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| A Rocking Chair is Good Therapy courtesy free clip art |
With his schooling behind him Abel began to work in earnest at his marriage. Not having to go to school gave him some extra time to also work at repairing cars.
Shortly after the wedding his father passed on and his mother sold their house and went to Savanna to live with her sister.
This relieved Abel of that financial responsibility for which he was thankful.
Millie's mother had trained her well in the survival skills necessary to keep her house in order. She and her mother would get together and do the canning for both families which made it easier for both of them.
There were so many things Abel wanted to do to their place such as; put electric wiring throughout the house.
With only one light fixture in the entire house, and no outlet plugs at all, and with winter coming on he felt constrained to get on with that project as well as others.
With the woodshed full of wood, and everything set for winter the only thing he had to worry about was him getting back and forth to the mill to work until Millie came down with the flue.
In fact it seemed as if half of the town was afflicted with it. That winter there were many people who never made it including Millie which left Abel devastated.
Loosing Millie he lost his own will to live. Able stopped going to work and became somewhat of a recluse.
It was deep into summer before he began showing up in town.
The preacher would visit and Able would just sit there not saying a word.
Then the preacher would try to engage him in conversation but the most he could get out of Able was a one syllable answer.
From time to time when someone would go by they would see him sitting on the porch, and just rocking in his father's old rocking chair. That chair was all he received when his father died.
One day an old neighbor came over pushing his truck and when he saw Abel he asked him to look at it and see if he could fix it for him.
Before Abel could say no, the old man said, “I desperately need this truck to keep from starving to death. It is the only way I can make a little money to get by on.”
Abel just sat there rocking and the old man sat down and let out a long sigh and under his breathe said; “Lord help me.” The two of them just sat there not saying a word.
After about an hour Abel got up and went out where the man had left his truck and just looked at it, not doing anything just looking. After another hour he finally said to the old man, “Do you have a crank?”
The old man said, “I think there might be one under the seat, Ill look and see.”
After several minutes he said, “Sure enough here it is.”
Abel took it and stuck it in the front of the engine and cranked it over several times with no results.
The man asked, “Is it hopeless?”
Abel answered and said, “No I can fix it.”
The old man sighed again and said, “Will you do it then, please?”
Abel went back to his shed and got some tools and cleaned out the gas line and told the man; crank it over and see if it runs.
The old man did what Abel said and it started up on the third crank.
He was hollering and was happy, but when he looked around Abel had gone back into the house and closed the door.
The old man took it that Abel didn't want to talk anymore so he went into town and told it around what had happened.
The word quickly spread that Abel was moving around and talking a little bit which was good news to the locals.
The preacher let it be known that Abel needed to be left alone for the most part, not to be bothered by foolish prather.
As it happened the people didn’t take the preacher’s advice and started to drop by and sit with Abel on his porch.
Abel would sit rocking not acknowledging their presence except for a grunt now and then if they tried to extract a yes or no answer from him.
To be Continued
