Call the Devil by His Oldest Name by Sallie Bissell Page A

He watched the frowning child pulling at Ruth’s breast, her gaze serious and in­tense upon her mother’s face.
    â€œHer appetite is.”
    â€œHow about you?”
    â€œI’m fine.”
    â€œThen I guess you haven’t changed your mind about the rally.” Jonathan wondered if she’d ever once heard, in the past month, any of his concerns about their shrinking bank account.
    Ruth’s face immediately locked down into the hard, angry lines of the night before. “No, Jonathan, I haven’t changed my mind. I’m going. Lily’s going. At last count, you were going, too.”
    â€œIt’ll cost us a almost a thousand dollars.”
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œIt’s the peak weekend for tourists. If you stayed here and kept the store open, we might clear three hundred bucks.”
    Ruth set her coffee cup on the bedside table and lifted Lily to her shoulder. “That’s not a thousand by my arithmetic book.”
    â€œThat guy Duncan. He’ll pay me five hun­dred to take him boar hunting for three days. I’m supposed to meet him in Murphy tomorrow morning.”
    â€œNow I get it,” Ruth said sarcastically, as Lily started on her other breast. “This is really about you going boar hunting.”
    He rubbed his forehead in frustration, hating the way she could always box him in with her words. “No, Ruth, it’s about making ends meet. We’re almost broke.”
    â€œBroke? We weren’t broke last week when you bought that new fishing reel. Or that chain saw.”
    Involuntarily his hands curled into fists. “Damn it, Ruth, I spend one dollar to your ten. Fish is what we eat! Wood is how we heat this place! Right now it’s mid-October. We have a cold, damp winter coming. If you take Lily to that rally and she gets sick, how are we going to pay for it?”
    â€œBreast-fed babies have immunities, Jonathan,” Ruth replied smugly. “They don’t get sick like other babies. I’m taking my medicine bag, and anyway, we’re only going to Tennessee. It’s not like she’s going to catch bubonic plague there.”
    â€œYou don’t know what could happen, with Clarinda watching her.”
    â€œJonathan, you have fought me about this rally since day one. Go ahead and go boar hunting if you want. I don’t care. Just don’t make rude remarks about my cousin and stupid excuses about not having enough money to get poor little Lily through the winter!”
    He was so angry, he couldn’t focus his eyes. Since Lily had been born, it had been like this every time they argued. He’d say one thing and she’d twist it into something entirely different. For the first time in his life, he wanted to hit a woman. Instead, he turned away and stormed down the stairs, where he found Clarinda perched behind the cash register, eating a carton of strawberry yogurt.
    â€œIs all your stuff packed up?” he asked gruffly, at that moment hating her as much as he did Ruth.
    â€œRight there with yours.” With her spoon, Clarinda pointed to the front door. If she heard the fury in his voice, she didn’t show it.
    Ruth had stacked all the gear she’d packed for the trip—their clothes, Lily’s clothes, food, diapers, toys, and a portable playpen—in a pile by the entrance to the store.
    Without bothering to put his shoes on, he flung the door open and started hauling everything out. Ruth had already worn out one clutch on her truck in the eighteen months she’d lived in the mountains, and she was fast working on wearing out another. Not wanting to take the chance of the thing going bad on her and Lily, he loaded their gear into the back of his old Chevy. By the time the morning fog lifted, he’d attached the camper to the trailer hitch and filled up the tank. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he looked at his work. Though the makeshift rig looked like something the