The Stubbornest Broad on Earth

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There’s always one. Tell the population Mount Saint Helens is about to blow its top and they ought to evacuate and somebody will set his feet and refuse to do so. Tell the town Hurricane Andrew’s on its way and deadly and they’ve got to head for high ground, and somebody will say, “No, absolutely not.” If the governments of Earth thought it would be any different this time, they had another think coming. Tell the population of a planet it’s got to evacuate because old Sol is about to go nova and we’ve all got to pick up and move out—no doubt about it and several bilhon years too soon—and there’ll still be that one.

That one was Cora Jowett. She was ninety-seven years old and admitted to every last one of them. Tiny as a bird, straight as an arrow, she’d farmed all her life and she was damned if she’d leave the land she’d sweated over all those years.

Her kids and grandkids all had their places on the evacuation fleet, but no amount of talking from them or from the sheriff would budge her, not even if the sheriff was Harry Johnson, her favorite grandson. She’d set her feet, she’d fold her arms, and she’d simply say, “No. This is my home. I was born here, and I’ll die here.”

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