What we gonna do then?
How we gonna git stuff to eat?
An’ I tell you Rosasharn ain’t so far from due.
Git so I hate to think.
Go diggin’ back to a ol’ time to keep from thinkin’.
Seems like our life’s over an’ done.”
“No, it ain’t,” Ma smiled. “It ain’t, Pa.
An’ that’s one more thing a woman knows.
I noticed that. Man, he lives in jerks—baby born an’ a man dies, an’ that’s a jerk—gets a farm an’ loses his farm, an’ that’s a jerk.
Woman, it’s all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on.
Woman looks at it like that.
We ain’t gonna die out.
People is goin’ on—changin’ a little, maybe, but goin’ right on.”
“How can you tell?” Uncle John demanded. “What’s to keep ever’thing from stoppin’; all the folks from jus’ gittin’ tired an’ layin’ down?”
Ma considered.
She rubbed the shiny back of one hand with the other, pushed the fingers of her right hand between the fingers of her left.
“Hard to say,” she said. “Ever’thing we do—seems to me is aimed right at goin’ on.
Seems that way to me.
Even gettin’ hungry—even bein’ sick; some die, but the rest is tougher.
Jus’ try to live the day, jus’ the day.”
Uncle John said,
“If on’y she didn’ die that time——”
“Jus’ live the day,” Ma said. “Don’ worry yaself.”
“They might be a good year nex’ year, back home,” said Pa.
Ma said,
“Listen!”
There were creeping steps on the cat-walk, and then Al came in past the curtain.
“Hullo,” he said. “I thought you’d be sleepin’ by now.”
“Al,” Ma said. “We’re a-talkin’.
Come set here.”
“Sure—O.K.
I wanta talk too.
I’ll hafta be goin’ away pretty soon now.”
“You can’t.
We need you here.
Why you got to go away?”
“Well, me an’ Aggie Wainwright, we figgers to get married, an’ I’m gonna git a job in a garage, an’ we’ll have a rent’ house for a while, an’—” He looked up fiercely. “Well, we are, an’ they ain’t nobody can stop us!”
They were staring at him.
“Al,” Ma said at last, “we’re glad.
We’re awful glad.”
“You are?”
“Why, ’course we are.
You’re a growed man.
You need a wife.
But don’ go right now, Al.”
“I promised Aggie,” he said. “We got to go.
We can’t stan’ this no more.”
“Jus’ stay till spring,” Ma begged. “Jus’ till spring.
Won’t you stay till spring?
Who’d drive the truck?”