Will O Wisp (11 page)

“
Me as well. Aunt Gracie, I
like it here,” Shana agreed.

“
What do you like about
being here, dear?” Melinda asked.

“
There's so much new to me
to do. I have a dog and cat with kittens to play with. Chickens
that have names that lay eggs I get to eat for breakfast. We can go
fishing. What are we going to do tomorrow, Aunt Gracie?”

“
Let me think about that,
and I'll let you know in the morning, youngun,” Gracie
said.

They sat quietly watching the night
surround them. Before they realized it, all three of them dozed
off. Melinda's head nodded and jerked back up, waking her. “My
goodness! I just went to sleep sitting here so still.”

“
Me, too,” Gracie said,
rubbing her eyes.

“
Aunt Gracie, tell me a
story,” Shana suggested.

“
Humph, you might as well
try remembering a story in your head, girl, and tell it to
yourself. My head is too thick to think now. It's my bedtime.”
Gracie rose from the chair and went inside.

“
Maybe she will tell you a
story when she isn't so tired. We should go to bed. We want to be
ready for a fresh start in the morning,” Melinda
suggested.

The next morning, Shana asked again
what they were going to do that day.

Gracie said, “We should check out
Ivy's garden. It might need hoeing. If we all three work on that
this morning, then this afternoon we can walk over to Neff Graves's
place. I've been wanting to talk to him.”

Upon inspection, Gracie found Ivy kept
a clean garden. It didn't take them long to break the soil between
the rows. After lunch, Shana and Gracie dried the dishes for
Melinda so it wouldn't take long to clean the kitchen.

That afternoon, they went for a walk,
and a pleasant one it was. Melinda declared that walk good
exercise. Gracie said she wasn't so sure she needed so much
exercise between walking to the pond the day before and to the
Graves farm now.

Shana skipped along beside them,
grinning at the way the two woman bantered. When they neared the
Graves place, they heard sounds of children talking and
laughing.

“
Wonder how many children
Neff and Lettie have now?” Melinda asked.

“
Don't know, but sure is a
mess of them. Shana, do you know any of the Graves younguns?”
Gracie asked.

“
Not real good, Aunt
Gracie, but I have talked to some of them in town playing with the
Brown kids behind the mansion,” Shana said.

“
Figures that Neff's
younguns would take up with Maudie's brood,” Gracie
groused.

“
Why does it figure, Aunt
Gracie?” Shana asked.

Gracie opened her mouth to answer, and
Melinda warned, “Gracie.”

With a shrug of her shoulders, Gracie
answered, “Reckon cause they know each other.” She got a nod of
approval from Melinda.

At the edge of the front yard, Neff,
sporting a week's growth of beard, perched unsteadily on a tree
stump. He had a wash pan filled with water resting against his
thick set middle. His dusty black felt hat's brim flopped over his
ears as he went through the motion of washing eggs with a rag. His
dark grizzled hair hung down on the frayed collar of his dull blue
faded shirt.

“
Afternoon, Neff,” Gracie
greeted.

“
Af'ernoon, ladies,” he
slurred and hiccuped softly.

“
Neff, looks like you've
found the easiest job you can do,” Gracie said dryly.

“
Someone has got to do this
job. Just washin' this morning's layin'. A egg broke on the others
and made a mess,” Neff said, rubbing the egg in his hand with the
dripping rag.

“
Why don't you leave
women's work to Lettie and go hoe that weedy corn field your sons
planted for you?” Gracie barked.

Neff gave her a slack jawed glance.
“Now, Miss Gracie, I been feelin' right poorly lately. I don't want
to over do myself.” He put the egg in a basket by his
feet.

Gracie scolded, “You are drunk is what
you are?”

Neff gave her a wavering hard glare as
if he was seeing two of her. “You're ugly, talking that way to me.
That's wha you are.”

Gracie's hands fisted on her hips. “If
I were your wife I'd put rat poison in your coffee. That would fix
you.”

