The Elder of Days by Robert Reginald

Author:Robert Reginald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC.
Published: 2011-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

BONEYARD

Jewel-Rose first got the chaud one sunny afternoon in May, while tending Granny Needles’s tomb. She spotted what she thought was a white pebble poking out of the grass, and when she bent down to brush it away, she suddenly realized—too late—that it was bone. A flush of warmth tiptoed up her arm, and she felt....

“Glory,” he pleaded, “come on home.”

“No, Frank,” she said, “not after what you said.”

“Didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

“Then why dya say it?” she asked.

“I dunno,” he said. “I guess....”

“When you can do more than guess,” she said, “then we’ll talk.”

Then she found herself sitting on the grave, legs drawn up tight, her arms hugging her knees, shivering in spite of the warm sun. She looked around quickly to see if anyone else had noticed her lapse, but the cemetery was still deserted. It was almost like a park, really, green and lush and well tended, filled with old trees and dotted here and there with stone monuments of varying sizes. A vagrant breeze ruffled her hair and flipped up the edge of her dress, briefly revealing a pair of nicely rounded, tanned calves. She idly patted it down again.

This was the third time in a week that she’d found her way to Greenmount. Course, she was kin to half the folks buried here, but still, this was getting to be quite a habit.

“Gotta be more careful,” she muttered out loud to herself. People would talk. Hog would hear. And then there’d be hell to pay, that’s for sure. Real hell to pay.

Jewel-Rose sighed. Sometimes she almost envied the dead. At least they’d finally found their measure of peace, or that’s what the preachers told you. More peace than she was ever likely to see, in this life or after.

She got up.

“Well, girl,” she said, shaking the leaves away, “this ain’t gettin’ us anywhere.” The afternoon was almost shot, and she still hadn’t started his dinner. And Hog would want his din-din real soon, whenever he found his good ole way home.

Good ole “Hog.” Homer Ogden Clatterbuck. Big Man in Big Caboose, Montana. Got the only Ford lot hereabouts, and people in the sticks didn’t buy them foreign cars. Tall and good-lookin’, even at forty-two. Still a lotta muscle lathered onto that frame, despite the paunch. Curled-up mustache salted with just the right pinch of gray. Long thin cigar dangling nonchalantly from his right lip. That little sidewise smile. And the ladies.

Yep, she knew all about the ladies. Just like young puppy dogs, following him around anywhere and everywhere, trying to get his attention. More fools them.

Jewel-Rose picked up her worn-out handbag, and headed back to her equally beat-up Fairlane. You’d think a car dealer would care more about what his wife drove, about the message he was sending his prospective customers, but he was the one with the new truck. Of course.

The town was two miles south of the cemetery. She clattered across the BCS tracks, picked up Pearl-Lee and Rosaltha at school, told them for the millionth time to quit fighting, and then thought for a moment about supper.

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