My Bluegrass Baby Read Online Free PDF Page A

explorer’s earliest expeditions to elementary school
     kids; another of Melody and me smiling from the dunking booth at the annual Hunter’s
     Moon Festival near Buford; and one of the entire office staff huddled at the finish
     line at the Great Outhouse 300 Race in Lebanon, Kentucky. (Our team lost because the
     other team opened their crescent-moon-embellished door and edged us out just before
     we crossed the finish line.)
    Gina, who hadn’t liked me since a particularly ugly White Elephant Christmas gift
     exchange incident involving a Sephora gift card, worked in a separate part of the
     building, outside Commissioner Bidwell’s oft-unoccupied office. She saw the scathing
     glare I sent her as I came down the hallway, and she scurried away. I passed Melody,
     our sweet-faced front-desk receptionist, and dropped a small brown bag containing
     her favorite cranberry muffins from Sweet Eats on her desk. This ensured the delivery
     of my mail and faxes for at least a week. Kelsey was at her desk, ruthlessly sorting
     through Ray’s e-mails and typing the important notices into her usual Monday morning
     memo. As I went to get some office coffee, I saw The Interloper, Thief of Promotions,
     through the conference-room windows. Watching him pore over our materials with an
     amused smirk on his face made me want to smash the window with a chair. He must have
     caught my glowering vibe because he turned toward me and gave me one of those megawatt
     smiles that was supposed to turn me into lady jelly.
    “Sadie,” he called. “Would you mind coming in and having a seat? I asked Ray to lead
     me through some of your, uh, work, so I would know where I need to start.”
    The tone of his voice implied that my work was some catastrophic knot of media relations
     that had to be undone before he could even start thinking about his duties. That stung
     a bit. But rather than make excuses or jump to explain myself, I arched an imperious
     brow and gave careful consideration to his rather fabulous gray pinstripe suit and
     light blue shirt. Clearly someone had told him that wearing blue brought out the color
     of his eyes, because he seemed awfully partial to it. Between that and the hair, he
     looked like a model selling cologne for upwardly mobile, emotionally unavailable men.
    Still, he was completely out of his element, overdressed and uptight. He was the new
     guy. He had no idea how things worked around here. I had the home-field advantage.
     He didn’t know how to work within the mind-melting bureaucratic maze that was state
     government. And he was too damn fancy for his own good.
    I smiled beatifically . . . because making the rude gesture my hand seemed to be forming
     on its own would surely merit a reprimand in my personnel file. I slid into the seat
     across from him with my special mug, a Christmas gift from Kelsey that read BENHAM, THE TOWN THAT INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER, COAL MINERS, AND THEIR FAMILIES BUILT . After Kelsey gave it to me for Christmas, I made her a custom mug that read BENHAM, HOME OF THE LONGEST TOWN SLOGAN IN THE WORLD .
    This was one of many mugs I kept in the office emblazoned with city slogans and pictures
     of odd attractions. I had BOWLING GREEN—CORVETTE CITY, USA; PATTI’S 1880S SETTLEMENT—HOME OF THE MILE-HIGH MERINGUE PIE, and a mug that displayed the many ways to pronounce Louisville ( LOUIE-VILLE, LUH-VUL, LEWIS-VILLE, etc.). I tried collecting shot glasses at first, but Ray objected, saying it wasn’t
     professional to keep them around the office. I even tried describing them as tiny
     educational juice glasses, but he wouldn’t budge.
    I sipped from my mug and behaved as if this were any other meeting on any other Monday,
     which would not involve leaping across the table and throttling the new guy. I was
     not going to rise to the bait, I told myself. I would not respond to the way he referred
     to my samples with implied air-quotes around the word “work.” I would get