“You just change your clothes,” he said, shoving her in the direction of the bedroom. “I said we’re going to get ’em and by God that’s all there is to it. What do you mean calling my daughter a bitch? You’re her mother, ain’t you?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” Lois said, but she didn’t feel like arguing. She felt sorry for Gene, and pity always made her feel wretched. She already had visions of a horrible scene somewhere in Oklahoma. She stood in the doorway and heard Gene call the highway patrol and ask them to stop Jacy’s car. When he hung up he seemed to feel better. A man should react to such an event in a certain way, and he was doing what he should.
“I won’t have her living over no poolhall, not even for ten days,” he said. “Hurry up and get changed, and don’t call my daughter a bitch again.”
“No promises,” Lois said. “You know what she’s doing as well as I do, Gene. She doesn’t give a damn about Sonny, she just wants to hurt us and get a little attention while she’s doing it. What is that but bitchery?”
“Well, she comes by it honest,” he said, looking his wife in the eye. “I know right where she gets it.”
Lois merely nodded. “I’m sure you do,” she said. She obediently went into the bedroom and put on more somber clothes.
SONNY AND JACY, meanwhile, were off on the realest of adventures: running away to get married. Jacy had an expensive suitcase and enough clothes to last her a week, while Sonny, who owned no suitcase, had a canvas overnight bag and an extra pair of slacks hung on a hanger in the back seat. They were in the convertible, and Jacy drove. Sonny didn’t yet trust himself to drive on the highway with one eye.
Jacy was wearing a lovely white dress she had bought at Neiman’s the week before, to wear to fraternity parties. She had some new sunglasses, and drove barefoot. It was great fun to be running away to get married—both of them were delighted with themselves. All Sonny had to do was lean back and watch Jacy and imagine the bliss that was going to be his in only a few hours. It was a bright, hot day and there were drops of sweat on Jacy’s upper lip. Neither of them minded the heat, though. They stopped in Lawton and had milk shakes, probably the last milk shakes they would ever have as single people. Both of them were hungry and they sucked up every milky drop.
Then they went on to Altus, a popular place for getting married. It was late afternoon when they arrived—Sonny stopped at a filling station and asked where they might find a justice of the peace. “Why there’s one right up the road,” the attendant said. “What part of Texas you all from?”
They told him and drove on. It turned out to be absurdly simple to get married. The justice of the peace lived in an old unpainted frame house and came to the door in his khakis and undershirt.
“Been having myself a little snooze,” he said. “What part of Texas y’all from?”
He surveyed their license casually, got a pencil, licked the point, and filled in what he was supposed to fill in. Sonny would have preferred him to use a fountain pen, since pencil erased so easily, but he didn’t say anything.
“I better go get Ma to witness,” he said, belching. “I guess I could put a shirt on too, if I can find one.”
“Get many marriages up here?” Sonny asked, to be polite.
“Not as many as I’d like,” the J.P. said. “Not like I used to when we was a Christian country. Used to be people feared God, but not no more. I don’t marry half as many kids as I used to—fornication don’t mean nothing anymore. Kids nowadays fornicate like frogs, they don’t never think of marryin’. What decent ones is left is mostly hifalutin’ kids, church weddin’s and recepshuns and such as that. Ma! Got some customers.”
An old woman wearing a sunbonnet and gray work gloves came in from the backyard. She was a thin little woman and looked tired, but she nodded politely. “Pardon this getup,” she said. “I was out getting’ the last of my black-eyes. Garden’s just about gone for this year. What part of Texas you all from?”
The old man had wandered out, but he came back into the living room buttoning a khaki shirt over his belly. He stuffed the shirttail unevenly into his pants and shuffled over to an old pigeonhole desk to find his service.
“Y’all don’t mind if I read this, do you?” he asked. “I ain’t got a memory worth a damn.”
They didn’t mind him reading, but Jacy did mind him standing so close to them. He had a body odor that almost made her gag, but he winked at her with mild lechery and seemed to think she found him attractive.
“Wouldn’t mind marrying you myself, honey,” he said. “You got more meat on you than Ma has.”
