It was because they were not married the husband says. It wasn’t even his child. I didn’t know it then, though. I didn’t find that out until I heard them talking that night by the fire, when they didn’t know I heard, I reckon. Before he had done got himself desperated up all the way. But I reckon he was desperate enough, all right. I reckon he was just giving her one more chance He continues: “So there he was skirmishing around, getting camp ready, until he got me right nervous: him trying to do everything and not knowing just where to begin or something. So I told him to go rustle up some firewood, and I took my blankets and spread them out in the truck. I was a little mad, then, at myself about how I had got into it now and I would have to sleep on the ground with my feet to the fire and nothing under me. So I reckon I was short and grumpy maybe, moving around, getting things fixed, and her sitting with her back to a tree, giving the kid his supper under a shawl and saying ever so often how she was ashamed to inconvenience me and that she aimed to sit up by the fire because she wasn’t tired noway, just riding all day long and not doing anything. Then he came back, with enough wood to barbecue a steer, and she began to tell him and he went to the truck and taken out that suitcase and opened it and taken out a blanket. Then we had it, sho enough. It was like those two fellows that used to be in the funny papers, those two Frenchmen that were always bowing and scraping at the other one to go first, making out like we had all come away from home just for the privilege of sleeping on the ground, each one trying to lie faster and bigger than the next. For a while I was a mind to say, ‘All right. If you want to sleep on the ground, do it. Because be durned if I want to.’ But I reckon you might say that I won. Or that me and him won. Because it wound up by him fixing their blanket in the truck, like we all might have known all the time it would be, and me and him spreading mine out before the fire. I reckon he knew that would be the way of it, anyhow. If they had come all the way from south Alabama like she claimed. I reckon that was why he brought in all that firewood just to make a pot of coffee with and heat up some tin cans. Then we ate, and then I found out.”
Found out what? What it was he wanted to do?
Not right then. I reckon she had a little more patience than you He continues: “So we had eaten and I was lying down on the blanket. I was tired, and getting stretched out felt good. I wasn’t aiming to listen, anymore than I was aiming to look like I was asleep when I wasn’t. But they had asked me to give them a ride; it wasn’t me that insisted on them getting in my truck. And if they seen fit to go on and talk without making sho nobody could hear them, it wasn’t any of my business. And that’s how I found out that they were hunting for somebody, following him, or trying to. Or she was, that is. And so all of a sudden I says to myself, ‘Ah-ah. 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 in a case like that the 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: ‘Why, Mr. Bunch. Ain’t you ashamed. You might have woke the baby, too.’ Then he come out the back door of the truck. Not fast, and not climbing down on his own legs at all. I be dog if I don’t believe she picked him up and set him back outside on the ground like she would that baby if it had been about six years old, say, and she says, ‘You go and lay down now, and get some sleep. We got another fur piece to go tomorrow.’
“Well, I was downright ashamed to look at him, to let him know that any human man had seen and heard what happened. I be dog if I didn’t want to find the hole and crawl into it with him. I did for a fact. And him standing there where she had set him down. The fire had burned down good now and I couldn’t hardly see him at all. But I knew about how I would have been standing and feeling if I was him. And that would have been with my head bowed, waiting for the Judge to say, ‘Take him out of here and hang him quick.’ And I didn’t make a sound, and
