them beasts in the pasture, too, an’ knows they’re countin’ on me for their bed an’ board come winter.” She stuck the stone back into her hip pocket. “I know the Book says to remember the Sabbath an’ keep it holy. I can pray an’ cut hay at the same time, but the hay ain’t goin’ to cut itself, an’ I ain’t testin’ the Lord by askin’ Him for no private miracles. Says not to, right in Matthew. I thank you for the water.”
“Don’t work beyond its lasting. Eternal damnation is long enough for you to know how sunstroke feels.”
Joss touched the brim of her hat in acknowledgment of the warning and took the snath in her hands. She turned and stepped and swept, and the blade hissed an eighteen-inch swath through golden grass. A clump of hay fell to her left, the start of another six-hundred-foot windrow. Aidan, seeing how long it had taken her cousin to clear a tenfoot path through the square field, suspected that the rest of Joss’s week was going to blur into a drone of repetition as dreary as the sound inside a train that was taking its passengers to places they had no desire to see.
It takes men to run a place. Effie Richland’s voice came back to her as she watched Joss pace slowly down the field: stepsweep, stepsweep, stepsweep. She turned with a small, soft sigh, wishing she could disbelieve the acidic storekeeper.
“Will you look,” Joss murmured, looking at the golden roasted chicken, and at the woman across the table from her; slowly, her glance touched the empty chairs at the table. “A whole damn chicken an’ not but two mouths to peck at it.”
“What may I serve you?” Quietly, Aidan asked.
Joss slipped her napkin from under her fork; carefully, she spread it on her lap. “I’m used to a wing.” Her voice was soft and rough. “But if Ethan’s sick of a Sunday, or gone, I’ll sometimes have a drumstick.” A brief ghost of a smile haunted her face.
“He’s got to be a right smart o’ sick or busy to miss Ma’s Sunday chicken. Yankee chicken, Pa calls it. Says she never could fry chicken like a decent Southern woman, nor try to, even, but he sure can eat his fill o’ that Yankee chicken.”
Aidan didn’t think she’d ever seen a human being who had as much right to be tired as had Joss Bodett that evening. She had worked from seven until five, taking only enough pause to eat lunch and smoke a cigarette before she was back to the scythe; her only concession to the simmering heat of the afternoon had been to linger a few moments in the shade of the massive oak trees at each end of the field when she got to them. Aidan had called to her at four, trying to bring her in; she got a wave of response, but half an hour later when she looked Joss was at the far end of the field, the lowering sun flashing off the straw-scoured blade of the scythe. Aidan attacked the triangle at the end of the porch with the irritation of any woman whose afternoon in the kitchen has been greeted with yet-empty chairs at the table, even though dinner was almost an hour from being ready, and Joss was on the porch ten minutes later, her hair damp and her rolled-up sleeves wet at the distal ends from her quick wash at the trough. “Dinner already?”
“Dinner after you’ve had a bath. I’ve been near enough to
hay to know you must itch, though I’m sure I couldn’t know how horribly.”
“Bath?” Joss blinked at her. “I just had one last night.”
That was a piece of Kansas custom Aidan meant to change on the parcel of post road real estate over which she had influence, however minute: that business of a bath on Saturday night whether it was needed or not, but no more often whether it was needed or not. Joss’s sweat was fresh and honestly-earned, but tomorrow it would be old; by Saturday Aidan knew she would have been giving her cousin wide berth for several days. “Your tub’s all made. No sense in wasting such an amount of hot water.”
She plucked a clean shirt and
“Don’t work beyond its lasting. Eternal damnation is long enough for you to know how sunstroke feels.”
Joss touched the brim of her hat in acknowledgment of the warning and took the snath in her hands. She turned and stepped and swept, and the blade hissed an eighteen-inch swath through golden grass. A clump of hay fell to her left, the start of another six-hundred-foot windrow. Aidan, seeing how long it had taken her cousin to clear a tenfoot path through the square field, suspected that the rest of Joss’s week was going to blur into a drone of repetition as dreary as the sound inside a train that was taking its passengers to places they had no desire to see.
It takes men to run a place. Effie Richland’s voice came back to her as she watched Joss pace slowly down the field: stepsweep, stepsweep, stepsweep. She turned with a small, soft sigh, wishing she could disbelieve the acidic storekeeper.
“Will you look,” Joss murmured, looking at the golden roasted chicken, and at the woman across the table from her; slowly, her glance touched the empty chairs at the table. “A whole damn chicken an’ not but two mouths to peck at it.”
“What may I serve you?” Quietly, Aidan asked.
Joss slipped her napkin from under her fork; carefully, she spread it on her lap. “I’m used to a wing.” Her voice was soft and rough. “But if Ethan’s sick of a Sunday, or gone, I’ll sometimes have a drumstick.” A brief ghost of a smile haunted her face.
“He’s got to be a right smart o’ sick or busy to miss Ma’s Sunday chicken. Yankee chicken, Pa calls it. Says she never could fry chicken like a decent Southern woman, nor try to, even, but he sure can eat his fill o’ that Yankee chicken.”
Aidan didn’t think she’d ever seen a human being who had as much right to be tired as had Joss Bodett that evening. She had worked from seven until five, taking only enough pause to eat lunch and smoke a cigarette before she was back to the scythe; her only concession to the simmering heat of the afternoon had been to linger a few moments in the shade of the massive oak trees at each end of the field when she got to them. Aidan had called to her at four, trying to bring her in; she got a wave of response, but half an hour later when she looked Joss was at the far end of the field, the lowering sun flashing off the straw-scoured blade of the scythe. Aidan attacked the triangle at the end of the porch with the irritation of any woman whose afternoon in the kitchen has been greeted with yet-empty chairs at the table, even though dinner was almost an hour from being ready, and Joss was on the porch ten minutes later, her hair damp and her rolled-up sleeves wet at the distal ends from her quick wash at the trough. “Dinner already?”
“Dinner after you’ve had a bath. I’ve been near enough to
hay to know you must itch, though I’m sure I couldn’t know how horribly.”
“Bath?” Joss blinked at her. “I just had one last night.”
That was a piece of Kansas custom Aidan meant to change on the parcel of post road real estate over which she had influence, however minute: that business of a bath on Saturday night whether it was needed or not, but no more often whether it was needed or not. Joss’s sweat was fresh and honestly-earned, but tomorrow it would be old; by Saturday Aidan knew she would have been giving her cousin wide berth for several days. “Your tub’s all made. No sense in wasting such an amount of hot water.”
She plucked a clean shirt and
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