Read Online Five Minutes in Heaven by Lisa Alther - Free Book Online

legs, which were laced with thongs from her sandals.
    â€œThank you, Momma,” said her father. “I’m sure you’re right.”
    Jude glanced at him, scratching her neck, which was itching from her scalloped lace collar. Often he agreed with his mother to her face, then ignored her behind her back. Hopefully, this was one of those times.
    Satisfied, her grandmother resumed her account of the siege of Fredericksburg, told to her as a girl by a legless soldier at the Confederate Veterans’ Home: “As the Yankees crossed the Rappahannock, Lieutenant Stevens hid behind a stone wall to shoot at them. All of a sudden, he saw a baby girl toddling down the street chasing a rolling shell casing, with bullets whistling all around her. He ran out and grabbed her and carried her down a side street, where he came to a young woman in a dirty ripped dress who was sitting on a pile of rubble.”
    â€œMa‘am,” he said, “is this here your little girl?”
    She and the child reached out for each other. “Sir,” she said, “my cow’s been shot. It’s lying in that shed over yonder. You can go butcher it and take the meat if you want to.”
    â€œThank you, ma‘am,” he said, “but the Yankees is coming fast, and I surely would be honored if you’d come along with me right now.”
    â€œWhy, thank you, sir,” she said, taking his outstretched hand with a coy smile, as though he’d just asked her to dance. “I don’t mind if I do.”
    As he led her up the street, a shell exploded beside them. He woke up to find a starving hog licking the stumps where his legs used to be. The mother and her baby were lying dead beside him. Down the hill, he could see Yankee soldiers dressed in gowns stolen from the town houses. They were drinking fine French wines from the bottle and waltzing with one another around a bonfire of Chippendale chairs.
    â€œThere was no way in the world,” Jude’s grandmother concluded, “for our fine colonial cavaliers to prevail over that race of barbarians.”
    It was her favorite story. Although it was a good one, Jude had heard it a hundred times.
    â€œAnd another thing, Daniel,” her grandmother said as she ladled milk gravy over her fried chicken.
    He looked up, the green beans on his fork slowly dripping fat-back. “Yes, Momma?”
    â€œThis poor child has no mother. And the way you’re behaving, running around with that floozy from intensive care at all hours of the night, now she has no father, either. It’s not going unnoticed around town that Jude is practically living at the Elkins’s while you cavort in back alleys with your concubine.”
    â€œYes, Momma,” he said, chewing his beans. “I’m sure you’re right.”
    â€œWhat’s a floozy?” asked Jude, studying the wallpaper over the sideboard, which featured a white columned mansion surrounded by women in hoop skirts and sunbonnets. This was what her mother’s mansion in heaven looked like. One day soon, she was going to come take Jude there. It wasn’t true that she had no mother. Just because no one else saw her didn’t mean she wasn’t real. “What’s cavort?”
    â€œMomma, tell us about Provence, why don’t you?” said her father.
    â€œProvence? Oh, Provence was lovely. You know, I believe I like Provence almost as much as I do Virginia. Except for all that funny food. And that strange language nobody understands except the French.”
    Her father laughed, running his hand over his bald spot. “I declare, Momma, you’re the only person I ever saw who travels the world searching for Virginia. Why don’t you just go to Virginia in the first place?”
    She sighed and patted her red lips with her linen napkin. “Well, you know, Virginia’s not what it used to be. Once, before that dreadful war, it was a gracious land of rolling