When I Crossed No-Bob by Margaret McMullan Page A

Frank and Miss Irene. I draw water from the well, kindle the fire, cook up some cornbread. I set to sweeping the dirt floor, thinking now that I know what a real house looks like, I can fix this broken-up one. Now that I have helped build a school, I can rebuild this here house.
    Pappy sleeps all morning and arises to dress at noon, tucking his knife and pistol into his pants. It's like he's not dressed without his knife and pistol.

    "Come on," he says. "You, me, we got a meeting with Smasher."

Chapter 8
    I am to marry Smasher.

    Pappy tells me this on the way to Smasher's house while he teaches me some about the stars and such, even though it is still day. He tells me about the night the stars fell. He says he doesn't know where the stars go when they fall from the sky. They just fall and go out, not hurting nobody.
    Then he complains about the quiet all around us. He says he thinks better with a lot of noise, noise like screaming and yelling, gunfire and shouting. The silence irks him, but the quiet is what I like.
    "I don't want to marry Smasher," I whisper.

    He stops and looks at me square on. "You
will
marry Smasher. And if you don't, I'll throw yer hide to the snakes in the swamp."
    Pappy says the Bible says to "multiply and replenish the earth" and his pappy took that part of the Bible real serious because he set out to do just that and had twenty-two children with two different wives. Pappy doesn't say "at the same time," but I know that to be true too.
    "I don't want to marry nobody, Pappy. I'm not but twelve years old. I can live with you, cook and clean for you. I want to be with you and go back to the schoolhouse and learn some more." I wished I brought my blue-back speller with me. I'd only got as far as
baker
in it.
    "Mr. Frank says—"
    Pappy swings around and puts his hand over my mouth so that I cannot speak. His hand smells of tobacco.
    "I never ever want to hear you say that name again, you hear?" He takes his hand away from my mouth. "Everything that Frank and Irene said to you? Forget. Forget it all."
    I stare down at my shoes. "Yes, sir."
    He palms the asafetida bag I wear around my neck. Then he yanks it off and throws it to the ground.
    "Us O'Donnells, we don't wear these either," he says, turning to walk on.

    Without him seeing, I pick the bag from the dirt and stuff it in my pocket.
    "You think you so smart now you read and write. Well. Guess what, you're thirteen. You missed a birthday. And besides, you've had enough schooling. I'll school you from here on out. Schoolhouse or no schoolhouse, you'll never be as smart as your pappy. Never."
    What would Momma tell me? What would she have me do? Would she want me marrying Smasher? All that time, living with Momma, I missed Pappy. All that time. Now here I am living with Pappy and I'm missing missing missing my momma.
    We walk a ways up the trail. A peddler stops to ask me to fasten the trace that has come loose on his wagon. I fasten the trace, but Pappy pulls the peddler out of his wagon.
    "She don't do what
anybody
tells her," Pappy says to the man, putting his face in his face. "She does what
I
tell her." Pappy slaps the man, cuts his shirttails off, and tells him to drive on before he cuts him good.
    We watch the peddler drive off, fast. I know I should feel bad for that peddler, but I am proud and confused that Pappy
took up for me. I don't do what
anybody
tells me. I do what Pappy tells me.

    It is Saturday and Smasher hails us at the gate and invites us in. The pine groves grow almost to his door. He lives in a one-room place just like ours with his twin brother, Eustace.
    Straight away we sit down to eat. On their round kitchen table is a contraption, a wheel that you put the food on and it goes around and around so others can get at the food and nobody has to serve you. Smasher calls the wheel his "lazy wife."
    Pappy sits me next to Smasher. Smasher, he still has both his ears but he has a rising smell. He has slicked back his hair and