Repost – Ladies on a Mission … a taste

While I needed to step away from writing for a season, it was time to get close to my good friends … Lily-Rose, Fiona, and Sugar again. Oh, how I missed them. Here’s the prologue of the third installment of the Ladies series, Ladies on a Mission. Here’s a taste. 

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Prologue

July 1945

“Sug, you stay close, ya hear?” Zinnie Mae’s bellowing voice rang in four-year-old Sugar Thompson’s ears. She raised her head above the grass and blew a puff of air moving blonde hairs away from her blue eyes as she looked toward the shanty. Her corralled grasshoppers would wait. She watched as Zinnie Mae cuffed momma across the head.  “What’s wrong with you, Betty Mae, letting your baby girl go traipsing off so far?”

“I’m okay. Playin with bugs.” Sugar smiled as she rolled onto her back and looked at the puffy clouded sky. This was how hot Kentucky days moseyed along in the Appalachian Mountains. The stillness was so thick it was like being wrapped in a sweater. Even the birds stopped singing after they’d welcomed the day. Critters had long burrowed themselves in their holes to stay cool until evening. Away from the clearing, leaves from the oaks and hickories barely let any light touch the ground.

Not much ever changed. Miles up the hill from Trotter, their two-room shack Sugar called home sat in a small parcel of land that had housed the Thompson clan for more years than anyone remembered. There lived three generations of Thompson women. Zinnie Mae, the grandma of the clan, Bettie Mae—Sugar’s Momma—then Sugar. Inside, a splintering plank floor held a table surrounded by four chairs that served as the family’s sitting place. In the corner close to the potbelly stove —for both heating and cooking—sat a raggedy stuffed chair where momma’s pa used to sit. A flimsy curtain cordoned off a corner of the room for sleeping. The door off the back of the shack was close to all the necessities— the fruit cellar and path to the two-seater outhouse. A tarred roof with only a few holes covered it all.

It’d been said Zinnie Mae was purdy in her day, but that day was long past. Her once crazy red hair held back with a bandana is now grayed and bunned tight, held away from the deep lines on her face. Momma’s smile crinkled her eyes and lit her face like a star in the night’s sky. But that didn’t happen very often. And she never smiled during trips ventured into Trotter. People often stepped back, giving a wide path and peering from side-eye glances as gawkers spoke to one another in hushed voices.

Sugar raised up on an elbow and looked toward the porch. She saw Momma wave. Her mouth gaped when Zinnie Mae knocked her in the head again. “Stop hitting me. What you talking ’bout? She ain’t traipsing off.” She pointed with a hand still gripping several green beans. “She’s right there. I can see her. Yonder. Look for yourself.” Her voice raised. “Sweet girl, give me and Zinnie Mae a wave.”

“Hey Momma, hey, Zinnie Mae.” Sugar smiled and waved.

Zinnie Mae harumphed. “You know how easy it is to get turned around in them hills. Two steps off the paths and you’d be lost forever. Today’s not a day I want to go off lookin’ for her. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

Momma dropped her hands into the basket of untrimmed beans. “For the last time, will you please allow Sugar to call you Granny … grandma. Somethin’ other than the name your momma gave ya? Besides, she ain’t going off a path she ain’t even close to.”

Zinnie Mae worked her mouth then spit a straight shot of tobacco juice, clearing the porch’s edge. “If you’da waited to have a baby ’til later, maybe you’d know better how to take care of a youngin’. I can’t help it if you done gave yourself and got in the family way too soon.” She brushed hair from her face with the back of her hand, then muttered. “Besides, I ain’t old enough to be a granny. When I am, I’ll let you know.” She picked up another bean and snapped its ends off. “It wasn’t what I had in mind for me—or you.”

Sugar stretched out again in the grass. She had heard this conversation more times than could count, though Momma saw to it that her counting was real good. She returned her attention to the grasshoppers and scooped one carefully into her cupped hands. Peeking through her loose grip Sugar watched as the bug offered up its defensive spit that looked like Zinnie Mae’s tobacco juice. The brown liquid pooled on her already dirty palms.

With cargo in hand, Sugar stood and made her way toward the porch. Before arriving at the edge of the broken stoop, she crouched in a low cluster of grass, opened her fists, and watched as the grasshopper launched from her grip. After wiping her hand on her coveralls, she climbed her way onto the side edge of the porch—greeted by the women’s never-ending bickering.

“How many times do I have to tell you he took me. I didn’t offer nothin’!” Momma turned from her grandmother, smiled her way, and spoke in a louder voice. “But you, little girl … are just like your name, right? Sweet as sweet can be.”

“How many times do I have to tell you he took me. I didn’t offer nothin’!”

Sugar smiled, climbed onto the porch, and gave each woman a kiss on the cheek. In one jump, she returned to the yard and played with her found bugs, making sure to stay within earshot. She learned long ago once these women started talking about her, everything was always better. That proved to be true this time as well.

