Where We Are Now by Carolyn Osborn Read Free Book Online Page B

the real business of farming. Grandpa’s only son Uncle George didn’t like what he knew. He was far more interested in buying and selling land than he was in plowing and harvesting. First he took up auctioneering, then real estate. I wondered briefly what Grandpa would have thought about that.
    â€œWell, he was a trader himself,” said Fergus.
    â€œPapa wasn’t sentimental about farming. He liked the look of the land, the way certain fields lay, and he took pride in what he could raise, but he always planned for us to leave the place—all of us. He insisted on college educations, girls included. Papa was a great believer in education.” Aunt Lucy got up again and went to the dining room.
    â€œI want to show you something. You haven’t seen it in years.” She held up a wax apple with teeth marks on it.
    For an instant I was seven years old again tasting wax instead of the tart apple I’d expected, and Fergus was laughing just as he laughed then. Of course he was the one who had dared me to take the fruit from Grandmother’s cut-glass bowl on her dining table. Of course I chose the apple; I liked it best. It was a strong primary red, darker on one side than the other.
    â€œDid you keep the rest of it, Aunt Lucy?” Once there was a bunch of grapes, a banana, a pear, two plums, two peaches, and an orange. All were wax, beautifully colored and shaded to ripe perfection, or so they appeared to me in those pre-plastic days. By some childish twist of logic I had not thought to wonder why the fruit never spoiled. Perhaps I unconsciously assumed everything in my grandmother’s house stayed quietly perfect in the way old people seem always the same age to children.
    â€œThat kind of thing went out of style, and Mother put them in the attic. You remember, that storeroom she had upstairs. One hot summer they must have collapsed. Only the apple kept its shape. When we cleared out the house, I threw the rest away.”
    The truth is sometimes a poor, sad thing—wax fruit melted in an attic, a lone mule wandering on the front lawn, a mute player piano—a few insubstantial fragments. All we could do was grab hold and make something more of them.I turned the apple in my hands.
    â€œIt’s a grief, clearing out a house after someone’s gone. But you can’t keep everything. You’d never believe that though, looking at Fergus’ office.”
    â€œThe ghost of Miss Kate flies through there on white angel wings around four every morning. Sometimes people hear her screaming.” Fergus grinned.
    â€œAnd Grandpa’s ghost?”
    â€œOh, his is still riding though the Arcade on a mule.”
    The Arcade is a sort of covered passageway through the middle of a block in downtown Nashville. Small stores used to face pedestrians on either side. I don’t know what’s there now or if it’s even still used.
    â€œWhy did he do that?”
    â€œHe’d been up to Nashville to see some friends,” Fergus said and looked at the ceiling as if he wished I hadn’t asked.
    â€œYou mean he’d been up all night drinking” Aunt Lucy intervened. “I know he did that kind of thing. I swear, the way he treats me, you’d think I was Mother. She’d hardly let anybody say ‘whisky’ in front of her.”
    â€œYes,” Fergus went on, “well … he rode through the Arcade and found a policeman waiting for him on the other side. And the policeman said, ‘I’m fining you five dollars for disorderly conduct.’
    â€œGrandpa pulled some money out of his pocket, ‘Here’s ten dollars. I’m going back the same way.’ He turned the mule around and rode through again, went on back to the farm I reckon.”
    I saw him with the sun rising over the stubby green hills, a portly squire, his jacket rumpled, his face reddened, his watch chain strained against his belly. He was a little sleepy. He