Free Dovey Coe by Frances O'Roark Dowell Page A

turn him down in a way that left no doubt as to where she stood on the matter. He looked like someone had reached down through his throat and pulled his guts right up out of it.
    Someone yelled from the crowd, “Don’t be shy now, Caroline, tell the man how you feel!” Everybody laughed good and hard at that. Almost everybody, that is. Neither Parnell nor Caroline let on that they heard.
    Parnell looked Caroline up and down like he were sizing her up for the first and last time. “Fine, then, if that’s the way you feel about it,”he told her, his voice rising to a high pitch. “To hell with you, Caroline Coe!”
    Daddy moved up on him real quick then, but Parnell was already headed for the door. When he got there, he turned and looked at us. “To hell with all of you,” he yelled. Then he shoved his way past Amos and was out the door, and a minute later come the sound of his car starting up and heading down the road into the night.
    â€œThat boy don’t take too well to rejection, do he?” someone asked in a real amused tone. Then all sorts of voices started talking, working out amongst themselves what had just happened.
    Caroline walked out of that barn just as normal and steady as you please, but her face was still red with fury. Soon as she walked out the door, Mama and MeMaw hurried out after her.
    Daddy climbed up the platform and spoke quietly to Luther and Gaither, who commenced to playing again. But it was easy to see that the spirit had gone out of things. About an hour or so later, about the time the summer twilight faded, folks started gathering up their families and trickling out of the barn a little at a time. Wilson Brown come over to me to say good-bye. “You want to meet me at the farmers market on Saturday?” heasked. “We could maybe pass an afternoon looking at the sights.”
    â€œSure,” I told him. “I’d like that right much.”
    I t took us Coes a long time to settle into sleep that night. Caroline went right up to bed after talking some with Mama and MeMaw, but the rest of us sat out on the porch, not quite sure what to do with ourselves. Daddy picked at his guitar a little, but you could tell his thoughts was somewhere else.
    â€œI reckon Parnell thought he was going to force that little girl’s hand, proposing to her in front of all them folks that way. I suspect he didn’t count on Caroline being as stubborn as a mule, now did he?” he spoke at last, looking out into the yard where fireflies was lighting up the night one spot at a time.
    Mama leaned forward in her chair, a pained look on her face. “Caroline made her point this evening, I’ll give her that much. But why she couldn’t have told Parnell she weren’t going to marry him before all this is beyond me.”
    â€œWell, like the man said, this too shall pass.” Daddy leaned his guitar up against the house so he could stand and stretch. “We’ll get Carolinedown to school on Saturday, and pretty soon we can all forget it ever happened.”
    â€œI just wish there were some way to stop folks from talking about it,” Mama said, knotting her fingers together with the worry of it all.
    Daddy laughed. “Shoot, woman, this is the best thing that’s happened to most of them folks all year! Besides, what do we care what they say? Caroline didn’t ask that boy to go and make a fool of hisself that way. This weren’t our fault. Any man who says a bad word about us, he ought to remember whose chickens he was eating.”
    Mama give Daddy a long look then, like she was none too happy with him. Sometimes Daddy forgot that just because he didn’t care none what folks thought about him didn’t mean that Mama felt the same way. Mama had some high standards Daddy didn’t always share, and sometimes their differences in that regard got them to feuding.
    â€œAll I got to say is that Parnell Caraway