Read Online Chinaberry by James Still - Free Book Online Page A

Georgia and passed it in Texas. No other unmarried woman came in contact more frequently with Anson.
    At the Beech Ledge Cemetery, there were no beech trees and never had been. Nor was there any ledge. The ground was flat as a table. The original settler of the land thereabout had named it for the one where his parents were buried. Several of his children had died in infancy, along with two wives, and eventually he had been interred there himself. There were trees shadingthe graves—great, evergreen live oaks, which had preceded the founding of the cemetery and which gummed the grave stones at their almost secret blooming in spring and showered the ground with spent leaves throughout the year.
    Before the lowering of the casket into the grave, the Winters family departed, as was the custom. Others, who had arrived by buggy, carriage, and horseback, lingered. Only two automobiles had tracked the half-wilderness road to the isolated cemetery: the Winterses’ Hudson and Lurie's Overland.
    Lurie's vehicle drew attention, particularly that of the women. Yet the envy or the disapproval was masked. There was many an “Oh!” and “Ah!” The wife of the preacher cried out, “How cunning!” Whatever that meant. But Lurie was not attending these social nuances concerning the car, which spoke more than was actually put into words.
    Lurie was struck by a symbolic act following the end of the preacher's exhortation when he had said “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” and dropped a rose into the open grave. Jack had stepped forward and more pitched than dropped a small object into the hole. It happened unexpectedly, and the viewers who usually missed nothing construed it to be another blossom. It made a small thud as it struck the casket, or so Lurie believed. There was no further mention of this act among them. Later she was to ask Jack directly, and he said it was the gold safety pin their sister had sent to the shower party given Melba after they had announced their forthcoming wedding. It had been Little Johnnes's first toy. Pinned to his collar, it served as a teether and had been latched to his rompers or shirt pocket all his life, as it had remained a wonder to him.
    Lurie lingered among the graves, as anxious as any for details not known to her. Since the age of twelve she had filed away in her mind every scrap of information concerning the Wintersfamily. Here, under the live oaks, she listened. The shaking of hands, the greetings, the comments on the dead child. Talk of the father took place, as it would have at any funeral.
    Lurie learned little, for they knew little.
    â€œAnson could diaper a baby as good as any woman, and as quick.”
    â€œI was in a grocery store once, and in came Anson Winters, and he bought something, and he stuck his hand in a pocket to get some change, and out came a bunch of safety pins along with the money. Sad and sort of funny, too.”
    â€œReckon he washed the diapers?”
    â€œNaw, he has help at that cotton farm. At the ranch, too. Women to help.”
    â€œYes, women. Mexican women, at the farm.”
    â€œHmm! I wonder!”
    â€œBy the time the child was two, he didn't need help. Didn't want help. He was mostly holding on to the child, or the child holding on to him, all hours of day and night. They were one.”
    â€œAnson done a job my husband wouldn't’ve undertook. I praise him for it.”
    â€œWith his wife gone, his child dead, what now?”
    â€œSome floozy will hook him.”
    â€œWouldn't you like to be the one?”
    Smothered laughter.
    News of what did follow in the months ahead, or in the next two and a half years ahead, was hard to come by. But even in such a place, where farms and ranches were miles apart—sometimes counties apart—there was always somebody who knew somebody who had gleaned a grain of it and passed it along, however flawed in passage.
    The telephone system was subject to frequent