scarcely been ruffled. Daintiness is disconcertingly deceptive in magnolias.
The stiff, shoe-size dead leaves scratched harshly as I kicked them down the front walk. The white clapboard house, always in need of painting no matter how recently it had been done, had stood on this spot for a hundred years.
I twisted the turn bell in the center of the front door. The mechanical jangle carried easily to the back part of the house. Usually I went in and out the back door, but for some reason, today I felt like a more formal call.
“Avery.” Aunt Letha flung open the door without first parting the lace curtains. “You should have phoned first. You’re just in time.” The odor of moth-balls and Aunt Letha’s gardenia perfume wafted over me.
She backed me onto the porch and slammed the door, rattling the windowpanes. Aunt Letha’s rottweiler, a black mass of spoiled dog flesh named Bud, strutted at the end of his leash like one of Hannibal’s elephants. The family suspected he’d been named for an old boyfriend. Aunt Letha wouldn’t say.
“Where—”
“Come on.” She left me blowing in her wake like dried leaves in a wind. When she hit the sidewalk, I noticed her Rockports.
“Aunt Letha, I’ve got on pumps. I can’t walk in—”
“Sure you can. If you can’t keep up with an old lady like me, you’re in a sad state.”
Bud’s thick nails rasped along the magnolia-leaf carpet. I’ve never had sense enough to know when to back down from a challenge. I trotted down the sidewalk after them.
Aunt Letha towers over me. Despite her bulk and her age, an impression of energy and activity encircle her like an aura. She steamed down Main Street while I clopped down the root-broken sidewalk behind her. She cut right on the first side street, marched through the gates at Memorial Park, and plopped down on a bench near the praying hands statue. A block and a half. Bud looked around, sighed deeply, then stretched out on the grass, his legs out behind him like a frog awaiting dissection.
“You walk every day, Aunt Letha?”
“Every day.” She sat spraddled on the weak-legged bench, her turquoise pull-on slacks strained at the knees. “Almost.”
We settled into a companionable silence. The graveyard—the only one in Dacus, if you didn’t count the country church cemeteries scattered outside town—covered the two blocks behind the Lutheran church. Weathered granite and marble monuments, some with lettering scrubbed away by wind and water, were sprinkled thickly all aroundus. Most stones bore the family names of original German settlers.
Flowers brightened the graves—some clamped onto the tops of headstones, some in metal canisters stuck into holders, others on spindly legged wire stands. In odd contrast to the solemn, fall-colored plastic and fabric flowers, I noticed several Mylar balloons, shining and dancing in the sun. Balloons on graves? I didn’t comment on them. Aunt Letha surely had a well-rehearsed diatribe on Mylar and Lutherans that I didn’t need to hear.
“Got any clients yet? Besides that white trash you’ve been picking up at the courthouse.”
“Yes’m, I do, as a matter of fact. Two new ones this week, it looks like.”
“Harrumph,” she answered. “It’s a wonder. Avery, you’re gonna have to mind what kind of folks you find yourself attracting. What kind of clients you gonna have, you keep associating yourself with weirdos like that Donlee Griggs? That boy acted like he’d been struck stupid by lightning when he was in my eleventh-grade history class. And time has not improved his lot. What few synapses the unfortunate circumstances of his breeding left him, he ruined with drink.”
I nodded. No argument from me on that.
“You realize folks are going to have enough trouble taking you seriously.”
I half turned to get a better look at her.
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth, Avery? If folks’ve known you any stretch of time, theyhave trouble believing you have a
The stiff, shoe-size dead leaves scratched harshly as I kicked them down the front walk. The white clapboard house, always in need of painting no matter how recently it had been done, had stood on this spot for a hundred years.
I twisted the turn bell in the center of the front door. The mechanical jangle carried easily to the back part of the house. Usually I went in and out the back door, but for some reason, today I felt like a more formal call.
“Avery.” Aunt Letha flung open the door without first parting the lace curtains. “You should have phoned first. You’re just in time.” The odor of moth-balls and Aunt Letha’s gardenia perfume wafted over me.
She backed me onto the porch and slammed the door, rattling the windowpanes. Aunt Letha’s rottweiler, a black mass of spoiled dog flesh named Bud, strutted at the end of his leash like one of Hannibal’s elephants. The family suspected he’d been named for an old boyfriend. Aunt Letha wouldn’t say.
“Where—”
“Come on.” She left me blowing in her wake like dried leaves in a wind. When she hit the sidewalk, I noticed her Rockports.
“Aunt Letha, I’ve got on pumps. I can’t walk in—”
“Sure you can. If you can’t keep up with an old lady like me, you’re in a sad state.”
Bud’s thick nails rasped along the magnolia-leaf carpet. I’ve never had sense enough to know when to back down from a challenge. I trotted down the sidewalk after them.
Aunt Letha towers over me. Despite her bulk and her age, an impression of energy and activity encircle her like an aura. She steamed down Main Street while I clopped down the root-broken sidewalk behind her. She cut right on the first side street, marched through the gates at Memorial Park, and plopped down on a bench near the praying hands statue. A block and a half. Bud looked around, sighed deeply, then stretched out on the grass, his legs out behind him like a frog awaiting dissection.
“You walk every day, Aunt Letha?”
“Every day.” She sat spraddled on the weak-legged bench, her turquoise pull-on slacks strained at the knees. “Almost.”
We settled into a companionable silence. The graveyard—the only one in Dacus, if you didn’t count the country church cemeteries scattered outside town—covered the two blocks behind the Lutheran church. Weathered granite and marble monuments, some with lettering scrubbed away by wind and water, were sprinkled thickly all aroundus. Most stones bore the family names of original German settlers.
Flowers brightened the graves—some clamped onto the tops of headstones, some in metal canisters stuck into holders, others on spindly legged wire stands. In odd contrast to the solemn, fall-colored plastic and fabric flowers, I noticed several Mylar balloons, shining and dancing in the sun. Balloons on graves? I didn’t comment on them. Aunt Letha surely had a well-rehearsed diatribe on Mylar and Lutherans that I didn’t need to hear.
“Got any clients yet? Besides that white trash you’ve been picking up at the courthouse.”
“Yes’m, I do, as a matter of fact. Two new ones this week, it looks like.”
“Harrumph,” she answered. “It’s a wonder. Avery, you’re gonna have to mind what kind of folks you find yourself attracting. What kind of clients you gonna have, you keep associating yourself with weirdos like that Donlee Griggs? That boy acted like he’d been struck stupid by lightning when he was in my eleventh-grade history class. And time has not improved his lot. What few synapses the unfortunate circumstances of his breeding left him, he ruined with drink.”
I nodded. No argument from me on that.
“You realize folks are going to have enough trouble taking you seriously.”
I half turned to get a better look at her.
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth, Avery? If folks’ve known you any stretch of time, theyhave trouble believing you have a
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