The next week was tortuous for Agnes. She couldn’t avoid Olivia and she couldn’t find Woody. Her fiancé wasn’t in any in any of their usual meeting spots — the Merryland  (the only place in town with a fountain), the library, smoking on the bleachers at the old football field, or even the riverbank. Yes, she’d gone there.

            That he hadn’t called or written didn’t concern her. He was living on Kill Creek again, and the telephone lines didn’t run that far. As for letters, he’d never written. She’d written him nearly every day during the six months he was gone, pouring out her love and devotion. Agnes wonders if he’s kept the letters. She wonders if he’s thinking of her now. 

            Suddenly Agnes knows what to do. She’s going to give him what he wants. He wants the corner brick building for his barbershop.  

            Getting the loan should be easy because Cora already feels indebted. Had Paul limped down Main Street to Heck’s Dry Goods, liquored up and wearing his shoes on the wrong feet, the news would have been all over town. Agnes decides it’s time to cash in. She’ll get the loan, borrow Olivia’s car, and drive out Kill Creek to tell Woody the good news.  She’ll face down Parboiled. 

            Agnes wants her fiancé back again. 

            She was earlier than ever the next morning, only pausing to slip a rose in her hair. Though Otis wasn’t to be seen, the employee entrance was unlocked.  She walked to her window, only to see a figure moving about in Paul’s office. It couldn’t be Paul! He never made it before ten. 

Cora stepped out. 

Agnes felt guilt plaster her face; she’d been thinking of ways to twist Cora’s arm if she didn’t get an immediate yes.  

“Agnes?” Cora is looking at her strangely. “Are you all right?”

            “Why wouldn’t I be?” she snaps and is immediately sorry. Cora looks hurt, the way she always does after one of Olivia’s snubs.  Agnes decides on a half-truth.

            “I was thinking about Olivia,” Actually, she had been thinking of ways to steal her car. “She plucks at my nerves.”

            Cora gives a nervous laugh and says, “Step into the office.”

            Cora is acting strangely, too. Agnes forgets about the loan and wonders if she’s going to get fired. Instead, her eyes are drawn to the desk, and she squeals,

            “Where did you get those?”

            Agnes lunges for the stack of letters she wrote to Woody. 

            “I got them from Alma Jenkins,” Cora replies. 

            Alma Jenkins is the postmistress of Harshbarger Mills.  Cora walks to the post office every day to get the bank’s mail. Then she sorts it.

            “I thought this would be easier coming from me.”

Agnes hardly hears her. She’s looking at her rounded, loopy handwriting embellished with little hearts and flowers in all the O’s. Another feminine has written on the envelope, as structured as hers is childish. Return to Sender was written on each, the phrase underlined three times.  Agnes feels like she’s failed a test at school. 

            “I’ve had these since yesterday. Alma handed me the box they came in, so I put the bank’s mail inside and brought everything here. I started to phone, but I know that Olivia is in and out.”

            Agnes doesn’t have to inspect each one to know that they’re all unopened. She knows what this means but she wants someone to tell her. She wants things spelled out. Instead, she puts her head down on the desk and weeps. 

            “Oh, honey, oh sweetie, don’t cry so,” Cora tells her, although it’s clear by the hitches her voice that she’s crying, too. 

            “I love him,” Agnes says against the wood. Then, she looks up and says, “I love him so much!”

            “Agnes, Woody Garrett is a married man.”

            Her tears stop. She sits straight up. “But he said he loved me!” 

            “That’s not love!” Cora is shouting. “That’s just words! A man will say anything to—” 

Cora stops. She takes deep breaths.  Something is punching at Cora that wants to come out, but Cora is determined to keep it in. Agnes recognizes guilt. There’s something in Cora that is alone, shamed and sad. It’s what keeps her from snapping back at Olivia and her spectacular snubs. It’s what keeps her picking up after Paul. It’s what makes her come to the bank every day to water the plants, get the mail, make sure Otis has mopped everywhere and that the complimentary coffee cups are clean, that everything is as perfect as it can be. 

