learned that my nubbin could calm them at their stormiest.
Sue Lee seemed worried I might spoil Grace. She was always saying, “It is time for her nap” or “Don’t fling her in the air thataway, Jake!” Mothers are endless with those comments.
After the noon meal Sue Lee suckled Grace. This was my favorite part of the day. I watched, and it could be I over- watched, for Mommy’s cheeks reddened.
“Are you always going to stare like that?” she asked me.
“Long as I can.”
“Well, you’re pretty near well, so it won’t be much longer.” She turned away from me slightly. “I reckon you and Holt’ll be off to get shot by some different fellows here pretty soon.”
That was a prediction that could come true. Bodily calamities just seemed to be in the cards. But I thought I was about done with bushwhacking gangs, and the regular Confederates had too many rules. None of that interested me. I was still loyal to the Cause but leery of the people.
“Maybe I won’t,” I said.
“What will you do, then?”
“Oh, now maybe I’ll trek on over to California and catch me a sailboat to somewhere sunny and full of lambs.”
“Is that right,” she said and laughed. “What grand spot have you got in mind, Jake?”
The baby gummed away at the nourishing breast, and I stretched my legs out straight and leaned back on my hands.
“In Sparta they have olives,” I said. “I got that out of a book. I could eat me some olives, I think.”
“Olives? What are olives like?”
“Well, I don’t know firsthand. I never had one yet. But I’ve eat a bushel of walnuts, and nothing can be more trouble to eat than them.”
A look of deep thought came over Sue Lee’s face. She switched Grace to the spare nipple, her fingers moving fast, then sighed as the babe went to work.
“I wonder about me,” she said. “I ain’t going sailing nowhere and I know it. I wonder about me and Grace.”
“Oh, you’ll get by,” I said. That was all the honesty I could summon. I hate it when they put you on the spot. I don’t like lying, but I hate it worse when I don’t tell the truth. “You know, that girl needs her a daddy.”
“She had a daddy, Jake, and you ain’t it.”
That comment was uncalled for. I pushed myself to my feet and pointed a finger in her face.
“You know, girl,” I said all hot and breathy. “You’re going to have to get your water from the nearest well, or else learn to love lugging that heavy bucket of yours.”
And with that I went outside and stood beneath a sky of gray, trembling in my effort to rein myself in from becoming a mushmouth.
That girl was starting to bring it out in me.
Late in the afternoon I noted two things: Wilma dusted off the family Bible and put it on the table; then she baked bread and tommyhawked a chicken though it wasn’t Sunday.
“What’s with the special favors, Wilma?” I asked.
Now, this was an older lady and she gave me an older-lady look of shrewdness.
“Why, nothing,” she said. “Orton will be mighty hungry from the ride, don’t you think? I intend to feed him well.”
Uh-huh, I thought.
In an hour or so Orton and Holt rode up with a fat, pale, dark-dressed stranger. I watched them from the window, and when they came in the stranger looked at me and said, “Is this the man?”
“That’s him,” Orton said. “Dutchy Roedel.”
Holt stood in the doorway, trying to choke down some sniggers.
“What is this?” I asked.
“This is Reverend Horace Wright,” Orton said. He held his shotgun by the barrel with the butt on the floor. “You’re getting married today, Dutchy. You’re getting married or you’re getting out.”
“I’m what?”
“You heard me. You’re all healed. I wanted to be sure you wouldn’t die slow before I did this. I can’t have it in my house the way it is.”
Wilma bustled Sue Lee into the room. I guess she was about as rattled by this as me, but she sure didn’t look it.
“Holt, saddle my horse,” I said. I was all puffed with myself, like the rooster in a one-rooster county. “We’re getting out of here.”
“No, no,” he said. He shook his head several times, and I wanted to pop him in the middle of his grin. “You should do right, Jake.”
“What on earth does that mean?” I screamed.
The reverend chewed his lips and looked on me without too much pity. Orton matched him and