The Death of Aunt Lottie

The Death of Aunt Lottie by Billy C. Clark Aunt Lottie lived with her nephew Eff seven miles from the mouth of Birdsong Creek where we lived. To reach her place you traveled the bed of the creek if the weather was dry, or a rugged brier-covered path high on the bank if the creek was up and flowing. Ma never took us to see Aunt Lottie often. During the last years she lived along the creek, seldom more than once a year. And this was usually on Decoration Day when we went into the hills to gather wild flowers to place over the graves of our dead; to clean the cemetery and build the mounds where the snows of winter had sunk them. Ma claimed that progress had come to the mouth of Birdsong Creek, hills had been cleaned for cattle pasture and lot-selling for houses. Only deep in the hollow did the wild flowers remain untouched and suitable for the dead. And that's why I really came to know and love Aunt Lottie. 17 Her house was gray-logged, and the grass was always tall in the yard. Nearby, rock cliffs slid into the earth with caves under them, and opossum grapevines hung over the caves like brown eyebrows over deep, dark eyes, and lizards dropped from them like gray tears. Aunt Lottie was blind, yet long before we reached the yard she would be standing at the edge of the porch waving her arms. Loneliness had made her hearing as keen as a squirrel's. "Now you stay with your Aunt Lottie, Isaac," Ma would say on this once-a-year trip. And Aunt Lottie would turn her blind eyes toward the sound of Ma's voice, grin and say to her, "Lord, Ellie, don't you worry about Lottie. You come here to pick flowers for the dead and on this day you think old Lottie needs tending to. What about all the other days of the year when I'm here by myself? You go on to the hills and leave Isaac here with me. Not to tend, but to keep me company for a spell." And then she would sweep her hand in the direction of the yard. "You just mind and don't pick the heads from the flowers in the yard. I love to smell them. I can tell the seasons by smell. Bet the flowers are pretty now that they're in bloom, ain't they, Ellie?" And this was the one time that I loved to be left behind on a trip. I would much rather have sat here with Aunt Lottie than have gone chasing lizards over the rocks with my sister Lisa and my brother Sim, fooling Ma into thinking they were looking for wild flowers. I loved to sit on the porch and watch Aunt Lottie's long white hair blow in the wind that turned and swept the edges of the cliffs and brought the smell of the flowers across the yard. And I would look at Aunt Lottie and say: "What flower smell does the wind bring, Aunt Lottie?" "Honeysuckle," she'd answer. "See the vines near the cliffs?" The smell would be honeysuckle and the vines sure enough were near the cliffs. "What does the wind bring now?" I would ask. "Wild daisies from right here in the yard," she said. I judged Aunt Lottie to be the smartest person along the creek, and I told her so. She reared back in her splitbottomed chair and said, "Now let me just see about that." She brushed her long white hair. "What grade of school are you in now, Isaac?" "Fourth," I said. "Reckon you got me beat then," she said. And she placed her hand on her forehead as if she were studying. "Not really bad, though. Just got me beat by . . . let's see . . . about four years, I'd say." And she laughed into the wind. I also judged that Aunt Lottie could see better with her blind eyes than most people could with seeing eyes. Ma and my brother and sister would hardly be out of sight before Aunt...