He swung a right, at what was left of an old barn foundation and slowed, winding down the faded ribbon of  Ol’ Ginny Combs Road, as it laced its way to the house where he and his would live out their days in the shadow of that fine oak tree- Where local yarn would have it, Ginny herself had spent many a warm summer’s day, on an old tire swing, knotted to a low branch- long before life became a ligature, and she found herself a dangling at the end of her own rope….

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Gunther Combs strode heavy footed on to the plank wood porch that ran the length of the house his son built for his wife and child the year before they’d lost him. He did so because he wanted his daughter in law to know he was there. He’d been making his presence known before he entered a room with her in it for nearly eighteen years. Far as he was concerned, if she got to heaven before him, he’d “clomp his boots through them pearly gates”.

“Ginny! Come on down. Yer papaws here.” Mama called up before Gunther even hit the door.

When Ginny’s daddy was alive, the way Gunther entered a room used to bother Mabel Marie.  It bothered her plenty. He made no bones about the reason he did it. In fact for years, he’d tell anyone that asked.

“I seen my son Lester and Mabel Marie a headed to the barn after dark, and I follered ‘em in there to see if they was a doin’ what I thought they was a doin’. And sure enough they was.  So I run Mabel Marie off my land, and whooped Lester within an inch of his life. But none of that stopped Mabel Marie from showin’ up late one night, knocked up and beat up, an a marrying my only boy three months later.”

“Where’s my baby girl at?” Gunther grunted at Mabel Marie as he helped himself to a still warm biscuit and took a seat at the kitchen table.

“Up yonder.” Mabel Marie motioned toward the stairs, her weathered hand covered in flour and bits of bread dough.

Continue reading at Thru Violet’s Lentz