“Just a couple of tramps.”
“Just a couple of gypsies, but we’ll be together.”
“That’s it.
We’ll be together.”
Next morning, we packed up.
Anyway, she packed.
I had bought a suit, and I put that on, and it seemed to be about all.
She put her things in a hatbox.
When she got done with it, she handed it to me.
“Put that in the car, will you?”
“The car?”
“Aren’t we taking the car?”
“Not unless you want to spend the first night in jail, we’re not.
Stealing a man’s wife, that’s nothing, but stealing his car, that’s larceny.”
“Oh.”
We started out.
It was two miles to the bus stop, and we had to hike it.
Every time a car went by, we would stand there with our hand stuck out, like a cigar store Indian, but none of them stopped.
A man alone can get a ride, and a woman alone, if she’s fool enough to take it, but a man and a woman together don’t have much luck.
After about twenty had gone by, she stopped.
We had gone about a quarter of a mile.
“Frank, I can’t.”
“What’s the matter?”
“This is it.”
“This is what?”
“The road.”
“You’re crazy.
You’re tired, that’s all.
Look. You wait here, and I’ll get somebody down the road to drive us in to the city.
That’s what we ought to done anyhow.
Then we’ll be all right.”
“No, it’s not that.
I’m not tired.
I can’t, that’s all.
At all.”
“Don’t you want to be with me, Cora?”
“You know I do.”
“We can’t go back, you know.
We can’t start up again, like it was before.
You know that.
You’ve got to come.”
“I told you I wasn’t really a bum, Frank.
I don’t feel like no gypsy.
I don’t feel like nothing, only ashamed, that I’m out here asking for a ride.”
“I told you.
We’re getting a car in to the city.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’re there.
Then we get going.”
“No we don’t.