Stillness in the Air

By Louise Goodman

The year is 1905 and just as sure as the boll weevils nest in the rafters of the barn to return next year, so the seeds of madness lay waiting to destroy the McKinnon family.

In Louise Goodman's new novel, Darla McKinnon tells her story-of a young girl, born into a violent family where denial of reality becomes their way of surviving. From the cotton fields of Texas to the streets of Los Angeles, Darla's rich imagination leads her to believe that California presents them all the opportunity to lead a "proper" life. Fantasy rarely comes true, but, in Stillness In The Air, it seems that some of Darla's dreams are realized when she is sent to live at a farmhouse in Anaheim where she cares for the ailing Mrs. Sparrow. Here she learns how to love and lets herself be loved. She matures into a thoughtful and lovely young woman. But happiness has a way of fleeing when least expected and so it is that Darla is thrown into a battle of wills with her ruthless brother, Jasper. His derangement spirals deeper into madness, threatening to take Darla and her two sisters with him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 29, 2002
• ISBN: 9781469752600

Louise Goodman

Louise Goodman?s short fiction has appeared in national and regional literary magazines. She holds a doctorate in Psychology and is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Dr. Goodman lives in Southern California where she is writing her next novel, Hunt For A Soul.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Darla

It started soft to begin, just a spark here and there where my two big brothers had set their torches. Pa, at the end of the acres, was doing his own torching. A distant glow flashed, then wiggled across the fields, catching more plants as it went. I watched while streaks of red and gold pulled at each other until they burst through to engulf the whole of Pa’s crop.

I was only nine but I still remember how my scrawny bones quivered with both excitement and terror as I watched the flames, crimson-gold, leap toward heaven only to be pulled back again into the moans of the cotton plants. Just when I thought the fire was about to go out, a flare would jump into the air throwing its fury onto a nearby bush. I held my breath, heat pricked my skin. I took a notion to run and hide behind the settee in the parlor, but then, fearful that the fire might leap the clearing and burn the house down with me in it, I stayed to keep my eye on that blaze.

Somewhere behind me, Mama yelled, Darla, you fall in them flames and I ain’t coming after you!

When I turned I saw my two brothers, dead torches in hand, whooping it up like it was Independence Day in Midland—riding their old mules around the woodshed, through the clearing, over to the pig’s pen and back again. The poor dumb critters looked scared half out of their wits, their eyes bulging and lather at their mouths. Calvin was in the lead as usual, his red hair standing up like little flames, and Jasper, trailing, slapping his mule’s rear.

My jitters grew, the ground seemed to tremble beneath my feet. I worried a cinder might jump and set my hair afire. My little sister, Isabelle, danced and whirled until I feared she’d get too close and fall among the burning bushes.

Pa, his work done for the day, stood near at hand with Mama, his voice rising over the roar. Stop your wiggling, Isabelle! This ain’t no party! You should be on your knees praying the varmints don’t come back next year!

I sidled up close to my mother’s long rough skirt, hoping she’d lay a plump hand on my shoulder. But Mama shooed me off. Darla, she said, it’s too hot with you hanging on me. I moved away, but not too far.

She wiped her brow with the hem of her apron then turned to Pa. Another whole season of work done gone up in smoke.

Pa spat in the dirt and pulled at his long red mustache. It’s a right sorry day when a bug no bigger than a child’s thumbnail can whip Edgar McKinnon. But, beejeesus Mabel, you’d think them fellas in Washington could come up with a resolve before the damned critters eat all the cotton in Texas. Here we is in the year nineteen-ought-five, and all they say is burn ’em or poison ’em.

Little red bonfires danced in my father’s eyes. I stared at Mama and hers were the same. At the time it seemed a wonder to me how they got there, when I looked again they’d disappeared.

Pa bellowed, his chest puffed out. It’ll be arsenic next! I got me a batch of it from Ed Garcia. Yep! Packed up his family and high tailed it to Oklahoma. Said he couldn’t fight the weevils no more. Pa’s face turned red as the fire.

Mama said in her prettiest voice, Don’t get yourself riled. Third time’s a charm is what my mama used to say. I bet we killed them weevils off this time. The new crop’ll be better’n ever.

