Dandelions in Paradise

by Kit Duncan

A few days later, just after dinner, I heard Silas and Sallie on the front porch.

  "Oh, hold still, you ol' geeser, 'fore I slit your throat again!"

  Alarmed, I slipped quietly to the front door and peeked out the screen, careful not to make a sound.

  "Easy with that razor, Woman!" Silas retorted.

  "Then sit still!"

  Silas was sitting on the wicker chair, facing the meadow of bluebonnets. Sallie was hunched over behind him, her elbows arched. She was leaning a little to the left.

  "Tilt you head, Sy. No, no, the other way! There. That's better."

  Relieved, I eased out onto the porch and sat on the stoop in front of Silas.

  "Getting a hair cut, huh?" I asked Silas rhetorically.

  "Well, what the blazes does it look like?" Silas snarled at me.

  Sallie clipped a tight little white curl from over his ear and said, "Oh, don't mind him, Honey. He's just testy 'cause he's got to get cleaned up, that's all."

  "Cleaned up?" I repeated. "For what?

  "Oh, that idiot's going to jump today. Gonna make a big ruckus of it. I swear, I'll be glad when he's gone!"

  "Who?" I asked.

  "Little Cory," Sallie said. "Now Silas, I'm not telling you again. Hold still!"

  "Cory Larson?"

  "Yep," Sallie said. "Gonna jump in the pond this afternoon. "Around five."

  "Well," I chuckled a little, "I thought you'd be happy about his going, Silas."

  "Oh, I am, I am." Silas said.

  "Quit squirmin'!" Sallie ordered.

  I decided to forego questions until Sallie was finished, which didn't take long.

  "There," she said, "I reckon you'll do." She picked up a little hand broom and swept his neck and shoulders, removed the white towel from his throat, and swept some more. She walked around in front of him and eyed him carefully with a long, steady smile. Silas was scowling.

  "My, you clean up right nice!"

  Silas' face shot up into a grin that seemed the crease half the bottom of his face. Sallie pulled the rocking chair over near him and sat down.

  "So you're getting all slicked up just to go watch Cory jump in the pond?" I asked.

  "Well, Honey," Sallie said, "Going back to life is a pretty big jump!"

  "Jump!" Silas laughed. "Jump! Get it?"

  Sallie and I only looked at him blankly, and he lowered his head a little. "I thought it was funny. You know, jump into life?"

  We both smiled at him politely, but we didn't either one think it was nearly as funny as Silas did. He giggled quietly under his breath.

  "So, this is going to be, what, like a party?" I asked.

  "Oh, absolutely," Sallie said. "It's kind of like getting' hitched, I reckon. Some folks like to make a big production of it, some just like to slip away and do it real quiet like. I love a big jump, though, all that dancing and music, and…."

  "…the cake," Silas interrupted. "Everyone brings cake."

  "So, you coming?" Sallie asked me.

  "Me?" and she nodded.

  "Well, I don't know. Was I invited? I wouldn't want to intrude."

  "Oh, heavens!" Sallie cackled. "You don't get invited to a jump, you just go. Just like when a baby's born in life. The baby don't send out invitations, you just go visit 'cause you care, that's all."

  "I don't really know Cory," I said. "Only met him that once, at the softball game."

  "Meeting Cory once is enough!" Silas said under his breath.

  "Now, Silas," Sallie scolded him. "You know you don't have to go if you don't want to."

  "Well," Silas winked at me, "I want to make sure he gets good and gone. An' if he don't sink fast enough I might have to hold his head under the water a little. I'd like to choke the life right into him. Get it? 'Choke the life right into him?'" he laughed, and we laughed, too.

  "Besides," Silas cocked his head a little to the side. "I don't want to appear rude. Man goes out of his way to make an announcement in the paper, we might as well pay our respects."

  Later, as we were walking to town to watch Cory jump in the pond, I asked Sallie what she had meant earlier when she had threatened to slit Silas' throat again. I was carrying the lemon cake Sallie had baked earlier.

  "Did you kill him in a previous life?" I asked. I wondered if soulmates perhaps occasionally got so fed up with one another they resorted to murder.

  Silas laughed harder than Sallie, and Sallie laughed plenty hard. They laughed so hard they had to stop walking, and Silas bent over at the waist a little and Sallie clutched her chest with her left hand.

  When they got done laughing at me, Sallie, through errant gulps of giggles, said, "No. I didn't never kill ol' Sy. Mighta wanted to a couple times." She winked at him, and he winked back. "But no, it wasn't me."

  "It was that no count Radford fellow," Silas said, but there wasn't the kind of rancor you might expect in the tone of a man talking about his murderer.

  "It was back before the Depression," Sallie told me. "Bad time to live in the South, I'm afraid. Bad indeed."

  "The newbie don't want to hear all this," Silas protested. "Not much merit in repeating it."

  "Well," Sallie said. "It was your death. I expect you have the right to tell it or not."

  "Well, then," Silas told her, "I'd just as soon we drop it."

  We walked along the dusty road quietly for awhile.

  "The thing is," Silas said a few steps later. "Radford, he wasn't so bad as he was just plain ignorant, that's all. Just a victim of the times and place, that's all."

  "Oh, I'm not so sure about that," Sallie countered. "He had a choice. They all had a choice. The whole lot of 'em. Yes, sir, they did have a choice."

  "If you say so," Silas said. "But it's awfully hard going against the flow. When a whole community, an entire region, believes such and such a thing, it's right difficult to stand apart and say something different."

  "Difficult or not," Sallie huffed, "they every one of 'em had a choice."

  "And they lived by their choice," Silas told her.

  "And died by 'em, thank God!" Sallie added.

  "So this Radford, I don't guess he lives in Paradise?" If I had taken time to think before asking, I doubt I would have pursued the conversation. But a lot of us talk too quickly, and a lot of us talk too much.

  "No!" Silas and Sallie said at the same time.

  "Not Heaven, I don't suppose?"

  "Absolutely not!"

  "Reincarnated?"

  "Won't have a crack at jumping in the pond for at least, what, another century or two, I expect. And that's only if he can muster up some kind of goodness within him," Sallie said angrily. I couldn't remember ever seeing Sallie so aggravated as she was at the mention of Radford. "I swannee," she heaved a thick sigh. "I don't believe that man's got a lick of kindness anywhere within him."

  "Oh, Sallie," Silas' voice was tender, as if trying to calm her by his tone. "There's something good within all of us. Folks like Radford, their kindness just lies deep, deep inside is all. It's just kinda tough to get to it sometimes, is all. Give him a little time, he may work it out for himself yet."

  "He's a scoundrel!" Sally said, unmoved by Silas' assurances, "and I don't care if he rots there!"

  She was so enraged, tears were rimming in her eyes. Silas reached over and gently took her hand. They slowed their pace some, and I speeded up a little, not real noticeably, just enough so that after a short time they were walking well behind me. They didn't catch up with me until right before we reached town.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN