Morning Glory

  “I’ll see after the pigs,” he said, ending the moment of closeness.

  Donald Wade agreed to show Will where the pigs were, and Eleanor sent them out with a half-pail of milk and orders to feed it to them.

  “To the pigs!” Will exclaimed, aghast. He’d gone hungry most of his life and she fed fresh milk to the pigs?

  “Herbert gives more than we can use, and the milk truck can’t get in here, what with the driveway all washed out. Anyway, I don’t want no town people nosing around the place. Feed it to the pigs.”

  It broke Will’s heart to carry the milk out of the house.

  Donald Wade led the way, though Will could have found the pigpen with his nose alone. Crossing the yard, he took a better look at the driveway. It was sorry, all right. But Mrs. Dinsmore had a mule, and if there was a mule there must be implements to hitch to it. And if there were no implements, he’d shovel by hand. He needed the driveway passable to get the junk hauled out of here. Already he was assessing that junk not as waste but as scrap metal. Scrap metal would soon bring top dollar with America turning out war supplies for England. The woman was sitting on top of a gold mine and didn’t even know it.

  Not only was the driveway sad; the yard in broad daylight was pitiful. Dilapidated buildings that looked as if a swift kick would send them over. Those with a few good years left were sorely in need of paint. The corncrib was filled with junk instead of corn—barrels, crates, rolls of rusty barbed wire, stacks of warped lumber. Will couldn’t tell what kept the door of the chicken coop from falling off. The smell, as they passed, was horrendous. No wonder the chickens roosted in the junkpiles. He passed stacks of machinery parts, empty paint cans—though he couldn’t figure out where the paint might have been used. The goat’s nest seemed to be in an abandoned truck with the cushion stuffing chewed away. Lord, thought Will, there was enough work here to keep a man going twenty-four hours a day for a solid year.

  Bobbing along beside him, Donald Wade interrupted his thoughts.

  “There.” The boy pointed at the structure that looked like a tobacco-drying shed.

  “There what?”

  “That’s where the pig mash is.” He led the way into a building crammed with everything from soup to nuts, only this time, usable stuff. Obviously Dinsmore had done more than collect junk. Barterer? Horse trader? The paint cans in here were full. The rolls of barbed wire, new. Furniture, tools, saddles, a newspaper press, egg crates, pulley belts, canepoles, the fender of a Model-A, a dress form, a barrel full of pistons, Easter baskets, a boiler, cowbells, moonshine jugs, bedsprings... and who knew what else was buried in the close-packed building.

  Donald Wade pointed to a gunnysack sitting on the dirt floor with a rusty coffee can beside it. “Two.” He held up three fingers and had to fold one down manually.

  “Two?”

  “Mama, she mixes two with the milk.”

  Will hunkered beside Donald Wade, opened the sack and smiled as the boy continued to hold down the finger. “You wanna scoop ‘em for me?”

  Donald Wade nodded so hard his hair flopped. He filled the can but couldn’t manage to pull it from the deep sack. Will reached in to help. The mash fell into the milk with a sharp, grainy smell. When the second scoop was dumped, Donald Wade found a piece of lath in a corner.

  “You stir with this.”

  Will began stirring. Donald Wade stood with his hands inside the bib of his overalls, watching. At length he volunteered, “I can stir good.”

  Will grinned secretly. “You can?”

  Donald Wade made his hair flop again.

  “Well, good thing, ‘cause I was needin’ a rest.”

  Even with both hands knotted hard around the lath, Donald Wade needed help from Will. The man’s smile broke free as the boy clamped his teeth over his bottom lip and maneuvered the stick with flimsy arms. Will’s arms fit nice around the small shoulders as he knelt behind the boy and the two of them together mixed the mash.

  “You help your mama do this every day?”

  “Prett-near. She gets tired. Mostly I pick eggs.”

  “Where?”

  “Everywhere.”

  “Everywhere?”

  “Around the yard. I know where the chickens like it best. I c’n show you.”

  “They give many eggs?”

  Donald Wade shrugged.

  “She sell ‘em?”

  “Yup.”

