Rest beside the weary road

I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.  (Mark Twain)

Me’n Fred happened on a real hospitable buncha folks camped out near a spring late one afternoon last fall, and after a supper a squirrel an’ beans an’ late greens, we settled in for ghost tales around the fire as the shadows gathered and the dusk deepened to a dark purple.  In thanks for the mighty fine meal they’d shared, I told them my most recent adventures in the silver mines at The Old Country Store and Post Office, and they got to talkin’ about hauntings they’d either experienced or heard tell of.

What we heard gave us some shivers for sure.  We heard tales about seein’ unexplained shadows, usually outta the corner of your eye — people havin’ bad dreams in a particular place — hearin’ footsteps or voices when nobody’s there — animals reactin’ to somethin’ others can’t see, like a dog growlin’ at thin air while its hackles rise (Fred, she sat up and took notice at that one) — unexplained cold drafts and cold spots — feelin’ as if you’re bein’ watched, or poked, or nudged when there’s nobody there — bad smells — little kids that talk to people who ain’t there —

Now I gotta tell you, on a cool fall evenin’ as the shadows gather and folks have had them beans and squirrels for supper, cold spots and bad smells are mighty plentiful, so it was easy to believe in them spooks on that particular evenin.’  After me and Fred turned into our bedroll, I laid awake for awhile, a’wonderin’ and marvelin’ at all we don’t know or understand about things.  The stars was bright and beautiful, and as the wind blew kinda soft and sad, soughin’ in the pines, it was easy to imagine all the people that mighta walked that land before us.  An’ whether it was a dream, or for real, or just our imagination, this is what we kinda saw unfold around us . . .

We saw a people that was a’sufferin’ from bad water, failed crops, illness, and death, and just like people everywhere, they seemed to wanta blame somebody else for their troubles.  And these people, they went kinda wild and seized on some poor souls they called witches, or skinwalkers, to blame for all their struggles and tragedies.  Seemed like we could hear the soft cries and moans of those folks as they was driven outa their homes, sometimes tortured, sometimes killed.  More often than not, seems like they was just people that was different, wise in the way of herbs an’ medicine an’ healin’ an’ all, but the other folks just didn’t understand their ways.  When I woke up, if I’d even been asleep, I could still hear the grievin’ and feel the tragedy of it all . . .

Fred nosed me kinda insistent-like, and I got up, packed my stuff, and walked on down the Trail without wakin’ the other folks.  This here land did feel haunted, mebbe not by any real spirits, or mebbe so . . . but mosta all, by all the history and pain of those there times.

I’d liketa say those times is over and done with, and we’re better people now.  But you know, I’m not too sure I really believe that — too many of us are still avoidin’ takin’ responsibility for what we do, and blamin’ somebody else for our misfortunes.  This ole world can kinda get to you sometimes if you’re not careful — it’s real important at those times, I reckon, to stay on the sunny side, as my grandma always said.

Sometime I’ll haveta tell you about her.  She was quite a person . . .

 

 

Some people talk to animals.  Not many listen though.  That’s the problem.  A/A. Milne

I’ve seen a right smart bit a hardship and sadness and sickness since Fred ‘n me been on the road.  I gotta admit it got me down some a the time.  This ole world seems to be facin’ a lotta troubles, and sometimes folks I see just don’t seem to have good sense.

At times like this, Fred, she reminds me a old songs that mean a lot to me — like the evenin’ we was walkin’ by a camp a gypsies or some such folks.  Ordinarily I woulda stopped and listened to their stories or songs, and mebbe even shared a can a beans if they’d a offered it, but it was one a those times when I wasn’t feelin’ too cheerful.  But the folks, they was a’singin’ one a my favorites — There will be peace in the valley for me, someday,  There will be peace in the valley for me, o Lord, I pray — there ‘ll be no sickness, no sorrow, no trouble, I pray — there will be peace in the valley, for me.  Ole Fred stopped on the trail and wouldn’t let me go on ’til I stood there and listened to that whole song, twice.

