They's Two Kins of Truth

The Lord's truth and the people's truth and most times ain't the same. Comes a time the Lord's truth just bubbles up and runs over into the people's truth and every one pays.

Lillie May kept a journal.  It was just an calendar with the back pages blank but, Lordy, did that girl write!  She'd jot down things like how Pearl's boy had blue eyes and red hair when thar ain't been nothing but brown eyes in that family for six generations.  She wondered why the parson's buggy was in the cedar glade every time the Widow Smith was at the cemetery.  Little things caught her attention like that and she wrote 'em down.  I tod h'er not to, wern't none of our bidness and could get us in big trouble.  She laughed cause no one knew she wrote this stuff  exceptin' me and 'er. She wanted to know why Aunt Nettie's brother didn't come around no more since the girls took to bed with fits and had to stay inside.  They's well now but it was odd when their favorite uncle didna came to see 'em anymore sick or well.

Lillie May tole me it had to be writ.  That the truth would come out one of these days and she'd have an answer to 'er questions.  I tod 'er to let it be.  As chilun we was taught to be seen not heard but when older people gotta talkin' sometimes they dina see us younguns. Lillie May got to thinkin' and she writ a lot.

We all wondered when Elizabeth Ann up and moved to 'er aunt's house far away.  We'd always thought 'er and Richard would be married for shore.  We's a mining town and most peoples work there except the few that work in the mercantile, livery and the bank.  Richard was a promising husband prospect and one up on the minin' family Elizabeth Ann came from.

Sometime we just don't know how ner why things turn out.

I ne'er thought Lillie May would kill 'erself but she did. Jumped into a mine shaft on True Mountain. I heared tell it was over fifty feet deep 'for it turned. Since it wern't a workin' mine they buried her there.  Maybe all that wondering just got to 'er so bad she put an end to it.

The truth showed itself when someun showed a calendar page where Lillie May writ...I ain't able to carry on no more.

What's they dina know was I hid the old calendar so's no body could fin it.  I'd take it to the sheriff but he's been hangin' at the diner with Charles Floyd's wife and I ain't takin' no chances.  No, sirree, not me.

I stand careful at the edge throwin' wild flowers to my friend.  I say the truth will come out, Lillie May, the truth'll come out.