It was already hot at eleven, and even though he’d only been plowing a short while Fairly left the long field to rest under the lunch tree letting George and Ross wander and eat grass with their traces dragging.
“Want I fix you a plate?” Boo asked, looking shadowy inside the kitchen door screen.
“Nah-nah no, hon,” Fairly said.
“It just some saved breakfast, that cornbread and,”
He didn’t hear the rest.
Fairly’d started that morning early, before light, before anyone else was up, heading out through the kitchen into the yard, walking under the lunch tree set by the house at the end of the garden, and down the quarter mile to the barn. George and Ross poked their heads out and kicked stall dust a bit, which didn’t make much mess with all the dry everywhere, and started nodding their heads up and down when Fairly came in whistling “Sixteen Tons.” A hatch of warblers did their best to join from the girt between the stalls and Fairly played along for a bar or two brightening the tired barn some. He gave the boys some sweet feed and fiddled in the dark with the hose to get the trough water running, then went straight on to the tack room, set in the quiet lee of the barn, about as far from the house as a man could get, on a cracked concrete toe running out into the field.
Fairly Dunn was a concise man, concise in manner and size. He kept his grayed hair home-cut close, with wide white margins outlined above the ears, and not even one neck whisker left long enough to poke the collar of coveralls that hid a younger man’s strength. On a rare day, lazy stubble might mark his face. This was not a rare day. His sideburns were razored right in line with blue eyes set above skin so tight that it only wrinkled a little when he started whistling at those mules. They watched him, heads up from the feed like they were learning something. They watched him fuss his pockets, one then the next, pulling out all sorts of things, a little change, a couple of sugar cubes, and a zippo, finally fingering keys out of a mess of lint and papers with hands that stopped needing gloves years ago. They watched him unlock the tack room, and they watched him go in.
That room was small, about five by five, and opened right up into the loft so there was nothing to keep hay rot and loose binder twine tails from raining down, which they did, covering everything except an old three-drawer chest Fairly kept clean up under a waxed tarp. Stacked boxes, taller ones in back and smaller ones up front, hid the back wall and two sides. The other wall was clean like it’d been just dusted. Framed pictures were tacked up nice and neat over two hanging woodworkin’ horses holding George and Ross’ tack waist high. Fairly pushed the tarp back from the three-drawer, pulled open the top one, and took out an open envelope from a stack of maybe ten, folded it and tucked it down in his pocket next to his zippo, and change, shut the drawer with his hip, not bothering to pull back the tarp. Loose hay fell with the shut.
Three hay bales sat stacked off left, the top one with an obvious dent in the middle about the size of Fairly’s backside. There he sat, work boot toes barely touching the floor, legs swinging gently to swoosh some hay clots across the planks, looking straight up out of a hole in the roof, nothing more than a shingle board blown off last winter that he’d never found time to fix. He watched the stars give in to the day’s first sun, the final notion of moonlight shining in a straight line down onto a plow sitting in the middle of the room.
It was a Wiard, obsolete on the day it was made and too used now to be special. The handles were rubbed smooth from work with not even the beginnings of a splinter found around the oak. Boo’s Pa told Fairly that it had been in the family since the 1800s and that it was the only thing worth a darn Miss Beulah Henderson would be bringing to their marriage. He knew the old man was wrong but took the plow anyway.
Fairly’d asked right after church, not ten minutes after the benediction, when everyone was making their way, shaking hands and gathering plans for supper. He nodded Beulah out of the receiving line, snuck her hand, and led her off under an old locust, and she smiled and said yes. Fairly turned right that minute and walked straight over to Mr. Henderson who was next in line to talk to the preacher. “Suh-suh sir, I ca-ca-come to ask for your daughter’s hand,” he said, loud enough for everyone waiting in line to hear, the hitch in his voice he’d had since the war trapping his words down tight, then letting go. Old man Henderson looked past Fairly and saw his daughter smiling bigger than regular and said, “I reckon yes,” with the whole congregation looking on and the choir still singing “We Plough the Fields and Scatter” inside.
It wasn’t long after that they married right there at Ebenezer Baptist, which wasn’t the Dunn Family church, of course, but where Fairly’d felt most comfortable since the war. They had a picnic lunch reception on folding tables set under that same locust. Boo’s skin looked pretty under that white dress. She wore a veil, shyly pulled back just far enough to kiss Fairly who stood about eye height to her. That was that promising summer of ’47 when Kentucky boys they’d gone to school with had stopped coming home in boxes and the graves along Pilot Rock Road were finally greening up more grass than mud.
