The Seam Sorceress

The County Fair, part 3.

Booger approximated a smile, but her mouth full of long, white teeth gave it a menacing edge. "What you talking 'bout? I been spotted the whole time!"

Tilly's eyes rolled to the heavens, shoulders shaking with reluctant laughter as she pulled the dog back behind the stand with her. "C'mere, you—"

There was a gong-like ringing as Booger's tail thumped against the side of a oil drum repurposed as a trash can. "See, 'cause I'm covered in spots. Didja get it?"

"Oh, I got it." Tilly craned her neck around the corner. "But I didn't want it."

"Guess I got no future as a carnival clown, huh?" The dog sat back on her haunches. "So who we hiding from anyway?"

Tilly stood on tiptoe to gain a better vantage point. "Peter's wife."

"I thought Sprout said she was pushing up pumpkins in Peter's garden."

"She is," Tilly said, but shook her head once she realized she'd given credence to Sprout's nasty rumor. She sighed in frustration. "No, I mean—this is his second. Married her over the summer."

"Well, shoot, he was all ate up with grief, wasn't he?" Booger asked.

"Barely waited for the body to get cold," Tilly muttered. "This one's the new schoolmarm. Last three times Mama's come to town, this lady's cornered her, going on and on about how we need to come to her lessons."

Booger's back arched as she scratched behind her flopped ear. "What kinda lessons?"

"Reading, writing, arithmetic, how to talk proper, stuff 'bout the old queens and—" Tilly waved at Booger absently. "—Here she comes."

They both shrank from the corner as a young woman wove through the shallow crowds of the fair at an urgent pace. The high neck and pinprick polkadots of her matronly black dress disguised her radiant beauty no better than a straw-and-ribbon hat hid her lovely honey-colored hair.

"I guess we know why ole Pete was so quick to remarry," Booger mused.

"She is a mite easier on the eyes than the last one," Tilly murmured. "But I can't never decide if she's going to a nunnery or a funeral."

Adjusting her glasses, the school teacher scanned the crowd, pursing her lips when she found her quarry thoroughly vanished from sight. Tilly swore she saw the woman stomp her foot in protest.

A cold nose pressed against Tilly's calf. "Reckon she knows?"

"Knows what?"

"That she's Peter's second wife," Booger said. "And that the first is fertilizing his garden, so to speak. You know, when he gets tired of this one—she could be next."

"Oh, that's awful. Don't believe everything Sprout tells you. I'm sure Peter's last wife got a good Christian burial." The confidence in Tilly's voice shook. "Regardless of whatever happened to her."

Booger tilted her head. "You mean you don't know?"

"Well, no. Nobody does." There was a long pause as Tilly stared at the laces on her shoes. "Either way, I don't particularly care to find out. C'mon."

Back pressed tight to the concession stand, Tilly slid further and further out of view until she found a gap between two sideshow tents. The pair was halfway across the fairgrounds before they decided they had put an adequate amount of space between themselves and the schoolteacher, footsteps slowing to an interested meander.

There wasn't a lot to do at the fair without money. The rides needed tickets, the shows required coin, and the only thing that came free at the concession stands was the smell. Eventually, they found themselves at the mouth of the temporary barn housing the petting zoo. There was no admittance fee, but a couple of vending machines dispensed handfuls of feed at a penny a pop.