Beats me, Mabel, he shouted, how it is you always got some derned notion that things’ll be better’n ever! That ain’t the way things is!

When Pa hollered like that I felt shriveled as if a weight had been put on my shoulders forcing me to shrink, further and further into my skin. But it was when he turned quiet that I feared him the most.

I’m still afraid when I can’t hold back the memories.

I was dog-tired that day after working side by side my big sister, Addie. Not a sprig of brush could be left anywhere near the house is what Mama had said. The clearing was raked and raked again and weeds that’d grown around the chicken coop had to be pulled. Don’t want to burn down the farm along with the stalks.

We had no schooling. No need for book learning on a farm, Pa said. When Mama feebly protested, he said, Need all the hands I can get.

Mama knew how to read, but all she read was the Sears, Roebuck & Co Catalogue. Look at this, she’d say, a little old mahogany dining chair—costs dollar-ninety-seven! Lordy what’s this world coming to. When I looked I saw it had spindly legs and wouldn’t have held Isabelle let alone Mama whose fat bottom would have lapped over the sides.

That’s how I learned to read—Mama pointing out the words and me remembering the sounds: Fancy Metal Chatelaine Purse in Nickel or Silver, seventy-five cents; Oil Grain Plow Boot, dollar-seventy-five. It was always an exciting day when the new catalogue arrived and the old one put in the privy.

Addie squirmed and begged me to go to the outhouse with her. C-come on. I’m too s-scared to go by myself.

I would’ve hidden behind the porch to pee if left up to me but with Pa so near I thought better of it and took off running through the clearing with my sister. I was sick of Addie acting like a scaredycat, and told her so as we ran.

Fire raging in the distance threw a curious light over the farmhouse and woodshed. Ash had started to settle on the dirt and I noticed it falling onto Addie’s hair.

The door to the two-holer was hot to the touch when I pushed it open. Phew! I held my nose until I could get used to the stench. Dim inside, it suited me just fine, I didn’t have to see the spiders that I knew hovered on their webs in the high corners near the ceiling. Addie and I sat side by side to pee.

I finished first.

Wait on me! Addie cried.

Why y’all such a slow-poke? I said, then rushed back to watch the flames, not waiting for an answer. The fire was the most exciting thing that happened since the day I’d gone to town with Pa and saw the Johnson boys whooping down the main street of Midland, shooting their guns in the air at nothing I could see. Pa’d said they were drunker than a man had a right to be, shoulda been behind bars before they hurt somebody.

I wondered on this when I saw my brothers at the water-well, their hair slicked back, shirts tucked into the waistband of their brown cotton work pants. Most likely going to town, I thought.

Torching the fields must’ve put heat in Calvin’s eyes, because they looked fierce just like Pa’s. A brown felt hat, too big for his head, hid Jasper’s pale hair. He yelled at me as I ran by. Why don’t y’all jump in that fire, Darla? One less sister to worry on!

Calvin laughed out loud, and Jasper pushed out his puny chest like he’d done something good. It was hard for me to love those two boys, almost men. I knew I should. Mama told us often enough that we had a loving family and we should thank God. Nobody’s gonna be as good to you as family, she’d say.

In those days I never gave it a thought—just believed everybody’s family was the same.

I stuck out my tongue at Jasper and ran back to where I could feel the heat and hear the crackle of exploding cotton stalks. Suddenly the sky turned dark, the day seemed robbed of its light. I looked up to see black clouds rolling across the fields, over the house and barn. My nostrils filled with smoke, and I worried I might choke on the stench.

After a fit of coughing with tears rolling down my face I picked up my chin and realized that Addie still hadn’t come back from the outhouse. Breathing easier, I stood by myself, silent, watching flames burst through the blackness, thinking about Addie and me and why I had a sudden urge to jump in the blaze, leaving nothing but moans for Mama to hold. I looked then at Isabelle, crimson color spilling across her small face.

Three peas in a pod is what Uncle Arthur had said of us girls, when he came all the way from California to see his sister’s family. But I couldn’t fathom how he thought it. My hair was redder than either of my two sisters. Isabelle’s eyes, bluer and Addies, green as grass. Besides, Addie would stumble over a pebble and Isabelle was still a baby in my eyes. I looked at her, pressed up against Mama’s skirt, thumb in her mouth.

