Amendment

{Five} Embarrassing a Hatfield

I didn’t really wanna ask, but…I was starting to seriously stink. Maybe these guys were used to only bathing like twice a month—if that much—but this 2012 girl was used to taking showers, at the minimum, every other day. Three days without a shower was probably not the biggest deal in the world, but man it would just be awesome to wash my depression away and cover my body with soap. As it was, I’d been brushing my teeth with my finger and some mint leaves—I am so proud I learned what mint leaves looked like!

But how do ask the people who have already given me so much—well, as far as the suspicious Hatfields could give, that is—if there was any chance of showering? By this time in history, I was sure some people had indoor plumbing; just not the relatively poor. These guys had an outhouse that made me seriously hold it until I was sure I’d burst and a water pump in the kitchen for dishes. I’d been pretty sneaky giving myself birdbaths with that pump, but birdbaths could only take care of so much smells.

I once read this book about an accidental time traveler—much like myself—who was able to bathe every night. Just two things: one, she landed in a seriously rich castle and had servants at her disposal, and two, that was in the renaissance times. If it came down to picking in which era I’d rather be stuck in, renaissance wouldn’t even rank top five. Too much blood and gore and disease for me, thank you very much—although if I didn’t get Russ and find some way back to the future, this feud was going to get so much worse.

Even if it was historically inaccurate, I wished I’d watched more of that awful Hatfields and McCoys movie! At least then I could get some kind of semblance for the real turning point of this feud. Obviously, Asa McCoy’s murder had a lot to do with it, but that wasn’t it. There was something that happened that changed everything, just as there always is when it comes to these things. Something that was bigger than the Union or the Confederacy.

As soon as I got home, I promised myself, I was going to spend all my weekends reading old history books and encyclopedias. Maybe if this crappy thing happened again I’d have a better handle on things. And I wasn’t just going to do research on the Civil War period. No, I was gonna be sure to cover all the bases—even renaissance and Egyptian. Of course, if this did happen again, I was just gonna kill myself. That’d make things so much easier.

This whole stinky-girl thing got my brain thinking way too much. I’d woken up this morning thrashing and whimpering. Betty had tried to calm me down as best as she could, but in the end I had just barely escaped a full mental breakdown. I think by this time they were all concerned for my mental well-being. Maybe they even thought something awful had happened to me and I’d lied because it was just too awful to share—okay, so they actually did think, and say, that and I’d just eavesdropped; sue me!

If there were such things as magical ruby slippers, then there would be absolutely nothing holding me back from throwing them on my feet and screaming “there’s no place like home” a bazillion times.

Well, I mean……after I got Russ back, of course.

Since we were kinda buds now, while we were doing breakfast dishes, I asked Betty quietly, “Betty, can I ask you something?”

She fixed her eyes on me, grinning widely. She was probably the only one who honestly trusted me. It was pretty cute. “Yes,” she answered, all quiet and secretive.

Holding in a giggle, I said, “Is there a lake around or something?”

Her eyes widened in excitement. “You wanna go swimmin’ later today?”

Well….Yeah, I could go with that. I nodded. “That was the idea.”

“I’ll ask Ma an Pa, but I’m sure they’d let us go!”