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Oba went to the door, opened it a crack, and stood eating his eggs as he peered out to see the rear of a wagon pulled up close by. A man climbed down.
It was Mr. Tuchma
Oba didn't know what to do. When he looked back to the doorway, Mr. Tuchma
"Afternoon, Oba." His eyes, eyes that Oba had always found curiously liquid, were peering in the crack, searching the house. "Is your mother about?"
Oba, feeling a little violated by the man's roving eyes, stood holding the plate of eggs, trying to think what to do, what to say. Mr. Tuchma
Oba, standing ill at ease behind the door, reminded himself that he was a new man. An important man. Important men weren't unsure of themselves. Important men seized the moment, and created their own greatness.
"Mama?" Oba set down his plate as he glanced to the fireplace. "Oh, she's about, somewhere."
Wool-headed Mr. Tuchma
"You heard about Lathea? What they found at her place"
Oba thought the man had a mouth kind of like his mother had. Mean. Sneaky.
"Lathea?" Oba sucked at a piece of egg stuck between his teeth. "She's dead. What could they find?"
"More precisely, what they didn't find, I guess you could say. Money. Lathea had money, everyone knew that. But they found none in her house."
Oba shrugged. "Must have burned up. Melted."
Mr. Tuchma
Oba felt indignant that people just couldn't let a thing go. Didn't they have their own business to mind? Why couldn't they leave well enough alone? They should rejoice that the sorceress was out of their lives and leave it at that. They had to keep picking at it, though. Peck, peck, peck, like a gaggle of geese at the grain. Busybodies, that's what they were.
"I'll tell Mama you were here."
"I need the thread she's spun. I have another load of wool for her. I need to be on my way. Got other people waiting."
The man had a whole bevy of women who spun wool for him. Didn't he ever give his poor spinsters a chance to catch their breath?
"Well, I'm afraid that Mama hasn't had time to. .»
Mr. Tuchma
"What's… what's that? Dear Creator.
Oba looked where he was pointing-at the new fireplace being built against the stone wall that separated the house from the barn. Oba thought his work was quite well done-sturdy and straight. He had studied other fireplaces and learned how they were done. Even though the chimney wasn't built all the way up yet, he was using it. He had put it to good advantage.
Oba saw then, what Mr. Tuchma
Mama's jawbone.
Well, wasn't this just something. Oba hadn't expected visitors, especially snoopy visitors. What gave this man the right to poke his nose into other people's houses, just because they spun wool for him?
Mr. Tachma
When Mr. Tuchma
Oba, a new man, a man of action, could hardly let that happen. Oba was an important man, he'd learned. Rahl blood coursed through his veins, after all. Important men acted-handled problems as they arose. Quickly. Efficiently. Decisively.
Oba seized Mr. Tuchma
With a grunt of effort, Oba plunged his knife up into Mr. Tuchma
Oba followed the obnoxious Mr. Tachma
Mr. Tuchma
Oba had nothing against Mr. Tuchma
It was because he was important, he knew.
It was probably time for changes. Oba couldn't stay around and keep having people who knew him pestering him with questions. He was too important to be in this little nothing of a place, anyway.
Mr. Tuchma
And then, the time had come for Oba to take up his important life as a new man and to move on to better places.
Just as the realization struck him that he would never again have to go in the barn and see the mound of frozen muck that he hadn't been able to dislodge with the scoop shovel, despite the ranting insistence of his lunatic mother, it occurred to him that if he had used the pickaxe, that would have made quick work of it.
Well, wasn't that just something.