“That’s not love,” Cora steadies herself against the desk. “Please don’t hate me for saying this, but you’re an innocent and I can’t stand by and —”

“I am an innocent!” Agnes shouts. “Yes! Yes, I am!
“And him married an all.” Cora is still kind, but there’s a firmness, a resoluteness about her that Cora has never seen. “I knew he was courting you and I’d heard about —”

“Parboiled.”

“Who?”

“The boarder. The schoolteacher. Woody called her—”

Before Agnes can finish, Cora rips the loan application in shreds. She’s furious. 

This is happening so fast that Agnes feels the room spinning. Woody had been laughing about Jenny Parboil for months, the wispy spinster who wears blonde braids on either side of her head like a Dutch girl. That’s how he’d described her. Plus, she was dumb as a bag of rocks. “Parboiled. Soft but not quite done!” And they’d laughed and talked of Woody’s barbershop in town. Never mind that her sister said they wouldn’t have a pot to piss in, Woody had big plans. 

“Parboil!” Rage pours out of Cora. There’s blood in her eye. “That’s exactly like those Garrett men. They always give their women nicknames, like they’re pets.”

“Woody is really married?”  She knows the truth, but she has to ask. 

“Yes, and yes,” replied Cora. “He filled out a loan application for the corner building. The yellow brick on Chestnut and Church where the old library used to be. Jenny had a good sized down, but since Woody doesn’t even have a job and the town already has a barber, I told Paul it was too much risk.” 

Agnes feels as though she’s been knocked flat. The rose is long gone from her hair. Now she feels a pin slip, and another. Soon her hair will fall down, but that hardly matters. What matters is that she’s innocent. 

The shredded loan application is forever in the wastebasket. The future she had envisioned is gone. 

“Thank you, Cora,” She says. “Thank you so much.”

“Get rid of those.” Cora nods toward the box of letters.

Agnes opens the top one and is relieved to see she’s been incriminated by nothing but her own stupidity. How much she loves him. How happy she’ll be as his wife. And, yes, as she feared, there’s the line about a baby. We’ll have a baby in three years. She feels deep contempt for herself. She slips it back in the stack and says, “I’ll burn these.”

            Odd, now that Agnes has composed herself, it’s Cora who looks like she’s about to cry. Agnes realizes that for all Cora’s hard shell, there’s a vulnerable person inside. Suddenly, she thinks of the time Trixie, Mother’s rat terrier, ferreted a baby bunny out of the woodpile. The bunny had been too scared to hop and so it had stayed still while Trixie ripped the skin off its back. Agnes had pulled the dog off. The rabbit was all red, but not bleeding. The same redness is inside Cora. That’s what she’s keeping in. Something has torn her, sharper than teeth, more unsparing than claws, and she’ll never heal.  

Coraline the Supine.

Now, she recognizes the voice. It’s Dave Garrett, Woody’s older brother. She remembers Cora had been dating him. It was hot and heavy. Agnes knows this because at that time Olivia and Cora were still friends. Agnes had been tagging behind them after school. They’d turned down Main off Pike, and there’d been Dave Garrett with a bunch of his friends. Cora and Olivia walked faster, heads down, as though they were battling wind.  

Agnes had stopped. She’d looked at Dave Garrett, puzzled as only a child can be when something unexplainable has been said.  Tell me, she silently pleaded, tell me it’s not bad.  He’d dropped his eyes and walked away. It was that night that Olivia cried at the table. It was that night Mother had said, “She might be your friend but you’ve got your own reputation.” 

She knows the meaning of “parboiled”, but she’ll have to haul the dictionary from the attic to look up supine. “Do you mind if I take the day off?”

            “I think you should.” She gives Agnes a rueful look. “I may go home and take a nap myself. Rouse Paul.” 

