“Where’s Daddy, Mom?”
“Out back, Maybelle. Don’t bother him.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Hen Kelly’s mother died.”
“She’s been dying for years. Daddy shouldn’t feel bad. It isn’t his fault.”
“He thinks…he knows he could have cured her back on Earth. It makes it hard for him.”
It was hard for him, and what could I do to make it up?
He’d ask, “Where did you get this piece of equipment, Margaret?”
“I think someone brought it in from the next Walled-Off, Bryan. Is it something you can use?” He’d been grieving over not having it for two years, and it had taken me a year and a dozen broken regulations to get it smuggled in.
“Of course it’s something I can use! But it’s not a technology we’re permitted to have yet. The Walled-Off Inspectors…”
“Let me worry about the Inspectors,” not mentioning the valley grapevine I had tapped into, the informants I paid off with eggs or fruit or other barter that patients had offered to meet their bills.
“I didn’t think we could afford a larger furnace for the clinic, Margaret.”
“Bryan, it’s one that was taken out of a building being remodeled up in Contrition City. It didn’t cost anything.” It really hadn’t cost anything: except the time spent in cultivating Billy Ray Judson’s father, who did a lot of remodeling in Contrition City; except for the pies I baked every few weeks for the wagoner who brought it down to Crossroads; except for the winter’s worth of preserves I’d given Abe Johnson, who had put the boiler and pipes together. Most of the clinic improvements came about in similar ways: the windows, the added room, the shelves in what Bryan was pleased to call the pharmacy.
“I saw Daddy out back again, and I think he’s crying!”
“I know, Maybelle. The little Benson boy died.”
“I thought Daddy knew how to fix his back.”
“Daddy did know, dear. Daddy just didn’t have the special medical equipment he needed in order to do it.”
Every day I told him that I loved him, though I’m afraid my love weighed light on the scales, particularly as lovemaking became infrequent, then rare, then extinct, killed off by unending exhaustion.
Still and all, I had seldom seen him lose his temper, and never as badly as he did a week or two later when Maybelle said to us quietly, privately, while Mayleen was somewhere else, “Daddy, Mom, I’m pretty sure Mayleen’s pregnant by Billy Ray Judson.”
As the words left Maybelle’s mouth, Bryan turned as red as an apple, and his face swelled. “Get your father a glass of Hen Kelly’s best,” I demanded. Maybelle darted toward the kitchen, and I seized my husband’s shoulders and pushed him into a chair.
“She’s not going to marry that ne’er-do-well,” he grated. “That…”
“Bryan, hush. Listen to me. I know you’re angry. I’m angry. But I’m not surprised.” He erupted under my hands, and I thrust him down, hard. “No, don’t say anything, just listen. I’m not surprised. It’s exactly what we could expect from Mayleen. She isn’t Maybelle. She’s another person entirely, and nothing I do or you do is going to make her grow up or become sensible. Now listen to me!”
He stared at me, amazed. In all the time we had been on Tercis, it was only the second time I had raised my voice to him, and it was definitely the first time I had openly acknowledged Mayleen’s particular…difficulty. Maybelle came in with a glass of Hen Kelly’s five-year-old best. I put it in his hand, and said, “Maybelle, close the door and watch out the window to be sure nobody’s out there listening.”
I leaned over Bryan once more: “Billy Ray’s father has built up a good construction business in Contrition City. Judson was married twice. His first wife got herself killed in a drunken brawl in the tavern where she evidently spent most of her time, and it’s doubtful whether Billy Ray is actually Judson’s son, though he’s always treated the boy as his own. It was the second wife who reared Billy Ray, along with Hanna and James Joseph…”
“I’m really not interested in their damned family history,” snarled Bryan, lowering the glass.
I laid my fingers on his lips. “Bryan, the family history is important! Judson still has title to the land he was awarded when he first settled here, near Crossroads. He built a house on the piece across the river and lived there for a few years, but he never farmed it because by the time the population built up to the point market farms made sense, he already had his construction business well established. Now lately, Billy Ray’s been talking about farming. His father told him it was a hard life, and he wouldn’t advise it…”
“Advising Billy Ray not to do something is absolutely guaranteed to make him want to do exactly that!” opined Maybelle from the window. “Mr. Judson should have begged him to be a farmer and forbade his joining the army!”
I shook my head in reproof, but I was smiling a little, and Bryan was staring at both of us as though we’d lost our minds.
“How do you two know any of this?” he demanded.
“Maybelle and I go shopping, we listen. We have the quilters over, and we listen; we go to the Ruehouse, we listen. And Maybelle is right, it might have prevented a lot of misery if Judson had forbidden Billy Ray to join the army, because he’d have done it, just to upset his father, and that would have at least removed him from Rueful. Now listen to what I say, Bryan! Mayleen’s exactly like him. If we say black, she says white. Our opposition would only make both of them that much more determined. That’s by the by, however.
“What’s relevant is that Mr. Judson has already given property to the three children. He’s given Hanna some income property in Contrition City, and he’s given half the farm to each one of the boys. Billy Ray is eldest, he
