The Longest Road by Jeanne Williams

worse’n a dog’s. You’re not goin’ to do one another like that.”
    The two subsided and worked on their cobbler and milk. The milk tasted rich, though it had surely been skimmed. Laurie remembered Rosalie telling Mama that Grandpa let her use the butter and egg money for dressing the family and “extras” which, according to his lights, included sugar, cocoa, oilcloth for the table, dishes, cookware, and kerosene for the lamp.
    â€œWhen it’s too dark to see, it’s time to be in bed,” he’d always said, during his visits, and had taken himself off to Mama and Daddy’s room. They slept on the couch during these invasions but they couldn’t get to bed till late because Rosalie liked to talk or read magazines after her children had fallen asleep wherever they wore out and she’d settled the boys on a pallet and put Belle in bed with a reluctant Laurie.
    If I have to sleep with Belle, I’ll make sure she goes to the toilet last thing before bed, Laurie thought, and wondered where everybody slept. This good-sized room that served as kitchen, dining room, and living room had a bed in one corner and the door was open to a smaller room with another bed and a dresser. As far as she could tell, there wasn’t any other room, not even a porch.
    All of a sudden, the cobbler didn’t taste so delicious, though Laurie told herself she and Buddy had their own bedding and Rosalie might let them make down pallets. After dinner, while Daddy and the boys unloaded from the car what would be left here, Grandpa stretched out on the blanket-covered couch and was snoring long before Laurie, Rosalie, and Belle had cleared the table. Rosalie swabbed most of the scraps into the slop bucket for the hogs but she sent Ernie out with a pan for the chickens.
    â€œKind of encourages them,” she laughed and half-filled the dishpan with hot water dipped out of the reservoir of the cast-iron range.
    The box beside it held “slack” coal, mostly dust, the kind that sold cheap at the railroad yard. Sudsing the water by rubbing a bar of yellowish homemade soap with a sour-smelling dish-rag, Rosalie washed faster than Laurie could rinse the dishes in a big kettle, dry some, and hand the others to Belle, who stood on a box.
    The tea towels were smudged and full of holes. There were a few shelves for cups and pans and cooking supplies and a box to hold utensils but the dishes were just put back on the table. There were a lot. From the traces of dried egg and oatmeal on some of them, it was clear that Rosalie did breakfast dishes along with dinner ones. Laurie was beginning to understand why Rosalie didn’t keep her children and house very clean. When every bucket of water had to be pumped and carried, a person would be tired before ever starting a wash. And what was the use of mopping a linoleum that was worn through to the black underside except around the edges and beneath the stove?
    Rosalie tossed the greasy dishwater out the back door. “If the rinse water’s cooled down, you can pour it on the rosebush,” she told Laurie. “Then we’ll figure out where to put your things and rest a little while before we chop weeds out of the cotton.” She rubbed her back. “Sure wish cotton and corn grew as fast as crabgrass and careless weed.”
    Daddy was repacking the suitcase and car now that he and the boys had carried in Buddy and Laurie’s things, including their bedding, and most of the pickles and plums and peaches Mama had canned last year. “Buddy and the boys took the twenty-two and went to see if they can get some rabbits for supper,” Daddy said. “You put up his clothes and stuff, Laurie, so they don’t get scattered around.”
    Belle tagged them curiously as Rosalie, after a little thought, located two apple crates. “They can go right under the bed next to my kids’ boxes,” she explained. “Be handy