Fairly took to welding, a trade he learned working on tanks at Ft. Knox before getting assigned to Dix in the winter days before England and opened up a shop of his own on McPherson near the quarry and the loose leaf floor, figuring there’d be plenty to fix over trucks going down that road. Boo painted a sign – Get It Done At Dunn’s – up on top in fat black letters, and Welding Shop in silver cursive below, and he hung it out front. Out back, Fairly framed up a few rooms big enough to live in. Two years later Pru was born; Ms. Prudence Dunn, their only, with looks like her mother and green eyes. Boo did the books, and in general took care of everything, except the welding, until the town men stopped bringing work and they had to close. For a while after, Fairly took odd jobs and Boo made meals over at the Mason-Dixon Elementary. That was until the fuss, of course. After that, Boo never really recovered and the three of them moved out to the old Dunn farm off 41. The place’d sat empty since Fairly’s folks passed the fall before he enlisted when he was supposed to be off to his freshman year at Austin Peay. It was pretty beat up, but they got it fixed nice, and Fairly took to farming full-time.
—
The sun was full up by six. Fairly left the boys to their breakfast and set off back to the house to get his. About seven he drove Pru up to the school bus stop, like he did pretty much every school morning, backing the truck up onto the paddock of what had been the Addle boys’ barn, at the corner where the farm road meets the Route 6 gravel, still a fair piece off 41. At seventeen, Ms. Pru was too old for the bus, but kids with their own cars, kids who might have given her a ride, weren’t the kind likely to be friendly with Pru, or the Dunns. She talked fast and easy about school and friends, not leaving much room for Fairly to get a word in on account that she knew talking was hard on him. She talked about the farm some, checking her daddy’s smile which was big pretty much anytime they were together. Right as that bus came over top of Fruit hill, Fairly said, “ba-ba-baby you tell me what you need for nah-nah-next year” and Pru said, “Daddy, please don’t worry on me. I’m fine.” She stayed in the truck until the bus stopped, waiting long enough to get everyone on board to turn their heads, then scooted across the truck’s bench seat to kiss her dad on the nose, a habit she’d started on long ago and now did every day.
Once he saw the bus go, Fairly fished the envelope he’d tucked in his pocket that morning out, opened and read it, and headed straight into town to meet Clay Walker at the Farm Finance Bureau. On his way, he passed his old shop, now a campaign office for the Pennyrile Republicans, and even though the presidentials were two years off, the place was all done up red. Kentucky Needs Nixon banners swung between Get Cookin’ With COOK – Marlow Cook Senator – flags set in cement on the sidewalk, the trademark stove pot with a big, black, chicken boiling inside, embroidered dead center. The windows were streaked frame to frame with the words Vote Crow: Solid South, lettered in something that looked like black shoe polish. Beat Breathitt and Re- Elect Pappy ‘Jug’ Walker, ‘Dixie’s Mayor’ posters hung anywhere there was space. Fairly slowed enough to get good look, then got on out of there when he saw the door crack open.
Now, the Bureau was in the old Planter’s Bank Building at Main and 3rd though the place didn’t look much like the bank anymore. A Nashville company was gutting it; only the marble columns still stood. Fairly parked on the street and for a minute watched a new sign being hung right where the old the bank one had. The word ‘Farm’ shined solid in red carnival lights, but the rest of the words were blinking on and off and on, dark then red. He shared a nod with two electricians he knew from town who were working at it. They nodded back. A pick-up with ‘Clarksville Welding’ on the doors, and a whole mess of gear spread in the bed, was backed up at an angle with some guy sitting on the open tailgate. Fairly nodded at him too. The guy didn’t nod back. He just sucked hard on the puff under his lower lip, pocking his face up something scary, and cut loose a mess of Copenhagen chaw that splattered right next to Fairly’s feet.
Inside, Fairly stood for a bit, remembering the old bank. There was a plastic grass mat with the words, ‘Wipe Your Feet, You Don’t Live In A Barn’ spelled out in plastic yellow daisies where ‘Welcome’ should’ve been and Fairly did. All the counters were gone. So were the teller ladies who used to say “come on up, hon” to whoever was next in line, always licking their fingers and counting bills, talking loud to each other about tall meringue, and weekends at the lake, and football and whose kids were kissing under the bleachers out by the track at Town High. The place was empty now but for one orange fiberglass chair pushed up against the wall where the Manager’s Office used to be. On it was propped a ‘wait here’ sign handprinted in hard-to-read lettering on a flap torn-off from a used cardboard box.
