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Show Moon - 180 "The courthouse was in the center of town. Magnolias grew in a circle around it. Oh, what a wonderful smell!" I settle into my chair, waiting. "The Lears lived in the big house next to the woods. It got so hot in the i summer we kids would go to the river behind their house and wade into the water. This made our mothers furious. My father was the county clerk, you know. Even when it was a hundred in the shade, the sweat dripping off the leaves like rain, he wore his tie." She paused and stared at me as if I should reply. "Must have been uncomfortable," I said. "My mother was never herself after that." "After what?" "After her babies died. She put them under the sink." Is she talking about her own babies? Or is this a story of every generation in my family? Which one of us-Caleb, Lee, or me-is slated to die too soon? Ruth pats my hand. "Let me tell you. When a man gets cancer, it's because he's sinned." Is she thinking of her husband, Grandad, who maybe really did hang himself by one of his neckties? Does she judge a person so cruelly? I think she has never fixed her eyes on the person here and now across the table and seen what was in front of her. It's as if everyone whose life touched hers were zapped in one of those electronic bug jars and kept there like the roaches inside the clock. Electricity turned bad. |
