The Floatplane Notebooks Read Online Free PDF Page A

Thatcher’s house—about twenty people, and four or five dogs. Mark and Meredith each brought a mixed-breed dog, Fox and Trader, who, in turn, brought several friends along. Everybody had people their age to match up with, plus there were several old people. Mildred took me around and introduced me to everybody. I finally got to meet Aunt Scrap, one of the older cousins I’d heard so much about. She has a wrinkled face, is somewhat stooped and wore a red bandanna around her head. Her eyes were little slits like a Japanese, almost.
    All the rakes, hoes, and other implements, and picnic lunches were placed in the back of Mr. Copeland’s jeep truck; he drove ahead to the graveyard while all others walked along the path through the woods. Thatcher and I held hands and I soaked up the beauty of the woods, especially the dogwood trees.
    And as we walk along the final path I see a horrific splendor of purple wisteria blooms off to the left of the graveyard—a far larger gathering of such blooms than I have ever witnessed. Thatcher had shown me the graveyard and we’d walked down there several times. In fact, I’d walked down there and cried the time Thatcher took Veronica Harden out to lunch, but I had not really noticed the wisteria, since it hadn’t been in bloom those times. The vines cover an area about the size of four or five houses, running out and around the limbs of tall stately pine trees and also uniformly winding very tightly up their trunks, eventually to kill them, I fear; thus a mixture of splendor and dread such as you would never expect to find in the very woods down behind Thatcher’s house.
    Mr. Copeland was already there, chopping with an ax on the large pine tree—fallen partly across the graveyard—so it could be taken to the pickup, a piece at a time.
    Everyone started in to work, except Noralee and several of the smaller children, who walked down to the edge of the pond, which is beyond the wisteria. Mr. Copeland will not let them swim in the pond until after June first.
    Miss Esther started in helping Mr. Copeland tote pieces of the log away. She works like a man. I got a hedge clipper and joined in, clipping a hedge planted near the center of the graveyard.
    Aunt Scrap talked most of the time. We hadn’t been working long when she came over to me. She was holding a rake—a yard rake, the kind with the short, straight, hard prongs. She leaned on the handle. Fresh tiny rivers of snuff juice were in the corners of her mouth. “Well, well,” she said. “You’re Bliss.”
    â€œYes ma’am.”
    â€œYou know what kind of bush that is?”
    â€œNo ma’am.”
    â€œIt’s a Sweet Betsy bush, come from T. C. Sutton’s place about the time they tore it down. When they closed off that road used to run through here, things kind of died out. People moved out; houses got torn down. Anyway, Sweet Betsy—Mrs. Sutton had them all over her front yard. Don’t trim quite so close there.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œThat Thatcher’s a fine boy.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œHe’s my, let’s see, I guess second cousin. His granddaddyand my daddy were half brothers. You know”—she looked down, then up at me—“on this marriage stuff, they told me if I swallowed a raw quail heart I’d marry the first beau to come along and talk to me, and I knew the time of day Horace Jacobs walked along the road, that road that was right out there.” She pointed. “So I saved one and swallowed it—just before I knowed it was time for him to come along. I lived about half a mile down that way. And sure enough there he come and I made myself noticeable right out in the front yard. We got married too.” She laughed. She was leaning forward, looking at me, and her eyebrows were raised. Then she turned and spat a stream onto the ground where she’d already raked. She looked out over