Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings. Her forward expression was steady and driving like the advance of a heavy truck. Her eyes never swerved to left or right but turned as the story turned as if they followed a yellow line down the center of it. She seldom used the other expression because it was not often necessary for her to retract a statement, but when she did, her face came to a complete stop, there was an almost imperceptible movement of her black eyes, during which they seemed to be receding, and then the observer would see that Mrs. Freeman, though she might stand there as real as several grain sacks thrown on top of each other, was no longer there in spirit. As for getting anything across to her when this was the case, Mrs. Hopewell had given it up. She might talk her head off. Mrs. Freeman could never be brought to admit herself wrong on any point. She would stand there and if she could be brought to Say anything, it was something like, "Well, I wouldn"t of said it was and I Wouldn"t of said it wasn"t," or letting her gaze range over the top kitchen shelf where there was an a.s.sortment of dusty bottles, she might remark, "I see you ain"t ate many of them figs you put up last summer."
They carried on their most important business in the kitchen at breakfast. Every morning Mrs. Hopewell got up at seven o"clock and lit her gas heater and Joy"s. Joy was her daughter, a large blonde girl who had an artificial leg. Mrs. Hopewell thought of her as a child though she was thirty-two years old and highly educated. Joy would get up while her mother was eating and lumber into the bathroom and slam the door, and before long, Mrs. Freeman would arrive at the back door. Joy would hear her mother call, "Come on in," and then they would talk for a while in low voices that were indistinguishable in the bathroom. By the time Joy came in, they had usually finished the weather report and were on one or the other of Mrs. Freeman"s daughters, Glynese or Carramae. Joy called them Glycerin and Caramel. Glynese, a redhead, was eighteen and had many admirers; Carramae, a blonde, was only fifteen but already married and pregnant. She could not keep anything on her stomach. Every morning Mrs. Freeman told Mrs. Hopewell how many times she had vomited since the last report.
Mrs. Hopewell liked to tell people that Glynese and Carramae were two of the finest girls she knew and that Mrs. Freeman was a lady and that she was never ashamed to take her anywhere or introduce her to anybody they might meet. Then she would tell how she had happened to hire the Freemans in the first place and how they were a G.o.dsend to her and how she had had them four years. The reason for her keeping them so long was that they were not trash. They were good country people. She had telephoned the man whose name they had given as a reference and he had told her that Mr. Freeman was a good farmer but that his wife was the nosiest woman ever to walk the earth. "She"s got to be into everything," the man said. "If she don"t get there before the dust settles, you can bet she"s dead, that"s all. She"ll want to know all your business. I can stand him real good," he had said, "but me nor my wife neither could have stood that woman one more minute on this place." That had put Mrs. Hopewell off for a few days.
She had hired them in the end because there were no other applicants but she had made up her mind beforehand exactly how she would handle the woman. Since she was the type who had to be into everything, then, Mrs. Hopewell had decided, she would not only let her be into everything, she would see to it that she was into everythinga"she would give her the responsibility of everything, she would put her in charge. Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people"s in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack. She had hired the Freemans and she had kept them four years.
Nothing is perfect. This was one of Mrs. Hopewell"s favorite sayings. Another was: that is life! And still another, the most important, was: well, other people have their opinions too. She would make these statements, usually at the table, in a tone of gentle insistence as if no one held them but her, and the large hulking Joy, whose constant outrage had obliterated every expression from her face, would stare just a little to the side of her, her eyes icy blue, with the look of someone who has achieved blindness by an act of will and means to keep it.
When Mrs. Hopewell said to Mrs. Freeman that life was like that, Mrs. Freeman would say, "I always said so myself." Nothing had been arrived at by anyone that had not first been arrived at by her. She was quicker than Mr. Freeman. When Mrs. Hopewell said to her after they had been on the place a while, "You know, you"re the wheel behind the wheel," and winked, Mrs. Freeman had said, "I know it. I"ve always been quick. It"s some that are quicker than others."
