8

THE next afternoon, on our way back from seeing the grain elevator and Bailey, Gil told me he could only stay three days; that he had to leave Wednesday. I stopped in the muddy road and stared at him.

“But, Gil, I thought you were staying a week, anyway.”

“I know, Ellen. I didn’t tell you at first because I didn’t want to spoil everything, but I have to be in Florida by the first and I promised to spend a week at home before I left.”

He went on talking, explaining, but I didn’t hear him clearly. He had his drawing things he hadn’t even unpacked. We hadn’t done any of the things we had talked of doing. I searched his face, trying to understand. His eyes looked unhappy. His mouth had that moody line.

“What’s wrong, Gil?” I asked. Nothing mattered if he would just tell me, but he said, “Nothing’s wrong,” almost as though he didn’t like my asking. “I hate to leave you, that’s all.” This was the way he must speak to his mother when she wanted him to wear a raincoat, I told myself to take the sting out of it. I waited for him to speak next. We walked in silence up back of the store and along the highway. Gil had on some galoshes of Dad’s because of the mud. We turned off the highway on our road that runs down into the coulee. Mom and Dad built that road themselves, I almost told him, and then I didn’t.

“It must be lonely for you here sometimes,” Gil said, as though he were being kind.

“No, I’ve never been lonely here,” I answered. I wanted to go on talking, about anything, but I couldn’t.

The kitchen was warm and cheerful after our walk in the rain.

Mom and Dad were both working outdoors or down at the barn. They hadn’t expected us back so soon. I hung my jacket back of the kitchen door and took Gil’s from him. I loved the room because we were alone in it together. I shoved the teakettle over and put a fresh shovel of coal in the stove.

“We’ll have tea in a minute, Gil.” I set out the cups and saucers on the kitchen table and sliced bread. “You make the toast.” I gave him the toaster and the bread. He was so quiet. Why didn’t he say something?

When we sat down I noticed the rain had stopped. A yellow-gray light came over the field and the yard through the uncurtained windows. I hoped Mom and Dad wouldn’t come in for a while.

“The tea tastes good,” Gil said.

I wanted to ask him again why he was going so soon—what the matter was—but I knew with a kind of sixth sense that Gil didn’t like to be asked uncomfortable things.

And then Mom came in. I heard her kicking off her galoshes on the back step. She had her bandanna tied over her head and a chicken she had killed herself in one hand. When she opened the door she smiled at us.

“Hi, Mom, come have some tea,” I said. Gil stood up.

Mom waved the chicken at him. “Sit down. I just wash my hands.”

But of course we weren’t alone any more. When Mom was there Gil seemed embarrassed; Mom didn’t. I thought Gil’s nostrils twitched with distaste. I put the chicken in a bowl and covered it while Mom was taking off her bandanna. Then we sat down again. Mom loves tea any time and likes it strong. She looked like a painting sitting there. I wondered if Gil didn’t think so, too.

“You’re not gone long,” Mom said.

“No. Gil had never seen the inside of a grain elevator. I showed him that and all of Gotham. The road’s pretty muddy.”

“But we need the rain.” Mom’s eyes shone. “It look like rain again some more.”

While I was starting dinner Gil sat in the front room, reading a magazine. We had no bookcase. Dad kept the magazines in a neat pile on the floor under the window. I set the table in there, looking over often at Gil.

“This is like playing housekeeping, Gil,” I said.

“You are the happiest person, Ellen.” Gil sounded irritated.

“Why shouldn’t I be, Gil? Aren’t you?” Yet I felt he wasn’t.

“Of course.” Then he said, “Tell me about that little carved figure in your room.”

I told him that it was an icon Mom had saved from her home. “I’ve always had it there. I used to talk to it when I was a child.”

“I wondered about it,” Gil said.

We had the chicken for dinner and biscuits and mashed potatoes—the kind of a meal Dad loves. I wasn’t hungry. I saw that Gil wasn’t either. Dad was in high spirits. He came in from working on the tractor and bathed and dressed for dinner; we could hear the water splashing in the bedroom.