“Don’t be sassing, now,” his wife said. “You can wait till I get this sunbonnet off before you start.”
He read the service heavily, sometimes stopping to trace his place with a forefinger. When he asked about rings Sonny shook his head. “She’s marryin’ a cheap skate, Ma,” the J.P. said.
When it was over Sonny gave Jacy a quick kiss, but she wanted a long romantic one so they kissed for almost a minute while the old lady wandered off to start shelling her black-eyed peas. As soon as they quit kissing the J.P. came over and placed a wet kiss of his own on Jacy’s cheek—it made her furious. Sonny gave him a ten dollar bill and he stuffed it in his pocket contemptuously.
“Yeah, a cheap skate,” he said. As they left he followed them out on the porch. “Hell, you’ve got a collaspable,” he hollered, when they were getting in the car. “Used to be collaspables were twenty dollar weddin’s ever time. Y’all got any fornicatin’ friends down in Texas tell ’em to cut it out and come up here to see me. I’ll set ’em right with the Lord as cheap as the next man.”
“Why he’s just awful,” Jacy said. “I never dreamed they let people like him do marryin’.”
“Anyway, we’re man and wife,” Sonny said, barely able to believe it. At the first stop sign they kissed again and wiggled their tongues enthusiastically. Jacy was for going to Lake Texoma to spend their wedding night, and Sonny was agreeable to anything.
They left Altus in a high good mood and drove back to Lawton, where they stopped to eat. In Lawton, for some reason, Jacy began to feel a little depressed. A strange thought occurred to her. They were in the parking lot of the restaurant where they were going to eat, so they kissed for a while, as newlyweds should. While they were kissing Sonny got excited and fondled her in a place in which he was very interested. It was all right for him to do it, of course, but a little later, while she was in the rest room of the steak house, it occurred to her that maybe her parents wouldn’t have the police arrest them after all. Maybe they would just wash their hands of it and go on watching television. It might even be that they thought she ought to live with Sonny, since she had married him.
That was a very sobering thought: to think that they didn’t love her enough to want to keep her from living over a poolhall.
Thinking about it took away her appetite, and though she tried to appear gay she really only picked at her fried shrimp. They ordered beer with the meal and drank it self-consciously. It occurred to Jacy that even if her folks sent the cops they might miss them in the dark, or they might even get to the motel before the cops started looking. The thought depressed her more and more.
Sonny noticed that marriage was making Jacy a little nervous, but he supposed it was just worry over her parents. He was sure she would calm down once they got to Lake Texoma. But the strange thing was, the closer they came to the lake, the more nervous she became. He scooted over next to her and patted her leg, but that just seemed to make her more edgy.
When Sonny scooted close to her Jacy really began to feel funny. She realized suddenly that she just didn’t want a wedding night with him at all—she had been wrong to think she did. She didn’t know whether she even wanted to kiss him anymore or not. Kissing someone who just had one eye was kind of creepy.
Then, just outside Madill, a cop stopped them and everything changed completely. Jacy ceased to feel the least bit nervous.
/> “What part of Texas y’all from?” the patrolman asked, holding out his hand for Jacy’s license. He flashed a flashlight in their faces.
“Newlyweds, ain’t you?” he said, when they told him where they were from.
They admitted it.
“Well, better follow me in,” he said. “I think somebody’s lookin’ for you.”
“But we ain’t done nothin’ wrong,” Sonny said. Ain’t we got a right to get married? How can you arrest us, just like that?”
“I ain’t arrestin’ you,” the patrolman said, peeling a stick of chewing gum. “I just want you to come with me, till we find out. I don’t have no idea what you’ve got a right to do.”
“I guess we better follow him, honey,” Jacy said. She turned to Sonny and kissed him promisingly. “I’ll just be heartbroken if my folks have done this,” she added, kissing him again lightly as she put the car in gear.
The patrolman led them to a jailhouse in Madill. He didn’t put them in a cell or anything, but they had to sit in the jail for almost two hours and that was almost as depressing as being in a cell. Jacy realized she was tragically in love, and clung to Sonny tightly. They even got in some nice kissing, but in a way it was depressing, at least to Sonny. Jacy’s folks were in Lawton and were coming after her. He couldn’t figure out the justice of it.
