After supper I visit Rosemary’s grave. My hands touch the earth covering her burial place. I crumble a clod of dirt between my fingers.
Grandpa comes up behind me with a handful of daisies and sets them on the unmarked grave. “We need to be a-findin’ a stone fer this young’un.”
I nod. “Aunt Freddie and Mr. Crutcher cooked up a surprise, didn’t they?”
He makes clucking noises with his tongue. “Should’a got herself married when she was young enough ta have babies.”
My mouth flies open. “Mr. Crutcher’s already got six young’uns.”
“But they ain’t kin,” he says.
“Not blood kin, but they’ll be close as kin to Aunt Freddie.”
He stands firm. “Ain’t the same.”
“It doesn’t have to be the same to be just as good. Look at George Washington. They call him the Father of the whole country, but he never fathered any young’uns.”
Grandpa doesn’t speak, but his face takes interest.
“He married Martha and reared up her young’uns,” I say. “And her son fathered a son who fathered a daughter…”
Grandpa’s smile spreads slowly. “Mary Randolph Custis.”
“Who became Mary Randolph Custis Lee when she married Robert E. Lee. The general I’m named for had a wife whose great-granny was married to George Washington—who never fathered any young’uns of his own.”
Grandpa puts his arm around my shoulders. “Tomorrow we need ta be a-lookin’ fer a stone fer this young’un.”
A week later I find the perfect stone for Rosemary’s grave. On my way to Nellie’s to get the newspaper, I spot the stone along Rebecca’s Branch. It’s speckled like the belly of a wood thrush, and centuries of water have smoothed the sharpness from it.
I tear a strip from the hem of my old, everyday petticoat and tie it to a tree branch to mark the spot.
As I near Nellie’s house, she bustles out to her porch. “Ginnie Lee Kent, I been a-hopin’ ya’d come by. I pine ta hear ‘bout your trip.” Her thick-syrup voice sounds almost sincere. “A letter come fer ya.” She fetches an envelope, but makes no move to hand it to me.
“For me?”
“Sure ‘nough. Looks ta be writ with a strong male hand. Did ya up and find yourself a sweetie while ya was away?”
“I met plenty of folks. Haven’t decided yet if I’m sweet on any of them.” I hold out my hand for the letter and hope she can’t see how my heart races.
I’m truly not disappointed to read Weston Hargrove, Clarksburg, West Virginia on the envelope. Corporal Westy!
“Ain’t ya goin’ open it?”
“I’ll open it when I get home.”
But I don’t wait. I sit down beside the branch, under the tree where my piece of petticoat flutters in the breeze.
Nellie was wrong about the male hand. The letter is from Corporal Westy, but his daughter wrote his words. Turns out he can’t read or write, but the words sound like him all the same. He says he’s sorry about Mama, he liked meeting me, and we ought to play Dixie Land again one day.
I read the words over and over. It’s the first letter anyone ever sent to me. Before I go to Nellie’s next week, I’ll write him a letter, a letter to send by post, a letter to a living, breathing person.
