Pamela Morsi Read Free Page A

about the shortcomings of others. Looks ain’t everything.”
    “And looks ain’t everything the man’s doing without,” she countered. “Bug is as dull as a widow’s ax and easily half as smart.”
    “I don’t care what you say, I’d still rather have him for a brother-in-law over a fellow who acts like he ain’t got no use for you nor none of your kin,” Rans told her.
    Eulie waved his words away.
    “Moss Collier’ll suit us just fine,” she assured him. “He just ain’t got used to the idea of marrying and starting a family.”
    “The way I heared it, he done started one already,” Rans answered.
    When Eulie didn’t answer, he stopped abruptly in his tracks and stared at her in disbelief.
    “Good Lord save us all!” he said under his breath. “You lied about it, didn’t you.”
    Eulie hushed him with her hand and glanced around guiltily.
    “It ain’t no big catastrophe,” she assured him in a whisper. “Moss was sure to come around sooner or later. A little tall tale just had it happening more speedy than was perfectly natural.”
    Rans had covered his face with his hands and was shaking his head in disbelief.
    “No wonder he continued to deny it all, even after it was certain they was going to insist he marry up,” Rans said.
    “He’ll just get used to the idea of all of us and he’ll be settled and resigned to it,” Eulie said with certainty.
    “Lord, he’ll probably kill us all in our beds and feel right and justified,” Rans moaned.
    “The man needs a wife, clear and simple,” Eulie declared. “It ain’t like I cain’t do the job.”
    “Oh, my God,” Rans whispered under his breath. “Oh, my God almighty.”
    “Quit taking the Lord’s name in vain!” Eulie scolded.
    “Don’t be reproving me, Eulie Toby,” Rans snapped. “You’ve done told the biggest lie ever heard in the Sweetwood.”
    “It ain’t all that big a lie,” she said “He did kiss me.”
    “He kissed you.”
    “Yes, he done kissed me,” Eulie said. “I made myself all pretty and then sort of chanced upon him. He kissed me of his own free will, so it ain’t totally a lie.”
    “Kissing ain’t getting a baby,” Rans told her. “If you had it in your head to tell such a tale, you should have at least a let him have a shag so he could wonder.”
    “A shag?”
    Rans stared at her incredulously.
    “You don’t even know what it is, do you?”
    Eulie was silent.
    “You’re so dadblamed ignorant, you don’t even know where babies come from.”
    “I do, too,” Eulie shot back. “I just didn’t know what you call it.”
    Rans continued to shake his head. “We’ll be murdered in our beds.”
    “Just stop that foolish talk,” Eulie said. “I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
    “Eulie, this ain’t going to work,” Rans told her quietly.
    “It already has,” she answered “Now it’s getting late and it’s a long way up the mountain. You best be getting the youngers. I want to get Little Minnie and still have time to fix the husband-man a good meal.”
    “A plate full of hot food ain’t going to fix this,” Rans warned.
    “Just stop your worrying,” she said “Everything is going to be just fine.”
    As Eulie watched her brother take the ridge row path, she wondered if she believed the words herself. But she raised her chin and headed her own way, determined. Eulie had learned most of life’s lessons at her mother’s knee. And if there was anything that her mother had been certain about, it was that the more distasteful the job, the quicker it had to be faced. In the last few years, Eulie had been forced to face more distasteful jobs than she cared to think about.
    Her mother, a strong, hearty woman who had always seemed capable of overcoming even the most daunting of life’s obstacles, had succumbed to childbed fever only a week after the birth of Little Minnie. Her death had been more than a husband’s grief for Virgil Toby. A sickly, often listless daydreamer,