Like he was afraid I would beat him to it, with his face all shined up like a kid trying to do something for you before you change your mind about something you promised to do for him.
He went into the store on a trot and came back with so many bags and sacks he couldn’t see over them, so that I says to myself,
‘Look a here, fellow.
If you are aiming to settle down permanent in this truck and set up housekeeping.’
Then we drove on and came pretty soon to a likely place where I could drive the truck off the road, into some trees, and he jumps down and runs up and helps her down like she and the kid were made out of glass or eggs.
And he still had that look on his face like he pretty near had his mind made up to do whatever it was he was desperated up to do, if only nothing I did or she did beforehand would prevent it, and if she only didn’t notice in his face that he was desperated up to something.
But even then I didn’t know what it was.”
What was it?the wife says
I just showed you once.
You ain’t ready to be showed again, are you?
I reckon I don’t mind if you don’t.
But I still don’t see anything funny in that.
How come it took him all that time and trouble, anyway?
It was because they were not married the husband says.
It wasn’t even his child.
I didn’t know it then, though.
I didn’t find that out until I heard them talking that night bythe fire, when they didn’t know I heard, I reckon.
Before he had done got himself desperated up all the way.
But I reckon he was desperate enough, all right.
I reckon he was just giving her one more chance He continues:
“So there he was skirmishing around, getting camp ready, until he got me right nervous: him trying to do everything and not knowing just where to begin or something.
So I told him to go rustle up some firewood, and I took my blankets and spread them out in the truck.
I was a little mad, then, at myself about how I had got into it now and I would have to sleep on the ground with my feet to the fire and nothing under me.
So I reckon I was short and grumpy maybe, moving around, getting things fixed, and her sitting with her back to a tree, giving the kid his supper under a shawl and saying ever so often how she was ashamed to inconvenience me and that she aimed to sit up by the fire because she wasn’t tired noway, just riding all day long and not doing anything.
Then he came back, with enough wood to barbecue a steer, and she began to tell him and he went to the truck and taken out that suitcase and opened it and taken out a blanket.
Then we had it, sho enough.
It was like those two fellows that used to be in the funny papers, those two Frenchmen that were always bowing and scraping at the other one to go first, making out like we had all come away from home just for the privilege of sleeping on the ground, each one trying to lie faster and bigger than the next.
For a while I was a mind to say,
‘All right.
If you want to sleep on the ground, do it.
Because be durned if I want to.’
But I reckon you might say that I won.
Or that me and him won.
Because it wound up by him fixing their blanket in the truck, like we all might have known all the time it would be, and me and him spreading mine out before the fire.
I reckon he knew that would be the way of it, anyhow.
If they had come all the way from south Alabama like she claimed.
I reckon that was why he brought in all that firewood just to make a pot of coffee with and heat up some tin cans.
Then we ate, and then I found out.”
Found out what? What it was he wanted to do?
Not right then.
I reckon she had a little more patience than you He continues:
“So we had eaten and I was lying down on the blanket.
I was tired, and getting stretched out felt good.
I wasn’t aiming to listen, anymore than I was aiming to look like I was asleep when I wasn’t.
But they had asked me to give them a ride; it wasn’t me that insisted on them getting in my truck.
And if they seen fit to go on and talk without making sho nobody could hear them, it wasn’t any of my business.
And that’s how I found out that they were hunting for somebody, following him, or trying to.
Or she was, that is.
And so all of a sudden I says to myself,
‘Ah-ah.