            Agnes picks up the box, and walks home. She puts the box in the shed behind a wheelbarrow. Then, she crisscrosses a couple of rusted fishing poles over the wheelbarrow so Olivia won’t be tempted to pry. She’ll burn the letters later. 

            She walks to Bessie Jo’s Beauty Shop, instead. 

            Bessie Jo’s shop is in her kitchen. The house is a square cinderblock painted gray with a picture window and a pink door. Sitting beside the front door is a huge flamingo that no one has bothered to steal. Hanging from its beak is a sign that says, Bessie Jo’s Beauty Shop. Use Side Door.

            Agnes follows the walk that runs alongside the house and knocks.

            Bessie Jo is having a cup of coffee and smoking her first cigarette of the day. She’ll be with Agnes in a minute.

            Two hours later, Agnes once again walks down the sidewalk. Her waist length hair has been cut, and in its place is a stylish cold wave, parted low on the side with a cascade of pin curls. Her hair is the color of merlot. Bessie Jo has told her merlot is a wine and not to pronounce the “t” when she says it. Inside her purse is a packet of dye, #39 merlot. She told Bessie Jo she needed the extra for touch up, but that’s not where it will go. 

A startling change but it brings out the green in her eyes. Agnes’s eyes, a hazy color before, are now bright and piercing: she’s seeing another future. 

            Woody Garrett will never get a loan, nor will Parboiled ever teach kindergarten. They’ll be forced to stay out on Kill Creek and rusticate. As for Agnes, she’ll have a husband who adores natural redheads, a house bigger than her sister’s, and when the time is right, Presidency of the Harshbarger Mills Woman’s Club. Cora will be invited in.  

            Tonight, she’ll burn the letters. Not a bonfire, but one by one. Never again will she commit her feelings to paper. She’ll keep the fire inside. 

copyright Joan Spilman, 2023

The post Agnes Hand, Part Four appeared first on Joan Spilman Books.

            Agnes knew how he felt because she felt the same way. But something else was at stake. Her vanity.

            Keeping one hand cupped over a certain place, Agnes had retrieved her clothes and stepped behind a bush to redress. Woody had protested painfully all the while. Then, when he realized she was going to leave, he became rude.

            “Why do you think I brought you here?” he’d shouted.

            “To propose?” Agnes stepped out from behind the bush, fully clothed but mostly unbuttoned. 

            “Yes, but . . ..” Woody had kicked at a stone. “Go on, then, I’ll live.”  

            And she’d fled, telling herself she’d make it up to him.

Agnes saw the light in the kitchen before she saw Olivia’s car. She used her key to the front door, hesitating in the shadowed living room.  Olivia, being Olivia, was going to say something and she didn’t want to wake Mother. Instead, she’d come up to stand inches in front of Agnes, holding a teacup. Her hands were shaking so badly that the liquid spilled. 

“I warned you, and now look what you’ve done.”

It was a whisper. 

“I’ve done nothing!” Agnes hissed. Seeing the disbelief in her sister’s eyes only made her madder. That she’d wanted to, that she’d denied herself as well as Woody (who would pout for days), because she’d forgotten the henna rinse should be applied everywhere did not matter. Agnes did not like to be teased.

 “Listen to me,” Olivia said, “Woody’s back, but he brought a women boarder with him. She’s living with the family out on Kill Creek.” 

            “That woman is a schoolteacher.” Agnes spat out the word, as if calling it were the worst thing she could imagine. Besides, she already knew this. Woody had said his family needed some extra income and Parboiled wanted to start a kindergarten on the second floor above his barber shop. That is, if he could get the loan. Then, he’d winked. 

“Besides, she’s old,” added Agnes, as if calling her a schoolteacher wasn’t insult enough. 

“Jenny Parry is not old,” Olivia told her. “I saw her at church last week. She was sitting with Esther.” 