“I thought anybody had the right to get married,” he said, several times. The patrolman had gone on about his business. There were only two people besides themselves in the whole jail: one was a prisoner and the other was a redheaded jail-keeper named Elmer.
“Well you might have the right and you might not,” Elmer said. “I couldn’t say. I ain’t gonna hold no gun on you, but if you leave you’ll just get caught agin. You might as well wait here as anywhere. If you’re thirsty we got a Coke machine you’re welcome to use.”
While they were waiting the sheriff came in, a fat, white-headed man. He took one look at them and concluded they didn’t have any right to do anything.
“Kids, we really oughta lock you up,” he said. “Running off from home, making your parents chase all the way up here. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.”
Sonny didn’t either, but he knew one thing for sure: he was never going to get to sleep with Jacy. They would never be together in an actual bed, not for a whole night or even part of a night. Somehow his whole life had worked out to keep that one thing from happening, and it was the one thing he wanted most of all. He was not at all sure he would ever get to make love to anyone he cared about, much less to Jacy. In the hot little jail lobby, sitting on the one bench, he couldn’t even remember why he had ever thought he would get to sleep with her.
It disappointed him terribly and made him feel a little sick and very tired. About ten o’clock Elmer let the one prisoner come in and watch the late movie with him on the jail’s old Magnavox TV. That was what they were all doing when Lois and Gene arrived. Sonny was so tired by then that he wasn’t even scared of Gene, even though Gene started yelling at him the minute he stepped through the jailhouse door.
“You’re fired, you whelp!” he said. “What do you mean, runnin’ off with my daughter, tellin’ her she’s gonna live over a poolhall?”
He would have gone on, but Elmer cut him off.
“Just take him out in the yard to bawl him out, Mister,” he said. “I can’t hear this movie if you bawl him out in here.” It was a Randolph Scott movie, and they had all been sort of enjoying it.
As they went out the door Jacy clung to Sonny, crying bitterly. Mrs. Farrow said nothing at all, but Gene was still mad as cats.
“I’ll bawl him out all right,” he said. “Think I worked like a dog all my life so my daughter could end up over a poolhall?”
“We was gonna get another apartment,” Sonny said, though they had not actually given the matter much thought.
“I bet you was,” Gene said. He grabbed Jacy by the arm and jerked her away from Sonny. “Where’s your car keys, hon?” he asked.
Snuffling, Jacy fished in her purse and handed them to Lois.
“It’s a hell of a note,” he said.
“Oh shut up and take her home,” Lois put in wearily. “I’m tired of this.”
“You bet I will. You take her car. So far as I’m concerned Sonny can walk.”
He led Jacy to the Cadillac, got in, and spun the big car off, throwing up dust in the unpaved road that ran by the jailhouse. Lois and Sonny were left standing in the jailyard, by a little cedar bush. It was very quiet all of a sudden, the moon white overhead.
“I would like to apologize for all this, Sonny,” Lois said. “It wasn’t my doings. So far as I’m concerned you have a perfect right to anything you could get out of Jacy, but I can tell you right now that wouldn’t have been much.”
Sonny didn’t know what to say. He felt awfully tired, and Lois noticed it.
“You’re welcome to ride back with me,” she said. “In fact I’d enjoy the company. I can understand how you might not want to, though. If you don’t just say so and I’ll give you some bus money.”
Mrs. Farrow didn’t seem so bad, and Sonny was much too tired to enjoy the thought of waiting for a bus. “I believe I’ll ride with you,” he said.
They started back over the same road that Sonny had just driven with Jacy. Mrs. Farrow drove fast, but there was no sign of the Cadillac ahead of them.
“Gene’s probably driving ninety,” she said. “I bet he’s telling Jacy it was all my fault and his, for not loving her more or something.”
Sonny didn’t know whether he napped or not, but soon they were almost back to Lawton. The wind whipped Mrs. Farrow’s hair about her face just as it had Jacy’s, when they were driving up. To the west, toward the plains, there were low flashings of lightning and the rumble of thunder. Somewhere over near Frederic it was raining. Sonny noticed that Mrs. Farrow had a little flask that she drank from now and then.
