The Year in a Box

This is the way it was told to me:

Evelyn was just turned fifteen when, on a lovely April morning, she and her two younger sisters were allowed a Saturday diversion from their chores... a picnic. They cleared a spot beneath a pecan tree in the front yard to spread a blanket. The trees were in bloom. The azaleas soon would be. The sun was warm again, the wind soft.

Pearl made light. Susannah laughed. Evelyn bided the time, enjoying a rest. Life on the farm was hard. She was the oldest, but Evelyn understood the younger girls’ childish desires to play. She even joined in, strumming her guitar before giving blessings for the food in the basket, for her sisters on the blanket, as well as blessings for their mother in the house, and their father in the fields. The girls unwrapped their simple meal of cornbread and butter from its cotton napkins.

He trotted down from the Hatley side of the farm’s road. He road bareback, shoeless and shirtless, his skin still pale with winter. He drew rein when he saw them, wheeling his horse from the road and right up to the girls' blanket. The ground beneath Evelyn shook when the animal stomped a heavy foot, and blew through its nostrils. She was a tad frightened. The rider saved his longest look for her. She had never been wanted. It was a new feeling, but rich.

”Hi.”

She would have mounted behind him then and there, had he asked. She would have ridden away with him, but done right these things take a little more time.

When he was gone the younger girls looked wide-eyed at their sister. Evelyn was the smart one, the mature one. What had happened seemed out of her character, but nothing had happened, had it? Oh no, they all three knew it, as surely as they knew there was a God, “something” had most definitely happened. But what?

”That,” Evelyn stated unabashedly, “was the most beautiful boy I have ever seen.” Her siblings were struck dumb.

When he returned it was appropriately, in shirt and shoes. They were married within weeks, and were with child within months. They had only three years together as husband and wife. Two of those three years he spent in the war, Italy, while she raised their baby alone. He would never return.

It would be even sadder, the story, but for that one year, the one they spent together.

She called it, “that year with him” when she would talk about it, but she rarely would. The sweet, warm memories became painful when spoken aloud, so they stayed inside, tied away from curious ears with pink and blue ribbons. Everyone assumed it had been a bad time for her, and an ungodly one, but no, it had not been that. It had not been that at all.

It had been a year of music and laughter. A year of guilt free passions and unrestrained lusts, but it was never ungodly, that year. In fact, she had felt closer to God than ever before. It was over quickly, but her year would have to be enough, wouldn’t it, as it was all the time given them? When the daughter grew to ask questions about the Daddy she never knew, Evelyn shrugged them off. “That was a long time ago Punkin’, now go fetch the milk.”

But she kept the letters, Evelyn did, and the postcards. She kept the pictures, and the guitar, and the harmonica. She kept them in a box along with her memories, where she seldom loosened the ribbons that held it tight. There was little time for him anymore. There was little time for memories of happiness, or love. There was little time for that year in the box.

There was little time at all, Evelyn knew, what with the factory work, and a young one at home. What time was left should be spent with the living. After all, a woman needed more than a box, and so did a child.