Gap Creek by Robert Morgan

and uppity I couldn’t hardly believe it. I wanted to tell her she should have brought her own coffee, but I held my tongue.
    Hank and Ma set down at the table with Mr. Pendergast. I took a lantern out on the back porch and ground some coffee beans. After I come back in and started the coffee to boiling I set down at the table.
    “A woman should always be ready for her guests,” Ma Richards said. She put butter and then molasses on a biscuit. “She should know what they will need,” she said.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. I don’t know why I said I was sorry. It just come out. I guess I was too mad to say how I really felt. I’d had everything ready for over an hour.
    “We was late because an axle broke,” Hank said.
    “We’re lucky we wasn’t killed,” Ma Richards said. She held a spoon up and looked at it in the lamplight. I was glad I had polished all the silver.
    “I had to patch it up with a hickory stick,” Hank said.
    “Never been so scared in my life,” Ma Richards said. “We was on the edge of a cliff when the buggy wheel broke. Where did you get that buggy?”
    “It belonged to my pa,” Mr. Pendergast said.
    “Are you sure it wasn’t your grandpa?” Ma Richards said and laughed. Mr. Pendergast laughed with her.
    After I set down at the table, with Ma Richards at the end where I usually set, Hank said a longer blessing than usual. And it was more politely said too. “Lord make us truly thankful and worthy …,” he begun. I thought how careful he was around his ma. She was such a tiny woman, and yet Hank acted like a little boy trying to please her.
    “I’m so upset I don’t think I have any appetite,” Ma Richards said when the blessing was over. I passed her the platter of chicken and she took a drumstick. She held it up in the lamplight and looked at the crust, which had got damp from waiting so long in the pan.
    “A crust won’t stay crisp if there’s too much flour on the skin,” she said.
    I was going to say it was waiting so long in the pan that made the crust soggy, but I stopped myself. I didn’t want to sound like I was arguing with Ma Richards. She was not only my mother-in-law, she was my guest. And I was just learning to cook.
    Ma took a biscuit and sliced it. The biscuit had got a little soft from waiting under the cloth also. Ma held the biscuit half up in the lamplight. “A biscuit that ain’t cooked long enough will never be crisp,” she said. I felt my face get hot. Ma Richards was testing me in front of Hank and Mr. Pendergast. I wasn’t going to let her get my goat. I passed her the rice and the green beans. I passed her the butter and molasses. I seen the coffee was boiling and got up and poured her a cup. I asked Mr. Pendergast if he wanted any coffee.
    “Couldn’t sleep for a week if I had coffee for supper,” he said.
    “Anybody with a clear conscience can sleep,” Ma Richards said.
    Mr. Pendergast started to answer but then couldn’t seem to think of what to say. He couldn’t admit his conscience wasn’t clear,and he couldn’t argue that it was. Ma had made a statement that was unanswerable. I set down at the table again and helped myself to the rice.
    Ma Richards took a sip of her coffee like she was testing it. “Is this the house where a woman died of TB?” she said.
    “That was my wife,” Mr. Pendergast said.
    “I heard she was sick a long time,” Ma said.
    “Nigh on to three years.”
    Ma looked around the kitchen like she expected to see Mrs. Pendergast still there, in one of the dark corners. “I hear germs from TB will stay in a house for years,” she said.
    “No germs has bothered me,” Mr. Pendergast said.
    “What room did she die in?” Ma said. She sipped the coffee and took a bite of biscuit and molasses.
    “The front bedroom,” Mr. Pendergast said, “where I still sleep.”
    “You’ve been a lucky man,” Ma said. She took a bite of her chicken then put the drumstick back on the plate and spread more molasses on a