'Jake!  Jeb!  Get your backsides off them there beds and get down here for your breakfast right now or you'll go hungry till lunchtime.'

I heard Jeb stir and struggle into a sitting position, but I just opened one eye and told him, 'Maw'd never let us go hungry.  We don't need to rush.'  Then I closed my eyes again.

'Jake!  Jeb!  I'm telling you, get down here right now!'

Then Paw's deeper voice joined in.  'You boys!  If you don't do what your Maw tells you, I'll be up them stairs with my belt and I'll take it out of your hides.' 

We knew better than to ignore Paw's threats, and we got jammed in the doorway in our rush to get downstairs.  Maw and Paw were already seated at the kitchen table, and Paw was putting butter on a chunk of cornbread, which he handed to Maw.  I was taken aback at Paw doing what he called 'women's work' but then remembered that he and Maw were going to have a new baby.  I guessed he was being extra nice to Maw so that she'd have another boy, instead of the girl she wanted.

We sat on the homemade stools around the battered old table and helped ourselves to cornbread, which we had to butter for ourselves.  We were luckier than most of the kids around Pollen Bend, as Maw made the best cornbread known to man, and churned our own butter to go on it.  We finished it off with fresh milk from our three cows.  We kept chickens and grew our own vegetables and fruit, and our corn crop and excess milk and eggs paid for what we didn't make ourselves.  I was learning to shoot straight, and sometimes brought down a jackrabbit for Maw to make into a tasty stew, though once I got a scrub turkey and had to get Jeb to help me tote it home.  That lasted us for three days and Maw couldn't praise me enough.

Although we ate well, you wouldn't think it from the look of our house.  Granted, it was a two-storey building, but it hadn't seen a lick of paint since it had been put up some years before Paw was born.  Our grandpaw Lucius Barton had built the place when he came to Pollen Bend in 1882 with his new bride Amelia.  After he died, just after I was born, our Paw Rudy took over running the farm, along with our Maw, Eva.  Paw did the minimum amount of maintenance on the house, being of the old school that lived by the adage, 'If it's raining, I can't fix the roof.  If it's dry, the roof don't need fixing anyway.'  The old hinges on the door had rusted through a few years ago, and Paw had re-hung the door with strips of leather.

I'd wonder how Maw put up with Paw's lack of ambition, and figured that she was just so full of a sense of duty that she'd have lived in a tarpaper shack along with him and us kids.  It wasn't an easy life for any of us, but we had the fierce Barton pride and strong affection for each other, and apart from my dreams of seeing the world beyond Pollen Bend, we wouldn't have changed a thing, at least not much.

When our breakfast was over, Paw made me clear the table and put the dishes in the bowl ready for washing, then told Jeb and me to come out to the porch with him.  We sat on the rickety steps while Paw settled himself into his favourite position on the porch swing, where he spent most of his afternoons swigging moonshine.  Maw used to tell him that he was too lazy to shake the dead fleas off himself, but I knew different.  He spent a lot of time brushing away the persistent flies with his old hat.

He never knew that Jeb and I had sneaked a taste of moonshine after he'd fallen asleep one day, and had decided that it tasted worse than the lye soap Maw washed our mouths out with when we forgot to mind our language.

'Now boys,' he began.  'With your Maw being in the family way, you all are going to have to take on more chores to help her out.  Jake, you'll take over churning the butter, and Jeb can learn to chop the firewood.  Your Maw's going to teach you about the kitchen garden.  She won't be able to bend too easy before long, so you'll need to know the difference between weeds and onion shoots.  You'll be digging up the taters and the root vegetables for her.  You can't expect a lady in her condition to do that kind of thing.'  His face took on a faraway look, as he said, 'A lady like her shouldn't be doing anything like that anyway.'  He'd all but forgotten we were there as he continued.

