"Mississippi Flight of Fancy”
Kerri Sheehan

Mamma just fixed us lunch and had gone out to town to pick up a few things from the Thomas' store.  We lived in a small farm town, only about a thousand people or so according to Ms. Mave.  My family has lived in the great state of Mississippi for generations and Granddaddy always said that any Shumaker that's born in Mississippi dies in Mississippi.  That's the family way.  And if you're unfortunate enough not to be buried in the soil of this great state, then may God help your soul.

“Come here Miss Ellie Lou, let’s have another one of our little talks,” Granddaddy said as he shuffled around the tiny kitchen, bumping into things and cursing under his breath. 
          
Granddaddy likes to curse.  He says it helps him think his thoughts.  Mama says it’s because of those blue-coated Yankees who never stop getting under his skin.  Granddaddy fought in the Civil War and still can’t get over the fact that we had lost.  He liked to blame “those dammed Yanks” for everything.

According to Molly, Granddaddy looks just like Santa Claus, only scarier.  He's got a scruffy grey beard like one of those rat nests I found up in the barn last spring.  Since I could remember, his skin has always been dark and weather beaten, as if he had been left out in the sun to dry and someone forgot to bring him back inside.  Even though he's a bit rough around the edges, he's still one of my favorite people in the world.  And I love our lunch-time talks.

"Today we're gonna go back fifty years to one of the worst goddamn times in the history of this great nation: the Civil War.  You know a little about that, don’t you?” he said, squinting at me behind the crooked metal frames of his scratched and clouded glasses.

"Yea, I know some," I said.  Of course, I know more than some.  Granddaddy always talked about it.  He would always pull out parts of his old uniform and different letters he had written during the war and talk like it was one of the best times of his life.  But I knew better than that.  It was one of the worst times, but Granddaddy didn’t know what else to talk about so he talked about the war. 

"Well some isn't enough.  Let me tell you about a 20 something young man who fought in that war.  Now listen here, when I enlisted in the war I had just met your Grandmother, the most beautiful goddamn woman I ever saw.  The day I left I promised her I would come back and marry her.”  Granddaddy pulled out the old photograph of him and my Grandmother on their wedding day from his shirt pocket, kissed it, and tucked it safely away again.

“Anyhow, the first few months of that damned war were hell on earth.  We trudged night and day through the most goddamned horrific weather.  That summer left us in a puddle of sweat by the time we woke up in the morning.  We lived with just the clothes on our back and barely any food to keep us going.  A few scraps of hard tack and jerky were what we had to eat most of the time.  The only thing that kept me sane was the promise I made to your Grandmother and the boys in my platoon.  I remember one boy, I don’t recall his name, he was barley over eighteen,” he said.  Granddaddy’s memory was starting to go, so the fact that he never remembered the boy’s name didn’t surprise me. 

“The boy never said a damn word to anyone but played this goddamned harmonica of his.  Song after song, he never stopped.  It annoyed the hell out of me and my buddies for months.  One night, when the boy was playing, a buddy of mine nearly shot the bastard’s head clean off his shoulders.”  Granddaddy laughed his raspy laugh, ending in a fit of coughing.

“But there was something about that boy that I liked.  Maybe it was the fact he never bothered to talk.”  Granddaddy is a good talker, but a terrible listener.  He can have an enjoyable conversation with you for hours as long as you keep to yourself. 

“Anyhow, we marched into battle one evening and the boy just dropped dead,” he said sadly.  “Summer heat in those wool clothes finally did him in.  We hadn’t even opened fire yet.  The poor bastard.”  Granddaddy shook his head woefully.

As Granddaddy reminisced, I was itching to go outside.  Even without the fire going in our dingy kitchen, it was unbearably hot.  This has been one of the hottest summers I can remember.  It’s a summer where most people would just want to sit on the porch with a fan sipping lemonade like those uppity women in town.  But not me.  Molly and I had planned to go on another adventure hike through the woods and I didn't want to keep her waiting.

"Hey, Granddaddy," I said abruptly, causing him to slowly break his train of thought with a tired "huh?"

"Would you mind if we talk later, it's already noon and me and Molly want to explore the woods today."

He looked at me with bloodshot eyes and waved me off saying, "Alright alright, you kids these days have no patience for a good story anymore."

"Thanks, Granddaddy," I said with a relieved smile.  After a quick kiss on the cheek I was finally out the door.

