Tap, snap, crack.
Tap, snap, crack.
Tap, snap, crack.

Katey long ago developed that even, steady rhythm when snapping her fresh beans in their aged wooden bowl.  Tap the dirt off, snap the string at each end, and crack the bean at the exact center.  She never measured, and rarely looked down while she worked.  Katey had simply learned to snap beans like these when she was a little girl, barely older than Hannah.

Hannah…

This bowl of beans was to be special, just for Hannah.  Katey thought of this recipe a week ago, when she had sat just where she was now.

Tap, snap, crack.

The front porch of her daughter Christine’s house.  Katey and Hannah were staying with Christine and her husband Pete while Hannah’s parents were away in the city at the hospital on account of the new baby.  She had come too early, and her lungs continued to be mighty weak.

Tap, snap, crack.

Christine was very eager to be fashionable and therefore continuously ran about doing errands that never seemed to find her here nor there and always with little to nothing accomplished daily.  Pete was as slick as a snake oil salesman and Katey never had been exactly certain just what it was that he did to ‘earn a living’.  Not that Katey actually cared what he did.  She had never liked him, nor his incessant habit of calling her ‘Mother’.  The last time he did that Katey had snapped back at him.

“How many times do I have to tell ye Pete?  Your mother is dead and Lord bless her soul she can’t hear you!”

Tap, snap, crack.

Wednesday had been an unusual day for Katey and she just woke up with a feeling in her soul that something, somewhere, was wrong. 

Tap, snap, crack.

That morning she had turned Christine’s boy, Billy, over her knee and paddled his bottom with the whole of her aged but strong hand; and but good.  He was twice little Hannah’s age and size and he had attempted to chase her about and steal her shoe as he shouted at the little one.

”Hey there, Hobbled-y Hannah!  Hobbled-y Hannah!  I’m a gonna take your shoe!  Then you’ll be Wobbled-y Hobbled-y Hannah!”

Tap, snap, crack.

Little Hannah suffered from a birth injury that gave her a noticeably slow gait, particularly for a four year old, and the heavy corrective shoes made her slower still.  As soon as Billy started his taunts, Hannah fled to her grandmother’s skirts.  And she was safe.