Neff belched. “If I were your husband,
I'd drink it and be glad to be done with ya. What are you doing out
here anyway?”

Gracie said, “We're house sitting for
the Sawyers for a while.”

Neff reached down beside his perch and
picked up a glass with a small amount of amber colored liquid in
it. He held the glass up toward the women. “Here's one for the
road, Ladies.” He drained the glass and belched again.

Gracie fumed, “Neff, you done had more
to drink already than there are roads in this county. Why not take
a break from bending your elbow.”

Neff glared at her. “Tha' none of yer
business.”

“
Gracie, don't,” Melinda
said. To change the subject she asked, “Your hens laying pretty
good, Mr. Graves?”

“
Not tooooo bad
considerin',” Neff said sluggishly, leaning to the side. His hands
poised over the wash pan, and his eyelids were almost
closed.

“
Considering what? Thad
Sawyer said he gave you some of his best laying hens.” When Gracie
barked, Neff's eyes opened wide.

Neff had to gather his thoughts for a
second. “These are not his hens. These are Millard Sokal's
hens.”

“
What happened to Thad's
hens?” Gracie snapped.

“
Stop shouting at me. You
hurt my ears.
Them hens quit layin' on me
two flocks ago so we ate them. Millard gave me a new
----,”

Gracie interrupted him. “Where did you
get the rest of the hens, you scoundrel?”

“
Mrs. Simpleton gave me a
dozen. When they quit layin' I traded 'em to Edd Granger for
whiskey. Yesterday, I asked Millard for a start of his layin'
hens.” Neff stopped talking. His eyes shut, and he
snored.

Behind the ladies, a tired and nasally
female voice said slowly, “Can I help you?”

They turned to find Lettie, Neff's
wife, drying her hands on her stained blue apron. Her yellow cotton
dress had faded out until it matched the pallor of her skin. Behind
her stood, a bunch of younguns in different sizes.

Shana recognized one of the girls
about her age. “Hello, May Jean. Remember me, Shana?”

“
I do. Want to come look at
our new puppies? They just came,” the girl invited.

“
Sure, I do.” Half the kids
took off on the run to show Shana the puppies, and the older
children sauntered back to the house.

Neff let out a loud rumbling snore as
he wavered back and forth. The wash pan fell off his lap. Water
droplets splashed on the bottom of Gracie and Melinda's dresses and
muddied the soil around their shoes. Neff leaned slowly sideways
and fell off the stump in slow motion. His hat flew off his head as
he landed in a ball on the ground. As soon as he hit the ground, he
went back to snoring.

“
Sorry about this. Neff
must be really tired today. He ought to have better manners when we
have company,” Lettie excused slowly in her whiny voice.

“
That's all right,” Melinda
said sympathetically. “We understand.”

“
Was there something you
ladies wanted?” Lettie asked again.

Gracie explained, “We're staying at
the Sawyer place for a while. We're just out for a walk around the
neighborhood. I've been showing Melinda and the girl where I grew
up. I did want to ask Neff if he happened to notice anyone in my
family cemetery lately.”

“
Any certain reason?”
Lettie asked. She griped her hands under her apron and looked
worried.

“
Someone has been digging
around near my little brother's grave. I don't like seeing that. I
cain't figure out what anyone would be do that. Can you,
Lettie?”

“
No, I can't imagine why?”
She put a hand to her throat. “I will be sure to ask Neff if he
knows anything when he wakes up.”

“
Good. When I get back to
Locked Rock, I'll get a hold of the sheriff and have him poke
around out here,” Gracie said.

Lettie took a deep breath. “Well, if
that is all, I reckon I best get back to my work.”

“
That's it as soon as we
round up the girl,” Gracie said.

“
Shana,” Melinda
called.

The kids came running. Shana stopped
by May Jean at Lettie's side. “What did you want?”

“
It's time to go home,”
Gracie said.

