George worked with a pencil on a sheet of brown wrapping paper on the counter. “At two dollars and seventy-five cents a pound I can pay you two dollars and six cents,” he said.
“You mean you’ll pay me two dollars?” I said.
“And six cents,” George said.
“Make sure he gives you the six cents,” Slim said.
“You have to watch old George,” Pug said.
I had not seen that much money since Hank give his five dollars to Caroline Glascock or whoever the woman was.
“Honey, I wish it could be more,” George said. I guess he seen the astonishment on my face.
“George is a terrible skinflint,” Slim said.
“I would hate to see George try to go through the eye of a needle into heaven,” Pug said.
I decided not to ask any more questions. I wanted to take my coffee and sugar and get out of there. I wanted to tell Hank about our good fortune. Maybe it would cheer him up. “Can I get five pounds of sugar and five pounds of coffee beans?” I said.
“If you can carry that much,” George said. He scooped out the beans and sugar into paper bags and tied them with string. I took a bag on either arm like twin babies.
“You have twenty-seven cents left over,” George said. I put the bags back on the counter and took the coins.
“Thank you, George,” I said.
“I almost forgot: you have a letter,” George said. He stepped over to the pigeonholes that was the post office at the far end of the counter and brought back an envelope with pencil writing on the front. I put the letter in my pocket because I didn’t want to read it in front of George and Slim and Pug.
As I walked up the road with the bags in the crooks of my arms and the envelope in my pocket, I kept thinking of the letter. From the handwriting I could tell it was from Mama. Was she writing to say that somebody was sick, or a relative had died? Was she asking how I felt? Was she coming down for a visit?
There was a big white pine by the road about halfway back to Mr. Pendergast’s house. When I got to the big tree I told myself I needed a rest. I was breathing for two and didn’t want to hurry. And I couldn’t wait no longer to see what was in the letter. I climbed the bank and set down in the needles under the tall tree.
The letter was wrote on two sheets of lined tablet paper in Mama’s neat hand. “I hope you are well, we are well. I hope everything is allrite with the baby,” Mama wrote. “There is no news here accept that Lou and Garland is getting married and they are coming down to Gap Creek for a visit afterward.”
I turned over the page and read the back, as the breeze fluttered the papers in my hand. “And Carolyn is coming with them,” Mama said. “Carolyn is going to stay a few days with you and Hank while Lou and Garland goes on to Greenville.”
My hands was shaking with the news. It would be so wonderful to see Lou. Except I hated for her and Garland to see how poor we was. I turned to the last page to see when they was supposed to arrive.
“They will come down to Gap Creek next Wednesday,” Mama said. I tried to recall what day of the week it was. It was already Wednesday, because it had been four days since Hank went hunting for turkeys on Saturday. They was coming today. They might already be there. I stuffed the letter in my coat pocket and gathered up the two paper bags. I hoped they hadn’t arrived at the house while I was away and seen my dirty dishes, and the bedroom where nothing had been picked up.
• • •
YOU KNOW HOW it is when you’re trying to hurry. You stretch your legs but your feet stick to the ground. The road ahead grows longer and longer. I hurried toward the house, and finally when I come around the bend I seen Daddy’s old wagon parked in the yard with Sally still hitched between the shafts. Lou and Garland and Carolyn was already there. They had seen my dirty house. I slowed down and caught my breath. My belly felt uneasy, and I stopped to rest a little before climbing the steps. There was voices in the living room. Hank’s gun was leaning by the front door, but I didn’t see no sign of a turkey.
“Well look what the cat drug in,” Lou said as I come through the door.
“And look what washed down off the mountain,” I said. Lou shrieked and run to me for a hug. I hadn’t seen her in nearly three months.
“Don’t want to press you too hard,” she said and patted my belly. It felt so good to see Lou.
“You’re looking mighty pert,” I said, and set the paper bags on the sofa.
“I said to Garland when he asked me to get hitched,” Lou said, “I said, I’ll marry you if you’ll take me down to Greenville so we can stop and see Julie and Hank on the way.”
Garland stood by the fireplace and tipped his hat to me. “Take off your coats and stay awhile,” I said. I wondered why Lou had decided to take Garland back. I figured she would tell me when we was alone.
