The Saints of Swallow Hill(93)

She said, “It must’ve been something serious.”

Del crossed his arms, felt his face flush like he was a schoolboy again. “Well.”

“So, what happened?”

“The man who owned the farm tried to make it so I’d have an accident, if you want to call it that. He had me go inside a grain bin to walk down the corn.”

Alarmed, Sudie Mae exclaimed, “You’re lucky you didn’t die in there. People do all the time.”

“Something peculiar happened.”

Sudie May said, “What?”

Del shuffled his feet and didn’t answer.

Sudie May said, “Why’re you looking like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like when we used to try to scare one another telling ghost stories.”

Del nudged her and joked. “You could be talking to a ghost right now.”

Sudie May’s eyes went big and round.

“What’re you talking about?”

“The corn collapsed on me.”

She gasped and said, “Oh, my Lord.”

“It gets more interesting. I guess that’s how I could put it.”

She gave him a curious look. Del stared at his boots while he explained.

“I blacked out, and all of a sudden, I could see everything happening. I’d been working with two other men, saw them shoveling the corn out, trying to get me free. Then, a third man come who’d been working somewhere else. He started shoveling too. Next thing I knew, I was on the grass, choking on dust. When I could talk, I asked where the third man was. They wanted to know how I knew about him since he showed up after I was already buried. When I come to, he’d already gone back to work. Can’t nothing explain that.”

He’d not talked about it for so long, it sounded foolish. Like a dream. He lifted his shoulders and looked away. He was inclined toward thinking it had been intended as some sort a lesson.

Sudie May took it in stride and said, “It must not have been your time.”

“I reckon not.”

She raised an eyebrow toward Rae Lynn. “And . . . ?”

Rae Lynn and Cornelia had separated again, and Rae Lynn was working on a different row.

Del rubbed his chin and shrugged. “And what?”

“What do you reckon she’s running from?”

“Beats me.”

“She’s real pretty.”

“I guess.”

“Have mercy, you blind?”

“I can see perfectly fine. She don’t see me is the problem.”

Sudie May smiled and said, “Ain’t but one reason I can think of makes a woman ignore a man.”

Del tried one of his old jokes. “I’m ugly?”

She laughed and said, “That, or another man.”

He’d wondered about that. Maybe she was married already and, like Cornelia, escaping some jackass who didn’t know what he had. If that was it, he must not have cared much about her, not in the way he would if he had a chance.

Sudie May continued to ponder. “I mean, why else is she acting like she’s hiding from something?”

Del didn’t know what to say. He had no idea. Sudie May watched Rae Lynn, who happened to look their way, as if she sensed their attention on her. From across the way, Del pictured what she might see, the house in the background, the garden filled with good food, the children, a pastureland dotted with cows, the beloved pines. They could have so much together, her and him. He wanted to convey this to her, but just like at Swallow Hill, when the moment came over him, and it was all he could do to keep it to himself, she simply went back to work, and whatever she thought of this place, or of him, was as obvious to her as the air he breathed.





Chapter 32


Rae Lynn


Eventually the hard knot of fear centered within her turned soft, yielding to the ease of life at the farmhouse. What never changed were her memories of Warren. As persistent as the heat, as constant as time, her thoughts, the good and the bad, were always there. Her final moment with him was still so vivid, she expected anyone who happened by to suddenly look at her in horror, as if she’d somehow projected an image for them to see. She felt bad for not handling Sudie May’s questions very well in the garden the week before, and she was pretty sure she appeared like she was hiding something. While she realized how her behavior might seem, she couldn’t very well blurt out the truth. Aside from Cornelia, only she herself understood the story from beginning to end. No matter how often she justified to herself what she’d done, to her mind, it would portray her in a different light. They would think the worst of her. She already struggled with it, herself.

She’d seen Del and his sister having a long conversation that day, turning their heads her way every so often. Maybe they were thinking, given her lack of answers to the questions, she was trouble and would bring trouble to them. What was starting to complicate matters was she really liked it here, enjoyed Del’s family and the spacious house. She loved the stained hardwood floors, the wood darkened to the color of molasses with different styled scatter rugs placed here and there. She and Cornelia each had a room with a soft bed. Rae Lynn admired the furnishings in hers: a night table with a lantern by the bed; a soft, lovely tufted chair by one of the windows; a chest of drawers; and another smaller table with a little upholstered stool. That table held a wash bowl, a pitcher, always filled with cool spring water, a hair brush, and a handheld mirror. She liked the print wallpaper running throughout the house, and Del had told her one day in passing his mother had chosen it and had called it her “inside garden.” It wasn’t that they had money, or the house was all that refined. Matter of fact, it was dilapidated in some areas, needed a new porch rail and a good paint job.