• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1459 0

than you, but on th’other hand you aint so bad. I seen lots worse. Bevis realized with astonishment that in the reading of minds there can be no flattery, no dissembling, no lies. He noticed that Emelda Duckworth was smiling, although her eyes were not on him, so maybe she had not been displeased with his honest answer. Emboldened, he told her, I’d come over there and sit beside ye, but I’m way too shy for that. She replied, I know, and offered, Would it make any difference iffen I was to come over yonder and sit by you? He answered, Wal, I’d git powerful red in the face if ye did, but I reckon I could stand it, so long as you never said nothin out loud. She said, Okay, here I come, but even until that last moment he did not believe that she would actually do it, and when he saw her rise up from the ground and start walking in his direction, he had a strong impulse to run away, and he started to rise but heard her voice inside him say, Don’t git up. I’ll be right thar.

Participants in the afternoon’s activities at the Unforgettable Picnic could not help but notice, from time to time, all afternoon long, Bevis Ingledew and Emelda Duckworth sitting side by side, alone together in the Field of Clover, never speaking nor touching nor even looking at one another. But the Stay Morons considered it a great achievement on Emelda’s part even to get that close to a shy Ingledew, although they doubted that she would ever get any closer. They pitied both Bevis and Emelda because they were missing so many of the activities and attractions of the Unforgettable Picnic, but if two people could amuse themselves by sitting side by side without speaking for the whole long afternoon, then that was their business, so nobody spoke to Bevis or Emelda or tried to get them up from the ground, not even for one of the main attractions, when a furriner from out of state set up a talking machine and for five cents a head gave his customers the privilege of listening for five minutes to an accurate recording of a Negro being burned to death by a lynch mob, one of the most unforgettable sounds of the Unforgettable Picnic. Years afterwards, someone would always comment on the fact that Bevis Ingledew had never been known to speak to his wife, whereas even old speechless Coon Ingledew had at least been heard to give his wife directions to his house when she first came to Stay More.

Emelda politely waited until Bevis Ingledew’s face had stopped burning before she “spoke” to him again. And then she “said,” I know it would mortify you iffen we was to hold hands, so let’s us jist play like we’re a-holdin hands. Like this, and she demonstrated: how, by keeping her hands in her lap, and his at his sides, they could pretend that they were actually linking hands and even intertwining their fingers. How does that feel? she asked him. Mighty nice, he replied. Then she suggested, Let’s play like we’re takin a stroll down by the creek, to git away from all these folks. So they pretended that they got up from the ground, linked hands again, and strolled casually across the Field of Clover and into the trees bordering Swains Creek. They pretended that they walked along the bank of the creek until they were out of earshot of the Picnic; Emelda hummed old songs while Bevis skipped pebbles across the surface of the creek, and they went on strolling, and came to a secluded place where they sat on a rock and dangled their feet in the water. It was cool and quiet.

Emelda told him that if she could read his thoughts then he could read her thoughts too. He protested that he didn’t want to snoop. Go ahead, she invited him. It’s fun. So he invaded her thoughts, and discovered that she was thinking about kissing. He thought of the fact that he had never kissed a girl and was too shy to start, but she invaded his thought and thought that there was really nothing to it, all they had to do was move their heads close enough together so that their lips could touch, and they both thought about that and then pretended to do it, for a long minute. How did that feel? she asked him, and