Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [51]
I sloshed forward in the tiny pool, put my arms around her hips, warm from the sun, and buried my face in her lap.
“Yes, you big, dumb child,” she said softly, running her fingers through my damp hair, “but I can't meet you halfway on an issue like cockfighting. My roots are here and so are yours. Give it up, please, give it up, and marry me. Can't you see that you're wrong, wrong, wrong!” She gripped my hair with both hands and tugged my head gently from side to side.
“I can't exist on postcards any longer, Frank. 'Dear M.E. I'm in Sarasota. Won the derby 4—3. I love you. Will write from Ocala. F.! ' In a few more weeks, I'll be thirty years old. I want to be married and have children! I'm tired of people snickering behind my back at our engagement. Nobody believes it anymore. If you loved me only half as much as I love you, you'd give it up. Please, Frank, stay home, marry me—”
There was a catch in her voice, and I lifted my head to look at her face. She wasn't crying, far from it. She was trying to beat me down again with an emotional appeal to my “reason.” I had explained patiently to Mary Elizabeth, a dozen times or more, that cockfighting was not a cruel sport, that it was a legitimate, honorable business, and I had asked her to witness one fight, just one fight, so she could see for herself instead of listening to fools who didn't know what they were talking about. She had always refused, falling back on misinformation learned from reformers, the narrow-minded Methodist minister, and the shortsighted laws prohibiting the sport that were pushed through by a minority group of do-gooders. If she wouldn't see for herself, how could I persuade her?
“You're a brilliant man, Frank,” Mary Elizabeth continued earnestly. “You could make a success out of anything you went into in Mansfield. This farm is half mine, you know, and when we're married, it'll be half yours. If you don't want to farm with Wright, I've got enough money saved that you can open a business of some kind in town. I've saved almost everything I've earned. Wright doesn't let me spend a penny, and I've been teaching for six years. And I'll help you get your voice back. We'll work it out together, you and I, Frank. We can get a book on phonetics and you—”
As she constructed these impossible feminine castles I got restless. I pulled away from her, clambered up on the opposite bank and began to dress, without waiting to get dry.
“What are you doing?” she said sharply.
As she could see for herself, I was putting my clothes on.
“You haven't listened to a single word, have you?”
I grinned, and buckled the straps on my jodhpur boots.
“If you leave, now,” she shouted, “you needn't come back! We're through, d'you hear? Through! I won't be treated this way!”
When a woman starts to scream unreasonably, it's time to leave. I snatched a cold fried chicken leg out of the basket, draped my coat over my arm and started down the trail. Mary Elizabeth didn't call after me. Too mad, I reckoned.
Mary Elizabeth was stubborn. That was her problem. Anytime she truly wanted to get married, all she had to do was say so. But it had to be on my terms. I loved her, and she was a respectable woman with a good family background. I knew she would make me a good wife, too, once she got over this foolishness of wanting me to give up cockfighting and settle down in some dull occupation in Mansfield.