'Your Maw didn't come from farming stock.  She was the daughter of Old Wilfred Greenacre who ran the bank in Pollen Bend up until he died.  Eva was always so pretty, with ribbons in her hair, and even though she was just starting school when I was in my last year there, I knew she was going to be my bride one day.  I told my Maw I was going to marry her, and she laughed at me and told me to search closer to my own station in life, but I didn't pay her no never mind.  Eva just got prettier by the year, and she always had the boys flocking round her like bees round a jam pot. 

'I was the proudest man alive when I stood beside her when she graduated, and prouder still when we stood up in front of the judge to get married.  Her folks didn't cotton to her marrying a farmer, but she was as determined then as now to do what she wanted to do, regardless.  She loved me and I loved her, and nobody was going to stand in her way.  Her Paw wouldn't talk to her for a couple of years, not until she bore his first grandson.'

Jeb and I looked at each other anxiously.  Paw had never talked to us this way before, and I felt a little uneasy with it.  Maybe he'd already been into the moonshine, even at this early hour.

'My Maw had to teach her how to run a farm,' he continued dreamily.  'She didn't know one end of a cow from the other, and couldn't tell a rooster from a hen.  Hell, she didn't even know how to draw water from the well when she first got here, but she learnt it all quick smart, and never once complained.'  He sat up straight and came to his senses.  'Leastwise until you useless gits came along and gave her all the grief she could handle and more besides.'

That was better.  Jeb and I could handle the casual insults thrown our way, having been used to them all our lives, and things were back to normal.  Though I still felt strange at hearing Paw's reminiscences, I was glad he'd let his guard down with us.  I think it was then that I realised for the first time just how much Paw loved and depended on Maw.  Like most kids, we'd never connected our parents with youth and love, let alone procreation, and when Maw came out on the porch to see what we were all up to, I looked at her in a new light.

'Rudy honey, I thought you'd have sent Jeb out to get the eggs by now.  What's going on?'

'Aw nothing, just chewing the fat with the boys, and wondering what's for dinner tonight?'  We could tell he was embarrassed at talking with us about Maw like that, as he fumbled his old hat on top of his wild grey hair.  'I'm going over to milk the cows, and Jake can collect the butter churn and the paddles and start learning how to make butter, OK?'

Our busy day had begun, and we had no time to talk until late in the afternoon. While Jeb and I were harvesting the last of the peas in our kitchen garden, my kid brother asked, 'Hey Jake, did you know that Maw and Paw used to love each other?  Kinda soppy huh?'

In my best man of the world tone I replied.  'Well, if the sun wasn't shining on a shotgun, then they must have been in love to get married.  And Paw never mentioned no shotgun.'  Bubba Hayes' sister Ella had to get married with her Paw's shotgun shoved in her groom's back.  That was before their Paw shot the cattle salesman and spent the next two years in the Mississippi State Penitentiary.  We all felt he'd been unfairly dealt with, as he'd paid out a fortune for a bull that didn't work, though we felt he had to shoulder some of the blame.  If he hadn't held the shotgun in the back of Jimmy Lee Gifford while he married Ella, he could have borrowed the Gifford bull like the rest of us, instead of having to buy one.

'You don't suppose they still love each other?'  Jeb asked.

'Naw, they're past all that now that they're married with two kids and one on the way.'

'And how come Maw is going to have a baby?  How did she get that in her belly?'  I sat him down in the middle of the pea plants and gave him a man-to-man talk.

'Well, you've seen what happens when Old man Gifford brings his bull over to serve our cows?  Well, it's the same way with people.'

'And Maw and Paw had to do THAT to get a new baby?' asked Jeb, looking horrified.

'How do you think she got us?'

'Then they had to do THAT more than once?'  Aghast.

'Three times in all,' I said, feeling queasy at the thought.

'Who did they git to hold Maw steady while Paw did it?'

'People don't have to be held steady, silly.  They're not like dumb animals.  They know they have to hold still for it.  I've even heard talk in the school playground that some do it 'cos they like it.'