The Scryer ✔️

~Tears and Corn Pie~

I had found a suitably tasteful black dress to wear at the consignment shop along with a pair of shoes and a handbag. All in all, the ensemble cost me six dollars; I was pretty proud of myself. I also found a nice suit that would fit John; I got his for five dollars; I just needed to find a nice button-up shirt and a subdued tie was all.

The night before my Papa was to be laid to rest, I helped my Mam get the house ready for visitors. Every time I moved past my father's body, I kept expecting it to sit up and light his pipe.

I looked at the body that once housed the soul of Samuel Zook...how he always seemed larger that life, how like if he had wanted, could take flight to reach his wife or one of their children at a moment's notice if and when he were needed. I realized only then that I had never heard his voice raised in anger, but always with mirth and happiness and laughter. No, his business voice was always low and quiet...he had a way of making you listen to him and do whatever he directed you to do...it was the darnedest thing. His eyes always held a deep knowing, as if he knew the world's history and all the wiser for it. And his love for my mother was unequaled and I prayed that John loved me at least half as much.

I knelt down and felt my fingers comb through his thinned gray hair. I touched his face, his hands and his feet; his body was room temperature, but it felt cold to me. Cold and empty. Aware that my mother was watching me, I stood abruptly and turned away.

"I wish sometimes that I can hear him the way that you can, Hannah."

"I can't hear him, Mam," I confessed. "I see him but only barely and I can tell that he's talking, but I do not hear him."

"Oh," she replied.

I felt my eyes move to the side to see his spirit moving toward me and I closed my eyes. Suddenly, the air around me became eerily cold. I saw my breath, even Mam saw it. She shook her head and backed away, then sent one of my brothers to fetch David.

Within a few minutes, David was pulling me away from my father's angry specter and took me outside. "I apologize Hannah, but I couldn't take his yelling at you. He wants to know why it is that you cannot accept his death? You cannot change it..."

I shook my head as I lowered my eyes.

"Papa," David warned; I looked up at him. "Give her a chance to explain herself! You OWE her that! We all do!"

Even with the summer's heat and humidity, I still felt the cold on me making the tears that streamed down my face feel hot by comparison.

"Well, what do you think it is then, Papa!" David bellowed. I heard a silence and then David spoke again. "Yes, I remember Princess Kitty...so?"

I felt a laugh brewing in my belly. I think that I laughed so hard that I started crying again.

"Papa never did let you see her, did he?"

I shook my head. "If I remember correctly, I wouldn't have let me see them either. I think that I remember Sam saying that she was flatter than a flapjack and I went through the house screaming for my cat."

David nodded; Papa was the one who had found our cat in the middle of the street with a dead kitten an inch or two near; someone had run her over as well as one of her babies. My brothers fetched the other kittens and I became their surrogate mother, staying up till all hours, feeding them for weeks...

"I still cringe when I pass the place where she died...I prayed so hard to God that she hadn't felt any pain. And I pray that Papa didn't feel any pain...some do you know?"

Well.

"Well what," I asked.

Is that the way of it, Hannah?