This morning I saw Marvin Hankerson. He was on his way to the cemetery and was carrying his usual rose to put on Lee Lee's grave. It's been over five years since she passed on and I don't reckon Marvin has miss a single day visiting her. He stopped to talk with me a minute and I commented on his faithfulness to his love one. He said, "You know, Uncle Harvey Lee, people say I must be crazy. My brother is driving around in a fine car and living in a fine house. He has everything a fellow could want. And I live in a trailer on the other side of the lake and have to walk everywhere I go. I will probably never do better than manual labor and will probably never go anywhere outside of Harper. But you know what, Uncle Harvey Lee, I would trade the memory of a single day living with Lee Lee for any of that. People don't know and will never know what we had."
I watched Marvin as he made his way down the road toward his beloved's resting place. And I thought of that sad day when she passed on. I was reminded how many people around her took it as justice from above. That was the saddest part of that day, in my mind.
Tales of Harper, short stories and poems
about the fictional town of Harper, Mississippi is available on Amazon Kindle
Coming soon: More Tales of Harper (an ebook on Amazon)
No comments:
Post a Comment