The Ozark trilogy (40 page)

Would he
never
stop? Responsible tried to imagine any gathering of women where such a monologue would of been tolerated past the five minutes it took to see where it was heading, and failed. No female would of sat still for the wasted time. Not a word that he said, looming there in his antiquated black suit, flickering with the straining of the comset-which was certainly poorly-standing there with a
tie
round his scrawny neck as a symbol of his bondage to the ancient nonsense he spoke against-not a word they hadn’t all heard a hundred dozen times. Not a turn of phrase they didn’t hear every three Sundys or so at Solemn Service . . . and he had no skill of control. He had the preacher’s skill. He could put one word after another without ever a stumble or a pause; but they sat for his mellifluous bombast out of politeness, not because they enjoyed it-and because they were men, and had no better sense.

Granny Hazelbide had said it as well as ever she’d heard anybody say it, long ago at Granny School. “Men,” she’d said, “are of but two kinds. Splendid-and pitiful. The splendid ones are rare, and if you chance on one, you’ll know it. What I tell you now has to do with the
rest
of ‘em-as my Granny told me, and her Granny told her before that, and so back as far as time will take you.” They’d all leaned forward, because her voice told them something important was coming, and she’d gone on. “If,” she said, “a man does something properly, that’s an accident. That’s the first thing. As for the sorry messes they make in the ordinary way of things, that’s to be expected, and not to be held against them-they can’t help it. That’s the second thing. And the third thing-and this is to be
well-remembered
-is that no man must ever know the first two things.”

Granny struck her cane on the floor, three times hard, to underline that. “When a man spills something, it’s your place to catch it before it touches, snatch it before it falls, and be sure certain he thinks he caught it himself. Men-all but those rare splendid ones -they’re frail creatures; they can’t bear much.”

“And a woman?” one of the little girls had asked timidly. “How about a woman?”

The Granny had gripped her cane till her knuckles gleamed like pearls. “There is
nothing,
” she said in a terrible voice like ice grinding together, “more despicable than a woman who cannot
Cope!
”

Thump!

“You remember that now!” she told them. “You keep that
firmly
in mind!”

“It’s not fair!” It had run all around the circle, where they were sitting on the floor with their legs tucked neatly under them. “It’s not fair atall!” And she’d turned on them, brandishing the cane over their heads-Responsible remembered how that cane had seemed ready to crash down upon her head, and how she’d trembled-and she’d said, “
Fair!
This is the real world, and it is as it is. Let me never hear any more from you about
fair!
”

She jumped, then, no longer a five-year-old at Granny School, once again a woman near grown watching a foolish man and listening to his useless words. The word that had made her jump, thundering out of the wall, had been “Jubilee!” She had missed, in her reverie, the part where he’d compared all those tribulations of Old Earth with the tribulations he now claimed to see building on Ozark, and had laid them at the feet of the Confederation of Continents.

It didn’t matter, she’d heard it from him before, along with the part about the money wasted by the Confederation that should be staying in the treasuries of the individual Kingdoms where it belonged, where it had been honestly earned and should be honestly disbursed. She knew where he was in the speech-it was time now to make the motion to dissolve the Confederation-and what was he yelling Jubilee about? She leaned toward the wall, not wanting to miss this.

“A Jubilee!” he was saying, voice like butter melting, voice like syrup on cakes, voice like rosy velvet against the cheek, “A Jubilee is a time of rejoicing and coming together in celebration. And I wouldn’t have you think I begrudge you your Jubilee-you have
earned
your Jubilee. I do not propose to take it from you. What I propose . . . what I propose is that we make this a new Jubilee, a true Jubilee, a Jubilee in honor of the celebration that will then go on for all the days that remain of this week! A celebration not of serfdom, not of slavery, but of independence! A celebration of our decision to stand upon our own feet at long, long last, sovereign states governing themselves as befits
men . . .
no more cowering under the skirts of Brightwater! Let us, my dear friends, oh my dear friends, let us celebrate not the Jubilee of the Confederation -but the
Jubilee of Independence!”

The whooping and the cheering and the shouts of “I so move!” and “Second the motion!” came through loud and clear, and Responsible had to admit, much as she despised to do it, that that had been a clever touch. Grim old Jeremiah Thomas, he’d managed to get rid of the role of ghost at the feast, managed to paint himself benevolent and warm of heart and in
favor
of people enjoying themselves-and at the same time, the motion to dissolve the Confederation permanently had been passed and set up for debate, just as he’d wanted it to be.

She reached up and switched off the comset, no longer interested. It would be the standard procedure now, and it would take all of the following day at least. Every Senior Delegate would be allowed to speak to the question, first of all. Then every Junior Delegate, should any of them want to add something-and most were sure to, they had so few opportunities to be heard. And after that, there’d be the round of rebuttals, when anybody that wished to raise objections to the speeches could put that in. And the final summing up by the Chair . . . all of that, before the motion could be put to a vote. It would be tedious.

She could count on some of them. The McDaniels, the Clarks, and the Airys, for sure; she could count on them to point out and underline what it was going to be like for the frontier continents with no comsets and no supply freighters, hacking out their existences with a few thousand people that hadn’t been here to vote for any such condition. She could count on the Travellers to scoff at that and allow as how people weren’t such puny creatures as some thought they were, and how a hard life here meant a fair life Hereafter, and how misery was what built
men
-she could be sure of that. There’d be the Purdys, saying nothing . . . and the Smiths helping them . . . but doing it at great length, trying to play both sides against the middle they could only just barely glimpse. The Lewises and the Motleys, they’d help specify as far as they dared what sovereign statehood was going to be
like,
once the rhetoric was done with and the hardscrabble was before you . . . And the others? No way to know, and nothing much to do but wait. It seemed to her the chances were good, in
spite
of the rhetoric, and she was sick to death of watching the delegates caper about, and weary to death of hearing them talk, and she turned them off as she would have pinched a bug between her fingers.

