Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee (19 page)

“The basket won’t do to keep it in, Miss Responsible,” said the Housekeeper apologetically. “We had to tip it to get it in there just for the giving. But I expect you’ll find a use for a big basket like that all the same, and we wanted you to have both.”

Responsible smiled at them, and turned red, and wished she could think of something to say. People being nice to her was too rare for her to have developed any skills in dealing with it; it always took her aback and left her foolish.

And even more, she wished that she could sing decently, but there was no use wishing that. Might as well wish for wings. She settled for taking the instrument out of the basket, laying it across her lap, and playing them three verses of the easiest song she knew.

“Ah, it has a sweet tone!” she said, then, while they clappedspoiling her some more-and laid it to her cheek. “I thank you . . . so much.”

“It pleasured us to do it,” they said, and then the Housekeeper spoke up on the subject of what Thorn of Guthrie would do to them if supper was late to the table, and they scurried around the kitchen while Responsible sat and glowed at them.

“Sally of Lewis,” she asked the Housekeeper, “just how did youall know I wanted another dulcimer?”

“The way you’d treasured that one the Granny had made for you when you were a little bit of a thing? And then losing it like you did? Why, miss, it didn’t take all that much brains to puzzle it out that you’d be yearning after another one. It’s small, but then so was your lost one. We did wonder about that. Might could be you’d rather of had a proper one, instead of a child’s. But you were so fond of the other one. . .”

“You did just right,” Responsible assured her. “I couldn’t manage a bigger one. It’s beautiful, and I love you one and all for thinking of me. It must have taken a precious long time to make it -and the basket, too.”

“We all worked at it, miss,” said Sally of Lewis. “It went fast that way.”

“Bless your hearts,” said Responsible.

“We’ll need more than our hearts blessed,” the Housekeeper told her, “if you don’t get yourself on in to supper. They’ll be waiting on you.”

“Law! I’d forgotten all about it!” Responsible touched all the hands she could reach, tucked her dulcimer under one arm and the basket under the other, changed her mind and hid the dulcimer away in the basket again while Sally of Lewis fretted, and hightailed it for the diningroom.

And then as she went out the door the woman called after her suddenly, “Oh, miss!”

“Yes?”

“I didn’t want to forget . . . one of the stablemen was up here not thirty minutes ago, saying as how that Mule of yours is acting up.”

“Acting up, Sally of Lewis?” Responsible turned back and leaned against the doorframe. “He have any idea what was wrong with the creature?”

“No, miss-he’d had the Granny down to look at it; and he told me the Granny said you were to go see to the Mule yourself, after supper. I expect you’d best ask
her
what the trouble is.”

Responsible nodded slowly, thinking, and stared at the floor.

“Is something wrong, miss? You look right peaked to me-and you’re about to crush that basket.”

“It’s the potion Granny gave me last night,” said Responsible quickly. “That and lying in bed this whole day long.”

“I know what you mean-nothing makes a person feel more like leftovers than lying all day abed doing nothing. You go on in and get a good meal under your ribs, you’ll feel better.”

“And then she’ll be turned around entirely,” commented one of the servingmaids. “Sleep all day, you can’t sleep that night . . . it goes on and on.”

“Half a potion this night,” agreed another one. “To straighten things out. You speak to the Granny, miss; and we’ll see to it your tea’s brought up as soon as it’s light tomorrow morning.”

Responsible thanked them, and they wished her a happy birthday one more time, and she thanked them for that, and then she headed with a pounding heart for the diningroom.

Granny Hazelbide, seated at Thorn of Guthrie’s left hand, looked a little peaked herself, Responsible thought, as she slipped into her own place at the corner of the table where her left elbow wouldn’t always be poking people as she ate.

“Nice of you to honor us with your presence,” said her mother, tart as bad vinegar, and Ruth of Motley moved right in over that with “Happy Birthday, Responsible!” and the salutations ran round the table.

“Thank you kindly,” she said.

“How does it feel to be fifteen?” asked her uncle Donald Patrick. “You find gray hairs on your head this morning?”