“I don’t mind being a rancher if I can forget it at dinnertime,” he said. But the meal was the same as all the others. Mom was silent. Dad and Gil talked. I saw our hands moving again over our plates.

Gil wiped the dishes for me after dinner. Mom sprinkled clothes that she had washed before the rest of us were up. Dad sat smoking his pipe.

“I’m sorry that I’m going to have to leave tomorrow,” Gil said.

I saw Mom’s hands still on the clothes.

“Tomorrow! You better stay longer than that,” Dad said. I poked the corner of the dishcloth down through the spout of the teapot.

“I only wish I could. The Army doesn’t wait for you, I guess. I have to give the folks a few days before I leave for camp.”

“Well, I thought you were going to make us a real visit,” Dad said.

I couldn’t say anything. I emptied the dishpan outside where Mom had planted nasturtiums and asters. A little more water wouldn’t hurt them any. The air was cool and damp on my hot face. I saw Dad follow Mom into the bedroom. I knew what they had said when Dad came in. Gil must know, too.

“We didn’t know this was to be your last night, Gil. We promised Bailey we’d come down and have a hand of bridge with him,” Dad said.

Mom never went anywhere in the evening. They thought we wanted to be alone.

When they had gone I got some dance music on the radio. We danced around the table and out in the kitchen.

“I bet you never danced in a kitchen before,” I said, laughing.

“This is all right,” Gil answered.

When the announcer broke in on the music I was standing close to Gil. “Oh, Gil, don’t go!” I whispered.

“I really have to, Ellen,” Gil said.

We sat on the couch and talked. I don’t know what we talked about—things we did last year in Minneapolis, people we both knew. We seemed closer together talking about things there than here. But I had thought it was important to show him the places I knew, that they would make him know me better. I tried to say that to him.

“Isn’t it funny, Gil, we’ve been such different places together there and here? We could be anywhere if we were together and it wouldn’t matter.”

“That’s right,” Gil said. “You’d like to live here, wouldn’t you?” I thought he asked it almost eagerly.

“Oh, no, I don’t care where we live, Gil, but I was born here. I suppose that’s why I love it.”

“I wonder if you could ever be happy in the city.”

“I could be happy where you were, Gil, I know.”

Mom and Dad came home but they didn’t stay with us long. Mom made hot coffee and told us to have some when we wanted it. There was fresh cake to eat with it. She called me into the bedroom and showed me the white dress. She had finished the red cross-stitch border around the full skirt.

“I finish it down at Baileys’. Mrs. Bailey like it good. I’ll hang it up here.”

We didn’t stay up very late. And neither of us wanted any coffee or cake. There was too short a time to talk of some things. Others didn’t seem important. Just as we were saying good night Gil stood in the kitchen door.

“Isn’t it too cold and damp for you on the porch? Let me change places with you. I didn’t realize last night that I was putting you out of your room.”

“Oh, no, it’s just a June rain. Come out and breathe it; it’s sweet, Gil.”

He kissed me there on the porch in the dark and for a minute I was happy.

“Gil, you don’t have to leave so soon.” I almost said I wanted to go with him if he were leaving.

“Yes, I do, Ellen.” His voice was muffled against my hair. We were both as sad as death, and why should we be? We belonged to each other. He was going only for a short time—the time between two seedings. That wasn’t so long.

“You can drive me into town early, can’t you, Ellen? We can have the day together. The train doesn’t leave till ten-thirty,” Gil said the next morning. “Or will that make you too late getting home?”

“No, that won’t matter. We’ll leave right after lunch.” All I wanted was to be off alone with Gil.

Dad and Mom didn’t do any work except the chores. There was a feeling of waiting. When I tidied Gil’s room I saw the two suits in his suitcase he hadn’t worn. He had meant to stay longer. I couldn’t get that out of my head. Something must have happened here to change his plans, and yet nothing had.

I was glad it had cleared off; the sky was a bright clear blue above the coulee. The blossoms of the prickly pear cactus shone in the sun like yellow and red glass. I started to tell Gil to come and look, and then I didn’t. I felt with a sick sense of disappointment that he was going before he had seen anything, before he had any feeling for the country. But why did that matter? Wasn’t I separate from the country?

