Between the Flowers: A Novel

Chapter 10

· 10 · M ARSH DID not cry as Katy cried, or turn to stone like Delph; he cursed sometimes; cursed Dorie's mules with clenched teeth in low toned oil man's curses. The mules flipped their ears and rolled their eyes, but never tried to run away from him as they sometimes did with Angus. One day not long after Poke Easy's return to the university, Angus watched Marsh as he brought the mules in from watering and said, half enviously, "You're a natural born hand with stock." Marsh pushed his hat back and stared hard at nothing. "Looks like stock's about all I know how to handle, though." Angus shifted his tobacco to the other cheek and observed, careful to keep his eyes on the ground, "Lucky with horses, unlucky with women-that's a old sayin'." Marsh's eyes snapped. "Who in th' Hell says I'm unlucky with women. I've got th' best wife in th' world." Angus smiled down at him. "But you're leavin' her," he said, and strode away whistling "Shady Grove." Marsh stood still and looked after him until he had walked down the barn hall and disappeared behind a stable door. He started after him, remembering he had offered to help in the messy work of cleaning cow stalls; then wheeled abruptly about and hurried toward the house. He wanted to see Delph. There was always the hope that he would find her as he had expected she would be. Sad, or crying even, but reasonable, agreeing that his plan was a wise plan, the only sensible one. He couldn't leave her as she was; stony calm in speech and action, but under that calmness, fighting eternally, continually alert 134 135 for signs ofhis weakening. She was the one to weaken. Some day she would realize that her notions were those of a child. The kitchen was empty, and he ran up the stairs and into her room. She sat in a low rocker by the fire and mended a pair ofhis oil man's corduroys. He hated the sight of the trousers, discolored by oil and salt water, frayed at the cuffs and pale at the knees. He must have mixed and shot and hauled a million gallons of nitroglycerin while he wore trousers like those-or at least it seemed that many. "I wouldn't mess with that junk, Delph," he said, and came and squatted on his heels by the hearth. She smiled, the forced unnatural smile that touched her face so often now, then bit a thread and said, "It's only six more days. I want to do ever'thing I can." "That's right. It's not long." He looked up into her sad rebellious eyes, and wondered wearily why it was that when he was most certain of her love, he was least certain of her mind. "Delph?" "Yes." "I wish you wouldn't take it so. A year an' a half or even two's not a life time." "It'll seem like it." He waited a time with the room so still he could hear his own breathing, then tried again, "Delph?" "Yes." "I wish-I mean it's hard to go away an' have you-well-not wantin' to do what we are doin'. Can't you-well-think it over an' see it's th' best thing.-You'll maybe see a lot of th' world-someday. An' if you don't you've not missed much." She ran the needle through the cloth in careful even stitches, and looked at it with flushed face while she said, "It's not that-now. You know it's not. Marsh, I didn't marry you just because-well because you would go away. If seein' th' world was all I wanted I'd a run away or waited there 'til I was twenty-one. After-after I started goin' with you th' other things I wanted didn't come first anymore . I'd go any place," she went on slowly, her voice like the taut beating of a too-tight fiddle string, "I'd take anything-that oil shanty you batched in back at home-that is if you'd be there. Marsh, couldn't you get ajob closer home-Texas or Oklahoma or Kansassomeplace where there's oil?" BETWEEN THE FLOWERS He shook his...