On Emma's Bluff by Sara Elizabeth Rice, edited by davebccanada (comprehension books txt) 📖

by shaking her hands dry over the sink. "That damn girl, damn her," she intoned. Wiping her hands on her apron she returned to the table. The envelope was as she had left it, propped up against the salt and pepper shakers.

A small shudder coursed through her body as she flipped the letter on to it's back. "Mine eyes have seen the glory..." she hummed to herself. The letter stayed still, she had half expected it to move. The folded lips on its back puckered up at her. "...of the coming of the Lord," she rung out these words in a hearty voice. Her shoulders slouched about her as a hand snaked up to the tabletop to grasp the letter. She resumed her singing as she held the letter up firmly in one hand.

She was ready to throttle it should it choose now to try and wiggle away. "Glooory, glory, Hal-le-luuuu-jah," she pealed out as she suspended the letter above the table, "His truth is marching oooooooooon." She ripped open one end in an exclamation of triumph. Cupping the letter in her left hand she sloshed out it's contents on to the table, one page of lined paper. Her chest heaved as her right hand spread the letter open before her.

The letter read:

 

Dear Miss Emma Lewis,

I was rightly troubled by the letter you sent me. I weren't sure if I should answer you at all, but my sleep ain’t been right since hearing from you. If what you say is the gospel truth, and the good Lord help YOU if it ain’t, then you need more help than I can give you.

Maybe you are not going to believe what I say at all, but just maybe you are. It is not easy for me to write and say what's got to be said here. My mamma, she was always a very good mamma to me, but she wasn't always a very good woman. It hurt me a lot to hear when I was growing up what folks had to say about her. But maybe they did know what they were talking about.

My mamma wasn't no regular person, at least not like you and I. God gave her gifts, special gifts. She had them from the time when she was just a little girl.

Maybe it was just that she never learned how to use them right, but I think at first she really meant to be good. But sometimes a lot of power is more than one person knows how to live with, especially when one can see so much wrong on this old world. I think that's why she went way too far.

Now if you say you have seen her, I believe you. It scares me to believe you, but then I never figured my mamma to just let someone kill her like they said. The trouble is if someone really did try to murder her there is no telling how mean that might make her. It always seemed to me that for every time she did a little good she paid for it by doing a lot of meanness too.

There's not much else I can tell you about this, but if you still believe that what you told me is true, there is someone else you need beside me. And you got to believe me that if this is all true there ain’t no one down there safe til mamma has been taking care of. I am scared even up here to write any more about this. You got to go see Miss Hattie. She lives on the bluffs above the Sunflower River, just down from Rolling Fork. You ask folks around there, they will tell you where she stays. You go see her and you tell her what all you told me and then you do what ever she tells you to do! You do just what she tells you.!

May the Lord watch over you,

Adie Grace

 

Liz did not put the letter down once she had read it. She read it twice again and winced as she folded the letter and placed it neatly back into the envelope. "Nobody is going to Hattie's," her voice spilled out of unmoving lips, the words cold and smooth as the belly of a dead fish. She crumpled the letter into a ball and slipped it into her apron pocket.

 

 

Chapter 27

"Kiss me again, William," Emma demanded.

"Don't you ever get enough?" Bill turned in the car seat to face her. They were parked safely in her driveway. The whole ride home she had kept leaning over the middle console to kiss his neck and caress his inner thigh.

"I want more," she whined like a petulant child.

"You are asking for it you know?"

"Uh-huh," she heartily agreed.

"How safe are we here?" He looked around nervously.

"How safe do you want to be?"

"Well..." He reached out and squeezed one of her breasts.

"Let's go up to my room," she said and then dropped from her waist her head in his lap.

"Yeah, maybe we should." He laughed as she blew warm air into the crotch of his jeans. "Now where did you learn to do that?"

Roy saw the couple crawl out of the car and walk up to the house. "Just what I was afraid of," he said, his voice leaving a mist on the windowpane.

"What's that you say, Mr. Wilson?" Demar asked.