I was in the truck first. I wore my new white dress because Mom expected me to. She had cleaned my shoes for me, too. It didn’t occur to her that I might look a little silly sitting up high in the truck all dressed in white. As I went out the door Mom said:

“The geranium match the cross-stitch, Yeléna. Wear it in your hair.” Mom loves bright flowers. I broke off the blossom and fastened my hair back with it instead of with a bow. I looked at myself in the mirror over the sink. I looked very gay and happy.

Mom gave me twenty dollars to stop at the McCormick-Deering and get the new part for the combine. I watched Gil standing at the door with his beautiful leather bag. He thanked Mom so politely. Mom shook hands with him. They were still like strangers. Dad laid his hand on Gil’s shoulder and walked with him to the truck. I couldn’t hear what Dad said, but I could see how he liked Gil, how he had adopted him already.

“Can I drive? I don’t get a chance like this very often,” Gil said.

“The road sticks!” Mom called as we drove off.

I nodded. “I won’t stop for the mail today,” I said to Gil. “I won’t stop till day after tomorrow. Have a letter for me then, Gil.”

Gil was shifting gears. I was glad when we had passed Gotham. Somehow I felt Gotham seemed horrible to Gil. The road ran between the fields; the strips of faint green were spring wheat; the strips of olive-green were winter wheat. They were beautiful under the sun. I could never drive through the country without noticing the wheat. I felt happier.

“Don’t you like the wideness, Gil?”

“It’s so wide it’s depressing,” Gil answered. “Look at that shack without a shrub or a tree around it!”

I looked. It belonged to the Peter La Rouches. Guy La Rouche was in my class at high school. We used to drive in to Clark City on the school bus together every day. He had ten brothers and sisters in that house. They made a living and kept off relief, but they didn’t have any time left over for gardening. I didn’t tell Gil I had gone to a dance once with Guy La Rouche. But the sun drove out all my worries of last night. It was enough to be riding along in the truck with Gil beside me driving.

On a stretch of gumbo about eight miles from Gotham we slued violently to the side. Gil put his foot on the brake too hard and we swung way around.

“Scare you?” Gil asked, looking pretty scared himself.

I laughed. “It takes more than that to scare me. You better go slow, though. This road’s all gumbo to the main highway. Want me to drive?”

“I can do it.” Gil sounded irritated. The truck had to follow the deep ruts gouged out in the mud. He was driving too fast.

“There’s an awfully bad place about a mile ahead,” I said.

Gil liked the novelty of the truck. “Wonder what a fellow that drives one of those big oil trucks thinks about, thundering along like this?” he said. Of course, our truck weighs only about a ton; that’s some different from an oil truck, but I let him pretend.

“His girl,” I said.

“Poor devil, probably worries for fear she’s two-timing him.” He looked at me, smiling.

“I bet she isn’t. She’s probably waiting for him at the end of his run.”

“You think love’s pretty important, don’t you?”

“Don’t you?”

“Yes, but I think a lot of other things are important, too.”

Suddenly, I knew as clearly as though he had told me what was wrong. Gil was going away because he was afraid to marry me; he didn’t mean to come back, ever. I was thinking so hard that I didn’t warn him about the place in the road. It was so chopped up by other cars there were no clear ruts. I felt the truck settle down in the gumbo. I came out of my thoughts in a hurry. The truck stopped. The racing motor gave back a hopeless sound. I was sorry for Gil’s sake.

“Try backing, Gil,” I said.

Gil tried. The wheels churned up the mud and settled down deeper.

“Well, I’ll be . . .” Gil muttered, pushing his hat back on his head. I liked him that way.

“Somebody’ll come along, maybe,” I said, but there wasn’t much traffic. People out our way were busy this time of day. The place seemed loudly quiet after the noise of the motor. “Let me get in there a minute, Gil. You slide over so you won’t have to get out in the mud.” That was the wrong thing to say. I thought maybe I could get it out, because gumbo was such an old story to me. I tried, but the road had no bottom.

