Dagger in the Cup

By JB Hamilton Queen

The daughter of a mountain gatherer and healer, sixteen-year-old Shug Yokem knows every sound the mountains make: the creaking of limbs in winter, the prattle of rain in spring, the whisper of summer winds, and the crackle of falls sun-dried foliage underfoot. She knows which plants will cure and which will kill.

Until Cleo Sizemore shows up on her and her mothers doorstep, she has never had an enemy, let alone entertained the idea of killing someone. But now that she has discovered her stepfathers murderous secret, her life and the lives of her siblings and mother are endangered. A cunning and callous man, Cleo has found a way to keep Shug quiet---fabricating a story that imprisons her behind the barred windows and locked doors of an institution for the epileptic and the feeble-minded. Undaunted, she ingratiates herself with some of the staff and learns what really goes on beyond the doors of the surgery room.

Desperate to return home, she escapes into the unfamiliar mountains of Virginia. There she encounters a mysterious woman who warns Shug, Na path doth lead home, na til the unwill is undone, an the evil done the two women, righted. Shug realizes she must return to the institution and find these women before she can go home and save her family. The two women prove to be connected to Shug in ways she could never have imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491723197

JB Hamilton Queen

JB Hamilton Queen grew up in Kentucky and now lives with her husband in Sarasota, Florida. An award-winning author of short stories and memoirs, she has contributed to magazines, such as Nostalgia Digest, Doorways, and Yesterday’s Magazette. She has a deep love for the south, and enjoys bringing her heritage to the page; the beauty of the countryside, the strength of those who live there, and the courage that dwells in their hearts. In addition to Dagger in the Cup, she has written Raincrow, Sweet Gums, Imminent Reprisal, and Masters of the Breed. She enjoys cruising with her husband and friends, target shooting, golf, deep sea fishing, and spending time with family. Shug Yokem spins a daring tale of a young woman trapped in her mother’s nightmare of a marriage to a cruel stepfather who is out to get Shug with a vengeance. The Blue Ridge Mountain setting lends an air of mysticism juxtaposed a historical account of dark practices in the not so long ago annals of American institutions. Shug is resourceful, determined and brave, a strong protagonist you won’t forget. Nadja Bernitt, author of Final Grave, a mystery set in the wiles of Idaho. Former Kentuckian JB Hamilton Queen established a niche in Appalachian storytelling with her novel Raincrow. She returns with Dagger In The Cup, in which the author’s sense of place and the protagonist’s voice evoke the myths, mysteries, and magic of mountain folklore. Madonna Dries Christensen, author of the memoir In Her Shoes: Step By Step  

Book preview

Chapter One

Something here on this mountain, something invisible yet powerful and daunting, seeped into her skin and weighed her down like rain-wet clothing. When Shug had complained of it to her stepbrother, Digger, his eyes turned hard, and he had whispered to her in a voice squeezed with fear, Bad things happened here. Then he streaked off up the mountain trail.

That night, she and her mother, Zola Marie, had worried away the hours of darkness, and when daylight climbed over the mountain, he came home, his pants and shirt caked with mud, his fingernails ragged and rimmed with it. His eyes had carried a look that dared a question from any of them.

She had not come to this Virginia mountain of her own accord. Since her first baby step, she had followed in her mother’s footsteps, but this time she had followed unwillingly, looking over her shoulder in memory of a home left smouldering in ashes high in the Cuhottas of Georgia. Truth be told, none of them had wanted to come here.

At a fallen oak, Shug leaned the burlap sack she had filled with wild greens and young poke against the splintered stump and hoisted herself upon the hoary trunk. She lay stretched out flat on the rough bark, her arms crossed over her chest, listening to the sounds the mountain gave and watching a buzzard float in circles without one stroke of its black wings—a graceful hunter of the sky, born with a keen sense of smell and an eye for the dead. As she watched it; it watched her, waiting for her to move along so it could fill its stomach on the carcass of a nearby dead animal without fear of death itself.

She raised to a sitting position, her arms circling her knees. She wondered what had ended the animal’s life. The Bible said that a person’s days on earth were numbered. Perhaps the same was true for animals, and that this animal had simply reached its last day. With sixteen years of days behind her, she hoped God had set her count to at least three times that. When her last day did come, she wished to have done something of note and not to die on a mountain alone.

