Tending to Virginia by Jill McCorkle

pigs’ feet?” James had asked and laughed. Even in those last years he was as handsome as ever. He’d say, “Look at that would you?” and point to the shore and there would be a bird or a rabbit or an oleander in full bloom. Oh, how she loves those oleanders, filled that side yard there all along the street full of oleanders like a tropical paradise, like Lena wrote telling of Florida all those years ago. Years and years ago, passing on the shore, and she could not take her eyes off of him, that strong dark face, though tired by then and, behind that face and those eyes, the blood that the doctor said could go sky high if he didn’t watch it. She watched it for him; she would have crawled inside his body and held that rush of blood back if she could’ve.
    “Look a there,” he said and there was an old possum swinging from a tree. She glanced at it and went right back to trailing her finger in the water. “Never in my life have you made possum stew,” he said and grinned. “My mama used to make it when I was a boy.”
    “Your mama was poor, that’s why,” she said. “And that daddy of yours didn’t know what hunting was, so lazy he probably shot the first thing he saw.” She said that mostly out of habit; they had talked their possum talk for years. She never even met James’s daddy but she knew well enough that he had not been a good provider. “Unlucky,” James always said. “Just couldn’t get his head above water.” James had made himself everything he was, risen way above that part of the county where he was raised, but he never once put it behind him and forgot. “You’ve no one to thank but God for what you’ve made of yourself,” she told him once, him sitting in the side yard in his old age, feeling so guilty that he had done so much better than his father ever had. “You were just a young man when he died. You worked, did all you could to help.”
    “Yes,” he said. “But I do have him to thank. You should never forget who reared you,” and his stare was so solid and strong that she knew he was saying the truth. He never forgot all those boys he grew up with down there, grown men that had houses full of children and no meat on their tables. They’d come to town on Saturday, five or six of them, and waste their money on getting drunk and then they’d be sitting out on her front porch with bottles and banjos trying to sing with their voices sounding like dying alley cats. They’d sing all those old songs with all kinds of filthy talk in between and her slaving in that kitchen and trying her best to keep Hannah and David away from that door. James would let those men come in and take baths, give them a tee shirt or pair of pants or socks which never came back clean if they came back at all, and they’d eat their fill and fall dead asleep wherever they chose to sit after dinner. Come morning and you’ve never seen such politeness with “Miss Em,” this and “Miss Em” that while she poured coffee and asked after their families, pitiful pictures coming to her mind of tired worn women and dirty little children.
    She leans forward in her chair now and glances at that screened door, latched tight and nobody there. She would have sworn she heard somebody there. James knew every curve of that river, had trees that served as markers and he always knew right where they were. And he could sing, Lord in heaven knows that man could sing, and that voice would carry she thought across that river like a skipping stone right on down to South Carolina and back. He’d sing “Red River Valley,” and it made tears come to her eyes to hear that sweet sadness. He’d always turn and look at her when he sang “We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile.” That shore seemed to go on forever and as it got later the light would come and go from behind those trees, just come and go, and she took off the hat so she could see better, what with it coming and going. They didn’t play “Red River