The Mockingbird's Ballad

Nancy Bird busied herself with kitchen doings and Alex greeted neighbors in the front yard while Joe carried into the dining room the gifts of food brought as is the timeless custom in time of grief. Alex was gatekeeper so only family and preachers were inside the house.

"You all be still. I'm going to check on that new jack colt," Lou told them as she came into the kitchen in her work clothes and went directly to the back porch. She didn't go to the barn, instead she walked to the edge of the woods out to the west side of the house, some fifty yards, crossing the rock wall that bordered the house's yard. In a grouping of cedars, she found a three-foot high limestone outcropping and sat down.

After gazing back at her house, stock barn, shed, wash house, smoke house, fields and garden patch, she looked up at the slate blue sky seeking to find a cloud. There was the shadow of one down toward the river stretching north to over where she had left her Jim - the Bee Springs Church and graveyard. Taking off her hat and placing it on the ground at her side, she placed both hands on her face and sobbed. At first it was controlled but then she gave out deep gut-wrenching crying. It took a few minutes for her to get the terrible grief under control. As she stood, she wiped her face with a big blue and white bandana. Then she leaned over, grabbed her hat and put it on. Turning to the gray, ageless, moss-stained stone she said, "I share my pain with you old one, I can't carry it all." She turned and went back to the living.

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Solon had wrapped up good and gone and sat on the front porch steps. He looked out across the yard down the brown gravel drive lined with hickory, oak, and chestnut trees. He thought, "Even the place grieves." Then his thoughts returned to the wake in the big room of his house the night before. Solon had stood before the polished finely finished cherry casket. Placing his hand on the smooth cool lid, he surprised himself with the thought that came into his mind, "My goodness Mr. Fields, Joe and Alex did a fine piece of work on this." He chastised his inner self for that thought. It was as if he couldn't let into his heart the meaning of the occasion. He knew lots of folks buried their children but he was not finding anything like acceptance. His spirit felt as if it was horsewhipped and his sixty-five-year-old body ached from head to heel. "I'll get through this," he told himself, "but it'll take a lot of doing." Then he remembered more about standing numb at the bier. Joseph Wheeler Stevenson, his surviving son, had come up to him, discretely took his hand without shame and stood silently for as long as his daddy stood at the beautiful/ugly casket of his brother, nearly half an hour.