On Wings Of The Morning Read Free

long as she kept silent, we’d all have to.
    Papaw dropped a big, calloused hand on my shoulder. “I’ve got to finish fixing that wobbly board on the hog pen. The sow worked it loose again rubbing up to scratch her back. You pump some fresh water for your chickens and get them back inside for the night. I saw a big black dog skulking around last night. Probably a stray. Might be the same one that got to Thompson’s birds last week, so you make sure you shut those hens in good and tight. We’ve got about an hour to supper. Should be enough time for your shirt to dry.”
    â€œYes, Papaw.” I stooped over the bucket to squeeze the last drops of water from my shirt. The water wasn’t clean enough to give to the chickens but I could pour it over Aunt Ruby’s tomato plants.
    Papaw turned and started walking toward the hog pen, but he only got a few steps before he called to me over his shoulder.
    â€œMorgan!”
    â€œYes, Papaw?”
    â€œYou’re a good son.” He smiled and kept walking.
    I stood up and shook out my shirt. A quick, sharp gust of prairie wind lifted the wet fabric into the air, blowing dust onto the previously clean cloth. I held tight to the sleeves, and the shirt billowed out in front of me like a sail trying to draw me into the breeze, and I wished, for the hundredth time, that I was light enough and free enough to fly.

2
    Georgia
    The 1920s
    Â 
    I ’ve always been a realist. I had to be, because my mother’s grip on reality was so tenuous. Someone had to be the grown-up in our family, and by the time I was six years old it was clear to me that Cordelia Carter Boudreaux was not putting in an application for the position.
    Cordelia Carter Boudreaux. Lord! How in the world did she ever conjure up a name like that? One thing I’ll say for my mother. She had imagination.
    Delia had no more claim of descent from New Orleans aristocracy than from the crowned heads of Europe, but it wasn’t her style to let something as inconvenient as facts stand in her way. We weren’t from anyplace half as romantic as the French Quarter or even the Bayou, just the cracker part of Florida, far from the beach, that humid, bug-infested part tourists never go to unless they accidentally read the map sideways and get themselves lost.
    I was the child of a moderately well-to-do, married storekeeper named Earl. He came to visit us on Sundays, bringing bags of groceries. There was always a bit of penny candy tucked in among the oranges, grits, and cans of tuna fish. My mother would give me the sack of lemon drops or sticky caramels and tell me to go outside and play on the tire swing in the yard while she and Uncle Earl talked. She made it clear that I was not to come in the house and bother her until she came to get me or she’d take my candy away. I guess the pull of my sweet tooth was stronger than my curiosity because I never did sneak inside to see what Mama and Uncle Earl were “talking” about. When I was older I pretty well figured it out.
    Earl’s store was at least three or four miles from our house. I don’t know how I figured out the directions, but once I walked there all by myself. How old was I? Four, maybe? Earl gave me an orange Nehi and a ride home in his car. He wasn’t mad or anything—in fact, he let me shift the car while he was driving—but he said I shouldn’t wander off so far because I might get lost or come across the path of a mean old gator with a hankering for the tender flesh of little girls. When we got to the house he patted me on the head and told Mama to keep a better eye on me next time.
    He was always nice to me, and other than cheating on his wife, he didn’t seem like a bad man. I’m sure if he’d realized what he was doing before he got himself mixed up with my mother, he’d have thought twice about adultery. Well, he wasn’t alone in that. Before Delia was through there