Nancy Culpepper Stories

19801982 Nancy Culpepper When Nancy received her parents' letter saying they were moving her grandmother to a nursing home, she said to her husband, "I really should go help them out. And I've got to save Granny's photographs. They might get lost." Jack did not try to discourage her, and she left for Kentucky soon after the letter came. Nancy has been vaguely wanting to move to Kentucky, and she has persuaded Jack to think about relocating his photography business. They live in the country, near a small town an hour's drive from Philadelphia. Their son, Robert, who is eight, has fits when they talk about moving. He does not want to leave his room or his playmates. Once, he asked, "What about our chickens?" "They have chickens in Kentucky," Nancy explained. "Don't worry. We're not going yet." Later he asked, "But what about the fish in the pond?" "I don't know," said Nancy. "I guess we'll have to rent a U-Haul." When Nancy arrives at her parents' farm in western Kentucky, her mother says, "Your daddy and me's both got inner ear and nerves. And we couldn't lift Granny, or anything, if we had to all of a sudden." "The flu settled in my ears," Daddy says, cocking his head at an angle. "Mine's still popping," says Mom. In a few days they plan to move Granny, and they will return to their own house, which they have been renting out. For nine years, they have lived next door, in Granny's house, in order to care for her. There Mom has had to cook on an ancient gas range, with her mother-in-law hovering over her, supervising. Granny used only lye soap on dishes, and it was five years before Nancy's mother defied her and bought some Joy. By then, Granny was confined to her bed, crippled with arthritis. Now she is ninety-three. "You didn't have to come back," Daddy says to Nancy at the dinner table. "We could manage." "I want to help you move," Nancy says. "And I want to make sure Granny's pictures don't get lost. Nobody cares about them but me, and I'm afraid somebody will throw them away." Nancy wants to find out if Granny has a picture of a great-great-aunt named Nancy Culpepper. No one in the family seems to know anything about her, but Nancy is excited by the thought of an ancestor with the same name as hers. Since she found out about her, Nancy has been going by her maiden name, but she has given up trying to explain this to her mother, who persists in addressing letters to "Mr. and Mrs. Jack Cleveland." "There's some pictures hid behind Granny's closet wall," Daddy tells Nancy. "When we hooked up the coal-oil stove through the fireplace a few years ago, they got walled in." "That's ridiculous! Why would you do that?" "They were in the way." He stands up and puts on his cap, preparing to go out to feed his calves. "Will Granny care if I tear the wall down?" Nancy asks, joking. Daddy laughs, acting as though he understood, but Nancy knows he is pretending. He seems tired, and his billed cap looks absurdly small perched on his head. When Nancy and Jack were married, years ago, in Massachusetts, Nancy did not want her parents to come to the wedding. ShMason, Bobbie Ann is the author of 'Nancy Culpepper Stories', published 2006 under ISBN 9780375507182 and ISBN 0375507183.