South of Superior by Ellen Airgood Read Free Book Online Page B

sweater knitted in intricate cables, and shiny, smooth-soled leather shoes. Those would be Useless if she ended Up having to walk out of the woods. Mary wondered what she’d have to say for herself.
    â€œGladys sent some things for you,” Madeline said, then cleared her throat. Polite. Uncomfortable. She wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes around Joe. Though maybe that was wrong. Probably was. Mary knew this girl had looked after the woman who’d raised her for years and years when she was real sick, so she was no coward. And she had turned Up here, staying with Gladys to boot, so she had some spark to her. “Gladys made too much meat loaf,” Madeline was saying. “And cookies, and bread.”
    â€œDid she now? Well, that was nice of her. You tell her she don’t have to.”
    â€œOh, it’s just extra—”
    â€œHa. Extra all done Up in its own pan, eh? Well, you tell her I’m grateful, and I’ll get her pan back to her directly, next time I’m in town. I’ll be bringing the maple syrup in, might be some people about if the weather ever clears. Ought to be some travelers showing Up by Memorial Day anyway.”
    â€œDo you make the syrup?”
    â€œGot near to fifty gallons this year.” Mary heaved herself Up out of her chair and went to the cupboard and pulled out a jug. She poured a dollop of golden brown syrup as thick as molasses into a teaspoon and held it out.
    Madeline took the spoon and hesitated. Mary gave her a sardonic look and Madeline popped the spoon in her mouth. “Wow,” she said, then licked the spoon. “That’s amazing. It’s so good.”
    â€œDamn good.” Mary took the spoon back. “I sell out every year, got people asking after it’s gone, but now they want to get rid of me.”
    â€œWho does?”
    â€œFolks at the grocery. They don’t like me peddling my stuff. Cuts into their trade.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œYou don’t believe me but it’s true. Gladys tell you they cut me off my credit?”
    Madeline nodded.
    â€œThey don’t want my fish no more, either. I been supplying that grocery with all I could get for fifty years. Smoked, fresh, you name it. Now they don’t want it. Don’t want the fish or the syrup or the berries I get in the summer. It ain’t hygienic, they said, and I’m not licensed. Damn right I’m not licensed, I never had to be. Says right on my deed I got the right to farm my property, I can show you. They don’t want me to set Up and sell it myself, either, no more than they do the fruit man, and he’s been coming here since sixty-six. Bah.” She made a gesture of disgust and changed the subject.
    It was good to have company. Mary showed Madeline all over her place that afternoon—the sugar shack and maple grove, the smokehouse, the root cellar and woodshed, the pump in the yard for water and further back the outhouse, the little old camping trailer she’d bought for a good deal years ago now but then never done anything with. “This here was my house,” she told Madeline, waving at a burned-out structure.
    â€œOh—what happened?”
    â€œChimney fire. Been meaning to rebuild. But Higley give me them old tool cribs and I’m okay there.”
    â€œWhen did it happen?”
    â€œBeen fifteen years ago or so now, I guess. Time gets by.”
    Madeline nodded.
    They walked across the yard to a small barn and pasture in which stood one cow and a handful of sheep. “I got forty acres,” Mary said. “I cut my wood from the property, got all the heat you could ask for. Well, folks help me now I’ve got older, but still, this place keeps me going. I got all I need.”
    Mary felt compelled somehow to show Madeline everything—her old truck stowed in its tiny shed, the earrings she made of beads and porcupine quills, the boxes of paperbacks people brought her out to read,