Stolen Flowers
“It was bad enough they took the last of her Virginia bluebells,” Florence says, “after she worked so hard getting them to survive past May.” She abruptly changes subjects, as she does so readily.
My mind can’t change subjects. Gerald’s no-account ways run deep. I recollect the bluebells he let me believe were store-bought and expensive. But he stole them from a lady’s garden. The rose was from yesterday—the horrible day of the flivver ride.
My spoon drops into the dish with a plink.
“Are you all right, Virginia?” Florence asks.
“Fine,” I say, before she picks up her conversation like a dropped crochet stitch. But Chance’s eyes don’t leave my face. He seems to see right inside me. I bite my lip and stare into my empty dish.
When we leave the ice cream parlor, Mr. Redmond leads us through Gettysburg, telling us its history. I try to listen, but my thoughts are too loud to hear him.
Mr. Redmond points to a plain two-story house on the town square, a stone’s pitch from the hotel where Grandpa and I stayed.
I push away my thoughts to hear his words. “That’s where President Lincoln stayed when he came to dedicate the cemetery, where he delivered his Gettysburg Address.”
I have walked past this house often, but Grandpa didn’t say a word about it. I look at the door Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, walked through. I ponder on thoughts that must have filled his head. Thoughts of war and dead soldiers.
I recall his Gettysburg Address, the speech that covers a single page in my history book. I let its words flow into my mind to try to get shed of other words. Four score and seven years ago…He snipped off one of her prize roses clean as a whistle…they gave the last full measure of devotion…and took the last of her Virginia bluebells.Even the famous words can’t pluck Gerald the Flower Thief from my thinking.
We won’t need to fend off an army of flies at supper. The screen door is mended, and pages of flypaper hang just inside it. The flypaper smells of castor oil, like the kind Daddy makes, but instead of catalogue covers, Mrs. Grome used pages from an old calendar—a religious one. Mama would have a conniption. Flies stuck to the Last Supper would be downright sacrilegious to her.
I need to keep my thoughts free of Gerald. And the way grandpa abandoned me. Might be I can think on General Lee in the cupola, instead of stolen flowers and flivver rides. Might be I can think on the honorable President Lincoln, instead of Gerald’s vicious words and dirt-dog deeds. Might be Grandpa will be at supper tonight, and I won’t feel so much like last year’s calendar.
Virginia Lee Kent
