A Good Boy, Bradley

Abstract

FICTION A Good Boy, Bradley Laura Weddle It was the first day ofJuly and hotter than blazes. Nellie Grimes sat on her front porch, rocking, and breaking the last of the summer's beans. Her knotted little claw-like hands worked with mechanical precision, almost independently of her mind and body. As she worked, her eyes darted around the yard, taking in the sagging front gate, the broken bottom porch step, and the weather-beaten mailbox leaning drunkenly to one side. She could count at least six things that needed fixing in the front yard alone, never mind the back yard and the barn. She was trying to figure out a way to get her nephew Bradley to come up and do some work for her. He was just fifteen, but big and strapping like his daddy, and a good hard worker. Not too smart, as far as she could tell. Had a faraway, meandering look about his eyes that sometimes made her wonder if there was anybody home. Nellie was alone, and had been for so long she hardly even noticed it anymore. Mr. Ben had let her stay on in the tenant house after Spencer died ten years ago. Then when his granddaughter, Nora, inherited the farm, she had never asked Nellie to move either, and all they ever expected was for her to keep things up in reasonably good repair. That never had been a problem until just the last couple of years. Hard work was as natural as walking or breathing, but lately the pains in her hip joint made it hard to get up when she was down, much less fix a broken gate or plant a mailbox post. So she sat there and plotted and schemed about how to get Bradley to come and do the chores, without having to pay him an arm and a leg. It was ridiculous. The boy wanted five dollars for every day's work he did around the place, and him her blood kin. Nellie had a good view of the road and fields around the farm, situated as she was on a little rise, and her porch another ten feet off the ground. A dark green line of trees over to the right stood like sentinels between her house and the rocky banks of Harrison Lake. Laura Weddle, Somerset, Kentucky, is a retired Pikeville College professor, andfreelance writer. 38 The county road ran by in front of her house, and most weekends during the summer, a stream of cars pulling boats or trailers would head for the cool shelter of camping and fishing sites on the lake. She had almost finished breaking the beans when she saw dust rising, a long way down the road. She watched idly as the cloud came closer to her gate, and when it moved past, she saw that it had been raised by a big black car she'd never seen before. Nellie squinted to try to get a better view. She set the pan of beans aside and eased up to walk over to the porch railing. "Ohhh," she breathed, and rubbed her hip. She held on to the back of the rocker, and stretched out her other arm to catch the rail. Above all things she dreaded the thought of falling, alone as she was out there. The car had passed her gate and gone on down the road, obviously in a hurry to get somewhere. Nellie was about to turn around to get her beans and take them into the kitchen, when she saw the car stop in the road and two men in dark suits get out. Now what on earth are they stopping out here for? she wondered. They sure weren't fishermen, and there wasn't much to see around here, at least nothing worth stopping a car for. She was puzzling it over when a curious thing happened. The two men looked up toward her house, then turned to face each other. From where she stood, they appeared to be arguing, and although she could not hear words from that distance, she had the impression that the discussion was heated. While she stood peering...