“Satisfied?” Gil asked, grinning at me. I think he was glad I couldn’t get it out either.

“We should have brought chains,” I said. “This road’s awful in the rain.” Then I laughed; it was pretty funny. “Oh, Gil, look at us, you all dressed for the train and I in white!” I couldn’t stop laughing. It was a relief after the way I’d been feeling.

Gil laughed a little, too. “Woman, you’re stark, raving mad,” he said, and he sounded like himself. “I suppose there’s nothing to do but sit here till somebody comes by.”

“Oh, no, we can do something,” I said.

“What would you suggest?”

“Well,” I said slowly, “if we could find some branches to put under the wheels . . .”

Gil looked around. There were no trees, only some low bushes along an irrigation ditch.

“What a country!” Gil said.

I stepped gingerly out on the mud, but I went down to my ankles.

“Where you going?” Gil said.

“To make mud pies!” I don’t know what made me flippant. I was sorry the next moment. “Gil, you’re all ready for the train, there’s no use in your getting muddy too.” I squshed through the mud to the side of the road. I had to lift my full skirt carefully over the wire fence. I jerked at the little low bushes. They were hard to pull out. I looked back at Gil, expecting him to come after me anyway. He was trying the motor again. The roar didn’t seem powerful out here, just useless. I called to him to stop, but he couldn’t hear me. I pulled so hard at the bush it came over with me. At the fence I got one of the rotten fence posts loose. I came back to the truck and spread the bushes and the log in front of the back wheels. Then I pulled the blanket from around Gil’s bag and laid that in the mud. I was dirty and my hands were scratched, but I didn’t care. I came around to the door.

“Now back slowly,” I ordered. “Slowly!” I yelled again as Gil started up too fast. The big wheels threw up the mud like water. A soft, wet chunk hit my hair. Then one wheel was on the rotten fence post. I tried to hold the blanket out straight. The geranium fell out of my hair in the mud.

Gil let the motor stall. He hadn’t given it enough gas at the right time. It made me mad.

“Let me get it out, Gil.” Gil moved over. I slid in and backed the truck hard until I felt the wheels take hold and the rear end rise a little. Then I shifted like lightning and drove full-power ahead. I let out a yell. If we slued off the edge we were done for, but we couldn’t ever get out if we didn’t give her everything she had. The truck plunged ahead like a sheep coming out of the sheep dip. I didn’t dare slow down. I kept her going. I felt triumphant. In the car mirror I could see the blanket lying in the mud, chewed to ribbons. I didn’t care; let it stay there. I bet Gil’s suitcase was thrown around, too.

When we were out on the dry road, Gil said:

“Good for you!”

I was so hot I pushed my hair back from my face, muddy hand or not. I looked down at my feet.

“I’m a mess!”

“If you’d been driving in the first place, you wouldn’t have been stuck,” Gil said. I had wanted him to tell me I wasn’t a mess or that he loved me anyway.

“Oh, I might have. That’s a regular sumphole.” Gil was angry because he’d got stuck. We drove a long way in silence. “When we get to town, I’ll buy some new shoes and stockings and a new dress,” I said.

“I’ll pay for them,” Gil said. Tears filled my eyes so I could hardly see where I was driving, but I kept my voice cool.

“Oh, I’d be getting them anyway,” I said, but I wanted to stop the truck and put my face against Gil and cry. I wanted to say: “Gil, what’s happened? Where are you? Gil, I’m sorry I got the car out of the mud. Oh, Gil, I love you, don’t you see?”

We came into town and it was only a little after three. I tipped the mirror down so I could see myself. I looked awful. Six hours was all I’d have of Gil. He’d go away then and never come back. He wanted to go now, and he was uncomfortable because he was trying to explain to me. But he wouldn’t have to explain. I’d act as though everything were all right between us.

“Gil, I’m such a mess, I’ll go in and buy a dress and stockings and shoes. It won’t take me long. Then I’ll go to . . .” I was going to say “to the station rest room to change,” but Gil would squirm at that, so I said “the hotel.”

