Her face must have been a picture, because Mrs. Holcroft laughed, and actually slapped the table, she was so amused. “Lawsy me, chile, didn’ y’all know this part’a Tennessee went with the Nawth?”

Dumbly she shook her head.

“I was gonna tell ’er all ’bout it later, Maddie,” Aunt Jinny said, with faint disapproval.

“Wall she might as well hear it now,” retorted Maddie Holcroft. “Ain’t no sense in lettin’ her go down to Ducktown an’ git herself in hot water on account’a ignorance.”

“She ain’t a-goin’ to Ducktown if I have any say,” Jinny muttered, and might have said more aloud, but it was becoming evident to Anna that Maddie Holcroft at her kitchen table was a force to be reckoned with where gossip was concerned. Like a summer thunderstorm, all you could do was ride the torrent out.

“Yore Granny on your Ma’s side was quite the beauty, so they say,” continued Mrs. Holcroft with the relish that would have been due gossip of last week, not decades old. But maybe she just liked having a brand-new audience. “An’ ’bout as much sense as a baby rabbit. She cotched hersel’ Parnel Parry, a right good-lookin’ feller with about as much sense, who was your Granpappy’s best frien’. Wall, up an’ starts th’ War, and Parnel gets his fool head stuffed full’a romantical fol-de-rol by an idiot cousin, an off he goes t’be a occifer with the Rebs iffen y’all please, an’ not even yore Granpappy can put any sense inter his haid. Weren’t nobody’d even say g’bye t’him but yore Granpappy an’ his wife. He left in the dead of night, like a thief. So th’ last thing he does afore he leaves, is get your Granpappy t’promise t’take care of th’ gel iffen anythin’ happens t’him. Then yore Granpappy goes t’fight fer th’ Union.”

“An’ we was livin’ here, not up the Holler. This useta be my Pa’s farm, an Granny on my Ma’s side, the Root Woman, was still alive, an’ lived where I live now. My Ma was daid then, but my Granny an’ Granpappy on my Pa’s side lived wi’ me an’ my brothers, so me an’ th’ farm was tended to without Pa,” put in Aunt Jinny. “My other Granpappy was gone by then, but Granny was close enough t’this farm t’ git he’p if she needed it.”

“She means where her an’ her brothers an’ her Pa all lived, her Pa’s farm, thet was this very farm,” said Mrs. Holcroft, helping Anna get all the relatives sorted out again. “So, yore Granpappy Alscot come back, an Parnel didn’, an’ since your Granpappy’s notion of ‘takin’ care of a pretty widder woman’ was a-marryin’ her, thet’s what he done.”

“It weren’t as if she was gonna get a widder’s pension from th’ Rebs,” said Aunt Jinny. “Not like Pa got from th’ Union Army.”

“But ev’body in Ducktown know’d she was married t’ a Reb, an’ plenty of tongues was a-waggin’ ’bout how she Jezebeled Parnel, then did the same t’ yore Granpappy, an’ thet she was a schemin’ hussy, an’ what with one thing an’ another, she couldn’ even buy a reel of cotton in th’ store wi’out people gossipin’ ’bout it. Thet’s why I feel sorry for ’er.”