“And welcome, Carolyn,” I said.
Carolyn was talking to Hank in the doorway to the kitchen and I patted her on the shoulder.
“Mama sent you some things,” Carolyn said and pointed to a box on a chair. There was a ham wrapped up in brown paper and several jars of jelly and jam.
“Why don’t we all set down,” I said. “And I’ll take these things to the kitchen.”
“We’ll help you out,” Lou said, and picked up the bags from the couch.
“I can do it,” I said.
“You ought to be careful,” Lou said. “Grab that box,” she said to Carolyn.
“Expecting a baby is not a sickness,” I said.
“Didn’t say it was,” Lou said.
“I was going to clean this house up,” I said, “but I had to go to the store.”
“We can help you,” Lou said. “Can’t we, Carolyn.”
“Hank said he would show me the barn and the springhouse,” Carolyn said.
“You can do that later,” Lou said, sounding just like Mama. I had forgot how much Lou’s voice was like Mama’s.
“I wish Mama could have come,” I said.
“Mama won’t never leave the place anymore, except to go to church,” Lou said. “I think she’s got arthritis in her back, because she walks stooped over.”
“I wish I could see her,” I said.
Carolyn walked around the kitchen looking into pots and boxes and inspecting cans and bottles on the shelves. She opened the sugar canister and seen it was empty. “Where is your sugar?” she said.
“I got some today at the store,” I said. “And some fresh coffee beans.”
“You don’t need to fix anything special for us,” Lou said.
“It’s your honeymoon,” I said.
“Yeah,” Lou said and hugged me again. I’d never seen her so happy.
“I want to go to Florida when I have a honeymoon,” Carolyn said.
“You will, darling, you will,” I said. Carolyn had never had to work like the rest of us, and she was the most romantic of all us sisters.
“I sure don’t want to go to Greenville on my honeymoon, or Gap Creek,” Carolyn said.
Lou and me looked at each other and grinned.
“Honey, whoever you marry will have some say about where you go,” Lou said.
“I want to marry somebody that likes to travel,” Carolyn said.
“Well, I hope you do,” I said.
Carolyn drifted back into the living room, and Hank took her and Garland out to the barn to unhitch Sally and look around at the outbuildings. Lou and me lit in to clean up the kitchen and get some supper started. I poured the coffee and sugar into their cans and ground some fresh coffee beans.
“Fresh coffee always reminds me of Rosie,” I said.
“Don’t nobody love coffee like Rosie,” Lou said.
“She likes her coffee and baking better than she’ll ever like any man,” I said.
“She may be right about that,” Lou said and laughed. I looked at her and broke out laughing myself. It was like old times, when we talked about boys and made light of boys, and girls that was in love with boys. Now we was both married, but it was fun to be like our old selves.
“If boys is so bad why did we both get married?” I said.
“’Cause it’s the bad in boys we like,” Lou said, and we laughed again.
I swept the kitchen and Lou got a bucket and the mop and mopped the kitchen and living room floor. Then we attacked the bedroom and picked up everything and made the bed in Mr. Pendergast’s room. Hank and me would sleep there while Lou and Garland was visiting.
When we finished downstairs we climbed up to the bedroom Hank and me had been using. “Only problem with this bed is it falls apart when it gets shook,” I said.
“Well, thanks,” Lou said.
“That’s what happened to us our first night here,” I said. “But the next day I fixed it.”
Lou looked at the bed and patted the post. I expected her to make some smart remark. But of course she didn’t. She was a woman on her honeymoon. I told her the story of the bed crashing down on our first night while we dusted the room and put on fresh sheets and pillow cases.
“You think old man Pendergast left it that way on purpose?” Lou said.
“The bed was ready to collapse,” I said.
“What a dirty old man,” Lou said.
“You should have seen the figures he liked to carve with his pocketknife,” I said.
I was waiting for Lou to tell me why she had decided to marry Garland after all. I knowed she wanted to tell me. Out the window I could see Hank pointing out to Garland and Carolyn the boundaries of the pasture where it run up the mountainside. At a distance Carolyn looked like a full-grown woman. Her figure had filled out since I had left home in early fall. She took Hank’s arm as they walked around the barn. Carolyn was laughing at something Hank or Garland had said.
