Ozark Trilogy 3: And Then There'll Be Fireworks Read Online Free Page B

sight of your old skinny-skin-skins ... for sure I would not lust after you! But if you rank your modesty higher than your misery, so be it; I’ll not squabble with you.”
    The cabin was small and bare, and even after Troublesome got the fire crackling in the fireplace the best she could do was pull up a rough board bench with no back to it for them all to sit on and try to bake the damp from their bones. Troublesome had no rugs, and no curtains; her bed was a pallet laid on a rope frame in the corner, she had one straight chair and one rocker and one low stepladder and a small square table and a cookstove. And except for a bucket or two and a shelf here and there, that was it. The Grannys were bemused by it, even with their teeth chattering.
    “Don’t have eight cups, do you?” asked Granny Sherryjake.
    Troublesome chuckled, and admitted she didn’t, and served them up the scalding tea in an assortment of jars and ladles and whatnots that was ingenious, but not elegant.
    “Never needed more than three before,” she told them. “One to drink with, one to measure with, and one in the dishpan soaking.”
    “I can’t say as you exactly ... do yourself proud ,” commented Granny Frostfall, and a kind of snort of agreement ran down the bench.
    “No, I don’t suppose I do,” Troublesome agreed.
    “Tain’t natural,” said one, and Troublesome’s eyebrows rose.
    “You expected things up here to be natural?” she asked.
    The Grannys sighed all together, seeing it was a hopeless case, and Troublesome went to a row of three pegs on a wall by her bed and took down a long dress all in a soft scarlet wool and slipped it over her head.
    “There,” she said, “now I’ll not be quite such an offense to your eyes.” And her long fingers were almost too quick for those same fourteen sharp eyes to see as she put the mass of hair into a braid and wound it up around her head and fastened it tight.
    It was unjust that anything so wicked should be so beautiful, or so clever, or so serene, or so happy with her lot—especially the last—and the Grannys stared glumly into the fire and pondered on that.
    “Well, ladies,” Troublesome said at last, sitting herself down on an upended bucket with her arms wrapped round her knees, since it wouldn’t of been mannerly to take a chair while the old women huddled on that bench, “now you’re a bit warmer and dryer, maybe you’d tell me what I’m beholden to for the pleasure of your company?”
    “Maybe you might offer us a bite of breakfast first!” snapped Granny Gableframe. “ If you care to spare it!”
    “It’s already cooking,” said Troublesome calmly, “but I can’t do anything much to hurry it along. And while we’re waiting on it—no, I don’t have eight plates either, but as it happens I do have eight spoons—while we’re waiting on it I see no reason not to make the time go by speaking up on the reason for this visit. I’m afraid I’m not much for visitors.”
    The Grannys allowed as how they never would of figured that out if she hadn’t mentioned it, and she chuckled again.
    “Earn your keep, you dear old things,” she teased them, brazen as brazen, “earn your keep. What brings you hanging round my door all unannounced and unkempt, with snow before the week’s out or my name’s not Troublesome of Brightwater? You should be home, each in your rocker with your knitting, by your own fire, telling terrible stories to the tadlings.”
    Granny Hazelbide was embarrassed; true, this one was properly Named, and her outrageousness came as no surprise to anybody, but it had been her, poor Granny Hazelbide, that had tried to keep some control over her when she was a little girl at Castle Brightwater.
    “Troublesome,” she said sadly, “have you no feelings atall?”
    “Probably not,” said Troublesome promptly. “Feelings about what?”
    “Times are hard , young woman,” said Hazelbide, “times are fearsome hard! You talk of sitting by our fires