How the Soul Sings

Chapter One

**I will be posting chapters of this story in installments until it's finished. Thanks for reading & for your support!**

How the Soul Sings

By

April Johnston

"Do your little bit of good where you are; it is those little bits of good put all together that overwhelm the world." - Desmond Tutu

In the summer of '69, I was eleven and we still lived in Oklahoma. I road my yellow Schwinn along dirt roads lined with rows of corn as tall as I was. The trees were thick with leaves and the air humid; there was no such thing as a cool, dry place. The farmer's irrigation ditch was as close as I could get to a place to swim without going into town. I'd stop in the heat of the day and wade down in one, just enough to splash water all over myself before hopping back on my bike to ride off to whatever adventure I thought was waiting for me - an abandoned house missing all its windows, a rusty old grain silo, another resting field to explore or just park my bike by the railroad tracks and follow them for a while, balancing myself along a rail.

Late one afternoon, I swung around the fence post into our driveway, kicking up a little dust with me and saw that one of the Hutchens' boys was helping Momma unload something out of the back of her truck. Next, I saw the passenger side door come open and Momma in a hurry to get around to that side with Willa Jane close behind. Together they squeezed side by side and reached into the cab of the truck and pull someone forward, then lifted him up and lowered him down to a wheelchair that was behind them. It was my cousin Daniel.

I parked my bike against the giant willow tree in our yard that was about as old as Grandma Evee and hurried on over to the front porch. "Now be quiet and stay out of the way until they get him settled; your cousin's just come home from war." Grandma Evee tells me. She's not really my grandmother; that much would have been obvious as she was colored and I was not. She was Willa Jane's grandmother and great-grandma to all of the Hutchens' children, Jesse, Daisy and Caesar. But everyone called her Grandma Evee. It was easy for her to be like everyone's grandmother, she just had that way about her. She used to make me read Shakespeare out loud to her and she'd recite just about every line from heart as I read it. She could recall lines from 'Macbeth' like they were her favorite Bible verse. I asked her why she made me read it to her if she already knew the words and she said because it was good for me and gave me "culture".

"People don't talk real elegantly like that no mo', go on, keep going." She told me. She'd close her eyes and tilt her head back and I could see the words practically leap off her lips like she was savoring them like a sweet and juicy peach as I read each verse. I had to read a lot of things to her on account of her cataracts; they practically left her blind. She could still see shadows and make out people and things if she needed to, but words on a page were gone to her forever. "Read me that 'Dear Abby' column for this week again, Charlotte."

"Dear Abby, My husband likes to often invite guests over at the spur of the moment to dinner, when I practically already have things planned and on the table for just the two of us. It's not that easy to suddenly plan another meal to feed one or even three more people. What do you suggest that I do? Sincerely, Janet H. Dear Janet, tell him, 'Well, I guess it looks like we'll be going out for dinner!'"

Grandma Evee chuckles. "I can't disagree with that. Though, I'd tell him that if he was to keep doin' like that, that he'd have to find a way to fix his own damn suppa."

The day that my cousin Daniel came home from Vietnam, Momma, Willa Jane and her daughter, Daisy, had already set up a twin bed on the back, screened in porch, until Momma could clear out her study for him. Under the bed I saw that there were a couple of porcelain enamel bedpans and a portable metal toilet chair next to it. Daisy was finishing up hanging curtains on rods around the windows, I assumed to give Cousin Daniel privacy, when Momma wheeled him in.