Girl Runner Read Online Free PDF Page A

crying myself. He’s given up.
    Cora stays silent until we pass the faint traces on the road where the bottle broke, and then she says, “Did you see the loaf of bread? Mouldy. I should have thrown it out, but I don’t know if Edith has more.”
    “I think Edith looks poorly,” I say.
    Cora disagrees. “Edith always looks poorly.”
    I say, “She didn’t even get up from the rocker.”
    “She’s like that now,” says Cora, and she looks at me and frowns.
    I’m about to argue, but Cora repeats herself: “Edith is like that now, anytime we visit. You know that. There’s nothing new to tell Mother.”
    “I guess not,” I say slowly. I don’t want Mother discovering what we’ve done—or neglected to do—any more than Cora does.
    It seems Fannie’s returned because we’ve hardly arrived when she calls us in to set the table for supper. I argue that I still have to do the chickens. That’s a safe bet for me. I pretty much always have to do the chickens. I don’t want to see Fannie just now anyway, not at all.
    Cora says that’s okay, she will set the table. We glance at each other and I think, like twins.
    HERE IS THE EVIDENCE against Cora and me: we do not deliver the tincture. We do not tell our mother what happened to the bottle. We do not say that Edith is looking poorly (more poorly than usual?).
    But Edith is poorly, and she wakes the next morning in a worse state, a fact we learn when Carson arrives before breakfast and pounds on our door, like husbands do, shouting for Mother.
    There’s blood! We hear him say that, Cora and I.
    Cora and I are making eggs and biscuits for the hired men’s morning meal, and we don’t stop in our work. Olive has been churning cream for butter, and she runs to the door that opens out of the dining room, the first to get to Carson. I’m hardly breathing. Is this my doing? Cora rolls and cuts the biscuit dough into squares, her head bent, eyes wide, and I know that she is thinking the same.
    Fannie is not yet awake, but this isn’t unusual. Fannie is the last to rise. She’s not like the rest of us, but I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe it’s only that she’s never hurrying to get somewhere.
    My mother is a blur of hurry. She fastens her boots. She keeps a sturdy canvas bag with handles in the cloak closet by the dining room door, prepared for any sudden need. In her work, needs almost always arrive suddenly. She checks the kitchen: “Good girls. Get the breakfast on for the men, and send Fannie to me when she comes down.” Her tone is serious, but unafraid.
    I let Cora tell Fannie. I don’t hear Fannie’s reply, just her feet on the steps and the door slamming behind her as she rushes off—as Fannie, who never hurries, runs now to help Mother, and Edith, and maybe too Carson, I think, and then I tell myself, For shame.
    Father seems not to hear the uproar; only he doesn’t touch his biscuits and eggs.
    “You put too much salt in,” Cora tells me, of the eggs.
    “You burnt the biscuits!”
    Father retreats in silence to the barn.
    After we feed the salty eggs and burnt biscuits to the hired men, who don’t complain, and after we clean up, Olive says we should get going on the beans today, even with Mother and Fannie away. Cora says, “Who put you in charge?” And Olive says, “Fine. Aggie and I will do it. Aggie’s a good worker, aren’t you, Aggie?” None of us mention George. He is being deliberately slow over his tea. But he hears us arguing in the kitchen and comes in with his cup and saucer, and says, “I’ll help you, Aggie,” and I’m pleased, even though I expect little from George’s help, and little is what I get. But companionship counts for something. After Olive and I have picked a mass of beans, George and I tail and snap them in the shade on the long porch that runs the length of three sides of the house.
    Olive prepares the jars, and the hot water bath. George and I don’t talk about what might be happening at Edith’s.