Time Well Spent as a Ghost

Chapter 8

She'd cleaned up the kitchen after dinner so Ma could sit with the girls and sew. The boys had headed out to the yard. They were sleeping close to the herd until the new barn could be blocked in. Pa joined them sometimes and other times he just slept on the porch where he'd set his bottle down. He was worried about money since he had to go to town to order lumber for the new barn from the man he still owed for the one that burned. The farm was making money, though, and everyone knew it. Pa'd had local customers and a government contract too, for milk and eggs, and Ma's blackberry jam was sold year-round at the grocery store in town. Tonight he hadn't come down for dinner so Sylvia had set out a plate.

Halfway up the stairs she could hear him snoring. He'd had a bad afternoon. His boots were next to the bed, covered with mud and grass from his walk through the family plot. Sylvia looked at him collapsed on the bed. It struck her how weak he was behaving. She set his plate on the bedside table, screwed the cap on the whiskey and set it on his dresser across the room. Hopefully he'd wake up and find the plate first.

The heat of the day had evaporated that morning's rain. With a cool evening breeze stirring, Sylvia thought of visiting the graves herself. She stopped in her room to put on her walking shoes, and wrapped a shawl around her shoulders. For now the room was just hers but she'd eventually ask one of her sisters to share with her again. Walking quietly through the house, she slipped past the screen door and onto the path toward the grave sites, turning away from the wide open space where the barn used to be.

Along the pathway Sylvia picked some chicory, purple aster, queen anne's lace, and some chamomile to place on Benjamin's grave. He had loved to search the fields through the spring and summer so he could sit on grandma's lap and listen to the names of the flowers. The sun was setting behind her. As she stood in front of her husband's and son's graves, her shadow lay in the length between them, as if they were together as a family again.

Turning toward the house she noticed Pa's coin box laying in the grass. What was that doing out here? When he made his collection rounds at the end of each week he placed the iou's and paper money with the record keeping and kept all the coins together in an oil cloth sack in this box. He was probably so drunk he didn't know what he was doing. Weak old fool. Pa'd be angry as hell if it turned up lost. He'd be set back another half-year of earnings.

Pressing the lid down tight, Sylvia carried the box under her shawl and began to walk farther east and then south towards the blackberry garden ...