Entry 27

BEQUEST

Whether the corn crop failed was of no real consequence to Sam Warner. He had not fretted over such things since his sharecropping days. And, since eight of his twelve acres were rich with pine timber, if the harvest was light, he would simply sell off of few cords of wood and keep right on keeping on.

What troubled him on the coldest spring morning in nearly twenty years was not the fate of a few ears of corn. What troubled him was his daughter’s letter. All night he had wrestled with it, several times giving serious consideration to waking his wife and telling her again how lowdown her daughter was acting. Only God himself could tell where Lilly had come upon such roguish ways.

It had been three years since she had set foot on Alabama soil. Three years since she had laid eyes on her own child. And now, with little more than a week’s warning, she was coming home and carrying on about some big surprise.

Sam had a farm to run. Visibly annoyed, he got up and went out to the kitchen. It was there that he realized how much the temperature had actually dropped.