Just because she forgets don't mean I should. (She also says g's are free, and I should remember to tack them onto the ends of my ing words, and stop using ain't, and talk proper like a lady and all.
Mama says stealin' butter is free, as long as you don't get caught.
Then, everythin' we eat is buttered thick as flies on a deer carcass, because it would break mine and Jenessa's hearts to waste those little squares of gold. Sometimes, after a stint away, Mama will appear out of nowhere, clutchin' a greasy brown sack from the diner in town. That's what I'm thinkin' as I fill the scratchy cookin' pot full of water from the chipped porcelain jug and turn on the dancin' blue flame of the Bunsen burner: how I can make the beans taste new tonight, along with wishin' we had butter for the last of the bread, which we don't, because butter don't keep well without refrigeration. But when you're livin' in the woods like Jenessa and me, with no runnin' water or electricity, with Mama gone to town for long stretches of time, leavin' you in charge of feedin' a younger sister-nine years younger-with a stomach rumblin' like a California earthquake, inventin' new and interestin' ways to fix beans becomes very important indeed. It's just beans, after all, the cause of square farts, as my sister used to say with a giggle on the end. From the dried, soaked-in-water variety to beans in the can-baked beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans … But I like how free sounds all poetic-like.īeans ain't free, but they're on the cheap, and here in the Obed Wild and Scenic River National Park, dubbed "the Hundred Acre Wood," I must know close to one hundred ways to fix beans. Happiness is free, Mama says, as sure as the blinkin' stars, the withered arms the trees throw down for our fires, the waterproofin' on our skin, and the tongues of wind curlin' the walnut leaves before slidin' down our ears. Or the creek itself, babblin' music all day long like Nessa when she was a baby. Like, the way the white-hot mornin' light dances in diamonds across the surface of our creek. Mama says no matter how poor folks are, whether you're a have, a have-not, or break your mama's back on the cracks in between, the world gives away the best stuff on the cheap.
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