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Show 11-4 in the yard with Grandfather feeding the hens and jumping the mud holes when Frederick drove up in his father's Model T. He waited in the car for a long time. Grandfather said he suspected it was some salesman trying to get up enough ginger to try to sell Grandmother a new corset. I laughed and said I thought it was a Baptist Bible thumper who saw the name MacLeod on the mail box and knew he was in the wrong place but was too scared to move. Grandmother placed Baptist Bible thumpers right next to unreconstructed Southerners in the warm place below and often reminded me that nice Presbyterian girls of Scottish heritage should have no truck with either. Mother and Father were shocked when I announced this at the dinnertable and told me that many fine people were Baptists. But I felt sure that Grandmother knew something they didn't and planned to always keep my distance from Baptists. After a time, Grandfather picked his way across the muddy, hen-soaked yard to the car. I watched as a young man, handsome in a golden way, got out and shook Grandfather's hand. They talked a moment and then Grandfather shook his hand again and led him around to the back door. He called out to my grandmother as they stood on the porch scraping the mud off their boots and then they both went into the kitchen. All I could hear was the gurgling from the melting snow trickling under the hen house and down into the creek below. I stood for a moment in the sun, wondering if I should go home or go inside. Grandfather just seemed to have forgotten me. He hadn't told me not to follow him and the golden soldier. So I emptied my bowl of chickfeed on the high ground under the maple tree and sloshed back to the house, leaving the smell of mud and the pale warmth of the winter sun to the hens and to Fidelio, who was asleep on top of Grandfather's tool shed. Inside, the house was quiet, the kitchen empty. I tiptoed down the long hall to the living room. My grandparents were sitting together on the high-backed |