A Settled Child

A Settled Child by GRACE CASH 'Gl e_ SHS JS) Back in 1941 Uncle Vaughn Hunnicutt allowed me, him a deacon in the church and opposed to square dancing , to give one anyway. He had a notion the President would be conscripting soldiers before the year ended. The rest of us hadn't started worrying about the Second World War, not the young people with their dreams and jealousy, crying more than laughing, now I look back on Oconee Pond and us believing the Appalachian Mountains was God's choice of all creation. My cousin Lila was engaged to marry James Barker. That kept his brother Clarence hanging around the house when he came back to Kentucky from wandering around. Clarence was a hobo. Name any city on the United States map and he had been there or somewhere thereabout. Every father around Oconee Pond had warned their daughters not to have anything to do with him. The girls admired him for everything he did, even the way he would strike a match on his shoe sole, worn through to his sock, and light a cigarette. Uncle Vaughn and Aunt Agnes thought Lila, wearing an engagement ring, was safe from Clarence. They thought the same of me but I was twenty-three and settled. A settled child, they said, when I came to live with them after Papa got killed. He was a Pender County farmer, like Uncle Vaughn, like all the Hunnicutts. Papa was clearing a woodland for planting cotton when a tree fell on him and crushed his heart outside his ribs. That happened five years after Mama died. And so at seven, I went to my uncle's home, not adopted but the same as theirs. After Lila and I started growing up, Uncle Vaughn told the neighbors, he wouldn't ever have to worry about me. He gave the impression he might worry some about Lila, a blonde cuddly girl who got the leading parts in school plays. Lila was in love with Clarence. She was born right after I came to live at Uncle Vaughn's. I was trained to call her my little sister. I grew up, thinking my place was to be good and quiet and not noticed at all, if anything I did stood in Lila's way. Clarence didn't care about anything that trivial. Fresh in from Texas or California or Reno, Nevada, where he liked best to go, he laughed and teased one girl the same as the other. Oconee Pond was his vacation 16 away from the bright lights. He brought back to us knowledge of the outside world, things we knew nothing about except what we saw at circus sideshows. Nobody knew that I loved Clarence more than anybody on earth. He was tall and dark, his eyes black as a crow's wing. He had white, flashing teeth and a trim waistline, which accommodated well a wide Texas-cowhide belt attached to a heavy, brass buckle. Both of his arms were tattooed, one with a nude woman, lying on her side. The other arm had a rattler on it, curving into blue, menacing circles. When he dressed up in a blue serge suit and starched , white shirt and a red-striped, silk tie, nobody remembered he had the tattoos. That's how he looked the first date I had with him. I was actually Lila's chaperone. James would do anything to get a date with Lila. She wanted Clarence to go with them, and James had to bring him along. All that came before the square dance at Uncle Vaughn's house. The country people filled the long rambling farmhouse that night. There were couples, some already married, and old maids and seasoned bachelors. About a dozen married couples watched from chairs in a back room. The Oconee Pond string band was there. Clarence was at home. He stood on the porch, having a round of talk with the neighbor men, before he came into the parlor. I heard Hubert Pitchard saying , "This country's sure as damnation going to send soldiers to fight that war." "If we get in it, I'm going to...