Free Homebody: A Novel by Orson Scott Card Page A

taking a bite they must be waiting for him, as the guest, to begin. He picked up his spoon and dug in.
    Miz Judea laid a hand on his arm. "Don't forget to give thanks."
    He almost thanked them again, before he realized what they meant. It made him feel stupid, since he'd said grace every day as he was growing up, and he and his wife had seen to it that they raised their daughter with prayers at meals and every night before bed. But for the past couple of years, there'd been nobody to pray with and, more importantly, nobody he much wanted to pray to.
    The ladies bowed their heads. "Dear Lord, for this food we give thanks," said Miz Evelyn, "and for this strong young hardworking man who earns his bread by the sweat of his face. Bless him to be smart enough to get the hell out of that house before it eats him alive."
    Don wasn't the only one startled. Miz Judea gave a little cry and apparently kicked Miz Evelyn under the table, since she gave an equally sincere cry in response. "Evvie!" said Miz Judea.
    Miz Evelyn steadfastly kept her eyes closed and intoned with all deliberation, "A. Men."
    "Amen, you silly old tart," said Miz Judea. "Say amen yourself, young man."
    Bewildered as he was, Don had nothing better to say. "Amen."
    "Now eat before she says something even stupider," said Miz Judea.
    Don was grateful to obey. The food was good, but there was an element of craziness about them both—no, call it simple strangeness—that disconcerted him, precisely because they didn't seem crazy at all. They seemed like his kind of people, earthy yet elegant, gracious yet plain. He liked them. They were generous. They were funny. But when it came to the Bellamy house, they were, in fact, loons.
    The conversation stayed on safe subjects through the rest of dinner—how the Bestway on Walker Street was the only survivor of an onslaught of supermarket takeovers that brought in the big boys and drove out the small ones; how outraged everyone was when they changed the names of a half-dozen of Greensboro's historic old streets so that Market and Friendly would have the same names along their entire length; how ironic it was that now they couldn't even remember what the old names had been... Hogarth? Hobart? Hubert? No, that was the vice-president back in 1952, wasn't it? Or was he the one who got impeached? It was like being caught up in a history lesson in which the teacher had no notes. They remembered everything, had lived through everything, and yet they remained hopelessly vague about all the public events.
    But not the private ones. They could still tell stories about their childhoods. For Miz Evelyn it was Wilkes County, not quite the heart of Appalachia after all, but still true hill country. "I learnt to smoke before I turned five, and nobody whupped me for it either, they just slapped me when they caught me filling my pipe from some grownup's stash."
    "My mama caught me smoking when I was ten and I thought I'd never walk again," said Miz Judea.
    "And don't it beat all—
her
folks was tobacco farmers, and mine raised chickens and pigs and bad corn." Miz Evelyn shook her head over that one.
    "Well, it wasn't cause my mama wanted me healthy, I'll tell you that, cause her whuppings took a lot more out of me than the tobacco ever did."
    "I notice you don't smoke now, either of you," said Don. If either of them did smoke, the smell would linger on everything in the house, and there wasn't a trace of it.
    "Well, that's Gladys," said Miz Judea.
    "Can't abide smoke," said Miz Evelyn. "Can't say as how I blame her, either, all shut up indoors like she is. Not a breath of fresh air. Can't go filling it up with smoke now, can we?"
    "Gladys?"
    "I should say
Miz
Gladys but she's younger than us so, you know," said Miz Evelyn.
    "My cousin," said Miz Judea. "Six years younger."
    "She lives here?"
    "Upstairs," said Miz Evelyn. "Bedridden, poor thing."
    "But let's not talk about Gladys," said Miz Judea. "She
doesn't
like being the subject of