The Run for the Elbertas Read Online Free PDF Page B

crop’s planted, and they’s a spare minute. Why, I raised this place off the ground in twelve days, elbow for axle. I didn’t have half the proper tools; I had no helphands. I hauled lumber twelve miles from Beddo Tillett’s sawmill.” He grunted, untangling baby’s fingers from his watch chain. “Anyhow, hit might take them Crownovers a year’s thawing to visit. Hain’t like the camps where folks stick noses in, the first thing. I say let time get in its lick.”
    We were quieted by the thought of enduring a lonesome year, of nobody coming to put his feet under our table, nobody to borrow, or heave and set and calculate weather. Oh, the camps had spoiled us with their slew of chaps and rattling coal conveyors and people’s talky-talk. Dwelling there, you couldn’t stretch your elbows without hitting people.
    I said, sticking my lips out, “I hain’t waiting till I’m crook-back ere I play with some’un.”
    Fern batted her eyes, trying to cry. “Ruther to live on a gob heap than where no girls are.”
    The skillet jiggled in Mother’s hand. She spoke, complaining of the house, though now it was small in her mind compared with this new anxiety. “Nary a window cut,” she said. “A house blind as a mole varmint.”
    â€œJonah’s whale!” Father exclaimed angrily. His ears reddened. He galloped his knee. “A feller can’t whittle windowframes with a pocket knife. I reckon nothing will do but I hie at daybreak to Tillett’s and ’gin making them. Two days it’ll take; two I ought to be rattling clods. Why, a week’s grubbing to be done before a furrow’s lined. Crops won’t mature planted so late.” He swallowed a great breath. “Had we the finest cellar in Amerikee, a particle o’ nothing there’d be for winter storing.”
    â€œI reckon I’ve set my bonnet too high,” Mother admitted. “The cellar’s got to be filled with canning, turnips, cabbages, and pickling, if we’re to eat the year through. Now, windows can be put off, but the chimley’s bound to have a taller stacking.”
    The blood hasted from Father’s ears. Never could he stay angry long. He coaxed baby to latch hands on his lifted arm and swing. “Ought to fill the new barn loft so full o’ corn and fodder hits tongue will hang out,” he said. He taught the baby to skin a cat, come-Andy-over, head foremost. “One thing besides frames I’m fotching, and that’s a name for this tadwhacker. Long enough he’s gone without.”
    â€œHain’t going to call him Beddo,” Fern said. “That’s the ugliest name-word ever was.”
    â€œNot to be Tillett neither,” Lark said.
    The hominy browned. We held plates in our laps. Theyellow kernels steamed a mellow smell. It was hard not to gobble them down like an old craney crow.
    Mother ate a bit, then sat watching Father. “I had a house pattern in my head,” she said, “and I ached to help build, to try my hand making it according. And I’d wished for good neighbors. But house and neighbors hain’t a circumstance to getting a crop and the garden planted. Hit’s back to the mines for us if we don’t make victuals. Them windowframes can wait.”
    â€œI can’t follow a woman’s notions,” Father said. “For peace o’ mind I’d better gamble two days and get the windows in.” He chuckled, his mouth crammed. “I’d give a Tennessee pearl to see you atop a twenty-foot ladder potting nails.” His chuckle grew to laughter; it caught like a wind in his chest, blowing out in gusts, shaking him. He began to cough. A kernel had got in his windpipe. His jaws turned beety; he sneezed a great sneeze. We struck our doubled fists against his back, and presently the grain was dislodged. “Ah, ho,” he said, swallowing, “had I