By: EmilyAnn
Summary:An elderly neighbor of Amanda's dishes
out all the gossip.
Rating:PG
Disclaimer:Amanda, Lee, and Scarcrow and Mrs.
King belong to Warner Brothers and Shoot the Moon Production Company. Miz
Ernie is mine, as is the story. Any resemblance to any person living or
dead is purely coincidental.
Mah given name is Ernestine Marie Carlon Mitchell, but call me Ernie, all mah friends do.
Do ya like mah rocker? Mah gran'daddy made it for mah gran'mammy right after the war. Mah gran'daddy was a slave, an' this was the first thing he made for hisself. I still like to sit in it. Ahm ninety, ya know, an' I figger that I's earned the right to sit.
This here's mah spot. Right here on the porch where I kin see everythin'. Mah legs and hands might be rheumy, but mah eyes work just fine.
There, see that lady pickin' up her mail? That's Miz Carstairs. She's lived in t' same house for ten years, but she's had three different husbands. Mmmhmm . . . and even more lovers.
That red brick house for sale over there? That's where the murder was . . . oh, Ah'd say goin' on fifteen years now. It was durin' Veitnam. Poor boy come home from t' front, an' he done snapped. Shot his wife, his baby, and then hisself. No one's stayed long at that house since.
T' little white house over there's Miz King's. Ah don' think there's a soul in the neighborhood I like more.
She comes over every Wednesday with somethin' she's made -- cookies, biscuits, whatever she thinks Ah need or will make me happy. Then she'll sit 'n talk to me. She loves t' talk about her boys, her mother, all the little things she does.
Ya know? The strangest thing happened t' other day. It was rainin' an' her car was in the shop. Ah think she said it'd been in an acci'dent, So t' poor lady was tryin' to walk home from the grocery. Her arms was full an' she was tryin' to carry the um'brella, an' this taxi cab started followin' her -- real slow like.
So I was fixin' t' call the po'lice, think' that somethin' was goin' to happen to her. There she was with no husband an' two baby boys when this man in the taxi cab done called out her name.
Well, Miz King was startled, an' she done slipped on the wet pavement, an' then she looked up an' saw the man, nad what do you think she done?! She laughed!
In all mah days, I ain't never seen nothin' so peculiar! So then, she stands back up and the taxi cab follows her home, and she lets the man in her house! I thought surely Miz King done lost her mind!
Well, it wasn't half an hour later she come out lookin' like Princess Diana, in a fancy dress with her hair done up and gets in the taxi cab with the man! He WAS a handsome man, so I'm not surprised she was so friendly-like with him, but still he was a total stranger.
I asked her about it later, when she come by. She'd made me some vegetable soup because it was rainin', an' then we sat down and talked about this an' that while she worked on the little boys' halloween costumes. I asked her what was goin' on, and you know what she done tole me! She said, "It's nothin' Miss Ernie; don't worry about it."
Well I said when I see such a sweet young thing as her takin' off with
a strange man, I's bound to worry. She just kissed me on t' cheek an' said,
"Thanks Miss Ernie." But she never did tell me what happened. Ah well,
I guess every body's allowed t' have some secrets.
END