“Was you surprised to hear I was marrying?” Lou said.
“I was, a little,” I said.
“You know I always loved Garland,” Lou said.
“I know you did,” I said. I was going to let her tell me in her own good time. I was not going to hurry her with questions.
“I finally decided that it didn’t matter about that girl over at Pleasant Hill,” Lou said.
“Really?” I said, and plumped a pillow with a fresh case on it.
“He said he had give her up,” Lou said. “He said she never meant anything to him.”
“Didn’t she have a baby?” I said.
“She had a baby, but Garland said it didn’t belong to him,” Lou said. I thought there must be a grin on her face, but there wasn’t. When Lou talked about Garland she always got serious.
“I just want you to be happy,” I said.
“I don’t think Mama was too happy I got married,” Lou said.
“Mama always worries,” I said.
“Older women don’t believe in romance,” Lou said.
“Mama is just afraid for you,” I said.
IT WAS THE first time Lou and me had ever cooked together. We had sawed wood together and we had hoed corn together and pulled fodder. But it was always Mama or Rosie that was busy in the kitchen at home. It felt good to have Lou in my kitchen.
“Now you just set down while I fix supper,” Lou said.
“I will not,” I said.
“You’ve been on your feet long enough,” Lou said.
“How would you know?” I said and we both busted out laughing.
I was so glad I had bought the sugar and coffee, for my cupboard was bare, and there was only what was left of the canned stuff in the basement. But there was the ham Mama had sent, and that would give us a feast for two or three days. I put the ham in a pan and basted it with brown sugar and molasses. It was just like Mama to send a ham. I bet she had sent the best piece of meat left in the smokehouse.
“You could put a little mustard or vinegar in that sauce,” Lou said.
“I want this ham to be all sweet,” I said. After sliding the ham in the oven I got more wood from the back porch for the stove. Garland and Hank and Carolyn was standing out by the bee-gums, watching something above the trees. I shaded my eyes and seen a wedge of geese going over. They sounded like a pack of beagles running after a rabbit. The geese was high enough to go right over the ridge. They was flying south, and by dark they would be far out of the mountains.
“Who has done the work at home since I left?” I said.
“Most of the outside work has fell to me,” Lou said.
“I figured that would happen,” I said.
“We sure have missed you, Julie,” Lou said.
“Missed my wood chopping and hog killing,” I said.
“Missed your complaining,” Lou said, and we both laughed.
“Who is going to do the work now we’re both gone?” I said.
“Mama and Rosie will have to take turns,” Lou said. “And Carolyn is going to have to learn to do her share.”
“Why did Mama want Carolyn to come with you?” I said as I mixed batter for cornbread.
“It was not so much Mama wanting her to come as Carolyn begging to come,” Lou said.
“She wants to see new places,” I said.
“That girl is so spoiled I could smack her sometimes,” Lou said.
“We have all spoiled her,” I said, “after Masenier died.”
“I wouldn’t have minded some spoiling myself,” Lou said.
“Maybe it won’t hurt her,” I said. “She just turned fourteen.”
“What does a fourteen-year-old girl know?” Lou said.
“About as much as a seventeen-year-old girl,” I said. We both laughed. I opened a can of green beans into a pan and placed them on the stove. I wished I had got some sweet taters to bake, but I hadn’t.
“Was you scared when you got married?” Lou said. “I mean on your wedding night.”
“I guess everybody’s a little scared at first,” I said. But I couldn’t look at her as I said it. Lou and me had talked about marriage before I was married, but in a general way. I was embarrassed to talk, now that I was married and going to have a baby. I would not have thought I would feel that way, like I would be violating a confidence.
“I’m a little scared of being hurt,” Lou said.
“No need to be afraid of being hurt,” I said. I still couldn’t look at her. Lou was older than me, and here she was asking me questions. “At least in that way,” I added.
“What way?” she said. I looked at her and we both laughed.
“If you get hurt it will be your feelings that are hurt,” I said. I started setting the table and Lou got the silverware from the drawer and begun to lay it in place. I was glad I had polished what was left of Mr. Pendergast’s silver a few days before.
“I just hope I can make Garland happy,” Lou said.