Turner's Rainbow 2 - The Rainbow Promise Read Online Free PDF

there was no other place for the children to sleep.
    Julia sighed and turned her attention back to the table where her husband lay. Will's death had stunned her. He was only thirty-seven years old; she had expected to live out most of the rest of her life with him. But Vance had come running to the house this morning, screaming that Daddy was sick, and she had found Will stretched out on the ground beside his plow, the team waiting patiently. He had been unconscious. She had sent for the doctor, but Will was dead by the time he came. The doctor had said it was probably a heart attack, uncommon in a man Will's age.
    With her neighbor's help, Julia had washed the body and dressed it, folded his hands across his chest and weighted his eyelids with coins. Now all that was left was the long night of sitting up with the body. She supposed she ought to pray for Will, or recall pleasant memories of him. But there had been precious few pleasant memories, and at the moment she couldn't summon up a prayer, except maybe one of gratitude.
    She was glad he was dead. Well, not glad, really; she didn't wish harm to anyone. But she was relieved. Yes, certainly she was relieved. She would no longer have to be afraid that he might hit her. She would no longer have to worry about protecting the children from him if he was mad or drunk. She wouldn't have to listen to him curse her or be reminded of the favor he had done her by marrying her. Nor would she have to lie quiescent under him, enduring his clumsy hands and the violation of his entering her.
    He hadn't been a terrible husband. Julia guessed. He hadn't hit her as often as some men hit their wives, and he'd never taken his belt to her. He had kept a roof over their beads and food in their mouths, even if it had never been fancy. And he had given her child a name.
    The trouble between them hadn't been all his fault. She didn't love him, had married him not loving him, just so the baby she carried would not be illegitimate. Will had wanted her so much that he had been willing to marry her, knowing that she carried another man's child, but the knowledge had always been a bitterness within him. Julia had cried on their wedding night, loving Jimmy, aching for his tender caresses instead of Will's rough fondling. Though she had cried into her pillow, trying to muffle the sound. Will had heard it. If Will hadn't been very good to her, neither had she been fair to him.
    Even now when he was dead, she couldn't feel anything for him.
    All she could feel was relief that he was dead and fear because she didn't know what she and the children would do. Will was sharecropping this land, so the house didn't belong to them. The owner of the property would want to put someone else here to work the land. Where would she go? How would she take care of two children all by herself?
    She tried not to think about that. She folded her hands together, closed her eyes, and tried to pray for the repose of Will's soul. But Julia knew that deep inside, she was really praying for herself.

Chapter 2

    J ulia buried Will Dobson in the cemetery beside the Antioch Baptist Church, three miles down the road from their house. Only Julia, her children, and their neighbor, Lula Braswell, and her two sons were there. The preacher said a few words over the grave, and Mrs. Braswell's sons lowered the pine casket into the open hole. Julia stood for a moment, staring down at the grave. Bonnie and Vance were on either side of her, dressed in their best clothes, holding Julia's hands.
    "Is Daddy down there?" Bonnie asked.
    "Yes, sweetheart."
    "How will he get out?"
    "He won't," Julia smoothed her hand over her daughter's hair, neatly captured in braids. "When you die, you don't get up anymore. You lie in the earth."
    "How will he meet Jesus, then?"
    "It's not his body that goes to Heaven." If, in fact, that was where Will was headed; Julia had her doubts. "It's his soul, and that's already left his body. When he died, his soul flew