Free Homebody: A Novel by Orson Scott Card Page B

talk."
    "Says it makes her ears burn," said Miz Evelyn.
    After dinner, they tried to make Don sit at the table or in the parlor while they straightened up, and got Gladys's dinner tray ready, but Don insisted. "All the good company is out in the kitchen. You wouldn't make me stay alone in the parlor, now, would you?" So he ended up with a dishtowel drying while Judea washed.
    "It's not right for us to make you help," she said.
    "It's my pleasure," said Don again. "Beautiful china."
    "Used to be in the Bellamy house," she said. "Used to be a set of twenty-four places, nine dishes per place. We've only got three complete settings left. The cereal bowls are always the first to go."
    "I wasn't expecting to eat so well tonight, I'll tell you, or off of porcelain as fine as this, either."
    "The laborer is worthy of his hire, that's what the Bible says. Though what that has to do with this I'm not sure, it just seemed the right passage to quote."
    "If I'm the laborer, then what have you given me wages for?"
    "If that was your wages, then we cheated you. You hardly made a dent in that stew."
    "You made enough for a whole work crew! You'll be eating that stew for a week."
    Miz Evelyn came back downstairs with Gladys's dinner tray. Don realized that she had carried up, not a bowl of stew, but the whole tureen, and now it was empty. So was the pitcher of lemonade, and there was nothing but crumbs on a plate where there'd been half a loaf at the end of dinner. Gladys couldn't have eaten it all, could she? How much appetite could a bedridden woman work up?
    "Gladys is so crabby tonight," said Miz Evelyn.
    Judea plunged the pitcher into the dishwater, and then the tureen, not even seeming to notice the fact that Gladys had already almost polished them both, they were so completely empty.
    "I'm not surprised," said Miz Judea. "Wouldn't you be?"
    Miz Evelyn spoke confidentially to Don. "She's on a diet."
    At once Miz Judea rounded on her. "He doesn't need to know personal things like that about her, Miss Evvie. You
are
talky tonight, aren't you?"
    That seemed unfair to Don—it was Miz Judea, after all, who had told him that Gladys was bedridden. Don didn't like it when the two of them crabbed at each other. Especially the names they called each other—names his mother had taught him never to use even with his friends, let alone with women. So Don changed the subject to the one that he knew they couldn't resist.
    "You ladies have been talking around something all night and never quite hitting it on the nose. Now we're about done with the dishes and I'm heading back over to the Bellamy house. My house."
    His plan to stop their argument worked, except that it focused Miz Judea's scorn on him. She rolled her eyes. "My house, did you hear him?"
    "Well, it ain't ourn."
    "Ours."
    "Oh, you're the one to correct my grammar."
    "I'm the only hope you got of not sounding like a hillbilly whore."
    "What
about
the house?" Don said, again trying to stifle the argument.
    Suddenly the two of them grew quiet. Miz Judea put the dripping tureen in the dish drain. "You just let that dry by itself," said Miz Judea.
    "I can dry it," said Don.
    "You're tired and I don't want that tureen in your hands when you hear what Gladys said."
    Apparently they had no idea Don wouldn't be hanging on every word that came from the mysterious Gladys.
    "It's those locks you put on the doors," said Miz Evelyn. "They're
strengthening
the house." She said it as if this were an appalling idea.
    "That's the idea," said Don. "I've got all my stuff in there."
    "But you just can't," said Miz Evelyn. "The house was finally beginning to fade, don't you see? Any time now, the termites was going to get in and... oh, Miss Judy, he's just not listening."
    "Yes I am."
    Miz Judea laid a hand on his arm. "What Miss Evvie is trying to tell you is that it's out of the question for you to renovate that house."
    "I'm sorry, ladies, but it's too late. That house isn't a historic site and I've got all