“Let’s play dominos,” I said. So we got out the card table and the dominos and played for three or four hours; neither one of us was sleepy. I got a lot of good hands and won more games than Gid.
“Domino,” he said, and I laid down my hand and shuffled for a long time. Gid had asked to see the one letter Jimmy wrote, and I had lied about it and said it was lost. Actually I had hidden it in a shoebox. I felt dry inside and out when I lied to Gid—he was so trusting and it was so easy to do. And part of me wanted to show him the letter; if I had he never could have left me again. But thank God I didn’t.
“Well,” he said. “Maybe you’ll locate it one of these days. We can’t do nothing staying up.”
It was hot that night; no breeze at all. I told Gid he ought to take his undershirt off, but he didn’t. He went right off to sleep. I got up three or four times during the night to sprinkle the sheets with water. I couldn’t get cool; I was dripping sweat. Once Gid woke up and raised up on his elbows a minute and seen I was awake.
“We’ve covered a lot of miles together, haven’t we?” he said, and then went back to sleep. He always slept on his stomach. We had covered a lot of miles together—and we had covered a lot when we weren’t together, too, I thought. Tomorrow night I would just have the moon and an empty bed. I put my hand on his neck and there was sweat in the little wrinkles of his skin.
I guess I slept a little; Gid was pulling on his Levi’s when I woke up.
“I’ll go get the chores,” he said. “You stay here and rest.”
“I can stay in bed the rest of my life, if I want to,” I said. And I got up and cooked while he tended the animals. We didn’t have much to say that morning. I went in to town with him so I could get my car. When we got to the post office I leaned over and kissed his cheek.
“Many thanks for staying,” I said.
“Why, Molly?” he said. “He was the only son we’ll ever have.”
As soon as I got home I went to the hall closet and got the letter out of the shoebox and took it to the trash barrel and read it agin.
DEAR MOLLY:
This is just a note to tell you I won’t be home after the war, so don’t you’all look for me. If I never see Texas agin it will be too soon as there are lots of other parts of the world I like better.
Joe wrote me that you was afraid I would marry some Filipino girl and bring her home without telling you. Don’t worry, I am not going to marry no girl, Filipino or otherwise. I’m not very religious no more, this war has caused that, and I don’t take after girls any more, I take after men. I have a friend who is rich, and I mean rich, he says if I will stay with him I will never have to work a day, so I am going to. I guess we will live in Los Angeles if we don’t get killed.
JIMMY
I hope his rich friend loved him. He was a cruel boy, but I guess I had it all coming. After I burned the letter I went and got the basket and gathered yesterday’s eggs.
Seven
I GUESS GID TOLD JOHNNY, BECAUSE HE CAME OVER RIGHT after dinner that day that I burned the letter. I was glad to see him; he was just the one I was in a mood for. We sat on the glider awhile too.
“Did you see Gid?” I said. “How did you think he looked?”
He kinda grinned. “He’s taking it hard,” he said, “because he decided not to work this afternoon. That’s unusual. The last time Gid took an afternoon off was the day Sarah was born.”
“It could have been worse,” I said. And in two minutes I had told him about the letter. Telling him didn’t make me feel any better—it just made me feel disloyal to Jimmy. But I had to tell it.
“That’s terrible,” Johnny said. But the surprising thing was, Johnny was in a good mood. He tried to act solemn and sad, but he just wasn’t—Jimmy had never been close to him. Once in a while he would grin to himself about something.
And I guess I was a bad mother to the end, because I began to feel good too. It was such a relief, somehow, that Johnny wasn’t really sad. Johnny could still sit there and enjoy life—I guess I had thought everybody would stop enjoying it forever because my sons were dead.
“You know what I’d like to do this afternoon?” he said. “I’d like to gather up a pretty woman like you and go fish that big tank in the southwest corner. We ain’t fished that tank in nearly a year.”
“That’s right,” I said. “It was last September, wasn’t it, that we went down there?”
