All Men Fear Me Read Free Page A

straight that she seemed taller than she was. “I hardly recognize you with that beard, but I do believe you’re my Uncle Robin come to visit us at long last.” Her voice was low and melodious, as though song were more natural to her than speech.
    Rob shook his head. “Ruth, honey, I can’t believe you knew me after all this time. You’re sure not the same long-legged elf I taught to make a cat’s cradle when last I saw you.”
    She laughed. “You remember that! Well, it’s no surprise that I’ve changed. That must have been ten years ago! You haven’t changed a bit, though, but for all that gray.” She opened the gate and stood aside for them to enter. “Mama will be so glad to see you. Charlie, Mama’s back in the woods. Give her a holler and I’ll take Uncle Robin into the kitchen and see if I can roust up some breakfast for him.”

Chapter Five
    â€œDestroy This Mad Brute”
    â€”U.S. Army enlistment poster
    In the woods behind the Tucker farmhouse, the buffalo currants and blackberry bushes were heavy with fruit. The deep shade was occasionally punctuated with color that flared when a breeze stirred the leaves and allowed a shaft of early sunlight to illuminate a scattering of purple henbit. Every morning of the world, Alafair Tucker made her way out to the woods after breakfast was cleared away to snatch a moment of solitude, commune with nature and the Deity, and feed stale breadcrumbs to the wild turkeys who made their home here.
    Her companion this morning was her two-and-a-half year old granddaughter, Zeltha Day, child of her fourth daughter, Phoebe. Zeltha was only a bit more than two years younger than Alafair’s youngest child, Grace, who was far too energetic and chatty for her mother’s one quiet morning ritual. But Zeltha was a peaceful, dreamy little girl, with mild, round, hazel eyes, and thick black hair that liked to stick straight up.
    Phoebe had worried that Zeltha still did not talk much, but Alafair was inclined to think that the girl simply kept her own counsel. Animals adored her. Even when she was an infant, the farm dogs and cats, Phoebe’s little milk goat, even wild birds, would come close when her mother took her outside.
    At the moment, Zeltha was hunkered down beside Alafair’s knee, doling out the breadcrumbs clutched in her fist. She had nothing to say, but the soft chortling sound she was making was so like the turkeys’ that it took Alafair a moment to realize it was her.
    Alafair looked after Zeltha quite a lot these days, now that Phoebe was busy tending to her husband, her house and garden, and her active one-year-old, Tuck. Truth be told, Alafair sometimes volunteered to keep Zeltha without being asked. Zeltha was such a soothing presence. Which her own lively children were not.
    Alafair was not a fearful woman, but never before in her life had there been so much to dread. For a woman whose entire experience of the world extended from the western side of the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas to the middle of the Southwestern desert, Europe was so far away that she had never imagined that the fire that was raging there could ever burn her.
    And it hasn’t, yet, she kept reminding herself, as she scattered crumbs. Yet the United States was in it, now. She didn’t have the slightest idea what that would mean. Would they come here, the Germans, so far away? Would Hindenburg send brutal men in his submarines and battleships to march across this wide country burning and killing and raping, spearing children on their bayonets? Had such a thing really happened in Belgium? The papers had said so, and even though she wasn’t quite sure where Belgium was, she certainly didn’t wish such a thing on the poor natives. She was quite aware that human beings were capable of unspeakable acts, yet she was always skeptical of such stories, since it was hard for her to believe that so many people could be