Fair Weather Read Online Free PDF Page B

wanted us out of the kitchen before Everett came to call on Lottie. He was never invited over the threshold, but Mama was particular about us clearing out of the kitchen. It was hard tofathom her thoughts. Maybe she didn’t want him to think we were spying on him.
    I was in the porch swing when Lottie came out wearing her new white shoes under the fresh apron she always put on for Everett. She said she was breaking in the shoes. She was showing them off to see if he’d notice.
    Then right away there he came, all over the road, so I went on in the house. As I made my way through the darkened front room, I fell over Mama.
    “Hush,” she whispered. She was bent to the window, watching Everett trying to turn the wagon into the lane. She was spying, if you ask me. If Buster was under the porch, we made quite a crowd.
    “Did you notice how pale and spindly he was earlier in the summer before the sun got to him?” Mama said in my ear.
    Even in the evening at a distance he had a better color. And he was looking broader across the shoulders from heavy work. He was not bad-looking, though I didn’t point this out to Mama.
    “I have an idea he’s been in jail,” she whispered. “That’s why he was so pale. They get that way.”
    My land, I thought.
    “But he’s a talker,” Mama murmured. That was true. We didn’t know what they found to talk about. But we could hear the mumble of their voices every Wednesday night, and he did more than his share. He’d bring a book sometimes and read it to Lottie.
    “I hope it’s not the Bible,” Mama remarked, “because I have a feeling he’s not a Methodist.”
    But I didn’t think it was a revival meeting Lottie and Everett were conducting out there on the porch.
    Mama muttered, not for the first time, “We don’t know a thing about him.”
    “I guess we could ask,” I said, being pert.
    “I’d sooner nip this in the bud,” said Mama.
    *  *  *
    On the night before we were to leave, Lottie and I sat upright in the bed like birds on a branch. Our new getups were laid out around the room. We were to wear them to make a good impression on Aunt Euterpe, if such a thing was possible. At the foot of the bed were two egg crates packed with the rest. We had nothing resembling valises.
    We were all set to go. We were cocked and primed. But something fearful was coming over me. I had some shyness in me that may have come from Mama. Of course, at that age I didn’t know
what
I was, because I had a history of spunkiness too. And a scrap or two in the schoolyard to prove it, in years past. I’d even gone on the stage once, for a minute.
    They were having a school program where the families came. Lottie had tricked me out in a costume and made me memorize a song. I couldn’t have been more than six, and too dumb to fight her about it. They pushed me onto the stage, and I held out my skirts and sang:
    When first I stepped upon the stage,
    My heart went pitty-pat,
    And I thought I heard somebody say,
    “What little fool is that?”
    That was all of the song I could remember, so I naturally burst into tears and had to be led off. It would be many a year before I sang another solo.
    Now I wondered if that school program had marked me for life, because flouncing off to Chicago liked to scare me out of my skin. Staying tucked in right here at home, safe from a world full of complete strangers, began to look good.
    The lamp burned beside Lottie, and she was staring into space. We supposed we were too tired to sleep. In fact, we were worried to death.
I
was.
    Even so, I couldn’t leave Lottie be for long. I began to pluck the petals off an imaginary daisy, chanting:
    He loves me,
    He don’t.
    He’ll have me,
    He won’t.
    He would if he could,
    But he can’t.
    “Be quiet, Rosie,” Lottie said.
    “What do you and Everett find to talk about?” I inquired.
    “This and that,” she said. “Nothing to concern you.”
    “Mama says Everett’s very probably been in jail.”
    “He