CHAPTER 17
Mary Jo got her car and a job - in that order. Three months later she got a husband. Ma bought some nice material and made her wedding dress. Mary Jo made enough money at her job to buy one, but Ma wanted to make it and she couldn't think of anything else she'd rather walk down the isle in than something Ma made.
Pa gave her away and Billy Ray made a happy best man. Several of her co-workers were bride's maids and one of Logan's daughters was a flower girl. Even Uncle Del was there. Barrett's mother cried. She said it was because she was so happy for them. That seemed a strange reason to cry, but Barrett assured her it was a common thing. She had so much to learn about socializing.
Mrs. Monroe wanted to give them a home as a wedding present, but Barrett said it was too much. Instead, he agreed to let her loan him the money, interest free, to build a home on the forty acres she had bought next to Pa's land. She was a delightfully sneaky woman who found clever ways to help people who were too proud to accept charity.
As it turned out, Ma didn't lose her onliest little girl. In fact, she gained a bunch of in-laws. Pa didn't have to worry about leaving them alone when he went away on a job. Barrett and Mary Jo were a short mule ride away and Ma got a phone anyway. There was a county program for people like Billy Ray and Barrett convinced Pa that his taxes had helped pay for it. They got the generator Pa wanted, but he said wiring that old house would make as much sense as putting an electric fence under a water fall. Pa said a freezer wouldn't be practical because when the electric went out, they'd lose everything in it. Uncle Dell and Barrett were exploring the idea of solar energy.
Meanwhile, Mary Jo, aka Mrs. Monroe, got a nice house with electricity and running water. She sometimes felt guilty about living the good life while Ma and Billy Ray struggled, but she still helped with the canning. Pa even had a propane tank put in so they didn't have to depend on wood to cook and eat. It didn't hardly seem right that they sweltered in the summer while Mary Jo and Barrett had central air and heat. It wasn't fair, but Barrett said it was their choice.
Mary Jo enjoyed all the luxuries of their new home, but the one she liked most was her computer. There were no more stacks of paper. Everything was neatly filed in the computer. She even had her own office. Maybe some day she'd get that book published, but she was having way too much fun to devote as much time to it as she did in the past. Instead, her time off work was devoted mostly to trekking through the forest with Barrett. She was learning how little she actually knew about the forest, and rationalized that it was research for her book. Sometimes they hiked and sometimes they rode the mules, but they always enjoyed that time together. Often Billy Ray went with them.