Finally Addie came shuffling around the bend of the house, not seeming to see all the beauty dancing before her eyes. She went to sit on the crumbling front steps—that never got fixed—that led up to the front door nobody used anyhow. Seeing her, I wondered if that’s how Addie was, half fallen down with nobody bothering to fix. Addie at twelve had been broken a long time, or so it seemed. I sighed and went back to gazing at the fire.

The blaze was dying off and not near so pretty as when it first jumped to the sky. I recalled cotton plants burning a long time before—when I was six or seven. I’d heard Pa’s same kind of talk then: We gotta rid ourselves of them vermin or we’re gonna go under. I trusted that come summer we’d have us a whole new crop of cotton, just as we did those other summers.

I noticed Pa standing afar, gazing out over his dying fields, and guessed he thought the same.

Later when my sisters and I had gone to bed, Addie turned her face to the wall, and I knew she was crying. She cried most every night until I got sick of her carrying on like that.

I missed the talks we had when both of us were little. Once Addie told me the boys played a poking game and it hurt.

I never heard of no such game, I said, sure she was fibbing.

It took a long time before I knew the truth of her words—by then it was too late.

One night I remember giggling before I whispered into Addie’s ear, Jasper showed me his thing. Then I giggled some more until I could hardly stop. It weren’t no better looking than his ugly big toe.

But Addie didn’t laugh, she got mad and turned her back to me. I felt bad for a long time thinking I’d said something sinful.

Not long after that Addie stopped talking altogether when we went to bed, just turned her face to the wall like she had that night.

The room seemed to spin when I closed my eyes. With the thrill of flames still vivid I couldn’t seem to settle. Up I got and asked Mama if I could read.

Mama sat in a circle of light cast by a lantern placed on a small mahogany table. She had her fist stuck inside one of the boy’s socks. With darning needle and thread in the other hand she made small stitches meant to close a hole big enough for one of Calvin’s toes to push through. She looked up from her mending, gold strands of hair fell around her small blue eyes. Can’t you keep your nose outta that book? Well, shoo, on with you.

I made a beeline for the kitchen table where another circle of light shone on the once rough hewn wood, smooth from years of wear.

Uncle Arthur had sent me my only book—Wide Awake.Iopened it to my favorite story—the one about Flossy who went to China by magic. There, Flossy found herself a new family, became the daughter of Long-nailed Fair One and given the name of Boo-hi-ski, which meant: The child with a balloon instead of a heart, which causes her to soar above all human sadness and dance among the stars.

Most of the time when I wasn’t working, or even when I was, I day-dreamed of living like Flossie: traveling to an enchanted land and finding a new family. Lightness settled around my heart at the thought of it.

I rested my head on the table, feeling content, smiling myself to sleep, I guess, because I felt Mama’s hand shaking my shoulder. Get yourself to bed. We’ve got us a load of chores to do tomorrow. I don’t want no lazy girls saying they’re too tired to work.

I staggered to my room, the braided rug in the hall rough against my bare feet. Both my sisters were asleep, Isabelle’s thumb dangling at the corner of her mouth and Addie looking peaceful. I curled in close to my big sister. A thin sliver of light poured through the open door from the parlor where Mama sat. Pa’s snoring rumbled through the house.

I closed my eyes. The next thing I knew some commotion awoke me. The parlor lantern was dark but the moon was bright and shone through the calico curtains. I could hear muffled sounds of my brothers’ voices. Once I heard Jasper’s voice, clear as a bell. Shit! he said.

CHAPTER 2

Jasper

The fire had scared the beejeesus out of Jasper. And now that the roar of the blaze had dwindled all he wanted to do was crawl in bed and hide his face in the covers. But, hell, at fifteen he couldn’t let on to his fright. His big brother, in one of his moods—couldn’t sit still while those flames still danced through the fields. Calvin was like that. Once his blood got to spinning, he had a bad time getting it to slow down.

The mules about dropped from all the torment they took, with Calvin racing his around the farm buildings, and Jasper’s barely keeping up. Finally, seemed Calvin got sick of that. Let’s go to town, he said, get us some whiskey. Jasper knew that with enough whiskey in him and a poke he’d settle.

