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call her after he’d addressed her as “ma’am” one too many times.
     
    Had he ever eaten dinner in a kitchen? He didn’t think so.
     
    Did he have a personal acquaintance with anyone who had ever milked a cow? He was fairly certain he didn’t.
     
    Aunt Liza wore an apron that fit over her shoulders and hung to her knees where flesh-covered support hose bagged conspicuously under her housedress. She hustled about the commercial size stove off to one side of the kitchen. Sitting on benches that lined both sides of the table, chatting amiably with him as if it were perfectly normal for him to be there, were Chet, Johnny, whom he already met, and Jerry Lee, a fifteen-year-old. This family bred kids like rabbits, apparently. The baby was up in his crib, down for the night, Chet said hopefully.
     
    A radio sitting on a counter was set on a twenty-four hour country music station. Surprise, surprise.
     
    “Do you people honestly like that music?” Clay asked. It was probably a rude question to ask when he was in someone else’s home, but he really would like to understand the attraction this crap held for the masses.
     
    “Yeah,” Chet, Jerry Lee, Johnny, and Aunt Liza said as one.
     
    “But it’s so  . . . so hokey,” Clay argued. “Listen to that one. `I Changed Her Oil, She Changed My Life.’“
     
    They all laughed.
     
    “That’s just it. Country music makes you feel good. You could be in a funky mood, and it makes you smile.” Jerry Lee thought about what he’d said for a moment, then chuckled. “One of my favorites is `She Got the Ring, I Got the Finger’.”
     
    “Jerry Lee Fallon, I told you about using such vulgarities in this house,” Aunt Liza admonished. Then she chuckled, too. “I’m partial to `You Done Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat’.”
     
    “I like `I Would Have Wrote You a Letter But I Couldn’t Spell Yuck’,” Johnny said.
     
    “Well, the all-time best one,” Chet offered, “is `Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth ’Cause I’m Kissing You Good-Bye’.”
     
    Some of the other titles tossed out then by one Fallon family member after another were: “How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away,” “I’ve Been Flushed From the Bathroom Of Your Heart,” “If I Can’t Be Number One In Your Life, Then Number Two On You,” “You Can’t Have Your Cake and Edith Too,” and the one they all agreed was best, “I Shaved My Legs For This ?”
     
    Despite himself, Clay found himself laughing with the whole crazy bunch.
     
    Just then, the back door could be heard opening onto a mudroom. Voices rang out with teasing banter.
     
    “You better not have mooned any passersby, Hank? That’s all we need is a police citation on top of everything else,” Annie was chastising her brother.
     
    “I didn’t say he mooned the girl,” another male said. It must be Roy, the vet student. “I said he was mooning over her.”
     
    There was the sound of laughter then and running water as they presumably washed their hands in a utility sink.
     
    Seconds later, two males entered the room, rubbing their hands briskly against the outside chill which they carried in with them. They nodded at him in greeting and sat down on the benches, maneuvering their long legs awkwardly under the table.
     
    Only then did Clay notice the woman who stepped through the doorway. She was tall and thin. Her long, long legs that went from here to the Texas Panhandle were encased in soft, faded jeans, which were tucked into a pair of work boots. An oversized denim shirt  . . . probably belonging to one of her brothers  . . . covered her on the top, hanging down to her knees with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. A swath of sandy brunette hair laid straight and thick to her shoulders. Not a lick of make-up covered her clear complexion. Even so, her lips were full  . . . almost too full for her thin face  . . . and parted over large, even white teeth. She resembled a thinner,