CHAPTER 1

On a hot, dog-day Saturday morning in August of 1957, I stood on the back porch of Aunt Victoria Amelia Caldonia Davenport’s house and knocked on her screen door. I rubbed her gray cat, Smokey, and inhaled the delicious fragrance of the boxwoods beside the porch.
“Aunt Vic” was not my aunt. In fact, she was nobody’s aunt, and yet she was everybody’s. She often dressed in black, from her wide-brimmed witch-like hat down to her low-heeled black tie shoes.
“Calvin Jackson, come on in. I’m glad to see you,” she greeted me with her deep, slow drawl and her twinkling blue eyes. (I sometimes wondered if she really was as glad to see me as she professed.) “What brings you out so early on this pretty mornin’?” she asked as I entered.
“Mama said our hens have been layin’ up here again,” I answered.
“They sure have. They seem to like it over here for some reason.” She took my basket, went to her refrigerator, and began to transfer eggs from a large bowl.
Aunt Vic cooked on a wood stove, and it was still hot as I entered the kitchen that morning. “I just baked a cake, Calvin. You want to sop the bowls?” she asked, already knowing the answer and handing me a spoon.
“Yes ma’am,” I said as I took a chair at her table and began to indulge myself. “It’s good!” I declared. “You must have got up early if you already made a cake.”
“Well, I always get up early. You know I like to take my Bible and coffee and get out there on the front porch before the sun comes up and read my scriptures and talk to the Lord. I like to see the sun peep up over the mountain. It’s comes up as easy and
peaceful as a baby’s sigh. Of course, when it’s cold, I just set inside by the winder and watch it.”
“Yeah, it is pretty. I guess I ain’t noticed it that much,” I said, licking the spoon.
“Today though, I had to make Jessie a birthday cake. She’s ten today. She’s a little younger than you, I reckon,” she said, taking a seat at the table.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m almost eleven and a half.”
“I hope you’re goin’ to be lookin’ after her when school starts,” Aunt Vic said, peering at me over her glasses. “It’ll be hard for her startin’ a new school and all. That reminds me,” she said, getting up and going into the living room. I followed with my bowl and spoon. “Now you’ll tell all the others about my pictures, won’t you?”
“Yes ma’am. You want everybody to bring you a school picture as soon we get ‘em,” I said.
Aunt Vic sat on her couch scanning the coffee table in front of her. Under the table’s glass top were the most recent photos of all the neighborhood children. When one graduated or quit school, Aunt Vic moved his picture to one of the two shelves under the table. Beside her couch was an end table with a drawer containing countless letters from her “children” who had moved away, joined the service, and even one who had gone off to college. There were also newspaper clippings about weddings, births, deaths, and family reunions.
Under the side window, a floor-model Philco radio was playing Ernest Tubb’s “I’m Walking the Floor over You.” That was followed by songs by three Hanks: Williams, Thompson and Snow. The latter was singing about “movin’ on”.
After looking over the pictures for a few minutes, she said, nodding toward the radio, “You know, after I have my time with the Lord, I always turn on the music. It’s a lot of company to a body that lives alone.”
“I like it, too,” I said. “My granddaddy turns ours on early. Sometimes I wish he wouldn’t on days I don’t have to get up early for school.”
Looking at my last year’s picture and back at me, she said, “Calvin, I know I said it before, but you’re your grandmother made over. You got her light hair and same blue eyes. Me and Corie was best of friends. I still miss her after all these years.”
“I never got to see her. She died before I was born.”
“I know it. Sometimes, when I look at you, I feel like she’s still with us.” Just then there was a knock at the back door. “Come on in,” Aunt Vic responded, evidently knowing who it would be.
“Aunt Vic,” called the voice of Molly Myers.Molly, Aunt Vic’s next-door neighbor, entered with her daughter Jessie.
“We’re in here,” answered Aunt Vic.
Mother and daughter joined us in the living room and greeted me as they took their seats on the sofa beside Aunt Vic.
Molly was an attractive, twenty-eight year old woman with round brown eyes, auburn hair, and a smile she wore easily—in spite of her circumstances. Jessie was a smaller version of her mother, but her smile, in my judgment, hadn’t been perfected. She viewed the world through eyeglasses with light blue frames.
“Jessie,” said Aunt Vic, “I told your mammy to bring you over this mornin’ because I was makin’ you a birthday cake. She said your favorite was white cake with chocolate icing, so that's what I made."
“Yeah, and it’s good,” I said. “I already sampled it,” I added, eliciting a sharp look from Jessie.
“You gotta watch Cal,” laughed Aunt Vic. “He likes to tease. He also likes desserts. I’ve seen him get shed of a lot of pies and cakes.”
“Thank you a lot for my cake,” Jessie said as she hugged Aunt Vic.
“That was very sweet of you,” added Molly. “So, that’s why you asked me when her birthday was.”
“Oh, I just like to help celebrate birthdays.”
Jessie probably thought she was starting to establish herself as the favorite among Aunt Vic’s neighborhood children, but I could have told her otherwise. I had long ago been singled out for that distinction.