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Authors: With Hope

Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers] (7 page)

BOOK: Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers]
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Since he had bought the radio he and Henry Ann seldom missed listening to the
Grand Ole Opry
on Saturday night. Ed was especially fond of Uncle Dave Macon, known as “the Dixie Dewdrop,” and Roy Acuff. Personally, Henry Ann thought her daddy played and sang better than any of them.
Just before Ed breathed his last, Aunt Dozie had come in and closed the door, shutting out the curious Isabel so that Henry Ann could be alone with her daddy. When it was over, Aunt Dozie closed his mouth and folded his arms across his chest. Henry Ann placed her head on the pillow beside his and cried. This day, at dusk, it was Aunt Dozie who sang. She stood at the end of the bed with the Henry family Bible in her hands.
“A - maz - ing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I - once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but - now I see.”
* * *
At daybreak Henry Ann went to the kitchen. Aunt Dozie was there starting a fire in the cookstove.
“That old dominecker rooster came clear up to the door dis mornin’,” Aunt Dozie said, shaking her head. “It was plumb queer the way he jist stood an’ crowed fit to kill. ’Twas as if that old rooster was sayin’ his good-bye to Mr. Ed.”
“I heard him. It seems strange not to have Daddy here. He always got up before I did.”
Henry Ann batted the tears from her swollen eyes and went to the porch. She stood there and scratched old Shep’s ears for a while before she headed for the barn to do the chores. To her surprise they were done. Johnny was drawing water from the well and filling the stock tank. She hadn’t heard him when he came home last night, but she’d noticed him in the kitchen when the undertaker arrived. Then he had come to the porch and had stood silently and expressionless as Ed Henry was taken from his home for the last time.
“Johnny, I need to go to town to . . . make arrangements.” He averted his eyes when Henry Ann spoke to him. “I’d like for you to take me.”
“Why? You can drive.”
“I can’t crank the car. Here are the keys to the shed.” She handed him a ring of keys she took from her pocket.
“He didn’t have to lock it up.” The boy looked straight at her. “I wasn’t goin’ to steal it.”
“He knew that, but he wasn’t sure about Pete Perry.”
“I found a butchered steer down in the lower woods.”
“Butchered? You mean someone killed it for the meat?”
“Looks like it.”
“Well, forevermore. Did they take it all?”
“Only the front and hind quarters. Dogs and wolves tore up the rest.”
“That means they took it to sell and not to eat. Were there tracks?”
“Motorcar tracks.”
“Do you know whose?”
“No.”
Henry Ann looked into her half brother’s face and knew he was telling the truth. He seemed different this morning; not so hostile. Could it be that he
really
had felt something for her father?
“We can tell the sheriff, but I doubt he’ll do anything. I’ll be ready to go in a few minutes.”
Ed Henry had not particularly wanted a car; he bought it only to take Henry Ann to school on the days she couldn’t walk. Johnny, however, had been delighted that a car was available when he first came to live with them. Ed had taught him how to drive and how to take care of the machine. The enthusiasm for the car faded as soon as Ed bought him the pony.
The motor of the topless Model T balked at first when Johnny attempted to start it. He instructed Henry Ann to pull out the choke. He had worked up a good sweat turning the crank by the time the engine sputtered, caught, then began a steady hum.
When they reached the funeral parlor, located behind the furniture store, Henry Ann asked Johnny if he wanted to come in. He shook his head, and she went in alone. The mortician confirmed what Doctor Hendricks had told her. Ed had made the arrangements for his burial and had paid for it. He had not been interested in the services that would precede the burial and had left that up to Henry Ann.
She visited next with the Reverend Wesson, the minister who would conduct the services. His daughter, Karen, was her best friend. He told her that Karen had left only minutes ago for the Henry farm.
After reporting the slaughter of the steer to the sheriff’s deputy, Henry Ann and Johnny headed back home. Two wagons and two cars were parked in the yard. One of the cars belonged to their neighbor, Tom Dolan, the other to Karen Wesson.
