The Intruders

Lucretia Mention stood atop her hen house peering down at the trouble moving in and out of her neighbor’s yard. The noise had awakened her. The sound of a wide wheel truck toting a heavy frame and the echo of male voices hollering across the way sent her jumping out of bed, running out of the house and on top of the hen’s gently gabled rooftop an hour earlier that usual. With one hand perched over her brow blocking the morning sun, she squinted as the train of naked-to-the-waist men relayed furniture from one set of eager hands to the next.

Snatching up the hem of her skirt, she spat before stepping down the makeshift steps that led down to a barren yard. When she reached the ground, she kicked up a cloud of dirt that got her coughing and looking through the murk for her stick propped against the frame. As she headed towards the back of the house, she stabbed the cane against the ground. The weight of Gate’s shoes slowed her down to the old woman’s walk she hated.

“Lucretia, the Lord brought you some bad news this here morning,” she said to herself in a husky voice, turning the bend.

Her china blue skirt hung off her hips and reached down to her calves. Her ankle socks needed washing. Gate’s shoes, stuffed at the toes with kitchen rags, were the next best thing to buying a new pair. “Men’s shoes made to last but a woman’s made to put bunions on her feet,” she’d said. Her unruly, utter white hair hid the half-moon birth mark on the left side of her face. An old hickory smell clung to her clothes.

Old Maddie Lee from church had promised her a bag full of Sunday suits, but Lucretia told her that no way would she take just anyone’s “has beens” and shuffle them off as her own.

Next to the corn crib large enough to feed seven hens were several shelves cramped with chicory, chervil and summer savory potted in terra cotta bowls. Behind the root-bound plants was an old tin can of Polly’s Maple Syrup. Lucretia hugged the can to her chest and pried off the lid. She reached in and pulled out a half-empty bottle of whiskey. Her gnarled fingers gripped the cap firmly then twisted it off. Six more mouthfuls and she was back to Chaney’s Spirits to replenish her supply. Her eyes widened and teared as the nip bit at the back of her throat, the fire quenched by the warm tingle that crawled along the sides of her mouth.

Mopping her lips dry with the back of her hands, she swished the whiskey from cheek to cheek then swallowed it, placing the cap back on the bottle and the bottle into the can.

“Now, Cretia, don’t go getting your bowels in an uproar. You knew they was coming. You knew they was coming,” she said.

She had watched the place next door liven up. It used to be the Sumner’s land, but soon as the mister of the house got a touch of city in him, he moved his family on into Atlanta. A month ago a carload of strangers pointed up at the house, the paint sun-cracked from years of a harsh Georgia sun. Since then Lucretia had seen a truck pull up, and out of it spilled crews with paint, buckets, brushes and ladders, and all the signs of fixing up for a family about to move in.

For several years it had been just her and her hens—the Seven Sisters—and Hootie, the old hoot owl, and butterflies as big as her fist that shared her part of this countryside. Her husband Gate died years ago. When he passed she spat at the ground for days, making it clear to anyone within hearing distance that she’d have given her eyes and teeth to have been the first to go, but now since she still reigned, she had “no intentions...