Then another time, I was lyin’ in my bedroll, no stars that night, and Fred musta been off huntin’ or somethin’ and I was feelin’ powerful lonesome and discouraged.  An’ then I felt a soft touch on my face, and Fred’s body warm against my own, and as clear as anything, I heard the words — Great is Thy faithfulness, great is Thy faithfulness.  Morning by morning, new mercies I see.  All I have needed Thy hand hath provided.   Great is Thy faithfulness . . . unto me.

Reminders like that, they mean a lot.  Then I don’t feel so alone.

Now along about now, you might be sayin’ to yourself, well why the heck is he and Fred on the road like that if he feels so lonesome and all, but you need to know I mostly am real grateful I can travel and see this ole world like I can, nothin’ tyin’ me down.  I’ve seen such beauty and experienced such kindness it nearly takes my breath away.

And ain’t it remarkable about ole Fred, and how she seems to know just what I need an’ when I need it?  But the strangest thing is how she talks to me.  I been around animals all my life and she’s the first one I been able to communicate with, so to speak.

I gotta tell you one more story about ole Fred before I stop this evenin’ — remember I told you how Fred wasn’t much to look at?  Well, I mean, she’s beautiful to me, but most folks would think she looked right peculiar at the very least.  Well, this is a story she told me about how she came to be that way:

Yeah, I had died and gone to heaven, before my time — at the hands, or paws, of an old mountain lion.  I was a’climbin’ that A-New-Day-Has-Begun-Ladder, a mite resentful since I hadn’t been ready to die quite yet.  A little Chick was a’showin’ me the way, claimin’ to be my “mentor,” and I was a’thinkin’  Really?  A chicken is goin’ show me this place called heaven??  And this little scrap of a thing got kinda put out at my attitude, thinkin’ I wasn’t showin’ the proper amount of respect and appreciation at having one so noble and evolved as him as my Heavenly Mentor.  Me, I was a’thinkin’ that he had forgotten that his crap still stinks.  And that’s when I saw a Vole trottin’ by — now I gotta tell you, on earth, I always had a powerful sweet-tooth for voles, and right then and there, I forgot where I was, and I bit that Vole’s tail right off.  Right away I knew that had been the wrong thing to do, but oh how I loved to eat them:  Volies, volies I love to eat; bite they little tails off, nibble on they tiny feet.

The Chick, after his shock and all, he finally got over himself, glued the Vole’s tail back on, but wasn’t about to forgive and forget my uncontrollable impulse.  He called me a total Dweek, said by no means was I ready for heaven yet, and said I was gonna have to suffer the consequences, which was goin’ back to earth as a Guardian Angel for someone that needed it, and that I was gonna have to lose my looks in the deal.  And I had been beautiful, a Wolf beyond compare.

But it wasn’t such a bad deal.  I got you to be an Angel for.  But you know what?  That there Chick-Fella?  He did the worst blamed thing ever, worse’n takin’ away my looks.  He took away my taste for Voles, can’t stand the critters now.  Now that was downright cruel.

 

 Witch.  We call such women so, because we have no other name.  (Arden)

I’m back to tell you a tale I heard that’s been on my mind lately; in fact, it’s been nudgin’ at me and won’t let me alone even in the wee small hours of the night.  So I decided mebbe it wanted to be told.  I think it has somethin’ to do with what I already told you about how Fred is.

This here story was told to me by an ole woman I met away down in the Georgia mountains.  She said her name was Bird, and she looked kinda like one, too.  And now that I think of it, there was an awful lotta birds around the day I happened on her place.  She lived off by herself, and I just happened on her cabin one day when I was walkin’ in the hills.  I had a mighty thirst that afternoon, and she offered me a drink a cool well water, and we sat and talked a spell.  And for some reason, she told me this here story.  I’ll tell it to you just the way she told it to me, and maybe by the end, we’ll both learn somethin’, or at least understand why this story wanted to be told.

