The six slipped silently past the dark corral fence and through the rough scrub along the edge of the woods. The wet ground fog rose around them, hiding Rose and the others from the view of the men in the farmyard, showing them only glimpses of the silent farmhouse and barn as they moved past. The men moved towards the trucks and wagons in the farmyard, climbed in and pulled out into the road. The six stood still, hidden in the fog until the noise of the marauding party had faded into the distance.
Roy held his hand up, indicating the others should wait. He disappeared as he moved off into the fog then reappeared next to the giant sweet gum tree in the farmyard, disappearing again as the fog that floated by in wisps hid him and most of the farm from view. At his signal, Rose and Marlene hurried across the corral to the tree where Roy waited for them.
Rose looked at the corral fence and thought how Uncle Syl started laughing every time he met with Mr. King, a small serious man who was not talkative unless you asked him about his horses. Then he would go on and on, telling story after story of the amazing intelligence of his mare, Jolly. He had built his corral out of railroad ties after she had jumped or kicked out every other fence he built, leading him on a wild and wily chase every time she broke loose. Finally, he vowed, he had built a fence that would hold her.
“An elephant couldn’t knock this fence down,” he’d declare.
Every time he heard that, Sylvester would laugh and laugh.
"You trade that mare for an elephant yet?” he’d ask, and then laugh some more.
As small and quiet as their father was, that big and loud and boisterous were his children. Five of them went to the school in town. They could be heard a ways away before they came down the road to the schoolhouse door, laughing and fooling as they walked. The oldest son, Joe, was sweet on Rose and asked her every day if she was ready to marry him yet. “No, not yet,” she’d tease, and all his brothers and sisters would laugh, but so would Joe, and he’d always tell her that he’d ask again tomorrow.
At the Christmas party the whole family had worn matching knit caps in red and white stripes. They sang “Coo-coo” and “Lovesick Blues” together, the caps flashing in bright flickers as they waved them back and forth in time to the lines of the chorus, even Mr. King smiling and dipping as the family bellowed out the last lines and took a big bow to the applause and laughter of their friends.
Rose thought about that afternoon as the fog drifted across the farmyard, obscuring and revealing Roy at his awful task. She thought how small they all looked now, somehow shrunken down to almost child sized, swaying as they twisted in the cold wind.
The red and white of the flannel gowns and union suits on their bodies flashed bright in the dim light of the silent farmyard as Roy moved the ladder from limb to limb and cut the King family down from the branches of the sweet gum tree where they had been hung. Rose and Marlene caught them and together struggled as one by one they eased their bodies to the ground.