After River by Donna Milner Read Free Book Online

bluntly handsome. Like a rugged John Wayne, his looks only improved with age and the inevitable map of laugh lines marking time on his sun-scorched skin. Morgan and I inherited his dark eyes and brown hair–‘mouse-turd brown’, my father called it.
    Morgan stood on the other side of Dad with the same laughing eyes, widow’s peak and strong jaw. But unlike Dad, he was short and stocky. At seventeen Morgan was only five foot six. He would grow no taller. Carl was fifteen years old, all hands and feet that he had not finished growing into. As usual, he stood right beside Morgan, dwarfing his older brother. Carl was the anomaly, with his red hair and freckled skin, a throwback, Dad often teased him and Mom, to some married cousins on Mom’s side.
    How easily we all smiled for the camera. The smiles of a family who–though they knew no excess of money–were aware their lives were as rich and sweet as Mom’s freshly churned butter. I wonder if any of us has ever smiled that openly, that honestly since? Even Mom, who was camera-shy, and usually had to be coaxed to say ‘cheese’, smiled with a pride barely held in check.
    At fourteen, I was already a good two inches taller and probably fifteen pounds heavier than she was. Mom was five-foot two–oh, how she hated that song, or at least professed to. She was tiny, but not delicate. It was as if her small-boned body was made of steel. Gracefullystrong is the only way I can describe her. She looked like good music should sound. Back then I’m sure I looked and moved like the proverbial ugly ducking, waddling under her mother’s beautiful wing.
    I wasn’t very old when I became aware of the fact I would never be beautiful, never turn heads the way my mother did. I grew up knowing that, unlike her, I would never be on the receiving end of appreciative glances from men, or the tight-lipped smiles of the women by their sides. It wasn’t until midway through my teenage years that I too began to covet my mother’s beauty. Not until after River. Up until that time I lived in the glow of hers. Even when others carelessly pointed out the difference.
    I believed I had grown immune to the shocked expressions that crossed people’s faces when they realized we were mother and daughter. But when Mom first introduced me to River on that summer day I was relieved to see no surprise, no hint of secretly comparing us, in those blue eyes. And I was grateful not to hear yet another rude comment about my lack of resemblance to my mother.
    The first time I overheard one of those thoughtless remarks I was seven years old. That winter I was chosen to recite a ballad at our school Christmas pageant. The poem about our town’s founding father, Daniel Atwood, was written by none other than my hero, Boyer Angus Ward. He coached me every evening for weeks before the concert.
    The first time I read the ballad I was sitting wrapped in a blanket at the makeshift desk in Boyer’s narrow attic room. ‘Won’t this make Mr Atwood angry?’ I asked. All I knew about the Atwood family was that they lived in a massive brick and stone house overlooking Main Street.
    â€˜Don’t worry,’ Boyer smiled at me from across his desk. ‘This isabout the first Mr Atwood, old Daniel. Stanley Senior is his son and he’s nothing like his father. Stanley could be called a philanthropist.’
    â€˜Philanthropist?’
    â€˜There’s your ten-penny word for the week,’ Boyer said and handed me his Webster’s Dictionary.
    The next day I took the ballad to school as my project for the concert rehearsal. When the teacher asked who had written it, I kept my promise to Boyer. I was pretty proud of that word too. Anonymous.
    Boyer and I rehearsed the verses so many times in his attic room that I could repeat them in my sleep. I still can. I know that the composition penned by a fifteen-year-old boy was not literary genius, but