Five full moons she had seen here on Raven Ridge, and she had scorned every day of each month and blamed herself for having to be here. Before her father died, life in the Cuhottas had been her and her mother’s happiest years. She had known every brittle lonely sound the mountain made in winter, every feathery whisper it made between summer leaves, the prattle of spring’s rain, the autumn crackle of sun-dried foliage.

Then six years ago, Cleo Sizemore came to Fannin County with his two sons, and life for Shug and Zola Marie took a sorry turn. She glanced up to the buzzard, then slid off the trunk to the ground and retrieved her sack, dragging it behind her. With a keen eye, her mind marked every plant that nudged its head from patches of green, and the fungi that grew on the silvery bark of dying trees and the parasites that fed on them.

Spotting ginseng, she drew her hunting knife from its sheath and dug up some of the healthy roots. Her mother believed ginseng tended to keep ghosts away, the fresher the better. As far as Shug was concerned, here in this place, the more ginseng the better.

She shared her mother’s conviction about the existence of spirits, the evil and the good, and had carried a collard leaf in her pocket all the way from Georgia and nailed it over the cabin door, but the winter wind had beat it ragged until there was hardly enough to discourage an evil spirit from entering or to protect her and her family from the curse set upon Shug that night at the Tilly Bin churchyard in Fannin County. Foolishly, she had taken her friends dare, and beneath a full moon had taunted the ghost said to dwell in the churchyard.

She had bounded through the door of her home and confessed to Zola Marie where she had been, and her mother had said, Cursed ta the day ye die, Shug Yokem. They’s some things best left alone.

The words had come too late. Only hours later Cleo came home so drunk he could hardly stand up and lit a match to their home. Burning up the devil, he had hollered to the smoke cloud that rose to veil the moon. Every piece of plunder gone to ash and cinder.

She dug up a few more roots, then threaded her way through sun-starved elms to the edge of a black stone cliff. From there, she could almost see the Cuhottas, but only in her imagination. She could see clear to the waves of the Blue Ridge Mountains that stretched north and south, befogged like breath blown upon blue glass. Beyond them to the western horizon, past the humps of the Great Smokies lay the Cuhottas.

This morning Cleo had ridden off on Strider on one of his bidness trips down to Lynchburg. Which meant he would come home with moonshine in his gut, and without a cause, he would be hollering and cussing so loud the walls would shake out the chink that held the logs together, while her mother trembled in a corner like a held bird, the children hiding in the loft. That kind of life wasn’t any kind of life at all for her mother and Lily and Stump. It wasn’t fit for anybody to live.

Them coming here convinced Shug even more that she had been cursed and would be until her dying breath. Zola Marie had just about said that, and in Fannin County Zola Marie’s word had been as close to gospel as the Bible’s. People had said that about her. People there had said other things about Zola Marie not so nice, but only because she had married a man they likened to a plug nickel.

Shug held no blame against her mother for marrying him. Sickness and worry had made that decision. Soon after Shug’s father died, her mother took sick. There had been no money to speak of, and Zola Marie feared she couldn’t take care of Shug.

Their home burning up like to have killed Shug and her mother, nothing left standing but a stone chimney, like a marker on a grave. In a way, it was. Every memory she had in her head, the nine years of living she had done there with her mother and father, and the seven years she had lived since he left this world and moved on to a better place; all of her memories rattling around in her head. All those baby squalls from little Lily and Stump when they were born.

The smoke hadn’t even settled when she began to bleed, down there. She imagined all sorts of horrible things going on inside her body and thought her days numbered. Shug had not wanted to, but she told Zola Marie about what was going on with her down there, and that she suspicioned she would die any minute, and maybe she should go to a church somewhere, confess her sins and get baptized.

You ain’t dying, Shug; it’s the curse, she had said, and let it go at that, like having a curse on you wasn’t any more a concern than stepping in chicken spit. Neither one said another word about the curse. Zola Marie just handed her some rags and left her to tend to herself.

A sudden burst of wind blew strands of dark hair across her sweaty face, them sticking to her cheeks and getting into her eyes. This morning, she had meant to tie her hair back with a piece of twine like she usually did, as it was always catching in low-hanging limbs and getting pulled out. She would bob her hair clean up to her ears if she had her say, but Zola Marie had preached on about how bobbing hair was a sin and hair was a woman’s glory. Aggravation; That’s all it was to her.