“Here,” she said, holding it out to him. “Have a little bourbon—you can have the rest of it, in fact. I’ve got to drive. It might pick you up.”
Sonny took the flask and sipped from it. The whiskey was very sharp on his tongue, but he kept the flask and continued to sip, and after a time he felt a vagueness spreading through him that was almost comfortable. He was surprised to find Mrs. Farrow so likable.
“Not much of a wedding night, is it?” she said. She grinned at him, but it was not an insulting grin.
“No, not much of one,” he said.
“Let me tell you something you won’t believe, Sonny. You’re lucky we got her away from you as quick as we did. Even if you had got to a motel room she’d have found some way to keep from giving it to you. God knows how, but Jacy would have thought of something. You’d have been a lot better off to stay with Ruth Popper.”
Sonny was startled. “Does everybody know about that?” he asked.
“Of course,” Lois said. “It sounded like a good thing to me. You shouldn’t have let Jacy turn your head.”
“She’s prettier,” Sonny said. “I guess I shouldn’t have though. I don’t guess I can go see Mrs. Popper any more.”
“I shouldn’t imagine. I wouldn’t have you back if you’d left me for Jacy, but then you never know. I’m not Ruth.”
They turned south out of Lawton. The bourbon was going down easier and easier. In the west the lightning flashes were closer together, and in the moments of light they could see heavy clouds low over the plains.
“I hope we don’t have to put this damn top up,” Lois said. She found herself moved by Sonny’s youth. He held the bourbon flask very carefully and looked almost comically young. Giving way to an impulse, she reached over and touched his neck. It startled him a great deal.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” she said. “I guess I just felt motherly for a second. Or maybe I felt wifely, I don’t know. It’s strange to have a married daughter who wouldn’t go through with her wedding night.”
Sonny looked at her curiously and she smile
d at him, an honest, attractive smile, as she kept stroking the back of his neck lightly. He drank more bourbon and watched the intermittent lightning yellow the plains. He felt as though life was completely beyond him.
In a little while they crossed Red River, the slap of their tires echoing off the old stone bridge abutments. The water in the channel was shallow and silvery.
“Anyhow, I know why Sam the Lion liked you,” Sonny said, and it was Lois’ turn to be startled.
“Sam?” she said. “Who told you he liked me? Genevieve?”
Sonny nodded. Lois was silent for a moment. “No, it was more than that,” she said. “He loved me, honey.”
They were silent almost to Burkburnett, but Sonny noticed that Lois kept wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands.
“I get sad when I think about Sam for long,” she said in explanation, her voice unsteady. “I can still remember his hands, you see. Did you know he had beautiful hands?”
They passed by Shepherd Field, with its flickering, rotating airplane beacons and its rows of dark narrow barracks.
“I think he was the only man in that whole horny town who knew what sex was worth,” Lois said, her voice a little hoarse. “I probably never would have learned myself if it hadn’t been for Sam. I’d be one of those Amity types who thinks bridge is the best thing life offers womankind. Gene couldn’t have taught me, he doesn’t know himself.”
Then they were coming down on the lights of Wichita.
“Sam the Lion,” Lois said, smiling. “Sam the Lion. Nobody knows where he got that name but me. I gave it to him one night—it just came to me. He was so pleased. I was twenty-two then, can you imagine?”
Then suddenly her shoulders began to shake and she did a strange thing. She wheeled the convertible off the highway in a screech of brakes and stopped on the hill across from the auction barn. She scooted across the seat and grabbed Sonny’s arms, tears running down her face.
“But you know somethin’,” she said, her whole body shaking. “It’s terrible to only find one man your whole life who knows what it’s worth, Sonny. It’s just terrible. I wouldn’t be tellin’ you if it wasn’t. I’ve looked, too—you wouldn’t bu-lieve how I’ve looked. When Sam, when Sam . . . the Lion was seventy years old he could just walk in . . . I don’t know, hug me and call me Lois or something an’ do more for me than anybody. He really knew what I was worth, an’ the rest of them haven’t, not one man in this whole country. . . .”
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