’ ‘We don’t gotta be busy. That’s why we gots ya girlies fer,’ the boss said. Wade just stood there, knowing that nothing he said would be s...tisfactory. He waited while the sloppy middle-aged man scrounged around in a drawer, an unlit cigar dangling between his lips. ‘Take yer sissy ass and git. We don’t need no girlies here. Git!’ Knowing better than to argue, Wade walked out, never stopping until he was at his front door. Exhausted from the heat and the two-mile trek, he stripped and stepped. They had had nine idyllic years when returning late one night from a business meeting in Aiken, SC in order to get home to Ellie Charlie fell asleep at the wheel, ran off the road, hit a tree and was killed. It was almost impossible to tell Ellie. When the call came into the sheriff, Victor Richards, he didn't know what to do. He didn't want to be the one to have to face Ellie. Instead of calling Vic went by Jedidiah's house to tell him what had happened. Like the sheriff Jedidiah couldn't. When she discarded the tissue in the garbage, she gently pulled my bottoms back up to my waist and then pulled the blanket back to my chest. The single kiss that followed was chaste, like most of my grandparents kisses up to that night.Again her whisper, "Will you keep this as our secret honey?"Who would believe me? Sounding like a croak to my own ears, "Yes granny."She smiled sweetly and retreated soundlessly from my room.Our affair started that day and would continue to fill my nights with. Better still, she wasn't often wrong in her assumptions. She had an analytical brain, and it got to the heart of the problem quickly. The truth was, given some experience, she would be better at this job than I am.I knew I was going to hire her before we left Frankfort, but I didn't say anything to her. We stopped for supper at a restaurant in Louisville, before finding our motel in Evansville. The topic of conversation was all about what she had seen in the Frankfort plant. They had.