“Oh, aye. Odd jobs and handiwork, splitting firewood, all that’s needful.” He sat back down. “And you’re a painter, I hear?” He had a faint accent that might have been Scottish or simply from the mountains where so many Scots had settled.
“Scientific illustrations, yes. The doctor has retained my services to illustrate his book on insects.” That sounded awfully stiff, so I added, “All thousand or so of them. I suspect I’ll still be painting bugs sometime into the next century.”
Mr. Kent laughed. “He’s certainly got a lot of them on pins in the library. I suppose you’ve seen them already?”
“Not yet,” I admitted. “I just got in yesterday. I imagine I’ll be spending a lot of time there.”
“Oh, aye. Well, when you do get up there, remember who had to haul every single case up to that room.” He grinned. “And I’ve the backaches to prove it.”
“Grab your plates,” Mrs. Kent ordered. We dutifully filed pastthe stove, scooping up rice and ladling beans over the top. The smell of ham and onions mingled with beans made my mouth water. This was a far cry from the meals at the school, where I suspect that the headmistress feared excessive flavor might lead to insurrection.
I dug into my food like a starving woman. The beans had more spice than I was used to, but I didn’t care. Jackson eyed the sweat popping out on my forehead and passed me the cornbread. “You might want this,” he said, sounding amused but sympathetic. “Rose’s food bites back.”
Mrs. Kent sniffed. “It’s an insult to the pig to turn it into something bland. If I was a pig, I’d want to know I died delicious.”
I swallowed my mouthful of cornbread. “This is the best thing I’ve eaten inyears.”
She sniffed again, but I could tell she was pleased. “Just beans and rice, nothing special.”
“It’s amazing.”
“Not the sort of food you’re used to?” asked Jackson. I admired the tact of the question, which expressed curiosity without demanding details I might not want to give.
“Not at all. My last post was teaching art at a girls’ school in Wilmington.” I briefly considered how much to tell, but really, what was I hiding?I don’t think I’ve got what it takes to be an international woman of mystery. Actually, I’m not sure what it takes. Confidence? Sex appeal? Extra stockings?
“Oh, out on the coast.” Jackson nodded to me. “Been out there a time or two. Pretty country.”
Sally piped up for the first time. “Aren’t there awful hurricanes out there?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “We got two or three bad storms a year. I was only there for a few years though. The old-timers told stories about hurricanes that leveled buildings and flooded the streets, but I never saw one myself.”
“I’d be mortal scared,” said Sally, sounding quite satisfied by the prospect.
“I was scared stiff the first time a hurricane rolled in,” I admitted. “It gets so dark and so loud and you can’t tell if it’s rain or spray hitting the building.” The older students, most of whom had grown up on the coast, had found my terror rather quaint. A sweet girl named Edith spent much of the first storm sitting with me and patting my hand whenever a particularly loud gust of wind came through. It was slightly embarrassing to be comforted by a girl half my age, but I was still grateful for the kindness. (She later went on to become a nurse, and the last I heard was working in a sanitarium for victims of consumption. I imagine she patted a great many hands over the years.)
“We only get the leftovers of your hurricanes,” Jackson said. “A lot of rain and a few trees come down, but that’s usually it.”
“I can’t say I’ll miss them.” I chased the last of the beans around with my cornbread. “I haven’t been to this part of the state before. What do you have, if not hurricanes?”
“Summer,” said Mrs. Kent darkly. “Gets so hot and muggy, you feel like you’re chewing the air afore you swallow it. And then it’s sickly season and we’ll all be taking Jesuit’s bark and hope the ague passes us by.”
I grimaced. Malaria season was the worst of the school year, as our students would be struck down with various shades of fever and ague. Quinine—what Mrs. Kent called Jesuit’s bark—helped a great deal, though getting the youngest students to take the nasty-tasting stuff was a trial. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to that part.”
“No one does,” Jackson said.
“Had bilious fever when I was nine,” said Sally proudly. “Said I was like to die, but I didn’t.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” I said, and she giggled. “What else do you have here?”
All three of them chimed in, relaying tales of snowstorms(rare) and tornadoes (slightly less rare). Plus cottonmouths, copperheads, and, of course, bears.
“Not that any of them are much trouble,” Jackson assured me. “Bear’ll run the other way nine times out of ten, and copperheads just freeze up and hope you don’t touch ’em. People swear cottonmouths chase you, but if you get out of their way, they’ll go right past you often as not. It’s usually some damn fool who decides to kill it with a stick and then gets real surprised when the snake isn’t keen on letting that happen.”
I snorted. “I’m familiar with the type. Snakes don’t bother me. My father had a friend who studied them.”
“Around here, it’s more bugs than snakes,” said Mrs. Kent. “You put your hand down on a wheel bug, you’ll know you’ve been somewhere. Feels like somebody hit you with a hammer and kept on hitting. Some big centipedes too.”
“A centipede stung me once,” said Sally. “Felt like a hot wire. And it hurt fordays.”