"Everybody is different," Mrs. Hopewell said.
"Yes, most people is," Mrs. Freeman said.
"It takes all kinds to make the world."
"I always said it did myself."
The girl was used to this kind of dialogue for breakfast and more of it for dinner; sometimes they had it for supper too. When they had no guest they ate in the kitchen because that was easier. Mrs. Freeman always managed to arrive at some point during the meal and to watch them finish it. She would stand in the doorway if it were summer but in the winter she would stand with one elbow on top of the refrigerator and look down on them, or she would stand by the gas heater, lifting the back of her skirt slightly. Occasionally she would stand against the wall and roll her head from side to side. At no time was she in any hurry to leave. All this was very trying on Mrs. Hopewell but she was a woman of great patience. She realized that nothing is perfect and that in the Freemans she had good country people and that if, in this day and age, you get good country people, you had better hang onto them.
She had had plenty of experience with trash. Before the Freemans she had averaged one tenant family a year. The wives of these farmers were not the kind you would want to be around you for very long. Mrs. Hopewell, who had divorced her husband long ago, needed someone to walk over the fields with her; and when Joy had to be impressed for these services, her remarks were usually so ugly and her face so glum that Mrs. Hopewell would say, "If you can"t come pleasantly, I don"t want you at all," to which the girl, standing square and rigid-shouldered with her neck thrust slightly forward, would reply, "If you want me, here I ama"LIKE I AM."
Mrs. Hopewell excused this att.i.tude because of the leg (which had been shot off in a hunting accident when Joy was ten). It was hard for Mrs. Hopewell to realize that her child was thirty-two now and that for more than twenty years she had had only one leg. She thought of her still as a child because it tore her heart to think instead of the poor stout girl in her thirties who had never danced a step or had any normal good times. Her name was really Joy but as soon as she was twenty-one and away from home, she had had it legally changed. Mrs. Hopewell was certain that she had thought and thought until she had hit upon the ugliest name in any language. Then she had gone and had the beautiful name, Joy, changed without telling her mother until after she had done it. Her legal name was Hulga.
When Mrs. Hopewell thought the name, Hulga, she thought of the broad blank hull of a battleship. She would not use it. She continued to call her Joy to which the girl responded but in a purely mechanical way.
Hulga had learned to tolerate Mrs. Freeman who saved her from taking walks with her mother. Even Glynese and Carramae were useful when they occupied attention that might otherwise have been directed at her. At first she had thought she could not stand Mrs. Freeman for she had found that it was not possible to be rude to her. Mrs. Freeman would take on strange resentments and for days together she would be sullen but the source of her displeasure was always obscure; a direct attack, a positive leer, blatant ugliness to her facea"these never touched her. And without warning one day, she began calling her Hulga.
She did not call her that in front of Mrs. Hopewell who would have been incensed but when she and the girl happened to be out of the house together, she would say something and add the name Hulga to the end of it, and the big spectacled Joy-Hulga would scowl and redden as if her privacy had been intruded upon. She considered the name her personal affair. She had arrived at it first purely on the basis of its ugly sound and then the full genius of its fitness had struck her. She had a vision of the name working like the ugly sweating Vulcan who stayed in the furnace and to whom, presumably, the G.o.ddess had to come when called. She saw it as the name of her highest creative act. One of her major triumphs was that her mother had not been able to turn her dust into Joy, but the greater one was that she had been able to turn it herself into Hulga. However, Mrs. Freeman"s relish for using the name only irritated her. It was as if Mrs. Freeman"s beady steel-pointed eyes had penetrated far enough behind her face to reach some secret fact. Something about her seemed to fascinate Mrs. Freeman and then one day Hulga realized that it was the artificial leg. Mrs. Freeman had a special fondness for the details of secret infections, hidden deformities, a.s.saults upon children. Of diseases, she preferred the lingering or incurable. Hulga had heard Mrs. Hopewell give her the details of the hunting accident, how the leg had been literally blasted off, how she had never lost consciousness. Mrs. Freeman could listen to it any time as if it had happened an hour ago.
