brow furrowed with her task. “She’ll get you water.”
“Would you be kind enough to bring some for my friend here, too, please, Mae?” Margery nodded at the girl.
“That would be very kind, thank you,” said Alice, and the man startled at her accent.
Margery tipped her head toward her. “Oh, she’s the one from Engerland. The one married Van Cleve’s boy?”
His gaze switched impassively between them. The gun stayed at his shoulder. Alice sat gingerly on the bench as Margery continued to talk, her voice a low, relaxed sing-song. The same way she spoke to Charley the mule when he became, as she called it, “ornery.”
“So I’m not sure if you’ve heard from town but we got a book library going. It’s for those who like stories, or to help your children get educated a little, especially if they don’t go to the mountain school. And I came by because I wondered if you’d like to try some books for yours.”
“I told you they don’t read.”
“Yes, you did. So I brought some easy ones, just to get ’em going. These ones here have got pictures and all the letters so they can learn by themselves. Don’t even have to go to school to do it. They can do it right here in your home.”
She handed him one of the picture books. He lowered his gun and took the book gingerly, as if she were handing him something explosive, and flicked through the pages.
“I need the girls to help with the picking and canning.”
“Sure you do. Busy time of year.”
“I don’t want them distracted.”
“I understand. Can’t have nothing slowing the canning. I have to say it looks like the corn is going to be fine this year. Not like last year, huh?” Margery smiled as the girl arrived in front of them, lopsided with the weight of the half-filled bucket. “Why, thank you, sweetheart.” She held out a hand as the girl filled an old tin cup. She drank thirstily, then handed the cup to Alice. “Good and cold. Thank you most kindly.”
Jim Horner pushed the book toward her. “They want money for those things.”
“Well, that’s the beauty of it, Jim. No money, no signing up, no nothing. Library just exists so people can try a bit of reading. Maybe learn a little if they find they have a liking for it.”
Jim Horner stared at the cover of the book. Alice had never heard Margery talk so much in one sitting.
“I tell you what? How about I leave these here, just for the week? You don’t have to read ’em, but you can take a look if you like. We’ll come by next Monday and pick them up again. If you like them, you get the kids to tell me and I’ll bring you some more. You don’t like ’em, just leave them on a crate by the fence post there and we’ll say no more. How does that sound?”
Alice glanced behind her. A second small face vanished immediately into the gloom of the building.
“I don’t think so.”
“Tell you the truth, you’d do me a favor. Would mean I don’t have to carry the darn things all the way back down the mountain. Boy, our bags are heavy today! Alice, you finished your water, there? We don’t want to take up any more of this gentleman’s time. Good to see you, Jim. And thank you, Mae. Haven’t you grown like a string bean since I last saw you!”
As they reached the gate Jim Horner’s voice lifted and hardened. “I don’t want nobody else comin’ up here botherin’ us. I don’t want to be bothered and I don’t want my children bothered. They got enough to deal with.”
Margery didn’t even turn around. She lifted a hand. “I hear you, Jim.”
“And we don’t need no charity. I don’t want anyone from town just coming by. I don’t know why you even came here.”
“Headed to all the houses between here and Berea. But I hear you.” Margery’s voice carried across the hillside as they reached the horses.
Alice glanced behind her to see that he had raised his gun to his shoulder again. Her heart thumped in her ears as she picked up her pace. She was afraid to look back again. As Margery swung herself onto the mule, she took the reins, mounted Spirit with trembling legs, and it was only when she calculated that they were too far away for Jim Horner to take a shot at them that she allowed herself to exhale.