LITMIR.BIZ

      1.

      My Testament

      I was born Charles Gilbert Mears on August 21 in Southampton County, Virginia, during the financial panic of 1893. Mother told me the midwife moved her pallet onto the gallery to catch the breeze. She spread damp cloths over my mother and the two of them prayed for nightfall. The midwife sang, “Bend down, Jesus, bend down low!” I was born at twilight. Mother said from that evening on nothing was so restful to her as listening to the ratchet of katydids in the gloaming.

      I never knew my father. In the tintypes he is a big man with a full beard. Mother looks slender as a lily next to him. The month before I was born, he traveled west to find work. The Southampton Bank & Trust failed and took his business with it. He never returned to my mother and me, but never did I hear her speak an ill word against him.

      Before the panic my father had a thriving freight business with three heavy wagons, teamsters who were sober and reliable, and six pairs of mules. For a while he made ends meet by bartering to haul goods and equipment. Then even grain for the mules grew scarce. He sold the mules, but no one had money for the wagons. They were all that was left, abandoned in a field behind our house. I remember leaping from their sideboards to slay Yankee cavalrymen, the rusty wagon springs creaking. When the days grew hot, I rested in their shade, listening to cicadas in the trees. Beyond the wheel spokes the wide, barren fields shimmered in the sun.

      The money from the mules my father gave to my mother. He kept enough to make passage to Provo, Utah. He was hired as a laborer to build a railroad spur from Salt Lake. My parents exchanged letters until after I was born. Then my mother’s envelopes were returned. Rumor had it Father was killed in a brawl with an Irishman. I didn’t know if that was true or if he

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