She backed away from the cliff. The morning was taking leave and she still had to gather her mother’s heart leaf. She stepped around a clump of sour doc, plucked off a leaf and stuck it into her mouth to chew. The sour taste always made her picture white strawberry blossoms. When she chewed rabbit tobacco, she pictured big rabbits sitting around chewing and spitting like the men down at the Fannin County courthouse. Mint—a green valley with a blue flowing river.

Ahead, a rustle sounded from a tangle of blackberry bushes. She hoped to see Possum poking out his head, as she had not seen the dog for nearly an hour.

She whistled a couple times. Here Possum. Come on boy. A fox squirrel scampered up a pine, turned her way and gave her a good what for.

Possum had showed up right after the family came to Raven Ridge, and she had taken a real liking to the dog, a gray and black spotted broad-chested mongrel. Hard to say what breeds of dogs had put him together. Didn’t matter; he had his mind set a lot like hers, in that neither one would piss on Cleo if he were blazing on fire.

She drew back her foot and kicked a cluster of devil’s cushions that lay in her path, a cloud of black powder exploding into the air and covering her foot. Good for nothing things. She wiped off as much of the black as she could on the burlap sack, and took a peek into it, satisfied with the fare she had gathered. With seven mouths to feed, the greens would cook down to a few mouthfuls each, but it would be nourishment.

Cleo provided almost nothing but his presence at the head of the table; everything they ate was provided by God’s bounty of the mountains, and the sure and keen eyes of Digger and Boo who did the hunting. Digger favored the long rifle and Boo the shotgun.

Cleo couldn’t pull a trigger if he had to, him being right-handed and his first two fingers cut off at the second knuckles by a tomahawk during tobacco cutting time. Digger said Cleo had told him that, but Shug had wondered about it, not that Digger himself would have lied. The fact was she had never known her stepfather to hit a lick of work.

On occasion, Cleo dragged in a slab of fatback, coffee, some honey or whatever was handiest when the store clerk wasn’t looking. Or a groundhog or possum he’d hit in the head with a rock. Yesterday, he brought home turnips.

In Georgia, they had tended a garden and had raised chickens, and had a cow that gave the best tasting sweet milk. She let out a long breath. Forget yesterday, her mind scolded. Stop dredging up memories.

Zola Marie once told her that memories, good or bad, made people what they were. That some folks took strength from hardship and some took weakness. Strength would get the living done, and that’s what Shug would take from hers before she would let Cleo Sizemore take her down like he had her mother.

A black pincher bug crawled up on her big toe. She kicked her foot in the air. The bug stuck tight, its spiny feet digging into her skin. She pulled it off and set it on the ground where it scuttled under a clump of death angels—poisonous as all get out to cows, pigs and things. And to people. It wouldn’t take much of a mess, maybe two or three of the mushrooms to make a man vomit up his stomach and turn his bowels to soup. Maybe a few more to shut down his heart. She pulled one up and twirled the stem between her thumb and forefinger. White and tender. Mashed up with the turnips from dinner her mother had put aside for Cleo’s supper, no one would have any suspicions. She doubted the children would as much as cry if he passed on, but would she be able to hold her guilt inside or would she break down and admit what she had done? For sure, she would be put in prison. Better that than for Cleo to destroy every one of them.

Her mother wouldn’t be scared anymore and they could laugh and be happy, sing and talk. She could go back to school to learn instead of Digger bringing her books to read from his school’s library, and teaching her arithmetic and English from his books, even algebra. Not that he wasn’t a good teacher, because he was, or always had been until they came there and he took off nearly every day up the mountain with a shovel over his shoulder.

When she had asked him about that, he threw a pure fit and told her to mind her own business. Which she did. But with all the time she spent gathering on the mountain, she had found out for herself what he did with that shovel. Almost fell into one of the holes he had dug up, and had come across plenty more. Surely, he had a good reason for digging them.

She looked toward the forest. Here, Possum. Come on, boy. Dog would be better off without Cleo, too. Wouldn’t be scared of his own tail and crawling on his belly under the bushes to hide. She took a folded rag from the hip pocket of her overalls. Womenfolk ain’t got need fer goin’ ta skoo, Cleo had said, and made her quit right out of the seventh grade.

She hollered once more for Possum and knelt in front of the death angels.

