The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) by Robert Hough Read Free Book Online Page B

next year's
tobacco, it becoming my job to entertain the visitors. A big job it was,
too; they kept coming and coming, loaded down with baskets and jugs
and jars, all determined to help out the family of the man who, upon
coming south from Quebec, had changed his last name to one that was
old-fashioned and American sounding and, believe it or not, inspired
by the sight of threshed hay. This went on for months, such that my
biggest recollection of mourning, aside from the pure dog misery of
it, was long awkward conversations had over cups of tea with people I
barely knew. (That, and having people treat me like a thirteen-yearold one day and a full-grown woman the next.) When we weren't eating jams, pickles and mincemeat pies the neighbours had brought over,
we ate root vegetables and cuts of meat preserved in clay urns filled
with duck fat.

    "And your mother?" Levine asked. "What happened to her?"
    Well.
    Here I told how she grew addled with pent-up sorrow, how she'd
leave the house with only one shoe on or sometimes turn to me and you
could tell she was seeing someone other than yours truly before shaking her head and coming to her senses. How one day, when the two of
us had been alone for five months, she decided to buy an old dray cheap
from a guy who'd spent time ranching in the Appalachians. The horse's
name was Tom and he'd taken poorly to the wide-open spaces of west
Kentucky: always snorting and stamping the ground and trying to
manoeuvre his haunches so he could launch a hoof at your forehead,
which was presumably the reason he'd been sold at the price he'd been
sold at in the first place. A week after that, my mother decided she'd
use Tom to harrow the northwest field, figuring the horse's spunk
might come in handy at the end of a long day. Her second mistake came
when she stood between horse and harrow while linking the trace. Something spooked Tom, probably nothing more serious than a breeze
or a moth fluttering by, and he bolted, dragging the harrow over his
grief-witted owner. Course I was the one found the results. The sun
was lowering and the cooking was done and she hadn't yet come in
from the fields so I went out looking. Walked to the northwest field and
from a distance saw the horse buckled to the harrow, just standing there
chewing and thinking about whatever it is horses think about. Twenty
feet away was a dark heap I couldn't make out. As I got closer it became
pretty obvious what it was, though the mind's an optimistic thing, and
needs to be shown the worst has happened or it'll go on believing the
opposite. I got up close and took it all in. She looked like she'd been
torn apart by wild animals.

    Levine was still scribbling away, trying to get everything I'd said
on paper, as though I'd recited the cure for smallpox instead of details
I regarded as dreary and all my own. After a few seconds, the sound of
his pencil scratching at paper stopped and he moved the chair around
so he could look me in the face.
    "Mrs. Aganosticus, I'd like to try something I have been reading
about. I was wondering if you'd like to talk some more tomorrow."
    "You mean like we did today?"
    "Yes, exactly."
    "Would it be during my tubbing?"
    "If you'd like."
    "Then sure, Doctor. Course."
    That's how I started the first talking cure ever performed in the state of
Kentucky. I didn't know it was controversial, and I had no idea it was
contrary to hospital procedure. I didn't even know it was treatment, for
as far as I was concerned cures involved something you could lay your
hands on, like pills or bathtubs or turn-handled Faradizers. I just figured Levine liked to talk, and ask questions starting with "Tell me
about..."

    So I'd tell him. Not everything. But most things. Made up stuff too,
just to keep the spice level high. To tell the truth, it did me good to get
some of my mental goings-on into word form, particularly as regard to
how much I missed having a mother. One day, after