Mary at the Old Railroad Trestle

Chapter 33

Chapter 33

          When I reached Mamma’s home I jumped down from the wagon before Mister Minister could assist me and ran toward the house, calling a ‘thank ye” over my shoulder. Mamma must have heard either the wagon pull up outside or heard the door opened, as she immediately called me into the sewing room and asked for the package. I handed it over to her, and she told me that Lucie had hung my second-best shawl out on the line and that I needed to fetch it into my room before a passing crow, heading for the corn field, decided to stain it. Then still without lifting her eyes, she asked me to return to the room in the next few minutes as she wanted me to model the dress while she pinned on the lace. I gazed at her in amazement while my thoughts whirled. (“What! Aunt Grace is short, squat, and homely, and I am well above five and a half foot, why in the world would she ask me to model that dress? And Auntie is heavy-very heavy- the dress will bag and sag on me worse than an empty croker sack blowin’ in the wind!)

         Of course, the entirety of that mental conversation went unspoken and therefore unheard, though as I noticed Mamma’s gaze beginning to lift from the dress she was pinning, I once again decided to rely on discretion as the better part of good common sense, and simply replied, “Yes, ma’am, I’ll go now and fetch my shawl and then I’ll be right back in. Is Lucie gone home yet?”

          Oh! At that one she did react instantaneously, whipping that dark gaze at me and pinning me to the spot like a butterfly on a board, or like the weekly church bulletin on the cork near the door of Old Old First Baptist. I had a second again to marvel how Mamma’s eyes had darkened lately from their previous clear sky blue that I had seen all my life, to this new and unfamiliar dark matte with occasional sparkles.

         ”Were you needing to look for Lucie for something, Miss Mary Grace?”

         ”No, Mamma,” I stammered, “uh-I just was wonderin’, that’s all. Would you like me to set out meat for supper then?”

         Another steady look from that darkness and then her eyes flashed, once, and she looked back at the dress. “No. We are goin’ over to Aunt Grace’s tonight.”

         At that the breath whooshed out of me, and silently I padded out of the room, through the kitchen, and out into the back yard, where I stopped to sit on the stoop for a few minutes, hoping to regain my equilibrium. No matter how I strived, it seemed like circumstances were closing in tighter and tighter around me. I felt like that ol’ fish I watched Jeth Thomas reel in one time when I was hidin’ out on the Old Trestle, before it collapsed, when there was still a danger of freight traffic. Jeth was down river just a piece in his daddy and uncle’s old rowboat, catching fish for their supper I reckon (Jeth lived with his Daddy Martin and his Uncle Joe Bob in a shack down past the darkie community, between Cameron City and Canton). I watched him catch something on his hook-turned out to be a big catfish, pretty common in these parts-and then he reeled it in, little by little, while that poor ol’ fish just a-struggled its life away.

          I’m knowin’ now just how that catfish felt. No matter how I try, them ol’ pincers are homin’ in on me, and I am just as doomed as Farmer Blake’s cows when he takes up to the slaughterhouse in Montgomery.