When Hulga stumped into the kitchen in the morning (she could walk without making the awful noise but she made ita"Mrs. Hopewell was certaina"because it was ugly-sounding), she glanced at them and did not speak. Mrs. Hopewell would be in her red kimono with her hair tied around her head in rags. She would be sitting at the table, finishing her breakfast and Mrs. Freeman would be hanging by her elbow outward from the refrigerator, looking down at the table. Hulga always put her eggs on the stove to boil and then stood over them with her arms folded, and Mrs. Hopewell would look at hera"a kind of indirect gaze divided between her and Mrs. Freemana"and would think that if she would only keep herself up a little, she wouldn"t be so bad looking. There was nothing wrong with her face that a pleasant expression wouldn"t help. Mrs. Hopewell said that people who looked on the bright side of things would be beautiful even if they were not.
Whenever she looked at Joy this way, she could not help but feel that it would have been better if the child had not taken the Ph.D. It had certainly not brought her out any and now that she had it, there was no more excuse for her to go to school again. Mrs. Hopewell thought it was nice for girls to go to school to have a good time but Joy had "gone through." Anyhow, she would not have been strong enough to go again. The doctors had told Mrs. Hopewell that with the best of care, Joy might see forty-five. She had a weak heart. Joy had made it plain that if it had not been for this condition, she would be far from these red hills and good country people. She would be in a university lecturing to people who knew what she was talking about. And Mrs. Hopewell could very well picture her there, looking like a scarecrow and lecturing to more of the same. Here she went about all day in a six-year-old skirt and a yellow sweat shirt with a faded cowboy on a horse embossed on it. She thought this was funny; Mrs. Hopewell thought it was idiotic and showed simply that she was still a child. She was brilliant but she didn"t have a grain of sense. It seemed to Mrs. Hopewell that every year she grew less like other people and more like herselfa"bloated, rude, and squint-eyed. And she said such strange things! To her own mother she had saida"without warning, without excuse, standing up in the middle of a meal with her face purple and her mouth halt fulla""Woman! do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? G.o.d!" she had cried sinking down again and staring at her plate, "Malebranche was right: we are not our own light. We are not our own light!" Mrs. Hopewell had no idea to this day what brought that on. She had only made the remark, hoping Joy would take it in, that a smile never hurt anyone.
The girl had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could say, "My daughter is a nurse," or "My daughter is a school teacher," or even, "My daughter is a chemical engineer." You could not say, "My daughter is a philosopher." That was something that had ended with the Greeks and Romans. All day Joy sat on her neck in a deep chair, reading. Sometimes she went for walks but she didn"t like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men. She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.
One day Mrs. Hopewell had picked up one of the books the girl had just put down and opening it at random, she read, "Science, on the other hand, has to a.s.sert its soberness and seriousness afresh and declare that it is concerned solely with what-is. Nothinga"how can it be for science anything but a horror and a phantasm? If science is right, then one thing stands firm: science wishes to know nothing of nothing. Such is after all the strictly scientific approach to Nothing. We know it by wishing to know nothing of Nothing." These words had been underlined with a blue pencil and they worked on Mrs. Hopewell like some evil incantation in gibberish. She shut the book quickly and went out of the room as if she were having a chill.
This morning when the girl came in, Mrs. Freeman was on Carramae. "She thrown up four times after supper," she said, "and was up twict in the night after three o"clock. Yesterday she didn"t do nothing but ramble in the bureau drawer. All she did. Stand up there and see what she could run up on."
"She"s got to eat," Mrs. Hopewell muttered, sipping her coffee, while she watched Joy"s back at the stove. She was wondering what the child had said to the Bible salesman. She could not imagine what kind of a conversation she could possibly have had with him.