She was of the opinion that her hair would be snow-white by the
following
morning, if the message about her Mule was what she thought it had to be, but she didn’t intend to tell him that.

“Just one,” she said. “And I pulled it out.”

Emmalyn of Clark, Jubal Brooks’s wife, set down the forkful of fried squawker she’d had halfway to her mouth and shook a warning finger.

“I hope to goodness you
burned
that hair, Responsible of Brightwater!” Emmalyn declared. “No telling who might find it, you know.”

The other women at the table avoided one another’s eyes, and Responsible waited, wondering if her mother would be able to resist the chance to make a remark about how Responsible hadn’t even been out of
bed
the whole day and couldn’t therefore have found any gray hairs among the black ones. When her mother said nothing, she was pleased; perhaps, as time went by, she’d mellow.

“I took care of it, Emmalyn,” she said courteously. “But I thank you for the reminder.”

“You’re welcome, I’m sure,” said Emmalyn. “You can’t be too careful these days. Such goings-on I’m sure I
never
heard of before as we’ve had since this year began. It makes me nervous.”

“Emmalyn of Clark,” said Granny Hazelbide, “you wouldn’t be nervous if you didn’t dwell on everything. It’s not healthy, the way you do, and it’s time you gave it up and had babies instead.”

It wasn’t especially nice of the Granny, saying that, seeing as how it was due to her judicious alterations here and there in Emmalyn’s diet that she and Jubal Brooks were still without a single babe and them married almost six years now. But Granny Hazelbide was out of sorts, and Emmalyn irritated her rather more than somewhat.

“Now, Granny Hazelbide,” put in Ruth of Motley, “I’m sure Emmalyn does the best she can.”

“Emmalyn has always been delicate, haven’t you, Emmalyn?” said her sister Patience of Clark demurely.

Emmalyn gloried in being called delicate, and while she was glowing with pleasure and Jubal Brooks was patting her hand to show he too appreciated her frailties, she forgot all about Responsible’s one gray hair and the hazards thereof.

“Responsible,” said Thorn of Guthrie, “you going to tell us what you’ve got there in that basket by your feet, or not? It’s big enough to hold a morning’s firewood, or a couple of babies set head to toe, if they scrunched up a tad. You can’t expect us not to be curious.”

Responsible hadn’t realized she’d been so obvious with the basket; that showed how distracted she was, and Granny Hazelbide clucked her tongue.

“A birthday present from the staff,” she said, and showed them all the lid with her initial worked in, and the dulcimer tucked inside.

“Law,” said Thorn of Guthrie, “here I was so grateful when you lost the old one, and now you’re all equipped again. They must be out of their minds.”

The uncles chuckled, and Emmalyn fell in behind them, and Responsible gave the basket a shove with her toe to get it out of sight under the table. “I had no plans of singing to you, Mother,” she told Thorn of Guthrie. “I believe you can stop worrying about it.”

“Won’t be caterwauling under my window in the middle of the night, eh?”

There went Thorn-prick and poke, poke and prick. Responsible had been six years old, and the dulcimer Granny’d given her brand-new, the year she’d decided it would be appropriate to celebrate Thorn’s birthday by serenading her from under her bedroom window. It had not been a great success.

“No, ma’am,” said Responsible. “Set your mind at rest.” Jonathan Cardwell Brightwater the 12th put his oar in then. “Thorn,” he said, “you are downright mean. I don’t know what keeps you from pickling in your own juices, I
tell
you I don’t. Pass your girl some food here before she faints away-that’s the least you can do, I happen to know you forgot her birthday again-and stop your jabbing at her. Listening to you, I understand why Troublesome stays on top her mountain and won’t come down; shows good sense on her part, if you ask me. You trying to drive Responsible off the same way?”

Ah, thought Responsible; the bosom of her family. However, at one hundred and nine a man had certain privileges, and Thorn of Guthrie apologized charmingly to her father-in-law, who responded that he should think she
would
be sorry.

