Victory Over Japan Read Online Free PDF Page B

even bothering to chew them. “I’m never speaking to you again as long as I live,” she said, her mouth full of chicken breast. “You are not my father.”
    â€œSuits me, Miss Smart-alecky Movie Star,” he said, putting his hat back on his head. “Soon as we get home you can head on out for Florida. You just let me know when you’re leaving so I can give you some money for the bus.”
    â€œI hate you,” Rhoda mumbled to herself, starting in on the homemade raisin cookies. I hate your guts. I hope you go to hell forever, she thought, breaking a cookie into pieces so she could pick out the raisins.
    It was late afternoon when the Cadillac picked its way up a rocky red clay driveway to a housetrailer nestled in the curve of a hill beside a stand of pine trees.
    â€œWhere are we going?” Rhoda said. “Would you just tell me that?”
    â€œWe’re going to see Maud and Joe Samples,” he said. “Joe’s an old hand around here. He’s my right-hand man in Clay County. Now you just be polite and try to learn something, Sister. These are real folks you’re about to meet.”
    â€œWhy are we going here first?” Rhoda said. “Aren’t we going to a hotel?”
    â€œThere isn’t any hotel,” her father said. “Does this look like someplace they’d have hotels? Maud and Joe are going to put you up for me while I’m off working.”
    â€œI’m going to stay here?” Rhoda said. “In this trailer?”
    â€œJust wait until you see the inside,” her father said. “It’s like the inside of a boat, everything all planned out and just the right amount of space for things. I wish your mother’d let me live in a trailer.”
    They were almost to the door now. A plump smiling woman came out onto the wooden platform and waited for them with her hands on her hips, smiling wider and wider as they got nearer.
    â€œThere’s Maud,” Dudley said. “She’s the sweetest woman in the world and the best cook in Kentucky. Hey there, Miss Maud,” he called out.
    â€œMr. D,” she said, opening the car door for them. “Joe Samples’ been waiting on you all day and here you show up bringing this beautiful girl just like you promised. I’ve made you some blackberry pies. Come on inside this trailer.” Maud smiled deep into Rhoda’s face. Her eyes were as blue as the ones on the woman in the store. Rhoda’s mother had blue eyes, but not this brilliant and not this blue. These eyes were from another world, another century.
    â€œCome on in and see Joe,” Maud said. “He’s been having a fit for you to get here.”
    They went inside and Dudley showed Rhoda all around the trailer, praising the design of trailers. Maud turned on the tiny oven and they had blackberry pie and bread and butter sandwiches and Rhoda abandoned her diet and ate two pieces of the pie, covering it with thick whipped cream.
    The men went off to talk business and Maud took Rhoda to a small room at the back of the trailer decorated to match a handmade quilt of the sunrise.
    There were yellow ruffled curtains at the windows and a tiny dressing table with a yellow ruffled skirt around the edges. Rhoda was enchanted by the smallness of everything and the way the windows looked out onto layers of green trees and bushes.
    Lying on the dresser was a white leather Bible and a display of small white pamphlets, Alcohol And You, When Jesus Reaches For A Drink, You Are Not Alone, Sorry Isn’t Enough, Taking No For An Answer .
    It embarrassed Rhoda even to read the titles of anything as tacky as the pamphlets, but she didn’t let on she thought it was tacky, not with Maud sitting on the bed telling her how pretty she was every other second and asking her questions about herself and saying how wonderful her father was.
    â€œWe love Mr. D to death,” she said. “It’s like