Heir to the Everlasting

By Janice Daugharty

The Pulitzer-nominated author of EARL IN THE YELLOW SHIRT turns her acclaimed talents to an epic story of three generations of Southern women at Big Eddy, the home place they love. HEIR TO THE EVERLASTING begins at the turn of the last century with the beautiful, determined Pinkie Alexander, strong-willed matron of the Alexander clan. Come Hell or the high water of the south Georgia river which gave Big Eddy its name, Pinkie will ensure the survival of her family on their beloved land--a place where the family cemetery guards the spirit of the past, and where secrets, as well as the dearly departed, are buried. Follow the lives, loves, mysteries, deadly feuds and steely courage of the Alexander women through a full century of joys and sorrows. HEIR TO THE EVERLASTING showcases the culture, language and daily travails of their time and place with vivid storytelling skills and Janice Daugharty's love for "the working words."

• Language: English
• Publisher: BelleBooks
• Release date: Feb 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781611940237

Janice Daugharty

Janice Daugharty is Artist-in-Residence at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, in Tifton, Georgia. She is the author of one story collection and five novels: Dark of the Moon, Necessary Lies, Pawpaw Patch, Earl in the Yellow Shirt, and Whistle.

Book preview

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Part One

The Pinkies

Chapter 1

This was the long and short of it, how Little May’s life began as an actual, physical hand-me-down, but how with a lot of iron-bending on her part it wouldn’t end up that way.

Pinkie Alexander drew the new black surrey up level with the courthouse porch. Then she handed her drawstring bag to the little girl seated on the bench next to her. Here, Hon, you can carry this for Grandmother. It had beads like ticks and was heavy with the pistol inside.

A man on the porch hurried to help her down. Another man came and took hold of her horse. The train of her cream and pink flower-print dress crawled off the surrey behind her. Then the little girl, in her shadow like always and why some referred to her as Little Pinkie when her real name was May. Her grown uncles even told her she looked like her grandmother, but that was just to make her feel good about dragging pillar to post after her mother Minnie died of malaria and Pinkie took her to raise. Like Minnie, May never would be anything to look at.

People were watching from the porch and cows were watching from the courtyard, chewing in the oak shade like they’d do in the mornings at Big Eddy. A yellow mama cow walked off like she’d seen enough and the other cows followed and their shadows shed off their sides and followed too.

Down a side street behind the courtyard drummers and regular strangers were standing along the porch railings of the two-story hotel. Waiting with their suitcases for the stagecoach to come by, they watched too. It was as though the whole world had heard about what went on at Big Eddy and they had come to see if Maureen would kill Pinkie, or the other way around. Would Pinkie and May take Jack home with them, or would the law hang him in the courtyard, come end of the day?

Sometimes, May knew the answers, sometimes she didn’t. This time nothing was coming to her.

She had been born with a double veil, meaning there had been two layers of skin encasing the birthsack. Meaning, according to an old wives tale, she would be a prophet of death. Her dreams of death, they said, would come true.

Pinkie had forbidden such talk, said she didn’t want to hear another thing about this prophet of death nonsense.

But death ever much on May’s mind anyway, since her mother had died, she kept a running tally of the dead in the graveyard at Big Eddy: Minnie, plus Granddaddy Samuel Alexander, plus a baby named Zillie, made three people.

Maureen’s husband Rafe would have made four, by May’s accounting, but they didn’t bury him there because he wasn’t really family. Rafe was a sharecropper May’s granddaddy had ordered from Market Bulletin along with a new variety of seed corn. This mail-order man came and stayed after marrying Maureen, who used to be Samuel’s pet cook and housekeeper at Big Eddy. Anyway, Rafe wouldn’t have been buried on the Alexander homeplace because it was May’s littlest uncle, Pinkie and Samuel’s boy, who shot him and grandmother and granddaughter were here at the courthouse because of that.

Going up the courthouse steps, May could feel the pistol in the bag knocking against her kneecaps. The people on the porch parted for Pinkie like she was the queen of England. Her silk dress made a whispery sound and smelled like violets when she moved. She didn’t look scared to May. Maybe she’d gotten over it or was playing brave or had recovered what she referred to as her balance.

That morning, all the way from Big Eddy to Alexander Crossing, named after the family, she’d been saying over and over how everything would be all right, for May not to worry. She told her not to ask questions, to keep her chin up and her dress tail down and stay close. Everything she said came undone when she stopped the surrey just outside of Alexander Crossing for little May to pee, then took the pistol from under the seat and slipped it in her bag.

