Pamela Morsi Read Free

due punishment, she’d take it, but she wasn’t about to allow nobody, not even a husband-man, to make a rug of her for his own comfort.
    “Don’t worry about me, Preacher,” she assured him. “My family and me, we’ll be just fine. Eulie Toby takes care of her own.”
    Her confidence was unshakable. The old preacher didn’t look so certain.
    “You’re Eulie Collier now,” he pointed out.
    A change of name wouldn’t make any difference.
    With a spring in her step, Eulie began gathering up her things and her family. There was very little of the former and a lot of the latter. She’d left the Knox homestead that morning with all her worldly possessions tied into a ten-pound poke. The weather had looked sunny and bright and she’d determined that it was a perfect day for a wedding, so it might as well be hers. With yesterday being Preaching Sunday, she knew that the pastor of the Sweetwood congregationwas still at home. He’d be setting off tomorrow to ride his circuit. If she didn’t get married today, she’d have to wait a whole month. She simply decided that sooner was better than later.
    Smiling and cheerful, with her brother at her side, Eulie began making her way up the path toward Moss Collier’s place on the high ridge above the falls. She was as familiar with these narrow mountain trails as the back side of her own hand. Eulie had lived her whole life within the shadow of the tall, tree-covered peaks. It was where she was from and all she knew. It was all her mother and father knew. It was where the Toby family had lived out their lives for half a dozen generations. And Eulie was going to see that they survived here for a dozen more.
    At her side, her brother was silent until they were out of hearing range of the men at the meetinghouse.
    “I don’t like him, Eulie,” her brother declared. “No way, no how, I just don’t like him.”
    She gave her ill-tempered sibling a dismissing glance of unconcern. “Oh, Rans, you don’t like anybody,” she reminded him.
    Ransom didn’t argue the fact, but he still didn’t look pleased.
    “I don’t know why you have to up and marry some fellow anyway,” he countered.
    “I explained all that to you,” Eulie said. “It was the only way that we could all be together. Nobody in the Sweetwood is going to let a family of women and children sharecrop for them. And you ain’t big enough to do it on your own. If we are ever going to have our own place again, one of us gals has to marry some land.”
    “Then you should have let Clara do it,” Rans toldher. “Mr. Leight’s a fine fellow. I wouldn’t have no caution about him joining the family.”
    Eulie turned to look her brother in the eye. His bowl-cut blond hair was not as clean as it could have been, and his face was in need of a good scrubbing as well, though it was difficult to tell how much was dirt stains and how much freckles.
    “Clara is not marrying that old Bug,” Eulie stated adamantly. “I don’t know where you’d get such an idea.”
    “From them,” Rans answered. “You ain’t seen them together, Eulie. I told you, they’re plumb lovestruck with each other.”
    Eulie snorted in disapproval. “Well, sure enough he’d be lovestruck with her. Clara’s the sweetest, kindest, prettiest girl in the Sweetwood and I ain’t just saying that ‘cause she’s my sister. But him …”
    Eulie screwed up her face in an expression of distaste.
    “They don’t call him Bug ‘cause he’s got a pig-face.”
    “It ain’t his fault, Eulie. The doctor down at McComb says he’s got some kind of glandular complaint,” Rans told her, not for the first time. “That’s what makes his eyes bulge out like that.”
    “Well, my sister ain’t marrying nobody that’s got no glandular complaint, especially not one what looks like a click beetle.”
    “Well, ain’t you just the belle of the valley,” Ransom sneered. “You’re not so dadblamed pretty yourself that you need to be carrying on