The Most Beautiful Girl?

by W E Monroe

Chapter Seven: Day Two In Harrellson Corners

  The sounds this second day after the disaster were different from the previous day. At one point during the afternoon, for just a few minutes in the schoolhouse, everything went quiet. No one needed anything. Everything under control. At first Flo couldn't quite tell what the difference was. Instead of the loud, constant wailing and sobbing of yesterday, the crying sounds were muffled, lower key. Voices of the men, tired, no longer as urgent, as excited.

  There was one terrible, terrible sound from a child seven or eight years old as he walked by the front of the schoolhouse. "Mama, where are you?..Daddy?" he turned his sad and bewildered tear streaked face, paused and looked in the door at Flo. Then he continued along the street. "Mama, where are you?..Daddy?"

  Flo, then realized that this same child had been by the door several times. And others. "My God! Orphans." A numbness like she had never before felt, flowed through her body.

  "Runner!..Find Hester and get her back to me as soon as possible. Tell her it's urgent."

  The fourteen year old boy appeared from outside the door. "Yes'm! I think she went up to the church to eat. Don't you worry none, I'll git her."

  Flo, put a hand on his shoulder, pulled him close for just an instant, then said "I know you will...now git!" He turned and was quickly out of her sight at a dead run

  The problem of possible orphans was explained to Hester, and Hester was given the task of identifying them and placing them somewhere with adult supervision while the task of identifying the dead continues.

  By late afternoon, there were twenty eight children whose parents could not be found. Both mother and father were confirmed dead for seventeen of those children.

  The abundant outpouring of help from Carlisle and Murphyville, brought enough women from those towns to assign a substitute mother or grandmother for every one of these children. These women shared the pain and grief of their "child" and helped him or her through an awful time.

  As darkness approached, Flo and Hester walked together back to Flo's house. Very little was said...in words. Flo had quickly come to respect this pretty girl. Intelligent, caring and not the least selfish or conceited. In spite of that one glaring shortcoming -- that missing front tooth, or whatever, and the ridiculous whistle it produced when she talked. It was as though she was totally unaware. This is a very special young woman, Flo thought as they reached her house, wearily climbed the front steps and went inside.

  Inside the house, on the dining room table was a meal for the three of them, laid out by the ladies from the meals detail. In every other occupied house in Harrellson Corners was a warm meal. The love in this simple act from neighbor to neighbor, warmed many a heart. Grief-stricken people who surely would have otherwise thought they had little to live for, felt for a little while, that they were loved.

  The clomp, clomp, clomp of large boots heavy with the mud, announced Nate's return. Because of the heavy layers of mud he carried all over him, he came to the back porch. The metallic sound of the washtub being dragged, picked up and then loudly dropped on the boards of the porch. Still not quite where he wanted it, as he started unbuttoning his shirt, another small "bang" when he kicked it lightly with the toe of his boot, and the tub rattled softly another ten or twelve inches across the boards.

  "Flo, Hester, I need a blanket and some hot water." Shirt and shoes off, Nate took the large pitcher of water sitting on the porch rail beside the pump and poured about a third into the top of the pump to prime it. Raising and lowering the handle several times required very little effort, then it 'caught' and the handle became much harder to move as the water was raised the seventy-five feet from the bottom of the well pipe to the pump. Finally, the water flowed into the tub with a clatter that sounded like hailstones on a tin roof, fading to the sound of water flowing into water, as the tub filled.

  The screen door from the kitchen to the back porch loudly slammed as Hester, too tired to close it gently, brought Nate the blanket and draped it across the porch rail near the tub. Looking up at Nate with tired eyes, she walked around the tub to him, started to embrace him, but thought better of it. Almost as satisfying to them both, she reached out, took his hand in both of hers and held it against her cheek. After a long, fond look into his eyes, she turned and tiredly walked back into the house.

  As Hester left, his admiring gaze followed. He thought, ‘What a wonderfully strange girl. She’s plump, has a lop-sided smile and whistles when she talks. In spite of those things, she’s attractive, liked and respected. Mama always said beauty goes more than skin deep. Mama was right. Hester’s a beautiful person. She’s the most beautiful person in this county.

