Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Iris (04/17/25)
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TITLE: Royalty | Previous Challenge Entry
By Marilyn Borga
04/24/25 -
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The voice was loud and raspy, and I ‘bout jumped out of my skin. I would of hightailed it out of there, if the crook of the old biddy’s cane hadn’t had hold of the cord holdin’ up my pants. She tugged ‘til she could grab hold of me. My feet itched to run, but she held tight to my ear as the thundering of my friends’ footsteps behind the rickety fence faded in the distance. I was caught but good.
“Speak up, boy,” she urged. “Whatcha lookin’ for?” We looked each other up and down. Her limp sunbonnet shaded a face as wrinkled and tanned as a walnut shell. The tattered dress hung scarecrow-like on her bent form, bare feet peeking out beneath the long skirt. The only brightness was in her purply-blue eyes, which reflected a touch of kindness.
“You look kinda peaked,” she said with a snort. “You hungry?”
I shrugged. My belly never felt ‘xactly full these days, ever since the Roscoe Mine, where my pa used to work, closed down. My pals and me had planned to snag us some free produce in the Widow Bone’s garden before she discovered us, and they deserted me.
The widow dragged me across the yard and over to the back door. She nudged me into her kitchen, where the smell of stewing chicken set my mouth to waterin’. I wondered how much trouble I’d made for myself with my trespassin’. She plopped me in a wooden chair at the table and fussed around for a bit at the coal stove. In a short while, she’d set a big bowl in front of me chock-full of carrots and peas swimmin’ in chicken gravy. She got a smaller bowl for herself, and after mumblin’ a prayer, set to eatin’.
She let me shovel in for a few minutes before askin’, “What’s your name, boy?”
“I’m Will Jackson.”
“I’m Widow Iris Bone,” she says. “You can call me ‘Miz Iris’, if you're fixin’ to be friends.”
After I wiped my bowl clean with a hot buttered biscuit, Miz Iris showed me her parlor. The two-story house was bigger and fancier than most in our little town, but it was obvious that it had seen better days. She pulled a stool up to the dusty upright piano and started to play. Neither Miz Iris’ voice nor her piano was in tune, but the words to the song rang loud and clear:
My Father is rich in houses and lands,
He holdeth the wealth of the world in His hands!
Of rubies and diamonds, of silver and gold,
His coffers are full, He has riches untold.
I’m a child of the King,
A child of the King;
With Jesus my Savior,
I’m a child of the King.
I looked around the shabby room and at Miz Iris with her tired, threadbare clothes, and was hard pressed to keep from snickerin’. I didn’t want to offend the woman who’d just filled my belly, but she sure didn’t look like no princess to me. By now, I knew that the tales of this house hidin’ a fortune were nothing but hogwash.
“You’re not rich at all, are you, Miz Iris?” The words blurted out of my mouth before I could stop them.
She stopped playing and turned those shiny eyes on me.
“You know, Will, some riches can’t be seen except with your heart.”
Truth was, I didn’t have a clue what she meant. Didn’t matter, ‘cause Miz Iris had plans for her an’ me. She agreed not to tell my pa what I’d been up to that day, and I promised to come by every morning to see what chores I could do: weed the garden, mend the chicken coop, collect fallen coal along the railroad tracks — anything she could think of. Miz Iris taught me to use a slingshot to shoot squirrels and rabbits for eatin’. She saw to it that Pa and me got a home-cooked meal every day, too. Things started lookin’ up for us.
Soon, I started goin’ to Sunday school with Iris each week. It wasn’t long before I learned what it meant to have Jesus as my Savior. The day I got saved, Miz Iris declared I was now Prince Will, a child of the King! I’d never felt so rich.
*****
I’m a Child of the King by Hattie E. Buell (1834-1910) is in the public domain.
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