When Fairly walked out, the two electricians were up on ladders behind the sign and the whole thing was dark, except for the big ‘F’ in ‘Farm’, and the ‘i’ in ‘Finance’, and ‘Bureaus’ little ‘r’. Those three letters were lit-up solid and steady and the big ‘B’ in Bureau, was blinking real fast like, B-B, over and over, all of it so bright it was blinding. Fairly studied the sign through his squint, sounding out what it spelled. “Fi-BB-r,” he said to himself, ‘Fibber.”
“Ya-ya y’all sa-sah-see what that says, dont’ ya?” Fairly said.
“Sure do,” the welder said, smiling, flinting his torch. It popped to flame, making his face look blood red. “and, you best mind y’own business old man,” sucking his lips back into his face to spit again, this time up against a planter box holding the last of the bank’s trademark Johnson’s Blue Geraniums, now mostly choked dead by weeds.
—
“Fairly Dunn,” Boo said.
She was back at the kitchen door holding a plate, looking perturbed at Fairly who was sitting on a metal Woolworth rocker, one of three identical chairs brush painted lime green over peeking through rust set under the lunch tree. Foot shapes wore the grass brown in front of two chairs; a third sat off to the side a ways on a bed of perfect Kentucky Bluegrass. In the middle was a table, nothing more than a cut of plywood set on a 55-gal drum, words ‘Tobacco States CO-OP’ on its side. He had his feet propped up in the center of a tire he’d hung swing for Pru’s sixth birthday and was just swaying and rocking looking off towards George and Ross still wandering and eating.
“Ya-ya-yes,” Fairly said.
“Hon, I been hollerin’ at you for the best part of a half’hour.”
“Ga-ga-guess I lost track.”
“You guess,” Boo said.
“Where’d you go this mornin’?” Boo asked.
“Wa-wawhen?”
“This mornin’ I said, after takin’ Pru.”
“I-I wa-wa-went to the CO-OP to get some feed.”
“Well, I wish you’d told me,” Boo said. “We need things”.
Fairly Dunn listened to Boo name off things she’d wanted from town. She looked ghostly behind the kitchen’s screen door like she’d grown paler with age, less from failed appetite than a general vanishing that had taken the glow from her skin like grey takes color from hair. On the list was nothing for herself, just things for Pru to take to college in the fall that Boo thought they might give her for graduation. Pru was to be the first Dunn or Henderson to go to college and the hope was that the three of them might make the trip together to get their girl set up at University of Kentucky come August.
“She’s gonna need some dresses,” Boo said.
“Sh-shhe won’t wear’em.”
“and a long coat for formals, and a travel case.”
“Sh-shhe wants to-tata-take,”
“And maybe a pair of heels.”
“Me-me-ma-my footlocker.”
“Footlocker,” Boo said. “Why Fairly Dunn I never. You gonna let your girl go oft-a Lexington with an Army footlocker full of ratty old farm clothes, my God.”
“She ba-ba-be needing some personals too, some make-up and underclothes,” he said. “Ya-ya know I can’t get them alone. Wa-wah-why don’t we all go to the Pennys Sunday? Wa-wa-we could go’ta church, then out to the mall. Maybe stop at the Big Boy for lunch.” That made that kitchen go quiet, quiet for a long while, and eventually Fairly set off, collecting George and Ross who were content still eating grass between the yard and field.
Those boys were twin grays, brothers, and large by mule standards, about 18 hands. George was the puller, always hitched-to on the left, with Ross matched, hitched-to push, on the right. That morning, they’d cut maybe ten rows up the long field, leaving at least three times that many still standing full of sod and weeds and last year’s burley stalks, and doubted the day was done until Fairly half-hitched a length of twine to George’s bit ring and started leading him away toward the barn. Ross followed. After about ten yards, Fairly let that string fall and the boys just walked behind, leaving the Wiard where it lay, moldboard mirroring the sun and the share lost under heaps of dry clotted earth.
