Free Final Rights by Tena Frank

attention, filling the child up with
love.
    On Mary Alice’s 13th birthday, Aunt Ida
visited and made a request the girl had been secretly wishing for most of her
life. Could Mary Alice come to live with Aunt Ida and her husband? Uncle Fred
had been badly injured in a fall. He could hardly get around anymore, and both
of them felt age slowing them down. They could use some help with the chores,
someone to look after them. If Mary Alice could be spared, they would be ever
grateful. It did not escape Mary Alice’s attention that her parents conferred
only briefly before giving their consent. That afternoon, with her few
belongings packed in a sack and a lightness of heart she had never felt before,
Mary Alice set out with Aunt Ida to her new life.
    She settled into a routine quickly. She made
herself useful wherever she could. She provided help with the cooking and
laundry, chopping wood, feeding the chickens and collecting eggs. No task
proved too big or too small for Mary Alice, so long as she knew it would help
her aunt and uncle. When they ran out of requests, she found ways to make their
home better on her own. She gathered flowers from the small meadow to grace the
wooden table. She mended curtains and expanded the garden. What she received in
return held much more value than what she gave. In this house, Mary Alice
slowly settled into the security of being loved.
    Living in the mountains
provided a tonic to Mary Alice’s soul, and as she grew into adulthood, she came
to know her surroundings intimately. She recognized the birds by their mating
calls. She became familiar with the edible and medicinal plants growing in the
wild and took great pleasure in watching the subtle changes occurring with each
season. Frequently, with her work for the day completed and her aunt and uncle
settled in, Mary Alice retreated to the woods. The peacefulness of the forest
nourished her deeply. Weather permitting, she loved to lie down on a bed of
soft pine needles in a patch of filtered sun and drift off to the lullaby sung
by the wind wafting through the treetops. On such a day several years after her
arrival at the mountain homestead, an unexpected meeting changed Mary Alice’s
life once again.
     
     
    The ability to identify a good piece of timber before it
had been harvested stood out as Arlen Howard’s most highly developed skill. He
knew wood intimately. He learned to whittle soon after he learned to walk,
starting with simple stick figures carved from the leavings of the chairs and
tables made by his grandfather and father.
    The Howard men held a well-earned reputation
throughout the region for their craftsmanship, and little Arlen followed
happily in their footsteps. He loved the color of young cherry wood and the
earthy fragrance of freshly cut maple. What schooling he had took time away
from the forest, which he roamed from a young age in search of the best wood he
could find to add to the stockpile in the family workshop.
    The Howards’ log cabin in the mountains just
outside Asheville provided shelter and comfort for him and his older sister,
their parents and their paternal grandparents. Although his sister eventually
married and moved on, Arlen enjoyed his quiet mountain life. By the time he
reached adulthood, he had become an accomplished carpenter, working alongside
his father and grandfather, living each day as it came with little thought to
the future.
    So, the fact that Arlen found a wife at all
came as a miracle. One afternoon as he moved quietly through the woods, he
happened upon Mary Alice Clayton where she lay napping in a patch of sun.
    Her rich, dark brown hair tinged with red
fell in soft waves around her face. Her full black eyelashes formed soft curves
on her cheeks, and her pink skin captivated Arlen with its paleness. Her simple
dress rested in soft folds around her tiny frame, her small breasts pushing
against the fabric and her full hips resting gracefully on the bed of pine
needles. In her repose,