Relics Read Online Free PDF

treasures every time they walked out to water the petunias.
    Eventually, Carmen led her to the front porch of the Smiley home, their first stop. It seemed to Faye that the Smileys were taking an inordinate amount of time to answer the knock on their front door. But Carmen filled in the down time ruminating on why she enjoyed her career as an oral historian.
    “It’s not even like work,” she said, and Faye could hear an echo of Carmen’s Cuban roots in the exotic twist she gave every vowel. “In my family, we’d sit together on Sunday afternoons, just talking, and my abuela told me such stories. And sometimes, when I was lucky, her mother, God rest her soul, would tell me stories, too. What if she had died without passing them on? And now I get paid to collect stories from—”
    The Smileys’ door finally opened, and a woman who Faye judged to be about her own age stepped into the doorway, filling the open space.
    Carmen stuck out her hand. “I’m Carmen Martinez and this is Faye Longchamp. We’re here to—”
    The woman enveloped Carmen’s hand in her larger one, shook it once, and withdrew it, saying, “I’m Ronya Smiley. I know who you are.”
    Ronya Smiley was thick-waisted, broad-shouldered, and close to six feet tall. Her intelligent blue eyes were set into a face the color of a brown paper bag, and their expression was not welcoming.
    “Then you know I’d like the chance to sit and talk awhile,” said Carmen.
    “I’m real busy today.” Ronya crossed her arms.
    A reedy little voice piped up. “Mama, mama, come see what I built with my blocks!”
    Ronya turned her head, but didn’t move from the door. “Mama will be there in a minute, Zack. Just as soon as these two nice ladies leave.” She raised her eyebrows at Faye and Carmen, as if to say, “It’s time for you two nice ladies to take a hint and get the hell out.”
    But Carmen only smiled. “Perhaps later in the afternoon?”
    “Leo works in the limerock mine all week. Saturdays are the only time we have as a family. You ladies have a good evening.” Ronya stepped back from the door, preparing to push it shut. Zack, a bright-faced four-year-old, rushed up and threw his arms around her powerful thigh, saying, “Mama, come see! I’m building a spaceship that’ll take us to Mars!”
    “Then perhaps another day?” Carmen asked, and Faye admired her dogged persistence.
    Mrs. Smiley finally nodded, albeit grudgingly. “I’m supposed to sit with Kiki Montrose next Friday afternoon. Ain’t nothing to do but just sit there while she sleeps. Come talk to me then.”
    The door closed and they could hear the sound of a deadbolt sliding into place.
    “Good going!” Faye said, punching Carmen on the arm.
    Carmen shrugged off the compliment. “Some of the Sujosa are never going to cooperate with this study, and nobody can make them, but people do like to talk about themselves. If people see that I’m really truly interested in what they have to say, they usually respond.”
    Stepping off the porch, she set down her silver-toned briefcase and began writing in a notebook. When, five minutes later, Carmen was still at it, Faye could stand it no longer.
    “What can you possibly be writing? She hardly spoke to us.”
    “Really? She told us her husband worked at the limerock mine. She showed us that she’s a loving mother—”
    “But—” Faye had started to ask how Carmen could possibly make such a statement after observing the woman with her child for hardly thirty seconds, but she stopped herself. It was true. In the way Ronya Smiley had spoken to her son, in the uninhibited way he rushed up to her and grasped her leg, in the timbre of both their voices and the soft look in Ronya’s eyes, it was apparent that mother and son enjoyed a special relationship.
    “And,” Carmen said, gesturing at a pole barn standing beside the house, “I think you can guess her profession.”
    Through the open sides of the pole barn, Faye could see a