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

hard, and everybody moaning and sniffling, he quieted his preaching down. They laid Val’s coffin in the wagon that Wings had brought to fetch him. Val’s daughters climbed onto the wagon and rode away with Wings, to bury their beloved father next to their dearly beloved mother.
    Later, after they returned to their house, Tante began to pack to go back to university and to work. Rose was outdone,feeling abandoned. She cried and begged and pleaded for Tante to stay home with her.
    Tante sat Rose in a chair, and put her arm around her. She leaned close to her sister, whom she loved, and said, “Rose, I am not you. I am not through doing what I have to do for myself. I have a master’s degree. I want a doctorate. I know what I am doing with my life.
    “Wideland is not my life. Now, you? You must decide for yourself. You can sell whatever property is here. I don’t care. It’s yours. I give you my half. I will get my own for myself. I wouldn’t sell it right now though; prices are too low. Prices are not going to stay low as they are now; I’m watching the stock market, and every day I read several newspapers.
    “Hold this land awhile, while you decide just what you want to do with your life. Then do whatever that is! Because that is what I am going to do.” Tante stood up to finish packing, saying, “I am going to try to get the money to have a telephone put in this house for you so you can reach me and I can reach you whenever there is an emergency.”
    Rose’s eyes were wide open. She couldn’t believe her ears, that her sister was saying these things. She couldn’t believe her sister was leaving her again. Her heart sobbed, “Here, alone; all by myself.”
    Tante pulled her sister to her breast, saying, “You have to be an adult about your life now. You are a grown woman. If you have a dream, try to work toward that dream; if you don’t have a dream, you need to look around you, see what you do have, then work to keep it in the best way possible. You must like it here, you’ve never tried to leave. Rent that little house out, and keep teaching. I’ll do what I can for you, but the facts are I am workingon my dreams. I won’t have much to send. Life takes everything you have to keep going on. And I mean to keep going with my life.”
    They walked together to the train station, and Rose waited for the train to come take her sister away. She watched her sister leaving her. Life’s pain had filled her heart til it had near broken it. But, this time, she didn’t cry.
    Rose was used to her father and other cowboys. She knew how to cuss. She thought to herself, “I’m tired of all this leaving shit.”
    Rose Strong went home to think.
    For weeks Preacher Smoke had been telling different members of the congregation, “I’m worried bout that Rose out there in that big ole house all by herself! I’m gonna start checkin up on her; see is she doin alright!” The congregation was glad because they were mostly too busy trying to work and survive. Except Bertha, she checked every day.
    The preacher lived in two small rooms at the back of the church. He had no wife. The congregation fed him every Sunday, but, naturally, being the man he was, he wanted more, needed more. He had, secretly, wooed a few of the women in the church. The ones he knew were alone and lonely. He stood for a god to them, so naturally they gave in to him.
    He never brought anything with him, food nor money, and times were hard, so they couldn’t always feed him. But giving him some loving, his secret favorite thing, was easy. Besides, they needed some their own selves.
    But Preacher Smoke didn’t know how to do his secretfavorite thing too well. It wasn’t his size, because size doesn’t make the man. He just wouldn’t have known what to do with any size “down there.” Soon the ladies began to pull back, and fly from his reach. He had a few who were older, lonely sisters he ate with, but he didn’t want them. They smelled of