Free To Sail Beyond the Sunset by Robert A. Heinlein Page A

being effectively limited to the few young men near your age in Lyle County. If you decide to marry Charles Perkins, I won’t say a word. He’s healthy, he’s well behaved. And he’s not my cup of tea. But he may be yours.”
    (He was not my cup of tea, either, Papa. I guess I was just using him. But I’d promised him a return match…so I would have to.)
    “Father, suppose we hold off until next year?”
    “I think that is sound judgment, Maureen. In the meantime, don’t get pregnant and try not to get caught. Oh, by the way—If you submit your name and a young man on the list comes along, if you wish, you can try him out on the parlor sofa.” He smiled. “More convenient and safer than the judges’ stand.”
    “Mother would have heart failure!”
    “No, she would not. Because that is exactly the arrangement her mother provided for her…and that is why Edward was officially a premature baby. Because it is stupid to go the Howard route, then find out after you’re committed by marriage vows that the two of you are infertile with each other.”
    I had no answer. Mother…my mother who thought “breast” was a dirty word and that “belly” was outright profanity… Mother with her bloomers off, bouncing her bawdy buttocks on Grandma Pfeiffer’s sofa, making a baby out of wedlock, while Grandma and Grandpa pretended not to know what was going on! It was easier to believe in virgin birth and transubstantiation and resurrection and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. We are strangers, all of us, family most of all.
    Shortly we pulled into the Jackson Igo place, eighty acres, mostly rocks and hills, a shack and a sorry barn. Mr. Igo cropped it a bit but it didn’t seem possible that the place supported him and his thin, tired wife and his swarm of dirty children. Mostly Jackson Igo cleaned cesspools and built privies.
    Some of those children and half a dozen dogs gathered round our buggy; one boy ran shouting into the house. Presently Mr. Igo came out. Father called out, “Jackson!”
    “Yeah, Doc.”
    “Get these dogs away from my rig.”
    “They ain’t no harm.”
    “Do it. I won’t have them jumping up on me.”
    “Jest as you say, Doc. Cleveland! Jefferson! Get them hounds! Take ’em around back.”
    The order was carried out; Father got down with a quiet word over his shoulder, “Stay in the buggy.”
    Father was inside their shack only a short time, which suited me, as the oldest boy, Caleb, my age or near it, was pestering me to get down and come see a new litter of pigs. I knew him from school, where he had attended fifth grade for some years. He was, in my opinion, a likely candidate for lynching if some father did not kill him first. I had to tell him to get away from Daisy and quit bothering her; he was causing her to toss her head and back away from him. I took the whip out of its socket to point up my words.
    I was glad to see Father reappear.
    He climbed into the buggy without a word. I clucked to Daisy and we got out of there. Father was frowning like a thunder cloud, so I kept quiet.
    A quarter of a mile down the road he said, “Please pull over onto the grass,” so I did, and said to Daisy, “Whoa, girl,” and waited.
    “Thank you, Maureen. Will you help me wash, please?”
    “Certainly, sir.” This buggy, used for his country calls and specially built by the carriage wrights who built his racing sulkies, had a larger baggage space in back, with a rain cover. In it were carried a number of items that Father might need on a call but which did not belong in his black bag. One was a coal oil can with a spout, filled with water, and a tin basin, and soap and toweling.
    This time he wanted me to pour water over his hands. Then he soaped them; I rinsed them by pouring. He shook them dry; then washed them all over again in the basin and dried them after shaking, on clean toweling.
    He sighed. “That’s better. I did not sit down in there, I did not touch anything I could avoid