How come we’re taking the pistol? May asked. How come I can’t ask questions?

Just say yessum, Hon, and hush now, she said.

How you, Pinkie? A man tipped his hat to Pinkie. A smoking pipe stuck out from his grin.

Good, and you?

Pinkie, greeted another man wearing a hard black suit.

Morning, Lawyer Burkholt. She set off walking beside her lawyer, through the open double doors.

Usually, she called him Adam. May knew him as her grandmother’s best friend, in the same way that Maureen was her best enemy.

Everybody walked in behind Pinkie and May, crowding the child so that she almost stepped on her grandmother’s dress tail. She started to pick up the hem to cover her face—a bad habit in a tight—and stayed close. She needed to be by herself. She needed to smell the violets and not the tobacco and trapped heat of a crowd. Everybody’s shoes but Pinkie’s and May’s tapped eager and quick on the floorboards. To May it sounded like cows trying to crowd each other out to get a place at the feed trough.

Making her way up the stairs, May set her eyes on her grandmother’s back, her tee-tiny waist and then her shirred lace overskirt as she stepped up. Two men were walking each side of May and their wooly suits made her itch. It seemed that nobody could see her, because she was so little, just seven, same age as her uncle, Jack, Pinkie’s baby. Her grandmother always out-shined everybody. She had long black wavy hair that, when she brushed it, she had to part in back and swing the halves of hair over her shoulders; May’s hair was thin and the muddy color of sugar-cane juice. Pinkie was like a light in a dark room. Jack said his mother wasn’t all that good-looking to him, but he guessed she was holding up okay for a wore out old woman. Being a good hand to figure, he worked out her age. She was seventeen when she got married and that was around 1887, which would put her at around forty years old now in 1910.

Pinkie had took to calling Jack my baby the day the sheriff came out to get him for shooting Maureen’s husband dead. May guessed she did that to point out the fact that Jack was just a child and didn’t belong to be going to jail. May thought it was a thousand wonders she hadn’t shot that sheriff dead too. Everybody knew since Samuel died how Pinkie would fly off the handle with anybody who messed with May or her boys. The way May figured it, her boys could shoot anybody they wanted to at Big Eddy. She was the boss. But from what May could gather, that was why her grandmother wouldn’t let her two grown boys come to the courthouse They might shoot somebody off from home. They could shoot at bottles till the boss got back.

In the room at the top of the courthouse, Pinkie took a seat at a table up front next to Adam. She picked May up and set her on the table facing her, May supposed so that she could see anybody slipping up behind her. Then she straightened her lacy white skirt and took the bead bag and placed it on May’s lap. There May sat, shame-faced, looking out at all the people coming in and sitting in the wood pews either side of the tall room. She was the eyes in back of her grandmother’s head. The room smelled like May’s bedroom when she had the measles but was more light because of all those door-size open windows. A sparrow side-stepping along one of the windowsills seemed to be watching with her.

At the other table, to the right of the one where May sat, Maureen and her two grown boys propped their elbows, leaning heads and whispering. They used to live down past the cotton house at Big Eddy till Pinkie got enough of Rafe and Maureen’s boys laying up and not working and stealing everything wasn’t nailed down, she said. She had let them make a nervous wreck out of her. That’s what her mother, Granny Baxter, said. From what May could gather, listening in, Pinkie had had too much dumped on her since Samuel died: her only daughter dying, two more children to raise, women running their mouths about her because she was a widow and might be eyeballing their men; other men trying to hoodoo her out of her land and money. And now this thing with Jack

May didn’t know why Pinkie wouldn’t let Granny Baxter come that morning. She wasn’t ailing, and she sure didn’t carry a gun. In fact, she was the one always preaching to her daughter about her letting her boys carry pistols. Granny Baxter said the pistols were inviting trouble and besides they were a dead give-away that Pinkie was feeling weak with Samuel dead and not there to provide for them and scare the boogers off.

May counted five clabber-faced ladies in sack-cloth dresses like Maureen’s walking up the aisle with their heads hung and white handkerchiefs balled in their fists and black bibles down by their sides. They followed one after the other along the bench behind Maureen and her boys, stopped and loved her neck and patted her on the shoulder before they sat down. She nodded, nodded, that tight knot of hair on back of her head going up and down like a yoyo. The other ladies had yoyo hair balls on back of their heads too.

