The Cardboard Village: The Gardens

By Monte Combs

This book is for those that still remember their first real kiss or their first black eye. This is for those who remember their cuts and bruises and scrapes and the fun they had getting them. This is for those that still remember their first broken heart and the tears that they shed from it. This is for those that can still remember the "guys." The bullies and the bookworms, the jokers and the jesters and the tubbies and the tom boys. This is for the ones that remember that feeling that we had when were just trying to find a way to make sense of it all without a blueprint or a guideline. This is for the ones always trying make it to the other side of adolescence unscathed amid the peer pressure and the fear of not fitting in. For all of pain and pleasures of that time, most of us made it through. Some did not. I often hear people say that "if you could go back, to what age." For all of its wonders and memories, I would have to pass. If I were to change one second of that time I would not be here writing this book that I have thoroughly enjoyed reminiscing. However, it is just a place to visit. In my did all those memories happen that way? If not, I'll keep those memories
fact or fiction , alway close to my heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350936162

Book preview

BK90083993.jpg

© 2023 Monte Combs

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Print ISBN: 979-8-35093-615-5

eBook ISBN: 979-8-35093-616-2

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 1

Jody had just driven most of the night, although he wasn’t exactly sure why. It was getting close to morning, and he knew the sun would soon be rising. As he lit up his last Marlboro, he turned off of the blacktop onto an old red dirt road. The first light was starting to appear. Silhouettes of old familiar friends began to materialize before his eyes. There on the left was the old barn where his grandpa used to cure tobacco. He still remembered how sick he had gotten when he and two of his cousins had tried to smoke some of those old, dried tobacco leaves as kids. He could see the mimosa tree where his dad had put up a tire swing for him and his brothers. So many wonderful memories filled his mind, he could feel his eyes start to water. It had been too many years since Jody had walked that road. Now, as he strode past what used to be cow pens, he could see the old house. The tin roof had collapsed years before and the rocks that formed the chimney were scattered, but to him all the kudzu and briar bushes in North Carolina could never dull its memory.

For one brief moment he could have sworn he heard his mother, Jody, you best not be playin’ in your good britches, or I’ll wear you out, and I don’t mean maybe neither. Mamma sounded hard but that was just her way. She was only in her early thirties, but farm life sometimes has a way of wearing you down. Raising four kids on what little money they had was also quite a chore. Yes sir, Mae Walker was no stranger to hard work, coming from a family of ten herself. She was a tall, slender woman and frail by no means. Her hair was auburn, and her eyes were green. Jody’s earliest remembrance of her was how she smelled. It was a combination of apples, vanilla, and Ponds Cold Cream. She used to cover her mouth with one hand when she laughed, because she was always overly self-conscious of what she thought was a terrible overbite. She had a beautiful voice and Jody used to love to listen to his mother singing Just As I Am down at Hay Meadow Church on Sunday morning.

Hay Meadow Church. If there was another church in North Wilkesboro that preached more hellfire and damnation, Jody couldn’t recall it. He could recall the friends and the relatives and the gatherings that surrounded that little two-room building. He remembered the graveyard out in back of the church and how his father had pointed out who they had been and what fine things they had done.

Jody’s father, now there was a piece of work. Cletus Walker, six-foot-four, two hundred and fifty pounds of individual that most people were happy to have only seen the gentle side of. Cletus Had been considered a roughneck long before Mae made him see the error of his ways. He was devoted to his wife and four kids and worked as hard as two men to do for them.

Jody’s father had been a soldier in World War II, but that was one thing he never discussed. The family all knew that sometimes he still had nightmares about it. Cletus, at any rate, still believed that a ten-year-old boy should know how to use a twenty-two rifle, if for no other reason than to shoot squirrels and rabbits. He taught Jody to never kill just for sport. However, Cletus would never teach Jody’s younger twin brothers to shoot. His father said that they were too young, being only eight years old, but Jody always had his suspicions.

Jody’s brothers, Calvin and Cleavon, like Jody, were big for their age but it wasn’t just that. Both brothers wore extremely thick glasses and when you looked into their eyes it gave most people a very uneasy feeling. It was almost as if Jody’s mother and father knew that these two were not destined for greatness. Their only hope for them was that they did not wind up in prison, or worse. The twins would sometimes do things that would cause the neighbors to whisper amongst themselves about the twins being teched. Jody recalled one time when Reavis Lovette, who lived down the road_, caught the twins trying to snatch one of his hens. When Mr. Lovette brought this to their father’s attention, Calvin and Cleavon were whipped with a belt, which really didn’t seem to affect them too much. At any rate, the next time Mr. Lovette came walking down that road on a hot day, the twins, who were standing by the well at that time, assured him how sorry they both were and offered him a cold dipper of water. Mr. Lovette accepted their kind offer and to show them that there were no hard feelings, smiled at them as soon as he had finished the water and went on his way. To most people that might seem a forgiving gesture. However, Jody was sitting in the outhouse staring out through a knothole when he saw the twins in unison peeing into the dipper. Jody never again accepted food from the twins.

Dory was the other member of the family. She, like the rest of the family, was tall but unlike her mother she was dark with black ebony hair and dark brown eyes. There was some Cherokee blood in the family way back. Dory was as pretty as an Indian princess with high cheekbones and deep dark eyes. She was sensitive and not very outgoing. She was more at ease with children and most of all, she loved animals. Dory enjoyed the woods, and she spent more time there than she did with her mother in the house. This, to some degree, upset her mother. Her mother feared she would not learn to cook or to sew or to do the things that a woman was expected to know. Mamma was right.

These six comprised the Walker clan. Now, it was 1955 and work, as scarce as it was, paid very little. Between working at the furniture factory, farming and raising hogs and chickens, it was still difficult to scratch out a living. Cletus had heard that there was need for factory workers at an aircraft plant in Baltimore and the pay was good. So Cletus, along with some of his relatives, decided to pack up and move to Baltimore. Jody laughed to himself when he remembered what a sorry-looking caravan that bunch made. They looked like a pack of migrant farmhands at harvest time. The