Basnight

By Don Basnight

The wart on her chin had four white whiskers and the hairs were stiff like those on a pig at Granddaddy’s farm. The farm was Momma’s side of the family, this you see, was Daddy’s side of the family.

Aunt Lucille was my Daddy’s aunt, and she lived alone down in Hamlet with nothing for a visiting boy to play with of a Sunday afternoon. No pigs, or pig lot, no spreading magnolias to climb or hide under. Her yard was mostly sand and crab grass and it held sandspurs that made barefootin’ impossible, requiring a kid to wear Sunday shoes long past Sunday service.

But still, I liked Dad’s dear Aunt Lucille.

“An old maid,” my Uncle Jesse said. “She never married.” I don’t think she didn’t get married because of the wart though. The pictures in her hallway show her as just a girl with no wart at all. Her sweet smile was the same, you could spot her right off in our crowd of family, even in the dull light of the hallway. That and the chair, she was always in a wheelchair.

“Polio got her.” Momma said. That is why she was still in the old home place on Main Street of Hamlet. Nannie, her sister, my grandmother, left the house young. She left Aunt Lucille and up and moved to Chapel Hill where she played the piano at the movie theater. And where she would meet her my grandfather.

But Lucille stayed home in her chair. Even after her folks went to meet the Lord, she stayed home. Her and her cat. And her chair.

Ma Bell, the phone company, put a switchin’ station in the grand hallway of her house up under the second floor stairs. Aunt Lucille ran the switchboard for all of the Sandhill’s and was good at it too. She could roll right up, make the connections from one call to the other, and never leave her home. She would let me listen in some if a call came through when there on a Sunday afternoon. Usually it was Mrs. Bellamy and her son Earnest prattling on. I didn’t mind wearing my Sunday shoes if I got to listen in to Earnest coo over his momma.

Momma says they don’t really know what tipped her over, or just how her chair ended up like that. My Uncle Jesse said it was that damned cat. “See, the cat’s tail is broken.” I don’t know. I’m not sure. Dad said the fridge door was open too, all the food was spoilt. Aunt Lucille was lying on the linoleum, her legs akimbo, and the chair on its side. “I am telling you,” Uncle Jesse said, “she rolled over the cat’s tail when she went to open the fridge and it dumped her out.” I really don’t know. But I hate she laid there so long, the phones just a ringing, no connections.

Mrs. Bellamy beat on the door the next Sunday afternoon cause her son Earnest couldn’t get through from Chicago. She loves to talk to her son Earnest. She is the one first found her and called it in. Anyway, the casket was an open one and Momma said I could go say goodbye. I walked up there in my best Sunday shoes. She still had those whiskers, warts and all, but that chair was gone.

Short-story teller Don Basnight lives in Chapel Hill with his wife Ginger.