  “In town?”

  “Down on the road. She just leaves ‘em there and people leave the money in a can. She don’t like goin’ to town.”

  “How come?”

  Donald Wade shrugged again.

  “She got any friends?”

  “Just my pa. But he died.”

  “Yeah, I know. And I’m sure sorry about that, Donald Wade.”

  “Know what Baby Thomas did once?”

  “What?”

  “He ate a worm.”

  Until that moment Will hadn’t realized that to a four-year-old the eating of a worm was more important than the death of a father. He chuckled and ruffled the boy’s hair. It felt as soft as it looked.

  I could get to like this one a lot, he thought.

  With the hogs fed, they stopped to rinse the bucket at the pump. Beneath it was a wide mudhole with not even a board thrown across it to keep the mud from splattering.

  Naturally, Donald Wade got his boots coated. When they returned to the house his mother scolded, “You git, child, and scrape them soles before you come in here!”

  Will put in, “It’s my fault, ma’am. I took him down by the pump.”

  “You did? Oh, well...” Immediately she hid her pique, then glanced across the property. When she spoke, her voice held a quiet despondency. “Things are a real fright around here, I know. But I guess you can see that for yourself.”

  Will sealed his lips, tugged his hat brim clear down to his eyebrows, slipped his hands flat inside his backside pockets and scanned the property expressionlessly. Eleanor peeked at him from the corner of her eye. Her heart beat out a warning. He’ll run now. He’ll sure as shootin’ run after getting an eyeful of the place in broad daylight.

  But again he saw the possibilities. And nothing on the good green earth could make him turn his back on this place unless he was asked to. Gazing across the yard, all he said, in his low-key voice was, “Reckon the pens could use a little cleanin’.”

  CHAPTER

  5

  They went for a walk when the midmorning sun had lifted well above the trees—a green and gold day smelling of deep summer. Will had never walked with a woman and her children before. It held a strange, unexpected appeal. He noticed her way with the children, how she carried Baby Thomas on one hip with his heel flattening her smock. How, as they set off from the porch, she reached back for Donald Wade, inviting, “Come on, honey, you lead the way,” and helped him off the last step. How she watched him gallop ahead, smiling after him as if she’d never before seen his flopping yellow hair, his baggy striped overalls. How she locked her hands beneath Thomas’s backside, leaned from the waist, took a deep pull of the clear air and said to the sky, “My, if this day ain’t a blessin’.” How she called ahead, “Careful o’ that wire in the grass there, Donald Wade!” How she plucked a leaf and handed it to Thomas, then let him touch her nose with it and pretended it tickled her and made the young one giggle.

  Watching, Will became entranced. Lord, she was some mother. Always kind voiced. Always finding the good in things. Always concerned about her boys. Always making them feel important. Nobody had ever made Will feel important, only in the way.

  He studied her covertly, noting more clearly the bulk of her belly, outlined by the baby’s leg. Donald Wade had said she gets tired. Recalling the boy’s words, Will considered offering to carry the baby, but he felt out of his depth around Thomas. He’d be no good at getting his nose tickled or making chitchat. Besides, she might not cotton to a stranger like him handling Glendon Dinsmore’s boys.

  They went around
to the back of the house where the dishtowel flapped on a line strung between teetering clothes-poles that had been shimmed up by crude wood braces. Beyond these were more junkpiles before the woods began—pines, oaks, hickories and more. Sparrows flitted from tree to tree ahead, and Eleanor followed with her finger, telling the boys, “See? Chipping sparrows.” A brown thrasher swept past and perched on a dead limb. Again she pointed it out and named it. The sun glinted off the boys’ blond heads and painted their mother’s dress an even brighter hue. They walked along a faint double path worn by wheels some time ago. Sometimes Donald Wade skipped, swinging his arms widely. The younger one tipped his head back and looked at the sky, his hand resting on his mother’s shoulder. They were so happy! Will hadn’t come up against many happy people in his day. It was arresting.

  A short distance from the house they came upon an east-facing hill covered by regular rows of squat fruit trees.

  “This here’s the orchard,” Eleanor announced, gazing over its length and breadth.

