Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee by Suzette Haden Elgin Read Free Book Online Page A

at him to get a move on, before things could become more complicated than they were already. It was a fine kettle when the staff of a Castle had more brains than the Family they were hired to serve, and he sincerely hoped the situation wasn’t widespread. When he got back he’d review the whole bunch, and any that showed signs-like this man-of being sharper than they needed to be to carry out their duties would have to be replaced.
    And then he sighed, and went quickly to his rooms to fill in the final character of a Transformation he’d had ready and waiting for completion these last three days. He wasn’t eager to do it, but it was necessary. The Granny was going to have his hide in small scraps for the work that had deprived her of movement and of speech, that could be counted on already. What she would do about this last task of his, the one that would provide the Castle temporarily with a new cat-of origin unknown, but much too beautiful not to be spoiled and watched over-he didn’t even care to contemplate. If things went as he hoped, she might forgive him; on her deathbed, maybe, she might forgive him. If the Smith brothers, or one of their nervous women, made some mistake that put a kink in the plan-which was likely-she would never forgive him.
    And then Delldon Mallard Smith the 2nd would have a chance to see his “contest”! Years of it. Years of the Granny doing her Charms and Spells, setting them against him with her little mouth puckered tight as her heart must be in her chest; and years of him, Lincoln Parradyne Smith the 39th, canceling out each and every one of them. The chance of the Granny getting one past him was too small to be worth considering, but the amount of time he was going to have to spend in the feud would pile up into a respectable amount of misery over the years. Grannys lived to a formidable old age, and he’d never known one to mellow.
    It would have made things so much simpler if they could of brought her around to see things their way and cooperate with them-if not to help them, at least not to interfere. But she had told them flat out what she thought of Delldon Maliard’s great plan.
    “Flumdiddle!” she’d said. “Goatwallow! Cowflop!” And a halfhour string of more of the same with a persistent refrain on how they’d all taken leave of what pitiful supply of sense they’d been born with, and the litany of ancient oaths for coda and elaboration.
    Lincoln Parradyne didn’t agree with the Granny. Every means of foreseeing he had at his disposal had been clear: the road would be a tad bumpy for what they had in mind, and its duration would depend on the skill of those carrying it out--but they would bring it off. That was enough for him; the potential once it was done was everything he had ever wanted and had thought hopelessly out of his reach. Well worth the risk, and the problems could be faced as they came along. He was only anxious to begin.
     

Chapter 4
    Opening Day dragged on, and Responsible dragged on through it, up in the balcony. The breeze through the windows of the Independence Room was heavy with the smell of early summer flowers, and the soft hum of the red Ozark bees on whose ministrations those flowers depended, and the combination was an effective sedative. Nothing that was going on inside did anything to lessen its effectiveness, either. She supposed she must have heard worse speeches and more boring ones, somewhere, sometime, but she could not during that interminable day think of an example. If the overdose of tedium didn’t take any of the starch out of the Traveller delegation, it could only be due to their bizarre practice of spending all of every Sundy listening to a single extended sermon, with elaborate developments and codas and commentaries and extrapolations, and emendations on the extrapolations, and scattering slightly truncated versions of the same throughout the rest of the week. They were calloused to this kind of thing, both ears and