The neighbors had an old white horse named George stayed out in the pasture, and when she’d wake up in the morning sometimes she could look out in the field, sun just up, and see George out there and somehow it made her feel good. She couldn’t remember what happened to him, they must have sold him. She took to a baby goat Papa had and went out to the barn with Papa one day and he got angry and had a hammer in his hand and he slung it, didn’t even know the poor thing was standing there, and the little goat just fell over dead. Hit him in the head. They didn’t even dress it out. It wasn’t a pet or anything but it made everybody sad. Once she got up onto George and rode him out into the pasture and he went under a tree and nearly knocked her off. She was always scared of a horse after that. Earl wanted to get all of them a horse. Well he did have one — a beautiful mare — there was a way you’d pull her and she’d rare, and she’d rare up with the kids, and scare her to death. And Earl was going to break that horse. It’s a wonder he didn’t have a stroke over there one day. He got so mad at that horse he led her out into the lake up in the woods behind the house, that horse had to hold her head way up, Earl was just going to drown her. That’s how he was then. Why in the world he didn’t have a stroke right then, his face was so red.
He had a temper like a lion! But he’d get over it.
She could hear a gentle swishing in the trees. Could be rain, coming.
When they’d go out to that lake Edsel and Janie’s little Robert would say, wasn’t but about three, — Su-u-re is a lot of horse grunt around here. A little boy then, now long gone in the car wreck. What was the good in her living so long, when such things happen to young people? It just wasn’t right your children and even grandchildren should die before you. Finus would know about that.
She couldn’t hear. She’d heard thunder last night, oh, it was so loud one time. It’s funny about hearing, the way it goes. She finally got her hearing aid to work right, got it to squeak, but that lady down at the nursing home said she just took hers out, said she’d heard enough already. Earl used to sell that woman shoes, and she never would listen, and he just quit selling to her, he said he’d rather not have her business than to misfit her.
She knew he opened that store down in Tallahassee so he could be with Ann, she knew that.
— Miss Bird?
Old Creasie sticking her black head in the door.
— No, I’m all right, now just go on!
Merry even wrote that book, nobody would publish it, all about the family, and made Birdie out to be someone who pretended to be dumb but was really devious. Well she might have let them think she was dumb, but she wasn’t devious, she just wasn’t going to have all that fussing and fighting, the Urquharts did enough of that among themselves. And Earl knew she knew what was going on. Every now and then he’d come to her crying, You’re the best woman in the world! No woman’d put up with me but you! Things like that. Crying. I’ll never do it again! She didn’t say anything much, but naturally it killed something in you. She loved him but she didn’t respect him too much.
You know the first train that come through up there where Earl was born, where they lived when he was a boy, said it scared him so bad he run in and got under the bed. He used to tell the story. Little boy, he was. He was born in 1899. Maybe they’d all been different if the times had been different. These days nobody thought anything about sex, but back then it wasn’t so common, so maybe those Urquharts were just ahead of their time that way. Except with them it was more like couldn’t think of anything but sex. Peggy one time, she was Levi’s oldest daughter, and she told her mama, Rae, never will forget, she said old Junius Urquhart felt up under her dress. The idea of such a thing, and his own granddaughter, too. And the old man said, Aw, she’s just lying. But Birdie knew now it was true because just about three weeks before Ruthie died she told Birdie and Pud that he did her the same way when she was a little girl. Birdie said, Why didn’t you tell us before now? Said, Ruthie, that’s ruined your life and you hadn’t ever told us anything about it.
Now that old man could have done well by his family if he’d wanted to. He was a good insurance man, but all he cared about was chasing women. One time he put Edsel on his lap and was talking to him, before Edsel knew it big tears was rolling down his grandfather’s face, and Edsel was a sensitive child, you know, and he started crying too before you know it, and he says, What’s wrong, Grampaw? And old Junius says, Son, nothing’s wrong, that has sold me more insurance than anything in the world. That’s what he’d do, you know, in the Depression. Go into people’s houses and when they wouldn’t buy insurance he’d start to cry, say That’s all right, he knew times was tough, he could hardly feed his own family, he never knew when they’d be out on the street, and so on, and they’d buy a little bit. He worked hard, but he wasn’t honest.
My lands they was all bad, Earl too, but she held her head up and acted like she didn’t know a thing in the world because listen she knew that she could not work and make a living, she’d married too young and was spoiled, and she knew Earl would never marry anybody he just slept with, so she let it go. She knew he respected her, in spite of everything. And everybody depended on Earl, everybody looked up to him, never dreamed he’d die as young as he did, just fifty-five years old. And when he died everybody just fell apart. She’d lived almost as long without him as she ever did with him, and got by all right. But Pud’s death like to killed her. And Lucy going like that, on the stairs in her home, and nobody there. And losing Ruthie and Earl and then Robert. Well it wasn’t fair she should have to live through all that, she should have gone before any of them except Earl.
None of the Wells girls turned out well in married life, she guessed, well Pud did but Lucy didn’t. She was so beautiful, Lucy, nothing but a set of big brown eyes in a little birdlike face, and married that silly man couldn’t let go of his mama and then had to just divorce him, and then married that old goat, wasn’t nothing but a servant to him, he wouldn’t take her anywhere. Birdie felt so sorry for her. Pud’s Anton was a good man but he was as crazy as she was, always clacking his teeth out like a cash drawer, the kids just loved it.
There was that mockingbird come back and looking in. If he had any sense he wouldn’t build in the camellia, he’d build in one of the trees in the yard. She loved to climb trees when she was a little girl but once she got up there she’d be too scared to climb down. Never would forget, climbed up in the loft one time and couldn’t get down, and stayed there and worked her stomach till she nearly bled, she was so scared. Always scared of heights but couldn’t help but climb up. Just a birdbrain, she guessed, reason they named her Birdie.
The mockingbird went into his repertoire, so loud it sounded right in her ear.
Sometimes she liked to think she could have poisoned Earl like Levi and Rae said. It was so ridiculous, she liked to think she could have done it. She’d thought she was losing her mind there for a while, would go into the spice cabinet pulling out little spice tins, sniffing, thinking, Did I do something I didn’t even know? She had for a while put boiled sassafras water in his coffee because there was a doctor in Huntsville who’d said it countered the bad effects of tobacco. But she’d stopped because Earl said it tasted so bad. But could it have done some damage before she stopped? It froze her to think so. Levi and Merry had it like some old detective story, like she’d made him scrambled eggs one morning and sprinkled arsenic or — what was it Pappy had in his garden? hemlock — into it, and he’d gobbled it up, gone out and got into the pickup and over to the lake, down to the woodpile to chop some wood, the old mare snuffling up to him wanting some sugar, and fell out, spooking the horse so it ran off across the dam and into the woods. She liked to think sometimes she could have done that, not because she hated him or wanted him to die but just because it’d surprise everybody so, the ones with any sense, who weren’t crazy, it’d be so contrary to their notions about little old Birdie — Merry might have said she was devious but get right down to it she thought she was a birdbrain, too. It’s been so many years since all that, she couldn’t even be sure to tell you the truth herself that maybe she didn’t.