Love Letters From Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [9]
Ida Mae reached deliberately for a dish towel and took her time drying her hands. She looked at Bridget, sourly, then turned the look on Cici and Lindsay. She took the magazine.
The three women watched her closely as she slowly turned the pages, anticipating comments about “Dang fool Yankee trash tramping all over m‘flower beds” and “fuss and bother just so a bunch o’ rich biddies can look at how we live” and “working like yard hands for three damn weeks just for this?” Not to mention the inevitable derision over whatever mistakes had surely been made in the recipe, or the quotes. They waited, hardly aware of holding their breaths, until she flipped the magazine closed and returned it to Cici.
“Right nice,” was all she said, and they stared at her as she placed the last of the muffins in the basket and turned back to the sink. “Thought these greens’d make a good salad with some nuts and cheese. How’s that chicken coming?”
“Oh, um ...” It was at that moment that Farley knocked politely on the screen door, and Bridget glanced anxiously toward the oven as she waved at him. “Hi, Farley.”
“Afternoon, ladies.”
Farley was a big man in faded overalls and a camo cap, with a ginger-colored beard and a perpetual wad of chewing tobacco forming a small lump in one cheek. He carried a highly polished steel pressure cooker under one arm, and a soda can in the other hand. He spat a stream of brown juice into the can before adding, “Got your cooker.”
Cici grabbed an oven mitt and opened the oven to check on the chicken. Bridget opened the screen door and stepped aside as Farley came in, leaving his soda can on the porch rail. He set the pressure cooker on the counter and Bridget handed him a ten-dollar bill. “Thank you so much for fixing this,” she said. “Canning season is coming up and I don’t know what we’d do without it.”
Farley swept off his cap, mindful of being indoors, and tucked it into his back pocket as he somberly took out his wallet and placed the ten-dollar bill inside. “Weren’t no problem,” he replied. He added, without looking up, “Hear you ladies got your pictures in the paper.”
Cici closed the oven door and smiled at him. “It was a magazine,” she corrected. “Would you like to see it?”
“No thank you, ma‘am,” he replied, and returned his wallet securely to his back pocket. “Don’t have much use for that kind of foolishness.”
Lindsay raised an amused eyebrow but said nothing.
Ida Mae retrieved her pressure cooker and Bridget took the basket of muffins from the counter. “These are for you, Farley,” she said. “They’re fresh made this morning. Wild strawberry.”
He looked surprised as he accepted the muffins, even though Bridget almost always had some kind of baked goods for him whenever he came by. “Why,” he said, “that’s right good of you, Miss Bridget.”
Bridget smiled. “I hope you enjoy them.” She smiled as she added, “See you in church Sunday?”
It was almost a running joke, since everyone knew the only time Farley went to church was on Easter and Christmas. But he looked back at her somberly and replied, “No, ma‘am, I don’t reckon you will. But I thank you for the thought just the same.”
He removed his cap from his pocket, nodded at Cici and Lindsay, and left with his basket of muffins, settling the cap on his head as he reached the back steps.
“Strange bird,” murmured Cici as she heard the truck engine start.
“Oh, he’s a good soul,” replied Bridget fondly, smiling after him. “Just lonely, I think.”
“I hope he knows how to fix a pressure cooker, is all,” Ida Mae said, and there was a certain amount of menace to her tone as she returned from placing the appliance on its shelf in the pantry.
“For ten dollars,” Lindsay cautioned, “I wouldn’t expect too much.”
But the look Ida Mae gave her suggested consequences too dire for words should her prediction happen to be correct.
Cici started gathering up the magazines. “Well,” she said. “It’s been quite a day. But I guess it’s back to scattering chicken feed and shoveling sheep manure.”
“Damn,