This here is it, told in her words:

My mama died last week, left this world when she was 92, and in so doin’ she set me free, too. She always thought a growth would get her, was afraid of it all her life, but in the end, it was some unknown bug that just burned her up, took her in less’n a week, from fryin’ fish on a Sunday morning to bein’ bedridden on a Thursday, burnin’ up with fever and outa her head.  I guess mebbe it was that Spanish flu folks is so scared of still, the one the troops brought back with ’em from Europe after the big war.  We’ll never know, but you know, folks say as how you can catch it from birds, and she always had a powerful lotta birds around her.  They kinda liked my ma, like.  Funny they mighta finally sent her on her way.

She had a way a’talkin’ to them, said they made a lot more sense than most people.  Fact is, she said all animals could talk to us, if we’d just listen.  And she took the time to listen, sat for hours with ’em, flutterin’ and flyin’ all around her.  She had a lotta right peculiar notions; mebbe those birds give ’em to her.  Folks, they called her a witch, but I reckon that’s just because they didn’t rightly understand somebody like that, somebody that talked to birds.  Or mebbe she was one, a witch, I mean, not a bird.  At least three a her aunts and my grandmother claimed to be witches.  She always said my daddy forbade her to use any witchcraft, but I learned after her death as I was goin’ through her things that she probably hadn’t paid him any mind.

Anyway, as much as I already miss her and wish I could see her and ask her all those questions that are still unanswered, I believe she’s still out there in the big somewhere watchin’ me, worryin’ about me, lovin’ me.

And the birds, they don’t leave.   

The ole woman stopped talkin’ about this point, and just set and rocked awhile.  I admit I was powerful interested in that witchin’ stuff she talked about, since as you’ll remember, I had my own encounters with spooks in the silver mines in The Old Country Store and Post Office.  Besides, I was mighty interested in whether or not it really might be possible to talk to animals, ’cause of Fred.

But Miz Bird, she didn’t seem too inclined to talk anymore that afternoon, so I thanked her kindly for the water and the story and went on my way.  I didn’t know at that point that it wouldn’t be long a’tall ’til I learned a lot more about witchin’.  And you’ll probably guess who I heard it from — I’ll tell you about it next time.

 

 

All stories are true.  Whether they actually happened or not is something else.  (Unknown)

Me ‘n Fred spent the next couple a weeks travelin’ down a section of the mountains called The Indian Trail, datin’ from back when the early Indians trod this here part of the land.  Durin’ that time, we stopped by some of the campsites we came on that the gypsies and the leftover Indians, mostly all mixed up by now with other folks, had made.  We was viewed with pretty much suspicion by most of ’em, but some of ’em took to Fred, and if I kept my trap shut, finally ended up at least toleratin’ me.  They seemed to like it that I was interested in their stories of a night while we sat around the campfires.

And let me tell you, whoo-doggies, did they have some stories to tell.  About what has been.  About what will be.  Some of it downright fantastical and brilliant.  Some of it so frightenin’ it would turn your hair white.

I spent the next six months just a’wanderin’ this way, stoppin’ when I felt like it — and sometimes when Fred seemed to feel like it.  I sometimes got the notion he was the one leadin’ or directin’ me, kinda showin’ me where to stop and all.

Durin’ that six months, I didn’t write nothin’ in these here pages like I told you I would.  Sorry about that.  I was mostly a’tryin’ to integrate so to speak what I was hearin’ and learnin’.  Thinkin’ about how much was truth and how much was make-believe.  I can tell you, the folks that told me these here stories that I’m gonna tell you believed ’em and swore by ’em.  They told me about fantastical machines they somehow knew about that would control the world some day.  Horrible diseases that would sweep over the earth.  Unspeakable cruelty.  And unbelievable brillance and creativity.  And all mixed up amongst these here stories was the personal ones, the ones full of kindness and some full of downright meanness.

