JANE LOUISE
I fled into the hard-packed dirt street and zipped past Jane Louise Heckathorn, who was fixing to head into the store. Jane Louise was closest to a friend I had, but I didn’t stop.
“Adabel, wait!” she called.
“Not now,” I said betwixt my teeth.
But Jane Louise follered me, though she dropped further and further behind. She wasn’t the kind to hurry, believing a girl’s forehead should never be dotted with sweat. I never give thought to such things and didn’t slow down, even when I seen my brother Pick walking towards me.
I sidestepped to skirt around him, but that ran me headlong into the chest of Norris Shortwell.
“Nice running into you, Adabel,” he said, and wrapped his arms around me, pinning my arms at my sides.
I tried to squirm free of his grip, but he didn’t let go.
“Don’t set her free until she burns off some of whatever got her het up,” Pick warned him.
I stewed for a minute and caught my breath afore I stomped down hard on Norris’s foot. His grip loosed a mite, but he hung on, and I felt his breathing aside my ear.
“For such a skinny critter, your sister’s meaner’n a dang pant’er,” he told Pick with a laugh. I kicked his shin, and afore he had time to recover, I lit out, heading for the stand of pines surrounding Mr. Webster’s outhouse.
I stopped in the shade and shadows, where the scent of pine was stronger than the backhouse smell, and watched as Jane Louise reached the boys. I knew she was fixing to change right in front of me, like a tadpole turning into a frog.
Jane Louise always changed when boys was around. Her voice got whispery, her eyes got fluttery, and her lips formed a pout that turned boys into confounded lugheads. From where I stood, I couldn’t hear what she said to ’em, but I watched a performance I had witnessed all too often.
And I wasn’t the only one who seen it. Jist outside Mr. Webster’s Grocery, him and Mr. Grayson, the insurance peddler Miz Sparks had spoke of, stopped whatever they was talking about to watch Jane Louise and the boys.
Norris seemed to git three inches taller with Jane Louise in front of him. His lips flapped like a loose boot sole. But like as not, he didn’t say shucks worth hearing.
Most folks called Norris by the nickname of Shovel, and not on account’a he could shovel verbal manure better than most—which he could. But on account’a him and my brother being friends since they was babies. Always together, Pick and Shovel.
Even that brother of mine that Teacher Bromley said was smart enough to be somebody someday, become a half-wit in the presence of Jane Louise’s charms.
Me and Jane Louise got along jist fine, but the way she behaved with boys confounded me. She claimed to keep company with Corky Danfield, whose daddy was a boss at the Smoke Ridge Mine, but she still shamelessly teased and flirted with ever’ boy in Harlan County.
I couldn’t watch another minute of it. I headed home, without fabric for Blissie’s dress or one shred of dignity.
My mind went back to those harpies at the Dry Goods. Did they know what made Mama leave Harlan County all them years ago? And did they know where she went?