  “Big,” Will observed.

  “And you ain’t seen half of it. These here are peach. Down yonder is a whole string of apples and pears... and oranges, too. Glendon had this idea to try orange trees, but they never did much.” She smiled wistfully. “Too far north for them.”

  Will stepped off the path and inspected a cluster of fruit. “Could have used a little spraying.”

  “I know.” Unconsciously she stroked the baby’s back. “Glendon planned to do that, but he died in April and never got the chance.”

  This far south the trees should have been sprayed long before April, Will thought, but refrained from saying so. They moved on.

  “How old are these trees?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Glendon’s daddy planted most of them when he was still alive. All except the oranges, like I said. There’s apples, too, just about every kind imaginable, but I never learned their names. Glendon’s daddy, he knew a lot about them, but he died before I married Glendon. He was a junker, too, just like Glendon. Went to auction sales and traded stuff with anybody that came along. No reason to any of it, it seemed.” Abruptly, she inquired, “You ever tasted quince? Those there are quince.”

  “Sour as rhubarb.”

  “Make a luscious pie, though.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, ma’am.”

  “Bet you’d like to try one, wouldn’t you?”

  He gave her a sideward glance. “Reckon I would.”

  “Could use a little fat on them bones, Mr. Parker.”

  He leveled his eyes on the quince trees and tugged his hat brim so low it cut off his view of the horizon. Thankfully, she changed the subject.

  “So where’d you eat ‘em, then?”

  “California.”

  “California?” She peered up at him with her head cocked. “You been there?”

  “Picked fruit there one summer when I was a kid.”

  “You see any movie stars?”

  “Movie stars?” He wouldn’t have guessed she’d know much about movie stars. “No.” He glanced at her. “You ever seen any?”

  She laughed. “Now where would I see movie stars when I never even seen a movie?”

  “Never?”

  She shook her head. “Heard about ‘em from the kids in school, though.”

  He wished he could promise to take her sometime, but where would he get the money for movies? And even if he had it, there was no theater in Whitney. Besides, she avoided the town.

  “In California, the movie stars are only in Hollywood, and it gets cold in parts where there are mountains. And the ocean’s dirty. It stinks.”

  She could see she had her work cut out for her if she was to get that pessimism out of him. “You always so jolly?”

  He would have tugged his hat brim lower, but if he did he’d be unable to see where he was walking. “Well, California isn’t like what you think.”

  “You know, I can’t say I’d mind if you’d smile a little more often.”

  He tossed her a sullen glance. “About what?”

  “Maybe, Mr. Parker, you got to find that out for yourself.” She let the baby slip from her hip. “Lord, Thomas, if you ain’t gettin’ heavier than a guilty conscience, I don’t know. Come on, take Mommy’s hand and I’ll show you somethin’.”

  She showed him things Will would have missed: a branch shaped like a dog’s paw—“A man could whittle forever and not make anything prettier,” she declared. A place where something tiny had nested in the grass and left a collection of empty seed pods—“If I was a mouse, I’d love livin’ right here in this pretty-smellin’ orchard, wouldn’t you?” A green katydid camouflaged upon a greener blade of grass—“Y’ got to look close to see he’s makin’ the sound with his wings.” And in the adjacent woods a magnolia tree with a deep bowl, head-high, where its branches met, and within that bowl, a second tree taken root: a sturdy little oak growing straight and healthy.

  “How’d it get there?” Donald Wade asked.

  “How d’ you think?”

  “I dunno.”

  She squatted beside the boys, gazing up at the piggyback trees. “Well, there was this wise old owl lived in these woods, and one evenin’ at dusk he came by and I ast him the same thing. I says to him, how’d that li’l old oak tree get t’ growin’ in that magnolia?” She grinned at Donald Wade. “Know what he told me?”

  “Uh-uh.” Donald Wade stared at his mother, mystified. She dropped to her rump and sat like an Indian, stripping bark from a stick with her thumbnail as she went on.