“Woody’s mother is a stickler for attendance. Esther probably dragged her along.” Agnes was flailing and she knew it. Yes, she knew the woman was moving to Kill Creek, but she didn’t think the family would take to her. Woody said she was an embarrassment.  “She’s old. Woody’s s been laughing about her for months.” 

“Come in the kitchen and talk to me.”

“Not a chance,” Agnes had bolted up the stairs, and slammed the door to her room. Even so, her sister’s warning floated up, loud and clear.

“None of those Garret men are worth a bucket of warm piss. You’re not the first girl they’ve ruined.”

Agnes had cried herself to sleep that night because she hadn’t been. 

to be con’t.

copyright, Joan Spilman That’s not Love! “Harshbarger Mills”, 2023

The post Agnes Hand, part three appeared first on Joan Spilman Books.

Agnes was speechless. Cora was a genius. 

            “This is between us,” Cora’s voice brought her back to the present. She was using her Coraline voice 

            “Of course!” This had come straight from Agnes’s heart. She’d spent her life keeping things from her older sister, but now she has another reason. She doesn’t like the way Olivia treats Cora.  Once the two had been best friends; now Olivia treats Cora like trash. What no one knows is that after their spilt, Agnes had grieved, too. Cora had never called her a pest.  Cora had never chased her out of a room. 

            Coraline the Supine, Olivia had once called her, actually getting up from her chair and rolling on the kitchen floor.  Mother had told her to quit acting the fool. Agnes added that she’d always known Olivia was a fool and walked out.

To this day, Agnes doesn’t know what supine means, but it must have something to do with money. Olivia always talks about how much her husband Walter makes selling windshields in Clovington, so much they’d soon be richer than the Valentines. Cora Cooper was lucky Paul Valentine married her,she’d say, as though Cora had held a gun to his head. Lucky.

            Agnes graduated from high school last year, and had applied at the bank like everyone else. Cora could have put her papers in the trash, but she didn’t and already Agnes is head teller. It provokes Olivia to no end. 

            Coraline the Supine. A male voice this time, familiar yet strange. Because she can’t place it, Agnes wishes it would go away.

            “Find Otis and tell him what’s happened.” Cora is burning up the line. “He’ll know what to do. Tell him I’ll slip him a five.”

            Her plan worked. The only hitch was that Otis had refused the money, but that was understandable. No one talked about Paul’s “medicine” because he’d floated mortgages to all sorts of people who couldn’t get them elsewhere. Otis was one of them. 

            Agnes hopes Woody Garrett will be one as well, although not for a house. It’s the brick building on the corner of Chestnut and Church where he hopes to open a barber shop. They didn’t need a house. After she’d accepted his proposal, they’d decided to live with her mother because a woman her mother’s age shouldn’t be left alone. Woody is a country boy who lives on Kill Creek with his folks and knows the importance of family. Plus, he’s got plenty of ambition. He’s attended Tri-State Barber College in Clovington for the last six months, and now he’s close to the finish. Last night he’d phoned to tell her he’d passed the written exam.

            “When will you be home?” she asked. Hunger was in her voice. Yes, hunger was an appropriate word now. 

            “As soon as I give a decent haircut. That’s the last part of the test,” he replied, making a smacking sound into the phone. She could hear a woman’s laughter.

            “Don’t mind them,” he’d said. “It’s one of those girls.”

            Agnes doesn’t mind it. She knows the girls who live on the third floor of the boarding house are a nuisance. Woody says they’re always in the sitting room, waiting to grab the phone. The biggest nuisance is girl named Jenny Parry. Woody has nicknamed her “Parboiled” 

            She’d waited for him to tell her that he loved her, but he said goodbye. 

            Agnes knows Woody loves her. She believes that what happened between them on the riverbank has left an indelible mark on their souls. They’re linked forever.

