by Eve Redstone

Created on: November 09, 2008

Georgia sat on her old rocker on the back porch. Her old fingers were shelling the peas for the thanksgiving dinner and she was making steady progress. True, she wasn't as fast as she once had been but there would be enough done by the time they were needed for her to contribute to the family table.

Charley, her youngest would be calling round for her at three o'clock, "Three O'clock, prompt." he said. He seemed to forget she had no clock in the house. She would be ready though. Three o'clock this time of year was when the sun skimmed the tops of the trees, the time the children ran along the lane from school past the banana plants.

She'd had a clock once. A long time ago when Charley was just a small boy and he was one of the children running along the lane from school. Bobbie had still been here then. He ruled her by the clock and by his fists.

"Georgia, where's my breakfast woman, it's five a.m. and a mans gotta eat!"

"Georgia, where's my dinner, its six p.m and I need food afore I go out!"

"Georgia, will you look at the time....."

"Georgia, how many times I gotta tell ya......"

First thing she did when he went was bury the clock in the pumpkin patch. Folks thought she'd buried Bobbie in there. She heard them whispering as she walked past. " Her husband's in her pumpkin patch you know, she says he ran off, but folks say..."

Her and Bobbie had never been happy. He worked and drank, she worked and nagged, they never talked, or enjoyed life together. The night he went away he'd said he wasn't coming home again, all she'd said in reply was, "Good, you do that then.", and returned to hacking up the pumpkin for the pumpkin pies with her cleaver.

A quick and painless end to a marriage really. She had felt nothing while he was there, and less when he was gone. The only thing she did was get up early the next morning, quarter to five to be exact, and bury the clock in the pumpkin patch. It was a symbol of the end of her slavery.

Of course the freshly dug patch of earth in the garden had led to speculation from her neighbours and the sheriff had been around and dug up the area before asking her why she buried a perfectly good clock. Then he'd shrugged and left. She hadn't had a clock since. She hadn't really been able to get one and had learned to tell the time from the light. She hadn't been able to move the pumpkin patch either.

If the sheriff had moved a little to the right of course he would have been in her banana patch. Bananas need a lot of food to grow well, a lot. All in all Bobbie had done well providing for her and her boys, once he left.

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