“Well, you’re the pretty woman I had in mind,” he said. “Do you want to go?”
“Did you know I’m forty-three years old?” I said. “That’s about too old to be thinking about pretty.”
“Why, I’m older than that, and I think about it all the time,” he said, “Besides, I know a lot of young pullets that ain’t thirty yet who’d trade looks with you this afternoon.”
“It’s because I’ve had you to keep me fresh,” I said, and I smiled too. It felt good to really smile.
“I’ll get us some worms,” he said. “You get your fishing clothes on.”
I packed the old picnic box with some bacon and eggs and potatoes and the coffeepot and part of a mincemeat pie I had left over in the icebox. I thought we might just stay out and have supper by the tank if we felt like it.
“Well, I didn’t know we was going camping,” he said, when he saw me putting the box in his pickup.
“I just put in a skillet and some stuff to eat in case we don’t catch nothing,” I said. “I thought we might have a fish fry and do a little night fishin’.”
“I got enough worms to catch half the fish in the ocean,” he said. “Look at them big fat grubs.” We put the poles in, and a few quilts to sit on, and left.
THE TANK was still as a mirror, and the fish weren’t biting much. “I guess they don’t want to risk getting yanked up in this heat,” Johnny said. We spread the quilts at the south corner of the tank dam, under three cottonwood trees. The trees made pretty good shade.
And Johnny couldn’t resist shade. Before we’d been there an hour he was sound asleep on the quilts, and I was left to do the fishing. I didn’t mind. We just had three poles, and they weren’t much trouble to watch. In the summertime I usually did my sewing while we fished. Johnny’s shirt had a rip in the shoulder, and I sewed it up and patched one of his socks while he slept. The tank and the country around it were just as still: there wasn’t even enough breeze to stir the cottonwoods. I watched the water and sewed and fished a little, and couldn’t keep much on my mind. Since Jimmy was dead, I could imagine that we had been closer that we were, and I let myself make up a lot of little scenes that never happened, where we were having fun together. Later I got to believing a few of them. I made up that Gid and I had married, and one fall he and Jimmy and me went to Dallas to the Fair. I never had been to the Fair, but Jimmy and Joe both went once, and Joe tried to bring me home some cotton candy; he didn’t have much luck. Johnny slept two hours and I only caught four fish worth keeping: three nice little cat and one good-sized perch. I quit on worms and tried a little bacon for bait, but had no luck. I was feeling too lazy to go catch grasshoppers. When fish don’t bite you might as well leave them alone.
About five I woke Johnny up, because I knew when he slept too long he always felt sour and sluggish.
“Supper ready?” he said.
“I just do the catching,” I said. “You get to do the cleaning.”
“I believe I’ll swim a little, first,” he said. “You want to come in?”
I didn’t think it would fit too well with the day, for me to go in, so I said I would just dunk my feet. Johnny and I swum together a lot in the summertime, usually. I sat on the dam and cooled my feet down by the four fish, and he swum the tank a time or two and came out spluttering. He looked so cool I wished I had swum after all.
“Let’s have a little target practice,” he said, and he got his twenty-two out of the pickup and threw three cowchips out in the water and we shot at them till we had used up a box of shells. I had shot that gun so much I
could shoot it nearly as well as he could.
THEN WE dug out a little place not too far from the water, and I laid the fire and got out the supper stuff while he cleaned the fish. The sun was easing on down and it turned the water gold when you looked across it. Five of my old cows came to drink on the other side of the tank and stood and looked across at us and bawled. I guess they were hoping I had a little cowfeed for them, but they never came on around. I greased the skillet and cooked the fish and some of the bacon and made the coffee, and we put the potatoes where they would bake. I had forgot to bring any pepper, but it was a pretty good supper, anyway. The sun went into the mesquites over west of us, and just a few streaks of light got through and struck the water. Then it was gone and there was just the afterglow, and the killdees and bullbats were swooping down over the water.
“You ever eat a killdee?” Johnny said. “They don’t make two mouthfuls.” We seen some crows going to roost. The dam’s shadow began to stretch across the water.
