
do you know, the same eerie feeling came over me that still does whenever I linger
there.
I told Granny once about the strangeness there, and
she said, “Oh, that; that ugly, worn-out thorn apple tree—a young'n shouldn’t
have to bear that. Don’t bother me with that foolishness.”
“Tell me about it, Granny. Please!” I begged. “Tell me, will you?”
“Nonsense.
I’m fagged out now, but if you’ll leave me be I’ll say what I know. It happened
there ages ago, before the Civil War, before even I was born. Why, this farmhouse was build back in the 1850,” she
went on, gesturing towards the inner room, as she sat there in our ancestral
kitchen, remodeled with modern pasting—crass makeup on a noble woman.
She sat hunched over on a straight-back, wooden
chair, looking out the window, and as she talked (grudgingly it seemed to me)
her swollen, arthritic fingers stroked the radiator grates under the window.
“This farm,” she continued, not looking at me but out at our unpainted garage,
“was once a few hundred acres or so; it took in all the land in this area, from
the edge of town to way beyond where that simple McNatt is now. Why, this
kitchen was part of the original farmhouse, owned by the Hudsons, who built it
and farmed all the land. Now then, old Al Hazel married one of the Hudson
“Geez, Granny, I didn’t know our place was that old
and so big back then.”
“Yes, well, there’s a lot you don’t know, Bub,” she
said, moving back in her chair and folding her brown, large-knuckled hands in
her apron. “Why, it was lazy old Al who told me about them, living back there
in a shack like livestock,” she said, shaking her snow-white head in disgust.
“Well, don’t you know, it was his father-in-law, Bill Hudson, who told him
about that day. Lordy be, I still shudder just thinking about it.”
“Wait a minute, Granny. Who lived back where? What
day?”
“Oh mercy,
leave me alone boy. I’m tired of your foolishness. Leave me be; goodness, I’m not worth anything
anymore. I just wish I could get my hands on that shotgun out there; that’s all
I wish.”
“Granny,” I asked quietly, so shocked that my
stomach felt queasy all of a sudden, and laying my hand on her shoulder (cloth
covered bones), “were there friends of yours hurt out there?”
“Hush!” she hissed. “Don’t be talking nonsense,
fool; they were colored—slaves, and
that’s all I know; I’m worthless any more and I’m goin’ up to my room to lay
down.”
“But Granny, what happened out there that day by the
tree?” She didn’t reply, but stood up and walked—bent body shuffling along—to
the stairs, grabbed the black banister railing, and started laboring up. “Please, Granny, what happened that day;
won’t you tell me some more?” Then she turned, sighed, sat down and, clutching
the small, white banister post, looked down at me with a scowl before lowering
her head.
So odd, Nina, that I see her still, bent over there
above me on the steps: the brown, gnarled left hand grasping the post, her
bowed head—pure white hair swirled in a knot—supported by her right hand, and
her long, clean-white skirt draped over her legs and covering all but her
cotton stockings, which drooped in crumpled folds about her ankles, concealing
partially the tops of her work shoes.
“Gracious,
why bother an old, worn-out woman? You should be out doing something
useful—lazy lout! Why, you’ll never amount to a hill of beans … lazy. If you must know, there was a
slave shack out by that tree you fancy. There was a stable out there too, with
cows and horses. The tornado came out of nowhere that day, and it destroyed the
stable, killed horses, and killed a darky who was in there taking care of them.
It knocked a limb off of your tree as well, and if you look up there you’ll see
where it was ripped off. Now leave me be;
I’m gonna lay down; I’m fagged out from your nonsense.”
And that was all I was able to get out of her,
Nina, and snapping out of my trance, I scanned the area once more, looked up
into those tortured branches, ran my bike up the slight incline towards home
and, seeing Uncle Ernest settle into our double-facing swing, spun on down at
top speed. [To
be continued Tuesday, 8/21/2012
No comments:
Post a Comment