Chapter Two

Shug stepped from the dappled light of the woods into the clearing and looked down on the cabin. It reminded her of something that had given up life, just standing there with no purpose at all. Gray lichen grew on the chestnut logs and on the bark shingles, them all curled up like black fingers. The porch sagged in the middle. In the side yards, this year’s horseweed and pigweed drooped over among the dried gray stalks left from summers ago.

About to whistle for Possum, she heard the dog throwing a yelping fit halfway this side of the ridge. No telling what he had run into. Cussed dog. Wouldn’t come when she called and wouldn’t mind for nothing. She glanced over her shoulder, then looked down from the cabin to the rusty tin lean-to Cleo had made for the horse, hoping not to see Strider. She didn’t at first, not until he strode into view through the pines.

Boom, boom, boom, her heart went. She wasn’t scared of Cleo. That wasn’t it at all. She couldn’t hang a name on why her nerves always flew all to pieces like that at the sight of him, a feeling much akin to coming up on a rattlesnake, it coiled to spring.

Coming down off the ridge, with those death angels tucked in the bib of her overalls, she had kept hoping that Cleo had gotten drunk and fell off the horse on the trail and killed his fool self so she wouldn’t have to go on with her plan. Her stomach knotted as he unsaddled Strider and took the rein’s bit from the horse’s mouth. She let out a trembling breath. Punished by God or man, she would forever feel the sting of guilt. For her mother and the children to be happy, she could live with that sentence.

A tug on her back pocket caused her to scream out. Lily stood there, smiling up at her, eyes blue and bright. Shug’s heart flopping, she grabbed the little girl by the shoulders and shook her. How long have you been tagging after me? Haven’t I told you never to go into these woods by yourself?

Lily’s lips drew into a pout. Uh-huh, she said, her dark curls bouncing with the nod of her head.

Shug bent down and gave her a hug. At only three years of age, the child had no fear. There’s things up there with teeth long as you are tall that could swallow you in one bite. I’d have nobody to comb my hair, and Mama wouldn’t have anybody but me to help her cook. Don’t you do that again. She kissed Lily’s dirty cheek. Dirt and all, nothing was sweeter than the love she felt for the little girl. Even if she did have Cleo Sizemore’s blood in her.

As she straightened, she saw her mother hovered over the washtub scrubbing out clothes on the washboard at the corner of the cabin. White shirts, underwear and bibbed overalls flapped on the clothesline strung from four Virginia pines. Stump sat nearby at the base of the big walnut tree, piling up last year’s walnuts. Sizemore blood there, too, and just like Lily, the five-year-old took after Zola Marie, both much smaller than most children their ages.

Wanna help me carry this sack? Shug asked.

Uh-huh. Lily’s tiny hands reached up and took hold of one side.

Possum streaked out of the woods like a turpentined cat, shot past them and scooted to a stop at the porch. He spun around, tail tipping the dirt and looked back to the direction he had come from. Shug almost fainted at the sight of him, until she realized the fresh blood around his mouth and down his throat wasn’t his. She whirled around and scoured the brambles behind her. He had for sure tangled with something fierce. Bear, wildcat. Since the weather turned warm and spring was halfway to summer, she had seen and heard plenty of both.

Possum cut? Lily asked.

No, honey. He’s not hurt. Shug thought about what it was inside Possum’s head that made him go out looking for a fight when he would pee himself and crawl on his belly at the raise of Cleo’s hand. Maybe he was mad, too. Like her. Sometimes up there on the mountain, she felt she could beat the devil out of anything, two-legged or four. And if she came up on the devil himself, she could rip off his tail and hang him from a tree with it.

Head down, Possum eased off and slipped over to Stump at the walnut tree. Shug pulled forward, Lily grunting, trying to do her share of toting the sack down the steep incline.

Shug’s insides started sassing what her mind intended to do with the mushrooms, guts growling like a hungry hog’s. She narrowed her eyes toward Cleo at the lean-to and set her jaw, then hurried on down to the cabin, Lily huffing and grunting. Mama, me and Lily’ll get these greens on for supper.

Zola Marie raked an arm over her forehead. Cookstove’s heated up already.

I heard the shotgun go off twice a while ago, Shug said. Digger and Boo come back with squirrel?

Ain’t seen ’em.

