Agnes looked at the place with a tremendous sigh of disappointment. The old Victorian house in front of them beckoned menacingly, white with dark green shutters hanging loosely by the windows, paint pealing off the walls, a broken swing on the house’s surrounding front porch, a fallen tree bisecting the front yard. She could not see inside the windows, for the reflection of the sky’s glassy gray obscured the view. Two goats were eating grass in the yard. A barn that was partly burned sat to the left of the house, its door wide open and blowing in the wind.
Gracie Honeywalker spoke. "Lord Jesus, Miz Agnes, you done come to the right place to birth your baby. Come on over here, let me have a look-see, and we'll go inside the house and get you cozy.”
Agnes hesitated, looking at the house, unsure of what to do.
“Ah, don’t you mind the house. It ain’t so pretty but it sure’s the right place for your baby being born.”
Agnes cried in shock when they entered the darkness of the house. A long hallway cut it in half and a narrow decrepit staircase led to dark nothingness. The house smelled of rain and rueful neglect; the spare furniture in the living room sagged right down to the dirty floor. The dining room opposite had a small table, one leg broken, and two hard wooden chairs. A red-haired chicken pecked at bird seed strewn about the floor below the table. Agnes’s eyes came to rest on the portrait of a man with a broad, bearded black face, pride and defiance emanating from the frame.
“That was my pa. Half Cherokee he was. He fought for Lincoln in the Civil War. Died in ‘64. We was freed from Kentucky back in the late ‘50s and come on up here. I done lived on this place since I was a little girl. Runned it all myself ever since my husband died back in ‘85.”
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