I kept on, with them telling me lies and trying to make me, until I found he was in Leavenworth.
I didn’t have enough money for a ticket, so I had to get another job.
It took two months to get enough money. Then I went to Leavenworth.
I got another job as waitress, in Childs’, nightshifts, so I could see Lee every other Sunday afternoon.
We decided to get a lawyer.
We didn’t know that a lawyer couldn’t do anything for a federal prisoner.
The lawyer didn’t tell me, and I hadn’t told Lee how I was getting the lawyer.
He thought I had saved some money.
I lived with the lawyer two months before I found it out.
“Then the war came and they let Lee out and sent him to France.
I went to New York and got a job in a munitions plant.
I stayed straight too, with the cities full of soldiers with money to spend, and even the little ratty girls wearing silk.
But I stayed straight.
Then he came home.
I was at the ship to meet him.
He got off under arrest and they sent him back to Leavenworth for killing that soldier three years ago.
Then I got a lawyer to get a Congressman to get him out.
I gave him all the money I had saved too.
So when Lee got out, we had nothing.
He said we’d get married, but we couldn’t afford to.
And when I told him about the lawyer, he beat me.”
Again she dropped a shapeless piece of candy behind the cot and wiped her hands on the garment.
She chose another piece from the box and ate it.
Chewing, she looked at Horace, turning upon him a blank, musing gaze for an unhurried moment.
Through the slotted window the darkness came chill and dead.
Goodwin ceased snoring.
He stirred and sat up.
“What time is it?” he said.
“What?” Horace said.
He looked at his watch.
“Half-past two.”
“He must have had a puncture,” Goodwin said.
Toward dawn Horace himself slept, sitting in the chair.
When he waked a narrow rosy pencil of sunlight fell level through the window.
Goodwin and the woman were talking quietly on the cot.
Goodwin looked at him bleakly.
“Morning,” he said.
“I hope you slept off that nightmare of yours,” Horace said.
“If I did, it’s the last one I’ll have.
They say you dont dream there.”
“You’ve certainly done enough not to miss it,” Horace said. “I suppose you’ll believe us, after this.”
“Believe, hell,” Goodwin said, who had sat so quiet, so contained, with his saturnine face, negligent in his overalls and blue shirt; “do you think for one minute that man is going to let me walk out of that door and up the street and into that courthouse, after yesterday?
What sort of men have you lived with all your life?
In a nursery?
I wouldn’t do that, myself.”
“If he does, he has sprung his own trap,” Horace said.
“What good will that do me?
Let me tell—”
“Lee,” the woman said.
“—you something: the next time you want to play dice with a man’s neck—”