willing to pay a fortune for the acreage. A for-tune.”
“I could ask around in Nashville,” said Charles Martin. “Maybe somebody’s looking for a summer place, though they mostly like to stay within driving distance of Nashville. Vince and Reba probably wouldn’t be interested, being from Oklahoma. They like wide open spaces, and these woody hills might make them nervous, but I could check with Randy. This strikes me as his kind of place.”
“Just hold on,” said Clayt. “Daddy isn’t even cold yet. It’s a little too early to be divvying up the property, don’t you think? Besides, you all seem to take it as a foregone conclusion that we’ll sell out.”
“We’re not farmers, Clayt,” said Garrett. “None of us is going to chuck in a promising career to come home and tend cornfields on a hardscrabble farm. Maybe you would—until you found out what hard work it is being a farmer. But the rest of us can out-vote you.”
“Clayt’s right, though,” said Charles Martin, yawning. “Daddy is still hanging in there, so it’s too early to talk about this—and too late. Must be nearly midnight. I, for one, am wore out. Let’s get some sleep and squabble tomorrow.”
* * *
Lilah was alone in the corner bedroom, too sleepy to read, but not yet ready to turn out the light. Robert hadn’t come upstairs yet.
The room still had the musty smell of a place that had been closed and unheated for many months, but it was newly swept, and the bed linens were fraying with age, but they were clean. She felt no sense of menace about the room. Like the rest of the house it seemed quite empty of feeling. The faded roses on the wallpaper, the rag rug on the old pine floor, and the simple oak dresser and nightstand were neither cozy nor frightening to her. Not much living has gone on here , Lilah thought. I wonder whose room this was.
She and Robert were next door to Garrett and Debba. At the top of the stairs was a square hallway, and leading off from it left and right were two narrow passageways to the bedrooms. Down the right-hand passage, Charles Martin and Kelley occupied the room next to the cupboardlike bedroom that was little Kayla’s. It was barely big enough for the single bed, its only furnishing. Anyone remodeling the house would convert that cubbyhole into a bathroom for the adjoining bedroom. Lilah supposed that people would talk about Charles Martin and Kelley staying together in the same room, what with them not being married and all, and Robert Lee would likely be high on the list of complainers, but she thought that everyone would ignore him. They usually did. She herself didn’t plan to object, and Rudy the angel was, as ever, unconcerned with other people’s doings, so that was all right. Charles Martin’s sleeping arrangements were none of her business, and she figured that folks ought to know what show business people were like by now and not be shocked by a little thing like the lack of a marriage license. Besides, they all had enough to worry about with poor Daddy Stargill on his last legs, and all the business about the property to see to, without worrying about two grown people sleeping together without having the necessary paperwork.
She had been married to Robert Lee now for thirty years and then some, and she didn’t honestly feel that their union was all that much more sanctified than that of Charles and his redhead. People either loved each other or they didn’t, and you couldn’t legislate feelings, though sometimes she surely did wish you could.
Rudy was no help on that score, either. He declined to discuss Robert Lee or to listen to Lilah’s thoughts on the matter, even when she had tried, a time or two, to disguise them as prayers. Rudy once said, “What man has joined together, let no god put asunder,” and that had been his final word on the subject. Rudy wasn’t interested in Robert Lee, or in politics, wars, air pollution, or much of anything as far as Lilah
“I could ask around in Nashville,” said Charles Martin. “Maybe somebody’s looking for a summer place, though they mostly like to stay within driving distance of Nashville. Vince and Reba probably wouldn’t be interested, being from Oklahoma. They like wide open spaces, and these woody hills might make them nervous, but I could check with Randy. This strikes me as his kind of place.”
“Just hold on,” said Clayt. “Daddy isn’t even cold yet. It’s a little too early to be divvying up the property, don’t you think? Besides, you all seem to take it as a foregone conclusion that we’ll sell out.”
“We’re not farmers, Clayt,” said Garrett. “None of us is going to chuck in a promising career to come home and tend cornfields on a hardscrabble farm. Maybe you would—until you found out what hard work it is being a farmer. But the rest of us can out-vote you.”
“Clayt’s right, though,” said Charles Martin, yawning. “Daddy is still hanging in there, so it’s too early to talk about this—and too late. Must be nearly midnight. I, for one, am wore out. Let’s get some sleep and squabble tomorrow.”
* * *
Lilah was alone in the corner bedroom, too sleepy to read, but not yet ready to turn out the light. Robert hadn’t come upstairs yet.
The room still had the musty smell of a place that had been closed and unheated for many months, but it was newly swept, and the bed linens were fraying with age, but they were clean. She felt no sense of menace about the room. Like the rest of the house it seemed quite empty of feeling. The faded roses on the wallpaper, the rag rug on the old pine floor, and the simple oak dresser and nightstand were neither cozy nor frightening to her. Not much living has gone on here , Lilah thought. I wonder whose room this was.
She and Robert were next door to Garrett and Debba. At the top of the stairs was a square hallway, and leading off from it left and right were two narrow passageways to the bedrooms. Down the right-hand passage, Charles Martin and Kelley occupied the room next to the cupboardlike bedroom that was little Kayla’s. It was barely big enough for the single bed, its only furnishing. Anyone remodeling the house would convert that cubbyhole into a bathroom for the adjoining bedroom. Lilah supposed that people would talk about Charles Martin and Kelley staying together in the same room, what with them not being married and all, and Robert Lee would likely be high on the list of complainers, but she thought that everyone would ignore him. They usually did. She herself didn’t plan to object, and Rudy the angel was, as ever, unconcerned with other people’s doings, so that was all right. Charles Martin’s sleeping arrangements were none of her business, and she figured that folks ought to know what show business people were like by now and not be shocked by a little thing like the lack of a marriage license. Besides, they all had enough to worry about with poor Daddy Stargill on his last legs, and all the business about the property to see to, without worrying about two grown people sleeping together without having the necessary paperwork.
She had been married to Robert Lee now for thirty years and then some, and she didn’t honestly feel that their union was all that much more sanctified than that of Charles and his redhead. People either loved each other or they didn’t, and you couldn’t legislate feelings, though sometimes she surely did wish you could.
Rudy was no help on that score, either. He declined to discuss Robert Lee or to listen to Lilah’s thoughts on the matter, even when she had tried, a time or two, to disguise them as prayers. Rudy once said, “What man has joined together, let no god put asunder,” and that had been his final word on the subject. Rudy wasn’t interested in Robert Lee, or in politics, wars, air pollution, or much of anything as far as Lilah
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