Free Yard War by Taylor Kitchings Page A

Stokes looked out his bedroom window at the clouds sailing past a full moon, seeing banshees and leprechauns and all kinds of creatures. It got tough around four a.m., but we had made a blood-brother vow to stay up until sunrise and it felt great to have done it. But not as great as I wanted it to feel. And now I had to think of another main goal in life.
    Daddy started talking about the clinic in Kansas City again and said he was gonna fly up there pretty soon to see if it might be a good idea for us to move there. Every time he brings up the idea of moving, the girls whine, and Mama and I look down and don’t say anything.
    “We’re just talking about it, girls,” Mama said. “It’s nothing definite.”
    “Y’all can move if you want to,” said Farish.
    “Hush up and eat your turnip greens,” Mama said.
    “No thank you.”
    “Three bites. They’re good for you.”
    “I can’t even eat one bite.”
    “You heard me, young lady.”
    “Do as your mother says, Farish,” Daddy said, like he really didn’t care one way or the other.
    Farish sighed and looked at her plate.
    “Three bites,” Mama said.
    Farish put the smallest amount she could get awaywith on her fork and nudged it into her mouth like Mama was making her eat cat spit.
    “Turnip greens is for ol’ bastuds,” she said softly.
    “What did you say, young lady?”
    “I said turnip greens is ol’ bastud food!”
    Mama slapped Farish’s hand, and Farish jumped up and ran to her room. Ginny Lynn’s eyes got big as quarters.
    Mama said, “Trip Westbrook, did you teach your sister that word?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “Well, who did? Did Dee teach it to her?”
    “No, ma’am, Mr. Pinky said it. He didn’t know we could hear him.”
    “You better not let me hear you sayin’ it either.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Then she shot a look at Daddy that said this was somehow all his fault. She said everybody was going to be here for the party in just a few hours, and she didn’t know how she was gonna be ready in time.
    We finished lunch quick. Mama jumped up and went into the kitchen and started giving more instructions to Willie Jane.
    Daddy and I stayed at the table and talked about bad words. I asked him exactly what “bastud” means, and he said the word is
“b-a-s-t-a-r-d”
and it’s somebody whose father isn’t married to his mother. Then I asked him about “yay-ho,” which is what Papaw callspeople he doesn’t like. Daddy said the real word is “yahoo,” and it’s from
Gulliver’s Travels
by Jonathan Swift, and it means people who act like animals, not whoever disagrees with you, the way Papaw uses it.
    Then I asked him if it was bad to call somebody a redneck. He said yes, because a redneck was an old-fashioned, uneducated person with old-fashioned, uneducated attitudes about most things, including colored people. He said he also knew some highly educated rednecks.
    I told him Marcie Wofford called me a son of a bitch in the cafeteria when we were putting our trays up and I got banana pudding on her sleeve.
    “What in the world is a seventh-grade girl doing using language like that?” he said.
    “I don’t know. I’m not a son of a bitch, though.”
    “Certainly not, son. Certainly not.”
    —
    After lunch, me and Dee watched TV until the guys started showing up for the game. I promised Mama I would use all my allowance money for the next six months to buy her some new roses if we tore any up. I knew she did not agree with Daddy about letting this football game happen at all, and I knew it wasn’t the roses she was really worried about. But she said okay.
    I said I wanted Dee for my quarterback again, butAndy said it wasn’t fair to hog him, so this time Stokes and me and Calvin were the Rebels. Andy’s team was the Viking Stompers.
    Dee kidded Stokes that he’d better get ready to lose, and Stokes kidded him back. I guess I should have been glad that they were being friendly. But something bothered me about it. Dee