The Storm Read Free Page B

refrain, Why did I marry and move here? rarely stopped playing in her mind and plaguing her heart.
    â€œHere’s your favorite treat, Nellie,” she called. “Nice and rich. It’ll keep your coat shiny.”
    Nellie lowed and swished her tail. Usually docile, even she rebelled when she didn’t get what she needed.
    â€œBe patient, sweetheart. I can’t stand for both you and Mother Russell to rush me. Oops.” She’d hit her ring with the scoop. She was all thumbs today.
    She glanced down at her left hand. “Oh dear, I knocked the diamond out of my engagement ring.”
    She pulled on her gloves, dropped to her knees, and ran her hands along the littered ground. Nothing but chicken feathers, tufts of hay, piles of cornhusks, and mounds of dried and fresh manure. Her stomach churned, and she gulped to keep from throwing up.
    â€œDarn. Well, let me finish milking and run a bucketful to Mother Russell. After I wash the breakfast dishes, I’ll come hunt my diamond.”
    She rinsed Nellie’s tits then sat on the low stool, her head fuzzy as Nellie munched her breakfast and finally cooperated. The leisurely music of the milk buckets was usually soothing as their treble ping, peng gave way to a bass shhoop, shhuup . But the twenty minutes it took her today seemed like twenty hours.
    She grabbed several flour sacks she’d boiled and poured each pail of milk through one of them into small buckets for sweet milk to drink and into crocks for churning. Then she set the crocks in a washtub, poured water into it, and let each one’s cloth covering hang in the water to help cool the milk. The cream would gradually rise. After breakfast she would add some leftover souring cream and a little milk, then churn the mixture into butter and buttermilk. As careful as she was, though, sometimes the milk spoiled.
    She hurried to the well, even more jittery, and jerked her gloves on again. Otherwise the rough rope would callus her hands. Her shoulder muscles protesting, she strained to pull an already cold tin full of milk from the deep well for breakfast and carefully lowered the small buckets of fresh milk to chill.
    She scuttled to the kitchen but didn’t dare spill a drop. “This should be enough for breakfast, Mother Russell.” She’d mention her diamond later.
    Mr. James walked in from feeding the mules, Patrick dancing beside him. “Hi, Ma. I’m all clean and ready to go to school.”
    â€œGood boy.” She rubbed his arm and her day brightened. She couldn’t survive without him and her music. “You missed a spot.”
    His sunny expression dimmed. “Gee. Sorry. I tried.”
    She squeezed his small shoulder. “That’s all right. Just run along and wash your neck again before breakfast.” She gazed fondly at him then asked Mr. James, “Could you draw some more well water? I need to heat enough to fill the kettle, wash the dishes, and sterilize the pails.”
    When he returned to fill the reservoir on the wood-burning stove, she was in the pantry looking for some preserves. She overheard him and his mother.
    â€œI declare, James. Don’t see why she has to scald those milk buckets every blessed time she uses them. Once a week’s enough. Powerful waste of manpower, and well water too.”
    â€œYou’re right, Ma. Like you’re always saying, she’s gone overboard about germs. I bet she got that notion at that gol-dern university.”
    She’d heard it all before, but she stopped for the first time that morning, afraid the heavy white sacks of flour, corn meal, and sugar on the shelf next to her might fall and crush her. They’d trap her in this small closet and smother her.
    Suddenly she wanted to smash the Mason jars lined up on another shelf. The purple blackberry jam, the light-pink plum jelly, and the crimson strawberry preserves, safe and sweet in their glass jars, would dye the pantry floor.