Ashy Lou and the Prince

ASHY LOU AND THE PRINCE by Anne Shelby All right, here we go then. Set still, Billy Ray. Up in Whippoorwill Holler one time, there lived a girl. And that girl's name was Lou Ella Pennywinkle, after her grandmommy on her daddy's side. Lou favored her mother's people , though, the Pollards. Pretty people, too, the Pollards. Well, they got along pretty good up there, Lou and her mommy and her daddy. Had a spring for their water, a cow for their milk, chickens for their eggs, hogs for their meat, corn for their bread, apple trees for their fried apple pies, and a woods full of timber to burn in the grate. They had to work hard, but they got along good. Till Lou's mother, one bad winter, took sick and died. Lou's daddy took it pretty hard, but Lou had a secret that helped her. Every evening, that the weather wasn't bad, Lou would sneak off down to the sweetgum tree, the one that grows where the Sweetgum Branch runs into Whippoorwill Creek. Up in that tree, Lou could feel her mother right with 99 her. And so she'd tell her mother all that happened , how she was learning to keep house by herself, all what she'd do when she got grown, and all what she thought when she woke up in the night and heard the wind blowing through the cracks in the logs. Well it went on like that. You know how things do. Time passes, everything the same. Wake up one day and it's upside down. The next thing anybody knew, Lou's daddy had up and married the widow Philpot, that lived up at the head of Philpot's Branch, and had moved her and her three girls over to Whippoorwill. Now I don't know what was in the man's mind. Whether he thought Lou needed a mother, whether he wanted somebody else to do the cooking, whether he was lonesome, I just don't know. AU I know, he married that woman. Now the widow was a Pigg before she was a Philpot, and none of the Piggs was much to look at. And well, I hate to say it, but of the widow and her three girls, the widow was by far the best looking. In their eyes, them girls took after their mommy's side, that everybody called the old chicken-eyed set. They had noses pime-blank like their daddy, that when he was a boy at school, had the name of Little Hogsnout Philpot. And right around their mouths, they favored their granddaddy, old Muley-Mouth Proffitt. But their looks wasn't the worst of it, no. The worst of it was their actions. Oh, when Lou's daddy was at the house, you couldn't tell them from sweetening. Wait on his plate while he eat, clean the chimney lamps, sweep up the hearth. But he didn't stay around the place too much, for coon-hunting of a night, and of a day, going down to watch 'em build the road. Well he wouldn't be off the front porch till the Philpots'd all four hit the bed. Would not turn their hands to work. Would not strike a lick. Lay on the bed and listen to the radio and look at a catalog all day. Wouldn't wring a chicken's neck for Sunday dinner, wouldn't milk the cow, nor churn the butter, wouldn't walk from here to the garden to keep from starving to death. I don't have to tell you who done all the work. Brought the water to the house, chopped the fire wood, cleaned the ashes out of the grate. Of a winter, Lou was back and forth with the ash bucket so much, they got to calling her Ashy Lou. "Come here little Ashy Lou. Bring me a cold glass of buttermilk, Ashy Lou. Come and run the dogs off the porch, Ashy Lou." Laziest bunch that ever drawed breath. Well ever day after Lou would hunt the hens' eggs, the Philpots would take the eggs and...