(SSOFPINM- Short Stories of People I’ve Never Met).
SSOFPINM- Bertha VanAuden
Bertha waddled out to the chair on her front porch, grunting as she pushed herself back into it in order to have the ability to rock back and forth. Denim skirt pushing the dust of the day forward and back as the chair groaned and creaked with the movement. With another barely audible grunt Bertha pulled her prize across her lap. Shiney in some places and dull in others she took the corner of her stained apron and started to scrub at the areas that were less than golden. Always stopping to wave at the passerbyers as though the evening were identical to all the evenings before.
Farmers and neighbors waved back, smiling from their pickup trucks and bicycles. Birds even seemed to stop and crow, and Bertha would look up from her project to smile and nod in reply. There was no hint of the heaviness in Bertha’s heart as she quietly sang the old hymn “At The Cross”. She clicked her rocking companion into place and hoarsely hummed, “…It was there by faith I received my sight and now I am happy all the day.”
Except for her haunting scowl, deep and wrinkled the way only an elderly can scowl, one would have thought she was truly happy all the day. She appeared the picture of contentment, hair covering and all. The kind of person who lives out what she believes until her last grateful breath.
And reader, she was. Even at her final moment she never spoke of regret.
When Jimmy Bermand’s truck crested over the hill atop which her house sat, she squinted her already squinty eyes and gave her whole self the completeness of a focus which was unmatched. And lifting the shiny barrel up between her shoulder and hands she thought of all the shame he had made her granddaughter suffer. Nobody would believe her if she told, he had reminded her. And he was right, Bertha knew. But regardless of who would believe, Bertha believed her granddaughter, because she had seen the change in her. Little Missy didn’t like being around Jimmy anymore, though he was a long time family friend. Little Missy didn’t speak up about the butterflies she had seen or the frogs she’d been catching. Her little Missy was too embarrassed to talk about asking the Lord for things in their mealtime prayers, and when Bertha’s grandmothering heart had asked why, little Missy had shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t think God likes to give things to people who are like me.”
“And why on earth not?” Bertha had asked, patting back Missy’s curly sandy bangs and kissing her forehead.
“Cause God just thinks I’m little and weak.”
No. Nobody would believe a grandma’s suspicion and couple of girlhood prayers, but God didn’t think Little Missy was weak. And He damn knew Bertha wasn’t.
The shot was unheard but by the wilderness and fields around her home. But it did it’s job.
Jimmy would be found the next day, with a hole shattering through the passenger side window and a matching one in his skull.
Bertha left her rocker that evening, after wiping down her tool again with a mumbled, “But the drops of grief can ne’er repay the debt of love you owe…”
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