Grownups with death clouding their eyes talked about life while children laughed and played in the yard. Vonnie and I joined in endless rounds of Red Rover and Ring Around the Rosie. After that, someone started a game of Hide and Seek. From my hiding place high in the saddle fork of a maple tree, I could see people gathered on the porch. The big picnic tables were filled and overflowing. I thought Uncle Teel would be pleased. Grandma said he always did like a lot of company.
Aunt Annie had too nervous a disposition to stay alone where Uncle Teel died, so she went to stay with relatives in another county, leaving us to close up the house.
Tolerable Thigpen sent Ginny to help us. Vonnie and I played with baby Nia, making her a sugar tit from a spoonful of sugar tied up in a piece of cloth and taking her for rides in the wheelbarrow. We scattered corn to bait the coop so Grandma could catch a chicken most any time she wanted. One whole day she lured the chickens in one by one and wrung their necks. She chopped the heads off, watching as they ran around spurting blood from headless bodies. After they fell over dead, she dipped them in boiling water, plucked the feathers, lit a pine knot torch to singe the pinfeathers, then gutted and cut them up.
Turkey vultures held watch from a dead pine tree, lifting grotesque bodies to rearrange their wings from time to time.
After Grandma boiled the chickens in the big outdoor kettle, she added a handful of salt, boned the meat, and packed it in mason jars, pouring broth to an inch from the top. She had Ginny wipe the rims of the jars with cider vinegar to cut any grease so the lids would seal properly in the big canner. There were fourteen chickens put up and ready to use for chicken and dumplings. Grandma sent four of the jars home with Ginny.
Tolerable Thigpen stopped by to say he was right sorry to see us go. Grandma asked him to keep an eye on the place since Aunt Annie was figuring to come back to Flat Mountain in the spring. He perked up at that. Grandma gave him the stack of newly cut firewood from the porch, and he took Pony home with him.
I sat on the porch and watched him walk away, dipping to one side with each step.
The vultures settled to the ground and picked at the guts and bones and the bloodied dirt until no trace of death remained.
13
Lead a Horse to Water
The house felt strange when we got home from Flat Mountain. Like being in a cemetery, where the air was always flat as a flitter. I’d heard it said you couldn’t fly a kite in a cemetery even on a windy day because the air didn’t have any lift to it. I’d never tried it though. Although Grandpa had been home all along, a house needed more than one person to give it life so as there could be a give and take, at least according to Grandma, and the more people in it, the more life there was. It must have been true because something important had left our house while we were gone, and we’d have to laugh and cry and pray and fuss and work inside those rooms to get it back.
Grandma thought Grandpa was looking a little peaked, but she reckoned all he needed was a few biscuits and gravy to give him some color. Nobody talked about Uncle Teel dying, not a single word. It seems like we would have, but we didn’t. That’s just how we were. Grandma made a big supper and kept putting more on Grandpa’s plate until he finally told her he was up to his eyeballs and couldn’t eat another bite and besides, it was time to get ready for prayer meeting if she was really set on going. She was.
A few trees concealed a stone-circled fire site that had seen too many butts and not enough fires. Most everybody called it the ash pit, but I’d heard some call it the arm pit. The odor of stamped-out cigarettes and unrepented sins soured the air.
Roby Stover made a beeline there as soon as he could escape the Wednesday night prayer meeting for a couple of minutes. I didn’t know why we called him Roby when everybody else was called Brother This or Sister That. Grandma would know, but I wasn’t so sure she’d tell me. There was a lot of stuff she said wouldn’t hurt me one iota not to know.
While everybody shook hands with the people around them, even those they’d seen earlier at the post office or the Piggly Wiggly, Roby ducked back in. He wasn’t fooling me. A person needn’t smell the Sen-Sen on him to know that he’d been sneaking a smoke. Sen-Sen was a licorice candy advertised as “breath perfume.” Most of the men at the ash pit carried a packet of it tucked away. But Sen-Sen did little to cover the lingering smell of the Chesterfield or Lucky Strike or Camel cigarettes they tried to keep secret from meddling wives and girlfriends.
My grandpa preached hard as any man could against smoking and drinking. He said Roby hadn’t quit his sinful ways because the Holy Ghost hadn’t convicted him yet. When he got convicted, he’d lay those poisons down and never be tempted to pick them up again. It hadn’t happened yet, but Grandpa had faith it would. In the meantime he’d keep praying for Roby to be delivered. That was all a man could do. God would do the rest. Grandpa was sure of it.
“You can lead a horse to water,” he said, shaking his head, “but you can’t make him drink.”
I wasn’t sure what
