"Cackling Their Way Into the Kitchen"

In a flash it was all over and the family dispersed, with the women cackling their way into the kitchen and the children cat-and-mousing one another in and out of creaky screen doors. The men shuffled and shifted their weight, looking at their shoes, nodding, each waiting for his turn to speak. Occasionally a contemptuous snort would roll out over the steady, low rumble of mutters, grunts and farts. T.J. looked at his father. He was out of place. In a room full of doughy pastiness, Tom Latham’s red skin stretched over his bony frame like a roped-down tarp.
T.J. wanted to follow his mother into the kitchen, like he used to as a child, listening in on the gossip about cousins and uncles jumping on trains or getting into fights or drinking themselves to hell.
But T.J. would go with the men today. He knew that he was no longer welcome with the women. He was too old.
So he would follow his father, but he would be thinking of Aunt Lillie’s hair, the waif in the homespun dress, and Beatrice, the girl in the window.