These were the ladies from Maureen’s church, the same ones who came with Maureen to Big Eddy a while back to pray over Pinkie’s soul, naming off a list of her sins. She made them pray out on the porch and it rainy and cold while she and May watched from the front window of the room everybody still called Samuel’s. Then the cook, Fate, got a broom after them. Told them to save their praying for their own selves. She said if Maureen needed a little help recollecting her sins, she’d be more than happy to help out.

Behind May, at the front of the courtroom, a gruff man cleared his throat and said, All rise.

Everybody stood up but May.

Her grandmother’s pointy chin tilted up, to show she wouldn’t back down, she would have the straight of this matter and get on with her business of operating Big Eddy, and everybody else could get on with theirs—if they had any business worth doing. Which she doubted. Taking up her time with such foolishness. Ridiculous, a little boy charged with murder!

Her face was pale as cream with curtains of wavy black hair. Her eyes were stark blue and didn’t even blink.

May started swinging her feet. The bag slid from her lap to the floor, a loud whunk. Her grandmother seemed not to pay it any mind, but when the man behind May said everybody could be seated, Pinkie sat and reached for the bag and placed it on May’s lap again and hooked the drawstring around the wrist of her writing hand.

Like somebody May had thought up come to life, Jack walked around from behind her and sat scooched down in the chair next to his mother so both feet would touch the floor. He had on a man-style black suit, but in his own size, a black string tie and a white shirt. Pinkie kissed the top of his head and a woman behind her said, How sweet!

Ruint if you ask me. The woman beside her crossed her arms and looked away like the very sight of them all made her sick to her stomach. Boy or not, he’s a rascal. What comes of her taking up for him and the rest of them when they get in trouble. Mark my words, he won’t do a day in the pen. Whole bunch’s run wild since Samuel Alexander died and it’s her to blame.

So, May’s little uncle was there because he might turn out like his big brothers; he was on trial for murder, at only seven years old, to get back at Pinkie for being strong enough to take over, and for taking up for them in their mischief. May wished that minute that she could swap in all her nicknames for the name Jackie May, she loved him so good and he looked so pretty with his shiny black hair and blue eyes. Like Fate the cook said, she’d been one lonesome white-child with Mr. Jack gone. Up till then she’d loved all her sweet uncles the same, had been happy with those nicknames she was called by. Now she loved Jack the best. But to take on his name would be much too confusing when her grandmother started calling them to come in and eat, or getting on to them for something they were doing, not to mention that such a grand name would make May shine even brighter when her pitiful half-sister Fancy was around. She would feel too goody-goody, like that old woman sitting behind her grandmother right now.

She touched Jack’s leg with the toe of her white shoe and he grabbed it and started undoing the buttons. Just looking at the shoe made May think about the shoes she’d left for Fancy and their stepmother burning them and her burning them made May think about the bee stings. She squinched her eyes, trying to fall asleep and dream the witch dead.

Pinkie shook her head for Jack to let go of the shoe, but the two children met eyes and smiled and the loud talking all around them drifted and buzzed like preaching at church. May hoped she was relaying to him with her eyes her wish to take on his name, and not to worry, they would be home soon. Then they would shoot champs and wade Ray Harris Branch looking for crawdads. She would tell him the truth, that it was not a little fairy telling her his secrets, she just knew stuff. He could stop hating the tooth fairy then and leave his teeth under his pillow without having to worry that the fairy would burrow through his head into his dreams and make public to the whole world of Big Eddy his secrets—gold, what gold?

The little fairy had been a lie made up by May to keep from scaring him to death with what she either knew or simply happened to guess right some of the time.

May overheard her grandmother saying to Granny Baxter once that seemed like May was born speaking in question form and Jack was running before he could walk. What prompted that was May always asking what time it was. Got to where her grandmother would just bend down and let her look at her watch.

She looked now at the watch hanging from the gold chain about her grandmother’s neck and watched the hands creep over the V’s and X’s and I’s, telling time, they called it. But it was a puzzle that didn’t spell out anything and May’s pictures of what was coming up had gone all fuzzy. Pinkie had told her that with every sweep of the hands, with every tick, they were all getting older, the world was. Her watch told them when to go and how long to stay.

Just as May started to ask her how long before they could go home, she shot up out of her seat, shouting at the man behind May. Said, That drunken fool came by while I was gone and talked my baby into trying out his new pistol. That’s how Rafe Sonders got shot, Judge. An accident, pure and simple.

Adam reached for her hand and she shook him off like a stuck caterpillar.

Maureen jumped up and started hollering at Pinkie. Called her a low-down liar, adding in a raw scorched voice, `He who calls his brother a fool is in danger of hellfire.’

