A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) (14 page)

Burr moved up on the bed, closer to Jack.
I’ll do this for him now.
June kept her hand on Jack’s head, rubbing his hair, soothing him. She looked at her father and felt that this bad time would soon be over.

“Jack, I want you to listen to me.” June heard her father and rested her hand on Jack’s shoulder.

What can Burr say? He can’t say Ruby’s got the coffee on, can’t say she wants me to bridle the mule for her. What can he say, except “Do the best you can.”

Burr looked at his daughter’s hand on Jack’s shoulder and said, “I’m giving you this piece of land, Jack. We’ll go outside and you can walk off what you want. It’s always been yours, you worked it, but now I want you to have it outright.”
There, it’s said.

Jack lifted his head, looked first at June then her father
and then out the open window at the field and the woods beyond the field.
He wants to give that to you. It could belong to you, you know how you’ve wanted this place, don’t be proud now, you take it, you take it and work it with the time that’s left to you. Ruby’d say to take it, do it and be glad for it, if that’s what you want, otherwise leave it alone, but you know you want it. I want her more, but do I refuse one because I can’t have the other? No, I don’t think so. And it won’t replace her, I know that. I’ll just have something of my own, keep me from going out of here the way I came in. I will have it. I think I will. And now, let me try to live.

Published by

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of

Workman Publishing Company, Inc.

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 1989 by Kaye Gibbons.

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

ISBN 978-1-565-12206-2

EISBN 978-1-565-12700-5