"Now don't be gettin' into any trouble now, ya hear?" he called as I shut the door behind me.  I had gotten halfway down the dirt driveway when I realized I had forgotten something.  I turned around and ran through the door again and said breathlessly, "Hey, Granddaddy, don't tell Mama I'm out with Molly. She'll just get upset again."  And before I heard an answer I plowed out the door again and down that long drive.  Mama has never liked Molly, not since the first time we played together.  She says Molly is bad for me and is keeping me from growing up.  I say she’s wrong.  Molly’s been my best friend since I can remember, like the big sister I never had.  Mamma doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

It was a perfect Mississippi summer afternoon.  The sun shone bright and smiled down on my face as if to say, "Here I am, just for you, Ellie.”  As I walked up the crispy green hill at the far end of our farm I could hear the cicadas in the trees of the looming woods, perched like birds singing their rattling songs of sweltering summer afternoons.  As I approached the tree line, about a half mile from home, I yelled at the top of my lungs, "Molly!  Molly, come on!  I don't have all day!"  All of a sudden there came a rustling from one of the trees and down dropped Molly in all her glory.  Her auburn hair was in a long braid running down her back with random wisps of curly hair sticking out every which way.  I noticed her face was twice as ruddy and freckled as it was the last time I saw her.  The sun must have smiled on her too.

"I have the perfect place for us to explore today," she said as she brushed dirt off her torn overalls and picked leaves from her hair.  I smiled because she reminded me of a wild monkey or tree lemur I saw in one of those big encyclopedias.  Bobby Turner brought his daddy's in to school the other day to try and impress me.  The book was impressive, but he wasn't.

"Well, spit it out," I demanded impatiently. "Where is it?"

"Across the way, down the street from Pastor Hubbard's place," she said with an air of mischief that told me she was up to something.  She started leading the way fearlessly.  She always liked to pretend that she was the boss of me.

"I've been down there a million times and there's nothing exciting over there," I complained as I jogged to keep up with her and her long legs.

"That's where you're wrong," she called over her shoulder.  Then she stopped suddenly and turned to face me, watching me finally catching up to her.  I finally stopped in front of her and asked what we were doing.  She paused dramatically (she tended to do that a lot) and finally said, "We're exploring the old Morrison house."

She stood there beaming, expecting me to do the same but this time I was unsure.  The old Morrison house was a place where no one ever went.  It's been said that the last woman who lived there killed her whole family and buried them under the floorboards of her living room.  By the time the woman had died of old age, the house was already condemned.  The town didn't even bother to tear it down, leaving it to rot in the woods along with her family.  Those were the rumors, at least.  And I’m not sure I want to find out if they’re true.

"But--But what about the trespassing signs, don't you care about that," I stammered.  I always liked to come off as brave around Molly, but right now, my stomach was making that familiar fluttery feeling like one of those annoying catbirds was trapped in there and couldn’t get out.

"Stop being such a baby," she called over her shoulder again as she led our death march.  "Where's your sense of adventure?  What happened to the fearless Shumaker I know and love?"  Molly always had a way of making me feel both good and bad about myself at the same time.  I sighed and, a little disgruntled, muttered, "Fine" and continued to follow her through the thick Mississippi forest.
The trees towering above us left little room for the sky to peek through.  The air smelled of wet sap, even though it hadn’t rained in weeks.  Sweat was clinging to my neck, fighting gravity’s pull with all its might.  The twelve foot tall pine trees swayed slightly, relishing the slight breeze while Molly and I, only five feet tall, could feel absolutely nothing.

We were still a good bit away from the house which left me plenty of time to pluck up any kind of courage I could find, despite the miserable sticky heat.  I looked at Molly and the confidence in her walk.  Her feet navigated the pine needle strewn floor effortlessly and her head was held so high she didn't even bother looking at the uneven ground to watch where she was going.  I tried doing the same, but ended up tripping over a tree root.  I walked with my eyes glued to the ground till we got there.

