Maters.
Those blessed maters were going to be the death of her.
Betsy Ward had canned, stewed frozen, and dried about thirty pounds of those red, ugly things. The blight had hit hard because of the wet summer, and the first frosts had killed the plants, but her husband, Arvel, had brought in a double armload just before the big autumn die-off. Now tomatoes sat in rows across the windowsill, along the counter, and on the pantry shelves, turning from green to pink to full sinful red, with the occasional leaking black spot. The thing about tomatoes was that no bug or cutworm would attack them. The plants were as poison as belladonna, and bugs were smart enough to know that maters would kill you. But people were a lot dumber than bugs.
Betsy wiped the sweat away with a dirty towel. She had been born in Solom, and had even gone off the mountain for a year to attend community college. She'd wanted to be a typist then, maybe get on with Westridge University and draw vacation and retirement. But Arvel had come along with his pickup and Doc Watson tapes and rusty mufflers and he'd seemed like the Truth for a nineteen-year-old mountain girl, and then one night he forgot the rubber and nine months later they were married and the baby came out with the cord wrapped around its neck and they had tried a few times after that, but now all they had was a long piece of property and a garden and so many tomatoes that Betsy wanted to grab Arvel's shotgun and blow them all into puree.
She looked out the window and saw Gordon Smith's new wife checking the mailbox. The woman had that big-city, washed-out look, as if she couldn't wander into daylight without a full plate of makeup. Still, she seemed harmless enough, and not as standoffish as the other outsiders who had flooded the valley since Betsy's knee-high days. And Betsy was sick to death of her kitchen, anyway. She flicked the seeds from her fingers and headed for the door, determined to greet her new neighbor.
Four mailboxes stood at the mouth of the gravel drive. Arvel's place was the closest to the highway, followed by Gordon's, then by a fellow Betsy had never met, though she'd peeked in his mailbox once and learned that his name was Alex Eakins. A young woman drove by to visit him about once a week or so, probably up to fornication and other sins.
"Howdy," Betsy called from the porch.
The redhead looked up from the box where she had been thumbing through a stack of envelopes. Her eyes were bloodshot. Betsy wondered if she was a drinker, then decided a God-fearing man like Gordon would never stand for the stuff in his house. Even if she was kind of good-looking, in an off-the-mountain kind of way. Her ankles were way too skinny and would probably snap plumb in half if she ever had to hitch a mule to a plow and cut a straight furrow. Still, she looked a little tough, like a piece of rawhide that had been licked and stuck out in the sun. And she'd walked the quarter mile to the mailbox instead of jumping in a car.
"Hi, Mrs. Ward," the redhead said. "Gordon told me about the tomatoes."
Betsy wondered just what Gordon had told, because mere wasn't a lot to tell. She'd known Gordon since he was dragging stained diapers across the floor of the Smith house. Sure, he'd gone off and gotten educated, but he was still the same little boy who'd once pegged her cat with a rotten apple. Plus he had the tainted blood of all the Solom Smiths. "How you liking Solom so far?"
"I like it here. A little different from what I'm used to, though."
Betsy wasn't so sure the redhead meant that first part, since the corners of her mouth were turned down and her eyes twitched like she hadn't got a wink of sleep. "How did your garden do this year?"
"Well, Gordon keeps up with that," the redhead said, fanning herself with the envelopes. "We had some cruciform vegetables, cabbage, broccoli, some corn. Gordon said I should take up canning."
Betsy wanted to ask about the Smith tomatoes, because tomatoes were how you judged a mountain garden. Any two-bit, chicken-stealing farmer could grow a cabbage. But if you could fight off the blight, you either knew what you were doing or your garden had been plain blessed by the Lord. But this skinny thing had come in during late summer and wouldn't know a thing about blight.
And probably didn't know a thing about Gordon's ancestor the Circuit Rider.
Betsy couldn't say whether that was a good or a bad thing. Ignorance was bliss, they said, but stupidity got you killed.
"Where you from?" Betsy asked. The new woman didn't seem Yankee, or of that species from Florida that had lately become the ruin of the valley.
"I was born in Atlanta, but I settled in Charlotte."
"Charlotte, huh? I seen about that on the news." Betsy was about to bring up all the niggers that shot each other down there. But even with the Confederate battle flags that flew up and down the highway near the tabernacle, she didn't think "nigger" was a Christian term. Besides, those Rebel flags usually flew just beneath the Stars and Stripes, so she reckoned that Lincoln's law was probably just a mite superior, though of course far short of the Lord's own.
Arvel's border collie, Digger, had dragged itself from under the shade of the porch and stood by the steps, giving a bark to show he'd been on duty all along.
"It's quite a change," the redhead said. She turned her face to the sun and breathed deeply. "All these mountains and fresh air. It's a little strange at night to fall asleep without lights burning everywhere."
"Oh, we got lights," Betsy said. "God's lights. Them little specks in the sky."
The redhead stopped by Betsy's gate. Digger sniffed and growled.
"Hold back Digger," Betsy said. "It's neighbors."
"The constellations," the redhead said her face flushing a little. "You can see them all the way down to the horizon. In my old neighborhood, you saw maybe four stars at night."
"What else you seen? That's a little strange, I mean?"
"Strange? Well, it's all new, of course. Gordon's family has such a rich history here."
History just means you lived too long, Betsy thought. Valley families have made their peace with the past. And with the Circuit Rider. The families that are still around, anyhow.
"How's Gordon doing?" she asked.
"He's working on a new book. About Appalachian foot-washing practices."
"If he spent half as much time in church as he did writing about it, he'd be in the Lord's bosom a hundred times over."
The redhead gave a smile, but it looked as if she were chewing glass behind it. "Gordon has a passion for Baptist religion."
"Not the right kind of passion."
"Sorry, Mrs. Ward. I respect his work, and so do a number of anthropologists and sociologists who study this region."
"He ain't dealt with the proper side of things." Digger barked beside her in punctuation.
"I'll share your opinions with him," the redhead said. "My name's Katy, by the way. Katy Logan."
"Logan? I thought you was married."
"We are. I kept my maiden name. Long story."
No story could be long enough if it defied the Old Testament creed that kept a woman subject to her husband. Why, if Betsy so much as opened her mouth in anger to Arvel, he would slap her across the cheek and send her to the floor. In the Free Will church, she kept her mouth shut except for the occasional hymn or moan of praise, and she sat to the left with the other wives and the children. It was important to know your place in God's scheme of things. First there was God, then the Circuit Rider, and then the husband.
Digger growled again, sensing Betsy's unease.
"That girl of yours," Betsy said. "Seen her waiting for the school bus. What's her name?"