Read Online Dovey Coe by Frances O'Roark Dowell - Free Book Online Page A

to Amos what music was, the same way it was hard to get across to him that when people moved their mouths to talk, sound came out. He didn’t have a good idea for sound, I don’t think. The closest I could get him to understanding was for him to put his hand on my throat while I talked. When you talk, your throat will vibrate a bit, and I wanted Amos to feel that particular vibration. The next day I heard him making them noises he made from time to time, and when I looked into his room, he had his hands on his throat, listening to himself.
    I hoped Amos would be okay with all themfolks around. I knew it could be confusing for him to have a lot of folks about him moving and talking all at once. Watching him help Daddy build that platform, I got to wondering if some little girl might take a shine to him soon. Amos was right handsome; in fact, he had a lot of the same features as Caroline had, and even went one better. His hair was yellow and curly while Caroline had to do with dark and straight. How I got stuck with this old brown mess on top of my head, I don’t know. Seems God made me for something other than sitting around and looking good all the time, I reckon.
    I sat down on a pile of old blankets for a minute, letting my usual worries wash over me. What if some little girl broke Amos’s heart? What if Parnell turned Caroline’s feelings around again and convinced her to marry him and then somehow got control of Amos and sent him to a home? What if something happened to me and there was no one to help Amos through all the complications that life threw in his path?
    â€œSister, come over here and help hammer some of these nails,” Daddy yelled from where he and Amos was working. I stood up then and shook the worries from me. When I reached the other side of the barn, Daddy put a hammer inmy hand, saying, “Just don’t tell your mama I made you stray from your ladylike ways. I’ll get in a mess of trouble for that.”
    I began pounding a nail into the two-by-four, humming beneath my breath, and in less than a minute, I felt like my old self again.
    Hammering will always cure what ails you, I have found.
    After what seemed like years, the sun started making its way down the other side of Katie’s Knob, and us Coes got dressed for the party. Caroline looked pretty as always in a blue and white polka-dot dress and sweet little white dance slippers Mama ordered special from the Sears and Roebuck catalog. Mama looked extrapretty, too. She had on her red dress that brought out the coppery red lights in her hair, which is brown like mine, only darker.
    I was hoping to get by with wearing a clean pair of dungarees and a white shirt, but Mama come into my room and said I had better wear a dress so as to make Caroline happy. She pulled out my good yellow dress from where I tried to keep it hid in the back of the closet, and then went to borrow a yellow ribbon for my hair from Caroline. By the time I finished getting ready I looked so dolled up, I hardly known myself in the mirror.
    Seems like just about everybody showed up at once, and the yard was full of folks talking and laughing and looking good as they known how to. Tom and Huck was running around, trying to convince folks to give them the scraps off their plates, and a couple of the littler children were chasing after them. I sat on the porch with Amos and Wilson Brown, feeling like I was in another girl’s skin. For the first time since I known him, I felt like I needed to make nice conversation with Wilson. That’s what wearing a dress will do to a person.
    By the time most folks were well into their eating, who should finally show up in his car but Parnell Caraway. I breathed a bit more easy when I seen he come alone. The last thing I wanted was for Paris to see me dressed like I was. She’d never let me hear the end of it.
    Parnell strolled up to the yard, nodding and smiling at folks left and right, like he were a