And because of that, she missed the entrance of the Smith Delegation, filing sixteen strong into the back rows of the room, just in time to add their “Ayes!” to the vote for the Traveller motion. And she didn’t hear, until after Granny Hazelbide came to her room just before supper, of the stir it had caused when people had seen that Granny Gableframe wasn’t with them.

Jewel of Wommack was out of her bed at the first sound from Lewis Motley’s guestchamber and into her nightrobe; by the time he closed his door-so softly-behind him and turned around, she was standing outside her own door with her arms folded over her chest and her foot tapping on the cool stone floor.

“Hush!” he said at the top of his lungs; and then he roared at her: “You mean to wake up the whole Castle? Don’t you have any consideration at
all
for other people? You think you’re the only person in this Castle that--”

Jewel backed hastily into her room, dragging her laughing brother after her by a death grip on his left earlobe. Scandalized, she pushed the door to with her free hand, praying that nobody had heard his carrying on.

“Lewis Motley Wommack!” she said, stamping her foot at him -a wasted effort on the thick rug with its pattern of intertwined roses and ivy, but the only gesture short of biting him that she could think of in her fury. “You are a worthless, wicked man, and a disgrace to our Family, and you will drive me clean to
distraction
if you do not cease your dreadful ways! Haven’t you got any shame at
all?”

“No,” he said, “I don’t suppose I have.”

She glared at him, back to the door and determined he’d not go through it without going through her as well, determined she’d not cry no matter what he said or did, and silently cursing the mother who’d left her with this burdensome animal to torment her all her life long. He’d never marry, not him, she knew it; he could not bear the idea that there was anybody that had a claim on him, anybody he had to answer to for any smallest thing. She’d be a creaking old woman of ninety-nine and she’d
still
be accountable for his behavior.

“I wish I was dead,” she announced bitterly. And then she changed her mind. “No, I wish you were, and then I’d have some peace!”

Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd, all in black like a Traveller male, and a hood to cover the copper hair that might catch the glint of a stray light and give him away, lifted his little sister into the air and shook her gently at arm’s length, well beyond the reach of her nimble fingers.

“Nasty, nasty child,” he said, “wishing your one and only brother laid out in his cold narrow grave, and him only nineteen! Whatever would people say if they could hear you now?”

“That you’d driven me
mad,
that’s what they’d say! And they’d be right!”

“What
do you care about Responsible of Brightwater?” asked Lewis Motley in his most reasonable voice. “What has she ever done for you that you should have such tender scruples about her?”

“My scruples,” hissed Jewel of Wommack, “my scruples are for any living creature that strikes your fancy!
Any
creature-always excepting your Mule, of course. You take right good care of your Mule.”

He swung her down into his arms, gave her a hug that took all her breath away, set her back on the bed she’d come tearing out of, and allowed that he did see to the comfort of his Mule.

“A Mule,” he said, “is worth a man’s respect. Won’t do fool things no matter who tries to make it; keeps itself to itself and has no patience for human nonsense; works hard for its keep and asks no quarter of anybody or any thing; and’d take your hand off as soon as look at you if you don’t play fair. Mules, my dear, are
entitled.”

“And women? They don’t do for you and make over you and plain lie down and beg for the privilege of dying for you, Lewis Motley Wommack? They’re not worth the consideration you give a Mule, just because they won’t bite your hand off?”

“The day I find a woman that’s as admirable as a Mule,” he declared, “I promise to treat her well. You, for example; you show signs of developing into something as valuable as a Mule. Provided you get over spying on every move I make.”

“Lewis Motley,” she said, shivering all over with simple fury, “how many women now have you notched off to your count? How many girls are there in Kintucky that get up from their beds in the morning crying and go back to them at night with the tears not dry on their faces, because of you? How many now have you taken on, molded to your liking-law, you turn every
one
of them into the same pitiful slavish creature, over and over again-and then dropped the way you’d drop a playpretty? How
many,
dear brother?”

“You’ve been keeping my count for me,” he chuckled. “I don’t bother.”

And he added, “Responsible of Brightwater’s a different matter. I think you can leave her off your list.”

“I should think
so!
I should just purely and completely think so . . . And the idea that you are off to bedevil her again . . . Lewis Motley, you break my heart, you truly do.”

“Think I
can
bedevil her, do you? I appreciate the compliment.”

The tears flooded Jewel’s eyes, in spite of her resolve, and she hated her voice for the way it betrayed her, quavering and quaking like a little girl’s.

“Why do you spy on her?” she managed to choke past the lump in her throat.

“Why do you spy on
me?”
he countered. “The Grannys ordered you to, I suppose.”

Jewel bit her lip and glared at him, though he’d gone all blurry through her tears. As if she’d answer that!

“Little sister,” he said then, “you might just as well resign yourself and sleep the sweet sleep that’s due you, because there is no way in this world you can change a single thing that’s bothering you. Hear me, Jewel? No way atall. No way you can change me into a staunch and upright stick of a Lewis-or another version of my righteous brother Jacob. I have only four more days and nights in Brightwater, and if I’m to discover Miss Responsible’s secrets I have no time to waste. The days are useless, since I have to spend them in that Hall listening to the idiot pontification of the pack of fools we’ve chosen to call Continental Delegates . . . And if you interfere with my use of the nights . . . Jewel, love, I can’t let you do that.”

“Whatever secrets Responsible of Brightwater has,” said the girl wearily, knowing it was no use and never would be, “they’re none of your business.”