Butterfly Sunday by David Hill Page B

bedrooms overlooking a beautiful East Memphis golf course. No, there was nothing noble in it. It probably indicated some moral weakness. Yet, all that aside, she had an empathetic regard for her accomplishment. Though she wasn’t sure how she regarded Lucy’s ex-husband when he showed up late that Saint Patrick’s Day afternoon.

    “Is that Blue?”

    “Yessum.”

    Blue lived on the far side of the hill on a three-hundred-acre cotton farm he had inherited from hisfather. He was on his way to becoming one of those grinning young men of many enterprises. He’d acquired half interest in a video store and a drive-in grocery. She had also heard that for some unknown reason he’d recently hired on as a part-time deputy sheriff. He later admitted he went into law enforcement to avoid staying home alone at night.

    Averill had been gone since early that morning, called away to Senatobia to preach a funeral. A little boy had drowned. That had set her own mind drifting over her recent loss. Strange to say, at the time she still believed her daughter had been delivered as a stillbirth. Aside from grief, she was half-crazy from loneliness. She was trying to stir herself a little, pressing herself to make some plans. As deep as her sorrow lay inside of her, she was beginning to understand that she would get up and go on from here—even if that only meant carrying the pain wherever she went.

    Blue came on foot. She had spotted him as he emerged from a vine-covered ravine behind the cemetery. Above him, the path he had walked rose sharply to a wide, grassy plateau that rolled back for about an acre before it slanted higher into a hardwood forest.

    “Scare a nervous ol’ ninny to death.”

    “Don’t wanna do that, now.”

    He slipped into the ravine and out of sight for a moment. During the few seconds it took him to reappear, she felt an inexplicable delight of panic, a half-forgotten rush of blood she had experienced as an adolescent whenever a boy she liked walked past her father’s house while she was on the front porch. It was an exquisite angst of hope that he would stop and speak with her combined with an absolute dread that he might really do it.

    Blue was crossing the road now.

    “Reverend Sayres home?”

    “Naw, I’m sorry to say, he’s not,” she said. “Gone to Senatobia to preach a little boy’s funeral.”

    “A little boy, I’ll say …”

    “Terrible thing. It was his uncle that came for Averill.”

    If Blue thought it was peculiar that a family from a big town of several thousand people had sent for a country preacher twenty-five miles away, he gave no indication whatsoever. She studied his long oval face and pale blue-green eyes. He was as blond as they come, but with a dark complexion. Leona figured him to be twenty-five or twenty-six. He moved up the driveway, absentmindedly kicking up clods of dust with the points of his yellowish leather boots.

    “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

    “I never know what might come out of those woods.”

    “Tell the Reverend I came by, please, ma’am.”

    He tipped the front of his dirty white hat slightly, like in the movies. Its wide brim made a halo around his longish white-blond hair. His constant scowl and careful monotone gave him a comic edge, like that of a small boy trying to act like a man.

    “Please don’t rush off.”

    She was embarrassed by her unintentional plaintive tone. He didn’t respond. He just stood there looking at her a minute. Something flashed in his eyes, something meant for Averill, she guessed. Apparently, he wasn’t going to share it with her. For some idiot reason she blushed with jealousy. She pointed lightly toward a chair.

    “I reckon you noticed there’s a storm coming.”

    “All day long …”

    She continued with a silly harangue, saying the storm,if it was really going to make it there, would apt as not be a shower or several showers at most, certainly not torrential or menacing to any degree. He just