Grantville Gazette VII by Eric Flint

Author:Eric Flint [Flint, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction; American, Fantasy, Seventeenth century, Space Opera, Alternative histories (Fiction); American, General, Science Fiction, Adventure, Fantasy fiction; American, Fiction, Short Stories
Published: 2011-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

"The year I met John Lafferty and married him was one of the best years of my life." Tina Marie

looked at Pastor Kastenmayer and stretched her arms over her head, pulling the tight tank top so high

that it showed a couple of inches of belly. "I was what he liked, back then. I'm from Texas, originally. I'd

finished high school in Brownsville—well, I'd just barely scraped through—and come to San Antonio

looking for a job. Got on a commercial landscaping crew—office complexes, malls, things like that. John

was the foreman. I was nineteen. Skinny as a rail. Thin face, narrow shoulders, narrow rib cage, flat as a

pancake in front, not much hips and what I did have low, widest at the thighs. Every girl John ever dated

looked like that. He just went for the type."

"So I got pregnant with Ray, and pretty soon I didn't look like that no more. Instead, think of a pear

on stilts. Then I had him—Ray was born, I mean. That was down in San Antonio. The doctor said I

ought to breast feed him, which made me soft and squishy on top as well as soft and squishy in the belly

from being pregnant. Which sure didn't impress John. So he brought me here to Grantville, dumped me

off to keep house for his dad. Dave Lafferty, that was. Vance's middle name is after him. Dave was

crippled up with emphysema. He and Linda Lou, John's mom, had been divorced since 1953 and she

stayed out in California. John just dropped me here and went to Toledo. Got a job in Toledo and didn't

show his face again for five years."

Kitty took a deep breath, thinking of Tina Marie when she came to Grantville. Thin, scrawny, tanned,

rough-spoken, and boyish. About as far from soft and squishy as a woman could get. Even when she'd

been pregnant with her sixth kid, Tina Marie had looked like a goal post with the football fastened onto

its middle with duct tape.

Pastor Kastenmayer gave Tina Marie one of those "keep going" nods.

"I honestly didn't mind keeping house for Dave. He wasn't that bad. But it wasn't a barrel of laughs,

either, and John didn't send money all that regularly, so I figured that I'd better get a job. Got on the

loading crew at the discount appliance warehouse in Fairmont. That's where I ran into Zane

Baumgardner—at a country-western bar over in Fairmont. He was from Grantville, but our paths hadn't

ever crossed here."

She smiled. "Okay, Zane was quite a guy back then. I went out with him a couple of times. Over to

the 250 Club, mostly. He was like that song that Faron Young used to sing on the jukebox. 'I want to live

fast, love hard, die young, and leave a beautiful memory.' Too bad he didn't die young instead of ending

up as a drunk up in the holler with the Murrays and Bateses. He'd have left a lot more beautiful memory if

he had. Even Cheryl Ann divorced him last year. It takes a lot for a man to be worse than Cheryl Ann

Bates is willing to put up with.

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