He was a tall gaunt hatless youth who had called yesterday to sell them a Bible. He had appeared at the door, carrying a large black suitcase that weighted him so heavily on one side that he had to brace himself against the door facing. He seemed on the point of collapse but he said in a cheerful voice, "Good morning, Mrs. Cedars!" and set the suitcase down on the mat. He was not a bad-looking young man though he had on a bright blue suit and yellow socks that were not pulled up far enough. He had prominent face bones and a streak of sticky-looking brown hair falling across his forehead.
"I"m Mrs. Hopewell," she said.
"Oh!" he said, pretending to look puzzled but with his eyes sparkling, "I saw it said *The Cedars," on the mailbox so I thought you was Mrs. Cedars!" and he burst out in a pleasant laugh. He picked up the satchel and under cover of a pant, he fell forward into her hall. It was rather as if the suitcase had moved first, jerking him after it. "Mrs. Hopewell!" he said and grabbed her hand. "I hope you are well!" and he laughed again and then all at once his face sobered completely. He paused and gave her a straight earnest look and said, "Lady, I"ve come to speak of serious things."
"Well, come in," she muttered, none too pleased because her dinner was almost ready. He came into the parlor and sat down on the edge of a straight chair and put the suitcase between his feet and glanced around the room as if he were sizing her up by it. Her silver gleamed on the two sideboards; she decided he had never been in a room as elegant as this.
"Mrs. Hopewell," he began, using her name in a way that sounded almost intimate, "I know you believe in Chrustian service."
"Well yes," she murmured.
"I know," he said and paused, looking very wise with his head c.o.c.ked on one side, "that you"re a good woman. Friends have told me."
Mrs. Hopewell never liked to be taken for a fool. "What are you selling?" she asked.
"Bibles," the young man said and his eye raced around the room before he added, "I see you have no family Bible in your parlor, I see that is the one lack you got!"
Mrs. Hopewell could not say, "My daughter is an atheist and won"t let me keep the Bible in the parlor." She said, stiffening slightly, "I keep my Bible by my bedside." This was not the truth. It was in the attic somewhere.
"Lady," he said, "the word of G.o.d ought to be in the parlor."
"Well, I think that"s a matter of taste," she began. "I thinka"
"Lady," he said, "for a Chrustian, the word of G.o.d ought to be in every room in the house besides in his heart. I know you"re a Chrustian because I can see it in every line of your face."
She stood up and said, "Well, young man, I don"t want to buy a Bible and I smell my dinner burning."
He didn"t get up. He began to twist his hands and looking down at them, he said softly, "Well lady, I"ll tell you the trutha"not many people want to buy one nowadays and besides, I know I"m real simple. I don"t know how to say a thing but to say it. I"m just a country boy." He glanced up into her unfriendly face. "People like you don"t like to fool with country people like me!"
"Why!" she cried, "good country people are the salt of the earth! Besides, we all have different ways of doing, it takes all kinds to make the world go *round. That"s life!"
"You said a mouthful," he said.
"Why, I think there aren"t enough good country people in the world!" she said, stirred. "I think that"s what"s wrong with it!"
His face had brightened. "I didn"t inraduce myself," he said. "I"m Manley Pointer from out in the country around Willohobie, not even from a place, just from near a place."
"You wait a minute," she said. "I have to see about my dinner." She went out to the kitchen and found Joy standing near the door where she had been listening.
"Get rid of the salt of the earth," she said, "and let"s eat."
Mrs. Hopewell gave her a pained look and turned the heat down under the vegetables. "I can"t be rude to anybody," she murmured and went back into the parlor.
He had opened the suitcase and was sitting with a Bible on each knee.
"You might as well put those up," she told him. "I don"t want one."
"I appreciate your honesty," he said. "You don"t see any more real honest people unless you go way out in the country."
