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“I may do it. I can’t go on doing nothing all my life.”

He stayed until about ten and we talked a lot and played the phonograph, and the evening was almost perfect. There was one moment when I wasn’t so sure, but afterward I wondered if perhaps I hadn’t imagined it, or at least exaggerated it. It was while I was lighting a cigarette and Angelina had got up to go across the room for something and for a second when he must have thought he was unobserved I saw what was in his eyes as they followed her figure across the room.

When he had gone I said, “Maybe he’ll come out of it yet. Don’t you think so, Angelina?”

“Maybe so, Bob.” She was rather quiet.

“He’s all right when he’s behaving himself, isn’t he? What did you think?”

“He was nice, all right. And he’s the best-looking man I ever saw, even in the movies.”

“Well, I asked for it,” I said, a little sore.

She laughed. “Are you mad because you’re not as pretty as he is, Bob?”

“No. But, Christ, no man wants to sit there and hear his wife—” She kissed me and I shut up and was satisfied.

For the next week or ten days he came to see us often, nearly always coming around suppertime, and often bringing us a steak or some ice cream or something else from town. But I noticed that after each visit Angelina was a little more preoccupied and moody, and one day she asked me if we ought to have him so often.

“Well, we don’t have to,” I said, surprised. “But, after all, he’s my brother. And it seems to help keep him from drinking.”

“Maybe” was all she would say.

Suddenly he didn’t come out any more for supper. A whole week, the last week in September, went by with no visit from him. We were finishing up the cotton in the bottom now and Jake and Helen and I were down there all day long. Angelina wanted to come down and pick with us, but I refused. I wasn’t going to have my wife work like a field hand. Then she wanted to do the weighing or ride the wagon to the gin with Jake. She said she wanted to get away from the house. I thought it was because of the beautiful Indian-summer weather and said I’d think about it.

That same day, late in the afternoon, Jake and I were putting on a bale that was going to the gin the next day. I was passing the cotton up to him in a big woven basket from the pile on the ground near the weighing station and he was dumping it and tramping it down in the bed, going round and round the high cotton-frame sideboards and putting all his weight on one foot and pushing down.

He chuckled suddenly. “Bob, that brother of yourn shore does goose a car, don’t he?”

“Yeah,” I said absently. “Anything under fifty is parking to him.”

“I seen him come out of yore driveway this afternoon an’ make that there sharp turn onto the road an’ I swear they wasn’t only two of his wheels on the ground.”

“That so? I thought he’d forgotten us, he hasn’t been out in so long.”

“Oh, he comes out every day. I see him on the road out there a lot. I was wonderin’ why you didn’t put him to pickin’. Guess that’s the reason he stays up to the house, though, so you won’t put him to work,” he said, and laughed.

“Yeah,” I said. I was bent over the pile, pushing cotton down into the basket, and I tried to keep it out of my voice. He was above me and couldn’t see my face and by the time I had the basket packed full I had hold of myself and passed it up expressionlessly.

We finished loading the wagon and started up the hillside road toward the house with Jake driving. We stopped in the lot next to the barn and I helped unhitch, working mechanically and only half listening to Jake’s chatter. I could have left the unhitching to him, but I didn’t want him to notice anything unusual.

When we had fed the mules I said, “I’ll see you in the morning, Jake,” and started up to the house.

Angelina was in the dining room, putting the last of supper on the table. I stopped in the door.

“Do you still want to come down in the bottom with us tomorrow?” I asked.

“Sure. Can I, Bob?” she asked eagerly.

“Every day?” I asked.

“Yes. Until we’re through down there.”

“You don’t like to stay up here at the house, do you?”

“No. I hate it when the weather’s so nice.”

“Just on account of the weather?”

She must have noticed something strange about it then, for she looked at me sharply with worry in her eyes.

I came on into the dining room and walked over to her and caught both her arms. “Now tell me. Why do you want to get away from the house?”

“I’ve told you.”

My hands were cutting into her arms and I could hear her indrawn breath as she tried to cover up the pain.

“Tell me.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you, Bob.” I released her arms and she rubbed them where my hands had been. “But, please, you won’t do anything, will you? Promise me you won’t do anything to him.”

“Why? Are you in love with him?” I should have known better than to say that but I wasn’t thinking very clearly.

“What do you think, Bob?” she asked quietly.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I didn’t want to tell you. That’s the reason I wanted to come down there with you, so I wouldn’t have to be here. I guess I could have just gone off and hid in the woods all day, but it seemed kind of crazy to do that. He came out here every day, even during the time he was coming out at night to have supper with us. And he was drinking a lot and lots of times I’d have to fight him off. And that’s the reason he hasn’t been out here at night the last week, because one day I hit him real hard in the face and it gave him a black eye. I guess he didn’t want you to see that. There wasn’t anything I could do. I couldn’t tell you because I knew how you are and I was afraid of what would happen. He kept begging me to go away with him somewhere and hinting that if I didn’t people might find out about that—that thing that happened and why you and I were married. He didn’t say he would tell anybody, but he said that if I didn’t go with him he couldn’t stand it and drank too much and that he might let things fall when he was drunk. Of course, I didn’t mind that part of it because he was just silly and nobody cares what he says or tells—we don’t, do we?—but when he was drunk and I had to fight with him it was bad.”

When she stopped talking I said, “Is that all?”

“Just about. Except that sometimes when I watched for the car and saw him coming I would run and hide and he would look all over the house and barn until he found me.”

“And he was drunk?”

“Most of the time. Not always. Bob, can’t we sell this place and go somewhere else? I know you want to live on a farm, the way you told me in Galveston that time, but you could buy one somewhere else, away from him.”

“You don’t have to leave the country just because a man won’t leave your wife alone,” I said. “Not this country.”

“Don’t you see that’s the reason I didn’t want to tell you? Can’t you see it, Bob?”

I started toward the front door and she came after me and caught me in the hall.

“Don’t go without promising, Bob,” she said. She couldn’t cry, I guess, the way another girl would. All she could do was to look at me in that awful way and keep asking me over and over. I knew then that I didn’t have any right to do what I was doing to her.

“All right,” I said. “I won’t.”

I didn’t have any idea where I might find him but thought I would try the house first. It was possible he might be there. It was dark when I turned into the driveway off North Elm.

I didn’t knock this time. The door was unlocked and I went on in and walked back to the living room and he was there with a girl I didn’t know. They were sitting on the sofa drinking highballs.