Free Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 03 by Much Ado in Maggody

you could tell me. I thought Dahlia might have given you a hint or let something drop."
    He screwed up his face while he tried to think. I could see it was a painful and unfamiliar process, and I ordered myself not to rush him. After what must have been five minutes, his face eased and he gave me a grin. "Now I remember what she said. She said they was mad about something and were going to turn themselves into men, or something like that. I still don't understand why Dahlia keeps harping about being a man. She's the finest figure of a woman what ever walked the earth. Her cheeks are like peaches and her lips are like cherry cough drops. She's so soft and marshmallowy sweet I could just gaze at her all day long." He sniffled at the image, and pretty soon we were back to watery eyes, a drippy nose, and noisy gulps.
    You may have gotten the wrong impression from Kevin's ravings. Dahlia weighs three hundred pounds, at the least. Her cheeks may be the color of peaches, but they're the size of watermelons. The cough drops pass through his lips, along with everything else she can find. She has chins too numerous to count and massive breasts that sway back and forth like a pair of tire swings when she walks. Her expression is that of a bewildered bovine, and she's about as witty as her boyfriend. Or ex-boyfriend, I supposed.
    "So what should I do, Arly?" Kevin said piteously.
    "Beats me. I would imagine that she'll get over whatever's bugging her at the moment and take you back. I wouldn't take the treat-me-like-a-man thing too literally and offer her a chaw of tobacco or anything. Just try to listen to her and nod when you don't understand her."
    "Gee, Arly, do you really think she'll take me back? What about marriage being chains in a dungeon? I thought we could live in a mobile home. I don't reckon there are any dungeons around these parts anyhow. I wasn't going to make her wear chains, unless they was those nice yellow gold ones with a locket or a pearl."
    I considered trying to explain the philosophy of feminist thought to Kevin Buchanon while standing in hundred-degree heat on the edge of the highway. We could be there for days, if not weeks. Months. It occurred to me that I was already brain-baked to toy with the idea of explaining anything to Kevin Buchanon, much less a concept or an abstraction.
    "Buy her one of those gold chains with a heart-shaped locket," I said. "Maybe that'll win her back. What about your mother, Kevin? Has she said anything about what's happening at Ruby Bee's?"
    "Gosh, no. She hasn't said more than three words all week, and none of them was very nice. This morning she was ironing me a shirt when Pa yelled down at her to get his breakfast on the table. She told him to cook his own damn breakfast. Pa liked to have choked himself on his suspenders; he's never cooked in his whole entire life. He told Ma that that's why he got married, so he'd have a wife to cook and keep house. Ma's voice got colder than a well digger's ass and she told him to take his bacon and stuff it where the sun don't shine. I don't think I've ever seen Pa quite so mad," Kevin concluded in an awed tone. "Or Ma, neither."
    "Must have been real entertaining," I said. Kevin pedaled away and I went back into the PD to ponder all that. It was obvious that Carolyn McCoy-Grunders, the woman from WAACO, was stirring up the distaff side of the community. They were hiding out in the bar while they plotted whatever it was they were plotting, and I had an icy feeling in my stomach that it was going to be a doozy of a plot.
    Not that I had any objections to a little enlightenment in this last bastion of the dark ages. Earl Buchanon certainly deserved to be told to cook his own damn breakfast and to find an anatomically improbable place to stash the bacon. Johnna Mae had been treated unfairly by the bank. The majority of the women in Maggody considered themselves property of their husbands, to be abused, neglected, beaten, or ordered about like