Collected Stories of Reynolds Price by Reynolds Price

Author:Reynolds Price
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 1993-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

HIS FINAL MOTHER

CRAWFORD LANGLEY was twelve years old and still a child; but the first traits of manhood were on him—tall for his age, no baby fat, no pointless smiles, a broad forehead and steady gray eyes that gave his head a claim on the dignified notice of adults. So it was early in that crucial year when he took what he saw as his first grown step. He managed to stamp out his old nickname. It was nothing more obnoxious than Ford, but he calmly told his friends not to use it.

A few children laughed and tried to taunt him—Fordie or even Model-T. He smiled but then refused to know them; and since he was anyhow the main child to know in his town and school—the funniest surely, the most open-handed—they all came round in a matter of days, even his teachers and the baseball coach; even his mother, who privately called him Strut and Dub. All but his father. Crawford’s father stuck with Ford since that had been his own father’s name. Crawford liked and trusted his father enough to humor him, and causes for that came thick and fast once his mother was gone.

She left in an instant—no warning or pain, so far as they knew. She was in the backyard, hanging an ancient quilt on a clothes line and then she knelt. Crawford and his father had left for the day, but the cook had watched it clearly from the porch. She said “Miss Adele went to her knees like somebody needing to pray, hard. Then it look like she needed to rest her head—she went right on down slow to her side and smoothed the grass and stroked her hair. She was cool as a window by the time I touched her.”

The cook phoned school and Crawford was home on his bike in ten minutes (his father was an hour away, taking an Irish setter pup to his lonely aunt). By then the ambulance men were there; her body was covered in the dim front hall. Young as he was, Crawford walked straight to her, lifted the sheet and leaned in a slow curve to kiss the forehead. Cold as glass—he thought it before the cook could warn him. And though he loved his mother deeply, they’d all understood her racing heart would take her soon.

He expected tears and when none came, he told himself his natural feelings were in shock now. But before he took his hand off her arm, a tall new thing stood up in his mind. It was not a thought or even a feeling. It was more like watching his hands grow strong in a slow instant. He hoped it was one more sign of manhood. It calmed him at least and dried his eyes.

He told the ambulance men where to go, Bond’s funeral home. Then he tested the newborn strength again—it poured right through him like iron in his blood. So he thanked the cook and asked her to wait till his father was back.

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