Mrs. Bevell
February 20, 2020
Mrs. Bevell was a very nice lady. She and her husband, Charlie Bevell of Bevell’s Hardware in town, built a nice brick house next to ours the summer of my fourth-grade year. At first I felt a tiny bit suspect of townies moving in next door and cutting down trees, but when they dug out the basement and piled the dirt up into a mountain in their backyard, all was forgiven. A ten-year-old can do so much with a mountain of dirt.
The Bevells were tall, both of them, and well spoken. Mrs. Bevell was built a little like the actress Miranda Hart who plays Chummy on Call the Midwife, or like Eleanor Roosevelt. Her bosom settled down slightly above her waist and she had a bit of a lumbering gait. She was a bird lover and had a real way with flowers, especially azaleas. Haynie Robertson let her drive her Buick over the cattle guard into his farm and shovel up a trunk full of dried cow manure for the azaleas. She did that in her dress, of course. That cow manure made her azaleas flourish, and she transformed that patch of woods into a little Eden.
I would pop over to visit with her and ask questions about the birds. I commented on how beautiful her garden was. We became sort of buddies. Then there were her grandchildren. I’m going to call them Chip, who was a bit of a troublemaker, Martha, and Suzie. In retrospect, I’m not sure Mrs. Bevell knew quite what to do with them, but I was happy to have friends to romp around the woods with and they, town kids, were happy to have the woods.
This one instance I’m remembering involved a bow and arrow set I had. I have no idea what got into me to want one or what got into my parents to allow me to have it because it was a real bow and arrow, one that would really hurt you if things went wrong.
This one day, Mrs. Bevell’s grandkids and I went wandering off into the woods and fields behind the house and I took along the bow and arrow. We made it to the third pond, the cow pond, and it was full of ducks. Chip thought it would be fun to try to shoot a duck with the bow and arrow but he missed and then all the arrows were stuck in the mud of the pond or floating in the pond. So, as one, we all sort of decided to splash into the pond to retrieve the arrows, which turned into chasing the ducks, the ducks flying off in a noisy flutter, and then just getting wet and splashing each other and laughing like crazy, covered with mud. I believe that Martha and Suzie also had taken off some of their clothes.
And right in the middle of that hilarity, we heard a car horn. We looked up and, to our horror, saw Mrs. Bevell, who must have been out collecting dried cow manure for her azaleas, standing next to her Buick. She was not pleased. I had never seen her lose her equanimity, not ever. But lose it she did.
“Stop that right this minute! Get out of that water and get home right now!” Mrs. Bevell was raising her usually very calm voice.
She folded herself back into her Buick and off she went, she and her cow pies, across the pasture and home. She didn’t offer any of us a ride.
For just a minute we felt a little sheepish. But then, as soon as she was out of sight, we laughed and laughed and laughed.
©2021 Joy Cunningham