When Love Finds a Way

I remember the morning I worked in the sticky red clay of Miss Cox's garden in the summer of 1937. It clung to my rubber boots so fiercely that every step was a struggle, each foot heavy as stone. But when I straightened my back to catch my breath, the rising sun broke through the trees, lighting the clouds with a fiery glow that stole the words right out of my mouth.

There are moments so beautiful, so pure, they hush the soul. You don’t even have the sense to pray. You just stand there, quiet and still, overcome.

Ever known someone like that? A person whose love shines so bright it still warms you years later? That kind of love, like the morning sun, is never forgotten.

That day began before sunrise. I walked down Proper Street and passed under the railroad underpass to reach Miss Cox’s corner lot on Wick and Young Streets. Her mama, Miss Farris, who was visiting to help with the newborn baby, had left a wicker basket and a floppy safari hat on the porch for me. I picked up the basket and ignored the hat, but it wasn’t long before the Mississippi sun began to boil the back of my neck. I had to trudge back in my muddy boots just to fetch it.

I hadn’t worked in a garden since grammar school, so I was hoping the Good Lord would guide my hands and keep me from mistaking vegetables for weeds and weeds for vegetables. When in doubt, I reminded myself, "Better leave it for those who know what they’re about!"

Truth be told, I didn’t pull many weeds. I recognized the wild morning glories tangled around the corn stalks didn’t belong, but they were so beautiful, I couldn’t bring myself to remove them from the sticky clay.

And then there was the mockingbird. That feisty little thing had a nest in one of the pecan trees, and every time I reached the end of a row, it dove at me like a plane in a barnstorming show. Eventually, we called a truce. He left me alone and instead started showing off, whistling a different tune every few seconds like he was trying to impress me with how many songs he knew.

To be honest, after nearly an hour of his chirping, squeaking, and squawking, I almost wished he’d go back to attacking me.

Once I had the basket full of tomatoes, okra, snap peas, and green peppers, Miss Farris came out to check on me. I asked how the baby was doing.

“He’s squallin’ like a champion hog,” she said with a grin.

You wouldn’t believe how glad I was to hear that. Just a week before, he’d been born far too early, and both Miss Cox and her mama had been fighting to keep that tiny child alive.

When my husband, Doc Robertson, came home the night he was born, he said, “I just delivered the nearest thing to nothin’ I ever saw. I doubt he’ll make it through the night.”

So I’d brought food the next day and offered my help. But when I first saw that baby—his tiny face pinched and red, his cries weak and gasping—I felt the chill of fear crawl through me like the angel of death had passed by.

“Where’s his daddy?” I asked, before Miss Farris gave me a look that told me to hush. Miss Cox sat in the corner, trying to get the little one to feed. He kept turning his head away, eyes squeezed shut, as if the world was too much for him already.

The two older boys stood side by side, the older with a head full of wild black curls, the younger with ruler-straight blond hair. Their sister clung close to her mother, her wide brown eyes staring at me like a pair of saucers.

Their shack was no more than four walls and a patchy roof. Just two rooms—one for Miss Cox and her absent husband, the other for the three children. The kids’ room had two little beds, divided only by a sheet hung from the ceiling.

I later learned that Mr. Cox had been off drinking for weeks. That meant no work, no money, no food. I felt so ashamed to witness it, not because of them, but because I hadn’t known sooner. There wasn’t even flour in the house to make biscuits. The only thing keeping them from starving was the little vegetable garden out back.

From that day forward, I started coming by each morning to help. I brought white bread, self-rising flour, fried chicken, and sorghum molasses when they ran out. The two women were tireless, even building a makeshift incubator out of bricks heated in the oven to keep the baby warm at night. When I told Doc about it, he rolled his eyes and muttered in disbelief.

Eventually, I lost my senses and offered to care for Miss Cox’s garden myself. And that’s how I ended up muddy and sore, with a mockingbird for company and Miss Farris watching over me with raised eyebrows.

She asked if I’d ever snapped peas. “Not since I was a girl,” I replied.

“Well, it’s like ridin’ a bike,” she said, and we sat on the porch in old rockers, snapping peas into metal bowls. We didn’t speak much at first. The morning was already too full of things unsaid. But finally, I asked, “Do you think your grandson will live?”

She looked at me hard.

“You known Miss Cox long?” she asked.

“No, not really.”

Her face softened. “Her two older boys both knocked at death’s door, and their mama’s love called them back. The oldest caught diphtheria during the epidemic in the ‘30s and never got proper medicine. But he lived. When love has anything to say about it, life finds a way.”

“If you knew Miss Cox like I do,” she added, “you’d have never asked. The thought never would’ve crossed your mind.”

And she was right. That little boy, born in a tumbledown shack, weighing less than two pounds, lived. He grew strong and bright. And though the world nearly swallowed him at birth, he shone as fiercely as the Mississippi sun did that morning I first worked in Miss Cox’s garden.

Sometimes, there just ain’t no words.