Mule plowing isn’t like tractor plowing. Tractor will cut a straight line. All the farmer has to do is hold the wheel. A tractor-plowing man is fine out in his field alone. He doesn’t need someone to talk to. He does all his talking at home, to his family. Tractor plowing is for a set man, a man with acreage to spare. It takes room to turn that tractor around; room that’s OK left unplanted. Not mule plowing. Mule plowing isn’t about the man. Mule plowing is about the team: man, mules, the plow – all working together, depending on each other. A mule plowing team can’t afford to leave ground unplanted. They got to be down in it, crossing cut ground, pushing right up against barbed fence wire, taking every inch they can. A field will pull a shoe right off a mule, trip a man, and break his ankle. It’ll beach a blade in clay-covered sand, shooting the handles back through a man’s chest like a bullet. A plow man talks to his mules, leads them, telling them things no other creature could ever understand. Most days they’ll work until dark never cut a straight line.
Fairly started pulling the boy’s tack as soon as they got in the barn.
“No, I didn’t tell her,” he said, his voice as clear and unhitched as the boys. He pulled George’s blind and head crown, letting the gag fall away, and did the same to Ross. They looked back at Fairly, shaking off the day, drinking a fair bit from the trough.
“You know, that Clay boy, he’s a real sonnabitch,” Fairly said. George and Ross. stepped back a little, knowing something wasn’t right about that word. “Like father like son, I reckon.”
He gave the boys a sugar cube each from his pocket and pulled a bur out of George’s ear. Both mules started nuzzling up on Fairly’s coveralls with their faces, wiping off the hot, nibbling at Fairly’s neck like they had something to say.
The Walker boys, and their men, ran the county and owned a piece of pretty much everything. Darn near every store, car dealership and construction outfit was a Walker something. Jug Walker, Clay’s daddy, had been mayor since the fifties and was likely to be until he died. He’d taken over after his daddy, J.D. Walker, passed. That J.D. was a brute of a man. His Mama named him after the Civil War President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis. Back then, her folks owned tobacco and cotton plantations all over the South. Everyone’d heard the lynching stories. Of course, Jug hadn’t gone to war like Fairly and most of the town boys had. J.D. got Jug into Vanderbilt in ’42, even though his boy wasn’t much good in school. Come winter of ’44, when Fairly’s troops were waiting for orders in England, Jug was drinking shine and chasing Tennessee girls. Clay’d had it about as rough. He was at Bama in ’65 when that Dr. King started getting white folks worried. He got a Tuscaloosa girl in trouble and his daddy had to go down there and fix it, brought Clay home to work the family farm loan business. Spring ’66, he was safe as a pup. There was no way that boy was going to Vietnam.
“He’s built like his daddy too,” Fairly said. “Both skinny good-for-nothings. I don’t think those boys have a chin between ’em and I damn sure a Walker ain’t needed a barber since they was kids.”
The barn flies were thick and they all started swatting, Fairly with the lazy strap and the boys with their tails. He paced back behind them, rubbing Ross on the rump, and the boys just stood at ease like they were waiting for orders.
“I figured he’d keep me waiting, but he just come right out front and walked me back to a fancy office he set-up back by the vaults, putting his arm around me like we was friends. Never once asked me to sit down,” Fairly said. The boys shifted their heaviness from side to side and nipped at flies. “But he sat down, he sat right down and glared right in my eyes.”
“You know what he says?” Fairly asked. He pulled the boy’s heel chains and back bands and waited all quiet, like he was expecting an answer, and then walked around, face to face with the boys, to pull their collars. “He says, ‘Why, Mr. Dunn, did your mama ever tell you the story of the three little pigs?'” Fairly put on a high-pitched voice when he said that, and the boys cocked their heads curious. They saw Fairly shake his head side to side, then shoulder the collars and gear and head off to the tack room. They followed along like they were marching off someplace they knew they had to go. From the aisle, they watched Fairly rack the tack up on the hanging workhorses, pull a rubbing cloth out of the top of the three drawer, and wad it up in his pocket. They watched him take out a mess of papers, rip them in half, and let them fall.
“Then he says, ‘See Mr. Dunn, them pigs all come from the same place, they had the same Ma and Pa, same schoolin’, same friends. You know that part of the story?'” The boys watched Fairly pull out that rubbing cloth and begin polishing the Hame Ball and brass as he talked, rubbing hard until it shined, and then just stop and shove that rag back in his pocket. They watched him sit back on those hay bales and look up through that roof hole with the sun shining straight onto his face.
“‘yeah, Mr. Dunn, them pigs, see they grow’d up and go out into the world like we’s all supposed to. None of them was lazy pigs, or bad pigs. They’s good little white pigs, Mr. Dunn, white piggies with pink noses.'”