They saddled their horses and washed up at the well, when here came Addie and Darla running past heading for the outhouse. Darla, in the lead with her red-gold hair flying every which way, while slowpoke Addie, trying to keep up, tripped over her dress. Even in the glow of the fire, Jasper could see Darla’s eyes—blue one minute, gray the next, and turned up at the edges. Always looked peculiar to him, like the eyes of the old cat that lived in the barn.

Calvin nudged Jasper, nodded his head toward the girls. His big brother didn’t have to say nothing, Jasper got the drift. Done it before.

They waited until they saw Darla run past, back to where Pa and Mama stood. Addie took her time in the crapper. When she did come out Calvin grabbed her arms and held them. You knows you likes it, he said, kind of soft-like. She squirmed and kicked at his legs, until Jasper had to grab hold and help his brother drag her to the woodshed, with Addie whimpering all the way.

Jasper hoped Calvin would forget about the whiskey once he had his way with Addie, but he was steamed as a wildcat when he came outta there. That goddamned loony bit my ear! He held a dingy handkerchief to the side of his head. I gotta get me some whiskey! And where was you, little brother, when she’s got her teeth buried in me!

That loony’s apt to tell Mama.

She ain’t gonna snitch ’cause she likes it same as me…and you. Besides Mama ain’t gonna believe her. Calvin dashed back to the well where they’d hitched the horses. With one quick jump he was astride. You coming, or ain’t? I gotta get me some whiskey.

Jasper wasn’t about to be left behind. He climbed aboard his horse and the two of them skirted around the house and out the gate to the far end of the old barn where the roof had collapsed so long ago Jasper’d forgot the turmoil it caused at the time.

Afterglow from the fire lit their way. They followed the dry riverbed for a spell until they came out among a clump of oaks to the rutted dirt road that led to town. When they came to a rise they pulled up their ponies. Jasper’s heart beat fast as he took in the cotton fields spread out in the near distance—a flat eighty acres that shimmered red in the night, like the eyes of a million wildcats looking back at him.

Let’s go! Calvin swung his mare back to the road.

The farther they rode from the sparkle of embers the brighter the moon, until it shone so bright it lit every rut and cranny. Bluestem grasses alongside the road cast shadows in its brilliance. Soon lights from Midland took over the night and they booted their ponies into a trot.

The Red Owl Saloon stood quiet. The long-nosed piano player, Cheeks, sleeping, his arms crossed over the keys, his head cradled between them. He got his name from having a tattoo on each side of his face. One cheek read Mother, the other Sally.

Old Henry Bywater leaned into the bar, his rumpled trousers half down his backside. Your Pa know you’re here?

Sure. Calvin smiled big, showing the space between his two front teeth. He threw a half-dollar on the bar-top. Gimme and my brother a shot of Wild Turkey.

That fifty-cent coin held Jasper’s eyes. Where’d you get that money, Calvin?

Found it. Calvin stuck his nose close to the short glass and sniffed the whiskey before throwing back his head, swallowing it in one gulp.

Jasper did the same. He would find himself a silver piece from Mama’s flour bin next time they came to town—then he’d be the one doing the buying.

Seemed Bywater wasn’t done with them. Saw where your Pa burned his fields today. Could see the glow for miles.

Dilly, the bartender, rubbed the bar with a dirty rag. It didn’t help much: with wood stained and scratched beyond repair. His face, so pock-marked not an inch was left without a small cavern. Tell your Pa a fella come in today, says he’s willing to buy any of the farmer’s land around these parts. Says he knows how hard it is to rid the cotton of the bolls.

Bywater leaned into the bar, his face, red as a chili. Don’t listen to no carpet-baggers. Come down here from the north, find a man like your Pa, down on his luck, and offer him a penny a acre. They’re leeches is what they is. Suck the blood right outta ya. He thumped his fist on the bar and downed a shot of whiskey.

Well, Pa ain’t selling. They’d have to hog-tie him to get him off that land. Calvin tapped the edge of his glass.

Dilly filled it. Calvin gulped it down and tapped again.

Jasper, sick of the stuff after two shots, went to sit on a ladder-backed chair in the corner. The piano player woke and played My Wild Irish Rose with such fury, Jasper reckoned the ivories might take flight. Cheeks’ long face took on a look of saintliness and when he finished playing he sauntered over to the bar. Dilly had a drink waiting. Cheeks downed it in one gulp, headed back to the piano, rested his head on the keys with a bang and closed his eyes.

