Nuts and Buried Read Free Page A

people, “the girls.”
    Miranda, with her arthritic hands, could shoot the eyesout of a snake at a hundred feet, pick him up, strip him of his rattles, open a screw jar, drop in the rattles, then pull that jar out whenever you saw her, proving how many snakes she got that year, and insisting you take a look at how small the rattles were. “Something up, I’ll tell ya,” she’d say. “Bad year for the snakes.”
    Every January, Miranda started out new with a little ceremony in the garden behind the Rushing to Calvary Independent Church, where the pastor would bless the jar and both women, then wish them good luck in the coming year.
    Melody was into what she called “gentility.” She’d taken, as the girls aged, to upbraiding Miranda for her crude ways with people; the way the ranch house looked when folks came to visit; and for pulling that jar of rattles out of her pocket whenever she had a captive audience.
    The girls had come as themselves, far as I could see. Boots that looked a hundred years old. Pants with patches low on the butt, washed-out cotton plaid shirts hanging oddly over their spindly shanks. Their ancient Stetson hats sat far down on their backs. Same outfits they wore every day of their lives except they’d evidently marked this occasion by a trip to Lena’s Salon in town. They were a lot curlier, and a lot grayer, than usual, with their hair teased up like two elderly angels. Melody had spots of rouge smeared on her cheeks for the occasion. Miranda, old eyes squinting and looking around from under her bushy white eyebrows, seemed about as ready to bolt as I was.
    I knew this pair was going to laugh when they saw me, and tell me I looked like ten miles of bad road or something they found equally funny.
    Miranda was going on and on about cottontails and how she was shooting them at a great clip when Eugene looked up and waved, almost begging me to save him from another rabbit story.
    Ethelred Tomroy, a cranky old friend of Meemaw’s, whospent most of every day over to the Nut House, was standing beside Melody. I was in no mood for her sniffing and screwing up her mouth and guessing I was dressed as old Texas dirt or something else she hoped was offensive enough.
    Trouble was, I didn’t have a choice. I joined the circle and nodded to everyone. I hugged Miranda and Melody and gave Ethelred one of Mama’s phony smiles. The woman looked like she’d come as the original flour sack, in a down-to-the-floor sprigged dress with a scalloped hem. Had to be homemade. No self-respecting dressmaker would have turned out an outfit like that one.
    When Eugene introduced me to his new wife, Jeannie, dressed in a very fluffy, very yellow ball gown, I walked up and hugged her hard, welcoming her to Riverville and saying how happy I was to meet her.
    â€œI was just asking who Miz Wheatley was dressed as, in all that yellow.” Ethelred gave me a hard look and sniffed as she rocked back on her black oxfords.
    Jeannie looked down at her yellow gown, did a half turn and back, then shrugged. “Just like yellow, I s’pose.” She smiled wide and looked happy.
    I knew right away what Ethelred was going after: A new bride in something that yellow and obvious. Yellow roses wound through her yellow hair. Yellow gloves and yellow shoes.
    Had to be the Yellow Rose of Texas, though why this new society wife would choose that particular famous Texan was beyond me. The Yellow Rose of Texas, Emily West, was a hero in the Texas War of Independence all right, but the problem was that she kept General Santa Anna busy in bed while Sam Houston attacked San Jacinto. Houston won the battle in eighteen minutes—which I guess said something about Santa Anna in bed and how the man could keep his focus when he was occupied.
    Famous Texan, all right, but for a new bride?
    Still, who was I (or Ethelred) to judge? Hey, she wasn’t dressed in white, pretending to be