“Waa-wah-what da-da-do you want with me ca-caClay?” Fairly said to the sun, his mind off back in that old bank.
“They’s church-going pigs. Course them pigs, they go to white folk’s church. You member that story, Mr. Dunn? I knows you do.”
“‘Ca-ca-caCla’, was all I could say. Damn me boys, I couldn’t get a word out.”
“‘One make a mud house, one make wood. The other build out’a bricks. Big bad wolf come along puffin’ and blowin’ and, well, you know what’appened. I don’t need to tell you, do I Mr. Dunn?'”
“Ca-ca-clay.”
“‘Now, you think I’m that wolf, don’t cha Mr. Dunn?”‘
“Nah-na-na, Ca-ca-Clay. No, I da-dadon’t.”
“‘Nah-na-na, you da-da dont’. Boy, ain’t you’a sight. ‘Nah-na-na you don’t’. Hell, I knows you do. Well, I ain’t. I’m the brick building pig who’s I is. Only I ain’t your brother pig and I ain’t your sister pig, and I sure ain’t gonna ever let you in. I gots no room in my house for funny-nosed pigs, pigs that just ain’t quite right. See, you a stick pig, Mr. Dunn. You and Boo and that Pru a’yours too. Y’alls stick pigs.'”
“Wah-wha-what’you mean fa-fa-fafunny nosed pigs?”
“‘Fa-fa funny nosed pigs. Good God. Listen to yourself. You think I don’t know, don’t ya? Well, my daddy told me about your Boo. How she ain’t a pure blood. How she ain’t white. How y’all got married at that nigger church out on Pilot Rock and how her granpappy was a nigger. How y’all had that fix-it-up shop and thought my Daddy’s boys would bring y’all work, and how your Boo tried to hide in kitchen on over ta’ Mason-Dixon. Daddy took care of that. You know, he and the boys still talk about that afternoon when they stopped by to pay your Boo a visit after.'”
“Sta-sta-st…”
“‘Folks like y’all got no business being married.'”
“ta-stop, now.”
“‘Bet y’all thought you’d get off scot-free, move out’a that farm, that we’d all forget. Well, sir, we don’t forget.'”
And George and Ross stuck their heads in the tack room, watching Fairly close.
“They called her ‘nigger-nosed lunch lady,” he said toward the boys. “Beulah the nigger-nosed lunch lady.”
“‘That Boo a’yours be a jigga-boo, and that purdy little girl a’yours too. Yes, Mr. Dunn, I hear tell Pru’s looking fine. All grow’d up they say, graduating from Town High next month. Maybe I’ll give’er a call. That be ok with you, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Fairly Dunn?”‘
“Da-duh don’t you say that now, you sta-sta-stop,” and the boys watched Fairly’s head hit his hands and heard him sobbing, hay coming down from the loft, covering his shaking shoulders, falling to the floor. “Those men, they hurt her real bad. Made her so she couldn’t have more kids. She couldn’t take no more. I can’t take no more.”
After a bit, they watched him wipe his eyes, put his hand on his knees, and push himself straight up. They watched him shuffle over to the tack wall and pull that rubbing cloth back out of his pocket, pull down the pictures and wipe each frame, looking hard at each, and put them back up where they were, all nice and clean. There was one of his mom and dad in front of that old barn on the day it was raised, long back before his war. There was one of his battalion. There was one of Boo at their wedding and one of the welding shop when it was new. And, there were a bunch of Pru and Boo. One of them baking cookies, one of little Pru up on Ross, her not more than ten. One of Pru smiling big in a tire swing, six candles burning on a cake set on top of a brand-new Tobacco States CO-OP drum.
The boys watched him pull a footlocker from under the back wall boxes, drag it to the middle of the room where the Wiard always sat, open it, and put some things in that he took from the three drawer. They watched him pull out something they’d never seen, a long metal thing with wood stuck up on one end, both looking at it hard like it was something they knew to fear. They watched him worry a mean looking long pointy thing out of an old box issued to him on the Channel crossing, a day before he was given charge of the Higgins Boat, when the Captain had ordered him to hold a straight line just off shore, the dunes of Varreville in sight, and the men on board, most of them just boys, asking, “When Lieutenant when?” and then yelling “No Lieutenant, NO” as the water turned red with the tide and the stutter started and he couldn’t answer.