I mean to tell you some of those stories now that Fred and me is a’restin’ awhile.  I never know when she’s a’gonna feel the urge to take off on the road again, but for right now, she seems content just to be quiet and peaceful-like in this little corner of the land where we find ourselves.

So I’ll start.  I won’t tell ’em — the stories, I mean — to you in any particular order, just as they come to mind.  I hope you get somethin’ out of ’em, mebbe that they make you think about things more, like they did me.  Or mebbe that they give you some hope.  Or direction, if you’re a’feelin’ kinda lost-like.  They seemed to come along to me just when I needed that kinda story, so mebbe they will be like that to you as well.

Mostly I tell ’em to you in the hope they’ll make you wonder more.  And that you’ll feel less alone.

So long as human beings change and make history, so long as children are born and old people die, there will be tales to explain why sorrow darkens the day and stars fill the night.  We invent stories about . . .  life because they help us find our way, our place at the heart of the mystery.  (Sam Keen and Anne Valley Fox) 

You’ll maybe remember me from The Old Country Store and Post Office if you’re a regular visitor to these here pages.  That there was a story I told you in seven episodes back along about a year ago.  Since that time, I’ve been travelin’, pickin’ up some more stories here and there.  To tell you the truth, that time in the silver mine with that there spook I told you about was whatcha might call a life-changin’ experience.  It made me think there was a lotta things in this ole thing we call Life that we can’t explain, an’ that mebbe things is a lot bigger than I had ever calculated on. That’s what really made me start out on this here journey o’ mine.

And the more I travel around, the more convinced I am that’s true.  I run into some real peculiar people with some real strange stories.  But I’m a’gettin’ ahead o’ myself.

I started out with no real clear idea where I was a’goin’ or what I was gonna do.  In the back of my mind, I thought mebbe I might travel south to Texas to see how Miz Suze was a’doin’ since I had a powerful admiration for that woman.  An’ I found her — I think you already know somethin’ about her story from The Yella Rose Schoolhouse.

But there I go gettin’ ahead o’ myself again, and I wanted to tell you about how I come to have a travelin’ companion.  When I started out, I was mostly keepin’ to tracks through the woods and fields, and away from towns and people.  One night I was hunkered down at the edge o’ the woods, just a’layin’ in my bedroll admirin’ the stars, and feelin’ real small, like the night sky makes you feel, when all of a sudden I heard a sound that made my hair stand on end and the goosebumps crawl all over my flesh. It was a high keenin’ sound, kinda like a cross between a woman a’mournin’ and an animal in some kinda agony.

Well, that near froze my blood, but when I finally got up the nerve to set up and squint around, I seen a shadow at the edge of the woods, some kinda animal just a’settin’ there watchin’ me.  In the starlight, it was hard to tell, but it looked like a dog or maybe a wolf or coyote, or a mighty big fox.  An’ as I was a’wonderin’ what I should do, this here animal whined, kinda soft-like, and held out one o’ his paws.  That was a little reassurin’, so I started sweet-talkin’ to him, like I did back on the farm when an animal was a’hurtin’, and he crept closer, not on his belly like he was afraid, but kinda proud-like.  Ever once in awhile, he’d pause and hold out that paw, for all the world like he was a’sayin’ he was a friend an’ didn’t mean me no harm.  But he didn’t stop, just kept a’comin’, which was a little disconcertin’ to say the least, ’til his head was pressed against my forehead.  And boy howdy, let me tell you, I didn’t move.

An’ then — an’ I swear this by all them stars in the sky — I heard that there dog or whatever he was whisperin’ some words in my mind.  I was so astonished-like that I forgot to be scared, (altho’ mebbe not, because I could feel my knees knockin’).  An’ I think what he said was I am your Companion.  I choose you.  My name is Fred.  Sleep now.