            There are lots of quiet spots along the riverbank, but Woody took her to one that was sacred. There, he got down on one knee and proposed. Agnes fell into his arms, and he’d taken her clothes off with an adeptness that was surprising for a country boy, which is what Woody always calls himself. Raw. Green. Fresh off the farm. Finally, she decided he’d known what to do simply by virtue of his sex. He’s a man. Men always know what to do when a woman is willing. 

Briefly, Agnes had wondered how her father, rest his soul, had dealt with her mother’s  Tite Panty Girdle. She ordered one every year from the dry goods store. Heck’s did a catalog business on the side. 

            She’d stood before him with her hair down, the length covering both front and back. Woody had reached out to brush a strand over her shoulder when Agnes remembered and stepped back. 

That’s Not Love to be con’t. 

copyright Joan Spilman, 2023

The post Agnes Hand, part 2 appeared first on Joan Spilman Books.

              That’s Not Love!

            Agnes works at First Mills Bank; she’s the teller at Window Number One. She’s always early because it’s a short walk from the house she shares with her mother. It’s the two of them though Olivia, her older sister, is always barging in. Agnes thinks that now that Olivia is married with a huge home in Harshbarger Heights, she should stay there, but Olivia say she has a right to come and go in the house she was born in. And as for telling others what to do, Agnes should watch herself with that Garrett boy. All those Garrett men were cheats.  

Why I could tell you things that would burn your ears. I just might, if you don’t straighten up. 

            Olivia was referring to Woody Garrett, Agnes’s beau. The sisters haven’t spoken since.

            This morning, Olivia is taking Mother to Dr. Veach, so Agnes has left even earlier, stopping only to snip off a Patience rose. She tries to fit the rose behind her left ear but Trixie, the rat terrier, keeps nipping her hem. Agnes kicks out before Trixie rips her nylons.  

            She peels off a thorn, and the stem slides easily between her ear and the thick of her hair. Agnes is proud of her hair. It falls past her waist and when she lets it down, everyone stares. Mother helps her apply the Zenia mix every six weeks. Mother has been “brightening” her  hair since Agnes was thirteen years old and threatened to drop out of school over algebra. The Zenia application had been a bribe, but it worked. She’s been strawberry ever since. 

            Agnes is so early that she wonders if she’ll have to wait for Otis with the keys, but the janitor is there, ready with his cheeky salute. Otis was a navy man, and she salutes back. She is, however, surprised to see the office door open. Paul Valentine, the bank president—red nosed and red faced—has a hard time getting up in the morning.

            When Cora Valentine’s head pops out, however, Agnes feels her heart bump. Coral is her friend for life, and all because Paul Valentine wore his shoes on the wrong feet.

            Here’s how it happened: 

            One early summer morning, Paul was limping and moaning inside his office. Agnes heard everything because Window Number One is a few steps from the office door; separated only by a thin wall.  When he began to curse, Agnes stepped in. 

            “Oh, Aggie,” he shook his head. “I’m in a bad way.”

            “What’s wrong?” The room smelled of aftershave and his usual “medicine,” but it wasn’t strong.

            “My feet are killing me.”

            “Your feet?”

            The bank president had raised his pant cuffs, and at once, she’d recognized the shoes. A pair just like them was currently on display in the window of Heck’s Clothing and Dry Goods. The summer shoes, two- tone oxfords, had been placed on a shut suitcase, surrounded by shorts and socks. A pair of sunglasses clips was nearby.

She and Woody had passed the store on their return from the riverbank, and Woody had stopped to stare.  He’s sighed, and because she was heavy with love, his new longing hurt her.  “Someday,” she told him, squeezing his arm. “You’ll look that fine.”

            On Paul Valentine’s feet, however, they didn’t look fine. The stitches seem about to fly apart. Plus, his ankles were swollen. It was on the tip of her tongue to asked about his gout when she realized the problem. 

            His shoes were on the wrong feet!

            Her next step required care. Paul Valentine, the mildest of men, could get touchy when he made mistakes.

