Morning Is a Long Time Coming Read Online Free

speck of color as she held onto that door for dear life.”
    “I did get a little warm,” I admitted cheerfully, “under this old black gown, so I went out to the bubbler for a drink.”
    My mother was quickly approaching, but from fifteen or twenty feet away, she called out, “Did you really faint?”
    Some five or six people nearby, including Mr. Casper Willis and his spinster daughter, Rachel, who had been unaware of the incident, turned to gape at me. Probably they were very annoyed to have missed out on the greatest drama since that Sunday morning Reverend Benn preached from the pulpit with a freshly blackened eye.
    Maybe they’re thinking that if I truly cared about their amusement, I’d stage something really interesting. Perhapsthe ancient and honorable Japanese ritual of disembowelment or, at the very least, an epileptic seizure, preferably grand mal.
    Within reaching out and touching distance, my mother came to an abrupt halt. “Well, what’s wrong with you?”
    “I got so hot wearing this old black gown that I had to go outside to the bubbler for a drink.”
    She looked at me suspiciously as though some valuable tidbit was being withheld from her. “Tell the truth, you were sick to your stomach again, now weren’t you?”
    “I already told you.”
    “This is the third time lately. Somebody must have said boo to you,” she said loudly enough to satisfy Rachel Willis’s ongoing interest in Mother’s observations.
    “No, nobody said boo to me, honest.”
    “Well, somebody must have,” she insisted. “Because every time someone says boo to you, you vomit.”

3
    A T TEN MINUTES AFTER FOUR (exactly one hundred thirty minutes after the start of the graduation ceremonies) all six of us crowded into my father’s sun-baked Chevy. When he zoomed on down Highway 64, neglecting to take the first right turn which would have taken us through the two business and the two residential blocks which comprise Jenkinsville, Arkansas (population 1,170), I knew that he wanted to cool off his car.
    On the other side of Bud’s Gulf station, my father tapped on the right-hand side of his windshield. “Look over there, Sam. That red brick house going up.”
    When Grandpa acknowledged seeing what someday soon was going to be a “nice little house,” my father continued, “You’re a real estate man, Sam. How many good houses would you guess have been built here in Jenkinsville in the last five years?”
    “Oh, not many. Not more than four or five a year since the end of the war. Twenty, twenty-five, say thirty houses in all.”
    “I’ll tell you better’n that,” said my father. “That’s only the second house of any kind that’s been built here since the war. This town is stagnating!”
    “Lots of up-north industries, Harry, are looking for quiet places with cheap labor. First thing you have to do is band together with the other merchants.”
    My father made a hissing sound. “I’d sooner band together with a bunch of rattlesnakes. Once we had us the Jenkinsville Mercantile Association. It was back during the war when everybody was making a buck. There was six of us leading merchants who (thanks to me) were real successful in getting people for miles around to come into town on a weekday. We handed out free tickets every Wednesday, every time anybody made a purchase.
    “And at exactly eight o’clock on Wednesday night, there’d be a drawing in front of the picture show and that’s when the grand prize of fifteen dollars was handed out. Well, Jesus H. Christ, you never saw so many people crowding into one small town in your life. From as far away asCherry Valley they chugged into town in old trucks and battered cars that cranked from the front.”
    “And I’ll never for the life of me forget,” added my mother, “the preacher’s wife coming into the store fit to be tied, telling us that we were playing Satan’s game by luring folks into town on a weekday. ‘Why,’ she complained in that whiny