Calvin kept up his drinking and Bywater kept up with him. Soon they both fell to the floor, sat tracing lines in the planks with their fingers. They tried singing Katie but couldn’t get past the first KK-Ka…

Cheeks’ snoring sounded like a dying calf.

Dilly kept filling Calvin’s glass until he’d used up the fifty cents. Better get him on his horse, Jasper.

That took some doing. Dilly helped walk Calvin, which was more like dragging a corpse. They pulled him through the dirt, leaving a path where his boots dug in. I’ll boost him up, Jasper, you get to the other side and pull his arms.

Calvin draped over his mare like a sack of cotton bolls. You trying to kill me? he yelled, before closing his eyes and passing into the unknown.

Jasper climbed behind his big brother so he could hold him on his horse, took up the reigns of his own, and slowly proceeded to ride home.

Jasper woke the next morning with his bedclothes in a jumble. He pulled the top quilt up and tucked it under his chin. The putrid smell of turpentine and burned-out fields of cotton caught in his nostrils. He’d been having one of his god-awful dreams again. This time the sun, hot as fire, kept getting hotter and hotter until everything in the world burst into flames—everything, that is, except Mama, who, charred, broke into a million pieces when he went to hug her. He was busy gluing her back together when his eyes popped open.

He looked over to Calvin’s bed, but it was empty, the covers pulled up neat. How he managed it after last night, Jasper couldn’t fathom. Calvin’d roused himself enough to get off the horse after Jasper’d brought them home, but it still took a heap of doing to get him to bed without too big a racket.

And now there Jasper was, still in bed, with the quilts pulled up, and Calvin nowhere in sight. Jasper knew he’d better haul himself outta there, or Pa’d be tanning his hide good. But he couldn’t stop thinking on the night before. He had feared his dumb mule would trip and he’d land in the fire, and all Pa’d say is, Get yourself outta there Jasper, there’s work to be done!

Addie, too, was a worry. Lately she’d been spooking him something awful. Always staring and looking like the devil was gonna pop outta her and strike him dead. And why did she bite Calvin’s ear until the blood run, he wondered. She liked the poking as much as Calvin—or so Calvin said.

Jasper knew he better stop mulling it over and get outta bed. His legs wobbled when he stood.

He pulled on his clothes and got outside just in time to hear the commotion of Pa and the rooster trying to out-crow each other.

Pa stood firm in the clearing, its raked dirt covered with the black ash of yesterday, while the old red rooster, atop the outhouse, acted like it had something to show off—its chest puffed out and cock’s comb straight up like a crown. Rays from the new sun lit up its blue and gold feathers. It gave one last long crow, then, wings flapping, it flew to the ground and scurried across the yard to join the cluster of red hens pecking furiously through the ashes.

Calvin and Pa stood eye to eye like a couple of bantam cocks readying for the fight, while Jasper lingered at the side feeling all the world the runt Pa was so fond of calling him.

Pa didn’t seem to take note of him, he was so pent up yelling at Calvin. You boys sure as hell high-tailed it outta here last night. Where’d y’all go? Whoring again? No need to go poking every night of the week. Pa sucked through a wad of tobacco, and let loose a stream of brown spit that landed next to Calvin’s boot.

Then he must have spied Jasper. What d’ya do, Jasper, watch your brother so’s to learn how to do it? His red mustache jumped.

Jasper stirred at the dirt with his worn field boot. He was near dying to tell Pa he could do it good as Calvin, but fear kept him from it. Never knew what might set Pa off. He brushed a lock of pale hair out of his eyes. No sir, I wait outside.

Beejeesus if that don’t beat all. Calvin, you’re seventeen, it’s time you learnt your brother. Ain’t never been a sissified McKinnon, and don’t want none now.

Jasper set his face to a grin so Pa wouldn’t know the mad growing in him. He figured his brother would talk up for him, instead Calvin said, His snake ain’t no bigger’n a wart on the end of an old man’s nose, Pa. He’s got some growing to do.

