A Day In Cascilla

Alice Mae died of some kind of female trouble in 1933.  Dorothy was 14, Rebecca was 10, and Bobby was 8.  She had been the glue that held the family together.  With their mother now dead and buried, Daddy Charles hardly ever worked in the cotton field or their vegetable garden; the three children had to chop down weeds and drag water from the well.  They ate beans, potatoes, or cabbage every day.  When there were left over biscuits, Dorothy made bread pudding by adding warm milk and sugar to the biscuits.  They drank milk from the cow until one day when the girls went to milk her she lay dead at the end of her rope.  Rebecca cried and cried.  She thought that if Mama died and the cow died they would be next.  Dorothy told her not to worry.  She told her that Mama was an angel now and she would watch over them.

But in a way the dead cow was worse because it had been so sudden.  One day it was standing up eating grass and the next day it lay dead.  Their mother had been sick for a year and she had died little by little.  She prepared the girls for her death.  She gave each girl a thin gold wedding band.  One was hers and one belonged to their grandmother.  The girls wore the rings around their necks on ribbons their mother had taken from the bodice of her wedding gown.  It had not been a store bought dress but one made by Esther Volney, Charles grandma.  Alice Mae had worn the dress only on special occasions, so it was still pretty.  Perhaps she had saved it to be buried in, and so she was.

After the cow died Daddy gave the task of burial to Dorothy, Bobby and Rebecca.  The ground on the edge of the cotton field where Daddy wanted the cow buried was as hard as any rock and the three were making little headway.  Flies were all over the cow now and she did not smell too fresh.  Their Daddy seeing that it would be forever and a day before they had a hole big enough to put the cow in, decided he better walk over to his friend Tobie Nelson’s house. There he would get Toby and his shovel to help dig a big hole before the cow started stinking up the whole neighborhood.  Before coming back they stopped off to get two bottles of liquor to steady their nerves for the task ahead.  Tobie carried his shovel over his shoulder and his bottle under his arm.  Daddy carried Tobie’s pickaxe and his bottle open ready to take a sip.

Before the two started to work, they sat down on the ground beside the small circle where the children moved the dirt around. This was done in an effort to do what their Daddy had told them to do.  The men opened their liquor bottles and took a few swallows.  The children watched from the back steps.

Charles yelled for Bobby to bring them some kindling to drive into the ground to mark the burial pit.  Tobie started with the pickaxe, slamming it into the hard ground.  Daddy shoveled the dirt and Bobby pulled what dirt he could with the other shovel.  Working with the pickaxe was by far the hardest work so the men switched off using it.  Soon it began to get dark and Daddy called for the girls to get the kerosene wick lanterns to give them more light.  Daddy sent them back to the house to get the kitchen chairs to set the lanterns on so the light would spread out further.  The liquor made the men silly and they dug and laughed and dug and cussed that old cow to kingdom come.

Digging the hole was only part of the problem.  Getting the cow in the hole was even harder.  Tobie walked home to get his truck.  They tied the cow to the back of the truck and pulled her near the hole.  But being near the hole and in the hole were two different matters so they untied the ropes from the truck and drove back to the bootleggers to get more whiskey and to talk some men into coming back with them to pull the cow in the hole.

The five men and Bobby pulled on the ropes and dragged that cow into its grave.  Everybody clapped and hooted and took a long swig on the bottle of liquor, even Bobby.  The three men said they were sorry but they could not stay and help fill up the hole but they better walk on home while they could still stand up.  It seems that they had been hanging around the bootleggers all day playing poker and drinking.

It was now near the middle of the night and Tobie and Daddy were three sheets to the wind and the hole still needed to be filled in.  Tobie and Daddy were singing and dancing around the hole.  Tobie stumbled on the dirt clods and fell into the hole on top of the cow.  Daddy cracked up laughing while Tobie invented some new words with cow in them.  Dorothy and Daddy pulled Tobie out of the cow grave and the men decided to get some sleep and leave the filling in until the next day.