            “Mother says she wishes we’d go back to the day of the shoe cobblers,” Agnes knelt and began taking them off as though she undressing a toddler. She didn’t tell him what was wrong. Paul sighed his relief. “Everything looks alike these days.”

            “Your mother is a wise woman,” he said, then, “And you’re a good girl, Aggie.”

            And a devious one, for the minute she left his office, Agnes headed straight for the telephone kept for general use in the back room and dialed his wife Cora. Agnes told her what happened and the first thing Cora said was, “Can he drive?”

            Agnes paused.  Paul had had his shoes on the wrong feet since at least nine o’clock—and the smell, while slight, was definitely discernable. Another thing. He’d been alert when the shoes were on but the second she took them off, he fell back like a punctured balloon.

            “Maybe,” she said.

            “Maybe means no,” replied Cora and then proceeded to tell her what to do.

            With wide eyes, Agnes listened to the most ingenious plan she’d ever heard. Cora lived in an “in case of emergency” mode. Agnes was to return to the office and check on Paul. She was to tell him his face was splotchy and the vein in his temple was big. No, use the word protruding, Cora corrected, Say it’s the one on the right. Agnes should add that while she wasn’t an expert on blood pressure, he didn’t look good. Paul was an expert on blood pressure. He would rush home to use the Baunmanometer Pressure Monitor he’d ordered from Physician’s Supply in Cincinnati.

            “It’s attached to his arm like a vine,” Cora explained. “Alongside his chair with the spittoon.” 

            It sounded good, but duplicity was not Agnes’s strongpoint. “What if he won’t go?”

            “Tell him I’m not home.”

            “But you are!”

            “I won’t be. I’m going to the club house to check on the garden show. Olivia will be there. Tell him that’s how you know.”

To be con’t.



Copywright “Harshbarger Mills” by Joan Spilman, 2023

The post Agnes Hand, part one appeared first on Joan Spilman Books.

During the call, Char had gotten confused. Did she phone them? She wasn’t aware that she said this out loud, but she must have because the nurse enunciated slowly. “No, Ms. Glimmer, your nephew phoned. All the way from Sun Valley, California.”  

How thoughtful, Char thinks, and what a comfort to have a loving family. But how will she get there? Frank’s taxi hasn’t run in years.

She must have said this aloud, too, for the nurse cleared her throat. “Naomi Waters from the Methodist Church is picking you up. The appointment is at ten. Will you be dressed and ready?”

“Of course, I will!” Char screeched into the phone. Did this woman know who she was talking to? She’s up and dressed by seven every morning.  She’s not some floozy who fetches the morning paper in her nightgown!

Had she said this as well? Char isn’t sure. She’s aware of a long pause at the other end and she doesn’t know if the nurse has hung up, or maybe she’s not having this conversation at all. Suddenly, the nurse repeats that she needs to see the doctor. And Char repeats, yes, she can be ready at ten o’clock though she isn’t quite sure who Naomi Waters is. She hopes that she will recognize a nose or a set of eyes, or maybe strawberry colored hair from someone she knew long ago.

She returns from Dr. Veach’s office, relieved and exhausted. The bruise is large but there’s no internal bleeding. More times than she thought necessary he’d warned her about the stairs. Stay out of the cellar. On a bright note, she did know Naomi Waters, a woman near fifty who was Vivian’s first granddaughter. Viv has been gone for, oh, a good while, but she remembered when the girl was born and how happy Viv had been to have a granddaughter. The others had been boys.

She’d give anything to see Vivian again. Or Maxine, whom they’d called  Maxie, then shortened to Max. Viv, Max and Char. Somehow, she’d been included with those two cut-ups. The somber note in their frivolity. But they were good girls. Even though they were cut-ups, they were good.

Char decides to take a box down from the hall closet. It’s not high; Father had had it made for himself. For all his importance, he wasn’t a tall man and didn’t want to stretch while reaching for his hat. Reaching doesn’t hurt her arm. 