"I know," she said, "real genuine folks!" Through the crack in the door she heard a groan.
"I guess a lot of boys come telling you they"re working their way through college," he said, "but I"m not going to tell you that. Somehow," he said, "I don"t want to go to college. I want to devote my life to Chrustian service. See," he said, lowering his voice, "I got this heart condition. I may not live long. When you know it"s something wrong with you and you may not live long, well then, ladya" He paused, with his mouth open, and stared at her.
He and Joy had the same condition! She knew that her eyes were filling with tears but she collected herself quickly and murmured, "Won"t you stay for dinner? We"d love to have you!" and was sorry the instant she heard herself say it.
"Yes mam," he said in an abashed voice, "I would sher love to do that!"
Joy had given him one look on being introduced to him and then throughout the meal had not glanced at him again. He had addressed several remarks to her, which she had pretended not to hear. Mrs. Hopewell could not understand deliberate rudeness, although she lived with it, and she felt she had always to overflow with hospitality to make up for Joy"s lack of courtesy. She urged him to talk about himself and he did. He said he was the seventh child of twelve and that his father had been crushed under a tree when he himself was eight year old. He had been crushed very badly, in fact, almost cut in two and was practically not recognizable. His mother had got along the best she could by hard working and she had always seen that her children went to Sunday School and that they read the Bible every evening. He was now nineteen year old and he had been selling Bibles for four months. In that time he had sold seventy-seven Bibles and had the promise of two more sales. He wanted to become a missionary because he thought that was the way you could do most for people. "He who losest his life shall find it," he said simply and he was so sincere, so genuine and earnest that Mrs. Hopewell would not for the world have smiled. He prevented his peas from sliding onto the table by blocking them with a piece of bread which he later cleaned his plate with. She could see Joy observing side-wise how he handled his knife and fork and she saw too that every few minutes, the boy would dart a keen appraising glance at the girl as if he were trying to attract her attention.
After dinner Joy cleared the dishes off the table and disappeared and Mrs. Hopewell was left to talk with him. He told her again about his childhood and his father"s accident and about various things that had happened to him. Every five minutes or so she would stifle a yawn. He sat for two hours until finally she told him she must go because she had an appointment in town. He packed his Bibles and thanked her and prepared to leave, but in the doorway he stopped and wrung her hand and said that not on any of his trips had he met a lady as nice as her and he asked if he could come again. She had said she would always be happy to see him.
Joy had been standing in the road, apparently looking at something in the distance, when he came down the steps toward her, bent to the side with his heavy valise. He stopped where she was standing and confronted her directly. Mrs. Hopewell could not hear what he said but she trembled to think what Joy would say to him. She could see that after a minute Joy said something and that then the boy began to speak again, making an excited gesture with his free hand. After a minute Joy said something else at which the boy began to speak once more. Then to her amazement, Mrs. Hopewell saw the two of them walk off together, toward the gate. Joy had walked all the way to the gate with him and Mrs. Hopewell could not imagine what they had said to each other, and she had not yet dared to ask.
Mrs. Freeman was insisting upon her attention. She had moved from the refrigerator to the heater so that Mrs. Hopewell had to turn and face her in order to seem to be listening. "Glynese gone out with Harvey Hill again last night," she said. "She had this sty."
"Hill," Mrs. Hopewell said absently, "is that the one who works in the garage?"
"Nome, he"s the one that goes to chiropracter school," Mrs. Freeman said. "She had this sty. Been had it two days. So she says when he brought her in the other night he says, *Lemme get rid of that sty for you," and she says, *How?" and he says, *You just lay yourself down acrost the seat of that car and I"ll show you." So she done it and he popped her neck. Kept on a-popping it several times until she made him quit. This morning," Mrs. Freeman said, "she ain"t got no sty. She ain"t got no traces of a sty."
"I never heard of that before," Mrs. Hopewell said.
