Part Four

Eighteen

CARRIE BISHOP

NO ONE HAD LIVED IN THE AUNT JANE PLACE FOR YEARS. Weeds grew close and dense in the yard and hung in tangles beneath each of the front steps. Inside, spiders draped their webs over the rough-hewn rafters and dustballs caught on splinters in the floor. I was so pleased when I moved in. I craved the roughness and untidiness.

I could see the headstones of the May family cemetery from my front window—Alec May, my mother, Aunt Jane, baby Orlando, Albion. The man who preached Albion’s funeral spoke of the worms splintering the pine wood of coffins and devouring flesh, of sin and corruption. His words were oddly comforting. I couldn’t have abided silliness from him.

Flora’s children stopped by every day, just as Flora and Miles and I had visited Aunt Jane. I fed them blackberry pie and buttermilk, and told them stories about Uncle Albion. Once a month on Sunday we walked the eight miles to Tater Nob, to visit their Papaw and Mamaw Honaker. And in the evenings we popped corn, made fudge, pulled molasses candy, read aloud or told stories by the firelight. Often visitors stopped for the night. Flora and Aunt Becka were excellent cooks, and the Honaker farm gained a reputation as a good resting place for travelers. Ben had added a fifth room to the house, and if it was still crowded, Aunt Becka walked up Grapevine and spent the night in my big featherbed.

One evening in early August we had just sat down to supper when there came a knocking on the screen door.

“Company!” Jane called. Luke knocked over his chair as he ran to answer the door. When he came back his eyes were wide.

“They’s a man on the front porch with a funny hat. He wont come in. Says he wants to talk to Aunt Carrie.”

“Whoever could it be?” Flora circled the table, spooned mashed potatoes onto each plate with a sharp swatting motion.

“Dont let your supper git cold,” Aunt Becka warned. “Bring him on in here.”

Even with his back turned I knew him at once. He wore overalls, a red plaid shirt and a cloth cap. His dark hair curled over his collar. I pushed the screen door open and he turned around.

“Aint you a sight?” he said, and grinned.

“What are you doing here?”

“Come for my banjer.”

“Then I’ll go fetch it.”

“And I come to see the meanest woman in east Kentucky. They kilt my fiddle player and they kilt the preacher. But you’re still yet here. I had a hankering to see you.”

I wrapped my arms around a porch post and looked out across the river.

“Besides that, I need nurses.”

“I knew you wanted something,” I said, “else you wouldnt be here, hankering or no.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“Carrie?”

Ben stood in the doorway, the warm yellow light of the kitchen behind him.

“Everthing all right?”