“You get my message, young lady?” Granny Hazelbide asked, as if it had been maybe something about piece goods.

“I did,” said Responsible. “And I’ll see to it.”

“You do that,” said the Granny. “Pass the gravy, Emmalyn!” Jubal Brooks was a swift eater; he pushed his plate away and concentrated on his coffee, and Responsible felt him looking at her from under his thick black brows.

“Something on your mind, Jubal Brooks?” she asked him. Might as well be helpful.

“Yes, as it happens,” he said. “I’m wondering. You’ve had a day off now-don’t remember you having one since that time you were taken so sick three years ago. And the Jubilee’s over-for five hundred years or forever, whichever comes first. Now I’m wondering what you plan to do starting
tomorrow
morning.”

“Well,” said Responsible, “I plan to be busy.”

“So Granny Hazelbide told us,” said Ruth of Motley, “and she was right sharp about it, too.”

“Details!” said Jubal Brooks. “That’s what
I
want to hear.”

Emmalyn smiled proudly. She fancied her husband something of a power in the Castle, especially when he was being forceful like he was now. And Responsible gave up pretending to eat.

“First thing that happens tomorrow,” she told them, “is we cut back the comset power till it transmits only to the borders of this Kingdom. For example.”

Both of the uncles whistled long and low, and Jonathan Cardwell swore a round oath, women or no women. “You don’t plan on the grass growing under your feet, do you, missy?” he demanded. “You really think it has to be done that fast? Law, and I was calling your
mother
mean!”

“Has to be done,” said Responsible, “and it won’t be a whit easier next week than tomorrow. Whatever a whit is.”

“But what will people do?” quavered Emmalyn. “How’ll they get messages around and how’ll they get the
news?
And what’s going to happen to the lessons for the older kids, and-”

“Emmalyn,” answered Responsible, “I don’t have any idea
what
soever what `people’ will do. That’s `people’s’ own problem.”

“Responsible,” said Donald Patrick slowly, “this isn’t going to be much help to business, you know. Are you sure we oughtn’t to have a kind of transition period here, while some other arrangements are worked out?”

Responsible stared at him.

“As I recall,” she said coldly, “when the delegations of the Twelve Kingdoms began whooping and hollering their votes to dissolve the Confederation of Continents, you made no least move to stop them-though you were chairing at the time and the whole procedure was out of order. I don’t recall you even saying `point of order,’ Donald Patrick.”

“The sense of the meeting was
clear!
”

“It was that. And a part of the sense of the meeting was that there was to be no more central government, am I not right? And that we were, as of the moment that fool vote went round, twelve separate and sovereign nations, each to its own self. You correct me, Donald Patrick, if I’m wrong.”

When he didn’t answer her, she went on.

“I can’t quite see how, without taxes from the other eleven Kingdoms, we could manage here at Brightwater to continue a planetwide communications system. You ask the Economist what it costs to run the comsets if you think it can be done for the price of eggs, dear Uncle. Furthermore, it appears to me that sending out comset broadcasts from
this
separate and sovereign nation into the other separate and sovereign nations would constitute interference in their national affairs. I surely wouldn’t want to be guilty of that, would you? Downright unboonely. Sticking our noses in where they’re not wanted.”

“Responsible,” said Donald Patrick, “when those comsets go dead, all over this world, there’s going to be an uproar like . . . like . . .”

“They’ll have to send their uproar by ship, Mule, or lizzy,” said Responsible grimly. “They’ll not be sending anything else by comset.”

“Oh, now,” said Jubal Brooks, still staring at her, and his coffee going stone-cold in his cup, “I object! There’s no need to go off into ex
tremes
like that, and you never said a word of warning before the vote.”

Granny Hazelbide saved her the trouble of answering.

“You mean to tell me,” she demanded, beating her fork on the edge of her plate to point out her opinions, “you mean to sit there and tell me that a whole roomful of grown men, and those men trusted these past I don’t know how many years with the governing of this
entire
planet, they needed to be told such baby stuff as that?”