Chinaberry by James Still

Author:James Still
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780813133737
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Ernest came over to Chinaberry in his Model T to check on me every week or so.

One morning I was hidden behind one of the swaying chinaberry trees when they all stood together, looking out across the flat plains. No one knew I was there.

“You are spoiling that boy rotten,” Ernest said.

“What I'm trying to do,” Anson admitted. “I want him to like me. When he does go back to Alabama, I want him to be so dissatisfied they'll send him back.”

“I don't know,” Ernest said. “He's the first boy after five daughters. You can guess how a man feels about his first son after five tries.”

Turning away, Anson said, “I don't want to hear it. Something may work out.”

“I doubt it,” Ernest said, not to raise false hopes.

“The boy's father let him come off with you. Proves he can get by without him. He's got two younger brothers, he says.”

“You don't understand his pappy. I know him to the bone,” Ernest said. “He let this boy come in his stead. He homesteaded himself out here in the 1890s, out near Killeen, and never got Texas out of his mind. This minute he's wearing a Stetson and cowboy boots. Visiting back in Alabama, the family lost a child, and the mother decided against returning to Texas.”

Anson had heard this before from me, and he also knew of my father's profession. “We could use a veterinarian,” he said. “Give him about all the work he could handle at our ranch alone, and there's the Bolton ranch north of us, twice the size of the Bent Y. They'd give more than he could do.”

“That's an idea,” Ernest said.

I could have told them with the little wisdom a thirteen-year-old had gathered that this couldn't happen. Mama had told us often of her promise to my sister, before she died of scarlet fever at age five, that she would never leave her. She was as committed to staying near the Rock Springs graveyard as Anson Winters was tied to the Beech Ledge Cemetery.

Still, Anson was determined to have me.

Anson and Lurie had been married almost three years. I put my face against the chinaberry tree, wondering why they had no child of their own.

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