Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon

Author:Jan Karon
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2007-09-16T04:00:00+00:00

‘I’ll give you a whole nickel to make me two dozen cookies,’ he told Peggy.

‘What you want two dozen cookies fo’?’

‘To sell.’

‘I can’t be makin’ you cookies t’ sell ’less you aks yo’ mama.’

He asked his mother, who thought about it and finally said yes, enterprise was character-building and his idea to put the money in the bank was wise and farsighted, but only after he tithed his ten percent, of course, and he may have only one dozen, not two, given the sugar shortage.

He rode to town with his father, the paper sack between his legs. The scent of fresh-baked raisin-oatmeal cookies permeated the car, he was nearly drooling. He would not eat one if his life depended on it; he’d been invited to lick the bowl and spoon, which should be enough for anybody trying to make an honest dollar. Chances were, he could sell every single cookie at Booker’s, or if he couldn’t move the whole dozen there, he could count on the ladies at the bank to take what was left. They might even give him reorders. I’ll have two every Wednesday, Miz Cox might say. One for me and one for my husband, Bill. Miz Cox had winked at him two different times.

‘This is wartime,’ said his father, who never took his eyes off the road while driving.

‘Yessir.’

‘Wartime is not a time to pleasure ourselves.’

He didn’t understand.

‘The cookies,’ said his father. ‘People are starving by the tens of thousands.’

‘Yessir. But they’re not for me, they’re for sale.’

‘Who made them?’

‘Peggy.’

His father reached over and lifted the sack from between his knees and set it between them on the seat. Then he opened the sack, removed a cookie, and took a bite.

Two bites.

Gone.

When he reached for the bag, his father stayed his hand. ‘Leave it there.’

He watched his father’s hand enter the bag and exit with another cookie, which he ate as if he were as starved as all of Europe.

Almost immediately he ate yet another cookie, and another—not saying a word, but making an occasional grunting sound.

It was the first time he’d ever seen his father really like what he was eating. Once, when they were having Sunday dinner at Nanny’s, his father had said with obvious pride, ‘I don’t live to eat, I eat to live.’

Since he’d learned what happened at the cattle auction, he had tried hard to love his father more. But pity didn’t have the power he hoped it might, and all he felt was another kind of guilt for being unable to love the man who had suffered and seemed to like holding on to his suffering. He had finally figured out that what his father was doing was making everybody in his whole life pay for what had happened to him. He and his mother, especially, were the lambs in the thicket.

Crumbs on the seat.

Six whole cookies gone.

Thirty-six cents down the drain.

His father’s eyes looked dreamy. He was scared by the person driving the car, who didn’t act like his father at all.

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