Pa pushed his head back and roared. I reckon he ain’t never gonna be the man you is, Calvin. Hell, you was big as a bull at that age. He reared his shoulders back like he figured he was big as a bull himself. "I want you boys staying put for the time being. We’re gonna have to plow them cotton stumps under. We’ve got us a heap of work to get them fields ready for next season.

Jasper, get a start on roofing the chicken coop. Them hens won’t lay if the rains come in on ’em this winter. Pa turned on his heel. Come on, Calvin, we’ve got us some fences to mend while them fields is cooling.

The two of them sauntered through the soot toward the woodshed, looking from the rear like copies of each other—broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, swaggering like they was ambling down the main street of Midland. From where Jasper stood there were no telling Pa’s belly had outgrown his pants, or bags of flesh puffed under his eyes until almost lost in the folds, while Calvin’s skin held a shine of sunburned cheeks, his eyes blue as the sky.

Jasper drew circles in the dirt with the heel of his boot, listening to the fury in him. I hate you, Pa! his heart said, loud as thunder. Always liking Calvin better’n me! Damnation! I’m gonna show you one of these days!

Heat nagged at the back of his neck and his stomach groaned with hunger. He’d slept through the breakfast Mama’d cooked for the men, but he knew a second was coming up for the girls. Pa’d told him often enough if he didn’t eat when the food’s ready, he could go hungry. But he knew somebody’d feed him. Maybe even Darla.

CHAPTER 3

Darla

Cold woke me the morning after the fire, Addie’s place next to mine empty. We’d shared the same bed since I was taken from the cradle to make room for Isabelle. When Isabelle was too big for the cradle she was put on a cot in the corner of our room where I could see her golden curls splashed across the muslin pillowcase. We (Addie and I) had the best white baked enamel bedstead with a real mattress, ordered from Sears, Roebuck and Co. but the boys only had pallets laid out on metal cots. Mama said she was going to get them mattresses but Pa said it’d make sissies of them. He didn’t say if he was a sissy for sleeping in a big four poster—a wedding present from Mama’s folks.

Light from the new day seeped around the edges of the curtains, and I wondered where my big sister had gotten to so early. Calling Addie big sister was wishful thinking. She seemed more of a child than Isabelle. Always stumbling over her words and her feet.

I wasn’t sure when Addie started acting peculiar. Seemed she’d always been that way, but now I remember how she used to run with me and giggle. First off, she’d stopped playing hide-and-seek among the cotton plants. That’s about the time she took to crying most every night.

Mama must’ve noticed too, because some times when Addie was near Mama clucked her tongue, twice, and whispered, I think she’s gone tetched, Pa.

I was still in bed when Mama pushed her way through the skinny opening of our door. Get yourself up, lazybones. I need you to get me a log for the cook-stove. Ain’t enough fire left for you girls’ breakfast.

I pulled myself up, scurried out the back door, bare-footed and still in my nightdress.The sun had yet to rise over distant hills, but the sky was bathed in golden rays. Whiskey Hill, closest to the farm, rested in shadow, along with Rattlesnake Hump and Red Mountain, though less a mountain than a bump in the landscape.

Sorrow Hill stood alone. Addie’d told me that on the darkest nights, the ghosts of our two baby brothers came out to play among the headstones. If you was to l-look at the hill early in the m-morning before the sun washed away the infants’ g-glow, you’d see them sure as hellfire’s real, is what she said.

I was no scaredy-cat like Addie, but still I’d never look on Sorrow Hill in the morning. I kept my eyes away from the hated image and leaned around the corner of the woodshed. There I saw Jasper in the clearing stirring black soot with the heel of his boot. I didn’t like Jasper much, or Calvin either for that matter. They were always doing mean things like the time they held me upside down over the water-well, me screaming like a Comanche until Mama came to my rescue. Then Mama saying, What you done, Darla, got your brothers so riled?

And me yelling, It ain’t me done wrong, Mama. I hated her that day, and my stupid brothers, too. But, then, in spite of myself, I felt sorry for Jasper when I saw him looking downcast, all alone like that, Pa and Calvin heading off together.

Wood shavings scratched my feet when I went into the woodshed. Rafters crisscrossed the ceiling and I knew that’s where all sorts of critters scurried looking for food. I looked for lizards but it was too dim to see. Grabbing a log I meandered back to the clearing where sunlight spilled across the valley.

