The Ozark Plantation, in: Mammy Mae's Secret (Series #3))1803))

Series #3
The Ozark Plantation, in:

Mammy Mae‘s Secret
(1803) #3 (3-6-2007)



Almost everyday, everyday that is when Shep was gone, Mammy Mae, went up the hill to the little plot sectioned off for a family graveyard, Judith Hightower was buried there, her tombstone read: “October 7, 1803, died Judith Hightower (Abernathy),” nothing else. This day, as others when Shep was gone on business or in New Orleans, she’d take an apple and some peanuts with her, stay for an hour or so, talk to Judith, or the headstone as if she was alive inside of it listening, and when she saw Shep, saw him like this day, Shep Hightower’s wagon approaching the plantation, from the dirt road along side the house, she ran down the hill, as if in a trot, almost head first as if to keep pace with the velocity of the nearing wagon, and right to the back side door of the kitchen she scrambled to and then through, into the kitchen and sat down behind the table, her table where she cut up most everything, and huffed and puffed to get her air back into her lungs. She was not young, nor slim; it was all she could do for the moment.
When Shep entered the house, he was still talking to himself, as usual, ‘…it didn’t take him long to get over the death of Judith,’ his wife, mumbled Mammy Mae, she was talking to the baby actually, little Charles, in the kitchen, him standing by her chair, holding onto her leg. She had taken him out of his crib, woke him up, there was three cribs in the house. In his bedroom, in the kitchen, so Mammy could watch him, and one in the main room by the fire place, so Shep could look at him at night by the heath.
She still had peanuts in her hands, she quickly put them back into the dish she had earlier taken them from, and they were moistened with her sweat.
“The town is too small for me,” said Shep aloud, so Mammy could hear.
“Dont New Orleans need folk like you…” whispered Mammy, playing with little Charles.
“What did you say?” asked Shep.
“I says, Mr. Hightower, dat dere tooth of Charles is jes’ peeking out…of de roof…!”
“How long do you reckon it will take for it to surface…I mean come out all the way?”
Before she could answer, Shep’s mind was back on money matters.
“You know where he’s at now…?” said Shep.
“Who!” asked Mammy?
“That banker, Mr. J. Ritt?”
“He dere in Ozark I reckon so,” said Mammy.
“No, he never got that far, he was in New Orleans with me, saw him there, I bet…him I’d beat him back home, .85-cents bet.”
He had run the horse almost to the graveyard to win that bet. Then he started laughing. “But tomorrow I’ll see him, get my money,” then he went and grabbed a handful of peanuts’, “I bet him .85-cents…” he said again, assuming Mammy didn’t hear him because she didn’t pay him any attention when he said it the first time. This time she looked up at him, away from little Charles and said, “Yous dont say…”; then speaking softly to little Charles, as Shep walked away, she said, “I dont think you’ pa knowd you mama is buried up dere on dat hill, buried up yonder, but I reckon I won’ forget.”