“
Can May Jean come home
with me for a few days? It would be fun to have someone me age to
play with,” Shana asked.

Gracie eyed the slim,
little girl that looked a lot like her mother.
She looks harmless enough.
“I don't
know. What do you think, Lettie?”

Lettie shrugged. “I don't mind if May
Jean wants to stay with you.”

The girls took off on the run down the
road as Gracie and Melinda followed them.

“
Those poor children and
Lettie. How do they put up with such as that from that awful man,”
Melinda fumed in a low voice.

“
Life's never going to get
any better for them. That's a hard scrabble farm Neff rented. Hard
enough to work poor farm land for an able body man and impossible
for Neff Graves. He doesn't even try,” Gracie
complained.

“
I expect it would take
years to scratch out a living on a farm like that. With as many
mouths as there is in that family, they will never get ahead,”
Melinda said wisely.

“
Lettie looks like she's
wore out enough to drop over if a good wind blew at her,” Gracie
said.

“
That's what happens when a
woman has one baby after another. She sure talks slow, doesn't
she?” Melinda said.

“
Yip. It plain hurts me to
wait for her to stop talking. I want to finish the sentences for
her,” Gracie said.

After supper, Shana and May Jean asked
Melinda for a jar with a lid. They wanted to go outside to catch
lightning bugs.

Gracie and Melinda went to the living
room. Melinda sat in one rocker, and Gracie in the other. They
rocked in silence. Their heads leaned back. They closed their eyes.
This was just like what they would have done on the porch at Moser
Mansion.

Finally, Melinda said, “Gracie, was it
just me or did Lettie look nervous when you talked about asking the
sheriff to look around the graves in your cemetery.”

“
Nope, it wasn't just you,
but I couldn't figure out why she'd be fidgety about
it.”

“
She wouldn't be unless she
knew something about what happened in the cemetery,” Melinda said.
She paused for a moment. “Lettie surely had her baby by now. She
was expecting the last time I saw her in the Mercantile. Wonder how
that turned out?”

“
I'd say we should ask
Lettie to see her baby next time we're over there just to find
out,” Gracie said.

“
That would be nice.”
Melinda rocked a moment and suddenly braced her feet on the floor.
“Oh, dear. You don't think the baby in the cemetery is Lettie's, do
you?”

Gracie shrugged and went back to
rocking in silence.

When the girls came in, Gracie and
Melinda had gone to bed. The house was dark. May Jean said, “I'll
race you to the bedroom.” She took off running. When she reached
the middle of the living room, she headed left instead of
right.

Shana said, “Wait! Don't go in
there!”

She spoke too late. May Jean landed on
top Gracie and Melinda. Gracie squalled like a mad cat.

Melinda screamed, “Indians! The
Indians are attacking us.”

“
Oh! My goodness!” May Jean
cried as she struggled to untangle herself from the thrashing
women. “Help me, Shana, before they beat me to death. I got the
wrong bed. I'm so sorry. Miss Gracie and Miss Melinda. Wake up, and
let me get off the bed.”

“
For lands
sakes
, it isn't an Indian,” Melinda said
sheepishly.

“
I never thought it was,”
Gracie said. “An attacking Indian would never make this much
noise.”

Shana took May Jean's hand and pulled
her over Gracie and out of the bed.

Gracie said gruffly, “Girl, you should
be sorry to wake us old women out of a sound sleep. At our age, we
need all the rest we can get.”

“
You half scared us to
death. Scaring old women isn't good,” scolded Melinda.

“
Yes, I know. I'm sorry,”
May Jean said meekly, ducking her head as she started for the door
behind Shana.

Gracie admonished, “Wait up! I'm not
done with you two yet. Don't be jumping on the bed in the other
room like you just done in here. The ropes are old, and they might
break. I don't want Abigail coming back home to a broken
bed.”

“
Yes, ma'am, Miss Gracie,”
May Jean said.