The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2004

taking care of other people, mostly white people. Along with her husband, Big Jimmie, Mae was stuck some- where between the Civil War and the 21st century. Both their families had been in the county forever, usu- ally as domestics and laborers. With a bit of good for- tune and a lot of ambition, they were now licensed in geriatric care and had an old house in Pine Hill. They always had one or two live-in wards. Their children, all except for Little Jimmie, had finished college and dis- persed across Maryland and Virginia. Little Jimmie, the oldest, stayed at home and did whatever needed doing. Rose had been bedridden for three months. If you were there when she woke, she’d say hi, smile, and start to sit up. Then the smile would disappear, fear would take her eyes, and what strength she had mobilized into rigidity. At the house, Campbell hurried to the steps. There was a gust of cold wind, then three loud clanks on the tin roof. The clanks were followed by the rat-a-tat of acorns rolling down and falling with a soft thud into the yard. He picked up two large nuts from the ground. The door was cracked. Campbell looked in. The room was quiet and hot. Rose lay on the couch. Mae sat in a straight-back chair, Rose’s hand in her lap. Big Jimmie was at the end of the couch at Rose’s feet, holding his face in his hands. “How are things?” Campbell asked. Big Jimmie looked up slowly. “Miss Rose is dead,” he said. “She woke up with the sun today and was thrashing all around.” “You sure?” Campbell asked. “She was all worried about her cat, Mr. Campbell,” Mae said, as she stroked the still hand in her lap. “She’s always worried about some cat or another.” “We’d catch her,” Big Jimmie continued. “She’d pull away and run pick up something, swing it around and throw it.” On the floor under the radiator was a small shattered bottle; the house smelt of honeysuckle. “And that picture,” Mae pointed at a crumbled frame on the floor. It was a watercolor of the cove in the creek. “Yes sir,” Big Jimmie laughed. “She got that picture and snapped the frame in two. Then she just stood there. I grabbed her and held her tight.” Big Jimmie looked at Rose’s body and swallowed the end of his laugh. “I carried her over to the couch and set her down. She just sat there, calm as snow.” The lyric voice of a radio preacher came from the kitchen, “We start to worship the created ...” There was a long pause, “Instead of the creator.” Campbell walked over to Mae and Rose. “Look at her face, Mae,” he said. “She looks like she did in those old pictures we found.” “She’s at peace, Mr. Campbell.” Mae laid Rose’s hand on the edge of the couch. Humming along with the beginning of a hymn on the radio, she stood and walked down to sit next to her husband. “So, I’m sit- ting with her and Rose looks at me and says, ‘Thank you, Mae. I’m tired now,’ and she lay down.” “Laid down and died,” said Big Jimmie. “I’m sorry, Mr. Campbell.” “It’s for the best, Big Jimmie,” Campbell said. With a finger he touched Rose’s cheek, and pulled her hair back from her eyes. “Mae, what do we do?” “Wait for Doc Willoughby.” “No,” Campbell said. “I mean, I don’t know what to do. What’s next?” Campbell walked to the front window. People were collecting at the Methodist church across the street. A still vigorous Lawrence Godbold, who had worked with Rose’s husband to convince the Army Corps to keep the river dredged after the Second World War, walked to the church’s steps. Rose’s husband wanted the dredging because he didn’t think the town could main- tain the light manufacturing the war had brought. Today there was a modest collection of restaurants and marinas at the river that kept Pine Hill vital. T. R. Raines walked up and shook Godbold’s hand. He paused and looked at the extra car parked in front of Mae’s. “Oh, we’ll have a fine funeral, Mr. Campbell,” Mae said. “You’ll need to write an obituary. You might be the only thing she could call family, but people will remember Mr. William’s Rose.” Campbell walked back over to the couch, then to pick up the broken picture from the floor. “No, Mae, I don’t think these people really want to know. Let’s have a service in your church. You and I can talk about Rose, the choir can sing, and Reverend Johnson can call on the Lord.” “Mr. Campbell,” Mae said. “You think that’d be okay with Miss Rose?” “Yes, Mae. I think she’d find it curious and appealing.” Campbell pieced the picture of the cove back together. F O C U S 42 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 4