Wild Swans Read Online Free PDF Page B

closed down back in the thirties. About ten years later the swamp took it over. Around here cotton ain’t as kingly as it used to be.”
    “I see.”
    “Anyway this is it. I collect rent on the first of the month. And I don’t take late payments, so don’t forget. There’s a phone in the foyer, and you have to pay for your own calls. There’s a washer out back but you have to hang your clothes out on the line. If you want to hire a girl to do it, Mrs. Seffy down on Cornhouse Row does a respectable wash. I don’t do anyone’s cooking or cleaning but my own, and I don’t think Mrs. Seffy does either. But you could ask her I suppose. If anything breaks down and you need a repairman let me know and I’ll call Mrs. Bristow so she can send her man out.”
    “Not a problem.” Lindt smiled. “I think I can manage.”
    “Well,” Ruby said. “I’ll leave you to rest then.”
    “Miss Thibodaux?” Mr. Lindt inquired.
    Ruby turned from the door and asked, “Yes?”
    “May I ask a favor from you?”
    Ruby’s expression hardened. “What kind of favor?
    “I mean what I say about cherishing my privacy. If anyone should come by asking about me, will you let me know?”
    Ruby cast him a suspicious glance. “You ain’t on the run are you? I’ll shoot you myself if I find out you’re an escapee from Angola or something.”
    Mr. Lindt laughed. “Oh my no, it’s nothing like that. I have business associates and I know they’ll put me to work during my holiday if they get the chance.”
    “Well, I don’t know...”Ruby hesitated.
    “Please,” Lindt added, “let me know if someone comes by, would you?”
    He offered her his most winning smile. Unimpressed, Ruby grunted, nodded a curt affirmative and left.

    ****

    Cally finished slicing up a stick of bologna. She wrapped a pound’s worth in butcher paper and taped it closed. A radio on the counter above her was playing “ When I was Seventeen .” and Cally’s mind drifted along with Sinatra’s melancholy tone. She slid the bologna back into the display compartment and extracted a long brick of cheese. Mrs. Wainright would be along shortly to pick up her order, and the order was always the same. On Wednesday, she called in for one pound of bologna sliced thick, one and a half pounds of sharp cheddar cheese, and two loaves of white bread. In the eighteen years Cally lived on Eldred’s Bend, Mrs. Wainright’s dietary habits towards luncheon never changed.
    Cally finished slicing the cheese and made a little package of it too, in the same nondescript white butcher paper and tape. She wrote cheese on the top of this package, placed meat, cheese and bread into a brown paper bag. A shadow flitted across the wide porch. Cally stopped, loaf of bread poised in mid air. “Mrs. Wainright?” She called. “I’ve got your order ready, hon.”
    Mrs. Wainright was ninety-seven years old, and although her minister’s wife assured the elderly lady that she could catch a ride with her anytime (Cally had heard Reverend Simon’s wife tell Mrs. Wainright this herself) she preferred to walk the mile and a half of what everyone called the deer trail down to Eldred’s Bend every Wednesday afternoon to pick up her small bill of groceries. After her arrival she would sit outside on the long wide deck in a rocking chair Ruby set out just for her, and sip a Royal Crown Cola and have her little dip of snuff before heading back to her house up bayou.
    “Would you like me to bring you an RC, Mrs. Wainright?” Cally called as she moved to the large blue ice chest near the front door. “It’s awful hot for you to be walking out in this weather. You should have let Mrs. Bristow or Mrs. Reverend come get you. I’m not scolding or anything, but you know how I worry about you walking in those woods by yourself, especially out in this heat. There’s gators out in that bayou, you know.”
    There was no response, which was very unusual, because whenever Mrs. Wainright walked up the