“I’ll have your tucker and other goods back before suppertime if that would do.”
“Thank you kindly, Mr. Thigpen. I’m beholden to you.” She watched him hitch-hobble down the road.
“Do you think he’s tolerable? How come you didn’t call him Tolly?”
I’d doubled up on questions, but she just answered one.
“Oh, I expect he’s nice enough, least he seems to be. I can’t put my finger on it, but something about that man just don’t set quite right. But nice or not, I wouldn’t be too quick to make fun if I was you. We’ve got our own peculiar names. Your great-great-grandpa was called Reckless, although I believe his real name was Rickles or something close to that. He was my grandpa on my mother’s side. Died on this very mountain. One day we’ll go tend the graves and you’ll see where he’s buried. Now, you run on and see if you and your sister can fill that egg basket.”
The chickens had escaped the henhouse and were scratching a pretty good living from mealybugs and grub worms they pecked from underneath dead leaves and bark. One chicken, blue-black in color, laid blue eggs. Aunt Annie said it was called an Easter egg chicken. Vonnie and I played a game to see who could find the most eggs, and the blue eggs counted double. She won, but not by enough to brag about, although she made a big whoop-de-do about it. We found twenty-three eggs that first day.
Grandma put the eggs in a pan of cold water to test for freshness. Three floated to the top and had to be thrown away. With eggs to spare, she made egg butter, drizzling beaten eggs into hot molasses and stirring like the dickens until the mixture was thick and creamy. Aunt Annie wasn’t much of a cook, but she thought she’d give egg butter a try herself when Uncle Teel got to feeling better.
True to his word, Tolerable Thigpen showed up just as we were finishing up our supper of chicken and dumplings, a mess of turnip greens, and custard pie. He’d brought all our supplies, plus a bag of penny candy for me and Vonnie, which we divided, picking the horehound out for Grandma because it was her favorite. Of course, she felt obliged to ask him to eat with us.
“I surely would like to break bread with you good folks, but I’ve got to git to the house for the milkin’. But you wouldn’t have to twist on my arm none to git me to carry home some of whatever you got on the fire that smells so good.”
Grandma covered a plate full of warm leftovers with waxed paper, taking it out to him on the porch.
He turned back as he was leaving. “Ma’am, if I ain’t being too forward, I’d be right privileged to take you and the little gals to Sunday meetin’. That is, of course, if you’d be of a mind to go.”
He said he belonged to a church called the Full Gospel Church of True Believers. Grandma thanked him for the offer, but said she couldn’t leave Uncle Teel. He said maybe she’d change her mind when Uncle Teel felt a mite better. She told him she and her husband, Preacher Cales, did missionary work starting churches in the mining towns all around Beckley. Tolerable Thigpen looked disheartened to hear there was a Preacher Cales in Grandma’s life.
Truth was, Grandma wasn’t about to go off anywhere with Tolerable Thigpen, even if it was to church. No telling what people might think.
Uncle Teel’s dog, Pony, came loping out of the woods, the polecat stink on him so strong it scalded my nose. His long fur, matted as the sheep he was born to tend, was camouflaged with leaves and twigs and burrs that attached to his coat as he ran through the brush chasing anything that moved.
After a closer look, Grandma decided she’d best use the sheep shears on him. She left the fur on his legs and head, but the rest got shorn almost bald. Once he’d had a couple of lye soap baths in Pinch Gut Creek, his smell improved considerably.
But I still tried to keep upwind of him.
Grandma and I were putting the sheep shears back in a storage shed near the house when an ear-splitting scream pierced the quiet. I took off to see what Vonnie was hollering about now. She was always pitching a fit about something. I busted out laughing when I saw that Wishbone, the big Rhode Island Red rooster, had her trapped in the outhouse at the end of the path below the house. She’d already thrown the Sears, Roebuck Catalog Aunt Annie kept in the outhouse at him and missed.
Grandma gave me a look.
I couldn’t help it, I’d already got to laughing too hard to quit.
The rooster, cinnamon and black and turquoise feathers all ruffed up, strutted back and forth in front of the door, so pleased with himself he was almost grinning. Every time Vonnie peeked out he charged, launching himself sideways, talons set to strike, all the while letting out a squawk that rivaled the squeals she let out every time he started at her. Now that I’d stopped laughing, the two of them were giving me a headache. If Grandma hadn’t been there, I might have left Vonnie to stew for a while.
Howling and whooping, I grabbed the broom off the porch and chased the rooster away while Grandma and Pony herded Vonnie back into the house. Although she was not harmed one bit, Vonnie was still yowling at the sky like there was a new moon. I told her to stop acting like a big bawl-baby. And I will own up to that not helping the situation.
Grandma told me to say I was sorry, and I did, but really I wasn’t.
I knew a bawl-baby when I saw one.
11
Survivors Will Be Shot
We
