Read Online Still House Pond by Jan Watson - Free Book Online Page B

box auction—young maids verging on being old maids like Manda. Wives and mothers brought food for their families. But maybe if the right person bid on her box tonight, this would be her last year at the spinsters’ table. Manda was ever hopeful.
    The auctioneer stood behind the table, picking his teeth with a broom straw and lifting one box lid after another. “What you got there, Miss Manda?” he asked. As soon as she put her supper on the table, he pried the corner up. “Well, well, fried chicken and still warm.” The broom straw bobbed in the corner of his mouth. “I just might have to save this one for last and bid on it myself.”
    Manda cringed. Joe Little must be forty years old, and he was bald to boot. Not to mention he was a widower with eight kids. Manda didn’t aim to take on that job. From the corner of her eye, she saw a boy sidle up to a second table, where delicious-looking cakes waited for the cakewalk. She watched as the boy ran his finger around the bottom of a caramel-iced confection. When he saw Manda watching, he popped his finger into his mouth and walked away.
    â€œBetter mind the cakes, Mr. Little,” she said.
    A tap on her shoulder and she was waltzed away by Gurney. “You sure look nice, Manda,” he said.
    Nice? she thought. Sisters looked nice . Mothers looked nice . Even grandmothers looked nice . Manda wanted to be beautiful—or at the very least pretty. She held her body stiffly in Gurney’s arms. He didn’t seem to notice.
    Dimmert and Cara danced by. Cara raised her eyebrows.
    Manda shook her head in answer. No, no sparks yet.
    â€œWhat?” Gurney asked. “Did I do something wrong?”
    â€œNot a thing,” Manda snapped.
    â€œI can’t wait until the auction,” he said. “My belly’s rumbling for your dried apple pie.”
    The song ended, and one of the musicians stepped forward, teasing a fast tune from his fiddle. Gurney turned to face the crowd and started clogging, heel-toe, heel-toe, emphasizing the downbeat of the music. Soon other folks fell in until a line stretched clear across the room. Some danced with eyes closed, and some slapped their knees in perfect time, energized by the percussive rhythm.
    Manda’s feet started up a little jig. It was hard to ignore the music. Gurney smiled and ran a set around her, his knees bent, his arms folded behind his back. Swishing her skirts, she matched him fancy step for fancy step. The other cloggers fell out until it was just she and Gurney facing each other, performing the time-honored dance to whoops and whistles from the crowd.
    The fiddler rocked the bow, burning up the strings. Gurney leaned in as if to steal a kiss. She leaned back. The crowd roared with laughter. Manda loved it. She could dance all night.
    It was over Gurney’s shoulder she first noticed the musician. He was a middling sort of guy—middling height, middling weight, and brown hair, nothing special except for his eyes, which were locked on her. She looked away and then looked back. He never broke his stare. Flustered, she lost a step.
    Laughing, Gurney caught her hand. Wild applause broke out. Manda and Gurney bowed like actors on a stage.
    The mood of the crowd shifted abruptly when the middling man took up a small, slender, three-stringed music box and strummed it like a guitar. The other pickers stood silently behind him. Nobody danced to the strains of “Pretty Polly.” Most just stood in place and swayed in time to the middling man’s high, lonesome voice. He sang of a girl murdered by her faithless boyfriend, an innocent girl who now lay silent in her grave with only the wild wind for comfort.
    Gurney chanced to slide an arm around her shoulders. She wished he wouldn’t.
    The middling man closed his eyes as if his song were a prayer. His voice was pure as an angel’s. When he finished, nobody clapped or hooted or hollered. Many women dabbed at