Cleo would start a ruckus over them not being back and the chores not done—wood not chopped, eggs and kindling left to gather. A couple of red hens carried on with hen-talk as they pecked at the dirt in front of the porch. She shooed them out of the way and gave a look back down toward the lean-to. Cleo had one of Strider’s hooves up on his knee, nailing back a loose shoe.

She hurried through the door, then let Lily take the sack while she threw back the tablecloth spread over the leftover vitals from dinnertime, looking for the turnips. A swarm of black flies scattered, then fanned back to take up squatter’s rights on the johnny cakes and honey jar. No… No. Her eyes flickered from bowl to bowl. The turnips were not there. She spun around to the stove. There they were, on the warming shelf.

She grabbed a fork from the wooden box next to the dishpan on the sideboard. Look out the door for your pa.

Lily, at the table on her knees in a chair, pulled her finger from the honey jar and licked it. Why?

Shug tugged at the tied up bundle inside her overalls. Why you always saying that? Can’t you just do what I say?

Why?

Shug made a growl noise in her throat. ’Cause I’m making him a surprise.

What’s a pwise? Lily sucked on her finger.

It’s nothing. Not nothing. Shug did the looking for Cleo herself and caught a glimpse of him mad-stomping past the door toward where Zola Marie was doing the washing. What had him stirred up this time? He deserves what he gets, the low-downed devil. Shug stood there, her teeth clamped together so tight her jaws hurt.

Gawd a midty, he shouted. Zolie, didn’t I te ye to fill the horse’s water trough? Ain’t no use fer you. The young’uns either. Nothin’ done when I come home.

Shug’s mind shut him out as she watched through the window Possum nuzzle Stump for a pat. She should have washed the blood off Possum. Now it was all over Stump’s shirt. He was just the cutest little boy, turned-up nose and chubby cheeks. Didn’t favor his father one iota. The sunlight sifting through the leaves put a tinge of gold in his hair.

She hurried to the stove and turned her back to Lily so she couldn’t see what she was doing. Get that lard can over there by the fireplace and put the greens in it, all right? Oh, take out the ginseng and heartleaf and put them on the table.

Lily, Stump and Digger were the only three good things to ever come out of Cleo Sizemore. Boo, well, Boo was turned too much like his father. He favored him, too, buckeye brown hair, stiff as boar bristle, and tiny eyes set too close together like a pig’s.

Lily stood at the doorway, where she had set the lard can to do her work. There ain’t no heartleaf, she said, looking into the sack.

After seeing the death angels, Shug had forgotten about collecting the heartleaf. I forgot it. I’ll get some in the morning.

She tried not to think of what she was doing as she dropped two mushrooms into the turnips. Once, after her father died, she and Zola Marie went to a tent meeting, the last time she had heard a preacher talking God’s word. Over seven years ago, but it seemed her whole life ago. One verse he read from the Bible stuck in her head—If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out. Cleo offends everybody. In the eyes of God, plucking him out of their lives surely would be a pardonable sin.

She mashed the two mushrooms into the turnips with a fork. Satisfied with the appearance, she was about to dump in the rest when a ferocious growl sounded from outside, followed by her mother’s scream. She spun around, the mushrooms plummeting to the floor as she bolted for the door. She jumped over Lily, her foot catching the lard can, it tumbling out the door and rolling across the porch. She jumped over it.

When her feet left the porch and hit the ground, she saw the bear. It stood with its back to her, its chest pressed against the trunk of the walnut tree, paws reaching, slashing at Stump on the other side, him screaming, shifting his body this way and that to stay clear.

Seeing Zola Marie crumpled on the ground, Shug screamed. Only feet away, Cleo stood motionless, both hands clasping his head.

Maddened by failed attempts to get to Stump, the bear roared, its black claws extended and bowed like scythes. If Stump decided to run, he would be ripped apart. Cleo appeared dumbstruck. God help us all.

Stay, Stump. Stay where you are. Shug grabbed the lard can and a limb from the ground. Each scream from the little boy shot pain through her chest. So much so that she defied the voice in her head that warned her not to do what she planned to do. If I die, I die. She dashed toward the animal, screaming and beating the lard can as hard and fast as she could. With the commotion, the bear did not see her until she stood behind the tree trunk with Stump safely behind her.

Don’t move til I say. Her teeth jarred with each jab of the limb toward the massive black face that had only one eye. When the eye met hers, she screamed, Run, Stump. The house. She kept a dead bead on the bear’s eye, beating on the can and shouting until Stump vanished from her sight. The moment she knew he was safely inside the cabin, she let out a trembling breath. The bear sniffed the air, backed from the tree and rose on its hind legs. It started for the house but changed direction and headed for Cleo.

