I went back to what was our home. A house that never heard much laughter. I was  seventeen.Not ready for the world. I had come back before, in winter. To bury Mama. I’ll talk about that later. It was an awful sight to behold.

Mama’s rocker has fallen apart. I guess it froze to death without Ma’s skinny bottom to warm it.

It is Spring. I opened all the windows and blew dust off the table. God bless me, I have no idea why I came this time. I guess I figured I might find something. A clue. My brother and sister died of a disease. They coughed blood. That was after daddy took em to town so he could drink his self to death. He was drunk when he fell off the ladder trying to paint the General store. I found some work. I did ironing and got room and board. My room smelled of dead fish. That’s what most did. Fish off the rickety pier. Folks going upstream where the real fish were stopped and got supplies.  Sometimes I helped out in the General  store. They paid me a whole dollar. Once, a dirty smelly man put his hand up and under my skirt. I slapped him, He called me a “whore-let”. The manager asked me not to come again.

This is my day off. Here I am…home. My family dead and just me. I have some kin up in Kentucky. Horse money. Cousins up there. They got high class jobs, I heard. What they want with me? My future is ahead and nothing to fill it. Maybe, there was a clue in this run down house.. Hidden. I climbed the ladder where my Ma and Pa slept. Old mattress on the floor. Ma’s shawl. Her Sunday shawl lying on the floor. I picked it up and smelled it. Rat eaten holes and it smelled funny. Musty. I noticed some sort of box in the corner half hidden by the mattress. I climbed across the bed and got it. It was locked. The lock was so flimsy didn’t take much effort. Inside was a cheap locket. I pried it open and there on either side was a photo of Ma and Pa when they were young. What happened to them? They looked happy and healthy. Under the locket was a small green book. Daddy’s book. I’d seen him with it. Thought maybe he was writing down seed purchases. I opened it. He had not written many pages. It was a story or a diary. No title. Maybe Daddy had really wanted to be a writer. It was hard to believe.