Angel of Death: Phantom Photograph 2

Abigail smiled as she remembered fiery Olive. Lord a mercy, it would be good to set on the porch and swing gentlywhile she thought on the good times they had as children. Here it was 1940, and they were all gone from this earth. The farm in the Canaan Valley had been rich and yielded most of what the family needed. Papa would sell a hog for lard, flour and sugar, and Mama always had flour sacks or some egg money for some piece goods for a Sunday dress. Why couldn't Clinton have stayed in their home church and sung the old hymns with them and not found sin in anything the least bit enjoyable? "You are in danger of damnation with that pipe, snuff and the bottle in your apron pocket, Abigail. That potion is not medicine but mostly alcohol." This from her brother who had been the bourbon drinking champion of Calhoun County. Abigail took a sip of her Lydia Pinkham Tonic for Woman's complaints and lit up her pipe, while tears worked their way down the furrowed wrinkles in her face. Tears for the boy who had run away with her on several occasions and comforted her when Papa took the buggy whip to them. Tears for the harum-scarum girl and her rowdy, drinking, joyous brother who left her long ago on that day he fell off his horse in a drunken stupor and got dragged into that snake handling, hellfire and damnation church in the dark, hill country of West Virginia. Angel of Death Phantom Photograph 2 The coyote glides golden across the eastern slope of Levi Wilder's farm, where once my mother saw white mules fly over the wooden gate and dirt road, like the angel of death departing the parlor where John Guinn lay a corpse. —Linda Caldwell 35 ...