She gave me a stricken look then, and I knew I had hit the mark. Ann had married James Melton to get away from a fractious parent and a home life of toil. She must have known as well as I did that Tom Dula was a deal more appealing to a young girl than old sobersides Melton had ever been. Maybe Laura Foster had precious little to gain by marrying Tom Dula, but what did she have to lose?
“It won’t change anything,” said Ann, pounding another biscuit into the floured cloth. “Tom would never.”
I took the dough away from her and rolled it back into a ball. “I expect you’re right,” I said, keeping my eyes on my work. “Just because he’d have a place of his own, and somebody making him dinner, and waiting to warm his bed, there’s no call to think he wouldn’t want to hang around here, on the off chance that your husband will drop off to sleep.”
Ann edged me away from the table. “Go see her, Pauline. Tonight. After supper. Just pass the time with her this evening and see if you can tell what’s on her mind. She may be mixed up with somebody besides Tom.”
“Go see her?” I laughed. Ann never thought about anything but what she wanted. “Why, she lives all the way over in German’s Hill. Even if I was to stop there only long enough to say how-do and drink a cup of water, I doubt if I could make it back here by sun-up.”
Ann stamped her foot. “But I want to know what she’s up to! I can’t rest until I do. Why don’t you go tomorrow after midday and walk over there? I’ll tell James to let you.”
I thought it over. The prospect of a walk over to see my other Foster cousins was a pleasant thought for me, if the day was fine, and if I had to indulge in tale-bearing at Ann’s bidding, I reckoned it would be worth it. Besides, I was curious to see for myself how the land lay between Tom Dula and Laura Foster. I might be stingy with the truth when I got back to Ann, but I’d like to know for my own satisfaction. No use to make it easy on her, though.
“I’ll be awful tired tomorrow, Ann. You know I ain’t well to begin with. I don’t know… to make a long walk over to German’s Hill, and then to have to walk all the way back here, and get up at the crack of dawn and cook breakfast…”
Ann stuck out her lip. “I suppose I could give you a hand with the morning chores, then. But you had better find out something worth telling when you get there, Pauline. If you go over to Wilson Foster’s and spend the evening getting drunk and sleeping it off instead of talking to Laura and coming on back, I’ll take a switch to you. I swear I will.”
I got the half day off, all right. I never once heard James Melton tell his wife “no” about anything. Maybe he was scared to, but I don’t reckon he could have been worried about rat poison in his food, for I never saw Ann do that much cooking. So off I went on that next afternoon, while Melton tilled the field alone, with his two milch cows yoked to the plow. I hated to wear out shoe leather trudging through the muddy trace to German’s Hill, when I could have got there in an hour or so on horseback, but if James Melton could not afford even a scrub horse, at least he could cobble me a new pair of shoes.
The walk was pleasant enough in the late afternoon, but I decided to stay the night, for spring nights are still bone-chilling cold, and I had no desire to make my way home on foot close to midnight in that weather, especially since this visit was being done as a favor to Ann, and I was disposed to inconvenience myself as little as possible on her account. Why is it that fine-looking folk always think they are doing you a favor by letting you do them one?
We still weren’t far enough into spring for there to be much to see on my way to the Fosters’ place-a few green leaves on trees here and there, and sprouts of grass amid the mire of rain-soaked fields. The road ran along beside the river, and it was as brown as the fields from the spring rains. I thought it looked like a trail of tobacco spit, not at all like the clear little streams we have up the mountain in Watauga County. I am not much moved by the beauty of nature anyhow, because every place I’ve ever seen looks about the same. I hoped that the Fosters would have something decent to eat and that they’d offer me some of it, and even more I hoped that there would be a full jug of whiskey and not too many people around to share it with. Whiskey is better than scenery. Better than people, too. It doesn’t ask you for anything in return.
I never paid much attention to the begats in our family, but as near as I could figure it, Wilson Foster’s daddy had been a brother to my grandfather, so we were cousins, same as I was with Ann’s mama Lotty Foster. Prosperity did not seem to run in the Wilkes County branch of the family, for Wilson was not much better off than Ann’s family. He farmed in German’s Hill, but he didn’t own the land, just worked as a tenant, so he barely cleared enough from farming to feed his family. Laura was the oldest, of an age with Ann and me, and after her came three boys and a baby girl. Their mama was dead, though, probably birthing that last child, though I hadn’t bothered to ask the particulars of it. What cooking and cleaning was done about the place fell to Laura, for there was no money to pay a servant.
It was a dingy white frame house that didn’t look big enough to house six people, but I suppose that the little ones all slept piled together somewhere like puppies. It looked like a house that nobody cared about-not Wilson Foster, because he was too shiftless to own it, and not his landlord, because he probably figured that a ramshackle place with a leaky roof was good enough for a tenant farmer’s family.
I didn’t feel sorry for them, though. They had a roof over their heads, and a woods full of game to put meat on the table, and they had lived through the War. There’s many that had to make do with less than that. Besides, the Fosters were not what you would call a close family. We didn’t think we owed anything to one another, and we didn’t flock together like guinea fowl, preferring our own company to the outside world. Look at Cousin Ann. She didn’t take me in out of the kindness of her heart. She let me stay so that she could have a servant for next to nothing. If that is family feeling, you can have my share of it.
I sat looking at the house for a minute, before I approached the door. Before I could hello the house, one of the boys came around from the side of the house, and stood a few feet away from me, staring. I made sure he didn’t have a rock in his hand, and then I bade him a good evening, but he just glanced at me wall-eyed, and gave me the barest nod to acknowledge my greeting. Shy around strangers, I thought, and I left him be, and walked on up to the house, wearing a plaster smile, and ready to be the long-lost cousin from the mountains, if that’s who they needed me to be.
At first nobody answered my knock, but inside I could hear a child hollering, “Somebody’s come a-calling.”
I waited, because there’s no use in rapping again if they know you are there. By and by, the door opened enough for a small head to peek up at me, and a big-eyed boy stared at me for a moment or two, before he said, “What?”
I gave him a careful smile. “It is all right,” I said. “I am kin to you. Which Foster boy are you? James?”
He shook his head. “Naw. I’m John. It was Elbert what brung you up to the door.” That got him talking, which is why I pretended to think he was James, who is seventeen. This sorry little pup couldn’t have been twelve yet. I knew that the best way to get some folks to talk is to let them correct you. After that, he forgot to be bashful, and I edged past him and headed straight for the fireplace, for it had been a cold walk from the Meltons’ place to German’s Hill. While I warmed my hands, I glanced around, seeing exactly what I had expected to see: a few sticks of homemade pine furniture, a rag rug on the floor, and some pans and a cast-iron skillet hanging from hooks in the ceiling.