Gathering Eggs

FICTION Gathering Eggs Norma Ramsey Eversole (Back in the '50s, my Grandfather Ramsey had to spend a week or two in a Lexington hospital, and being the oldest granddaughter I got to spend much of that summer with her. Mawmaw was constantly busy with all the farm chores: animals to carefor, crops to be tended, garden produce to be canned and preserved. But at the same time, she was tending and preservingfar more than I realized. It was not until years after her death that I came to understand the importance of that summer. Whether her storytelling was intentional or just the inborn trait ofgrandmothers to tell thefamily tales does not really matter. N.R.S.) YOU CAN'T JUST DROP THE EGGS INTO YOUR APRON. You've got to kinda place them with one hand and keep the material bunchedup with the other'n. You get it held just right and you could carry an apron full of eggs all day. That old speckled hen is bound to be laying out somewhere. This is not as many eggs as I usually gather. She's probably trying to get her a nest started up around the graveyard. That's where I've been seeing her go lately. It's a wonder a fox ain't already got her! We'll walk up that way and look. I don't want her to start trying to set. She's one of the best layers, and I like to collect enough eggs to have a few to trade. I used to have to use about all the eggs to do my trading, but now I usually get some moneyback after I get my coffee and sugar. I use my egg money to pay my tithe. Always have had enough from my eggs or chickens or a calf now and then to pay my tithe. I've not been up here since before Decoration Day. I stayed at home at the house and cooled, thought some of them that come from away might stay for a while. The only ones that come down to the house was Sary's bunch, and they was in such a hurry they didn't even set down! They might as well took a chair. Sary got to carrying on about all the family that had died and ended up staying most of the evening. It was so much better on her when she could stay part of the time with May down at the old homeplace, her with that shaking palsy and all. I know her girl Marie is good to her, but Oak Ridge ain't home to Sary! 27 May always brings pineys for all the graves. Mammie Ramsey loved her flowers, and it was so pretty down around the old homeplace this time of year. And Charlie, why, he would bring in any kind of flower he seen, whether it was in the woods or somebody's yard! When he come back from Michigan, he evenbrought his pockets full of sprouts he had cut off the bushes growing in Henry's yard. You know that band behind the cellar-house down at May's? All of them flowers and ferns and bushes are things Charlie brought and set out. He loved his flowers and woods as good as any woman. Anytime I see pink roses blooming, I figure he had a hand in putting them there. He set that bunch there in the kitchen yard, said everybody needed a little sweetness in their life. I always try to bring a jar of them up here for his grave. I'll never forget when they come to getAlberta. Come in the middle of the night and hollered at the gate that Charlie had been bad shot. It just knocked the breath right out of me! It was on a Saturday night. He hadn't been deputy hardly a year. He tried to arrest a drunk and they rasseled over a gun. He wasn't afraid of nothing! He was so bad shot they just took him right on down to Doc Pennington's hospital. It was a long trip to London back then, but they...