The women behind her stood and shouted, Amen! One added, Tell it like it is, Sister Reen.

That’ll do, ladies, said the judge at the bench behind May.

Everybody in the courtroom started talking.

Jack scooched lower in the chair, tapping his feet and scrunching his shoulders. Grownups were always on to him and May for hollering in the house at Big Eddy and here these grown women were, hollering in the courthouse. He grinned at May and she grinned back at him but deep down she knew her grandmother’s hollering was more than just noise. Her nothing but a child, too much on the serious side generally, she knew that. She was only cutting the fool with Jack.

"For the record, Rafe Sonders is not my brother," Pinkie said, then sat quickly for emphasis.

The judge shouted, Order, order in the court, and started hammering with his gavel on the bench before him.

Everybody sat down and got quiet but mumbles riffled from front to back of the courtroom. The bag slipped off May’s lap; the drawstring on her wrist saved it from hitting the floor again. Her wrist was corded, her fingers tingling. She held it up for her grandmother to see, since she and Fate, the both of them, were forever after Jack and May about cording their fingers and toes. One of the picaninnies they played with in the quarters had about lost his tongue from cording it. May wasn’t taking any chances.

Pinkie loosened the drawstring on her wrist and placed the bead bag beside her on the table. All the feelings inside May shook loose: she wanted to shoot the pistol and make everybody listen to what had really happened between Jack and Rafe, but at the same time she didn’t want people looking at her. Plus, she was afraid if she did tell, none of them would ever get to go home. Much as she loved Jack, she didn’t want to end up in jail with him. Not that she was really worried that Jack would stay in jail. Pinkie would fix that.

Adam was up and down and talking behind May,. all over the front of the courtroom, then sitting next to Pinkie, whispering to her. Calm down, Pinkie. Last thing you need is a contempt charge.

Jack told May once that he figured Pinkie would marry the lawyer someday, so it was up to the two of them to show Adam how crazy his mother could get when she got uptight. But Pinkie’s oldest boys, about a hundred years older than Jack and May, it seemed, would have to give their say-so on it. May couldn’t imagine her grandmother asking anybody if she could do something. Well, maybe Granny Baxter in the flatwoods; but then she wouldn’t be asking, she’d be asking what Granny Baxter thought after she had done it.

The sheriff came and got Jack to go back to the jail and eat dinner. Pinkie nodded for him to go. Then everybody stood and shuffled out like they’d shuffled in, only Pinkie and May were last this time. Pinkie stood her on the floor, and again she handed her the bead bag with the pistol in it. The sparrow on the windowsill flew up into the blue sky.

In the courtyard, under the live oaks and their spatters of shadows, women were standing over long tables of food, like at dinner-on-the-ground when May used to go to church with her real daddy and his new wife and children. The cows were gone, but their patties were everywhere. Lots of flies in the summertime. The sky was blank except for the sun in the middle shining straight down.

Tailing her grandmother in line along one of the food tables, May held tight to the bag while Pinkie fixed her a plate. Next table over, between them and the main road at the crossing and a little string of stores, Maureen and her boys and the Church of God ladies were fixing their plates and watching Pinkie and May. Being little, May could hide behind the bowls and platters of piled fried chicken—a fat brown ham covered her whole head—but Pinkie, short as she was, was too tall to hide. May could feel she was scared and she had never felt her scared before. Not even when a big mean bull got after them in the woods last summer while they were checking up on the slubbering of the turpentine hands. Pinkie had picked up a limb and slammed that old bull on the nose.

She sat May down in the eave shadow on the courthouse doorsteps and took her bag and laid it beside her, then placed the plate on May’s lap. Roasting ears, field peas, cucumber sticks, fried chicken—the wishbone. May smiled up at her for beating everybody else to the wishbone. She sat beside May with the bag between them and felt it with her ringed hand, whispering to her granddaughter, Not much longer now.

Do we know yet if they’re gonna hang Jack?

May was talking too loud so Pinkie had to talk loud back to cover her. She laughed. Of course not.

Will we shoot them if they try?

Of course not. Pinkie laughed out again, then squeezed May’s knee, saying low, Hush, now! With her plate on her lap, Pinkie started cutting a tomato slice into tiny wedges with her fork.

Adam sat on the other side of her, holding his plate in one hand and eating with the other.

