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.A man needed soil to plant his feet in.Daniel trudged over hill and dale, through clouds of insects, blistering heat.Breathing dust and wiping sweat.Stumbling over stones in the road, his feet aching so much he could almost cry.He rested often to catch his breath and sort out his feelings.He considered the farmer who unknowingly had fed him corn.Was it stealing to swipe food when your body was chewing on itself? When the time came for reckoning with God, he had a reasonable argument.Well, Lord, you designed my body to run on food.It's like my old truck can't run without gas.What's a man to do? Sit by the side of the road and let his arms and legs rust off?The truck reminded him of home; everything reminded him of home.Damn politicians.What do they care about children going to bed hungry? Or the sacrifice of parents wringing twenty-one meals from the seventy-five cents meant for coal to heat the house?By God, he'd not have his babies crying or begging for food.With him out of the way, LaDaisy's mother would surely see they were fed.If he knew Vera Baker, she'd enjoy rubbing it in when he came home.Earl had just turned six, old enough for school if his mother could afford to send him.Catherine was four, and little Bobby twenty-one months, not yet housebroke when his daddy left.Daniel wondered if his kids would someday forgive him for leaving them and their mama, never mind part of the reason was so he wouldn't make another baby.The last thing he wanted was for LaDaisy to carry another youngin' when she had barely enough to feed herself.At twenty-five, she'd already had more than her share of troubles.Married at sixteen, she hadn't even reached her seventeenth birthday before their first child came along, and died less than two years later.Well, she'd get help faster without him moping around and scaring his family half to death when he woke screaming from a nightmare.He hauled his weary body over to a small stream running parallel with the road and set his pack on the ground.He noticed the wide cracks in the rock-hard soil; rain kept promising, but rain wouldn't come.Finding a shady spot, he slipped out of the banjo strap, laid the instrument next to his pack and sat with his back against the bark of a black walnut tree.His load was becoming heavier and heavier to bear.The only thing keeping him going was the thought of earning enough money to pay the back rent on their little house and to finish off the doctor for Bobby's birth.That bastard brother-in-law of his was mean enough to take the rent out of Daniel's hide.But LaDaisy would probably find it easier making promises she couldn't keep.Tears came, and when they'd flowed out of his heart, he dried the salt from his lashes and picked up George's old banjo and looked it over.The bridge had been broken and glued back together.He could whittle another if he found the right wood.Part of the tailpiece had chipped off.The strings looked about to break.The metal rim around the head was dented, like old George himself.He patted the instrument affectionately.It seemed unlikely George could be mended.When a man got busted, you couldn't just run out and buy him a new string or mend his frets.He tuned the banjo and played a few chords, stopped to adjust the pegs and played again.Now the sound came nearly perfect as he sang about his grandmother."Oh she fed my daddy turnips / made him peel and made him slice./ She made him eat them dadgum things all through the night./ But daddy don't hate turnips now./ He loves 'em boiled and fried./ I'll never understand it if I live until I die."The music was sweet, the words filled with homesickness.When he was done singing for George, he sang for his children.He sang for his wife.He sang for a past too far gone to make a difference anymore.He sang for two hours, making up verses and stopping to dry tears with his shirttail.When the fifth string sprang loose and hit him in the chin, he laid the banjo aside and threw the string in the gunnysack.He brought out the catcher's mitt, sniffed the soft old leather and held it to his chest, remembering Frankie.From his bib pocket he took his penknife and a sharpened crochet hook, and examined his unfinished walnut-wood carving with a critical eye: a three-inch-long chain with movable links, each barely an eighth of an inch long.Daniel had tested his woodworking talent early in life.When his first child was born, he built a cradle.As babies arrived one after the other, each claimed the cradle for his own.Then, after Bobby's birth, the sheriff's wife, Fannie Gudgell, stopped by to see LaDaisy about buying tickets to a flower show, and when she tiptoed into the bedroom to see the new baby, she saw the cradle and offered him fifty bucks to build one for her own expected child.Daniel fancied the idea of earning so much money at one time.But he told the woman flat out, the cradle was a one-of-a-kind piece of furniture made for his own offspring."I'll mend your screen door or fix the busted boards in your back steps.But the cradle is a special kind of love I built for my own kids.""You'll wish you'd made each of your children one when it's time to settle your estate," the disappointed woman had replied."They'll scrap like wildcats over that furniture.Mark my words."Daniel told her he didn't plan on being around to help settle his estate.Besides, when his kids got done with the cradle, it wouldn't be fit for kindling."I reckon when I'm gone, they can fight over it if they have a mind to.If they do, then I wasn't no account for a daddy in the first place if I didn't teach 'em better."He thought that was the end of it.But Fannie wouldn't take no for an answer and pestered him at every turn.He was sick and tired of her persistence, and half afraid to upset the sheriff's wife for fear it'd come back on him.He sure didn't need an enemy who wore a gun and holster on his belt.What could he do? The darn woman was possessed with that cradle.Then one day, after he'd painted her back porch railings, she led him out to her gardening shed behind the house and showed him some beautiful pine lumber.Nice, smooth boards just waiting for a carpenter's talented hands."This is for you," she exclaimed."I even bought nails and screws.""Now wait just a minute, Mrs.Gudgell [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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