"He ast her to marry him before the Ordinary," Mrs. Freeman went on, "and she told him she wasn"t going to be married in no office."
"Well, Glynese is a fine girl," Mrs. Hopewell said. "Glynese and Carramae are both fine girls."
"Carramae said when her and Lyman was married Lyman said it sure felt sacred to him. She said he said he wouldn"t take five hundred dollars for being married by a preacher."
"How much would he take?" the girl asked from the stove.
"He said he wouldn"t take five hundred dollars," Mrs. Freeman repeated.
"Well we all have work to do," Mrs. Hopewell said.
"Lyman said it just felt more sacred to him," Mrs. Freeman said. "The doctor wants Carramae to eat prunes. Says instead of medicine. Says them cramps is coming from pressure. You know where I think it is?"
"She"ll be better in a few weeks," Mrs. Hopewell said.
"In the tube," Mrs. Freeman said. "Else she wouldn"t be as sick as she is."
Hulga had cracked her two eggs into a saucer and was bringing them to the table along with a cup of coffee that she had filled too full. She sat down carefully and began to eat, meaning to keep Mrs. Freeman there by questions if for any reason she showed an inclination to leave. She could perceive her mother"s eye on her. The first roundabout question would be about the Bible salesman and she did not wish to bring it on. "How did he pop her neck?" she asked.
Mrs. Freeman went into a description of how he had popped her neck. She said he owned a *55 Mercury but that Glynese said she would rather marry a man with only a *36 Plymouth who would be married by a preacher. The girl asked what if he had a *32 Plymouth and Mrs. Freeman said what Glynese had said was a *36 Plymouth.
Mrs. Hopewell said there were not many girls with Glynese"s common sense. She said what she admired in those girls was their common sense. She said that reminded her that they had had a nice visitor yesterday, a young man selling Bibles. "Lord," she said, "he bored me to death but he was so sincere and genuine I couldn"t be rude to him. He was just good country people, you know," she said, "a"just the salt of the earth."
"I seen him walk up," Mrs. Freeman said, "and then latera"I seen him walk off," and Hulga could feel the slight shift in her voice, the slight insinuation, that he had not walked off alone, had he? Her face remained expressionless but the color rose into her neck and she seemed to swallow it down with the next spoonful of egg. Mrs. Freeman was looking at her as if they had a secret together.
"Well, it takes all kinds of people to make the world go *round," Mrs. Hopewell said. "It"s very good we aren"t all alike."
"Some people are more alike than others," Mrs. Freeman said.
Hulga got up and stumped, with about twice the noise that was necessary, into her room and locked the door. She was to meet the Bible salesman at ten o"clock at the gate. She had thought about it half the night. She had started thinking of it as a great joke and then she had begun to see profound implications in it. She had lain in bed imagining dialogues for them that were insane on the surface but that reached below to depths that no Bible salesman would be aware of. Their conversation yesterday had been of this kind.
He had stopped in front of her and had simply stood there. His face was bony and sweaty and bright, with a little pointed nose in the center of it, and his look was different from what it had been at the dinner table. He was gazing at her with open curiosity, with fascination, like a child watching a new fantastic animal at the zoo, and he was breathing as if he had run a great distance to reach her. His gaze seemed somehow familiar but she could not think where she had been regarded with it before. For almost a minute he didn"t say anything. Then on what seemed an insuck of breath, he whispered, "You ever ate a chicken that was two days old?"
The girl looked at him stonily. He might have just put this question up for consideration at the meeting of a philosophical a.s.sociation. "Yes," she presently replied as if she had considered it from all angles.
"It must have been mighty small!" he said triumphantly and shook all over with little nervous giggles, getting very red in the face, and subsiding finally into his gaze of complete admiration, while the girl"s expression remained exactly the same.
"How old are you?" he asked softly.
She waited some time before she answered. Then in a flat voice she said, "Seventeen."
