"Miss Crabb, I… I didn't… I'm sorry that… I…"
Her smile was triumphant. "Please, Mr. Rhy, you have my permission to call me Esme."
Without another word she turned and marched out the door, her backside swaying provocatively. As far as Esme was concerned, it was all settled. She'd be Mrs. Cleavis Rhy before the turnips were sprouting.
Chapter Two
Yohan Crabb was the laziest man in Vader, Tennessee. That was an accepted fact Some thought he might be the laziest man in the world, but so far nobody could prove it
It would have been bad enough if Yo Crabb were drunk and lazy. But as a God-fearing man, Crabb had never allowed demon liquor to pass his lips. He was lazy for the mere sake of being lazy.
It was said that when Yo was born and his strange, foreign-speaking mother asked with her last breath to name him Yohan, what she was really trying to say was, "Son, I can already see that you ain't never going to turn Yo han' to no good purpose."
When Yo married Providence Portia, the community had felt a spark of hope. Miss Providence was as hardworking as the day was long, and most thought she might be a good influence on Crabb. Unfortunately, most of Yohan's newfound energy was channeled elsewhere. The twins were born barely a year after they wed, and Esme eleven months later.
To Esme's knowledge, Yo had never stirred himself again.
Except, of course, to play the fiddle. And thank goodness for that. Were it not for the fine way that he played, Yohan Crabb would have been totally worthless instead of just practically worthless.
Pa could play that fiddle, Esme thought as she listened, walking back up the mountain. The sound got louder and clearer with each step toward home. How sweet and romantic it was, she thought, her heart still pounding from the memory of Cleav's warm blue eyes fixed upon her.
"Evenin', Pa," she greeted him as she stepped into the clearing next to the house, though house was an exaggerated term for the place the Crabbs called home.
Esme remembered when they had first come to live up on the mountain the year after Ma died. They had been sharecropping on Titus Mayfield's place, but without Ma to do the work, Pa had almost let the crop rot in the field. Mayfield had ended up picking it himself and then told Pa to vacate the house so he could get somebody who wanted to work.
They had come up the mountain, Esme at her father's side and the twins running up ahead, laughing and picking flowers.
"It's a fine, sturdy house, Esme," he'd told her. "I guess you'd call it a stone house. And it's not about to fall down. And the best part is that it's ours, all ours. Nobody's ever going to take it from us."
Even at eight years old, Esme had known her father well enough to be skeptical.
"It's a cave!" Esme had cried in horror as she stared at what was to be their new home.
"I'm sorry, darling," Pa had apologized. "Believe me. Sugarplum, I hate moving you children into a cave as bad as you hate moving into it. But there ain't no help for it."
Esme felt tears of despair welling up in her eyes, but she fought them back.
"We're going to live in a cave!" Agrippa's voice squeaked with excitement.
"I'm a cave girl," Adelaide insisted, pounding upon her chest.
"See," Pa had whispered to her. "It's gonna be all right, Esme. I never lie to you."
It was a stone house, of a sort, Esme had to admit. And bears had been living in it for hundreds of years, so it probably wasn't about to fall down. And he was telling the truth: nobody was going to take it from them. No other human would be willing to live there!
The cave now had a split log front for protection from the wind. The logs, culled from fallen trees and scrub brush, were chinked together every which way and supported, where possible, with rocks, mud, and anything else that Esme could drag up the mountain. There was also clearly a front door which made it seem almost like a house. Esme had cut a window one summer, but it was covered over and chinked up now. The cave was never too hot, but it surely could get cold. For that reason, a stovepipe now came through a hole near the top of the logs. The stove made cooking possible and living bearable.
"That's a pretty song you're playing, Pa," Esme told her father.
The old man smiled up at her. Even nearing sixty, he was still handsome and a charmer to boot. "You like that, Esme-child?" he asked. "I thought up that little thing today."
She smiled briefly before a worried frown creased her face. "You wrote the song today? I hope it didn't take you all day."
"Purt near," he admitted.
"You promised you'd head down to the river and see if you could catch us a fish for supper."
Yo sighed and shook his head. "Esme-girl, I clean forgot it and that's the truth."
