Hug Dancing by Shelby Hearon

Author:Shelby Hearon [Hearon, Shelby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80039-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-26T04:00:00+00:00

COW’S PARTY AT the farm seemed to be disappearing down a distant farm-to-market, the way an apparent puddle glints always just ahead on the interstate, a mirage dwindling just out of reach. Such was my vision of Martha, dimpling her cheeks against the soft hides of Holstein, Ruth calculating acres of waving grain, pitchers of fresh chilled milk waiting on the old tile counter, sweet Czech dough rising on the stove.

While Drew rallied his resistance to all those trying to pull the land out from under him, what was I to do? I felt a rising panic, seeing my plans for a country home slipping away. When was I going to see my girls? Where? If I was thrown out of the church’s house, if the old homestead up the road was put on hold to me, where would I be? Where could they find me? I felt suddenly dispossessed, both of them and of a place to welcome them. I needed a halfway house, a stopping place, a shelter with walls, front door, deep shady yard, where they could come. A place they could hang their spare T-shirts and call ours.

Eben’s cash was the one card I had to play; so I played it. I got a copy of a glossy real estate booklet, “The Homefinders’ Guide,” complete with photos, addresses, asking prices and salient information about available locations. Each listing the basics (bedrooms, baths, square footage), each tagged with a come-on comment. As it turned out, it was easy as pie to buy a house that a bank had paid its own note on for a couple of years.

First of all, it was a revelation to find that every house in town was not a ranchstyle, because that was all you ever saw: luxury ranches, like Mary Virginia’s, authentic ranches, like the parsonage, ranchettes with carports, like those in Birdville, cutesy red-and-white barn decor ranches where doctors lived. Every house in town a low-slung, low-ceilinged ranch. Yet here on every page of the realtors’ guide were options from the past. A bungalow with shingled roof and dormer windows (“completely restored, must see to appreciate”); an all-brick Tudor (“nice older home, near hospital”); a Victorian two-story (“beautifully updated and maintained”); an arched and columned Greek Revival (“an antique lover’s delight, large rooms”); a Colonial with gallery porch (“lots of charm, formal dining”). What a wealth of choices!

And, the amazing thing—somewhat analogous to connecting dots and seeing a figure appear on a page—was that when I’d circled all my choices on the city map, the locations were clustered within walking distance of one another. I’d found a neighborhood. One that, in ten years of living in Waco, I’d never set foot in. It was as far to the east of Heart of Texas Fairgrounds and the middle school and high school as we were to the west, about a mile. An older area, clearly, and one with no cross streets, no through streets, so that unless you were going home or to visit kin, there was no occasion to find yourself on its tree-lined streets.

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