Read Online Dorothy Garlock by High on a Hill - Free Book Online Page A

her to look her eldest brother in the eye and defy him.
    “I’m taking no more abuse from you, Marvin, and I’m not going to be slapped around by Bud or Leroy ever again.”
    “Well, now, what ya think ya’ll do about it?” Bud sneered.
    “I’ll shoot you,” Tess said calmly.
    The brothers laughed. Leroy laughed so hard, he headed for the back door to spit.
    “I knowed it was a mistake. Pa knowed it too. He was agin’ lettin’ ya go to Aunt Cora to be schooled. Shows what happens when ya let a woman get the bit in her teeth. He was plum cloudy-headed over Maw and let her have her way. Pity she didn’t live to see what happened to ya,” Marvin said spitefully.
    “Yes, it is a pity,” Tess agreed. “She worked herself to death taking care of five lazy boys and Pa.”
    “Ya ain’t better let Calvin hear ya sayin’ that. He was right fond of Maw.” Bud continued to eat. He never let anything interfere with shoveling food into his mouth. He was already so fat he couldn’t mount a mule. “Calvin said it was a blessin’ Maw passed over before ya come back with yore belly swelled with a bastard.” Bud spoke between mouthfuls of food.
    “I was raped by Cousin Willard. All of you knew it and did nothing about it.”
    “It was yore word agin his’n.” Marvin’s face was a thundercloud, as it always was when this subject came up. “He said ya wanted it, begged him to do it. Willard said ya warn’t no good at it nohow.”
    Anger made Tess’s small body stiffen. Her head shot up, her fists clenched. They hadn’t believed her, and they hadn’t believed Aunt Cora. They wanted to believe that no-good, thieving, stinking, nasty-talking Willard Carter because he was a little better off than the rest of the Carters.
    “If you had the brains of a crabapple,” Tess said with a sneer, “you’d know that no woman would
want
anything from a fat, unwashed muddle-head like Willard!”
    “He be a man with strong seed.” Gravy ran from the corner of Bud’s mouth when he grinned. “He planted one in ya on his first try, didn’t he?”
    “And the whipping Pa gave me when I came home shook the evil thing right out of me. I thank God for that!”
    “Hear, now, don’t ya be talkin’ like that. It ain’t Christian.”
    Tess looked at her fat brother with disgust. “You wouldn’t know a Christian if one jumped up and bit you.”
    “She’s bein’ lippy, Marvin,” Bud said. “She ain’t had a switchin’ since Pa died. Pa always said a woman needs her legs switched once a week.”
    Tess reached behind her for the butcher knife.
    “Yeah. She’s gettin’ plumb feisty.” Leroy tried to sidle behind her, but she backed up.
    “Leave her be. Leroy, get on up to the still and siphon off some of that last batch and bring me a jug. I got thinkin’ to do.”
    “Ya ain’t goin’ to do nothin’ ’bout what she done?”
    “Are you wantin’ me to club ya upside the head? Get on and do what I told ya. Ya ain’t in charge a Tessie. If’n yo’re finished fillin’ yore gut, Bud, go with him.”
    “But … Marvin, I ain’t done yet.”
    “He won’t be until the last crumb is gone from the table,” Tess said, and Bud looked as if he’d like to hit her, but he didn’t dare with Marvin there.
    “Hitch up the wagon, Leroy. Take that case of bottles with you. This is a good batch. We’ll bottle some of it. Send it back with Bud. You stay and let Cousin Arney go home.”
    Next to Calvin, who lived on a farm four miles west of them and ruled his family with even a stronger hand, Marvin was the smartest and the best-looking of the Carter boys. The other brother had disappeared when Marvin became the head of the family. The two had never gotten along.
    Marvin had never married, although he’d had several dalliances with women from time to time. Tess suspected that they were the ones who did the breaking, because there was not one speck of softness in her brother. He was hard, demanding and cruel. He had taken