Zinnie Mae nodded. “That we agree on, for sure. I ’bout had a fit when you didn’t name her the way you was suppose to, though. Not addin’ ‘Mae’ to her label like the Thompsons been doin’ since I can remember.” Zinnie Mae sighed and waited a beat. “But that lil’ slip of a thing makes life worth livin’, that’s for sure.” She dropped her snapped bean in the basket of finished produce. “Mighty glad she’s here.”

Momma stopped for a moment with her beans. “Zinnie Mae. Betty Mae. What’s Mae matter? Sugar’s part of us, right Ma? Besides, if she’s gonna be her own person, she don’t need the label to hold her back. Besides, we’re raisin’ her just fine, ain’t we?”

Zinnie Mae nodded. “Your pa’s missin’ out on the only goodness this shack’s seen in years. He shouldn’tve run off like he done.”

Momma shrugged. “His loss, I reckon. We’re makin’ it just fine.”

Sugar continued listening as she looked back to the porch and grinned. Momma smiled back. “Little pitchers got big ears? You don’t miss much do you, Sug.” Sugar knew no harm was done. They were all best friends in the whole world.

Zinnie Mae rattled on as she continued trimming beans. “The garden’s real good now. Beans comin’ on strong. The corn’s gettin’ good and tall. The squashes and other viney ones are filling out their hills just as God designed ’em to do. Keep up with the weeds and the crop’ll be ready to store up just fine.”

Oh no. Garden talk. That meant they might start saying she needed to work more there since she was so low to the ground. Sugar watched from the grass as Zinnie Mae removed the basket of trimmed beans from her lap and stood, stretching her back. “Can you get the rest of these beans, daughter? I can’t sit like I used to. Guess I’m just an ol’ tired woman.” Zinnie Mae started for the front door then stopped. “How’s rabbit sound for dinner? I could go out and get a couple, no problem.”

“Don’t let the game warden catch you. You know they’ll skin you for hunting early.”

The screen door creaked as she entered the shack, and it bounced off her backside. “I don’t think this once will be a problem.”

Moments later Zinnie Mae came back out, shotgun broke open and across her arm. She walked to Momma and put a hand on her shoulder. “I spit n’ sass at you, but truth be, you’re a good daughter. Thank ya for that.”

“Momma? What’s—”

Zinnie Mae waved her off as she stepped off the porch. “I’m heading out for those rabbits, now.” She set off toward the woods, passing Sugar playing with another newly found grasshopper.

“Look Zinnie Mae, it’s chewing tobacca, just like you. Ain’t that funny?”

Zinnie Mae stooped down and watched as Sugar carefully handled the grasshopper. Zinnie Mae’s voice came on soft. “Not everything is as it seems, Sugar. ’Member that.” She kissed the top of her golden hair. “And here’s somethin’ else to think about. ‘Be not afraid of sudden fear. Do ya know where that sayin’ comes from?”

Sugar knew her grandmother talked about the Almighty often, so she ventured a guess. “Sounds like Bible stuff. Am I right?”

“And here’s somethin’ else to think about. ‘Be not afraid of sudden fear. Do ya know where that sayin’ comes from?”

Zinnie Mae smiled and cupped Sugar’s chin in her hand. “Yes, it is. From the wisdom of Proverbs. Do yourself a favor and folla what’s in that-there book, ya hear?”

“Yes’m.”

“Alrighty then. Time to go.” Zinnie Mae stood and walked toward the thicket at the front of the woods.

Hours passed. When Zinnie Mae failed to return, Momma set Sugar on the porch with strict instructions not to move. It was Momma’s frantic voice calling out for Zinnie Mae that lasted past sundown. When momma returned, her face was drawn. “Another one’s left us, Sug. Guess it’s just you and me now.”

There was no rabbit for dinner that night. Zinnie Mae had plum disappeared, never to be seen again.

That’s how it seemed, anyway.

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No exact date for publication has been set, but know I haven’t forgotten you and the ladies from Norwood Street.

Want to see how The Ladies Mystery series began?

Can a woman on the run find herself again?

Ladies of the Fire brought us to the late 1960s as we met the newly-widowed Lily-Rose Pembrick reeling as she fled Lincoln, Nebraska, with her children. Only taking the cash from the house safe and what she could get her hands on at the family bank, she left the recently-inherited and successful Pembrick Transportation company behind. Exhausted from driving all night, she stopped in Applegate, Ohio, and decided to start a new life on Norwood Street. There, she met Fiona Kasey, an African-American no-nonsense housekeeper/companion to an elderly white woman, and Sugar Bowersox, a Southern spitfire who has lost herself in motherhood.

Together, they enjoyed Lily-Rose’s backyard fire pit, where dreams were spoken and secrets revealed. As they embraced a kinship they never would have sought, Lily-Rose began thinking her past could finally be laid to rest—until someone ended up dead.