An’ I did.  When I woke up, “Fred” was stretched out by my side, keepin’ me warm, watchin’ me.  First thing I noticed was that Fred was a girl. Second thing I noticed was that Fred was the goldarn ugliest dog or wolf or coyote I’d ever seen.  Mottled browny-black raggedy fur and gold eyes and a long pointy nose and big ole ears — like somebody had just thrown random dog parts together.  Third thing I noticed was how much I already loved this dog.

We been travelin’ together ever since, me ‘n Fred.  She don’t require no care, kinda takes care o’ herself, hunts at night, I reckon.  An’ funny thing, she kinda leads the way.  She’s never talked again, altho’ sometimes when I lean my forehead against her, it’s almost like I can hear — somethin’.

Now if I tell you the stories I’ve heard on my travels, you’ll hear some mighty strange things, but one o’ the strangest is Fred.  Ever once in awhile, she kinda fades in and out and then disappears for awhile.  And when she comes back from wherever she’s been, an’ she sets there and tilts that cockamamie head at me, I could swear she’s tryin’ to tell me somethin’.  If you come to believe like I do that mebbe she’s magic, then mebbe she’s the one tellin’ these here stories.  What I do know for sure is that she’s the most lovin’ friend I ever had.

Me and Fred, we’ll tell you some more stories soon.

 

 

The tans will fade, but the memories will last forever.  (Unknown)

That old September feeling left over from schooldays, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air.  (Stegner)

Sigh — there goes another summer, Snoopy . . . (Charlie Brown)

The last time I wrote in these pages was toward the beginning of summer when the bees had decided to establish a base in my home.  The bees were nicely dispatched to new housing, and summer has passed — or at least is passing.  The wild tangle of greenery that has crept ever nearer to the house throughout the summer, and is now looping friendly arms over the porches and windows, is turning rusty-brown and looking tired.  The last tomatoes droop on the vines, and wolf spiders are trying to move indoors.  Mosquito bites are becoming ever more fierce, trying to get in their last innings, I guess.  Tropical storms are brewing one on top of another.  It’s almost World Series time, and football has begun.  And the flowers . . . despite the lack of rain, the flowers are putting on a final display of color and brilliance that is breathtaking.

My reflections on yet one more summer?

–It’s pretty clear it wouldn’t take long for nature to take right over were we to relinquish for a moment our attempts to coexist with it.

–Alas, my ancient Don Williams’ CD died — yes, there are still some of us die-hards who listen to CDs — no longer can I do my canning or baking to Louisiana Woman or You’re My Best Friend.  While it may strike some of you that this does not necessarily fall in the realm of Summer-ly Reflections, let me tell you that it’s well nigh impossible to make a chocolate buttermilk cake or put up green tomato mincemeat without Don.

–I waged an unsuccessful battle with stink/squash bugs over my tomatoes again this summer.  While I’ll take a lot from the stinky little suckers, messin’ with my tomatoes is tantamount to war.

–I didn’t have an ice cream cone all summer.  How can that be??

— BUT — I was invited to a Spamorama, complete with Spam done five ways, and Guinness Extra Stout.  Now that’s friendship!

–I could go on and on, but all this is really just in the service of getting you caught up, so I can begin a new project in these pages, one for which I hope you’ll stay tuned!

And in the meantime, a reflective Summer’s end to you . . .

 

 

Every creature is full of God and is a book about God.  (Meister Eckhart)

Even the smallest ant may wish to communicate with a man.  (Black Elk)

A swarm of bees have set up housekeeping in a wall of our house, and even as I write, we are attempting to dissuade them from living here.  Such dissuasion is somewhat complicated by the fact that my husband is allergic to bee stings, so I am nervously keeping the antidote close by.

Bees sting, but they also make honey, part of the wonderful opposites or contradictions of life.  And if everything that IS, is a different expression of what God is, as I believe to be true, then God holds the capacity to both sting and sweeten.  A thought somewhat different than the one I formed of God’s grace as a child in Sunday School . . .  A God who loves us enough to bring us the hard lessons . . .

