A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) by Kaye Gibbons Read Free Book Online

on his tractor and plow that field, something he knows something about.
    Lonnie Hoover was about as curious a man as you’ll meet, curious man, strange man. You’d watch him take something and take it until you’d be about to bust open to go in and snatch what was going wrong out from under him and fix it, just get the damn thing fixed in a hurry. Like if you knew and he knew and everybody in the whole world knew somebody was regularly stealing out from his barns, and everybody knew exactly who was doing it, somebodyright brazen, you’d see things gone and see things gone and wonder when in the hell Lonnie intended to do something about it. Or like if you knew who it was that took and borrowed a piece of machinery without telling somebody and then brought it back busted or just left it mired up in a field somewhere, you’d say, “When’s Lonnie going to make his move, get his business back in order?” But he’d move so slow and quiet, and then after what seemed like forever, you’d see extra bags of fertilizer packed back up under the shelter or a brand new disk or mower pulled up beside the barn, and you’d say, “Well, it was about time,” because you’d know Lonnie’d gone off somewhere with somebody and been made right with. Some quiet somewhere Lonnie and a man had sat in a truck and made arrangements for Lonnie to get back what was his, and usually more.
    That’s how he worked fixing Tiny Fran, old Tiny Fran dragging around like a slug, leaving a trail, something else Lonnie’d have to clean up. I remember one time a long time ago Ruby asked me why he hadn’t just packed her up and put her away in somewhere to have that baby, or why he didn’t pay a doctor off in town or somewhere under the counter to get rid of the whole business. Both of those quiet slipping around ways seemed to her like the way Lonnie liked to operate. But I said Lonnie was too sharp to fix something just for right now. He was thinking way on down the road. Get her wedged in. Clamp downon her. You get somebody like a Tiny Fran fixed up just for the here and now and it’d be silly and useless as finding the clown head up out of a Jack-in-the-box and shutting it back up inside and then leaving it out somewhere not thinking that the next one to come along will be bound to wind that thing up and watch it pop just for the pure fun of it. No, Lonnie intended to wedge her in, clamp down on her for the long haul.
    Burr said he’d always remember how bright a day it was, how dry the dirt was deep down when he turned it up. He said that was what he had on his mind, all he was thinking of, the bright day and the dry dirt, and then he looked up down a row and saw Lonnie walking across the way to him. He said when he got to the end of the row he stopped the tractor, expecting to hear how Lonnie wanted him to do five more things before dark, but when the engine stopped Lonnie just squatted down and started handling a dirt clod and told Burr to get down, they needed to talk. Burr heard Lonnie out, all the “Boy, you might amount to something one day,” and “You might could be somebody if you had something behind you. To be sure you don’t want to work for farmers up and down this road the rest of your life.” Burr heard him, listened hard, and what Lonnie said sounded reasonable, reasonable at least to a boy whose daddy and granddaddy and great-granddaddy had rented land from men like Lonnie and whose mama would die in a rocking chair, hemming dungarees, smelling like bleachand Argo starch. He just listened and agreed. “Marry Tiny Fran, whether you did it or not, just marry her and take a forty-eight-acre block, a good piece, drains good, not clay dirt, good loamy soil. Marry her and have something.”
    So what do you do? If she’d lived in town it could’ve been somebody saying “Marry the town whore and I’ll give you Main Street, all up and down both sides, all the stores, all the things in the stores, Main Street.” Burr said