The box is full of photographs. Many of them are of Char. There she is in her christening gown. Mother looks beautiful with her hair upswept in a bun, wearing a lace gown that matches her own. Father, standing behind her with his hand on the Queen Anne chair, looks proud. Char studies her long narrow face encased in the bonnet and feels embarrassment even now.  She looks unhappy at being born.

She sorts through the pictures, finding more of herself. Birthday parties where the children are unnaturally subdued, one in the porch swing with Mother. Another is of three girls with sleds.  Whitehall Hill! That’s where Harmony Manor now stands. Char remembers that day. It’s the three of them – Max, Char and Viv—although she can’t tell who’s who because the photo is faded and all three are wearing padded snowsuits with toboggans pulled down. She might be the one on the left, the thinnest, but maybe not. Mother always made her wear two sets of clothes.

She remembers the cold on her cheeks, the freedom of speed, and the laughter that came from deep within. Afterwards, there’d been a huge bonfire with kettle corn and marshmallows on a stick. Frank McGee had sidled up to her, whiskey on his breath even then, and kept up a conversation.  He was a rough boy from a rough family and most of his words ended up in his muffler, but she’d been thrilled.  It was her first flirtation. 

That night, safe in bed, she’d had her worst bout of St. Vitus yet. 

to be continued.

The post Char Glimmer, part 2 appeared first on Joan Spilman Books.

Char Glimmer sits on her porch in a ladder-backed chair, waiting for a familiar face to drive her to the doctor. She is wearing a navy -blue shirtwaist and around her shoulders is a white cardigan, the empty sleeves hanging on either side. She closed the living room drapes before she stepped out because she’s mindful of the upholstery.  Mother taught her to be so. 

Her hands are folded where her breasts would be if she had any, and she is shaking from St. Vitus dance, which she developed as a child and has plagued her all her life. It gets worse when she’s upset. She’s upset now, because she has to go to the doctor. She’s been to Dr. Veach plenty of times, but Mabel Lee retired last year and the new head nurse is young. Char can’t place her. She doesn’t know which family she’s from.

She’d like to go back inside and lock the door.

She’s lived at home all her life. First as a child, then as a young girl who cared for her mother, then as a maiden lady, and now a maiden aunt. She has a nephew in California who calls once a month and tells her stories about drug traffic, murders, and things so unspeakable that she knows he wouldn’t mention them if he were home, sitting across the table. 

She lives for these calls. 

She also lives for his affirmation at the end of each conversation.  Paul tells her that she’s right to stay in West Virginia, where it’s safe. She shouldn’t sell the house. Yes, it’s too large and the heating bills are awful, but it’s the house she was raised in. It’s her home.         

Sometimes she thinks Paul is working against her best interests. She’s deeded the house to him, and if she sold, she’d use the money to place herself in one of the care facilities that have sprung up like mushrooms, cozy places with lots of company and buttons to push if you have a need. Sometimes the thought is tempting. If she moved to Harmony Manor, for instance, she wouldn’t have to work hard at filling her pill tray or mark when she took a laxative. The last time she took two laxatives and had to wash her underwear out in the cellar sink. The washer and dryer are also in the cellar and now it’s a battle between her and the stairs.

Yes, Harmony Manor would be to her best interest but if she moved, Char believes, her nephew would stop calling. Everyone has family, but he’s all she’s got. Brother Homer died years ago and his wife, Lucia, died more recently, although Char can’t remember the year.

Char was educated. She was sent to the Normal School to become an English teacher and she taught at the local high school until her mother required her full-time presence. Char viewed her mother’s demand for care as a means of salvation. It was a bad time in her life. She’d always hated teaching, and when she didn’t recognize the students as the children or grandchildren of the people she’d known from her youth, she didn’t bother to try. She’d trembled so violently in front of the last batch that, after the students got over their astonishment, they’d thrown spitballs. 

