Crooked River Read Free Page B

didn't have no patience for weakness. When Ma died giving birth to Mercy, he hadn't been no different than he was about our cow. He said it was Ma's fault, that she just gave up and wanted to die. She would have taken the baby to die with her, too, but Mrs. Hawley had kept Mercy alive, nursing her and a baby of her own.
    “Why ain't things ready on the table?” Pa said, giving us a scowl. “What the devil you two been doing all this time?”
    “Everything's done, Pa,” Laura answered, and we sent the food clattering onto the table in front ofthem. Half-burnt cornmeal mush, mashed potatoes, yellow pickles, fried pork, bread, and coffee.
    “Git that bread down here to me—I'm hungry as a horse,” Pa ordered. “And the potatoes. Where's the yeller pickles? This mush looks worse than death.”
    Pa always got his plate first.
    Next it was Lorenzo, heaping his plate as if he was the only other one to eat. He was chattering on like a two-headed jaybird—talking about the Indian and what was gonna happen to him, and asking when the trial was going to be—and nobody was saying a word back.
    Cousin George sat next to Amos, chewing his food silently. He always acted as if he was one of the lords of creation and never used more than two words in talking to us. “Cup's empty,” he'd say loudly. Or, “Pork's cold.”
    George had come to live with us after he didn't get any land when his old father died—just two horses and a plow—but you would have thought he owned half a kingdom by the way he carried on.
    In the middle of the meal, Pa waved his table knife at us.
    “Over here,” he said.
    Me and Laura left the food we were watching on the hearth and came over to the table. I knew we were gonna hear about the cornmeal mush. Seemed as if there was always something that wasn't to Pa's liking.
    “After we git done and you two git your breakfast,” Pa told us through a mouthful of half-chewed food,“I want you to go on upstairs and take the rest of this food, whatever scraps is left, to that Indian.”
    “What?” Laura gasped like a piece of wet wood in a hot fire.
    I stared at Pa, and my face and arms felt suddenly prickly, as if I was being stuck with a thousand porcupine quills. Climb into the loft and take food to the murderer?
    “Ain't no reason for the girls to do that, Pa,” Amos said slowly, without looking up. “They got plenty of work in front of them. I'll take a dish of food and a slop jar upstairs for the Indian to use 'fore we head out to the fields.”
    Pa smacked his hand down on the table, making us all jump.
    “Amos,” he hollered. “You want your sisters to be a burden all your life? ’Cause that's exactly what they is gonna be.” He pointed at us. “How they gonna be fit to live out here in the woods if they can't do nothing for themselves? They'll be jist like the Hawleys, who couldn't chop the head off a chicken to save their own lives.”
    Amos didn't answer a word, just started shoveling food fast into his mouth. Cousin George chewed on a piece of bread and grinned, like he found everything downright humorous. And Lorenzo said loudly, “Well, they ain't living with me. I ain't taking care of them when I'm old.”
    That made Pa laugh. He leaned over and smacked Lorenzo on the back. “You're the only one who's got brains,” he said. “You can look after me in my old age. How 'bout that?”
    While Pa was laughing, I let myself breathe again. I figured maybe he had just been trying to give us a fright. I know I ought to get used to such things from Pa. Our Ma always used to say, “Even eels get accustomed to being skinned”—but I don't reckon that's true.
    Next to me, Laura gave a deep sigh and brushed her hands across her apron. “That all you wanted, Pa?” she said softly. When he didn't answer, we just turned back to our work as if we had never stopped—ladling out more food, clearing off dishes, and boiling water for washing.
    But Pa didn't forget. As all of them were pulling