“Are you coming to the service?” Henry Ann asked when Johnny stopped in front of the shed to let her out.
“Do you want me to?” He stared straight ahead.
“Only if you want to.”
“I . . . don’t have a decent shirt.”
“I’ll wash one of Daddy’s.”
“What’ll I have to do? I’ve not been to . . . one—”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“I’ll come.”
A girl ran out the back door to meet Henry Ann. Her hazel eyes were red with weeping.
“Oh, Henry, I didn’t even know your daddy was sick.” She wrapped her arms around Henry Ann.
“I didn’t either until I got home day before yesterday. He hadn’t told me, Karen. He let me go off to Oklahoma City without saying a word.”
“I heard about it last night at choir practice. It was late, or I’d have come out then.”
“I’m glad you’re here now. I just saw your daddy. I told him that I wanted you to sing at the service.”
“You know I will.”
With their arms about each other, they went into the house. On the kitchen table was a variety of food already brought in by the neighbors. Aunt Dozie was bustling from table to stove, and, sitting quietly in Henry Ann’s old high chair with a slice of bread and jam in his hand, was a small boy.
“Yo a’right, chile?” Aunt Dozie asked anxiously.
“I think so. Is this Mr. Dolan’s little boy?”
“Ain’t he ’bout the cutest little tyke ya ever did see?”
“He sure is. He was in the car yesterday when—”
“Dat Mr. Dolan come right after yo left. Brought a bag a coffee fer the fixin’s. Said ya got a fence down and he’d fix it ’fore yore cows got out. Said it looked like someone’d drove a car in. Was goin’ to take da little boy with ’im, but I said ta leave ’im. Little feller’s good as gold, he is. Loves ta eat dat plum jam.”
“Hello.” Henry Ann squatted down beside the chair. The child turned his head to the side and refused to look at her. “What’s your name?” He still refused to look at her. His mouth puckered as if he were ready to cry, and he looked fearfully up at Aunt Dozie. She hurried to him, picked him up, and cuddled him to her ample breast, uncaring that his little face was sticky with jam.
“Dere, dere, little sugar. Yo ain’t got no reason ter be scared. Dat lady like little boys,” she crooned. Then to Henry Ann, “Took a while ’fore he’d let me hold him. He a daddy boy.” She added in a whisper, “Yo better go on in de parlor. Dat gal’s in dere talkin’ her head off to Miz Austin.”
“I’ll stay and help Aunt Dozie,” Karen said, and took Henry Ann’s hat when she removed it. “Go on. That busybody is picking the girl’s brain for everything she can get out of her.”
“Dat ain’t goin’ ta be much!” Aunt Dozie snorted. “Dat girl ain’t got much brains ta pick at.”
Mrs. Austin embraced Henry Ann when she came into the room.
“You poor dear child. We just feel so bad about poor Mr. Henry. Chris-to-pher wanted to come over, but he hired two coloreds to help hoe cotton; and when you’re paying five cents a hour you got to stand over them and see that they earn it.” Mrs. Austin always drew her son’s name out as if she were reciting a poem or singing a hymn
“I know Mr. Austin is busy—”
“Not Percy, dear. Chris—to—pher.”
“I would like for Mr. Austin to be a pallbearer—”
“Chris—to—pher would be glad to.”
“Daddy has known
Mr. Austin
for a long time. If you think he’ll be unable to do it, I’ll understand and ask someone else.”
“He’d be glad to, dear. Do you need Chris—to—pher, too?”
“No, but thank you.”
Henry Ann untangled herself from Mrs. Austin’s arms and went to speak to the other neighbor.
“I’m just as sorry as I can be, Henry Ann. Yore daddy was as good a man as I ever knowed.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Whalen. And thank you for the beet pickles.”
With her legs crossed and showing a goodly amount of flesh above the knee, Isabel sat in the chair beside the door, swinging her foot back and forth. She wore her best dress, rouge, and lipstick. She had slid a yellow ribbon under the back of her hair and tied it in a bow on top of her head. Henry Ann looked at her, then looked back again. Isabel had also plucked her eyebrows to a thin arched line and had marked them with a pencil.
