the while, Mr. Chappels had been reaching quietly across Uncle Everett’s horse. He glanced secretly at me and secured its reins. Then, as stealthily as possible, he produced a small pistol from his coat pocket, and, without flinching an eyelash, shot the big man, squarely in the chest. Crawford sank to the floor, looked up in shock, collapsed, rolled to one side and stared off into space. A rattling sound escaped from his throat. Blood poured out of his mouth. He groaned and stretched out his legs; then grew silent. He was dead.
My lips parted in surprise. How wide my eyes were, I can only imagine. I began trembling. Suddenly I stopped and broke out in a nervous laughter.
“Quiet, Tommy,” Uncle Everett said. He rose to his feet and wiped the mud off his pants. He slipped the papers out of Uncle Jim’s hand, hugged the old man, and tore up the eviction. He kissed Aunt Viola on her neck and hugged her, too.
“Uncle Jim, find me a rope,” said Uncle Everett.
The old man shuffled around the side of his house to his barn. He soon returned with a heavy length of hemp twine and ten feet or so of rope. Uncle Everett tied the twine about Crawford’s body and secured him to a tobacco pallet, which we dragged behind Mr. Chappels’ horse, all the way down the road and back to the barn.
Upon our arrival at the house, my mother vented her frustration on all three of us. You could see the exasperation on her face. “You simpleton!” she wagged her head in disbelief at Uncle Everett. “You could have gotten the boy killed! As well as yourself and Marion!”
He turned away with rebuffed sadness, but not before rubbing my head with his hand.
“Your son’s a fine lad, a man,” he said to my mother. “My God, woman! Time will bear me out.”
She began to cry. He glanced toward Mr. Chappels, shrugged his shoulders; then he bent forward and kissed her.
Neither man was ever charged with a crime. Crawford’s death was ruled: “an accidental firing of a gun in self-defense.” My grandmother, mother, Mr. Chappels, Uncle Everett, and I attended his funeral, along with many of Abingdon’s leading citizens. Nothing else was ever said, except by way of gossip.
Chapter Three
Over the next few weeks, we saw very little of Uncle Everett. I missed him greatly, for in every way he was my surrogate father. We did enjoy Mr. Chappels’ visits, especially my mother. He began showing up in the late afternoons. Frequently, he brought her flowers and, occasionally, boxes of candy for my grandmother, Pearl, and me.
My grandmother effused for hours after he left. “Ah! Shaula! I told you there was another man for you. You like him. Don’t deny it. That’s quite all right, dear. Hamilton is dead. Tommy’s daddy is never coming back. I don’t mean to sound maudlin. But we have to face reality. He needs a daddy, and you’re too young to waste away as a widow.” It would grieve her to have to say this. Nonetheless, she would fold her hands in her lap and stare at my mother with that certain look, with that dreadful truth in her eye: that both knew that this was best.
They would rock together. Sometimes my mother would cry. Although, I was quite a large and strong child for age six, my mother would reach for my hand and have me sit in her lap. She would hold my head against her shoulder and neck, and rock and rock and rock.
Sometimes my grandmother would turn with a twinkle in her eye, and, standing with her back to the fireplace, lift the edges of her dress—ever so coquettishly—shuffle her feet in a pretend dance, and sing:
Over there, over there, send the word, send the word, over there.
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,
The drum’s rum-tumming everywhere.
So prepare, say a prayer, send the word, send the word to beware.
The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,
And they won’t be back till its over over there.
If she were in a more melancholic mood, however, she would remain seated and hum: “Oh, Danny Boy.” Sometimes she would substitute my name for “Danny’s.”
After awhile, I would fall asleep in my mother’s lap.
As for my mother, she possessed a spirit of grit that wonderfully compensated for any diminution in size. She could not have been more than five-one in those days. Later, she would shrink even more. Long red curls defined her, if anything. Her coiffeur set her apart from other women. Plus, her eyes: a pale shade of green behind warm eyelashes. There was a softness about her touch and her fair skin. It would freckle at the slightest exposure to sun. For this reason, she never left the house without wearing a hat that protected her face, even in the winter. Farm odors annoyed her. She would sprinkle a dainty pink handkerchief, no larger than a postcard, with her favorite perfume: Enchanté de Paris. How Parisian it was, I never knew, nor still know. That she could buy it in the drugstore in Abingdon during the war, says it all. It came in a tiny square bottle, which she kept on her dresser. A delicate fragrance filled the room, whenever she uncapped it.
At that time, Mr. Chappels lived in town. My mother took me to visit him one warm March afternoon. He met us at the door. “Come in young fellow, Master Edmonds,” he addressed me. “I’ve been expecting you,” he winked toward my mother. I realized something pre-planned, no doubt, was astir, but my curiosity overruled any sense of adult management. He escorted me into a large library, where he had set up an electric train near a fireplace. A circular track, with a black engine, coal car, one brown and two yellow boxcars, and a red caboose immediately caught my eye. “Oh, boy!” I must have shouted, for both he and my mother laughed. “It’s all yours,” he beamed.
“Marion! Please! It’s too much,” my mother protested.
“On the contrary! Here, Tommy, let’s sit down and see if it works.”
I followed his lead and sat on the floor with him, with my feet tucked under my legs. He turned on the transformer, and the train began to crawl. He increased its speed. It whistled, and smoke puffed out of its chimney. He ran it around the track a dozen times.
“There are lots of books you can look at,” he pointed toward the shelves. He turned off the train’s switch and rose to his feet. “Your mother and I need a few moments together,” he said.
I thought nothing of his comment and, stooping forward to examine the boxcars, lifted them off the track, turned them upside down to spin the wheels, before placing them back. I did that with all the cars; then I began to explore his library. My eyes struggled to take in his holdings. They equaled anything we had on the farm. His books seemed more neatly organized than ours, and many of them still had their bright, glossy dust jackets in place. Stacks of Life magazines enjoyed a shelf of their own. Their covers had to do with the war, with wounded soldiers and shot-up military matériel. I stared at the soldiers’ bloody bandages and dirty hands, their hollow eyes, and mess kits and canteens. I wanted to be a soldier. To carry guns and throw grenades! To kill Japs and Nazis.
It had grown very quiet in the house. I placed the magazines back on the shelf and crept across the hallway and peeked into living room. Mr. Chappels was kissing my mother. And she was letting him! My face felt hot, my heart numb. I wanted my grandmother; I wanted to run home. I slipped back into the library, closed its glass doors, and curled up in a corner by the Life magazines. How long we stayed, I have no idea.
More and more, my mother drove into town
