Free GodPretty in the Tobacco Field by Kim Michele Richardson Page A

mouth-of-the-south. You told your mama, and I got stuck with the cord-cutting! How could you?”
    â€œCord—what? I swear I didn’t know she’d make ya stay like that. I knows how scared you is of birthing after your ma died of it and—”
    â€œShut up, Henny! You don’t know nothing—NOTHING—slinking off just like your no-good daddy.”
    Mr. Stump wasn’t worth two hoots and I was beginning to wonder if Henny would ever be.
    â€œI-I’m sorry.” Henny touched my shoulder.
    I pushed her hand off. “I can’t wait to get away from you and this damn town.” Fresh tears stung my eyes.
    â€œC’mon,” she pleaded, “we’s sisters—”
    â€œDon’t.” I pointed at her. “ Don’t talk about sisters when you weren’t even there for your own .”
    â€œListen, Roo, I had to tell ’em. Had to . Sister—”
    I narrowed my eyes.
    â€œL-Lena said she’d run away. Run—”
    â€œLike you did with that no-good Crockett today?”
    She tossed a guilty glance over her shoulder. “It’s true, Roo. Lena said she was fixin’ to run off. Pa couldn’t have her doing that, ’cause then the law’d be up there and ya know how the law is? So I thought if I told her how nice them baby-buyers was, ya know, that pretty fortune-teller, what all was on it . . . well, she’d see differently—”
    â€œWell, Henny?” I said, scissoring my fingers in the air. “I’m predicting you ain’t never gonna see your baby niece, Eve. Ever! ”
    â€œRoo . . .”
    The Cline song punched in my chest, snuck back into my throat, vibrating the dangly grape that hung there. I took off as fast as I could, winding myself before it could roll off my tongue, ignoring her shouts close behind me.
    When I spotted Rainey and Gunnar talking in the tobacco, I cut through the rows closest to the house and ducked inside to the bathroom. I couldn’t let them see my face. And knowing about Rainey leaving would make it worse. Resting my hands on the sink, I bent my head and thoroughly damned the song, the day, and everyone in it.
    I was still spotted and red-faced when Gunnar knocked on the door about ten minutes later. I reached for a cloth to dry my face, stopped and thought better of using my aunt’s pink company’s-coming towels. Using my arm, I wiped my eyes, and said, “A minute, Gunnar.”
    â€œHurry it up.”
    â€œOkay.”
    Not three seconds later he was back at the door. “ Hurry it .”
    I walked into the kitchen.
    â€œYou’ve wasted enough time at the Stumps’,” he grumbled over his coffee cup.
    â€œWasted?”
    He raised his brow slightly.
    â€œI worked all morning helping the Stumps, Gunnar.”
    He set down the cup and glared. “You wasted all morning on the Stumps.”
    I squinted back at him. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”
    â€œYou’ll get back to your chores.”
    â€œI broke my back toting water up the mountain and then I had to—”
    He shot his hand into the air, and railed, “I’ve been breaking my back teaching you this land day and night so you can go to agriculture college in Lexington and take over one day.”
    I flipped inside. He’d never told me . . . all this time acting like I was a work mule, a stupid work mule . “You’ve been working me to a death closer than my time, Gunnar. I can’t even stop and draw a little, or read none—”
    â€œ I will assign your reading.”
    â€œDone read every book on your shelf. Even the encyclopedia ones, twice. You get to read your Old Judge Priest books . . . many as you want, even.” Gunnar loved the old wisecracking Kentucky author, Irvin Cobb, who’d written the funny stories. And he’d collected almost every one of his sixty books, stacks of ’em. I knew when he was