Love and Lament Read Online Free PDF Page B

carriage. She took Myrtle Emma’s hand—Myrt was her favorite now that Annie was dead. Myrt scolded her for running off.
    Her father chuckled and said, “I thought they’d taken you to Gallows Hill.”
    But Mary Bet didn’t think it was funny and she blushed. She was guilty, and if she didn’t mend her ways she would end up just like the bad man. “Do they ever hang girls?” she asked her sister.
    Myrtle Emma laughed and said, “What a silly question, Mary Bet. Of course not. They don’t hang women either, unless they’re very very bad.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I guess if a woman killed somebody, she could be hanged, but I don’t want to think about it.”
    “Neither do I,” Mary Bet said, but she did think about it. She knew that Shackleford Davies was guilty of murder, as well as robbery and incest. “What’s incest?” she asked.
    “Hush now,” her sister said.
    “I don’t want to go to the gallows,” Mary Bet said, for she was worried now that they would follow the crowd. It was sure to be a long walk, and she did not want to see a man hanged from a rope.
    Myrtle Emma laughed again and lifted her sister up by her armpits so that she was looking straight into her face. “You’re as good as pie,” she said. “You’re never going to the gallows, ever.”
    She wanted to tell her sister about the crow. But she was afraid. Perhaps Myrtle Emma already knew and had forgiven her, or perhaps the family had met and decided it was not her fault after all. She was still the baby, and always would be.
    Myrtle Emma took her father’s hand and said, “Can we go to Pfifer’s?”
    Cicero slowed and looked at his children, his beard like a buffalo’s, and said, “Isn’t it too early for ice cream?”
    “We should go now before all that crowd comes back,” Myrtle Emma suggested.
    “That’s a right smart idea,” he said. “I promised your mother I wouldn’t take you to any hanging, and here we were going along like we were off to the circus.” The crowd surged by.
    And then they were heading back into town, Mary Bet riding like a possum baby on Siler’s back. There were other people who didn’t want to go see the hanging. Her father stopped and talked with several men wearing nice clothes, jackets and ties, not like the farm people in tattered clothes who had been surrounding them. But there had also been nicely dressed people who wanted to go see that horrible ugly thing. Why would they want to?
    Siler stood straight, until she was clinging to his neck, her pink dress up over her knees, and she no longer felt like a possum baby. “Pigback,” she said, but he had shaken her off and she had to walk. And then they were in Pfifer’s, where the floor was all tiny white and black tiles, and there were fans high up in a white pressed-tinceiling. And they sat in a big wooden booth and ordered fancy ice creams. All five of them—her father, Myrtle Emma, Siler, O’Nora, and herself.
    “Don’t tell your mama about this,” her father said, winking at her. Then, “You want chocolate this time?”
    She shook her head and said, “Vanilla.” Which made him and the others laugh, and she blushed. She thought she should be more grown up next time, but she liked the eggy-sweet taste of vanilla. And when the cone came she forgot that she was embarrassed, and she licked it to a smooth ball like Siler did, except without the slurping noise, because her mother said it was rude but that Siler couldn’t help it. Her father was talking about the price of milk and how corn and wheat and cotton were falling dangerously, and she thought it had to be one of those things that grown-ups worried about. Maybe somewhere corn and cotton were falling, but she could see out the window that they weren’t falling here. She closed her eyes quickly and thought, “Please, God, don’t let corn and cotton fall, amen.”
    Siler tried to follow what the others were saying. He was the only boy at the table, Tom having stayed at