Visits and Debts
Originally posted to the LJ community fmagen; now lightly edited and put on for your convenience.
Dotty Kilgore toyed with the idea of ignoring whoever was knocking at the door. Her husband, bless his sweet soul, had tried sorting out the bills on his own the other night and now they were hopelessly disordered. While Dotty did love the farm and all the work her family put into it, she didn't relish the idea of letting somebody in to gawk at the sorry state of their finances. February was not a good month for farmers.
The visitor banged on the door again. Dotty sighed, fluttering the receipts and accounts in front of her. This was the country. You owned up to your mistakes or you were eaten by them.
She pushed herself away from the table, trying to remember if they had any of the expensive 'guest tea' left. "Come in!" she called.
The door creaked open. In a voice crackly with age and tobacco, her visitor remarked, "I was beginning to think you weren't going to let me in." Old Granny Pinako shuffled through the doorway, kicking the door closed behind her.
Dotty's polite smile melted into a real one. "Pinako! I'm sorry, I was just doing the accounts. Please, sit down. Would you like any tea?"
Her guest nodded matter-of-factly, plunking a heavy brown bottle onto a bare spot on the kitchen table. "Thank you, Dorothy. That would be wonderful." As Dotty watched, Pinako produced a tobacco pouch and filled up her pipe for a smoke.
They made small talk for a time, Dotty fiddling with china and the tea strainer while Pinako puffed at her pipe. They talked about their neighbors and the ramifications of that bad storm two days ago. It was the simple conversation that anybody in this town could've had, an exchange of gossip, nothing more. Dotty didn't think so.
Granny Pinako didn't make social calls. People made social calls on her. Decades of being the nearest doctor in a farming community left almost everyone in a forty-mile radius indebted to her. Dotty's debt was bigger than most—her son was a hemophiliac, and most people had thought he'd never live to see his twelfth birthday.
But Granny Pinako was here, with a gift bottle of fine whiskey and enough tobacco for a good long chat.
Dotty's fingers suddenly couldn't seem to get a grip on the lid of the honey jar.
Right on cue, Granny Pinako set the pipe aside. "How's that boy of yours doing? He's eighteen now, right?"
"Yes, we just had his birthday the other week. Ferdy's doing very well. He says the owner of the bakery's thinking of giving him a raise." Dotty searched Pinako's face. Nobody brought up Ferdy's age without a reason.
"It's a good thing he was too old to play with Trisha's boys when he was small," said Pinako. "Ed and Al have always been quite the troublemakers. No sense of responsibility. I don't know how many times I had to patch up them and Winry after one of their adventures."
Behind her, the kettle began to whine.
"I suppose that's just the way of all young boys," Dotty said lightly. "Goodness knows Ferdy was careless enough. Takes after his father, that way." She stood quickly, almost knocking over her chair. "I guess the water's ready."
"Ed and Al—their father was an alchemist. They take after him in a lot of ways, too."
"Do they?" Dotty almost grabbed the hot kettle bare-handed.
"Alchemy's a very difficult science to learn. I knew their father for years and never picked up a thing. He told me once that it takes a certain amount of natural talent to grasp the basics. Any alchemist who doesn't master that understanding isn't terribly likely to make it to a ripe old age in one piece." A pause. "Of course, pigheaded determination can take you pretty far. It just doesn't breed quite the same respect for the rules."
Dotty fixed her attention on the teapot she had just filled. The cozy it wore was a hideous, twisted mess of old red yarn, the product of her son's boredom years ago after he'd been confined to bed for a bad fall. Trisha's boys had found him in a ditch and got a nearby hired hand to carry him all the way home.
She didn't trust herself to speak.
"Those two missed their mother very much," Pinako said gently. "It's natural for children their age to think they can do something about death. They think that the rules just don't apply to them right up until it's too late." Granny looked down. "They'll be staying at Rockbell Automail from now on."
Dotty let out a breath she didn't remember holding. Giddy with relief, she turned to face Granny Pinako, ask her why the hell she'd scared her like that—
The whiskey bottle met her eyes and the accusations died unsaid. Dotty turned back to the tea.
A full minute of silence passed. Dotty brought the teapot to the table, arranging cups and saucers and spoons with a precision her mother-in-law couldn't have faulted. After at last pouring the tea into each delicate cup, Dotty sat down across from Pinako and folded her hands in her lap.
Granny Pinako spooned honey into her tea. Metal and porcelain clinked noisily as she stirred.
Dotty didn't feel like playing along anymore. "What would be the best way to handle this?"
Tink tink. Pinako tapped the spoon on the rim of the cup to rid it of the last few drops of tea. "Nobody talks about it," she answered finally. "You let them know what they need to know, and that's the end of that. No visiting for at least a month unless it's an emergency. If any strangers come to town, nobody knows anything about this but me." She brought the teacup to her lips. "Oh, this is very good tea. Thank you."
Dotty nodded, then took a polite sip of her own. It was good tea.
Granny stood and picked up her pipe. "I should go. Winry's all worn out and it's only a matter of time before Alphonse panics and does something silly. I'm going to be very busy for a while. I'd appreciate it if you handled the rumors while I'm gone." She tapped at a stray sheet of expenses Dotty had forgotten to clear outof the way."If you ever need a loan, don't be afraid to ask. I have quite a bit set aside, and Risembool's always taken care of her own." She was gone before Dotty could remember to tell her good-bye.
Outside, the wind picked up, rattling what few leaves remained on the maple tree. Dotty rose and tossed the tea in her cup down the drain. Briefly she hesitated at the table, one hand over a pencil, the other over the bottle.After a moment, she filled the cup back up with the whiskey and put the bottle away. She needed to think about this a little while.
She'd talked to Ed and Al's father twice, once at a dance and once at the wedding. He hadn't been a very sociable fellow. Supposedly he was an excellent alchemist, but she'd only seen him in action once, when someone's wineglass had slipped from their fingers in the middle of the dance floor. A little chalk had restored it to perfection.
But you couldn't do that with people. Nobody would even think about trying something that stupid, that out-and-out deadly. Even she knew the price of trying to restore the dead. Surely those children wouldn't have done such a thing. Probably Pinako was just… exaggerating. She'd been known to blow injuries out of proportion in order to ensure that they wouldn't happen again. Usually, she only did that to children, but you never knew what that woman was going to do next.
The door banged open. Dotty started, almost knocking over her teacup. "Sweetheart! Everything's fine, the farrier said Ragamuffin's hooves are in the best shape he's seen them." Her husband grinned at her, circling the table to give her a kiss. "You taste like whiskey," he told her.
Dotty shrugged, tipping her head up for another kiss. After obliging her, he sat down beside her with a sigh to wrap one arm around her, enjoying the peace of a Risembool afternoon. Neither spoke. They didn't have to.
Then he sniffed. "Has somebody been smoking in here?"
"Granny Pinako came by," she told him. "Brought us a bottle of very nice whiskey. It's in the cupboard next to the good china."
He licked his lips, standing to fetch it with a wide grin. Once he had the bottle in his hand, he turned back to the table and flopped back into the chair. "She doesn't usually smoke indoors," he remarked. "And I don't remember the last time she made a purely social call. Is everything okay?"
Dotty remembered Granny's downcast eyes, the pointed mention of her son, the way she had tiptoed around the topic at hand the way Pinako Rockbell had never been known to do.
"Not really," she said. She patted the table next to her. "It's about Trisha's boys, Ed and Al."