The Old Buzzard Had It Coming by Donis Casey Page B

with your staying home and helping me, just for the day. Would you be willing to do that?”
    A look a relief and gratitude passed over Phoebe’s face and she leaned over to give her mother a hug. “Thank you, Mama,” she said.
    ***
     
    Later that evening, the family gathered in the parlor by the dim light of kerosene lamps to spend some time entertaining one another before bedtime.
    Shaw melted a glob of butter in the bottom of one of Alafair’s soup pots and popped an enormous batch of popcorn on the pot belly stove. He and Charlie-boy took turns shaking the pan and shaking the pan until every last kernel of corn was popped. The popcorn was meted out in bowls, and while the family snacked, Martha and Mary alternated reading from a favorite book of poems.
    “Listen my children, and you shall hear
    Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere…”
     
    Alafair sat in her rocker by the window, listening with one ear as Martha regaled the family with her tales of working for Mr. Bushyhead at the bank and Ruth picked out a couple of tunes on the old upright piano. She tried to observe Phoebe without being too conspicuous about it. The girl seemed as engrossed in Martha’s story as the rest of her siblings, and not overly nervous or upset. The idea that was niggling at Alafair, that Phoebe knew something she wasn’t telling about this whole Harley Day affair, must just be her imagination. Phoebe was not good at being devious. Not like Mary or Alice or Charlie, the imps.
    Of course, love makes one bold.
    Alafair stopped rocking. She urgently tried to remember what she had heard in the last year or two about John Lee Day in conjunction with Phoebe. In fact, she had heard little enough about John Lee at all since his father had forced him to quit school and work the farm. She and Shaw and their friends and neighbors had all known of and deplored the situation at the Day place, but it was not unheard of for a man to drink to excess, or to determine that work was more important than education for his children, or to keep his wife at home. It was no one else’s business, and none of the neighbors would have interfered. They would have helped any member of the family who asked, but no one had asked.
    Shaw was playing his guitar now, and singing.
    “The old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be,
    Got stung by a bumblebee,
    Climbed up the apple tree…”
     
    Little Sophronia, scandalized, cried, “Oh, Daddy!”
    Alafair got up and began collecting popcorn bowls to carry back into the kitchen. It seemed increasingly obvious, she thought, that Phoebe had not only kept in touch with John Lee, but had developed a relationship with him. She couldn’t quite figure out how Phoebe had gone about it so thoroughly in secret. She wasn’t surprised, though. If she had learned anything in all her years of motherhood, it was that children have lives, inward or outward, of which their parents know nothing.

Chapter Five
     
    Alafair ran the hat pin through her good black felt bonnet with the bunch of carved cherries on the band, anchoring it to the thick knot of dark hair at her crown. It was an ongoing battle of hers to keep her hair neatly pulled back out of the way, but it seemed to have a mind of its own, and exasperated tendrils were always escaping any coif she attempted. She spent a moment trying to force a few tresses back into place.
    As her mother arranged herself in the mirror by the door, Phoebe stood aside, clutching a covered dish before her in two hands. In the mirror, Phoebe could see the dart of Alafair’s sharp brown eyes as she sized up Phoebe’s reflection. Apparently, she passed muster, since her mother offered no criticism.
    ***
     
    The Day farm was a sad, sorry place. The frame house had been white once, but no more. The yard was scattered with trash and rusty farm implements, rangy chickens, a cat or two and a yellow dog. The thought of lockjaw immediately entered Alafair’s mind as they rode up the rutted drive.