Here’s another gal that thought she could learn on Saturday night what her mammy waited until Sunday to ask the minister.
They never called his name.
And they didn’t know just which way he had run.
And I knew that if they had known where he went, it wouldn’t be by any fault of the fellow that was doing the running.
I learned that quick.
And so I heard him talking to her, about how they might travel on like this from one truck to another and one state to another for the rest of their lives and not find any trace of him, and her sitting there on the log, holding the chap and listening quiet as a stone and pleasant as a stone and just about as nigh to being moved or persuaded.
And I says to myself, ‘Well, old fellow, I reckon it ain’t only since she has been riding on the seat of my truck while you rode with your feet hanging out the back end of it that she has travelled out in front on this trip.’
But I never said anything.
I just lay there and them talking, or him talking, not loud.
He hadn’t even mentioned marriage, neither.
But that’s what he was talking about, and her listening placid and calm, like she had heard it before and she knew that she never even had to bother to say either yes or no to him.
Smiling a little she was.
But he couldn’t see that.
“Then he give up.
He got up from the log and walked away.
But I saw his face when he turned and I knew that he hadn’t give up.
He knew that he had just give her one more chance and that now he had got himself desperated up to risking all.
I could have told him that he was just deciding now to do what he should have done in the first place.
But I reckon he had his own reasons.
Anyway he walked off into the dark and left her sitting there, with her face kind of bent down a little and that smile still on it.
She never looked after him, neither.
Maybe she knew he had just gone off by himself to get himself worked up good to what she might have been advising him to do all the time, herself, without saying it in out and out words, which a lady naturally couldn’t do; not even a lady with a Saturday night family.
“Only I don’t reckon that was it either.
Or maybe the time and place didn’t suit her, let alone a audience.
After a while she got up and looked at me, but I never moved, and then she went and climbed into the truck and after a while I heard her quit moving around and I knew that she had done got fixed to sleep.
And I lay there—I had done got kind of waked up myself, now—and it was a right smart while.
But I knew that he was somewhere close, waiting maybe for the fire to die down or for me to get good to sleep.
Because, sho enough, just about the time the fire had died down good, I heard him come up, quiet as a cat, and stand over me, looking down at me, listening.
I never made a sound; I don’t know but I might have fetched a snore or two for him.
Anyway, he goes on toward the truck, walking like he had eggs under his feet, and I lay there and watched, him and I says to myself,
‘Old boy, if you’d a just done this last night, you’d a been sixty miles further south than you are now, to my knowledge.
And if you’d a done it two nights ago, I reckon I wouldn’t ever have laid eyes on either one of you.’
Then I got a little worried.
I wasn’t worried about him doing her any harm she didn’t want done to her.
In fact, I was pulling for the little cuss.
That was it.
I couldn’t decide what I had better do when she would begin to holler. I knew that she would holler, and if I jumped up and run to the truck, it would scare him off, and if I didn’t come running, he would know that I was awake and watching him all the time, and he’d be scared off faster than ever.
But I ought not to worried.
I ought to have known that from the first look I’d taken at her and at him.”
I reckon the reason you knew you never had to worry was that you had already found out just what she would do ina case like thatthe wife says.
Sho the husband says.
I didn’t aim for you to find that out.
Yes, sir.
I thought I had covered my tracks this time.
Well, go on.
What happened?
What do you reckon happened, with a big strong gal like that, without any warning that it was just him, and a durn little cuss that already looked like he had reached the point where he could bust out crying like another baby?
He continues:
“There wasn’t any hollering or anything.
I just watched him climb slow and easy into the truck and disappear and then didn’t anything happen for about while you could count maybe fifteen slow, and then I heard one kind of astonished sound she made when she woke up, like she was just surprised and then a little put out without being scared at all, and she says, not loud neither: