Johnston - I Promise

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Authors: Joan Johnston
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out of the chair as though to backhand him and seemed to realize belatedly that Marsh was four inches taller than him and wasn’t budging an inch. Cyrus halted in his tracks. A scowl appeared on his craggy face as he took a belligerent stance across from his son.
    “If I’d ever talked to my father the way you talk to me, he’d have knocked me flat,” Cyrus said.
    Maybe he was more of a father to you than you’ve been to me, Marsh thought. But he said, “I do my share of the work around here. I don’t have to account to you for where I go.”
    “If your mother was alive—”
    “She isn’t,” Marsh interrupted. “She’s dead. Been dead since I was born.” I’m all you’ve got left, Dad. Why can’t you love me?
    The commercial ended, and as though a bell had sounded for the next round, Cyrus turned abruptly and settled himself back in his chair. Eyes glued to the TV set, he said, “Make sure you mend that fence along the south pasture tomorrow. Got a call from the Circle Crown foreman that a few of my cattle have strayed onto Carson property.” His father smirked. “Seems that Santa Gertrudis bull Hattie Carson is so persnickety about was giving out free stud services to North cows.”
    Marsh made a disgusted sound in his throat as he turned away. His father had been talking for weeks about how easy it would be to shove down some fence and let a few of his cows in season stray over to where Hattie Carson’s prize bull could get a sniff at them. Come spring, Cyrus would have himself some pretty good-looking calves. Damned if the old man hadn’t done it.
    “I’ll take care of it, Dad,” he said.
    His father wasn’t listening. He never listened. Mostly he ignored his son, except when he wanted the stock fed, or the barn roof repaired, or some fence mended. Then he wanted it done quick and done right. He had used his belt liberally, along with his fists, to give instruction—until the day fifteen-year-old Marsh had punched him back.
    Marsh had been as astonished as his father when the old man hit the ground that day nearly six years ago, but it hadn’t been necessary for either of them to repeat the lesson. After that his father had browbeat him with words, but he hadn’t laid a hand on him again.
    Marsh stepped into his bedroom and closed the door behind him, shutting out the sound of a police siren across the hall.
    The room reminded him of his grandmother, the one person in the world who had ever given a damn about him. He missed her. He bought a lavender sachet at the H.E.B. every so often when he was grocery shopping and hid it under his pillow, because that was the scent she had always worn.
    Doilies Grandma Dennison had crocheted adorned his bedside table and the chest. She had made the quilt on his old sleigh bed from colorful scraps of material that each had some family history she had explained to him.
    “This here red is the dress your mama wore on her first date with your pa to the high school dance. Ooo-eee they were so much in love! That’s why your pa gets so testy sometimes that she’s not here with us anymore. And this is a piece of your pa’s Air Force uniform. In the Big War he was stationed in Burma refuelin’ fighter planes.
    “This lace-covered satin bit is from my wed-din’ gown. Don’t pay no ‘tention to all these wrinkles I got now. Believe you me, I was one bee-u-tee-ful bride! And this flowered calico is a piece of your great-grandma Hailey’s Sunday-go-to-meetin’ dress.”
    He listened to the stories sitting cross-legged at her feet, the porch creaking as she kept her rocker moving with a boot-shod toe.
    They were wonderful tales. Like, how Great-grandma Hailey had locked Great-grandpa Hailey out of the house one spring until he tilled her garden. “This piece of chambray is from the shirt he had on that day,” she confided to him.
    “This is part of your great aunt Eulalie’s dress she wore on the train to St. Louis to meet her beau. Only, she borrowed it

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