A Thousand Never Evers by Shana Burg Page B

sitting room. And all I could think is it’s too bad sweet Ralphie has to share a name with his mean old daddy.
    After that, Mrs. Tate didn’t stop talking about the garden—she just stopped talking about it with her husband. When she couldn’t find Miss Springer or Mrs. Worth, she talked about it with Mama and me.
    Every so often, in between talking about what she would wear to the planting and what food she would bring, she’d say how sorry she was about Elias. Just the other day she said, “I’ll bet he’s only run off with some girl. Soon as it sours, he’ll be back.”
    And even though Mrs. Tate meant it to be kind, there was glass over Mama’s eyes the second she said it.
    Now I watch Mrs. Tate, Miss Springer, and Mrs. Worth climb onto the porch of Old Man Adams’s garden cabin. Once they settle into their chairs, they unpack their feast from a picnic basket, while Mrs. Tate carries on about how wonderful Mr. Mudge is. “See, I told you he’d come around,” she says, and pours herself a drink from a thermos. “A couple days after our garden meeting, he was already out here on his tractor planting us a border of Indian corn. He says the cornstalks will protect our baby crops from high winds, so they’ll grow up big and strong.”
    But I pretend I don’t see these ladies, and I make like I don’t hear them, while I finish holing the land. Then I slog on over to the porch to pick up a tray of cabbage seedlings. When I get there, I see Mrs. Tate pouring Mama’s fresh peach juice and sharing Mama’s homemade blueberry muffins with her friends like this is a regular celebration, while here I am sweating so much a rash erupted over my thighs.
    I carry a tray of seedlings to the far end of my row. By the time I work myself back near the cabin porch, Mrs. Tate and her friends have been out there for hours, and I reckon they’ve forgotten I’m here.
    “Well, at least that colored boy got what he deserved,” Mrs. Worth says.
    My fingers turn to sticks in the ground.
    “I have to admit, much as I like my own help, the Negro problem’s getting out of hand,” Mrs. Tate says. “They just make everything so…complicated.”
    “That dead boy broke Jimmy’s leg!” Mrs. Worth says. “What’s so complicated ’bout that?”
    Dead boy.
I turn the words over in my mind.
    But Mrs. Worth goes on. “Now we don’t have a prayer of winning the state championship. And Jimmy might lose out on a scholarship to college!”
    I’m so mad I see raspberries! Right about now, I hate Mrs. Worth more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my whole entire life, Buck Fowler included. And I can’t believe Mrs. Tate would let Mrs. Worth call Elias a “dead boy,” when just the other day she told Mama and me not to worry, that of course he’s fine, of course he’ll be back.
    “Where are your priorities?” Miss Springer asks.
    “Oh, come on!” Mrs. Worth shouts. “Don’t tell me you feel bad for an uppity colored who messed with my son!”
    Mrs. Tate sniffles and I’m glad. But all too soon the roar of Mr. Mudge’s tractor drowns out the sound of her tears, so I transplant the last of the cabbage and go to help Mama. Of course, I’m not about to tell her what I heard, because I know she couldn’t bear it.
    Mama smiles when she sees me come her way. Her cheeks are rosy. Together we broadcast button squash seed across the fresh-turned soil. And I’ll tell you one thing: I wish I could get myself a life supply, because if you ask me, there’s nothing better than hot button squash with cool cane syrup running down the sides.
    By the time we finish planting, Mrs. Tate and her friends are long gone. I
tweet, click, click,
and Flapjack comes running. But when I lean over to pet him, every muscle in me aches, the knuckles in my fingers throb, and my body hurts so bad that for a minute or two, I forget what’s going on in my life—till I traipse over to the cabin where Mr. Mudge brings it back up.
    “And let us pray,” he