When we were in front of the store Gil said: “I wish you’d let me buy these things for you. After all, it was my fault, I mean . . .” I was glad he fumbled a little for his words.

“No, thanks,” I said again.

It was lucky I had the money for the piece of machinery. I don’t believe anyone ever bought a dress and shoes and stockings faster. I didn’t waste any time explaining to the salesgirl why my dress was muddy, either. I bought a dress that made me think of the city, all black, and black sandals with soles so thin they couldn’t stand anything like mud. On the way down through the store I bought a black turban to wind around my head, a big flat black purse, and gloves. When I came out of the door of the store Gil was sitting in the truck just as I had left him.

“Did you see the mud on the wheels?” Gil said when I got in. “The stuff’s like clay.”

“Gumbo’s bad, all right,” I said.

“I’ll get you a room,” Gil said when we walked into the hotel. He went up to the desk and I could see he was uncomfortable, but I didn’t care.

“I’d like a room for this young lady to change in. We ran into some mud coming in.” He laughed a little while he talked to the hotel clerk.

“I’ll say she did,” the clerk said. “You came through pretty good yourself.” That made Gil angry. I could see him flush. He wrote my name on the ledger while I stood there like a child. I couldn’t help thinking how it would be if he had written Mr. and Mrs. G. H. Borden.

I went upstairs in the elevator and followed the boy down the corridor without a word. I thought of that other time when Dad and Mom and I stopped here. The rooms had been done over since then; they were very modern now, but I hardly looked at the room. No one ever took a bath and dressed faster.

Gil was sitting in the lobby in front of the elevator when I came down.

“I feel better,” I said and started to pull on the gloves as though I hadn’t seen the quick change of pleasure in Gil’s face as he stood up. Then I saw the price mark was still on the gloves and started picking it off with my nail.

“Ellen, you look like the first time you came to dinner at our house.”

I sat down on the arm of the chair and looked across the room in the wall mirror. I didn’t look as though two hours ago I’d been dragging a fence post along the road.

“Then it’s a good thing I got muddy,” I said.

“I should have been the one,” Gil said. It still bothered him that I had got the truck out.

“Don’t be silly. My dress will wash.”

“Do you know, Ellen, you are the most unbelievable person. You change with whatever you put on.”

“No, I don’t, really,” I said. “I’m just the same whether I have on jeans and an old shirt hanging out or this outfit.” We went over to a corner of the lobby and looked out the big front window of the hotel onto the main street. We were by ourselves over there. A big fern and an aquarium shut us off from the rest of the hotel.

“Ellen, there are so many things we haven’t talked about yet,” Gil began. I could see how hard it was for him.

“Yes,” I said.

“I realize how much I’m asking you to change your whole way of life when you marry me. I didn’t know before.”

I waited. What was a “way of life” but being with a person you loved?

“I mean, seeing how you love the ranch, and how differently you’ve been brought up from the way I have, makes me wonder.”

He had almost said it. I waited so hard I could feel my heart pounding. I looked over at him and loved him so much I was afraid he could feel it. Something had made him afraid to love me, I knew. I believe he really wanted everything to be the way it had been before.

“Wonder what, Gil?” I said gently.

“Whether you’d be happy, living with me.”

But he couldn’t doubt that. He was afraid about himself—whether he’d be happy with me. I could see how wretched it made him, how ashamed, but I wouldn’t say anything to help him.

“Ellen! Why don’t you say something?”

There were so many things to say, but I mustn’t say the wrong thing. When you love someone you ought to be able to talk to him without testing your words.

“Ellen?” Gil didn’t like silences. The silence became strange, like another person standing beside us.

“You know I would be, Gil. I’m not like that.”

“I know you aren’t, Ellen,” Gil said. He reached out and held my hand tight. He couldn’t tell me. I was unhappy for both of us.

“Let’s go, Gil. Let’s have some fun before you go. It’s almost six o’clock.”

“Why don’t you come back and stay overnight at the hotel, here, after the train goes?” Gil suggested. “Your mother wouldn’t worry, would she?”

