Margie looked at Tom and, after a flicker of some feeling Tom could lay no name to, nodded farewell. And then it was as if Tom had never been.
The son took up the reins, gave a touch of the whip, and said something to Margie. Her laugh drifted back, streaming with her yellow hair.
Tom stood watching them ride away till they pinched up and played out.
He rubbed his beard thoughtfully, then hunted the dead rattler in the brush, taking care — he didn’t want to run across the rattler’s mate or kin. He found the riddled skin and used the shotgun barrel to pick it up. It hung limp, but as it twisted slightly with breeze-given false life, it glinted.
That glint was worth saving. He would build a fire and reduce the snake to ashes. Reducing the snake to ashes and panning the ashes — that seemed the best way to reclaim the gold he had meant to salt the mine with.
Later he would make up his mind whether to blow the gold on dance-hall girls and redeye or to buy stagecoach passage back to the family farm.
Either way, it looked like it was his hard lot to be honest, in spite of himself.
The Maiden Aunt
by Patricia L. Schulze
Belle was the last of a vanishing breed...
I have never heard the organ in church rolling out that one special march just for me. Never held a child of my own close to my breast in the still hours of the night and calmed its fretful cries with gentle croons. Never suffered the joys, fears, and sorrows of being a wife or of motherhood. I have devoted my life to serving others and been much too busy for such selfish things.
For a few short years I served by teaching school, but long before either parents or school board discovered my inadequacy I gave up the toil of trying to implant knowledge in unreceptive, unwilling young minds and took myself back to the home of my parents.
It was there, in the midst of my loving family, that I drifted into what was to become my lifelong profession.
I was born early in my parents’ marriage and had lived my childhood as an only child, a situation I found no great hardship — indeed, it was much to my liking. Then, shortly before my sixteenth birthday, my parents unthinkingly discovered some untapped fount of fertility and I was avalanched by six siblings in six years. It was perhaps to escape the noise and chaos of a house full of infants that I conceived my short-lived teaching career.
When I returned to my family at the age of twenty-six, the youngest, my brother George, was already five and the rest of the children were in school. For many years I helped out at home, my mother being a little overwhelmed by her enlarged family and, perhaps for the first time, grateful for my physical attributes. I had a face so plain as to be called homely by the unkind and a more-than-slight tendency toward plumpness, which guaranteed that I would not be tempted from her side by ardent suitors.
I found my real role in life when my sister Julie was married. Completely bemused by the miracle of newfound love, Julie was clearly not up to planning the kind of wedding the town would expect for a Whitlow daughter, and Momma was equally flustered by what seemed to her an insurmountable task. Quickly and efficiently I took matters into my own hands.
The wedding was a complete success and firmly established my reputation as an organizer. When my brother Harold took it in mind to take a wife, to whom should the family of the bride turn to smooth out the rough spots but his dear sister Belle?
It was Julie, again, who established me in my new life and gave a name to my profession. She was soon in what she liked to call “an interesting condition” and in short order was delivered of an eight-pound, fourteen-ounce baby boy, which act so depleted her delicate strength that it was only natural that Aunt Belle should move in for the first weeks of adjustment to care for both mother and child.
A few more weddings, a few more births, the unfortunate death of my youngest sister Claire and the resulting funeral which I handled with near perfection, and I was well launched as the family’s maiden aunt.
I continued living in my parents’ home, though I wasn’t often there. Even with Claire’s death I had three brothers and two sisters remaining, and the seemingly endless arrival of young nephews and nieces called for frequent absences.
My joy in this riot of fecundity was marred but once, and then only briefly, by the passing away of Momma and Papa within a few weeks of each other. I was cheered up when the will was read and I learned that my dear parents had left me the old family home and enough money to run it comfortably. My brothers and sisters were completely satisfied with the arrangement. It was now accepted that I would probably never marry, and they didn’t really want me to live with any of them on a permanent basis.
The only problem with being a maiden aunt is that at some point in one’s career one reaches a hiatus — a brief period when no demands are being made. As we all grew older, the members of my family finally outgrew the need to reproduce themselves with such frequency, and the next generation was a few years removed from weddings as yet. In fact, for a long time the only duty I performed was a funeral for the oldest son of my middle brother, Jack. The poor boy misjudged the grade of a curve he was rounding on a stolen motorcycle at one o’clock in the morning.
But for several years my services were not much needed, and as they grew greyer and began to fear old age, my brothers and sisters began to discuss with some concern who should be responsible for me when I was no longer able to care for myself.
My parents had left a few investments which assured me of a small income — enough, provided I could always care for myself — but my younger siblings seemed to think they detected signs of approaching weakness. In truth, they had nothing to fear. I had made provision for the future many years before, but for reasons of my own I chose not to enlighten them. I rather enjoyed the consternation they tried to hide around me, the suddenly hushed conversations when I entered the room. I delighted in imagining the frantic discussions between husbands and wives late at night. Who would get stuck with Aunt Belle?
Actually, I was in better health than any of them and perfectly content to sit out the lull and wait for the next generation to grow to the age of weddings and birthings...
If I have one complaint with young people today it is that they have no regard for tradition. There I sat, surrounded by nieces and nephews, waiting for them to call on my services. But do you think one of them called?
Those who married did so in forest glades, at the bottom of the ocean, or on horseback. The rest preferred more casual living arrangements which needed no helping hand of a maiden aunt. As for the babies born of these unorthodox unions, they seemed to be born one day and traipsing across mountains or through Europe in backpacks the next. Not one of my nieces had the decency to have a delicate delivery or an extended recovery.
I finally realized that what I had considered a predictable and temporary lull in my working life had become permanent. I had only two choices — to sit around and try to outlive my brothers and sisters so that I would be needed to arrange funerals, or to put my retirement plan into action.
I chose the latter.
When I was a young child, long before the days of brothers and sisters, I had a maiden aunt, one of my father’s older sisters. I still remember the softness of her voice, the coolness of her touch when she nursed me through my childhood bout of chicken pox. She was a fixed point in my childhood, someone who would always be there. Then one day she wasn’t, and no explanations were ever given. Through the years my memory of her faded until the time when I followed in her footsteps, so to speak. Then the memory returned and I asked my father what had happened to her.