It is as if God communicates with us through all things.  They are messages, gifts of love.  It certainly gives one a sense of reverence and awe to see all things — each person, each animal, each place, each event, as a facet, a face of God.  All things become our teachers.

Now to see what the bees have to teach me this day . .

 

We’re all prostitutes, we’re all selling ourselves for something, no matter to what culture, society, class, nation we belong, no matter how normal, moral, or mature one takes oneself to be.  (R.D. Laing)

This little story about a whorehouse in Texas is more than just a frivolous take on the “girls” who live and work there.  It starts with Miz Suze Campbell from The Old Country Store and Post Office and The No-Name Story (where we encounter her as the child Suzy Bell) heading to Texas to start a new life after she learned her supposed husband was a bigamist.  She was pregnant, but as we just learned, she must have lost the child.  And in Texas she found, not the teaching position she envisioned, but a schoolroom in a saloon/whorehouse where she was expected to set up shop, evidently supposed to teach the children of the town as best she could.  And it sounds like she adapted beautifully!  But we already knew from Suzy Bell’s story that she more than had in her what she needed to survive and thrive.

And now, in The Yella Rose Schoolhouse, we meet another young girl, BessieJune Pruitt, a compassionate, loving, lonely, and imaginative child, through whose eyes we’re allowed to see the stories of the women who live and work where she goes to school.  Although we barely skimmed the surface of those lives, I hope it gave you a sense of the souls that live behind the “oldest profession in the world”, what might motivate them and cause them to make the choices they do.

We perhaps falsely judge the “prostitute”, for she/he lives in all of us.  We live out of that part of ourselves every time we trade or barter ourselves, our bodies or our mind or our spirits, for money or security of some sort.  It may be in our jobs, our professions, our relationships, our families, our activities, but somewhere in your life you will find an arena in which you negotiate your integrity or spirit for financial or other gain, or maybe even survival.  If we’re honest, we’ll all find a place in our lives where we compromise our moral and ethical integrity.

Perhaps this is nowhere more apparent than in our current rancorous political climate, as we see how our political persuasions and religious principles have become intertwined and confused.  Moral and ethical considerations that seemingly have long been important, and even sacred, are sacrificed in the service of achieving some political gain.  When the “ends justify the means” in a way that sacrifices our personal integrity, we have prostituted ourselves.

We all do it.  Maybe that doesn’t make it right, but BessieJune would say it makes it understandable.  Have you ever remained in a situation or job only for money or financial protection?  Have you been, or are you, in a relationship for safety or security?  Have you sold out to people or organizations or activities that you truly didn’t believe in or respect in order to get something you wanted?

Prostituting ourselves is not necessarily bad or dysfunctional.  It’s normal.  Maybe the key is, if we’re gonna sell out, to do it consciously . . . to be aware of why you’re choosing to lessen your moral and ethical integrity.  Be honest with yourself.  And be aware of the consequences and the price you will have to pay.

And maybe along the way to increasing consciousness, we’ll dredge up the self-respect and self-esteem to say Not For Sale.  But until then?  Be careful, as BessieJune would say, not to go judgin’ nobody else.

 

Within each of us there lives a Child, whom we may or may not know . . .  (C.G.Jung)

BessieJune

Janelle Elise, she drew this here picture a me, said it was ’cause I was always thinkin’, that my mind was so full a things that sometimes my body didn’t know what it was a’doin’.  She mighta said that when Matilde was a’fussin’ me fer spillin’ somethin’ or trippin’ over the ole cat what lives here and fallin’ into her applesauce she was a’makin’.  Have I told you about the ole cat?  I call her SallySam, after that doll I already tole you about that I had when I was little.  Here’s what SallySam looks like.

She’s real fat and lazy, almost always a’layin’ around on a bed somewheres.  But all the girls mostly love ‘er, mebbe not Barefoot Woman so much, but she might not be usta to cats.  We gotta watch her around the customers, tho’, she’s got a bad temper and scratches and bites real easy.  We got a lotta animals, tho’ SallySam’s the only one what lives inside.

