PROLOGUE (1959)
397 Words
PROLOGUE (1959)The violent December wind whipped the pelting rain and turned it to ice on the roads of southern Iowa as Robert Taylor pulled into the driveway of his mother’s white Victorian house. He stepped out of the blood red Pontiac and into the storm, shielding his shivering baby in his arms. The moon lay buried deep behind the storm clouds and lightning flashed in the dark Midwestern sky, startling the baby. The crashing thunder and howling wind drowned out the little girl’s cries. Robert was twenty-six and overcome with fear and panic.
Robert’s tears mixed with the pouring rain as he kissed his daughter’s cheek and handed Ivy into his mother Violet’s waiting arms. Violet grabbed his arm as he turned back into the storm, but Robert pulled away. Her frantic warning evaporated into the thunderous night.
Violet Taylor tucked Ivy against her body inside the front of her big coat. The baby calmed and peered out from her Grandma’s lapel. They huddled together on the front porch and watched Robert’s car back down the driveway past the big maple tree that swayed and groaned in the storm. The old tree had survived many decades of Iowa storms by holding fast to the earth with its deep roots and bending with the power of the wind.
Cold rain poured from the porch eaves as Robert drove off. Fifty-four-year-old Violet pushed her short, wet hair out of her face and kissed the top of Ivy’s little head. She stared into the darkness for a while as if she thought her son might reappear, but he didn’t. Ever.
Later that night, someone reported that Robert’s car briefly stopped outside the Coffey Shop then hurriedly drove back into the freezing rain that coated the roads with an invisible sheet of black ice.
The new Deputy Sheriff, Charlie Carter, said the car carrying Robert and his wife, Barbara, skidded and swerved as it approached the two-lane Highway 69. He reported their new 1959 Pontiac Bonneville did not stop in time to avoid the oncoming tractor-trailer. The truck’s giant headlights must have appeared in the blackness of the storm-ravaged night, hazy through the cascade of freezing rain on their windshield. Bright-colored sparks exploded on the highway as the big truck dragged the mangled car beneath its belly.
And Ivy was left an orphan.
PART I
A FAMILY OF SORTS
(1966)
- Writer
