The Old Buzzard Had It Coming by Donis Casey Page A

dishwater. Martha hauled out the dishpan from the pantry, and Phoebe led the younger girls, Blanche and Sophronia, in clearing the table. Alafair seated herself in a chair by the kitchen door with her mending in her lap, presiding over the cleanup.
    “You haven’t had much to say this evening,” Alafair observed to Phoebe. Phoebe shot her mother a surprised and wary glance. How do they know, her expression said, these mothers, when something is on your mind? “I’m feeling a little draggy, Ma,” Phoebe managed.
    Alafair eyed her. “Are you feeling poorly? Come over here.”
    Obediently, Phoebe let her mother feel her forehead and cheeks. “No fever,” Alafair pronounced.
    Phoebe straightened. Her eyes wouldn’t meet her mother’s. “I’m not sick, Mama. It’s just that time of the month. I’m a bit wan.”
    “You feel like you need to lie down? Fronie, stop that.” Her eyes returned to Phoebe’s face after her brief aside to Sophronia.
    “No, Mama,” Phoebe assured her. “I can finish clearing.”
    Alafair studied Phoebe in silence as the girl made several trips to hand dishes to Mary.
    “You haven’t said anything about Mr. Day,” Alafair finally noted.
    Phoebe gave her a furtive glance. “I don’t know what to say, Ma. It’s an awful thing.”
    Alafair considered this comment. It was very much in character for Phoebe, who was by far the tenderest of all of Alafair’s brood. “It’s beginning to look like John Lee may be in trouble,” Alafair finally said, in her best conversational tone. “He shouldn’t have run off. Should have stayed around and explained himself. It’d look a whole lot less suspicious.”
    Phoebe had finished clearing the table. Blanche and Sophronia had scampered off somewhere and the other girls were still involved in the kitchen. There was a lot of noise. Phoebe sat down. “Maybe he felt like he had to run off, Ma. He had fought with his daddy and all.”
    “I can see where he might want to hide in the first heat of things, but if he’d thought about it, he’d have seen it looks bad.”
    For an instant, Phoebe looked as if she might cry. “Things always are bad for him,” she said. “I don’t think he’d expect much different.”
    Phoebe’s response took Alafair by surprise, and she swallowed hard, touched. “Well, honey,” she finally said, “if it makes you feel any better, I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems unlikely to me that that poor boy did it. If he did shoot his father, it wouldn’t be very smart of him to hang around home for three days waiting for a thaw.”
    Phoebe bit her lip and nodded, but didn’t answer.
    “You want me to make you some chamomile tea?” Alafair asked, falling back on a practical action she often took for her daughters’ discomforts, physical and emotional.
    Phoebe smiled. “Thank you, Mama.” She hesitated, then continued, “You think it would be all right if I made up a pallet and slept here in the kitchen for a couple of nights?”
    Alafair didn’t think that a particularly odd request. The family’s normal sleeping arrangements had the parents in the smaller north bedroom, the boys on cots in the parlor, and the girls in the larger south bedroom. Martha and Mary shared a bed, as did Alice and Phoebe. The younger girls shared cots that trundled under the big beds during the day. Often, when one of the kids was sick, Alafair allowed her the luxury of privacy by fixing up a makeshift bed by the stove in the kitchen.
    “I think that would be all right,” Alafair decided. Not that any of the sisters would mind. Ruth, Blanche, and Sophronia would immediately take advantage of the vacancy by jumping into the big bed with Alice, who would spend most of the night devising story and deed to scare them silly and irritate the older girls with muffled shrieks and scuffles. “In fact,” Alafair continued, “I’ll be going out to the Day place tomorrow to take some food out to them. I don’t see anything wrong