Maureen and her boys started up with their plates of food but stopped on the step below them. A large woman anyway, Maureen looked larger out in the open to little May. Her boys looked taller. One taller than the other, but not as ragged, not as dirty. There was something wrong with the ragged one’s eyes, looked like to May. They were too light and glittery; the blues looked like the yellows of eggs that had been stuck and run into the whites. The other boy took after Maureen, who was pretty in the face, but looked puffed up, about to burst, strutting her bosom. Poor but clean in an old print dress with broken buttons. They smelled poor—her lye washing mixed with their not washing.

Maureen, Pinkie said and placed her fork gently on her plate.

The other church ladies were climbing the steps with fasting dabs of food on their plates. Lips screwed tight, they waited behind Maureen.

I wonder how it feels—first you steal my daughter, then your hellion kills my husband.

Dimmie’s a grown woman, can come and go as she pleases. And Rafe’s the one responsible for getting himself shot.

May was always hearing this Dimmie referred to by adults as a credit, which usually meant, she had found, that there was some secret comparison being made to somebody close of low principle. In this case, May knew that Dimmie was Maureen’s grown girl, and that this Dimmie had married and moved to New Orleans from Big Eddy where her mother had been born and raised. For some reason, mysterious to May, Dimmie stayed in regular touch with Pinkie by way of letter and sometimes even visits.

We’ll see who pays, Maureen said.

Well, at least you’re threatening me out in public for once.

Talking’s not doing. Maureen looked about at all the people gathering to watch. I hope you don’t think I’d send my soul to hell over you.

But you would let your boys kill me; you’d send their souls to hell without batting an eye, wouldn’t you?

They’re old enough in the eyes of God to be accountable. But you’re the one accountable for the sins of that boy of yours.

Haven’t we both lost enough as it is, Maureen?

You’re the one ended up with all Samuel’s land and money. You. And you’re yet to settle up with me on Rafe’s share of that last corn crop.

Watch it, Maureen, your greed is showing. Pinkie laughed bitterly. Rafe was paid and overpaid. He took me for a fool after Samuel died. Beat me out of money every chance he got and you know it.

May had heard all this before, but not out in front of everybody like this; it was like a story in the bible running round and round in your head. One you found hard to understand but had to believe because God said so.

I’d like to say let bygones be bygones and be done with you, Maureen said, but the fact is I got three mouths to feed, and I want you to pay.

"Blood and cash, huh? Pinkie shook her head and gritted her small even teeth, looking down, then up at Maureen. I used to think you had class, Maureen."

Maureen shook her head too, mocking Pinkie. Class is money; money is power. You of all people can testify to that.

The eave shadow had slipped up the step behind those seated and they were now in full sun but headed for the oak shade.

I divide with Dimmie along and along, Pinkie said. What comes from the timber and cows, she gets a cut; I promised Samuel and I’ve kept my word. As far as the land goes, Dimmie’ll come into it same as my boys and this child here after I’m gone.

The boy closest to Pinkie, who looked like Maureen, stepped up in line with Maureen and spoke. Well, lady, you better sprout eyes in the back of your head or you’ll be gone quicker’n you think. He laughed. Minnie’s little orphan girl there’ll be raising herself.

Jolted by the tone change, the voice change, and what sounded like the threat they’d been waiting for all day, May reached for the bag to get the gun to shoot with. Her grandmother clamped down on May’s hand with her own hand and kept it there.

The other boy, the one in front of May, said, Yeah, and that boy better sprout a set of eyes hisself, and his biscuit tumbled from his plate.

Really he wasn’t all that tall, May observed, his pants legs were just short and his dingy bony ankles were shining.

"Now that’s a threat," said Adam and stood up.

Pinkie let up on May’s hand so she could eat.

Maureen’s plate started shaking; she told her boys to shut up or go on to the house. The boy in front of May said it was his daddy got shot and kicked the biscuit out into the bushes by the doorsteps. A black dog with a switching tail came up out of nowhere and clamped his muzzle down on the biscuit and scuttled off. Adam said for somebody to go get the sheriff and the boy that lost his biscuit took off running with the dog through the crowd.

Pinkie and Maureen were still at it, as if nobody else was around. But you could tell they were talking to the crowd through each other. Something Pinkie never did because she didn’t much care what people thought anyway.

You and I both know Rafe made your life hell, all of y’all’s, and mine too. Pinkie forked a piece of tomato to her mouth. Now if you’ll excuse me, you’re spoiling my dinner, Maureen.

Maureen looked like she might spit at Pinkie’s feet, but instead she bowed her head, praying. The women behind her hissed and mumbled, praying with their eyes closed. One had a bloody scab smack-dab on the tip of her nose. Amen, they said when Maureen got done praying.

You could tell the crowd wished the two women had fought instead.