“Oh, yes, she’d worry,” I said. “But if I were there in the morning early, it would be all right. Perhaps I will.”

I thought of that hotel room, the beds without any footboard and a silly print on the wall of some flowers that never grew in the earth. I couldn’t think of anything worse or lonelier than coming back here after Gil had gone. If Gil had loved me here, it might be different, but Gil was afraid to love me. I wondered as we walked across to the dining room whether if Gil had wanted to stay here with me tonight, I would have stayed with him.

It was a little early for dinner, but the doors were open. The waitresses stood in starched patience waiting by the empty tables. We had a table for two under a shaded light. I studied the big menu, but I didn’t take any of it in. If Gil had said even one little word, if he had shown he wanted me, I knew I would have loved him with all my body and my heart.

“Sherry to begin with?” Gil asked.

“Yes,” I said. “That will seem like being at your house with your mother and father.”

Gil smiled. When it came, I held the thin-stemmed glass in my fingers. I thought how big my hand looked.

“To us!” Gil said. We had said that with cokes in Pop’s Place. Then it had always seemed exciting and gay. I tried to make it seem that way again, but I felt as though this was the end of the world.

I was quiet at dinner. Gil was talkative. He was relieved that he was going so soon. I watched his hands, long and carefully cared for and shapely. Maybe I loved them because they were so different from any hands I had known. Mine were like farm horses, strong and well fed, but Gil’s were like fine saddle horses—the kind they showed at the County Fair now that people in Clark City were taking up riding.

It was quarter of nine when we finished dinner.

“Let’s go some place to dance,” Gil said as we came out.

We went to the Bijou, a funny little place in the basement of the biggest movie house, but it had a four-piece orchestra. There was only one couple there, it was so early. The orchestra played everything we ever liked. They played “Tomorrow Is a Lovely Day” over twice. I was happy while we danced. I didn’t look at the time. And then it was twenty after ten. We took a taxi to the station. Gil hardly had time to kiss me good-by. It was easy, after all. He stood on the platform, bareheaded, waving his hat as the train pulled out.

“It’s been wonderful, Ellen,” he called.

“Yes,” I called back. I watched until I couldn’t see him any longer.

The taxi-driver who brought us down wanted to take me back. He said the gentleman had paid for the trip back to the hotel. I said no, I wanted to walk back. I took off the turban on my head and carried it in my hand. The truck parked out in front of the place where we went to dance looked big and friendly. I climbed up in the seat and slipped off the black high-heeled sandals and put on the muddy white ones. It was good to hear the engine. The big wheel was something to take hold of. I left her in second gear all the way out of town so she’d make more noise. I don’t know why. When I came beyond the town where the road stretched out into distance, I shifted into third. She ran as quietly as a kitten purring.

There was nothing on the road. I could let her out. I went the first ten miles like a streak, then the dark sky with the stars scattered as carelessly as sagebrush across it calmed me and I slowed down. The air was cool for June. All month, June had meant Gil coming. Now Gil was gone. He had come loving me and something had happened to change him. What was it? I didn’t know. I tried to think about it driving along in the empty night.

I passed the place where the alders and willows shielded the creek bed. That was where Gil had said, “I was afraid you’d spoil yourself someway.” But how had I?

I came to the place where we’d been stuck on the way out and I blamed that mud for my losing Gil. I put my foot on the accelerator and rode through recklessly. The ruts grabbed at the wheels like one of those crazy cars at the fair, but the truck came through. It just took a little more drive than Gil gave it.

I thought of Gil standing on the train platform. He had kissed me as though he loved me, hadn’t he? Everything was all right. There’d be a letter for me day after tomorrow—but underneath, I knew.

I came to Gotham. The truck lights lit up the grain elevator and the gasoline station and caught the tracks of the railroad. Above the dark shoulder of the coulee shone an aura of light. I swerved off the main road a little faster than I usually took it. The unpainted box of a house and a barn and a shed stood out ugly and bare in the glare of light. There were lights, too, in the uncurtained windows. The folks were still up.