She entered her bedroom and smiled at her baby. A dash of water over her feet sent a thin stream of mud off the side of the porch. Mama’s coming, baby, Copper called as she mounted the stone steps.
Lilly Gray’s cry escalated, gone from asking to demanding. A few more weeks and they’d have pickles. Longing for her family nearly dropped her to her knees right there in the spillover that drowned the green onions, what was left of the lettuce, and the cucumber vines no bigger than her little finger. By that time she was sure to have the farm up and running again so that all he had to do was sit on the porch and listen to the katydids and the whip-poor-wills. Now all the work and worry belonged to her. She’d asked for her father’s ramshackle farm, and he’d turned over the deed. That was the price you paid, she reckoned, for living on Troublesome Creek. Hands on hips, Copper took one last look at the muddy water. Might as well pull her feet out of the mud and go back to the house.Ī baby’s cry drew her attention. The flood was receding, but it was too late to save her garden. Rushing water lapped first at her ankles and then her knees as she ventured farther into the creek. And, Lord, since I’m asking, make sure whoever Ye send ain’t afraid of turtles.Ĭopper Brown Corbett held her skirts ever higher. It ain’t a time I want to be alone, and Ace won’t hear of me going to my family. Bowing her head like Mammaw did, Dance prayed, Lord, if Ye see fit, I need for Ye to send me someone to help when it comes my time to birth this baby. Mammaw always said, Take your troubles to the Lord, Dance, and He will see you through. She remembered her mammaw Whitt and the Bible she kept close at hand. But now it was easier if her mind drifted like a dandelion seed in the wind, never lighting for long.ĭance absently traced the mound of her belly and hoped seeing the turtle hadn’t marked the baby. Once she was her mother’s quickest young’un, always first to figure a riddle. If she could have, she’d have turned that thought over. Her stomach knotted at the thought of saving the entrails for the snapper. If so, he’d take the turtle back to the lean-to and plug up the hole so she could cross the porch to chop weeds from the garden or kill a chicken for supper. Ace slept like a snake, with one eye open. She wouldn’t try sneaking out into the night again. The raw place on her arm was scabbed over, but still she kept watch on the poker. Hoot owls would steal your soul if you stared into their knowing yellow eyes.Īce left by way of the flooded creek bed, and Dance sat as she did every day in a straight-backed chair by the window, wishing her life away.
Just the thought of the thing being so close gave her the shivers. Her old man knew she’d never cross that porch. It never did grow back.Ĭold sweat broke out across her forehead and under her arms.
Her little brother Dimmert pulled the turtle one way while she pulled the other until the end of her finger snapped right off. Everybody knew a turtle wouldn’t let go until it thundered, but there was not a cloud in sight. She remembered screaming in fright and pain that day at the creek. The motion was enough to take her right back to her childhood and the day a snapper much like this one grabbed hold of her. One morning after Ace left, she’d watched with apprehension as a raccoon clawed at the screen, hoping for a tasty meal.Ībsently, she rubbed the stump of her right index finger against her chin. She didn’t have to look to know he’d lower it into the gap, then grunt as if he was working hard while he tacked a piece of window screen over the turtle’s hole to keep other varmints away from his prize. Jumping back, Dance let the curtain fall. Its head weaved about like a blind man’s. He caught her watching and so lifted the turtle high. As always on the mornings he left her alone, he raised the trapdoor in the porch and leaned it against the wall. Arms bowing from the weight of it, he strutted back to the house. He paused in front of a rickety lean-to by the barn, rummaging around for the varmint Dance knew he would withdraw. In the mornings fog rose like smoke from the surrounding mountains, and at night panthers prowled the ridges screaming their lament.ĭance Shelton’s thin hand parted tattered curtains as her husband, Ace, trekked across the yard.
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The sturdily built cabin was just one room with one door and two fair-size windows looking out over a rough-sawed porch floor. You’d have to be lost to find the place, set as it was up a holler overgrown with thorny locust, tangled devil’s shoestring, and poison ivy as dense as mosquitoes on a riverbank.
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