Tappy

Oat's head jerked up; he stared blankly at Nora. His face went pale as if someone had just announced he was terminally ill.

"Shut up!" Oat yelled. "I don't want to hear it. Don't you dare tell me my blood ran through that haughty girl's veins." Oat stood and shook his finger under her nose. "Don't you ever tell me that again."

His eyes searched her face. She smiled coquettishly and looked toward the ground. Nora stifled a wistful sigh; she did not feel any emotion.

"Didn't you notice how much she looked like your maw? She had yer violet eyes," Nora spoke soft and mellow.

Oat flew into a bitter rage, his eyes glassy. "Listen, you poor bitch. Lucille ain't no child of mine. I wouldn't claim her if she was Mary, Mother of God." Oat stopped short with his mouth open, struck as if deaf and dumb. "Jackson! Jackson?" he paused with a question in his voice. "Is my grandson, my grandson," he shouted. The pieces to the puzzle fell into place. He could not deny it. Oat knew it all to be the truth. For an instant, he recalled how young he had been. His sexual desires on fire and burning out of control for several days. Oat could see Nora's firm legs spread open for him on the living room floor. He had to admit to himself she was right. The fog of Jackson's relationship to himself began to lift as Nora spoke. The love he'd felt toward the baby was the strong invisible ties of kinship.

"You damn fool, how long does it take to soak into yer thick head?" Nora laughed, sounding annoyed that it took so long for him to catch on. "You dumb fool. You ain't got a lick of sense," she mouthed.

"Who's the fool?" Oat's voice was shrill with depressed tension. He licked his lips. "You're the fool. This here's no work of mother nature." Oat stood sweeping his arms out toward the destruction of her farm. "This here's yer payback from God almighty hisself." Oat jumped over and put his calloused fingers around Nora's throat and shook her violently. Her head whipped back and forth. "My grandson, that was my grandson." His eyes blazed.

Burr Slater stood unnoticed by the edge of the broken porch. He had heard it all. When the fever got too hot, he stepped in to part them like a skilled referee at a boxing match.

Oat turned his back on Nora and her mountainous job of putting the farm back in order. He looked ragged and slow as he walked down the hill to his shack. Oat's love for Jackson stayed longer in his heart than sorrow. The lingering pain of his grandson's absence would never cease.