We had just rounded the bend of a creek when we finally stumbled upon the house.  I had heard the stories since second grade, but none of them compared to the actual thing.  I stood there in amazement while Molly bounded up to the building and started peering through the windows that weren’t already missing.  It was small, almost as small as our three bedroom farm house, or our "shack," according to Mama.  The roof had caved in, almost as if a giant had stepped on it while strolling through the forest.  The old brick chimney was cockeyed, teetering between destruction and haphazard formation.  The front porch was colored green with years of mold and overgrown weeds that now used the entire house as their personal flower pot.  I pictured myself touching a part of the dilapidated house with one finger and watching the whole thing fall down with nothing left but a cloud of ancient dust.  I slowly made my way up to the house and peered into one of the windows frosted over with dust and dirt, careful not to touch the paper-like wood holding the broken glass of the window in place. 
I couldn't see much of what I thought to be the living room.  A lonely chair sat next to the vacant fireplace, almost as if someone got up to get a glass of lemonade and forgot to come back.  On the floor were the tattered remnants of what seemed to be a moth-eaten rug, handmade like one of Mama's.  A few of the floorboards were out of place, and some didn't even exist.  I squinted to see if I could make out the hand of a skeleton in the darkness beneath the gaping floor, but the sun was casting such a strange dreamlike glow on the room that it was impossible to tell.  The more I looked at the sad house, the more beautiful it became.  We came just before the forest was about to swallow the rest of it for lunch.

Through the damp blanket of heat, the buzz of the cicada's song, and the overwhelmingly sweet smell of rotting wood, my heart jumped at the sight of a shadow moving across one of the dingy windows.  A sliver of fear ran through me like a snake and I called out for Molly with wide eyes and a cracking voice.

"In here!" she called, and waved for me through the dust laden air of the house.

I carefully climbed onto the sloping porch and pushed open the front door.  Once the squeal of the door ceased and the creaking of my footsteps subsided, I heard the muttering of not one, but two voices.  My breathing had stopped altogether and my feet mechanically followed the voices and the shadows strewn across the cobwebbed floor.  I entered a surprisingly bright kitchen and sure enough, there was Molly sitting at a rickety table sipping tea from a cup and stuffing her face with freshly baked molasses cookies, her favorite.  Across from her sat a beautiful young woman with dark hair pulled up in a neat bun and hazel eyes that sparkled in the dusty sunshine.  She smiled as I entered the room and Molly turned around in her seat to face me.

"Ellie, this is Laura.  She lives here," Molly nonchalantly pointed out.  My shock melted away when my eyes found my best friend with this woman surrounded by a soft glow.  My muscles relaxed and I felt completely at ease.  I said hello to the beautiful woman and sat down between the two of them at the table where a friendly cup of tea had already been poured for me into a beautiful set of flowered china.  I saw Molly lean back comfortably in the polished oak chair and I did the same, following her lead.  

"So Laura, you were just telling me about your husband," Molly prompted, sipping her tea with her ankles crossed and her expression strangely grownup.  Laura smiled again and got up to pour herself some more tea from the brand new blue-speckled kettle sitting on the cast-iron stove. 

"Well," Laura said, "My husband, Steven, is fighting in the war right now.  He's been sending me letters saying he'll be home any day now.  I can’t wait to see him again; this house is so lonely without him.  We just got married," she added with wary excitement.

"Just married?" I asked.  I had a soft spot for weddings.  My Mama always tells me about her wedding day.  She describes the whole day to me, not one detail left out.  Mostly because I want to hear more about my Papa who died in a milling accident before I was born.  She always describes what he wore: a pair of grey trousers, a blue and brown checker-board shirt with a matching grey jacket.  Mama says they were his best church clothes.
"Tell us more about it!"  Laura has an air about her that makes you feel like you've known her for ages.

Laura continued to tell us about her courtship with Steven and how she had fallen in love with the greatest soldier this side of the Mississippi.  She told us that they met at a church fundraiser she had organized.  Laura was selling homemade cakes and one day Steven came up and bought every one of her cakes, just so he could have an excuse to talk to her.  Laura said she was immediately smitten with him, and a few months later they were engaged to be married.  According to Laura, Steven was the most selfless man she had ever met; always doing things for others and never himself.  He enlisted in the war shortly before the wedding and days after they were wed, he had to leave. 

Laura walked over to a large chest sitting in the corner of the living room beside a plushy looking chair that I swear wasn’t there when I first walked in.  She pulled a few objects from the chest and bounds over to us again, showing us a stiff portrait of her and her groom and the now dried flowers she had in her bouquet at the wedding.

"I'll show you girls where we had the wedding," and Laura excitedly led us out the back door and on to the overgrown lawn where, even amidst the sky-high weeds and thistle bushes, you could make out two magnolia trees.