The town had changed so fast in tone and manners that Char no longer recognized Harshbarger Mills as the place she’d grown up in. 



to be con’t.

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"I loved Ray Welk from the time I was eight years old," Iris Welk tells me. " The love bug bit me down to my toes. He didn't feel it then because he was busy playing war ball with the boys from the Upper School."

When Iris says "upper school," she's referring to the second story of the Red Brick School, built in the center of town in 1902. It was a staunch Federal- styled building, two floors and a low attic. Its windows were kept gleaming by teachers and students, and tea roses grew by the the door. The lower grades had classes downstairs while the older students went to the rooms above. At sixty, its capacity was full.

Old Brick School

Now, it's a staunch skeleton.The windows are busted and a recent, heavy snowstorm collapsed the middle of the roof. The young elm trees are now huge, and the shade has killed most of the grass and, of course, the rosebushes. Soon it will be restored and used as an office for the Senior Townhomes to be built around it.

Iris isn't the type of person you interrupt. For years and years, she was the wife of the town's only mortician, and she's picked up the characteristics of her trade. She's popped in, treating me like a source of income, unannounced and unafraid.

"I told my best friend that I loved Ray Welk, and Patty laughed." She tries to lift an eyebrow but it's a futile effort. Iris lost her eyebrows long ago. The ones she now has are penciled on and arch nearly to her hair line. She looked constantly surprised. "So, I told my teacher. I knew Mrs. Nutter would believe me."

"Did she?" I ask.

"Yes, though at first she didn't know who I meant. That's because I pointed. Ray was jumping left and right to dodge the ball. His friends were jumping with him like bunch of frogs." I pointed again and said, "That boy right there, Ray Welk."

"Mrs. Nutter always covered her mouth when she laughed because she was missing an eye tooth, but that day she threw back her head, and showed the gap. '"Oh, you're a deep one, Iris," she said. "You're as deep as you can be."

She bent over, placing her hands on her knees, and looked me in the eye. Sure of myself, I beamed.

"We married and for thirty years we were never apart but for the time he went to Cincinnati School of Mortuary Science. I was pregnant with Charlie and stayed in Harshbarger Mills. I didn't want to give birth away from home. He rode the bus from Cincinnati to Clovington twice a month and Fred Valentine, who had a car, was waiting for him at the bus stop. After that, I never allowed a bad word about Fred said in my presence."

"After we got the funeral home established, Ray took two showers a day. One before work and one after".

"We'll never go out of business,' he used to tell me, but his shower habits worried my mother to death".

Mom kept saying, "'He'll wash his strength away.'

"'That's an old wive's tale!'" I protested.

"'Heard it all my life,' she snapped. "'Must be something to it.'"

"Ray and I had a good life with no more than our share of trouble until one year right after Christmas. He was taking down a string of lights when he fell over like he'd been shoved. I didn't scream but called Tom Bailey, who drove our ambulance. Tom must have flown because the next thing I knew he was standing in my living room, while Ray was being carried out on a stretcher. Tom had left the siren on, thinking to go to the hospital, but I'd already turned Ray over. The light was gone from his eyes.

"'Turn the siren off, Tom.' I told him. 'Ray's gone.'"

Iris Welk and I look at each other in silence.

" Ray was only fifty one years old!" She glares. "I've been a widow longer than I've been married!"

Then, she asks, her voice childish and high. "Do you think Mom was right?" Iris pats her forehead with a folded hankie and smears an eyebrow. "Do you think Ray washed his strength away?"

I don't know. I've heard too many funeral home stories to have an opinion. Like the boy who got beheaded by a haymower, the woman from Guyan who died delivering a baby that looked like a frog, and the bodies of a man and his wife hacked to death in a cornfield. Their assailant was a nephew who later shot himself. Three Smiths in the morgue at the same time.

"You tell me." I toss the ball back in her court. "You know death better than I do."

Excerpt from "That's Not Love!" copyright Joan Spilman, 2023

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