Read Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming for Free Online

wait for Dr. Addison,” Alafair ordered, “while we do what we have to do. Girls,” she said, looking down at the two little clinging bundles of curiosity, “y’all go outside with Mr. Tucker and Sheriff Tucker and let your ma and me get to work.”
    All tasks allocated, the men withdrew, each with a little girl by the hand, and left the two women to the grim and intimate task of preparing the body.
    It took the women a few minutes to tug Harley’s stiff limbs out and arrange him supine on the table.
    Alafair rolled up her sleeves as Mrs. Day removed the big pot of water warming on the stove and brought it to the table. They worked in silence for several minutes, straightening the body and drawing off the wet, muddy clothing. Alafair turned her back as Mrs. Day tugged off the long johns and decently draped Harley’s privates with an old dishtowel.
    Alafair took a wet cloth and lathered it well with lye soap, then began washing the greasy black hair as Mrs. Day started at the feet. Alafair noted with distaste that this was probably the first bath that Harley had had in quite some time. The clothing they had removed from the body was amazingly filthy, as if he had indeed been rolling in some very black mud. The whole right side of his body was coated with a thick layer of it, from tip to toe. His clothes had been well-mended, though. Mrs. Day probably did the best she could under bad circumstances. Alafair glanced at the silent woman.
    “Where’s the rest of your children, Miz Day?” she wondered.
    “Harley’s sister from over north of Boynton come and got most of them just a little while ago,” she replied. “Mattie and Frances wanted to stay. Naomi is around here, somewhere. I swear, that girl is always going off by herself, lately. The others will be back tomorrow, probably.”
    “How many kids you got?”
    Mrs. Day looked up at her, perplexed, and Alafair thought that the woman was not used to someone being interested in anything she might have to say. “They’s seven still alive and at home. Oldest girl run off last year. Got married, I believe. I ain’t seen her since, but I hear she’s still around here somewhere. Three other kids died when they was pretty little, back when the whooping cough was going around.”
    Alafair nodded while squeezing her already blackened rag into the bucket. “None of mine are married. Their daddy says they’re way too particular, but really, we’re both glad.”
    “I married up with Harley when I was thirteen,” Mrs. Day commented dispassionately. “He weren’t so bad when I first met him. Always was full of vinegar back then, and big ideas, looking for ways to make himself rich. Seems like all he could ever find was ways to get himself in trouble. John Lee come along directly.”
    Alafair looked up sharply. Eleven kids in nineteen years, and the woman couldn’t be much over thirty. Alafair was filled with compassion and a nameless anger, quite unaware of any irony that might be inherent in the fact that she had borne eleven children herself, and was two years shy of forty. She, at least, could afford to feed and clothe her happy brood, and had been fully compliant in the conception of every one of them.
    “I got nine living,” Alafair told her. “I lost a couple of little fellows when they were babies. It’s hard.”
    Mrs. Day shrugged without looking at her. “Sometimes it’s God’s mercy.”
    For an instant, Alafair was shocked at the comment. She hadn’t felt the hand of mercy when her boy had choked to death in her arms, blue and staring, as she ran for the doctor. But the shock abated when she admitted to herself that she did not think life so horrible that she would have been grateful to see her children spared the experience.
    “What do you plan on doing now?” Alafair wondered.
    Mrs. Day didn’t answer right away, just dipped her cloth and washed, dipped and washed, until Alafair wondered if the woman had heard her. But she had heard. She