***
By the end of that year, 1898, the Delaney house had seen some changes thanks to our liquid assets in the garden. My pa quit his job at the Shelby County Bank and bought a used Olds gasoline buggy in dark green for two hundred dollars, one of only seven automobiles in the town. Though the cooler days tempered the demand for the spring water, we were still earning about fifteen dollars a week. Heads turned in our direction when we went to town accompanied by the coughs, spits and smoke of our horseless carriage. People smiled on our entrance and sneered on our leaving and I saw it all. I found out that year that money makes people mean, but not having it makes them meaner.
"Your father thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow," Willie Jelks told me when we were fishing the Locksley Creek one day.
"You take that back," I screamed, but he wouldn't.
Jenny too came home in tears from school, saying to anyone who would listen to her that the kids had said mean things about our pa.
"Even worse, they said things about me," she complained. Jenny didn't give a thought to the new dresses and bonnets that our pa had bought for her thanks to the Delaney Spring.
Just before Christmas, old man Clement Pettigrew, seventy years if he were a day, came to visit my pa. I stood on the staircase and made sure my feet didn't hit a creak.
"Mr. Mullard, my family has shown patience with the water on our property, but we seek now a fair solution," Mr. Pettigrew said. I'd seen only the white hair on his head as he was led into the drawing room, but that voice of his, scratchy as a barrel of corn husks, rose up to where I was eavesdropping. "The wall is in imminent danger of collapse and our land is sodden and unusable. We have had all the drawbacks of the thing, but none of the benefits." He spat out the consonants of that final word and they echoed around the fine beams of the house.
He threatened to use the courts and left nobody in any doubt he wanted his palms crossed with something that glittered, or at least promised to pay the bearer. When he left, my ma was furious.
"Those drunkards want to put their dirty hands on our money, Win. Clement Pettigrew is so crooked he could hide behind a corkscrew, not a sincere bone in his body. You know that!"
"I know," my pa replied, "but he'll fight us in the courts. They might be insolent folk, but they're well connected in the county."
"We have the money now, Win. We don't need to bow down to anyone, certainly not their sort. I'd love to buy the Pettigrews for what they're worth and sell them for what they think they're worth!"
There followed a silence. My pa was right. No Olds gasoline buggy or a bucketful of water could change five generations of south-east Alabama breeding. The Pettigrews had been walking in tall cotton since Napoleon was in knee pants. The Mullards were a decent, hard-working family but it was no contest.
An angry atmosphere filled the house for days afterwards and Jenny told me she'd heard that my pa had agreed to pay the Pettigrews twenty dollars a month for 'property repair and upkeep'. My ma was angry, telling my pa he was stupid, stubborn, everything under the sun.
Early in the new year, it was Liberty, more slothful mule than dog, who came inside the house one day and let us know things had changed. He sauntered over to the pantry and began licking the cool stone floor, a sure sign that he had a thirst on him. He had never been able to push himself up onto the trough, satisfying himself instead with the drippings from the faucet and we never charged him no five cents for it.
We went to the spring and saw there was nothing going into the trough. The wooden slats that were joined to make the sluice were drier than a lizard's tongue. My pa turned the faucet this way and that but nothing.
"Well, I'll be," he said.
By the next morning, the tall Mr. Stephenson was back, pencil behind his ear. Once the stand and faucet had been removed, he prodded away at the ants' hole with a tall stick, which he pulled out dry.
"Win, she's gone and dried up on you. I said at the time it could happen. I'm sorry."
My pa looked as though he'd found a nickel and lost a dollar. My ma took his hand and gave it a squeeze.
"We have a good deal of money put to one side, Win," she said.
As fast as the extra wealth had come, it was gone. My pa sold the Olds and settled up with the Pettigrews to fix up the wall. Jenny was in tears thinking she would have to give back her bonnets, but our pa said there'd be no need for that. I kept my new hoop and train set too. Those damn ants were back in the garden by the spring though and Liberty, slower now than maple syrup, learned to steer clear of them.
I didn't know the numbers, but I guessed we had money now, maybe not the old money of the Pettigrews, but enough to think about leaving the Delaney house. My ma held my pa's hand and said we had enough to buy a place on the edge of town if he wanted, away from the cramped backyards.
"I like it plenty here," he replied. And my ma's smile said she did too.
We stayed on Delaney and the sun cracked the earth where the water had come from and the ants ran free. The trough and drums were gone and we'd thrown the sign from the front yard down into the basement with the sluice slats. We still had the house though and its fine beams and noble aspect. And then my new little sister arrived and we soon forgot the time we'd been rich. But that's another story and perhaps Jenny can tell it better than me.
***
About the author:
Benjamin is a 40-year old Londoner who lives in the south of England with his dogs and his books in a house nearly as old as him. He only took up fiction writing very recently and is busy making up for lost time. He has stories coming out this year in the Lowestoft Chronicle and the 100 Lightnings anthology
Connect:
Benjamin Kensey has an author blog that you can find here: https://benjaminkensey.blogspot.com/
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