The Future Has a Past by J. California Cooper

you yet?”
    Luella smiled sadly at the very ridiculous idea.
    Several days had passed since Mattie had borrowed the ten dollars and she had had several visitors to drink up her beer and she had talked about Luella and “all that money her tightfisted mama left her!” A few fellows had leaned over the fence to see if Luella was working in her garden. Several, if Luella wasn’t in her yard, would knock on the door, hard, as if they had a right to do it.
    “How you doin, Luella? Girl, I haven’t seen you since the other day. Why you always hiding your fine self away?”
    Luella would answer, standing at the door, “How do? No, I haven’t seen you since school days. I ain’t hiding. I’m just livin. Ain nowhere to go to get out none.”
    “Oh, it’s places to go, Ms. Luella! You been to the Hi Ball Inn yet?”
    Luella laughed, “No, I have not! My church would put me on a cross if they was to think I . . .”
    “Church don’t have to know everything, Luella!”
    Something in her brain told Luella this was not what she wanted. She had never thought anything special of the men who came anyway. “No sir, I don’t blive I’m goin to the Hi Ball Inn.”
    When she saw the men, any of several, fix his body to step inside the house, she spoke quickly. “It’s too soon after my mother passing for me to think thoughts like that . . . and I’m not taking company.”
    Once a man came by, she knew him from frequent, casual, public meetings in passing, and she let him, hesitantly, into her house. He pulled out a half-pint of gin and set there, drinking it all; then ate the food she had on her stove for her own dinner. After his dinner and returning to the living room, he commenced to take off his shoes, til Luella stopped him.
    “Oh, Sam, you got to go now. Aunt Corrine will be here soon and I got to get ready to go to church with her.”
    A little drunk and full of food, all he could say was, “Huh?” She helped him up and into his jacket, all the while he sputtered about he would wait for her, “take a nap whilst you gone.” His body wanted to lie down real bad.
    But Luella persisted, doing everything to get him to the door. “You want me put out of church, Sam?! And ain’t you still married to Dolly? No, I think you better go.”
    It was right after that that she decided not to talk to all who stopped “to holler” at her, out in the yard.
    Corrine and Luella, in the end, laughed and talked about these men, Corrine thought she was showing mature good sense. “Any woman with a house can always have a man, cause most of em are always looking for a home.”
    Until. One morning, early, Luella stepped off the three little steps leading down to her backyard to do some work in her vegetable garden. A tall, brown, broad-shouldered man with his hair slicked back was shining in the morning sun. His overalls had been laundered and even had a crease down the front of the pant legs. And there he was, digging in her dirt! Had small, little piles of weeds he had already picked along the row. When she appeared, he smiled up at her with even white teeth and said, “You up awful late this morning, Ms. Luella. I looked over your fence and saw you needed some help with this here beautiful garden of yours.” He worked as he spoke, slowly, lazily.
    “You know, workin a garden relaxes me, so I thought I’d just hop on over your gate and get in a little work and pleasure fore I go to work on my job. I sho hope you don’t mind?”
    Well, Luella didn’t know just what to say even if she hadn’t been flustered when she looked at his grand smile lighting up his face and, then, into the deepest, dark-brown eyes she had ever looked into. She forgot there hadn’t been many she had looked into anyway and especially none, as he stood up, his hands covered with her dirt, none looking down at her with such bold admiration.
    She stammered, “Well . . . I . . . who are you? Do I know you?”
    “Well, mam, no you don’t. I ain’t been