Rags

Rags by Wanda Haynes Fries In the heat of the afternoon, Mamaw took away the cane-bottomed chairs that propped the doors to the rag store open, and they sat together on the wide front porch, hoping for a breeze from the river. In the shade at the far end, Grampa moved the green and white steel glider back and forth, rocking himself to sleep. The metal skreaked, but softly, like crickets from far off. Mamaw wore a printed cotton dress the color of the azaleas that grew by the broken bottom porch step, and Alice Ann sat on the top step next to Mamaw, the girl's face dark and flat as a spatter of mud. Alice Ann's mother had died two years ago when she was seven, 49 and since then she had carried herself more like an old woman than a child, her head drooping forward, her shoulders rounded and hunched. She was so skinny that down the middle of her thin white tee shirt, her backbone stood up like a saw blade. Her dark hair grew m a widow's peak on her wide pale forehead. She had the kind of eyes that looked as though she'd seen it all and was not impressed. She was staying with Mamaw and Grampa while her daddy was up north somewhere looking for a job. Mamaw squinted into the sunlight. "What?" asked Alice Ann, because Mamaw had her headtilted as though she was listening for something. "Sounds like a baby crying. Far off." Alice Ann leaned forward a little, to see if she could hear it. Mamaw often heard things before anybody else did-the hiss of a snake in the blackberry briars, the rumble of thunder from a storm a day away. Sometimes Grampa went behind the store and made noises just to fool her, trying to make her think the clothes in the store were full of crickets or that there was a whippoorwill calling in the middle ofthe day. But being smarter than Grampa, shehardly everfellfor it. When she did, he rode her about it for a week or two. At supper, when he stopped between bites, he'd make the sound again, laughing so hard sometimes that he choked on his food and had to call for her to bring him a glass of water. She always brought it, and Alice Ann would bend to feed a bite of her chicken to the cat rubbing her leg under the table, ashamed to see Mamaw, who had more sense in her little finger than Grampa had in his whole body, wait on him as though he were a hefpless little boy. Alice Ann, who had gone straight from the third grade to the fifth, was smarter than either one of them. She would die before she'd let anybody treat her that way. Mamaw picked up Sammy, her grandbaby , who lay on the porch next to her and Alice Ann. She lifted his hands, and he laughed, spit bubbling down his chin. His head was covered with sparse white hair that was fine and wispy like chicken feathers. He had eyes as dark and round as blueberries. He had started trying to sit up early, but his big head weighed him down. His mother took him to a doctor, but he told her not to worry. All babies started out this way and therestofSammy would grow in time to match the size of his head. But even now, when the baby was learning to walk, he had to roll over first from the flat of his back and use his arms for leverage. Mamaw rolled up the baby's undershirt andbent to blow on his belly. "I got you," she said, and Sammy kicked his feet and laughed. The wind caught the tail of her red dress, and she pulled it tight to cover the tops ofthe thick support stockings she wore rolled to the base of her knees. She leaned against the gray post behind her, narrowing hereyes as she studied the heat that hung between the store and the river. "It's Sammyyouheard,"AliceAnn said. She had listened for five whole minutes...