Free The Devil's Dream by Lee Smith Page A

nothing but a vexation and a distraction, and can’t none of them hold a candle to Daddy anyhow.
    But Nonnie, she’d go or die, and then she’d be mooning around over first one and then another. She used to sing this little song, “Oh I wonder when I shall be married, oh be married, oh be married, oh I wonder when I shall be married, or am I beginning to fade?” It was the dumbest little song I ever heerd, and she was the dumbest little girl I ever saw to sing it, and I said so. Didn’t faze Nonnie, though. She’d swat away my words like they was flies.
    And when we would go anyplace, if it was meeting or the store or anyplace at all, why she would flirt with the boys till it was shameful. But didn’t none of them come up here, for Daddy had said that they was not to, and most folks was kindly afeared of Daddy. Daddy thought none of them boys was good enough for our Nonnie, she had really pulled the wool over his eyes.
    â€œAnyway, Zinnia must have a husband first,” Daddy said at the table one night just to devil us. Since I knowed he didn’t mean it, I just laughed and said, “The last thing in the world I need is a husband. I need a husband like I need a hole in the wall,” I said. “And whatever would you all do without me, anyway, if I was to leave?” I axed them, for we were eating supper which I had cooked, mind you. “You-uns would starve to death,” I said.
    And do you know what Daddy done? Why, he reached over acrost the table and took Nonnie’s hand. “Why, Nonnie will be the little housewife, then,” he said, grinning. He was just funning her, because he would not have let me go for the world, mind you, but silly little Nonnie busted into tears and ran out of the house a-blubbering.
    â€œOh, I will never get married,” she wailed. “You all won’t let me,” she wailed. “If I have to wait for Zinnia, I’ll be a old maid,” she wailed out in the yard while Daddy and me sat on at the table and finished eating supper.
    The truth of it was, Daddy wanted Nonnie to stay in school as long as ever she would. I believe he had kindly a hankering for Nonnie to make a teacher like one of Daddy’s aunts done, over in Tennessee. Oh, he wanted the world for our Nonnie! And she could of had it too; it was hers for the taking. And it was all right with me, mind you, for Nonnie to get all that schooling, as I couldn’t get nothing at all done with her mooning around underfoot day in and day out. I was plumb glad to see her go flouncing out that door to school. She used to ride her little pony down to the schoolhouse every day, this was a white pony Daddy had bought for her over in Sparta, which she named Snowy. I had not took to school too good myself, truth to tell. It seemed like a waste of time to me. But Nonnie, she liked it fine, and the schoolteacher, Mister Harkness, set a big store by her. She had him wrapped around her little finger too.
    I recall one time when our preacher, Mister Cisco Estep, was questioning Daddy about Nonnie’s schooling and what did Daddy mean by it, for the Bible itself says that too many books is a sin. I will not forget what Daddy answered him.
    â€œCisco,” he said, putting his hands on Cisco Estep’s shoulders, “Nonnie is a soft girl, like her mother. I do not want her to get all wore out by hard work like her mother done. I feel real bad about her mother,” Daddy said.
    This is the only time I ever heerd Daddy say anything about Mamma, or saw him look so mushy in the face.
    â€œI want Nonnie to have a better life,” Daddy said.
    But Nonnie, she didn’t care nothing about that, all she wanted was a feller. Nonnie was just a fool waiting to happen.
    And one day, sure enough, she came back from going down into Cana with some of the neighbor people, looking like she had a fine mist of moondust laid all over her. Her black eyes was as shiny as