  “Well, he said there was two squirrels lived here, years ago. One of ‘em was a hard worker, spent every day totin’ acorns into that little pocket in the tree up there.” She pointed with the stick. “The other squirrel, well, he was lazy. Laid on his back on that limb over there” —she pointed again, to a nearby pine—“and made a pillow out of his tail and crossed his legs and watched the busy squirrel gettin’ ready for winter. He waited until there was so many nuts they was about to start spillin’ over the edge. Then when the hardworking squirrel went off to look for one last nut, the lazy one scrambled up there and ate and ate and ate, until he’d ate every last one of ‘em. He was so full he sat on the limb and let out a burp so almighty powerful it knocked him off backwards.” She drew a deep breath, braced her hands on her knees and burped loudly, then flopped back, arms outflung. Will smiled. Donald Wade giggled. Baby Thomas squealed.

  “But it wasn’t so funny, after all,” she continued, gazing at the sky.

  Donald Wade sobered and leaned over her to look straight down into her face. “Why not?”

  “Because on his way down, he cracked his head on a limb and killed himself deader’n a mackerel.”

  Donald Wade smacked himself in the head and fell backward, sprawled on the grass beside Eleanor, his eyelids closed but twitching. She rolled up and took Thomas into her lap. “Now when the busy little squirrel come back with that one last nut between his teeth, he climbed up and saw that all his acorns were gone. He opened his mouth to cry and the last acorn he brung up, why, it fell into the nest beneath the nutshells the greedy squirrel had left.” Donald Wade, too, sat up, his interest in the story aroused once again. “He knew he couldn’t stay here for the winter, ‘cause he’d already gathered up all the nuts for miles around. So he left his cozy nest and didn’t come back till he was old. So old it was hard for him to climb up and down the oak trees like he used to. But he remembered the little nest in the magnolia where it had been warm and dry and safe, and he climbed up there to see it again, just for old times’ sake. And what do you think he found?”

  “The oak tree growin’ there?” the older boy ventured.

  “That’s right.” She finger-combed Donald Wade’s hair off his brow. “A sturdy little oak with enough acorns that the old squirrel never had to run up and down a tree again, ‘cause they was growin’ all around his head, right there in his warm, cozy nest.”

  Donald Wade popped up. “Tell me another o
ne!”

  “Uh-uh. Got to go on, show Mr. Parker the rest of the place.” She pushed to her feet and reached for Thomas’s hand. “Come on, boys. Donald Wade, you take Thomas’s other hand. Come on, Mr. Parker,” she said over her shoulder. “Day’s movin’ on.”

  Will lagged behind, watching them saunter up the lane, three abreast, holding hands. The rear of her skirt was wrinkled from the damp grass, but she cared not a whit. She was busy pointing out birds, laughing softly, talking to the boys in her singsong Southern fashion. He felt a catch in his heart for the mother he’d never known, the hand he’d never held, the make-believe tales he’d never been told. For a moment he pretended he’d had one like Eleanor Dinsmore. Every kid should have one like her. Maybe, Mr. Parker, you got to find that out for yourself. Her words echoed through his mind as they moved on, and Will found himself glancing back over his shoulder at the oak tree growing out of the magnolia, realizing fully what a rare thing it was.

  In time they came to a double flank of beehives, grayed, weathered and untended, dotting the edge of the orchard. He searched his mind for any knowledge of bees, but found none. He saw the hives as a potential source of income, but she gave them wide berth and he recalled that her husband had died tending the bees, was buried somewhere out here in the orchard. But he saw no grave and she pointed none out. In spite of the way Dinsmore had died, Will felt himself drawn to the hives, to the few insects that droned around them, and to the scent of the fruit—wormy or whole—as it warmed beneath the eleven o’clock sun. He wondered about the man who’d been here before him, a man who maintained nothing, finished nothing and apparently never worried about either. How could a man let things run to ruin that way? How could a man lucky enough to own things—so many things—care so little about their condition? Will could count in ten seconds the number of things he’d ever owned: a horse, a saddle, clothing, a razor. Lengthening his stride to catch up with Eleanor Dinsmore, he wondered if she was as hopeless a dreamer as her husband had been.