All Together in One Place by Jane Kirkpatrick

moved without a sling.
    Tipton took a breath and held it. Sometimes if she did that, the tingling in her arm went away.
    “Have you seen Tyrellie, Miz Bacon?” She exhaled it as a blast of air.
    “I'll bet his mother named him that specifically so no one could add an ie at the end. Mothers'll do that, you know,” Miz Bacon said. “Not want someone calling their six-foot-tall boy ‘Mikie’ someday, so they name him ‘Jeremy to begin with or something solid like Isaac or Tyrell. Then some sweet thing comes along and rearranges it. Tyrellie.” She rolled her eyes.
    “It's no one's business excepting ours, his and mine.” Tipton s voice took on strength, and the tingling in her hand lessened. She sat up straighten
    Miz Bacon bit off a hunk of the cornbread and chewed. She winced as she tried to catch the crumbs in the palm of her bad hand.
    “Have you seen him then, Miz Bacon?” Tipton let her eyes scan the area“After all this time, dont you think ‘Mazy is in order?”
    “Not like him to wander from the wagons before we've had our good mornings.”
    “There'll be more folks around now, Tipton.” Miz Bacons voice got all soft. “People needing work done on their wagons, their horses trimmed. That's Tyrell's job. Its what a blacksmith does, why his work is so valued. Not looking after you.” She said it with kindness, but still the words stung. “Your mama and papa delegated that task to us, at least for a while.”
    “Do tell, ma'am,” Tipton said, lifting her chin. A songbird warbled into the silence. The scent of fried bacon drifted from a fire across the circle.
    Pig, lying on his side in the wagon shade, let out a sharp, quick bark, woke himself, and trotted over to the women. Miz Bacon fed him bread from her palm. The dog slobbered. “You fat little pig,” she said as she brushed at the dog's head in tenderness. Tipton looked away.
    “What's with you? Are you worried? You strike me as so sure of yourself. You never turned an eye back toward home when we left. I envied that, the way you said good-bye without even shedding a tear. It doesn't fit then, it seems to me, your needing Tyrell so much.”
    “None of your business neither,” Tipton said. She gathered up her parasol and poked it on the ground before her.
    “Now see, that's just what I mean. Put me in my place but then so…lost almost, as though you can't be your own post—you've got to lean on him. That can tire a man.”
    “Our love is a post. We're roped together around it. We don't intend to let it untangle loose after we say our vows, not Tyrellie and me, not the way some married folks do.” Tipton stood then. “We're the same. We understand that being together isn't leaning at all. It's filling up. It's…tying up loose ends, now that we have each other.” She eyed the woman chewing, still staring. “Maybe that's what you envy, ma'am.”
    “Just don't get so roped together you get hung up,” Miz Bacon told her.
    Tipton straightened the blue pleats of her skirt and opened the parasol. “I was not born in the woods to be scared by an owl,” she said and swirled out across the circle toward the new wagons.

    Tyrell hadn't soured on her. They did belong together. These six weeks had proved it. He'd been kind and good and gentle. It was how he proved his love, not coming back for Tipton after two years apart the way her mother wanted. The mere thought of two or three years without Tyrell took her breath away.
    She let herself take in the sights and sounds around her. The smells of horses and men, of cooking and smoke all swirled about by her parasol She walked past roped places; one held Marvel and another the Ayrshire cows, Jennifer and Mavis. People milled like water swirling in a bucket, more men, women, and children in one place than she'd seen in months back in Cassville, even dark-skinned people, and slender, bowing girls with ivory hairsticks and wearing what looked like trim silk dresses. She spied the boys who'd peeked