The Persian Pickle Club Read Online Free PDF

tell them straight off to hit the road,” he said. “Oh, and why don’t you put the rest of that buttermilk in a jar, since you’re not going to drink it. They could use it.”
    He reached out for another jumble, but I swatted his hand. “They might like some cookies,” I said.

    I packed up the cookies and the buttermilk and most of what else we had left in the refrigerator, telling Grover things were going bad so fast in this heat that giving them to the squatters would save me from having to throw them out later. I didn’t want Grover to think I’d gone soft.
    “You’re not so tough, Queenie. That peppermint candy doesn’t go bad.”
    “Now you watch out, Grover. Don’t you pick on me. They won’t be as likely to murder us if we fill up their stomachs. If they’re hard cases, I’ll tell them myself to move on.”
    But I didn’t. Like Grover, I thought they were the saddest, sorriest people I’d ever seen, and my heart went out to them right off, especially the two kids.
    When we drove up, the woman was kneeling down at that little trickle of water in the creek with a bar of harsh, home-made lye soap, washing out clothes. A pair of overalls and some shirts were already spread out on the rocks to dry. She was scrawny, but she was clean. They were all clean, and I knew they’d taken baths in the creek that day. The woman wore a dress that was more patches than dress, and the little boy had on a pair of homemade drawers made out of gunnysack. It made me itch to see that tough, old material next to his skin. I wondered why his mother hadn’t used a flour sack or a sugar sack to make underwear for him, then realized it must have been a long time since they’d bought a sack of anything.
    Their old rattletrap Ford with a ripped canvas top was parked under a black-walnut tree, next to their tent. They’d laid stones in a ring for a fire and rigged up a tripod over the fire pit to hold a kettle. I knew there couldn’t be much in it. Jackrabbits were pretty poor pickings these days.
    The man sat on the running board, with a stick in one hand and a pocketknife in the other. He stood when we drove up and threw the stick away, then carefully closed the knife and slid it into his overalls. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just the overalls.
    The woman stopped washing and put on a felt hat, even though she was barefoot, and came to stand at attention beside her man. She jabbed him with her elbow and jerked her chin at his head, and he snatched off his hat, holding it in front of him with both hands. The little boy stopped playing and joined them, not looking at us because he was shy. I didn’t see any baby.
    “Afternoon,” Grover said. They didn’t say a word at first, just stared and maybe wondered if we were going to tell them to pack up. “This is my wife, Mrs. Bean,” Grover said, and the woman nodded just the slightest bit. She glanced at the food basket I held, then looked away. Then she looked at it again.
    After a minute, the man said, “Proud to meet ya.” But it sounded like he wasn’t sure.
    Then the woman wriggled her toes and said softly, “How do.”
    “Hi,” I said, and we stood there looking one another over. Then because silence is a burden to me, I said, “I’ve got buttermilk. It’s cold. There’s cookies, too. I hope they won’t spoil your supper.” Then I knew without anybody saying it that the cookies and buttermilk would be their supper. “In all this heat … things spoil so fast. … There’s just Grover and me. …”
    The woman nodded again without smiling, and the man said, “We sure do thank ya.” They didn’t move, and neither did 1, so Grover took the basket out of my hand and handed it to the woman.
    “You ought to drink the buttermilk soon, so it doesn’t go bad,” I said. The woman fetched two tin cups out of a wooden box on the ground while the man opened the basket and took out the jar.
    “Would you have some?” she asked me, which made a lump come into my