  Wearily, Nate got his bath. It actually took two baths before he began to feel clean. Shivering from the evening chill, he reached for the blanket and wrapped himself snugly in it. Then he dumped the second tub full of water and filled it again. He also washed his clothes try to get the mud out of them. Again this took two tubs full. Finally finished, Nate dumped the last tub, started to hang it back on its nail. Realizing that he hadn't checked to see if any dirt remained, he brought the tub over to the light of the coal oil lamp in the kitchen. Sure enough there was more dirt still in the tub.

  Wait a minute, he thought. That's not just dirt. “Hey Flo, Hester. Come here and take a look at these little red rocks in the bottom of the tub in the bottom of the tub.”

  Chapter Eight: Five Years Later

  “Daddy, you didn’t get that field plowed this morning,’ did you? Mock sarcasm edged her voice and a little smile suggested for Rooster it was OK if he didn’t.

  Confused, Rooster guardedly replied, looking up from his lunch through one squinty eye. “No, Hester……that old mule is slowin’ down more ever’ day.”

  ‘Just like my old daddy needs to.’ thought Hester.

  His head drooped down, not wanting to see Hester’s expected disapproval. “I know I’m lettin’ Nate down, not doin’ my share of the work.”

  “Daddy, It’s OK.” She said, still smiling. “We know you were at the still makin’ whiskey. People say you make some of the finest whiskey in the county. Heaven knows you can’t make fine whiskey if you don’t sample it” Hester chirped.

  Shamefaced, he finally looked up at Hester. “I don’t know what I’d have done if you and Nate hadn’t got married right after the flood an’ he moved in with us.” She was smiling. “I’d have been so lonely, I would have died. An’ now I got two happy granbabies runnin’ aroun’ the house. An’ another on the way.

  Hester picked up another plate from Rooster’s lunch, and paused as she placed it on the drainboard. “Nate an’ me talked a long time last night after we went to bed.” The little whistle as she talked was barely heard. “You remember those little red rocks you found at the foot of the mountain when you plowed, after a rain. Five years ago when the flood hit all them folks down the hill, Nate found some stuck to his clothes after the flood, and showed them to me and his Aunt Flo. She said she thought she knew what they might be. An’ then she made us swear to not tell a soul about them. I told her I had a jar full of ‘em you found on our farm. We found more since then.”

  Hester paused while the baby in her belly kicked and squirmed. “A few weeks ago, when Nate, me, an’ the kids went down the hill to see her, we took a little cloth bag full of them red rocks. The next day she went off somewhere, real secret-like, an’ took them rocks with her. She was gone a long time, so she must have gone off to a big city.”

  Rooster listened, but Hester noticed he seemed distracted. Rooster’s droopy right eyelid had begun to twitch and the twitch was slowly accelerating. Rooster needed to ‘sample’ a little of his moonshine.

  Hester continued, “Aunt Flo brought us back a cloth bag, but it wasn’t a little one, and it wasn’t filled with rocks. Life’s gonna be a lot easier for us now.”

  For just a moment Rooster’s twitching eyelid stopped t
witching, then slowly began again.

  “Nate says he can handle the farmin’ from now on. When he needs some help, he can hire a boy. Flo sold them little red rocks and brought us back some money. You’ve worked hard all your life and it’s time to slow down.” Her unintended whistle was stronger now and the dog got up, tail wagging, and trotted over to her looking up expectantly.

  Unaware of Hester’s whistle or the dog, Rooster’s confusion drained away, to be replaced with a grin on his whiskered face. The eyelid twitched away at an even greater pace as Rooster announced, “I think I need me a little taste of my whiskey.”

  The screen door slammed as he went out the back door and then hopped off the back porch, headed for the new barn. The most beautiful girl in the county smiled and listened intently for what she knew would come next.

  “WHOOoooEEE!”

  Rooster had found the jug.