Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

“I’d best be getting supper on the table now,” she said, and thus Shaw and Alafair departed into their own realms.
    ***
    Martha had the stove properly banked and she and Mary were hauling down plates when Alafair came into the kitchen. Alafair dropped her apron over her head and tied the strings behind her back.
    “What’s it to be, Ma?” Mary asked her.
    “I doubt if those kids eat very good, so let’s do it up,” Alafair said. “Got no time to kill a hen, so let’s fry up some ham with gravy. Mary, I see you’ve already peeled some potatoes and chopped onions. Are you thinking of home fries? That’s good, then. Martha, warm up all the leftovers from dinner, and make two or three pans of cornbread. Remember, there’s seven extra of us tonight. I’ll open some more jars from the pantry.”
    Sophronia and Frances Day came skidding into the kitchen, and Sophronia grabbed her mother’s skirt. “Mama, can you get me and Frances a glass of milk?”
    “Are your arms broke?” Alafair asked, while hauling out her frying pans.
    “No, ma’am,” Sophronia assured her.
    “Well, then, you gals can go out on the back porch yourselves and draw off some milk in a couple of big pitchers for the table. Mary, get these girls some pitchers. Draw some buttermilk, too.”
    “I don’t like buttermilk,” Frances informed her, as she and Sophronia skipped off toward Mary.
    “It’ll make your hair curly,” Alafair said.
    “I only made two apple pies, Ma. Shall I make a cobbler, or another pie?” Mary wondered.
    Alafair pondered, then shook her head. “I’m near to out of canned fruit. I suppose we could whip up a couple of molasses pies. Alice is good at molasses pies. Where is Alice?”
    “In the parlor torturing Phoebe, Ma,” Martha informed her cheerfully.
    Alafair sniffed and headed toward the pantry. “Put out a jug of karo syrup and one of sorghum. Some may prefer to doctor their cornbread.” She swerved enough to stick her head into the parlor. “Phoebe and Alice, we need you in here.” She looked down at Naomi, who was sitting in an armchair with a toddler in her lap, and hesitated.
    “I’m sorry about your mama, honey. This is a lot of responsibility to put on your young shoulders.”
    Naomi blinked at her. “It’s all right,” she said at length. “I’m used to it.”
    “I heard that you and your sister were close. I wish Maggie Ellen was still here to help you. You must miss her.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” she acknowledged. “But she ain’t. Maggie Ellen told me that if she ever did get away, she’d come back and take the rest of us off with her. Never did, though.”
    “Well, maybe now you can find her.”
    Naomi shrugged. “I don’t reckon she’ll come back. I won’t come back, when I get me a place of my own.” She stood up. “I can help you with supper, Miz Tucker,” she said.
    “You’re the guest, Naomi,” Alafair told her. “You take your ease. When we come over to your house, you can wait on us.”
    Naomi’s mouth quirked slightly in an expression of irony, since the likelihood of the Tuckers coming to dinner at her house was nil, then sat back down.
    “Shaw,” Alafair continued, “we’ll be needing some boards and sawhorses to extend the table, and something to sit on.”
    Shaw was half out the door before she finished speaking. “Boys, come on,” he called. “You Day boys, too. I’m not so delicate a host as Miz Tucker.”
    All the males tumbled out into the cold except for toddling, thumb-sucking Alfred Day and three-year-old Otis Day, and all the females were pressed into mess service except Naomi, Ruth and Blanche, whom Alafair set to keeping Alfred and Otis out from underfoot.
    After supper, Alafair made use of all the extra hands to help with the cleanup and the evening chores, while Shaw went with John Lee into town to visit Mrs. Day in jail. Alafair packed a basket of comforts for them to take to Mrs. Day, though she was certain that Scott’s wife, Hattie, had already done the same. Alafair thought that the woman could use all the comfort she could get.
    Alafair expected that Naomi would go into town with her brother, but when the time came, the girl demurred and set about scraping leftovers into the slop bucket. Alafair sat in a chair near the parlor door, as she usually did, and supervised the cleanup. She was interested to observe Naomi discreetly wrapping scraps of food in a napkin and slipping it into the pockets of her voluminous skirt.