here, a guest in your’un house, I promise not to try ’n’ make you’un live like I want. This is your’un house, not mine,” she repeated.
“The animals?” Mud asked, wary.
“The cats and Cherry can stay in. I don’t like it, but I don’t hafta. But. You’un clean up after the critters every single day, including the hair on the floor in the corners, and you change the litter on the back porch.”
“Are you okay with that?” I asked Mud.
“I don’t know. She ain’t been the reasonable type. She’s a churchwoman through and through when it comes to control and manipulation. She’s used to being taken care of, like a horse in a barn, told what to do and when and how. Being independent ain’t easy.”
Esther sucked in a sharp breath. “That right there is mean.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but it’s the truth. The positive part is that you won’t be facing the changes in your life alone. We’ll be here to help you.” I looked at Mud, putting steel into my gaze. “Deal?”
“Oh, all right, dagnabbit,” Mud cursed in church-speak. “Deal. Besides, I been thinking. Jed will have to return your dowry, so maybe you can buy land to claim like Nell done.”
“Buy land? Land of my own? Like, off the church grounds? With a house on it?”
I had been thinking along those lines and while Esther wouldn’t have enough money to buy a house townie-style, there were other options open to her. “Why not?” I asked.
Esther scowled, an expression I had felt on my face. It was that Nicholson scowl, as familiar as my own hand. “Ain’t no money left. Jed used the dowry to buy our’un house from the church. Maybe we’uns can . . .” A peculiar expression fell over her face.
I didn’t know where Esther’s thoughts went, but she got up and began setting the table for supper. “Mindy, will you’un please bring in the slow cooker?” she asked.
“Mud,” my younger sister said. “Mindy is my church name.”
“Humph,” Esther said, severe and stern. “I done made us stew fer supper. Oh. And . . . I know it ain’t my place, but I got a dozen laying hens at my house at the church, so I second the idea of Mindy getting chickens.”
Mud hollered a woot from the kitchen. Instantly the tension vanished from the house. I kicked off my shoes and placed my socked feet flat on the floor. The old floorboards had been cut from Soulwood land and they knew me, as well as dead wood can know anything.
“Not fair. Two against one,” I said, faking a sigh but feeling quietly happy. When Mud reentered carrying the slow cooker, I got up and went to the kitchen to help. “Okay. Fine on the chickens. We’ll need to ask Sam about building a henhouse. Mud suggested setting chicken-wire runs through the garden and the greenhouse and letting ’em run free every day to chase pests and to keep the hens free-range.” I got salad fixin’s from the refrigerator. “Mud, see if the mamas will sell us six laying hens in exchange for future eggs, and let us borrow a rooster. We can have chicks inside of a month, and triple our hens.” The mamas would likely just give us the hens and the chicks too, but it was always polite to offer payment and have a plan.
“Will do,” Mud said, sounding like a normal twelve-year-old kid. “I’m’a ask for Easter Eggers and Isbars, so we can sell ’em for more.” Easter Eggers and Isbars produced varicolored eggs: white, green, blue, yellowish, speckled, rust, and a dozen shades of brown. The townies loved them. “They sell good from the get-go,” Mud said, rearranging the slow cooker on the countertop and getting out bowls. “I figger we need at least twenty laying hens to make steady money selling the eggs.”
My heart dropped. Twenty hens?
“Selling chicks is another way to make money. I’m right fond of Barred Plymouth Rocks, Red Wyandottes, and Red Orpingtons,” Esther said, naming hardy kinds of chickens.
“Them’s all brown and white eggs. Of course, we’uns could order us some fertile emu eggs,” Mud said with a sly smile.
“Emus are dangerous,” Esther said. “No emus.”
“Fine. How ’bout some Dampierres and Deathlayers,” Mud suggested, referring to totally black chickens that laid black eggs. “We could hand raise ’em, breed, and then sell fertile eggs for big bucks.”
“We could call the business the Nicholson Sisters Organic Eggs and Specialty Hens,” Esther said.