Those six months in Oregon, the remembrance of them, was the only part of her life with Jack that had no stain on it. Those months were the reason she could never hate Jack; those months when she had realized that every moment he was trying to make her happy, to make up for what had happened, perhaps for what was still to happen, those months when there was no confused, nagging fear in her, when she did not feel like a fugitive, when there was no hand clawing at the window to get in.
They had taken a trailer. Houses in Pendleton were too expensive to rent and apartments were impossible to find. It was a beautiful trailer, new and clean, with porthole windows rimmed with chrome. There was a bedroom with a double bed in the back, a couch in the front, a stove, icebox, cupboards, closets, a table that folded up against the side of the sink and two tiny chairs.
Later it seemed to her that it had rained almost every day. There had been many days when it had rained too hard for Jack to go to work, and then they would sit around drinking beer from quart bottles and playing cards with the Purdys, who had the trailer next to theirs. It all had a dreamlike quality to Gene, far away now, and sweetened and made hazy by time; the six months in Oregon spent in a trailer, where it had rained almost every day and she had to walk a hundred yards through the rain to the lavatory, where there was nothing to do while Jack was at work except listen to the radio with Suzy Purdy and sew and do the housework—the little movie house, the B.P.O.E. ballroom, Mrs. Anderson’s Tea Room, The Steak House, playing cards with the Purdys and going for rides in the green countryside on Sundays. Jack had tried so hard, so almost pitifully hard, to make her happy.
But June came, the work was almost done, and Jack would soon be out of a job. And then there was a letter from Smitty, saying that Hogan and Griffith had a big contract on North Island and he wanted Jack to come back as grade foreman. Jack showed her the letter. She read it through twice, slowly, and then she looked at him.
“Do you want to go?” she asked.
He was lying on the couch with his head propped up on the red bolster she had made, cleaning his fingernails with a matchstick. “I don’t know,” he said. Gene sat down beside him.
“Well, I guess so,” he said. “We might as well. It’s a lot better job than I can get around here.”
“Do you want to go?” she said again.
“It’ll be okay,” Jack said, still without looking at her. “It’s been six months.”
Holding the letter, Gene rose, stepped across to the stove and lifted the cover on the string beans. Steam drifted up into her nostrils and the cover burned her fingers, but she did not put it down right away. Finally she replaced it and turned around. “What about V?”
“She’s probably gone back to Bakersfield. The guy she married’s got a ranch up there.”
Gene sat down beside him again and looked around the trailer. It was so small. Everything was in its place. It was as though its smallness had thrown them into a closer relationship, as though in living so intimately they had become more intimate in all ways.
“It’s been nice here,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I hate to leave our trailer.”
Jack raised himself and put his arm around her back. “Listen, do you want to say here? I can get on as a skinner, maybe.”
“Oh, no. Not if it’s a better job.”
“The money doesn’t matter that much.”
She took a long breath and turned her head and smiled at him. “I didn’t mean I didn’t want to go,” she said. “It’s just that we’ve been so happy here.” She got up again and returned to the stove; there was nothing for her to do there, but she moved the pots around on the burners. Jack came over, turned her toward him and put his arms around her. He looked worried.
“Listen, damn it, Gene, if you don’t want to go, we won’t.” She leaned her head against his chest. He held one hand in the small of her back, pressing her to him, and she could feel the warmth of his body. She could feel his heart beating steadily against her cheek. “I love you, darling,” she said, into his chest.
Jack lifted her face and looked down into her eyes. She put her hand up to smooth his forehead. “Honey, are you worried about going back?” he said.
She shook her head, smiling at him.
“Aren’t you? Honest?”
“No,” Gene said. “Remember that night in San Diego when we talked about it before?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I trust you. I always will now. You’ve been wonderful, Jack.”
He was silent, holding her in his arms, and she leaned against him contentedly, feeling him breathe and trying to find with her ear the place where she had heard his heart beating.
So they went back. They stayed in a hotel until they found an apartment and could get their furniture out of storage. Gene wondered why she had dreaded this returning. She was sure V had gone, and V would never be able to find them again. She got her old job back with Hogan and Griffith and she and Jack were able to save two hundred dollars every month. In two or three years, with a G.I. loan, Jack would be able to buy the tractors he wanted.