A Northern Light(44)

"You all right in there, Mattie?" she hollered.

"Yes, Aunt Josie. I'm just moving the step stool."

"Don't come too close to the door with it. The floor's uneven right around there and the stool's tottlish. I wouldn't want you to fall, dear."

"I won't, Aunt Josie."

Tottlish means tippy, and is used mostly to describe boats. Miss Parrish never let us use words like tottlish in our essays, but Miss Wilcox did. She said words like those are vernacular. She said Mark Twain had a pitch-perfect ear for the vernacular of the Mississippi River and that this talent of his changed writing forever by allowing a wild, truant boy to sound like a wild, truant boy, and an ignorant drunk to sound like an ignorant drunk. I decided tottlish would be my word of the day even though rectitudes what the dictionary had given me. I wasn't sure I'd find tottlish in the dictionary. Or frowy either, which describes butter that has gone rancid. Or blat, which means to cry—the loud, whiny kind of crying Beth gives out with when she doesn't get her way. Or meaching. Which means skulking or slinking, and can describe a certain kind of expression, too. Like the one that must've been on my aunt's face right then, when Mrs. Mclntyre suddenly yelped, "Josie, don't you dare!"

"Hush, Alma!"

"Josephine Aber, I would ask you to remember that I am a bona fide government employee, duly sworn to uphold the laws of this land, and tampering with government property is in direct violation of those laws!"

"Alma Mclntyre, I would ask you to remember that our great government was made for the people and by the people, was it not?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"I am the people, Alma, therefore I am the government, too. It's my tax money that pays your wages and don't you forget it."

"Well, I just don't know."

"Land's sake, Alma, I never took you for an unfeeling woman. Don't you care what happens to a poor, helpless widow with six children and a baby? Don't you care at all?"

I rolled my eyes. My aunt didn't give a hoot what happened to Emmie Hubbard; she just wanted to know her business.

"Of course I care what happens to her!"

"Well, then."

"All right, here. But hurry."

I heard the sound of water running and the kettle being filled, and I knew that the two of them weren't making a pot of tea. From their conversation I had figured out that Arn Satterlee was sending Emmie Hubbard a letter, and since it was Arn sending it, and Emmie getting it, it had to be about her taxes.

"Alma, look! Oh, my goodness! Arn Satterlee is auctioning Emmie Hubbard's land!"

I stopped polishing.

"He isn't!

"He is! It says so right here! He's auctioning it to recover the back taxes. She owes twelve dollars and seventy cents and hasn't paid a penny of it."

"But why, Josie? Why now? Emmie never pays her taxes on time."

"Because she's 'habitually derelict'...It says so right here, see?"

"Oh, nonsense! This year's no different from any other. Am gives her a warning or puts a lien on the property if the county makes him, but he never goes so far as to put the land up for sale."

"Look, Alma, look right here," my aunt said, "it says there's an interested party."

"Who?"

"It doesn't say. It only says something about 'confidential inquiries made by an interested party.'"

"But who'd be interested? You think it's one of her neighbors?"

"Don't see how it could be. She's only got the three. There's Aleeta Smith, and she wouldn't do a thing like that to Emmie. Michael Gokey wouldn't, either. And even if they would, they couldn't afford to. Neither of 'em has a pot to piss in. That only leaves Frank Loomis, and I doubt he has the money, either. Not after paying for those new horses, and poor Iva going around in that same tired linsey dress every day of the week."

There was a pause, then Mrs. Mclntyre said, "He wouldn't want Emmie gone, anyway."

Their voices dropped way down low then. I stretched my neck as long as a giraffe's, but I couldn't hear a thing. Only "...disgraceful, Josie..." and "...I wouldn't tolerate it..." and "...fills her belly, all right..." I couldn't sense their meaning but thought they must be talking bad of Emmie like most everyone does.

They were silent for a minute or so, then my aunt clucked her tongue and said, "Alma, I'm sure as I'm sitting here that no local person would do a thing like this. It's a city person, I just know it. Some low-down, no-good, sneaky wheeler-dealer from New York, I'd bet, looking to buy himself cheap land for a summer camp."

"Oh, Josie, this is terrible! What will happen to those children?"

"I imagine the county will take them."

"Poor little things!"

"I mean to find out who's behind this, Alma."

"How?"

"I'll ask Arn Satterlee."

"You can't. He'll know we opened the letter if you do."

"I'll wait a few days, then. Give Emmie time enough to open the letter and start carrying on to the whole county about it. But I'm going to find out, Alma. You mark my words."