She looked like she had come off South Reno Street in Oklahoma City, the street that was notorious for honky-tonks and speakeasies.
Mrs. Austin prepared to leave as did Mrs. Whalen. Henry Ann walked with them to the porch.
“It’s a shame is what it is that Isabel didn’t get to know her daddy. Poor child’s all tore up about it and cried when she told me how her mother kept her from him.”
Henry Ann stared for a moment at Mrs. Austin, then looked back to where Isabel stood in the doorway. Their eyes met. The girl stared straight at her, then tilted her chin and curved her lips into a thin smile.
Henry Ann turned back when she heard Mrs. Austin telling her husband he was to be a pallbearer.
“I’m honored to be one of Ed’s friends.”
“The service will be at ten o’clock tomorrow morning at the church.”
“We’ll be there,” Mrs. Austin said, then added for the benefit of Mrs. Whalen as they walked toward the wagon, “We’d have brought the car, but Chris—to—pher needed it.”
Mrs. Austin was fond of “putting on the dog,” as Aunt Dozie described it. For the last several years she’d been trying to make a match between her son and Henry Ann, who liked Chris, but not well enough to consider him husband material. Everyone in the county, except Mrs. Austin, knew that he paid regular visits to Opal Hastings, a girl who lived down on the river bottom with her grandpa. Opal had a child and had never been married. Some said she was a whore, others said she had been raped. Henry Ann thought she was a pretty girl who had had a lot of trouble.
By noon, visitors had ceased to come with offerings and condolences, and Henry Ann was glad for the respite. Others would come when noontime was over. Aunt Dozie had washed a shirt for Ed to be buried in and one for Johnny to wear at the funeral. Henry Ann fetched them from the line and walked past the woodpile, where Tom Dolan had cut a supply of wood for the cookstove. He was stacking it as she approached. Their eyes caught and held. Hers, he thought, were like empty stars; the desolate look on her pretty face was a sad thing to see.
Henry Ann stopped a dozen feet from him, and a sudden paralysis kept her rooted to where she stood. Intensely aware of the big man with the curly black hair and broad shoulders, she finally spoke.
“Thank you for . . . fixing the fence and for splitting the wood.”
“It’s the least I can do for a neighbor.”
“Dinner is ready. We’d be pleased to have you join us.”
“You don’t need to feed me, ma’am.”
“I insist, and not because of the work you’ve done. I don’t think Aunt Dozie would let you take Jay if you wanted to. She promised him a chicken leg.”
“He took to her right away and . . . it’s strange. He’s not been around many colored folk.”
“I’m not surprised. Aunt Dozie has a way with little ones. There’s plenty of food, Mr. Dolan.”
“If you’re sure we’d not be a bother.”
“No bother at all. You can wash up at the well. Have you seen Johnny?”
“He went out to drive your steers into that pasture behind the barn. He showed me the one that had been slaughtered. We took the hide. The boy’s handy with a knife.”
“That’s the first steer we’ve lost . . . like that. The Whalens and the Cookmans have lost a couple.”
“Whoever killed it drove a car in to pack it out. I’ll keep a lookout for the kind of tires that made the tracks. Johnny said there was grass enough for the steers up close to the house for a day or two.”
“We won’t wait dinner for him. He can eat when he gets back.”
Tom watched her walk back to the house, his eyes fastening on her straight back and swaying hips. She was all woman! His insides felt warm and melting. Christamighty! What was the matter with him? His heart was thumping, and goose bumps were climbing up his arms.
* * *
Tom’s eyes found Jay as soon as he entered the kitchen. The boy was in a high chair pulled up to the table.
“Daddy, looky—” The grinning child squeezed the rubber ball in his hand, and the green rubber frog attached to the ball by a tube jumped and made a croaking sound.
BOOK: Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers]
11.93Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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