Maud, John Tucker’s elder sister, was tall, spare, and in both posture and topography absolutely as straight as a plank. Longevity apparently ran in the family, because she looked ancient, though solid and in no way ready to leave this earth: a long, thin slab of a woman, a gray rock, with a lot of cracks and grooves. Her husband, Pete, if slightly taller, looked agelessly similar, as if they had grown to resemble each other over the course of the longest marriage Emma had ever heard of. Tomorrow, their children would arrive to celebrate their sixty-seventh wedding anniversary. Which was why, on January 7, Maud told Emma, “After ye look at the tup, we was hoping ye’d help us cut doon a tree.” A Christmas tree. Maud, Pete, and Emma discussed the tree on their walk toward the ram’s pasture. “To spruce oop the place”—she passed a look to her husband, as if they shared a joke—“for the wee lads and lasses. All the grandchildren and two great-grand-’uns,” she announced proudly, “be coming here, ye see.”
