The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [96]
They met half-way between the farms, under the shade-tree.
"Haven't you had enough of the night?" asked Virgil. There they were, their pants all covered with dust and dew, and they had had to carry the third man home flat between them.
"I've lost Hazel, she's vanished, she went to drown herself.'
"Why, that ain't like Hazel," said Virgil.
William Wallace reached out and shook him. "You heard me. Don't you know we have to drag the river?"
"Right this minute?"
"You ain't got nothing to do till spring."
"Let me go set foot inside the house and speak to my mother and tell her a story, and I'll come back."
"This will take the wide net," said William Wallace. His eyebrows gathered, and he was talking to himself.
"How come Hazel to go and do that way?" asked Virgil as they started out.
William Wallace said, "I reckon she got lonesome."
"That don't argue—drown herself for getting lonesome. My mother gets lonesome."
"Well," said William Wallace. "It argues for Hazel."
"How long is it now since you and her was married?"
"Why, it's been a year."
"It don't seem that long to me. A year!"
"It was this time last year. It seems longer," said William Wallace, breaking a stick off a tree in surprise. They walked along, kicking at the flowers on the road's edge. "I remember the day I seen her first, and that seems a long time ago. She was coming along the road holding a little frying-size chicken from her grandma, under her arm, and she had it real quiet. I spoke to her with nice manners. We knowed each other's names, being bound to, just didn't know each other to speak to. I says, 'Where are you taking the fryer?' and she says, 'Mind your manners,' and I kept on till after while she says, 'If you want to walk me home, take littler steps.' So I didn't lose time. It was just four miles across the field and full of blackberries, and from the top of the hill there was Dover below, looking sizeable-like and clean, spread out between the two churches like that. When we got down, I says to her, 'What kind of water's in this well?' and she says, The best water in the world.' So I drew a bucket and took out a dipper and she drank and I drank. I didn't think it was that remarkable, but I didn't tell her."
"What happened that night?" asked Virgil.
"We ate the chicken," said William Wallace, "and it was tender. Of course that wasn't all they had. The night I was trying their table out, it sure had good things to eat from one end to the other. Her mama and papa sat at the head and foot and we was face to face with each other across it, with I remember a pat of butter between. They had real sweet butter, with a tree drawed down it, elegant-like. Her mama eats like a man. I had brought her a whole hatful of berries and she didn't even pass them to her husband. Hazel, she would leap up and take a pitcher of new milk and fill up the glasses. I had heard how they couldn't have a singing at the church without a fight over her."
"Oh, she's a pretty girl, all right," said Virgil. "It's a pity for the ones like her to grow old, and get like their mothers."
"Another thing will be that her mother will get wind of this and come after me," said William Wallace.
"Her mother will eat you alive," said Virgil.
"She's just been watching her chance," said William Wallace. "Why did I think I could stay out all night."
"Just something come over you."
"First it was just a carnival at Carthage, and I had to let them guess my weight ... and after that..."
"It was nice to be sitting on your neck in a ditch singing," prompted Virgil, "in the moonlight. And playing on the harmonica like you can play."
"Even if Hazel did sit home knowing I was drunk, that wouldn't kill her," said William Wallace. "What she knows ain't ever killed her yet.... She's smart, too, for a girl," he said.
"She's a lot smarter than her cousins in Beulah," said Virgil. "And especially Edna Earle, that never did get to be what you'd call a heavy thinker. Edna Earle could