“Tommy, your mother and Mr. Chappels are going to get married. Do you know what that means?”
“I think so. It means Mama’s gonna move away.”
“No! It means you’re going to have a new daddy, Mr. Chappels. He’s incredibly fond of you and will love you as much as your father. Your mother will be very happy, and we’ll all have a new life.”
That there was anything wrong with our present one escaped me.
“The wedding will be here on the farm. Won’t that be exciting?”
I didn’t know. But as I thought about Mr. Chappels, I drew comfort from the fact that he had steadied Uncle Everett’s horse that afternoon, when I was perched behind the saddle, and had then pulled out his pistol and shot Mr. Crawford, dead! I liked that. That’s what Uncle Everett would have done, if he could have gotten to his pistol.
About that time my mother’s sister, my Aunt Rachel, came to visit us. She generally came once a year and stayed a month or more. Though unpredictable, she could be entertaining. She paid me dimes to run errands and do special chores for her. Her arrival caused the wedding to be postponed, but that didn’t anger my mother. “I need more time,” I overheard her say to Aunt Rachel. “Marion frequently has to be in Richmond, when the legislature is in session. I’ve asked him to wait till late summer.”
Aunt Rachel lived in Roanoke. She and my mother were originally from Wytheville. The two loved to reminisce about their childhood and first years of marriage. Aunt Rachel had a dark side, but if it had emerged in previous visits, it passed unremembered by me.
One afternoon, after my mother had been tutoring me in reading and simple addition, I happened to pass through the kitchen, on my way to play outside. Aunt Rachel was seated in a swing on the back screened-in porch. She was talking to herself and cussing under her breath. I stopped to listen.
“The son-of-a-bitch. I told him not to see her. By God, I taught him. Bastard!” she chuckled to herself. “Got him right in the arm! Swish! Take that!” She held her left hand up, as if gripping a knife. “Shit!” Her eyebrows arched. An ugly smile marred her thin lips. Her complexion was dark to start with, and her forehead wide and sallow. One could not call her beautiful, though perhaps she had been in her youth. Strands of uncombed brown hair hung limp about her ears. She kept tapping the floor with one foot, to keep the swing in motion. In her right hand, she clasped a pint bottle. Suddenly, she stopped, turned, and glared at me, as if through a dense haze. “Tommy! Is that you? It’s not nice to spy on Aunt Rachel. Come here,” she beckoned with her right hand, causing the alcohol in the bottle to slosh loudly. “I need to kiss you. Come, darling. Aunt Rachel’s not going to hurt you. No sir-ree!”
I approached her with apprehension and stopped by the swing. “Kiss me!” she mumbled, with slurred speech. I leaned forward to hug her. A stagnant odor rose from her breath. I kissed her neck and stared at her bare feet.
“Run along now,” she said, as she pushed off to swing more.
I ran outside, to one of the outbuildings, climbed the wooden steps to its loft, and peered out its front window toward the porch. Aunt Rachel had fallen out of the swing and was struggling to get up. Just then, my mother came to the porch. “Rachel!” she blurted. “Are you hurt?” She must have seen the bottle and surmised Aunt Rachel’s state. “Oh, Rachel,” she moaned. “He wasn’t worth it. You’ve got to get over this.” She bent down and helped her to her feet. Aunt Rachel staggered inside, with my mother’s arm about her waist. I could hear Aunt Rachel laughing, but it was one of those cheerless, inebriated laughs.
That weekend, Uncle Everett came to take me to his place. Aunt Rachel watched him from her bedroom, upstairs, but never came down. I could see her pull back the curtains, before she withdrew from the window.
Uncle Everett drove a rusty-red pickup truck that always had handfuls of hay or straw and farm equipment in its bed. He chuckled as I climbed in beside him and my mother closed the door. She had to swing it hard to make it shut. He motioned for her to come to his window. “How much longer does she plan to stay?” he nodded toward the house.
“She’ll be all right. She’s sobered up now, but you never can tell,” my mother replied.
She put her hand up to his door. He had rolled his window down. He placed his hand over hers. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked.
“Yes. Marion’s a good man.”
“I wish I could believe you,” he stared at her. “Marriages are supposed to be forever, you know. That’s a long time.” He turned the ignition switch on and continued to study her face.
“Go on, now!” she said, lowering her eyes. “Tommy! Behave,” she uttered as an afterthought.
“We’ll have a great time,” Uncle Everett pressed her hand once more. He turned toward me and smiled. “How ’bout it, boy? What do you say?”
“Yes sir!”
“You do what he says, now,” my mother commanded me. “He’ll bring you home Sunday.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She backed away from the truck, as Uncle Everett turned it about in the dirt drive, and we headed for his farm.
We drove into Abingdon near the Sinking Springs Presbyterian Church; then crossed over Main and turned left on Whites Mill Road.
“Will we get to see the mill?” I asked.
“That’s where we’re heading. Then we’ll come back to the farm.”
It took about twenty minutes to drive to the mill. I had visited it once before. I had been with my mother and grandmother, and they had driven all the way across town and past the Laurel Springs Bottom, just to have a bushel of corn ground to a fine powder. It was white corn, which my grandmother preferred to yellow corn for her spoonbread and cornpone cakes.
Soon after passing the Laurel Springs, the creek began descending swiftly through a deep grassy gorge, bounded by steep hills and thorn bushes. A few cattle grazed in one of the higher meadows. I could see them nudging and tugging at the short grass between the rocky outcroppings. A long wooden trough came into view. It angled gently away from the creek but parallel with it. Streams of water poured through the seams of the wooden canal, as it fed the rushing current toward the mill. A huge paddle wheel turned ever so cumbersomely, as the water spilled from section to section. The mill, itself, rose three-stories tall. Its wooden planks had long ago transmuted into sodden, weathered boards. A copula graced the wood-shingled roof. Pigeons flew away as we stopped the truck and got out.
We entered the dusty building, redolent of milled wheat, ground corn, and stripped cobs. Stacks of powdery, swollen flour bags formed passageways through the mill. Below we could hear the wheel humming and watch particles of swirling dust sift up through the cracks in the wide floorboards. Since no one had met us upstairs, Uncle Everett led the way down a narrow flight of wooden steps to the grindstone below.
Tiny powdery clouds of sparkling chaff churned in the air. An old man with a red bandana about his mouth and nose turned toward us. “Well, well! Everett! Be with you in just a minute. Who’s the boy?” He slipped the bandana off his face and brought the big grindstone to a halt.
“Hamilton’s and Shaula’s. Name’s Tommy. Tommy, say hello to Mr. Archy.”
I