Thank you, ladies, said Pinkie, chewing on a grin. But I expect God’s so tired of y’all switching back and forth, even He’s quit listening.

Maureen walked on up the steps with the ladies and her other boy trailing her like May had been doing her own grandmother ever since the boys set fire to the main house at Big Eddy, since they dumped kerosene in the well, since they shot her grandmother's mare, and broke the legs of the mice-catcher cats. There was more May wasn’t told after her grandmother got worried that she’d seen enough, maybe too much. What Pinkie didn’t understand was what May didn’t know made her more afraid than what she did know.

Now she tried with all her might to re-think what had been said, what it meant. So long had this story been make-believe, now it was becoming real. It was becoming more than just another grownup matter overheard. More than the past being revealed even. There was some link to something else that she needed to grasp, but it kept slipping and slipping, it wouldn’t stick.

Pinkie whispered something to Adam and started to stand. He tried to make her sit again. I don’t think that’s necessary, he said. Besides, bribery . . .

I do, she said and reached for her bag with the gun in it. Stay with Adam, Hon, she said to May. I need to go have a word with the judge before court reconvenes.

Uh oh! She’d taken the gun and she was going to shoot the judge with it, May figured.

Adam seemed to read May’s mind. He slid over close to her after Pinkie had walked away and put his plate down on the other side of him. He propped his elbows on his knees and latched his fingers, staring in her eyes. It’s all right, he said. Pinkie knows what she’s doing. But his face told a different story. The narrow space between his low-growing curly black hair and his bushy eyebrows wrinkled up so that two question marks trailed down to the bridge of his nose.

In the upstairs courtroom after dinner, May sat in her grandmother’s lap and Jack sat beside them, leaning into his mother, squirming, cross-armed and sighing, while Adam paced back and forth and shot strange words at the dozy-looking judge and the people sitting behind Pinkie and the children. May got sleepy too, so relieved was she that her grandmother hadn’t shot the judge, but she tried to stay awake by kicking at the table in front of her. Everybody was still talking about Jack shooting Rafe—did he do it for meanness? Was it an accident?

If they would have asked May she could have told them how it happened; if they would have asked Jack he could have told them. But when you are seven nobody asks, they just make up their own stories because the truth doesn’t make as good a story and probably wouldn’t work out in the long run anyway. So, what they knew they just knew, she and Jack: that it wasn’t either one, meanness or accident, it was luck.

Rafe got drunk and took Jack out behind the cotton house to make him tell where his daddy Samuel had buried his gold. He made Jack stand up by the back wall, holding his pistol on him. Jack said if his daddy ever had any gold he didn’t know nothing about it; he wasn’t even born till after his daddy died. Rafe called him a liar, said he knew better. Said something like that he would have heard about at least. Jack dropped to the dirt and scooted up under the cotton house, and Rafe crawled after him, leaving his pistol where the rain off the eaves had pecked out a trench. Jack was hiding behind an old stump left in the ground when the cotton house was built. While Rafe was under there, looking for Jack, he sneaked out, snatched up the pistol and waited. Rafe crawled out, bawling and stumbling to his feet, and made a lunge for him, and Jack shot him in the head.

Pinkie’s watch was hurting the back of May’s head. She turned in her lap and looked to see if the hands were moving, if the letters said it was time to go.

What is bribery? she whispered to her grandmother.

Shh! Pinkie smiled and turned her back around, facing the judge, and started bouncing her on her knees with her arms locked around the child so tight she could hardly breathe. May managed to stay awake till after she heard the judge say Rafe didn’t have any business letting an innocent seven-year-old shoot his pistol. Jack was just being a good little boy and doing what he was told. Lucky the little fellow, napping in that chair there next to his mother, wasn’t shot himself, the judge said. It’s a good thing he wasn’t killed.

It was a good thing Jack was sleeping, May thought, because when he was sleeping he did look sweet. When he was awake his lips twitched up at one corner and he had a way of rolling his eyes to show he was sick of listening.

The hands of Pinkie’s watch had moved while May wasn’t looking. She woke up in the surrey between her grandmother and her little uncle and they were home at Big Eddy, safe, closed in by their own dark oaks and cows meeting under them. May’s agitation was gone, forgotten like yesterday’s tummy ache. The important thing was, Jack was out of jail and if her grandmother could do that she could make May’s daddy let Fancy come live with them. Then May wouldn’t have to go back with her daddy to the flatwoods whenever she wanted to be with Fancy.

