A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) by Kaye Gibbons Read Free Book Online Page B

hell out of somebody wanting to witness all the time. Or she might wouldcould’ve joined the 4-H and spent all her time dragging a calf around out here. But she got off from this place, had a mind to do something. You have to get off somewhere to do something makes some money. If she’d been born with her daddy still renting she’d still be here, and we’d all look at her all the time and think how that’s a shame with her so smart.
    No, you need something of your own, and you need it young so you can enjoy having it, not look back on all the work and wish you weren’t so damn tired all the time with not a thing to show for it but your memory of working. But Burr was lucky, hard a time as he had managing Tiny Fran, he’s told me he felt like he made out pretty good. He told me that a piece of something, the land, he’s said what that gives a man is two things, some pride and some time, and you can sit back if you’ve a mind to and look outside and see all those folks hunched over picking, digging, pulling up out of your dirt, setting something back down in it, doing all the things you used to do, save for the grace of Lonnie Hoover.
    He died this fall be ten years ago, lost the left side of his head then next thing you know he was gone. I told Ruby, I said, “I hate to say it, but I’ll be glad to finally see what Lonnie has down in his will.” I knew he had one, a man with as much business as he had has to. I don’t. I’ll die interstate, nothing to pass on and no heirs. Ruby’s cancerate up most of everything we had saved, and if it hadn’t been for her brothers’ picking up what they did, I don’t think we’d have made it. Everything’s so goddamn high. But I figured Lonnie’d have things squared away.
    Sometimes I don’t know why I think things, but I thought for damn sure he’d have sat in Lawyer Peele’s office and said to him, “Well, I’ve got this one tenant been with my family long as I can remember, worked hard, never showed up drunk, never asked to borrow money, good man. I think I might let him have that piece he’s been living on since he was born.” And I thought if it didn’t happen like that then he’d at least remember standing beside me in that field, and both of us boys, and seeing his daddy’s tractor kill my daddy, kill him right out here in this field next to my house. Oh but hell no, neither thing counted.
    Ruby’d tell me, “Try not to be bitter. Lonnie didn’t know all you’ve been thinking.” After she’d talk to me I’d feel better, and then her calming me down would wear off and I’d have to get out of the house and go out to the animal shelter and sit out there until I was so drunk I couldn’t see straight, much less think.
    See, it was I and daddy and Lonnie and his daddy, Henry, and all these farmers from up and down the road all standing at the edge of the field looking at Henry’s new tractor. Nobody’d ever seen one except in the
Progressive Farmer,
and sure as hell couldn’t afford one. But you can bet if it was big and new Henry’d beg, borrow, or steal for it. And there it was, big, red, and somebody said, “Show us what it’ll do.” Henry told daddy to hop up there and take it down a row. He’d been on it all morning so I didn’t think anything of it. But what did bother me was Henry. See, he could’ve driven it himself, but what he was doing was he was letting daddy do it so he could stand there with all his buddies and see everything they were seeing, not just the new tractor, but the field and the tractor and a man he could say this and that to and order to manage both things for him. He was one white man that loved to watch another one work.
    So daddy took the tractor down a row and Henry stood by us with his arms crossed and Lonnie stood next to him with his arms crossed just like his daddy’s. And then daddy got to the other end and started to make a turn and I remember thinking, He’s too close to the ditch, too close. Then the