Southern Discomfort

Mostly we had walked in silence, enjoying a communion that needed few words. Now as we started up the gentle rise, I remembered a warm May night back when this field was planted in corn. He and I and Mother and the little twins had been out walking in the moonlight, much like this. It had rained all night the night before, a long, much-needed soaking rain, and the sun had shone all afternoon. As we stood at the edge of the field, Daddy suddenly hushed us. 'Listen,' he'd said.

Crickets and cicadas stridulated all around us and a soft breeze rustled the green plants, but that wasn't what he meant. We strained our ears and there beneath the crickets came faint creaks like the opening and closing of a thousand tiny rusty hinges.

'What is it?' we whispered.

'Corn's growing,' Daddy said. 'Hear it? Drinking up water with its roots and stretching up its stalks. It'll be six inches taller tomorrow.'

'Do you remember a night?' I asked him now

'What night was that, shug?'

'The night we heard the corn growing?'

He smiled but kept walking. 'That was a purty sound, won't it?'

Down the slope from the house, on the same side as the porch swing, lay our family graveyard; and I suddenly realized this had been his destination all along.

Under a blazing sun, the bouquet of all the old roses planted here would have met us downwind. The cool moon silvered the heavy old-fashioned blossoms. It washed away their delicate pinks and flaming yellows, and it paled their heady aroma into a ghostly fragrance.

Inside the low stone wall, we passed the black marble obelisk he'd erected to his father's memory, the act of a boy's defiant pride after revenuers shot out the tires of the older man's truck and left a young family fatherless. The inscription was in deep shadow, but I knew it by heart:

ROBERT ANDREW KNOTT

1879 - 1923

WELL DONE, THOU GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT

Ten feet away was a white marble stone washed in moonlight. Its block letters were so deeply carved that they were as easy to read against the smooth surface as newsprint on a page.

ANNIE RUTH KNOTT

1915 - 1944

HER SONS WILL REMEMBER AND BLESS HER NAME

Growing up, I hadn't given those dates a second thought. Yet here I stood—now past my thirtieth birthday, but still young, still in a state of becoming—and I experienced an almost visceral shock as I realized for the very first time what it meant that she had ended while only in her twenties.

Daddy's words seemed to come from far away. 'They say Herman may be in a wheelchair the rest of his life.'

I slipped my hand in his. Less for his comfort than for mine.

'I been thinking on his mama all day. She named him after her daddy. You know that?'

'Yes, sir.'

'She didn't have much of a life. Nothing but hard work and babies.'

'And you,' I said loyally.

'Won't much of a prize.' He reached out with gnarled fingers and lightly touched the letters of her name. 'She was such a little thing. Not much more than a baby when she come to me. Not as old as Annie Sue is right now when she lost our first son.'

A newborn lamb knelt atop the miniature stone beside Annie Ruth's. After all these years, its features had weathered smooth, but as a child, I had been enchanted by the lamb and whenever I played here, I brought it flowers or ferns or colored leaves depending on the season.

Mother hadn't known Daddy's first wife; but she was the one who planted the yellow Marshall Niel rose by Annie Ruth's grave, and she was the one who sang lullabies to Annie Ruth's babies and tried to mother her boys.

The summer Mother was dying, she walked me down the slope to show me where she wanted to lie—opposite Annie Ruth with a space left between them for Daddy some day. Her stone was over there now:

SUSAN STEPHENSON KNOTT

I WILL NOT LET THEE GO, EXCEPT THOU BLESS ME

'Were you ever jealous of her?' I asked back then.

Mother's face was serene as she looked over at the white marble marker of the woman who had preceded her in all things on this farm. 'Oh, Annie Ruth and I made up our differences years ago.'

'Then you were jealous.'

'Use your head, Deborah!' she answered sharply. 'I had her man, I had her sons, I had her place. I was alive! What cause did I have for jealousy? No, it was Annie Ruth who was jealous of me at first. But we made it up.'

'How?'

My mother had answered my every question that summer, even some I didn't ask. It was as if she wanted to tell me all her secrets before she died. But not this one.

'Annie Ruth knows,' she said finally, 'and that's enough.'