Read Online Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith - Free Book Online

on. It smelled awful in the house, even with the winder open, and the door, from all that camphor, but Momma just set there and people wuld come and set with her and finely as the evening come on, they was a lot of folks ther on the porch and in the yard too, they was all eaten and drinking.
    Dont you recollect the time when John Arthur and Revel got that dynamite and took and blowed up Sugar Cave? said Mrs. Kirk.
    Lord yes and dont you recollect that time the high Sheriff come all the way up here after Revel, they said he had daddied a baby down there in Majestic, it was the Sheriffs nice as I recall, and Revel put on a old ladys dress and bonnet, it must of been his mommas or his grannys, and set on the porch there smoking his pipe and allowing as how Revel had just lit out of here the day before, headed for Wheeling, West Va.?
    They all toled storys about Revel and Daddy, and after a while when it started getting dark, Momma toled agin how she had come ther, and the midnigt ride. I rember I was setting on the top step then and listening to Momma tell it inside and I was all full up with wanting, wanting something so bad, I culd not of said what it was. The smell of the camphor was making me sick and the moon was coming up full. It was kindly cold on the porch but the house was so full of folks.
    Here Ivy, here Ivy, said Oakley Fox and put a pint jar of corn likker in my hand.
    Lord Oakley, where did you get this much likker? I said, and Oakley said he had got it out back where the men were, by the smokehouse, and they was plenty more where that come from.
    Lets me and you get drunk, he said but Mrs. Brown I am proud to say that we did not for I said No Oakley, but we drunken some of it, just to taste you know, it tasted awful I thoght and then Oakley give the rest to my aunt Tenessee who was sitting there on the steps too, now this was a big mistake as I will relate to you now.
    You know my aunt Tenessee is not quite rigt in the head but she isnt quite crazy ether. In fact she is smack inbetween I gess you wuld have to say, but more crazy than not. Tenessee hasnt never lived apart from her sister Garnett, this is Granny Rowe, who does everthing for her, even shell the beans! So Tenessee dont do a thing, but she dresses up as much as she can, and thinks she is beutiful. Some of her get-ups looks so bad you wuld die to see it, she laghs la-di-da and thows back her head. Her hair was so blond and fine at one time but now it is nearly white only she dont know it, she dont know she has gotten old. The bad thing about Tenessee is, she will go up and show herself to men sometimes, everbody around here knows it and buttons her up and takes her back over on Dimond Fork or down to the store where they will keep her until somebody can get up with Granny.
    But I have heerd tell that one time something nasty happend to Tenessee, and yet a nother time, a drummer come to Majestic and seed her ther in the store and fell plum in love with her and took her walking and give her a perl necklace and then axed ther daddy for her and wuld not take no for an anser nor listen to any sense. When he finely said yes, they say that Garnett, this was Granny then, took to her bed weeping. But this drummer was in love, and proposed to take Tenessee over to his people in Huntington West Va. wich he done, but after a wile he brung her back! and carried her up this holler in a buggy as far as they culd go. She was wearing a new green suit wich he had boght her, and a big yaller hat. Carried a new little bead purse.
    This drummer he walked her up to the porch dressed fit to kill whilst Garnett and aunt Vicey and Daddy and ther Momma and Daddy was all setting there watching them climb the holler and not knowing what to say. And then that drummer, they say he clicked his heels together like a man in a play and he said, Well my love, it has been an honor, and he give a little bow to her and then a little bow to all of them, and walked off down the holler without