The Saints of Swallow Hill(107)

If the boys were sad at all, it was over Aunt Nellie. They missed her a lot, but they tried not to let their mother know how much. After she got sick, their mother did everything she could to help her get better. They knew this because sometimes they would listen outside the door of Aunt Nellie’s room, where she was always resting. Their mother urged her to drink and to eat. Aunt Nellie’s sickness started right after Christmas the year before. They were at the supper table and she’d picked at her food and acted like she was having trouble swallowing. Their mother had asked if she felt okay.

Aunt Nellie had said, “It’s the oddest thing,” and she pointed at her throat.

Mother said, “You have a sore throat?”

Aunt Nellie said, “No, it feels like a lump there I can’t get rid of, like when you got to cry and you hold back.”

Their mother brought her water, tea, Cokes, and soups. Aunt Nellie got to choking, even over those things. The doctor came to see what he could do for her, and the boys steered clear of him because he’d given them a shot a time or two in his previous visits.

He disappeared into Aunt Nellie’s room, and when he and their mother came out, she started crying after the doctor said, “Six months.”

Aunt Nellie passed in the late spring of ’41 and their mother, who had called her “Sister,” stayed sad for a good while. The boys picked her violets and wild roses off the fence and brought them to her by the fistfuls. They dove in the river, searching for their special rocks, and set them about her room. They only wanted to see her smile again. Their father stayed close by, took her on small trips. Eventually their mother was her old self again, but every week, right after church, and without fail, she tended Aunt Nellie’s grave. She’d been buried next to their grandparents. They’d see her sit, and talk, and wondered what she said. Sometimes their father went too. When they came back, they would go out on the porch, rock in the rocking chairs, hold hands, and not say much. The boys watched all this, mildly troubled their parents were sometimes sad, but they were too. They’d loved Aunt Nellie.

One day their mother received a letter and her reaction disturbed them immensely. After she read it, she sank into a chair and stared a long time out the kitchen door without speaking, not even when they asked her a question. Their father came in, and she waved the piece of paper in the air. They went to their room, and the boys waited in the hall after the door clicked shut. They heard the murmur of their voices, and their mother crying. A bit later, they all went to this house in Harnett County. She said she used to live there, but now a man named Butch Crandall lived there, alone. Another man came that day too and introduced himself as Mr. Eugene Cobb. He gave the boys such a piercing look, they grew uncomfortable. They didn’t know who Mr. Cobb or Mr. Crandall were exactly, but Mr. Cobb acted real important, so they figured he must be. Mr. Crandall focused only on their mother.

Mr. Cobb didn’t say a word to them, and the only thing he said to their mother was, “Good to meet you. Sign here.”

Then, he gave her an envelope. After, he finally turned to the boys and they locked eyes with him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out two pieces of hard candy, their favorite, butterscotch.

He said to their mother and father, “Fine-looking boys. I wish you all well,” before he walked away.

Their mother looked relieved.

Mr. Crandall said, “I reckon it’s settled.”

Their mother didn’t say much, only, “Yes.”

Before they left, she visited a grave. Their father stood beside her quietly while she got out a hankie and wiped her eyes.

Delwood took her hand, worked the candy to the side of his mouth, pointed at the headstone, and said, “Mother, who is Warren Cobb?”

She said, “Someone I used to know. I’ll tell you and Jeremiah about him one day.” She handed the envelope to their father and said, “We can put it aside for the boys’ schooling.”

They said their goodbyes to Mr. Crandall and Mr. Cobb and went back to the big farmhouse on the Cape Fear River, where the boys immediately ran upstairs to put on their swim trunks. Back outside they dashed along the embankment, racing to their rope swing. Young Delwood reached it first, grabbed on, and swung out over the water, and for a few seconds, he was suspended in the heavens. He dropped into the river and bobbed up like a cork. Jeremiah came next, and they did this over and over, each time looking toward the edge of sloping hillside to see their mother and father watching over them. Beebee zipped in and out between them on the grass, and their father ran after her, grabbed her, and swung her around, mirroring their soaring play. Their mother held Joshua, the one everyone said resembled her most.

The family stayed on the river bank all afternoon, and the boys laughed as they played with a joy that was untroubled and carefree. They were contented, happy. Time and again, they were told how much they were loved, but they already knew this implicitly in their hearts. A while back, their father had taught them about longleaf pine roots. He’d said the main one, called the tap root, was as wide as the tree and went underground a long way, up to fifteen feet. He’d told them the trees could live five hundred years, and to them, that was forever. They paused in their play now and again to watch their parents, and what they saw were two people whose love was as deep and as solid as the tap root of their beloved longleaf, and the boys were certain their love was forever.