Chapter 2

How May came by the name of May was she was born in the month of May. As for the name Hon which her grandmother addressed her by, that was short for honey. Her grown uncles called her Little Pinkie because of her trailing behind her grandmother. All these pet names May took to heart—she was loved and wanted, she was part of Big Eddy—which set up a contrast of sorts and fed her guilt with each calling of the names. She was lucky, as her daddy often implied, meaning he was luckless: May’s mama had cheated him out of what was rightfully his, his share of Big Eddy plantation, by up and dying on him. Now, here he was with a third ailing wife, two boys, and a girl by his first marriage, and them barely getting by. It was the girl, Fancy, May’s half-sister, who broke her heart—she had to help her stepmother rob honey and was always getting bee stung; and too she had no shoes. It was Fancy who made May feel guilty for choosing the Alexanders and the easy life at Big Eddy over her poor-mouthing daddy and his family and the desolate sawmill camp in the flatwoods.

Much as she loved seeing Fancy, May dreaded her daddy’s visits to Big Eddy, and even worse were her visits to the flatwoods, especially last time when she was made to help rob honey and got stung so many times she looked like an overstuffed rag doll. Besides, her daddy was always playing up the family’s suffering and putting Pinkie down. Not one to judge, he would point out, he could only go by what the bible had to say: Pinkie was a vain and godless woman, a tempter of men. Her with her fine clothes and airs and not a worry in the world. But the truth was, as much as Pinkie liked fine clothes, she made sure that her own family had what they needed first. Bad things happened at Big Eddy, same as in the flatwoods, but got fixed by Pinkie, and then the sun went on shining as before.

May was beginning to wonder if her daddy wasn’t killing off these wives with his grating self-pity. And if the mean ugly stepmother dropped dead at May’s feet, she would count it a blessing. She had left a pair of her shoes for Fancy after one of those visits, and the stepmother had burned them. Forever more, May would associate the shoes with the bee stings and the bee stings with the stepmother, Big Eddy with heaven and the flatwoods with hell.

Since the shoe-burning, May had been trying to dream her stepmother dead but so far it hadn’t worked.

Often, following the trial, May would become agitated by that something important linking everything together that she couldn’t make stick. She would go over a list in her head, while drifting off to sleep, touching on each temptation of memory: Rafe, Maureen, Pinkie, Samuel in the graveyard with Minnie, Fancy, fancy shoes, bees, honey, gold—don’t mention the gold. Wishbone: wishing to drop the name of Hon because it was short for honey, wishing to be Jackie May, but most of all wishing that Fancy could come live with her at Big Eddy where she would never have to rob honey again.

Smiley, I don’t appreciate you bringing Hon home last time covered in bee stings. And you can tell your wife that next time she takes a notion to burn a pair of Hon’s shoes, she’s going to answer to me. Pinkie had been speaking from the front porch to May’s daddy in the sullen heat at the head of the lane. He could have taken two steps to the side and been in the flickering shade of the live oak, had he been of a mind to.

Bait! Shoes wadn’t nothing but bait and vanity. He never stopped smiling, playing polite, speaking always in that slow plaintive monotone. Beg your pardon, ma’am, but the wife done the right thing.

May wasn’t trying to bait Fancy; she was sharing and even the wife must see that as Christian virtue. Pinkie’s voice kept rising with the heat of noonday. But if you want to talk about baiting . . . well, you’re the one baiting May with Fancy, to keep your finger in the pie here.

A fine- looking man, though sunburned under a coat of dust, he flashed his many teeth at Pinkie. I’ll say good-day now, ma’am. Load up, Fancy, and let’s go.

Fancy had climbed up on the wagon bed, looking small and alone and charmed by circling gnats, staring out at May who was standing nearby. There was a dirt-colored cannonball jug on the floor of the wagon and May hoped it had water in it; she and Fancy had just been on their way to the well for water when Smiley had called out that it was time to go. Nobody knew his timing, or why he stood next to the wagon, suffering each visit made to Big Eddy. He seldom even spoke to May; he brought Fancy to play and that was the extent of it. Hired hands driving wagons up and down the lane had to lurch around him to get to the barn to the left of the oak. Always a commotion.

Smiley tipped his misshapen brown felt hat to Pinkie on the porch.

But she wasn’t done with him. I notice you won’t even answer me about the bee stings. I don’t blame you; it’s a shame and disgrace and you don’t have word one to cover it from the bible, such pure meanness. She looked ready to fly from the porch and land on him like a hawk and pick out his eyes.

That’s the wife’s business. As far as the honey goes, if you’d read the bible you’d know what it has to say about honey.