“My potato didn’t get quite done,” I said.
“Now if you ask me,” he said, “this is the good life.” He was leaning back on one elbow drinking his second cup of coffee.
“It is good,” I said. “I wish the boys could have lived some on it.”
“They did, some of it,” he said. “At least Joe did. I reckon old Jim was the one missed out.”
“Reckon they’ll ever find Jody?” I said.
“No, I don’t imagine.”
Mine would just be scattered, I guess. Dad was buried in Decatur, where his ma had lived, and Eddie was in Chickisha. I forget the name of the place where they buried Jim, and Joe was nobody knew where. I felt calm and rested, but pretty sad.
Johnny moved over by me. “What would you think if I was to steal a kiss from a pretty forty-three-year-old woman who’s lost her boys?” he said. “She can cook the best fish I ever ate.”
That was a funny speech, coming from Johnny. His voice kinda trembled. I smiled and leaned back against him.
“I guess you would just be kissing her because you feel sorry for her,” I said.
“I guess that wouldn’t have nothing at all to do with it,” he said.
We kissed once and sat by the tank listening to the bullfrogs. There wasn’t much moon that night, just a little sliver. We heard a snake get a frog, and the frog squeaked a long time. That sound always made me wince. Johnny turned on the pickup lights so we could gather up the stuff.
WHEN WE got to the house he helped me get the stuff in, and I figured he would stay all night. But he kissed me agin at the back gate, and went on.
“Aw, I’m too rambunctious,” he said, when I asked him why. “You got too much on your mind to have me around. I’ll be over in a night or two.”
“Well, I hope so,” I said. I hadn’t had a bath in three days, so I went in and took one. The bed was empty and there wasn’t no moon either, but I went right to sleep. I guess Johnny knew I was completely worn out.
Eight
ONE DAY THE LAST OF AUGUST I CLEANED OUT THE CELLAR. I had preserves and canned goods in there going back ten years or more. Some of it I had put up when the boys were little and we were real poor; I thought we had better keep as much stuff on hand as we could, in case of a hard winter. But I put up so much we never could use it all, and ever year we would wind up a little farther ahead of ourselves. Half of it had probably spoiled. I was the only one left, and I knew I couldn’t ever eat half of the good stuff, much less the bad. What looked bad I threw away, and what looked good I stacked in the smokehouse, so I could get Johnny to haul it into Thalia and give it to some poor folks there.
After I got the stuff sorted I set what was left of the jars off on the floor, so I could wash the shelves. Even as cool as the cellar was, it was a hot, dusty job. About halfway through I climbed out and started to the house to get a drink, and there was Gid, standing in the yard waiting for me. He looked all tense.
“Why, hello,” I said. “How long have you been standing out here in the sun?” It was only the second time he had been by since the day we heard about Jimmy.
“Just a few minutes,” he said. “You look like you been working.”
“Cleaning out the cellar,” I said. “Can you stay for dinner?”
“I don’t imagine,” he said. “I just wanted to talk to you a little while.”
But that was just what he thought he wanted, I knew that the minute I seen him. Gid had come to me keyed up like that too many times for me not to know what he was needing. I wisht I hadn’t been so hot and dusty.
“Well, come on in,” I said. “I’ll at least get some ice tea down you while we talk.”
But I didn’t have no intention of fixing him any. I knew Gid too well. If I made him sit around and talk when he didn’t want to talk, he would just get self-conscious, and get ashamed of himself, and that would spoil things for him before he ever touched me. The only way with Gid was to keep him from having to face what was on his mind until he was already in the bed. When I could manage that, he loved it. He loved it as much as Eddie or more; but it was just very seldom that he could let himself go.
When we went into the kitchen he was walking right behind me, and I turned real quick so that he ran right up against me. He kissed me without thinking, and I knew I had him for once, so I could forget it too. I wisht I could have gone to the bathroom and washed off a little of the dust, but it didn’t really matter. Gid was loose, and that was the main thing; unless he was, neither of us could be.