I think I’m mostly tired a’talkin’ in My Story about the girls that live here.  ‘Ceptin’ for ones that come and go, I mostly covered ’em all anyways.  Mebbe I’ll tell ya about the animals ’cause I sure love animals.  Here’s the pig, her name’s Joey, and I made Matildie promise not ta butcher her, an’ she rolled ‘er eyes, but I don’t think she will.

An’ the pony — he goes by the name a Al, and he’s pretty bad-tempered, too, I mostly leave him alone unless I got a carrot.

An’ we got some yard chickens that I named, but they ain’t too long for this world, what with Matildie and the coyotes, so I try not to get too fond a them.

And last, but not least, is this scruffy ole dog what hangs around lookin’ for a handout.  I’m hopin’ Matildie’ll let me keep him here, cause I’m here more than I am at my pa’s.  Sometimes I think I oughta just move in.

These girls, and these animals, they’re like my family.  It’s real lonesome at home, with Pa workin’ most a the time.  An’ I think the girls are like family to each other, too, even tho’ they squabble and don’t get along too good sometimes.  And I think each of ’em, in their own way, care about me, too.

I wonder.  D’ ya have a pretty good feel a things from My Story?  I could tell ya some more things, but mebbe I better let Miz Suze read this whole thing first, so I know if I’m all wet or not.  I’d like to tell ya somethin’ about her, but it feels real strange, kinda not-respectful-like.  An’ she’s kinda close to her chest, don’t let a lot slip about ‘erself.  I think her and AutumnGlory and Matilde prob’ly talk.  Somethin’ AutumnGlory let slip one time made me think Miz Suze mighta had a baby that died.  If that’s true, that’s real sad.

I think I’ll stop again.  I ’bout plumb run outa things to say.  Or leastwise, things to say that seem right somehow.

 

 

— to see work as love made visible, as mystical, as meaningful, as a copartnership with God, as a ministry, and as service to others . . .  (unknown)

 

AngelinaMay

AngelinaMay is what Matildie calls a good-time girl, but I’m here to say that’s not all she is.  Mebbe not even most of what she is.  She sure has a good time, and she invites other folks to have a good time, too, no matter what they’re a’doin’.  I go out in the kitchen sometimes and see her and Matildie dancin’ around whilst they’re a’peelin’ taters.  And she’s real sweet to everbody, and always nice to me.  I used to think she was was kinda-shallow-like, but oncet I got to know her, I learned some more stuff about her, and I don’t think that way no more.

Ain’t that always the way it is?  Yer first impression a folks is a lot different from what they might really be like inside.  AngelinaMay taught me that.  One time I was tellin’ AutumnGlory how I thought AngelinaMay might enjoy her work more’n the other girls, and AutumnGlory, she smiled and said, she not only enjoys it, honey, she thinks of it as a service she does a body.  Ya see, her grandmaw was a slave who got freed after the Big War, and she brought AngelinaMay up always tellin’ her that each moment, each breath was precious, and whatever kindness you can do folks is a’gonna be another star in your crown.  So ya see, AngelinaMay sees this work as somethin’ she can do fer God.

I wish some a the folks in town could see life that way, ‘stead of always judgin’ and mostly condemnin’.  But that don’t seem to bother AngelinaMay none, she just laughs that giggly laugh a hers, and later on I’ll hear her singin’ Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home, Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home.  Well, I looked over Jordan, and what did I see, comin’ for to carry me home?  A band of angels comin’ after me, comin’ for to carry me home.  She said that song was a’written by the colored slave of a Choctaw Indian. How ’bout that, ain’t that somethin’.  Her grandmaw knew him, said his name was Uncle Wallace.

So I think, nope, I know, that AngelinaMay is more than meets the eye.  Ain’t we lucky to have her here.