"Not a thing, not a thing. You and Pugh tie up the boat and bring in the lines. I got to stay here in the house." He did not turn around to face the two men's questioning glances, he just kept watching the couple.

They did not see him when they first walked into the living room. He watched as they embraced. Bill's legs were spread and Emma wiggled her pelvis up against him. They shot apart when he coughed.

"So, what you two doing?" There was no mistaking the disapproval in his voice.

"Bill just brought me home, that's all," Emma answered lamely.

"Well then I guess Bill should be getting on home now himself."   Roy nodded toward the door.

"Yes sir," Bill quickly conferred reaching for the doorknob. He left with out looking back.

Emma stared after him, now irritated with her uncle's intrusion.

"Emma, I believe we need to have a little talk." Roy was unhappy with having to take on this role of a disciplinarian.

"Yes sir." Emma remained stiff and standing. He could see malice in her eyes.

He shuffled his feet and began. "There are things that are just not right for a young lady to go around doing." He cleared his throat. "And if I come upon or hear about any more public displays of affection between you and that Simmons boy I am going to be forced to do something about it.”

"What do you mean, 'hear about'?" she shot out, "Who has been talking about Bill and me?"

"Now see here," he stopped her, "I wasn't going to bring it up, but it is no secret. I cannot tell you how embarrassed I was to have something said to me about the way you two were behaving in church on Sunday; in church for crying out loud! I was told you two disrupted the service with your squirming all over each other, offending decent folks who had come there to worship!"

"What?" she broke in.

"And another thing, did you or did you not have to be asked to please sit up straight, on the couch where you were practically draped over Bill, just this weekend at the church activities building? Mr. McMannis told me himself that it was a disgrace to see the way you two ‘carry on’ like dogs in heat!"

"Mr. McMannis is an old poop!" Emma cried.

"Emma Lewis, I am not going to put up with that kind of talk about your elders, not in this house." Roy's voice was getting louder and louder. Liz could hear every word being said from her spot in the kitchen. A broad smile sealed her lips as she sat peeling potatoes at the kitchen table.

"That's unfair, Uncle Roy." Emma lip began to quiver and she could feel the tears burning in her eyes. "You take somebody's word about me to be the truth. You don't even know my side of it."

"Emma, I saw you two in here just a while ago with my own eyes," he reminded her.

Her face fell when she realized this. "So what do you plan to do about it?" she asked in a quiet voice.

"Well I would rather hope you would just stop it by your own, but since I am your legal guardian I guess it is my place to ground you from seeing Bill so much right now. I mean I know you have to see him at school and all, but this spending all your time with him has got to stop"

"What?" she had not been prepared for this. The thought of not being able to see Bill whenever she wanted terrified her. "No, you cannot do that."

" Oh yes I can. I think maybe one weekend evening a week; not two, not all day together, is a very fair restriction. There is no reason for you to follow that boy everywhere he goes. It doesn't look nice. I suppose I am at fault for not nipping it in the bud before now."

Emma just stood there staring at him, wishing she could roll back time to before when she and Bill had come into the house. "God," she thought, "What if he had caught us up in my room?" Numbly she picked up her schoolbooks and went upstairs.

Roy waited in the living room until he heard Emma's door close, and then he went into the kitchen.

"Glad to see you, Roy," Liz beamed up at him, offering him one of her cheeks to kiss.

"Wish I was glad right now," he replied as he placed a swift peck on her forehead.

"You know it's about time you put that girl in line," she spoke contritely.

"So you heard all that, huh?"

"Most of it." She placed her hands on the tabletop and knitted her fingers into one big fist. "When will she be going away?" she asked studying her hand.

"Honey," he looked up in dismay. "I didn't ask Emma to leave. I could never do that."

"Hrmph," she snorted, "we will just have to wait and see about that." She had not sounded so much like her old self since Barbara Lee's demise.

 

 

Chapter 28

Hattie Murphy had spent most of her life in the house where she presently lived. She had been