© Copyright 1999 James David Pearce
JUNIOR'S SISTER
Boweaver's best friend was Junior Snyder, a little snip of
a fellow, lean and stringy. He wasn't
as big as Boweaver, who was under-size for his age.
Junior wasn't the world's greatest for education. He'd missed a lot of school transplanting
peanuts, picking cotton and handing tobacco – and he had a slight eye
defect. A wandering eye, his daddy
called it.
He had three sisters, one older than he was, pretty as a
picture with long blonde hair that she brushed a lot, and green eyes. The others were younger than Junior, one
five and the baby, Lily, two.
Junior's family, like everybody else in the neighborhood,
had an outhouse out back where people used the bathroom. It wasn't called a bathroom, of course,
because nobody would think of taking a bath there.
Junior's outhouse was a two-seater, so that two members of
the family could, if so inclined, use it at the same time.
On the terrible day, Junior's five-year-old sister went to
the toilet and Lily, the baby, tagged along.
When the bigger girl raised the wooden lid, Lily raised the
other lid and fell in.
The older girl screamed and ran for her mother.
Mrs. Snyder came running, and screaming. Neighbors, hearing the commotion, also came
running and screaming.
Boweaver and Junior, in a field nearby, came also, but
there was so much confusion that for a while they didn't realize what had
happened.
Workers roofing a house nearby heard the screams and came
on the run. When they discovered what
had happened, some of them began to scream also, but one or two grabbed shovels
and pitchforks and tried to get the little girl out through the hole.
That effort was unsuccessful, so they got outside and
pushed the house over. The slime was so
near ground level that they were able to reach in with the pitchfork and pick
the baby out.
The stunned gathering stared in silent disbelief at the
sight of the tiny child balanced on the tines of the pitchfork, until the
mother's screams drove them to action.
One woman primed the water pump at the back steps while
another ran for a washtub. A roofer
took over the pump and quickly filled the tub with water. Others ran down the road in search of
someone with a car.
Lily was placed in the tub, and her little body was washed
as clean as it had ever been in her short life. A car came and they took her uptown to a doctor, who sent her to
the hospital in Rocky Mount, 50 miles away.
She lived three days at the hospital, and then died of
pneumonia.
They
brought her back to the little house on the corner for the funeral. The whole neighborhood came.
~~~~~~~~~
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