Sinnerman

Chapter 19 Confidence & Hopes

Flo's house was such a picture of southern hospitality, and charm, it should've been pasted on a postcard for the gallant pastoral south.

Flo and her husband Arthur bought the run down farmhouse, on a desolate acre of overgrown weeds for a few hundred dollars back in the 70's, and they'd since turned it around into their dream home. Extended it to be a big farmhouse, and had it stuffed to the seams. Always busy with family, cooking food, pets, noise, and love.

Kindness and homeyness permeated every nook, and every cranny of that big, wooden house. Everyone who stepped on those porch steps was welcomed in like family. Gathered into the open arms of the Bernstein family as if they were one of their very own.

The old, off white, colonial farmhouse had everything. It truly was a dream house. Pristine charcoal shutters on the sash windows, rocking chairs on the wrap around porch. A swing. Hung off the branch of the massive angel oak trees, in the garden, which spread their leafy and green canopy to cover all over the house. Sheltering it. Right down the the lazy old Hound dog resting in the sunbeams on the porch. A pile of rusty furry red. Their old faithful bloodhound Buster snores lazily at the door, as he always did.

An apple pie, July 4th, true style colonial American home.

The house now nestled happily in a masterpiece of a garden, trimmed and manicured to perfection by Arthur's keen green hands. Where the outdoors were his domain, Flo had the run of the whole house. She'd filled the place with their children, and grandchildren, great grandchildren. Nieces, nephews, her three sisters, two brothers, and everyone she could get her hands on. Their house burst at the seams. Along with twelve budgies. Three cats. Four dogs, eighteen fish, and a horse and several cow's in the field far outback.

Arthur and Flo lived a full, kind life. They never turned anyone away, and they loved earnestly with their whole hearts.

Flo had been known to hook in people less fortunate than themselves at all times. A home packed to burst, and she still offered meals and a bed and board to those in town who were down and out. Last thanksgiving she'd not taken any prisoners and even had all of the local homeless sat at her dinner table that the shelter couldn't take. She gave them clothes, a bath, and a banquet of a hot meal. Even helped them find work after the holidays were over - she knew everyone and everyone knew her.

Even in her frail old age of 88, she was not to be messed with. No one says 'No' to Flo Bernstein.

Today, sticky and sunny as it was, drenched the house in speckles of sunlight that chipped through the trees. There's not even a breath of wind on the air. A truly typical sticky summers afternoon. The air stifling, hot with the smell of sickly jasmine, freshly mowed lawn, green, Sharp and muggy. From the house a buttery pastry smell poured out the open windows and the front door.

As Evie pulled up in her car, she smiles merely at the sight of the busy, loving house before her. Two raucous great-grandkids, boys, were playing with a football on the lawn. Another, a girl, sat swinging on the suspended rope tree swing. Her pink dress swayed like pink flower petals, on her movements. She can also see Arthur, pottering around his flower beds in his gardening hat, and raggedy trousers, shears in hand as he trimmed back an unruly shrub.

She smiles watching the busy house as relatives come and go from Flo's kitchen. Carrying heaped bowls of food over to the long stretch of rickety set tables set on the lush emerald lawn. Too many chairs to count crammed around the table, laid with a daisy stitched table runner. And citrus candles in mason jars burned to keep the insects away. There were far too many people to cram into the small dining room today.

Evie's glad of it. She needs a distraction. This week if she wasn't baking, or gardening, washing or cleaning, or out canvassing for a new job. She was finding other ways to keep busy.