Pa! Pa! Boo shouted, racing down the trail, Digger on his heels with the shotgun.Cleo grabbed the washboard and hurled it at the animal. It clunked against the bear’s skull, addled it for a moment, then the bear let out a furious roar and ran on hind legs straight for him, roaring, its mouth open and twisting. Cleo skittered backwards, tripped and fell onto Zola Marie.

Digger! Shoot! Shug cried. In horror, she realized Digger couldn’t get the gun cocked.

The bear would kill her mother, maybe all of them. Without thought to danger, she raced toward the maddened bear, screaming and beating the lard can. The next thing she became aware of was the bear’s heated breath upon her face, the giant paws raised above her. At the same time the animal pitched forward, she jerked backward and jammed the lard can over the bear’s head. As she dove to the ground, a claw caught her shirt at her shoulder. Trying to dislodge the lard can, the bear whipped its head from side to side, pawing at the can and roaring.

Shoot it, Digger! Shug screamed. Shoot it.

For the next few seconds, the only sound she heard was the repeating echo of the blast through the mountain’s valleys. The bear groaned and fell over, its hind legs jerking with the last beats of its heart. One shot, a miracle for certain. And another miracle that Digger had taken the shotgun to hunt with and not the long rifle.

White-faced, Cleo crawled to his feet. Damned son bitchin’ bear. He hauled off and kicked the dead animal, dislodging the lard can from the bear’s head.

Shug scooted to her mother, took her head into her lap and stroked her face, thanking God she had only fainted. Besides Lily, Stump, Digger and Boo, not much in this world she loved, but she loved her, loved Zola Marie more than she ever thought she had.

She felt like crying, but she wouldn’t. Mama, you hear me?

Zola Marie’s eyes blinked open, then widened. Stump?

The bear didn’t touch him, Mama. Didn’t hurt anyone. The bear’s dead. Shug and Digger exchanged knowing nods. Digger shot it.

Zola Marie raised a hand to Shug’s sleeve, it ripped almost off. Never even broke the skin, did it?

No, Mama, it didn’t. Shug knew she would have been dead if that claw had struck her neck, only an inch or two higher. Sometimes a person had no choice but to do what they had to do.

Cleo picked up his hat and slapped it against his thigh. Bitch bear’s got cubs suckin’ her. See ’em tits?

She’s got one less cub than she had, Digger said.

How ye know that?

Found one a few minutes ago fresh dead halfway down the ridge, tore up by something.

What’d you recon it was, mountain lion?

Shug started to say Possum killed the cub, but Cleo would beat the dog to death if she told. It wasn’t hard to figure out that the bear had smelled her cub’s blood on Stump, the blood Possum had gotten on his shirt. He had wanted only a pat, somebody to show him he was loved. And in doing that had almost caused the little boy he loved to be killed.

I seen a wildcat top the ridge yestedy, Boo said, and spit on the ground. Panter, too.

Shug dropped her gaze to the one-eyed bear, a wild animal, a mother that loved her cub the same as Zola Marie loves all her children. She had followed the scent of her cub’s blood to avenge its death. And now, because of that love, she was dead. That didn’t seem right.

Possum eased around the corner, tail down. He gave the bear a good looking over, scrubbed his tongue over his bloody fur and took off back around the house. Maybe he didn’t know the what for or the how come, but he knew he had done a bad thing. People could say dogs didn’t have any sense all they wanted to, but she knew better.

Cleo eyed the kill of two squirrels that hung from the rope around Boo’s waist, then took his hunting knife from the sheaf attached to his belt. He pulled a plug of tobacco from his hip pocket and sliced off a chew, then he pegged the knife into the ground at Digger’s feet.

Git’em skinned so’s we kin git this here bear skinned ’fore night. Cleo spat and turned. Zolie, get up. Git yoresef in the house ’n put the skillet on. I ain’t had a bite since brekfust. He looked at Shug. You git on, too.

Shug set a stare on him as she helped her mother to her feet. If his belly had been full, he’d pay her no mind. Just let her lay there, not caring if she was dead or alive.

Don’t chu be smart-eyein’ me, Shug Yokem.

She held her