A Daughter of the Morning. Gale Zona
look like that to own that drunken coward for a husband!
"What if he is?" I says. "He's a brute, and we all know it."
She cried a little. "You hadn't ought to speak to me so," she says. "If I go, how'll I earn my living, and the baby's?" she says.
I hadn't thought of that. "That's so," I says. "You are tied, ain't you?"
I couldn't get her to come with me. She's got the bed made up in the front room up-stairs, and she was going up there that night and lock her door, and leave the kitchen open.
"He may not be so bad," she says. "Maybe he'll be so drunk he'll tumble on the bed asleep, or maybe he'll be sick. I always hope for one of them."
I went back through the wood-lot. It was so different out there from home and Mis' Bingy's that it felt good. I found a place in a book once that told about the woods. It gave me a nice feeling. I used to get it out of the school library whenever it was in and read the place over, to get the feeling again. Almost always it gave it to me. In the real woods I didn't always get it. They come so close up to me that they bothered me. I always thought I was going to get to something, and I never did. And yet I always liked it in the wood-lot. And it was nice to be away from home and from Mis' Bingy's.
I forgot the whole bunch of 'em for a while. It was the night of a moon, and you could see it in the trees, like a big fat face that was friends with you. When a bird did just one note, it felt pleasant. After a while I stopped still, because it seemed as if something was near to me; but I wasn't scared, even if it was quite dark. I thought to myself that I wisht my family and all the folks I knew was still and kept to themselves same as the trees does, instead of rushing at you every minute, out loud. I never knew any folks that acted different from that, though. Luke was just like that, too.
I was thinking of this when I see him coming to meet me, down the path. He ain't a big man, Luke.
"Hello, Cossy," he says. "That you?"
"Hello, Luke," I says. I dunno why it is – with the boys at home I can joke. But Luke, he always makes me feel just plain. I just says "Hello, Luke," and stood still, and waited for him to come up to me. He turned and walked along beside me.
"I was afraid I wouldn't meet you," he says. "I was afraid I'd miss you. My, it's a good thing to get you somewheres by yourself."
"Why?" I says.
"Oh, the boys are always around, or your pa, or somebody. I've got a right to talk to you sometimes by yourself."
"Well, go ahead, then. Talk to me."
All of a sudden he stopped still in the path.
"Do you mean that?" he ask.
"Mean what?" I says. I couldn't think what he meant.
"That I can talk to you now? My way?"
"Oh," I says. I knew then. I guess I should have known before, if I'd stopped to think. But someway I never could put my mind on Luke all the time he was saying anything.
"Cossy," he says, "I've tried to talk to you; you always got round it or else somebody else come in. You know what I want."
I didn't say anything. I sort of waited, not so much to see what he was going to do as to see what I was going to do.
Then he didn't say anything. But he put his arm around me, and put his hand around my arm. I let him. I wasn't mad, so I didn't pretend.
"Let's us sit down here," he says.
We sat under a big tree and he drew my head down on his shoulder.
"You're all kinds of a peach," he says, "that's what you are, Cossy – I bet you've known for weeks I want you to marry me. Ain't you?"
"Yes," I says, "I s'pose I have."
He laughed. "You're a funny girl," he says.
"It's silly to pretend," I says.
"You bet," he says, "it's silly to pretend. Give me a kiss, then. Kiss me yourself."
I did. I had to see whether I was pretending not to want to, or whether I really didn't want to. I see right away that I didn't want to.
"Marry me, Cossy," he says. "Will you?"
I was twenty years old. For a long time Ma had been asking me why I didn't marry some nice young man. "Marry some nice young man," she says. "You'll be happier, Cossy." Why would I be happier, I wondered. What would make me happy? There would be, I supposed, a great deal of this kind of thing. I thought it was honest to talk it over with Luke.
"What for?" I says.
"Because I love you," says Luke serious; "and I want you."
I laughed out loud. "Them's funny reasons for a bargain," I says.
He kind of drew off. "Oh, well," he says, "it's all I've got. If you don't think it amounts to anything – "
"That's why you should marry me," I says. "But I want to know why I should marry you."
"Don't you love me?" says Luke.
"I donno," I told him. "I don't like to kiss you so very well."
"Cossy, listen," Luke said. "All that'll come. Honest, it will, dear. Just trust me, and marry me. I need you."
"Well, but, Luke," I says, "I donno if I need you. I don't believe I do."
"You listen here," he says, sort of mad. "You'll have a home of your own – "
"Why, wouldn't I live on your folks's farm?" I says.
"Oh, well, yes," Luke says. "But – I love you, Cossy!" he ends up. "Can't you understand? I love you."
He said it like the reason. I begun to think it was.
"You've got to marry somebody," says Luke.
I knew that well enough. Home was bad enough now, but when one of the boys brought a wife there it would be worse. I'd have to marry somebody.
"I'd like to get away from home," I says. "Ma and I don't get along, and Pa's like a bear the whole time."
"You'd ought not to say such things, Cossy," says Luke.
"Why not?" I says. "They're true. That is about the only reason I can think of why I should marry you. That, and because I've got to marry somebody."
I thought he'd be mad. Instead, he had his arms around me and was kissing me.
"I don't care what you marry me for," he says. "Marry me, anyhow!"
I thought: "I s'pose I'd get used to him. I don't like the boys, either. I can't bear Henny. Every girl seems to act as if it was all right, after she gets away. Maybe it is."
Two people were coming along the path. Luke and I sat still – it was so dark nobody could notice us where we were. I heard them talking and then I heard Ma's voice. I knew right off Henny had told her about Keddie, and she was going to try to get Mis' Bingy to come home with us.
" … On my feet from morning till night," she was saying, "till it seems as though I should drop. I don't know how I stand it."
Pa was with her. "Stand it, stand it!" he says. "Anybody'd think you had the pest in the house. I'm sick of hearin' you whine."
"I know," says Ma, "nobody thinks I'm worth anything now. But after I'm dead and gone – "
"Oh, shut up," says Pa. And they went by us.
I stood up, all of a sudden. Anything would be better than home.
"Luke – " I says.
In a few years maybe him and me would be talking the same as Ma and Pa. Maybe he'd be hanging around the Dew Drop Inn, same as Keddie Bingy. What of it? All women took the chance.
"Luke," I says, "all right."
"Do you mean you will?" says Luke. I liked him the best I'd ever liked him, the way he says that.
"I said 'all right,'" I says. "You be a good husband to me and I'll be a good wife to you."
Luke kind of scared me, he was so glad.
On the way home