Shadows held trapped by the night wiggled their way through the rows of burnt cotton stalks, still steaming from the fire. Red embers glowed on the blackened earth. The night before the fields had been ablaze with all the beauty I could fathom, but on that morning they looked like hell had risen and taken over our farm.

I shook my head to rid it of such a vision and carried the log into the house.

Lan’sake, where y’all been? Mama said when I got back to the kitchen. Addie was flipping flapjacks, bacon sizzled in the frying pan, a bag of ground coffee bounced in a pot of boiling water. Anybody’d think I could send a child to fetch a log without her taking her own sweet time about it. Mama snatched the log from my hand. Stop your day-dreaming and get some clothes on. We’ve got us a mess of work to do today. She pushed the wood into the black iron stove.

The stove cooked the food and heated the kitchen, which made it pleasant in winter. But come summer, heat and grease clung to the adobe walls. We left the door open to get the smell out, but then the heat from outside came in along with the flies, buzzing and landing on walls and table.

I pulled the stool to the sink to wash up. From there I looked through the spotted window to the old tupelo tree, its red bark twisted around the crooked trunk.

Later I wondered if that tree turned so as to avoid the people looking out at it.

At the time, I didn’t know we were different from other folks, thought everybody had our kind of troubles. We had a fine house with its big kitchen and nice table that Pa’d made out of boards he’d taken from the old barn whose roof had collapsed. Mama’d said she would get us a real table after she got Isabelle her bed.

In the far corner of the kitchen stood the Burdick sewing machine. And next to it was the opening to the parlor that was only used on special occasions like the time Uncle Arthur came to visit from California.

It was Thanksgiving, 1902, when he visited, and the house smelled of roast pork and mincemeat pie. He and Pa sat on the worn settee. Pa, on his best behavior, had polished his boots for the occasion and Mama was in her best-starched dress she’d sewn from blue daisied flour sacks.

My sisters and I, all dressed up: Isabelle in her little frock of yellow calico (a hand-me-down from Addie to me to her), me in the leftover material of Mama’s dress and Addie in her same faded green she’d worn the year before. Mama sat on the only other chair in the tiny room, so my sisters and I crowded together on the big rag rug, with me trying to keep my skirt over my shoes, scuffed from working the fields.

By golly, Uncle Arthur said, this girl can read! At the time I was reading aloud the letter he’d brought to Mama from her younger sister, Daisy Mae, who had moved from California to live in Seattle.

When he left he said he’d send me a book for Christmas and he did. The title, Wide Awake, which I read until the corners frayed and the binding loosened and still I kept it.

(I have it to this day, wrapped in tissue, in the bottom drawer of my bureau, its cover charred and some pages burned. It’s about the only thing we found in the rubble of the fire Mama set.)

Uncle Arthur’s chubby face and sweet smile was with me that morning as I gazed out the window at the tupelo tree. But then the smell of bacon frying reminded me of my empty stomach. I ran to our bedroom and slipped my brown work dress over my head. Back in the kitchen I saw that Addie had set the platter of flapjacks on the table right in front of Isabelle.

Now, it wasn’t that I meant to be mean to my little sister, I just was. I tried not to be, but the truth is she rattled my nerves when the rest of the family, especially Jasper, treated her like a princess, and what’s more she acted like one. My hand had a mind of its own when it yanked a golden ringlet hanging down her back. She let out a screech loud enough to call the chickens to their feed.

Mama twirled about, her apron flying. I swear, Darla, if you ain’t the most sinning child I ever did see! I’ve a mind to tell your Pa when he comes through that door. He’ll teach you a lesson or two!

Pa’d beaten me enough for me to know all the lessons in the encyclopedia. Didn’t seem to help, I still didn’t know as much as I wanted. I glanced at the door just in case he was coming through.

But it was Jasper who came in, another batch of flies with him.

It’s about time you got yourself in here, Jasper. Reckon you’re hungry enough to eat a rattlesnake. Mama looked over her shoulder like Pa was set to bite her. Pa’s let you come in, has he?

Jasper nodded, but I saw his cheeks turn pink and knew he was fibbing. He sat down next to Isabelle. I sat across from him and started on my own flapjack. I gotta eat in a hurry, he said. "Pa’s got me working