But if anything…
The dark hours came and grew black and the black hours laboured by.
Her door crashed open and the light blazed. ‘He’s gone and baby, I’ve got business with you. Get out here!’ Wima’s bathrobe swirled against the doorpost as she turned and went away.
Janie pushed back the covers and thumped her feet down. Without understanding quite why, she began to get dressed. She got her good plaid dress and the shoes with two buckles, and the knit pants and the slip with the lace rabbits. There were little rabbits on her socks too, and on the sweater, the buttons were rabbits’ fuzzy nubbin tails.
Wima was on the couch, pounding and pounding with her fist. ‘You wrecked my cel,’ she said, and drank from a square-stemmed glass, ‘ebration, so you ought to know what I’m celebrating. You don’t know it but I’ve had a big trouble and I didn’t know how to hannel it, and now it’s all done for me. And I’ll tell you all about it right now, little baby Miss Big Ears. Big Mouth. Smarty. Because your father, I can hannel him any time, but what was I going to do with your big mouth going day and night? That was my trouble, what was I going to do about your big mouth when he got back. Well it’s all fixed, he won’t be back, the Heinies fixed it up for me.’ She waved a yellow sheet. ‘Smart girls know that’s a telegram, and the telegram says, says here, ‘Regret to inform you that your husband.’ They shot your father, that’s what they regret to say, and now this is the way it’s going to be from now on between you and me. Whatever I want to do I do, an’ whatever you want to nose into, nose away. Now isn’t that fair?’
She turned to be answered but there was no answer. Janie was gone.
Wima knew before she started that there wasn’t any use looking, but something made her run to the hall closet and look in the top shelf. There wasn’t anything up there but Christmas tree ornaments and they hadn’t been touched in three years.
She stood in the middle of the living room, not knowing which way to go. She whispered, ‘Janie?’
She put her hands on the sides of her face and lifted her hair away from it. She turned around and around, and asked, ‘What’s the matter with me?’
Prodd used to say, ‘There’s this about a farm: when the market’s good there’s money, and when it’s bad there’s food.’ Actually the principle hardly operated here, for his contact with markets was slight. It was a long haul to town and what if there’s a tooth off the hay rake? ‘We’ve still got a workin’ majority.’ Two off, eight, twelve? ‘Then make another pass. No road will go by here, not ever. Place will never get too big, get out of hand.’ Even the war passed them by, Prodd being over age and Lone—well, the sheriff was by once and had a look at the half-wit working on Prodd’s, and one look was enough.