Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,67
looked toward the wall where the cartoon paper was still draped with twine. “What that for?” he asked.
She stood up, and it took her a moment to shake off the surprise of what she’d seen in his sketchbook before she walked toward the cartoon paper. “Well, let me tell you what’s happening here,” she said. She explained about the cartoon and that she would be working on it while he and Theresa and Peter built a stretcher for the canvas, which she hoped would arrive in the Norfolk art supply store shortly. “The stretcher is very exacting work,” she said, thinking that she really should have accepted Martin Drapple’s offer to help with it. It had to be accurate to the inch.
“I done door framin’,” Jesse said, only his accent was such that it took her a minute to understand what he meant. “My aunties and uncles and everbody call me to do it ’cause I know how to miter them corners right. Miss Furman give me some canvas and I made frames to stretch them over, even with bevel edges and all. I’m good at it.”
“This’ll be a bigger project than any you’ve done,” Anna said. “Way bigger even than a door frame.”
“Jes’ leave it to me,” he said, and Anna began to worry that he would boss Theresa and Peter around. She shouldn’t have, though.
When Theresa and Peter arrived, Jesse changed into a different boy. His bravado and self-confidence seemed to disappear, and it took Anna a while to realize that he felt the need to defer to them. That deference was expected of him. She didn’t like seeing the change in him. He communicated with the two of them in grunts, acquiescing to Peter’s directions, which were, fortunately, excellent. She had to admit that these boys who grew up on self-sufficient farms were good with their hands. She didn’t think the Plainfield boys she’d gone to high school with would have known what to do with all that wood.
Gradually, though, the awkwardness between the boys seemed to ease up. Anna had bought some cotton work gloves for all of them to use to protect their hands, but the boys just laughed at her.
“Miss Anna,” Peter said, “we don’t need no gloves! We build fences with our bare hands!” He looked at Jesse as if for corroboration, and Jesse picked it right up.
“An’ butcher hogs with our bare hands, too!” he said.
“An’ muck out the stables!” Peter said. “An’—”
“All right, all right!” Anna laughed.
Theresa rolled her eyes in annoyance at the boys and held out her hand for a pair of the gloves. It looked like she and Anna would be the only ones wearing them.
Anna gave directions and watched the three of them work. Peter was her surprise. He was so slight and blond, such a wisp of a boy, yet he was strong and very smart. Theresa didn’t want to get down on the floor. Rather, she attempted to give orders from above.
“I told you, you need to wear pants in here,” Anna said, and the girl turned away from her in a huff.
The boys, though, worked well together. Anna realized they were missing a couple of tools they needed to work with the wood, and Jesse promised to bring them the following day. Despite Theresa’s prissy attitude, Anna thought they were off to a good start, and with the three of them there, the warehouse felt cheerful and alive and not the least bit threatening. The beams high above their heads were just beams, the huge hanging pendant lights, just lights, and she watched her young students with a sense of delight she hoped would never leave her.
Chapter 27
MORGAN
July 3, 2018
It was dusk by the time the Uber dropped me off at the end of the long driveway to the Williams farm. I paid the driver, climbed out of the car, and began walking toward the house, batting away the mosquitoes that instantly descended on me. I was here to talk to Mama Nelle again, the only person alive who had known Anna Dale. The only person besides me who might care about the artist who filled my days.
Lisa had all but forbidden my visit to her aunt. “Don’t complain to me about how little time you have to get your work done if you’re going to waste it with an old woman who can barely remember her own name,” she said, when I told her my plans that afternoon.