"Right there,” she pointed, "under those trees is where we got married."  The look on her face said it all.  She was so in love, but so lonely.  Her eyes suddenly became sad and distant as she turned away from us and started walking through the forest, toward the only dirt road that led to town.  Molly and I looked at each other with shared sympathy and confusion.

"Where are you taking us Laura?" Molly asked, both of us struggling to keep up.

Laura said nothing but kept walking through the forest along a beaten path that must have been created by Laura herself.  It seemed like ages until we emerged from the forest and on to the dirt road where we continued to walk and came to the very edge of town.  She then stopped and turned to face us, with her long white sundress rustling in the damp summer breeze.  Her face was flushed and tears hung in her eyes when she said, "and right here--this is where I said goodbye to Steven, in his grey uniform, when he left for war."  Laura broke down in tears and dropped to the dirt road.  The sun was beginning to set and in the dusky light, Laura looked small and defeated, but beautiful.

Molly and I both sat down next to her, trying to offer some sort of consolation, even though, according to Granddaddy, we were “just knee-high to a grasshopper.”  Molly chimed in first saying, "He'll come back soon, just you see.  He'll come back and you both can live in your house and be happy forever.  Just you see."

I was trying to offer her something, anything to make her happy, but it all felt so strange.  I didn’t really know what to say.  How do you tell a woman you barely know what she wants to hear?  It was like my mind knew Laura, but my heart said she was a stranger.

"How do I know he is going to come home safe?  How does anyone know he isn't going to get hurt out there?  Anything can happen," Laura sobbed, through the hands covering her flawless face.

"You can never know for sure," I said hesitantly, "but my Granddaddy fought in a war—the Civil War--and he came back just fine.  He tells me stories about it all the time.  So don't worry too much, okay?"
I patted her back affectionately but something strange crept over me.  What if Steven didn’t come home?  What would happen to Laura living all alone in that house with only two little girls as friends?  But I quickly brushed aside my worries and planted a forced smile on my face again.

Laura looked up from her hands; her face streaked with the footprint of her tears, and gave me a watery smile.  "Thank you, Ellie...Molly.  You girls are the best friends I ever had."  

I got up and just started to notice how tired I was.  Darkness was setting in and, perhaps it was the light or maybe my tired eyes playing tricks on me but, as we walked down the road arm in arm, Molly and Laura were wrapped in a strange haze.  The day’s humidity seemed to become a thickening fog enveloping my two friends.  But they remained as real to the touch as they always have been.  The cicadas were ending their day's song and the sun flashed one last smile before disappearing behind the horizon and we neared home.

Molly insisted on making the trek home more fun, so we raced to see who could get to the nearest tree the fastest.  Naturally, Molly won every time.  We skipped and compared cartwheels and picked flowers that Laura carefully placed in our hair.  All the while, I could distinctly hear the metallic hum of a harmonica in the distance.

Walking up the dirt drive to my home, I could smell Mama's dinner on the stove.  In a sudden fit of hunger, I broke away from my friends, ran up the drive, and opened the warm door to my home.

"There she is," said Granddaddy.  "Your Mama and I were beginning to worry.  Now sit down and eat your dinner.  I’d like to spend some time with my only granddaughter before I kick the bucket.”

I gladly sat down, but as I did, I looked out the window and saw Molly and Laura, arm and arm, right where I had left them.  Only when they smiled did I realize how rude I had been.  Mama came in from the kitchen with a plate full of fried okra and sat down to the table.

"Mama," I said as I tore out of my chair and ran to open the door, "I brought Molly and my new friend Laura for dinner, do you mind?"

I looked at Mama and her face hardened.  Her brows were furrowed and her lips were pursed into a sour frown.  She looked at Granddaddy with concern and something that looked like 'I told you so.' She said in an exasperated and stern voice as she scooped mashed potatoes on to her plate,

"Eleanor Louise Shumaker, close that door and sit down to dinner with your family.  How many times have I had to tell you that you're too dreamy for your own good.  I swear, that imagination of yours has no limit.  Now sit and stop talking nonsense."

I looked to Granddaddy for something that would help me make sense of what Mama was saying, but he only nodded in agreement, with pipe in hand, for me to shut the door.

I looked out one last time to see my friends standing there with half-hearted smiles reassuring me that everything would be alright.  I will see them soon.  I slowly shut the door, sitting back to the table.  I glanced out the window to see only the steely grey of twilight and the stirred up dust of a now empty road.