I slept awhile—I didn’t usually—and when I woke up Gid was sitting by me on the bed, washing my face and neck with a washrag.
“You had dust on your eyelids,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“I’m sweaty,” I said. “Let me get some ice tea, I already got some made.”
I went and got two glasses and brought them back to the bedroom. He was still sitting on the edge of the bed holding the washrag, but he had put his pants on.
And he had the saddest look on his face. I didn’t know why; I felt so happy. I handed him his tea and crawled back on the bed.
“What’s the matter, hon?” I said.
He pitched the washrag on the bedside table and didn’t say anything for a minute. He squeezed one of my feet.
“I was just thinking about you,” he said. “I guess I’m still crazy in love with you, after all these years. What I come out here for today was to tell you I wasn’t going to do this any more. I guess I’m sad because it was our last time.”
“Oh now,” I said. I smiled, but it hurt my stomach, and I wanted to grab him and hold him. Gid had never said anything like that before, and I knew the instant he said it that he meant it, and that he would stick by it. And I knew I oughtn’t to say a word: the more I said, the more we would lose. But I loved him, so I fought anyway.
“Well, it just about kills me when I think of it,” he said. “But it has just got to be that way, Molly.”
I waited a minute. “Gid,” I said, “it ain’t one bit of my business, but I’ve always wanted to ask you, and I might just as well. Do you and Mabel ever do this?”
He kinda twisted his mouth. “Oh yes, of course,” he said. “Three or four times a year, I guess. But Mabel don’t have nothing to do with what I just said.”
“Well, Gid,” I said. “That ain’t very much. If she don’t care to give it and I do, what’s the harm in letting me? Why make it hard on both of us? Don’t you know I need to be able to give somebody a little something?”
He didn’t say anything; he still had one hand on my foot.
“Are you ashamed of me, too?” I said.
“Ashamed of you ‘too’?” he said. “Who’s good enough to be ashamed of you?”
“Jimmy was ashamed of me,” I said. I didn’t feel happy at all, any more.
“Who I’m ashamed of is us,” he said. “The both of us. And Jimmy’s part of the reason I made up my mind like I have.”
“Why is it you’re ashamed
and I’m not?” I said. “Am I just sorry? I always thought really caring about a person made a difference in what was right and wrong.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was raised to believe that what we done is wrong. The Bible says it’s wrong. The churches say it’s wrong. The law says it’s wrong. And I’ve always believed it was wrong—except when we did it. But any no-count bastard can get around something that way. Lots of people think stealing’s wrong, except when it’s them stealing. But if this here’s wrong, it’s wrong when we do it too, now ain’t it?”
My leg was trembling. I knew I had come to the wall, and I don’t know why I even argued, but I had to.
“Gid, I’m just me,” I said. “I ain’t the law, and I ain’t the church. All I say is, if it’s wrong, then let’s go ahead and have the guts to be wrong. We can’t but go to hell for it, and that would be better than doing without you.”
“We could do a lot worse than that,” he said, and he put his head in his hands. “We could have another Jimmy. You ain’t too old. And I’ve got a little girl now that’s got to be thought of too. We ruined one child’s life and we could ruin another. That’s worse than any going to hell.”
There wasn’t one word I could say to that.
“Molly, you could marry Johnny,” he said. “He’s always loved you too.”
“Johnny don’t want to marry,” I said. “And I don’t either. You know you’ve always been my mainstay.”
“Then why did you marry that sorry bastard you married?” he said. He’d been wanting to say it twenty years. “Why didn’t you marry me? It’s just about ruined my life, Molly!”
It had just about ruined his life, and I was to blame. And Jimmy’s too, and I was to blame for that. And Gid was going to quit me. That was the way.
“I wish I knew what all was involved in this loving somebody,” he said. “Mostly a lot of damn heartbreak, I know that.”
“I know we’ve done at least a little something that was good,” I said. “Please don’t quit me, Gid.”
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