Chapter 6
1958
Fifty years ago, in a small town in the foothills of the
Ozarks, Jane Matthews was feeding the chickens. She had already weeded the vegetable garden, pulled in the
washing off the line, and put the dinner on to cook. It was only a matter of time before her husband Howard would
come in from working in the store, put his hat on the rack, wash his hands, and
sit down at the table for his dinner.
There were three different Arkansas back then. There was the swampy flat lands where
mosquitoes swarmed, blackening your arms and face before leaving them with the
red itchy welts that lasted for a week.
Rice grew there, and ducks flew there, and hunters shot and killed those
ducks, well fed on rice and mosquitoes, probably, and folks all over Arkansas
ate those fat ducks when they could get one.
There was the Little Rock Arkansas, with its high curbs,
brick buildings, and a teachers’ college.
Jane had gone there, and had her teacher’s certificate from there. Folks were mighty narrow-minded for sophisticated City folk, and judged
anyone and everyone. You might
think a small town would be worse, but there was no place more judgmental, at least
in Jane’s eyes, than Little Rock.
And she had good reason to know.
Then there was the Ozarks. The prettiest part of all of Arkansas, the mountains rose up
out of the flat swamps, cooling the air, and leaving the hellacious mosquitoes
behind. There were green trees,
flowers, rocks, and sweet little towns where folks minded their own business,
and spoke kindly of their neighbors.
Jane taught third and fourth grade in a school that served two of those
towns, and had a home with a vegetable garden and a chicken yard on the
outskirts of one of them.
Most people, white people and colored people too, as they
said then, had vegetable gardens, some had chickens, too. You didn’t eat meat every day, but you
could have a nice egg omelet with your vegetables, and chicken or duck every
Sunday of the year after Church if you wanted to. Jane liked it there, and she liked her chickens, her
vegetables, her school, and her husband.
And most of all, she loved her son, Ezekiel, now a strapping boy of ten,
who made her life worthwhile.
In the Ozarks, no one counted backwards to see if your
little boy was started before or after the preacher blessed your union. Babies were sacred, and fathers were
dear, dear men to have around, and chasing either one away would have been a
crying shame. So folks just let
you be.
Jane finished scattering the feed and was ready to turn in
to the house, check on the vegetables simmering gently in the pork broth, when
something bright caught her eye.
Some of that mica from the mountain rocks, no doubt. Jane had learned a little about geology
at teachers’ college, just in case she was called upon to teach a little
science, and she knew that rocks sometimes had quartz, or mica, or other bright
specks. Little pebbles were actually good for chickens, or so they said, it
helped them digest their food, so Jane was ready to leave it be. But this looked like it could be a
piece of glass, and that could cut up a chicken’s gullet like nobody’s
business, so Jane went back out into the yard.
The hen flapped at Jane, telling her to stay away from the
prize, but Jane flapped her apron right back at the hen. A bit of squawking and the hen realized
she’d been out-flapped, and yielded the territory. Jane bent down and picked up the piece of glass. It sparkled like nothing she had ever
seen before in her whole life. It
was unbelievable. She turned it
over in her hand, staring.
Jane had heard tales of diamonds in the Ozarks, but no one
really believed the stories. Her
hand got wet holding the stone. It
was huge. It wasn’t cut like the
diamonds in the engagement rings she’d seen in Little Rock, engagement rings
that she and Howard had only glanced at, sheepishly, when it was already too
late for a ring. This rock was
big, about the size of a robin’s egg, sort of oval in shape, a little rough at
the edges. If it was really a
diamond, it was enormous.
Jane was still turning the rock over in her hand when the
front door clacked. “Mom! Mom!” Zeke was hollering.
Jane slipped the stone into her apron pocket.
“Guess what?”
Zeke’s blond hair fell straight down into his face, his pink cheeks
ruddier than usual. “Guess what?”
“What?” Jane said, quickly walking into the house.
“They’re gonna have planes come, and Army guys, and they’re
gonna have a show for the people with the planes!”
“Really?” Jane said.
She’d heard something about that at the school, but no one really knew
much about the plan.
“Yep. There’s
gonna be stunt flying, and rides, and everything!”
“Well, that’s great, Zeke. Guess you’re going to want to go, huh?”
“You bet, Mom.
And it’s gonna be free, too.”
“I should hope so, son,” Howard’s voice came from behind
them. “After all, it’s your
government, and your army, and your planes. And don’t you forget it. Everything that the government owns belongs to you.”
“Hi, pops,” Zeke said, holding out his hand. Howard shook it. They had done that every day for
years.
“Wash up, dinner’s ready,” Jane said, fingering the rock in
her apron pocket. She would wait
until Zeke had gone to bed before showing Howard her find.
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