“Hold on,” said Linda Sue, “Let me get the pepper sauce.”
“Where’s Pete?” asked Elvoye, her husband, as he heaped his plate full of collard greens and cornbread.
“He’ll be here any minute. It’s supper time, ain’t it?” she replied. Just then, they heard Pete’s truck pull up. Pete was Linda Sue’s recently divorced brother. He’d moved in with them temporarily, until he could get his life back together. Pete clumped in the door, looking like gloom itself.
“You’re looking kinda rough!” Commented Elvoye.
“It ain’t ever day a man’s wife runs off with the plumber,” Pete wailed. “What she seen in him I’ll never know. The only thing he had going for him was a steady job, until he run off with her.”
“Set down. We got a supper here that’ll make you forget your miserable love life.” Linda Sue said consolingly.
“Got any whiskey?” whispered Pete to Elvoye when Linda Sue was in the kitchen.
After supper, the two men went out on the porch to ‘talk’, while Linda Sue did the dishes. She could hear them out there arguing, then agreeing. When they began to sing, she smiled to herself knowingly. She crept out into the back yard and took the keys out of Pete’s truck. Then, she went into the shed and took the keys to Elvoye’s tractor. Then, she went to bed.
It wasn’t long before Elvoye and Pete ran out of whiskey, so they figured they had two choices - quit or go get more. They stumbled around to the back yard and got into Pete’s truck, but couldn’t get it to start because Linda Sue had been there first. So, they decided to take the tractor, but Linda Sue had taken care of that also. “What we gone do now, Elvoye?” moaned Pete.
Elvoye thought for a minute and then brightened. “Let’s ride Molly into town!” he exclaimed. Now, Molly was a six-year-old mule, who was wise to the tricks of these two men. In fact, she regularly outwitted them, and got to have a little fun in the meantime.
They unlocked her pen and tried to climb on. After awhile, they finally quit falling off and headed for town. All went well until they started singing again. Molly was no great fan of music to begin with, and the current concert was entirely too much for her sensitive ears. So she came up with a plan, and headed for the creek. When she saw the water, she began running towards it, lowering her head in the process. And when she got right up to that creek, she stopped, sending Pete and Elvoye sailing into the shallow water, hollering and cussing. Then, she turned around and trotted home.
“Elvoye, them collard greens is doing some funny things to my stomach,” complained Pete, as they began walking towards home. When they finally got there, they were so exhausted, they went straight to bed.
Next morning, Elvoye woke up and yelled for Linda Sue. She came in with a glass of Alka Seltzer and a stern look in her eye. “I can’t get out the front door, because Molly’s asleep out there on the porch rug again,” she complained, as Elvoye thankfully downed the medicine. “I seen you lock that pen door yesterday. You better get one of them combination locks this time, Elvoye,” she continued.
“Forget it , Linda Sue,” he replied. “She’s already figured out the last two I bought!”
