Read The Clock Winder for Free Online Page B

and pretty now that she is married and she is just real active in the Young Wives Fellowship. I don’t know if she has told you yet about the event they are expecting in March. Me a grandmother, I’m just tickled pink. I always did want to have someone to spoil rotten but hand back when he got to fussing. Honey I just wish you would settle down yourself some, finish at Sandhill College or get married, one. I know you don’t like to hear me say that but I just have to tell you what’s on my mind. Mrs. Bennett talking the other day said there is always one in every family that causes twice as much worry as all the others, not that you would love them any the less for it, well, I knew what she meant although of course I didn’t say so
.
    Dommie Whitehill still comes calling on us and asks all
about you, where you are and what you are doing and who you are going around with and so forth. I could just cry for that boy. You will never find anyone sweeter than Dommie, I don’t care how far you look, and that is something that is getting mighty hard to find these days and nobody waits forever
.
    Elizabeth I have oftentimes told your father he should drop you a line. He says it is up to you to write first and take back all you said so I wish you would. Honey he is just so hurt but would never show it for the world, you know how proud he is. Nobody is as strong as they look. I have thought of calling you on the long distance but not knowing how your employer might feel about it I didn’t. You could, though. Just one word is all it would take and it would make him so …
    Elizabeth changed into older dungarees, tattered and spotted and faded white at the seams. She took a leather belt from her dresser, but instead of putting it on she raised it over her head and spun it by the buckle like a lariat, in a huge wide beautiful circle. The tongue of the belt flicked a storybook doll—Margaret’s doll but Elizabeth’s room, no one’s but her own. She awoke here every morning feeling amazed all over again that she had finally become a grownup. Where to go and when to sleep and what to do with the day were hers to decide—or not to decide, which was even better. She could leave here when she wanted or stay forever, fixing things. In this house everything she touched seemed to work out fine. Not like the old days.
    When she descended the stairs, threading the belt through her jeans, she found Alvareen in the front hallway wiping the baseboards. “I’m going to take care of that turkey now,” Elizabeth told her.
    “That right?”
    “You wouldn’t like to do it, I don’t guess.”
    “Not me.” Alvareen sat back on her heels and refolded the dustcloth. “Honest to truth, you think she could find the money somewhere to
buy
one. What you all have for supper last night?”
    “Tuna fish on saltine crackers, open-face, topped with canned mushrooms.”
    Alvareen rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, a sign she was amused. She loved to hear what was served up on her sick-days.
    “For vegetables she spread oleo on celery sticks, with a line of green olives straight down the middle.”
    “You making this up?”
    “No.”
    “Can’t be
anyone
to cook as bad as that by accident,” said Alvareen. “Must be she wants to discourage your appetite. She’s tight with a dime.”
    “Elizabeth?”
    “Just going,” Elizabeth called up the stairs.
    “I thought you’d have left by now.”
    “Just on my way.”
    She waved a hand at Alvareen and walked out the front door, crossing the veranda briskly but slowing as she reached the yard. There wasn’t a person in sight, no one to offer to help. She dragged her feet all the way to the toolshed. When she opened the door the turkey rushed to the back of his crate with a scrabbling sound. Elizabeth squatted and peered inside. “Chick, chick?” she said. He strutted back and forth within his three-step limit, his wattle bobbing up and down. Away from the light his wings lost their