Life Is Short But Wide by J. California Cooper Read Free Book Online

work round here to even us up on the rent.” But he was a shy man, and didn’t mention it to Rose or Bertha.
    Joe just continued on his weary, worried way to the lumberyard, with his dull brown eyes set in their reddened whites, staring ahead of him looking at everything, seeing nothing. He was looking for something he could find, fix, and sell.
    He hung around the lumberyard waiting for some work. For a long time now, since the depression had come, his hours were fewer, and his pay much less. He thought, “Depression sposed to be over, but it sho ain’t gone from round heah yet.”
    The depression years were slow, and hard on everyone. Farmers, laborers, electricians, auto makers, everyone suffered because no one had any money. Harder on some coloreds because when it came to hiring, other colors came first.
    Even liquor bootleggers were barely getting by. Since the Wall Street crash in 1929, even the rich were having a harder time of life, but most of them were going to make it out all right. The poor people thanked God for Roosevelt’s New Deal that helped them survive. Sometimes you had to travel to get to theNew Deal, and Joe Smith was almost an old man. “I cain’t leave my Bertha and Juliet with jes nothin, even if I’m goin some-where’s to try to get somethin!”
    Val, who had been a sad man a long time, finally gave up trying to live on, and died. It was an unexpected hard blow to Rose; she was miserable. She cried a vale of tears; wretched despair was her daily misery. At night she screamed aloud at God in her grief, in that empty, empty house.
    Wings could not help her; he was in despair, agonized and sickened by Val’s death. To focus his mind he wanted to carve the headstone and dig the grave. He wanted to bury Val right next to Irene in the same wooded sanctuary that was full of birds and other live things that Val had loved. He wanted Val near his own grave. He was not superstitious, he was just used to his friend being near him.
    Wings had found Val’s savings in a can in the feather case Val had used for a pillow. He took it to Rose, gladly, for his brother-friend.
    Rose didn’t know how Tante found out because in her personal grief she had forgotten Tante. Tante sent a message through the Wideland newspaper office that she was coming home for the funeral. That helped Rose so much she was able to stop crying all through the days and nights.
    She knew Tante could not afford the trip, and it would take at least two or three days on the bus. She informed the minister the funeral would be held in Val’s own parlor. “His body can lie there as long as it has to. This is his home.”
    People came by to view the body as Rose sat at Val’s feet. When the body began to smell slightly, Rose still sat there, un-worried, unfazed.
    •
    Rose cleaned Tante’s room and the rest of the house, then sat back down to wait. “I must think of what to feed Tante while she is home.” Rose knew her father had been sending Tante some money each month to help her. “That’s what must’a killed him, all the strain of looking after us!”
    She would be ashamed of such thoughts for a while, then the thoughts would break through again, “She must be through with college now! She can come on home and help me with this place!” A little light flickered in her brain. “We can have two grades in school! I’ll get that shotgun house ready for a real school for us to teach in!”
    Rose had not forgotten her father had just died. She was no less grieved, stressed, depressed, and miserable. She just realized there was still a future, that life was not over, it goes on. With her arms resting on the kitchen table, she rested her head on them and cried again, dry sobs. She felt, almost, all alone in the world.
    Tante finally arrived amid all the doings, and Reverend Smoke preached the funeral of Val. He kept his little greedy eyes on the front-row chairs where the bereaved daughters of Val sat. After he got them crying real