Fiction Short Story

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Fiction Short Story

by Melanie Ann Campbell

Papa’s Big Black Boots

Although this happened nigh onto sixty years ago, my memory of the event is fresh and sharp, a much better recall than what I had for breakfast today or where I’m supposed to be this afternoon. It’s a puzzle sometimes, this thing called senior citizenship. It’s like being someone I’m not, so it seems.

But, about the story. There were seven of us young’uns, and Maw and Papa on that eight-acre plot of dust and scrub grass we called our farm. Papa raised hogs and Maw raised kids. One morning Papa came to breakfast with an ugly scowl on his face and banged the plank table until our grits bounced out of the bowls.

"Someone stole my mud boots.” Papa’s face got brighter than Maw’s red apron. "On the back porch, of course, woman,” he said.

"Eat children. Eat.” Maw pointed to our bowls.

"They’ll do no such thing,” Papa said and jumped up to face her. “No one eats a lick in this house until I get my boots back.”

We had been taught well about not speaking until an adult gives us the nod, except for the youngest girl, Amelia, who at three had little knowledge about grown-up versus kids' rules of propriety. She banged her spoon on the bowl until Maw and Papa turned to look at her.

"I wanta eat right now.” She dipped her finger into the grits for a quick bite.

“The children have to eat before school. I’ll help you look for the boots,” Maw said.

After Maw followed Papa out the back door, we gobbled our grits and raced upstairs to get our school stuff. Amelia and Petey, the two youngest, didn’t go to school yet and they toddled outside to find Maw.

I didn’t hear about what happened until later that night because when I got home from school there were hog pens to clean and water to tote from the well and other farm chores for all of us older kids. When we sat down at the table, Maw brought over the gravy for our cornbread and Papa used the big ladle to fill our bowls with beans and hog leavings. Until Papa said something, the mealtime rule of silence kept us quiet.

“What did you learn at school today?” Papa asked, with a nod at me.

“Did you find your boots?” I asked, since I hated to talk about school and learning.

“I asked the first question,” he said, in a grumpy voice.

Maw gave him a look, smiled around the table at her kids and helped Petey aim his spoon toward his mouth instead of his ear for a minute or so. We watched, our mouths busy chewing, while our minds wondered why Papa wouldn’t look at Maw.

“Maw found Papa’s boots,” said Amelia.

“Not where I left them.” He said in the same grumpy way.

When Maw grinned and winked at me, I almost choked on my cornbread. Even though I’m the oldest, she never treated me like a co-conspirator in anything.

“I suppose they grew feet and walked themselves into the mudroom,” she said.

“Don’t talk nonsense, woman! Ask your kids, and then you’ll know how my boots got from the back porch into the mudroom. That’s how they did it. One of these young’un’s moved my boots.” He gave each of us a quick glance from his bright blue eyes.

Maw just shook her head and grinned, while she leaned over to wipe gravy off Amelia’s chin. I glanced toward the mudroom—a tiny square space a few feet from the kitchen entrance, where we’re all supposed to take off our outdoor shoes and coats.

“But if they were in the mudroom, why didn’t you see them when you went out to the back porch?” Seven-year-old Eustis Ann mimicked Paw’s scowl.

I wanted to pinch her for her indiscretion but didn’t because Maw had started to giggle, and I’d never heard my Maw giggle like that. Papa had his face down almost close enough to dip his nose into his bowl of beans, but I could see a red flush on his cheeks.

“We tramped around the farm and the barn and pig sties for almost an hour searching for them boots.” Maw made a tsk-tsk noise with her tongue.

“Papa said a coon or a bear might have got them.” Amelia glanced around the table with bean juice dripping from her chin.

“A big bear?” Eustis Anne shivered and hugged herself.

“Weren’t no bear. No siree. I sludged around in that mud with my house shoes on and had breakfast dishes to do up and laundry to start. I told your Papa we’d have to hold out some money and buy a new pair of boots, cause I didn’t have time enough to keep searching.” Maw grinned toward Papa.

“Shush, woman,” he growled.

“Seems these young’un’s ought to be told the truth of the matter. Your Papa just might be getting addled seeing as how he’s almost got forty years on him. Why I come up them steps with Petey in my arms and Amelia to the side of me, and went through the back door into the mudroom. There them boots sat, all side-by-side under the bench where your Papa sat to take them off.” Maw nodded with satisfaction.

“Humph,” said Papa.

Now this isn’t the end of the story, because Maw and Papa lived to be into their nineties, and throughout the remainder of their sixty-six years together, whenever Papa couldn’t find something, Maw would send him to the mudroom to look. One day, when he might have been eighty-five or thereabout, Papa couldn’t find his glasses. I could see them on top of his head, but Maw held a finger up to her lips to silence me.

“Did you look in the mudroom?” she asked.

“Silly woman, how would they get out there?” Papa asked, but after he searched in all the usual places, on top of the TV and the kitchen counter and the night stand in their bedroom, he did walk out to the mudroom.

I sat with Maw at the table and watched him search. When he got to the mudroom, he checked the pockets of his heavy coat and knocked another coat off the hook. When he bent down to pick it up, his glasses fell off his head. He walked over to the table and sat down with the glasses in his hand. We didn’t say anything. Papa looked at the glasses and raised his eyes to Maw.

“How did they get on the mudroom floor?” he asked.

We never did explain why we couldn’t stop laughing.

Copyright © 2004 Melanie Ann Campbell

About the Author
Melanie Ann Campbell graduated from the University of Virginia shortly after Thomas Jefferson built the school. Well, not quite that old, but there is gray on her thinking cap and 'crinkles' around her eyes. After forty-two years of marriage, she retired last year and began to spend long days with her husband. Eventually they ran out of things to talk about. He began a carpentry shop in the garage and Melanie Ann began to write about the things they had talked to pieces. She said, "Writing is more fun than doing a sink full of dirty dishes!"