His smiles came in succession like waves breaking on the surface of a little lake. "I see you got a wooden leg," he said. "I think you"re real brave. I think you"re real sweet."
The girl stood blank and solid and silent.
"Walk to the gate with me," he said. "You"re a brave sweet little thing and I liked you the minute I seen you walk in the door."
Hulga began to move forward.
"What"s your name?" he asked, smiling down on the top of her head.
"Hulga," she said.
"Hulga," he murmured, "Hulga. Hulga. I never heard of anybody name Hulga before. You"re shy, aren"t you, Hulga?" he asked.
She nodded, watching his large red hand on the handle of the giant valise.
"I like girls that wear gla.s.ses," he said, "I think a lot. I"m not like these people that a serious thought don"t ever enter their heads. It"s because I may die."
"I may die too," she said suddenly and looked up at him. His eyes were very small and brown, glittering feverishly.
"Listen," he said, "don"t you think some people was meant to meet on account of what all they got in common and all? Like they both think serious thoughts and all?" He shifted the valise to his other hand so that the hand nearest her was free. He caught hold of her elbow and shook it a little. "I don"t work on Sat.u.r.day," he said. "I like to walk in the woods and see what Mother Nature is wearing. O"er the hills and far away. Pic-nics and things. Couldn"t we go on a pic-nic tomorrow? Say yes, Hulga," he said and gave her a dying look as if he felt his insides about to drop out of him. He had even seemed to sway slightly toward her.
During the night she had imagined that she seduced him. She imagined that the two of them walked on the place until they came to the storage barn beyond the two back fields and there, she imagined, that things came to such a pa.s.s that she very easily seduced him and that then, of course, she had to reckon with his remorse. True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind. She imagined that she took his remorse in hand and changed it into a deeper understanding of life. She took all his shame away and turned it into something useful.
She set off for the gate at exactly ten o"clock, escaping without drawing Mrs. Hopewell"s attention. She didn"t take anything to eat, forgetting that food is usually taken on a picnic. She wore a pair of slacks and a dirty white shirt, and as an afterthought, she had put some Vapex on the collar of it since she did not own any perfume. When she reached the gate no one was there.
She looked up and down the empty highway and had the furious feeling that she had been tricked, that he had only meant to make her walk to the gate after the idea of him. Then suddenly he stood up, very tall, from behind a bush on the opposite embankment. Smiling, he lifted his hat which was new and wide-brimmed. He had not worn it yesterday and she wondered if he had bought it for the occasion. It was toast-colored with a red and white band around it and was slightly too large for him. He stepped from behind the bush still carrying the black valise. He had on the same suit and the same yellow socks sucked down in his shoes from walking. He crossed the highway and said, "I knew you"d come!"
The girl wondered acidly how he had known this. She pointed to the valise and asked, "Why did you bring your Bibles?"
He took her elbow, smiling down on her as if he could not stop. "You can never tell when you"ll need the word of G.o.d, Hulga," he said. She had a moment in which she doubted that this was actually happening and then they began to climb the embankment. They went down into the pasture toward the woods. The boy walked lightly by her side, bouncing on his toes. The valise did not seem to be heavy today; he even swung it. They crossed half the pasture without saying anything and then, putting his hand easily on the small of her back, he asked softly, "Where does your wooden leg join on?"
She turned an ugly red and glared at him and for an instant the boy looked abashed. "I didn"t mean you no harm," he said. "I only meant you"re so brave and all. I guess G.o.d takes care of you."
"No," she said, looking forward and walking fast, "I don"t even believe in G.o.d."
At this he stopped and whistled. "No!" he exclaimed as if he were too astonished to say anything else.
She walked on and in a second he was bouncing at her side, fanning with his hat. "That"s very unusual for a girl," he remarked, watching her out of the corner of his eye. When they reached the edge of the wood, he put his hand on her back again and drew her against him without a word and kissed her heavily.