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By Root 1426 0

he replied, Mighty fine. The kissing had aroused his procreative instincts. My, my, she exclaimed. Yore jemmison is like iron. Could I pretend like I was a-touchin it? Bevis tried to pretend that he was blushing, but could not. Emelda bargained, You kin make believe you’re squeezin my titties. So they fondled one another in their minds. This petting was interrupted by imagined footsteps and voices approaching. Let’s turn it into dark of night, Bevis suggested, and they were concealed by the disappearance of the sun. The imagined footsteps and voices faded away, cursing the darkness. In the light of stars, Bevis and Emelda could just barely pretend to see one another, so they imagined that they were pretending to feel for one another with their hands. I never heared what doing it was named, Emelda’s voice said inside his head, but whatever it’s called, let’s do it anyhow. Or, I mean, let’s play like we’re a-doin it. Bevis did know what it was called; in fact, he knew close to a hundred different names for it, none of them pretty or even delicate, so he couldn’t tell her, but since she could read his mind she discovered them anyway and was impressed by their number and their aggressive energy, and she exclaimed Oooh! almost as if they were already doing it. Groaning and murmuring, she pretended to lie down on the ground and made believe that she was spreading her arms for him, also her legs. He needed no pretense of encouragement; his mind was raring to go, and he let it go, and it went.

If any visitor to the Unforgettable Picnic might have happened to glance at the couple sitting silently side by side in the grass of the Field of Clover, the visitor would have noticed, and wondered at, the fact that both of them simultaneously closed their eyes for a long moment, and smiled, as if experiencing rapture. But no visitor happened to be looking at them during their moment.

When the couple pretended to have rested from their labor of love and returned themselves to the Field of Clover and the Unforgettable Picnic, Bevis was somewhat taken aback to hear Emelda declare: Now you’ve got to marry me. He protested: Aw, heck, we was jist playin like. We never really done it. I aint ruined ye. She suggested, Then let’s play like we’re gittin married. He pointed out, It wouldn’t be legal. She thought and thought about that, and he read her thoughts, and their thoughts got mixed up and were interchangeable. Wait here a minute, she told him, and then she actually got up off the ground and went off in search of Brother Long Jack Stapleton; he wasn’t hard to find, as his Magic Bible Shows tent was a central attraction; she had to wait until the show was over before she could speak to him, and then she told him about Bevis Ingledew and herself and what had happened to them, or what they had allowed themselves to believe had happened.

Brother Stapleton was of course a great respecter of imagination, illusion, make-believe, and he was in sympathy with her situation. He told her just to leave everything up to him and he would take care of it. The conclusion of the Unforgettable Picnic, late in the afternoon, was a triple-feature show by Brother Stapleton: “The Marriage of the Virgin,” with Mary and Joseph dressed in Stay More costumes of the last Century, “The Marriage at Cana,” with more elaborate costumes and orchestral accompaniment, and “The Marriage at Stay More,” which depicted the wedding of Bevis Ingledew and Emelda Duckworth. The bride and groom attended more as spectators than participants, and it made Emelda weep to see herself getting married, and it made Bevis get awful red in the face to see how much he was blushing during the ceremony. He was tortured with suspense, wondering if, when the time came, the man who was Bevis could muster the nerve to say “I do” out loud. The other spectators, which included everybody at the Picnic, were caught up with the show, and cheered the couple on; bets were made among the men; the women who were not weeping made loud exclamations about the beauty of the bride’s gown, which indeed Brother Stapleton