Morning Glory by Lavyrle Spencer Page A

back on this place unless he was asked to. Gazing across the yard, all he said, in his low-key voice was, “Reckon the pens could use a little cleanin’.”

CHAPTER
5
    They went for a walk when the midmorning sun had lifted well above the trees—a green and gold day smelling of deep summer. Will had never walked with a woman and her children before. It held a strange, unexpected appeal. He noticed her way with the children, how she carried Baby Thomas on one hip with his heel flattening her smock. How, as they set off from the porch, she reached back for Donald Wade, inviting, “Come on, honey, you lead the way,” and helped him off the last step. How she watched him gallop ahead, smiling after him as if she’d never before seen his flopping yellow hair, his baggy striped overalls. How she locked her hands beneath Thomas’s backside, leaned from the waist, took a deep pull of the clear air and said to the sky, “My, if this day ain’t a blessin’.” How she called ahead, “Careful o’ that wire in the grass there, Donald Wade!” How she plucked a leaf and handed it to Thomas, then let him touch her nose with it and pretended it tickled her and made the young one giggle.
    Watching, Will became entranced. Lord, she was some mother. Always kind voiced. Always finding the good in things. Always concerned about her boys. Always making them feel important. Nobody had ever made Will feel important, only in the way.
    He studied her covertly, noting more clearly the bulk of herbelly, outlined by the baby’s leg. Donald Wade had said she gets tired. Recalling the boy’s words, Will considered offering to carry the baby, but he felt out of his depth around Thomas. He’d be no good at getting his nose tickled or making chitchat. Besides, she might not cotton to a stranger like him handling Glendon Dinsmore’s boys.
    They went around to the back of the house where the dishtowel flapped on a line strung between teetering clothes-poles that had been shimmed up by crude wood braces. Beyond these were more junkpiles before the woods began—pines, oaks, hickories and more. Sparrows flitted from tree to tree ahead, and Eleanor followed with her finger, telling the boys, “See? Chipping sparrows.” A brown thrasher swept past and perched on a dead limb. Again she pointed it out and named it. The sun glinted off the boys’ blond heads and painted their mother’s dress an even brighter hue. They walked along a faint double path worn by wheels some time ago. Sometimes Donald Wade skipped, swinging his arms widely. The younger one tipped his head back and looked at the sky, his hand resting on his mother’s shoulder. They were so happy! Will hadn’t come up against many happy people in his day. It was arresting.
    A short distance from the house they came upon an east-facing hill covered by regular rows of squat fruit trees.
    “This here’s the orchard,” Eleanor announced, gazing over its length and breadth.
    “Big,” Will observed.
    “And you ain’t seen half of it. These here are peach. Down yonder is a whole string of apples and pears... and oranges, too. Glendon had this idea to try orange trees, but they never did much.” She smiled wistfully. “Too far north for them.”
    Will stepped off the path and inspected a cluster of fruit. “Could have used a little spraying.”
    “I know.” Unconsciously she stroked the baby’s back. “Glendon planned to do that, but he died in April and never got the chance.”
    This far south the trees should have been sprayed long before April, Will thought, but refrained from saying so. They moved on.
    “How old are these trees?”
    “I don’t know exactly. Glendon’s daddy planted most of them when he was still alive. All except the oranges, like I said. There’s apples, too, just about every kind imaginable, but I never learned their names. Glendon’s daddy, he knew a lot about them, but he died before I married Glendon. He was a junker, too, just like Glendon. Went