She told them before she died."
"How much do they want?"
"Twenty thousand."
"You can buy 'em for five."
He didn't answer. Instead, he looked down at my feet.
"Get your shoes on and come on," he said. "Your father's waiting."
He started back across the field and I looked down at my feet.
The warm earth felt good against my naked toes.
I wriggled them in the sand for a moment, then went back to the cockpit and pulled out a pair of Mexican huarachos.
I slipped into them and started out across the field after Nevada.
I hate shoes.
They don't let you breathe.
2.
I KEPT RAISING SMALL CLOUDS OF SAND WITH THE huarachos as I walked toward the factory.
The faint clinical smell of the sulphur they used in making gunpowder came to my nose.
It was the same kind of smell that was in the hospital the night I took her there.
It wasn't at all the kind of smell there was the night we made the baby.
It was cool and clean that night.
And there was the smell of the ocean and the surf that came in through the open windows of the small cottage I kept out at Malibu. But in the room there was nothing but the exciting scent of the girl and her wanting.
We had gone into the bedroom and stripped with the fierce urgency in our vitals.
She was quicker than I and now she was on the bed, looking up at me as I opened the dresser drawer and took out a package of rubbers.
Her voice was a whisper in the night.
"Don't, Joney.
Not this time."
I looked at her.
The bright Pacific moon threw its light in the window. Only her face was in shadows.
Somehow, what she said brought the fever up.
The bitch must have sensed it. She reached for me and kissed me.
"I hate those damn things, Joney.
I want to feel you inside me."
I hesitated a moment.
She pulled me down on top of her. Her voice whispered in my ear.
"Nothing will happen, Joney.
I’ll be careful."
Then I couldn't wait any longer and her whisper changed into a sudden cry of pain.
I couldn't breathe and she kept crying in my ear,
"I love you, Joney.
I love you, Joney."
She loved me all right.
She loved me so good that five weeks later she tells me we got to get married.
We were sitting in the front seat of my car this time, driving back from the football game.
I looked over at her.
"What for?"
She looked up at me.
She wasn't frightened, not then. She was too sure of herself.
Her voice was almost flippant.
"The usual reason.
What other reason does a fellow and a girl get married for?"
My voice turned bitter.
I knew when I'd been taken.