males; the hunting in Lyle County was too poor to suit Maureen. I had firmly made up
my mind that, while sex might not be the be-all and end-all, I did want to marry and
it had to be a man who would make me eager to go to bed early.
In the meantime, I kept on trying to make Maureen as desirable a female animal as I
could manage and I listened most carefully to my father’s advice. (I knew that what
I really wanted was a man just like my father, but twenty-five years younger. Or
twenty. Make that fifteen. But I was prepared to settle for the best imitation I
could find.)
There were two hundred days left in 1897 from that day Chuck and I climbed up into
the judges’ stand; that makes 200 x 24 x 60 – 288,000 minutes. Circa 45 of those
minutes I spent copulated; that leaves 199 days, 23 hours, 15 minutes. It is obvious
that I had time for other things.
That summer was one of the best of my life. While I did not get laid very often or
very effectively, the idea was on my mind awake and asleep. It brightened my eyes
and my days; I shed female pheromones like a female moth and I never stopped smiling
– picnics, swimming parties in the Osage (you wouldn’t believe what we wore),
country dances (frowned on by the Methodist and Baptist churches but sponsored by
jack Mormons who welcomed gentiles who might be converted – Father overruled Mother;
I went and learned to swing on the corners and dosey-doh), watermelon contests, any
excuse to get together.
I stopped thinking about the University of Missouri at Columbia. From Father’s books
I could see that there just wasn’t money to put me through four years of college. I
was not anxious to be a nurse or a schoolteacher, so there seemed to be little point
in my aspiring to formal (and expensive) higher education. I would always be a
bookworm but that does not require a college degree.
So I decided to be the best housewife I could manage – starting with cooking.
I had always taken my turn in the kitchen along with my sisters. I had been
assistant cook for the day in rotation since my twelfth birthday. By fifteen I was a
good plain cook.
I decided to become a good fancy cook.
Mother remarked on my increased interest. I told her the truth, or some of it.
‘Chére mama, I expect to be married someday. I think the best wedding present I can
bring my future husband is good cooking. I may not have the talent to become a
gourmet chef. But I can try.’
‘Maureen, you can be anything you want to be. Never forget that’
She helped me, and she taught me, and she sent away to New Orleans for French
cookbooks, and we pored over them together. Then she sent me for three weeks to Aunt
Carole’s house, who taught me Cajun skills. Aunt Carole was a Johnny Reb, married
after the War to – Heavens – a damn Yankee, Father’s eldest brother, Uncle Ewing,
now deceased. Uncle Ewing had been in the Union occupation of New Orleans, and had
poked a sergeant in the nose over a distressed Southern girl. It got him a reduction
from corporal to private and a wife.
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Heinlein, Robert A – To Sail Beyond the Sunset.txt
In Aunt Carole’s house we never discussed the War.
The War was not often discussed in our own house as the Johnsons were not native to
Missouri, but to Minnesota. Being newcomers, by Father’s policy we avoided subjects
that might upset our neighbours. In Missouri sympathies were mixed – a border state
and a clave state, it had veterans from both sides. But that part of Missouri had
been `local option’ – some towns had never had any claves and now permitted no
coloured people; Thebes was one such. But Thebes itself was so small and unimportant
that the Union troops had ignored it when they came through there in’65, burning and
looting. They burned Butler to the ground and it never fully recovered. But Thebes