Fairly did as he was told. He kept his crew straight offshore, running the boat back and forth, out of range, the best he could. Eighteen hours, H + 18, almost a day, screams and the battering of bullets being lost in boy’s bodies, the noises constant until a cruel quiet came at dawn and all they could hear was the tap-tap of legs and limbs and head-filled helmets being washed along the haul. The boys in the boat looked at him wanting words he couldn’t say. He had no words. Tap, tap, tap until the order came. Go. And he did. Lt. Fairly Dunn, chosen for OCS because of honor shown, straight bars on his lapel soured by British bootblack to hide his rank from sharpshooters, his jaw hitched to a rifle butt that would all those years later prop up straight on a pile of fallen hay, the other end in his mouth, throat twitching, tired and afraid.
For a minute he thought of Boo and Pru and the families that used to work the neighboring farms. He thought about the boys on his boat and the burned and bloody bodies of those who landed first. He had nothing left to share, nothing but the truth between history and nostalgia, the truth cut by rows plowed through enemy lines, over the dunes, and into the hills and following fields of French farmland where abandoned plows and rotting mules gave no shelter.
When it was over, there was the long boat back. Men sang and drank. Most had family waiting on the docks in New York and went on their way. He took the bus back to Knox and was alone. Boys who talked a lot stayed in base hospitals went to work laying asphalt or got packed up to fight in the Pacific. Some went out west and just got lost. Fairly stayed quiet. Fairly went home.
For a few years, things were different. People got getting married and had kids. There was work if you wanted it, places to build something, things to buy. Then there was fighting again, this time in Vietnam, and a new set of boys went away. People started talking about history and nostalgia, started pointing fingers and whispering. It wasn’t long until there were fire hoses and Billy-Clubs. Sadness was as common as a penny.
Pru wasn’t surprised when her daddy wasn’t at the bus to meet her. It was springtime and he had rows to plow. She walked the gravel and stopped at the mailboxes hived where Route 6 went over construction of the new Pennyrile Parkway. Walker Paving Company trucks lined up like ants at a picnic waiting the drop their quarry loads. Walker construction bulldozers pushed aside earth that had once been part of the Dunn farm.
The Dunn box was the last of the nine farm boxes still to get mail. The rest had been empty since the folks lost their land to the highway and something called Eminent Domain she’d learned about in school but didn’t just didn’t make much sense. There was a bunch of envelopes, most of them legal sized, with those crinkly see-through windows, all puckered up by rubber bands the postman put on. The one on top had FARM FINANCE BUREAU FINAL NOTICE stamped on it big and red.
When she got to the house she saw a lunch plate sitting by the screen door and as she passed her mom poked her head out and said, “Well, hey there Ms. Pru can I fix you a plate?” and then something else that she didn’t hear. She walked on under the lunch tree, dropped the mail and her schoolbooks on the CO-OP drum table, and swung her tire swing with a push as she passed. She saw the Wiard laying up at the end of the long field and started skipping on toward the barn singing that Nancy Sinatra “Sugar Town” song that was everywhere on radio that spring, ‘I got some troubles but they won’t last, I’m gonna lay right down here in the grass, And pretty soon all my troubles will pass, ‘Cause I’m in shoo-shoo-shoo, shoo-shoo-shoo, Shoo-shoo, shoo-shoo, shoo-shoo sugar town.’
The boys were standing in their stalls with the doors open looking like they’d been brushed, kicking the dust around a bit. The tack room door was shut and her daddy’s footlocker sat out in the hall. A single straight line crossed out the old stenciling: VII Corps, 4th Inf. DUNN 2nd. Lt.. Below, Ms. Prudence Dunn was written in fresh black paint. Pru got down on her knees and opened it. There were some dresses inside, short summer ones, a long coat, a pair of boots and white tennis shoes bound up together with binder twine, and some lipsticks and a compact from Woolworths still in the bag. Underneath was an envelope, ‘For Pru’ written on the front. Inside, a Greyhound ticket, Town Depot to Clarksville, Clarksville to Nashville, with a paid transfer to St. Louis, was paper-clipped to one thousand dollars cash money and a bus schedule that had the words ‘you can go anywhere’ written across the top in her daddy’s hand.
It was cooler, but not yet evening. The warblers had nested quiet and the whipoorwills were whining about the dry. Pru could see Boo’s shadow behind the kitchen door screen as she led the boys straight up the last plowed row toward the Wiard. They were all tacked and ready for work, polished Hame Ball and brass shining in the day’s last sun.