She snorted. I never did have all that much use for you when you were married to my daughter. But I got a granddaughter I love out of that mess. She belongs here at Big Eddy, and I’ll take Fancy off your hands too. There’s always room for another girl here, long as I have any say-so.

He stepped up on the shabby wagon in his warped and laceless boots, still shining his teeth. His hair was the color and texture of winter grass. In places, the wagon had been hay-wired together and rattled with the least motion, with the shifting of the sun-struck mule. No disrespect to you, ma’am, but Fancy’s getting better raising right where she is; poor man that I am, I see to it that my family’s in church come Sunday morning.

Yes, I do seem to recall my daughter going to church and her so sick she could barely lift her head.

She’d a pulled through if she’d a had more faith in her healing.

Faith is one thing and foolishness is another. Pinkie’s face was red and she was shaking a finger at him. I rue the day I let Minnie stay on at my mama’s, once I found out she had an interest in you.

May had heard this all before. But hearing it again made her edgy, because she knew what was coming up next.

I’m a good a mind to take May on back with me, that’s what I’m a good a mind to do.

You let her choose and she chose to stay here. She belongs at Big Eddy.

He turned, bearing down on May with those stretched hazel eyes. You wanta go home with me, gal, hop on up there with Fancy.

May shook her head no. I want Fancy to stay here with me, I wish she could.

Spit in one hand and wish in the other, gal, see which’un gets full first, he said to her. Then to the droopy brown mule, Giddyup! as he swung the leadlines and headed up the pine-shaded lane, with Fancy smiling weakly and waving good-bye to her sister.

The rest of the summer, and then on into winter, Jack had to wear a pistol in a holster strapped about his waist. His mother told him he better not touch it unless Maureen or one of her boys walked up and threatened him or May. They had to stay close to the house except when Pinkie was with them. No longer could they get out and roam the free woods and fields the way they used to. About once a week, Pinkie would load them up in her surrey and they would head out to Granny Baxter’s in the flatwoods, east of Alexander Crossing, about a half-day away, so close and yet so distant from Fancy at the sawmill camp across the pine woods. But even then, especially then, they had to be on the lookout for Maureen and the boys. They were the boogerman Fate was always claiming would get Jack and May for being bad.

May’s uncles Ray Harris and Alex were right there if she needed them, but they had to see to the timber and the crops and the cattle

Reviews for Heir to the Everlasting

[strogan_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

(Received Review Copy from Publisher)I enjoyed reading Heir to the Everlasting and the glimpse it provided into the lives of the Alexander family. For this reader, the touchstone of the story is Big Eddy, the family plantation, and May Alexander Wetherington is the keystone.Big Eddy is the touchstone because that is the family "seat" and makes the rest of the story possible. It is the kind of place that embodies the phrase "if only these walls could talk," although, in this case, it's if only the walls and the land could talk. Through the lives of Pinkie (May's grandmother), May and Sara Ann (May's granddaughter), how they carry on and make their lives better - and sometimes worse - and keep their heads up in spite of troubles and tribulations is a story that I believe many readers can relate to.May Alexander Wetherington is the keystone of the story. While Heir to the Everlasting is as much Pinkie's and Sara Ann's story as it is May's, the book is a tale of her growing up on Big Eddy, growing older, marrying, having children, but always coming back to the family home, and seeing what she can do for her own granddaughter as Pinkie did for her.The heart of the story is love. Love of family, love of the land, and simply love of life - even if it may be a bygone thing. It is also a story of relationships - how they define us, how we define them, the blind spots they may cause us and how they make us stronger.A wonderful book that I would recommend to anyone who likes a good story that doesn't necessarily deliver a happy ending, but a fitting one for the tale it tells.(Cross-posted to Goodreads, Lily's Reviews, Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble)

[wakela_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This richly detailed book covered several generations of strong women in the Alexander family. The story is set on a plantation “Big Eddy” in Southern Georgia. The plantation seems as much alive as the people.There were times when the reading seemed to drag on a little bit, but then it would pick back up again. It reminded me of a course of a river. Where in some spots it seemed to trickle slowly then at other times it was gushing.This was definitely an interesting book. It did take me quite a while to get through it though. And in all honesty, those slow spots were a major deterrent for me. I don’t mind slower books. This one just seemed to move a little to slow for me in spots.In conjunction with the Wakela’s World Disclosure Statement, I received a product in order to enable my review. No other compensation has been received. My statements are an honest account of my experience with the brand. The opinions stated here are mine alone.