Read A Fine Dark Line for Free Online Page B

he didn’t have call for this,” Mom said. “But why he hit her matters to me. If, of course, you want to talk about it, Rosy.”
    “He hit me ’cause I ain’t been givin’ him all the money I make here. He wants it all, but he jes’ gambles and drinks it. He been wantin’ me to go out and do another little work, but I ain’t doin’ it.”
    “What little work?” Mom asked.
    “Well now, Miss Mitchel, I can’t talk on that with the chil’ren here.”
    Mom’s eyes widened.
    “Oh,” she said.
    “Yesum, that’s the work. And I ain’t gonna do it. He done run him some womens like that befoe, but I’m a good decent woman, and I ain’t gonna do none of that. Not for no one. Even if’n they beat me. He gonna kill me fo’ I do that.”
    “He beat you because you told him no?”
    “I sorta made it a little too clear, sassy-like. He didn’t ’preciate that none. He’ll cool down, though. He always does. When he gets off the drinkin’ a day or two and sobers up. Then he’ll be pretty good for a time. It’s ’round Fridays, when my payday come, that’s when he gets all swirly-wigged. By Monday, Tuesday, he doin’ better.”
    “That gives you maybe two good days a week,” Mom said. “Rosy Mae, you don’t need to go back to him tonight. You eat your dinner, then you’re gonna sleep in the living room. I don’t want you around that man.”
    Daddy was sitting with his mouth open, not knowing exactly what to say. Mom removed the iced towel from Rosy Mae’s face, said, “Now, you go on and eat. We’ll eat too.”
    Rosy Mae was tentative at first, but pretty soon hunger overtook her.
    “How is it?” Mom asked.
    “It really good, Miss Mitchel. Needs a little salt in them green beans, but it’s real good and I thank you.”
    “Salt?” Mom asked.
    “Yesum. Jes’ a little, though.”
    When we were finished, Mom said, “Rosy Mae, you want, you go lay down in there on the couch. We got to open up the drive-in.”
    “Miss Mitchel,” Rosy Mae said. “You gonna feed me and let me spend the night. I be glad to help you in the kitchen with the fried chicken. Anything you doin’.”
    “Well, there’s no real cooking except the chicken,” Mom said. “But sure. You can do that. But you get to feelin’ tired or in pain, you come in and lay down on the couch.”
    “Thank you, kindly, ma’am.”
    “You’re more than welcome, Rosy Mae.”
    Rosy Mae finished eating, went out to the concession’s kitchen to help Mama fry chicken. I knew that was going to be the best fried chicken anyone ever had at the drive-in, or maybe anywhere else, and it would have just the right amount of salt.
    Daddy sat at the kitchen table, looking in the direction of their retreat, an expression on his face like he had just awakened to find his old life was a dream and that his left foot was actually a cured ham.
    Me and Callie finished eating, asked to be excused, told Daddy we’d be back in plenty of time to start helping with the drive-in work, went back to my room where we dragged out the box and Callie started reading from the letters.
    “It’s all from M to J. Were any real names mentioned?”
    “I don’t think so . . . I don’t know. I haven’t read all of that stuff.”
    “These last pages, they’re out of a journal, or a diary . . . Well, this is odd.”
    “What’s odd?”
    “They’re from a diary, but the diary seems to be the girl’s diary. It reads in the same way as the letters. With it bound up and in a padlocked box, you get the idea it’s something someone treasured, but wanted to keep secret. That makes me think it all belongs to one person, this J. I guess it could belong to the girl who wrote the letters and the journal, and she never sent the letters. You know. Wishful thinking . . . Or maybe J gave them back. That happens sometimes when people breakup. Back then, during the war, letters were prized more highly than now, Stanley.”
    “How come there’s just pages torn from the