Free Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

sinking in a swamp, and raced around to the passenger’s side to stand by the widow.
    “The late Mr. Thompson was a fine feller,” he told her. He spent a tense minute getting up steam, then went on: “The late Mr. Thompson was a fine feller. Yes.”
    Claire said, “Yes?”
    “Yes. Everybody who knew him tells me he was an excellent feller and also a most … excellent feller, you might say. So they say. As far as them who knew him.”
    “Well, did you know him, Mr. Sauer?”
    “Not to talk to. No. He did me a mean bit of business once … But he was a fine feller, I’m saying.”
    “A mean bit of business, Mr. Sauer?”
    “He runned over my goat’s picket and broke its neck with his wagon! He was a sonofabitch who’d sooner steal than work, wadn’t he? But I mean to say! Will you marry a feller?”
    “Which feller do you mean?”
    Eddie had trouble getting a reply lined up. Meanwhile, Claire opened her door and pushed him aside, climbing out. She turned her back and stood looking studiously at Grainier’s horses.
    Eddie came over to Grainier and said to him, “Which feller does she think I mean? This feller! Me!”
    Grainier could only shrug, laugh, shake his head.
    Eddie stood three feet behind the widow and addressed the back of her: “The feller I mentioned! The one to marry! I’m the feller!”
    She turned, took Eddie by the arm, and guided him back to the Ford. “I don’t believe you are,” she said. “Not the feller for me.” She didn’t seem upset anymore.
    When they traveled on, she sat next to Grainier in his wagon. Grainier was made uncomfortable because he didn’t want to get too near the nose of a sensitive woman like Claire Shook, now Claire Thompson—his clothes stank. He wanted to apologize for it, but couldn’t quite. The widow was silent. He felt compelled to converse. “Well,” he said.
    “Well what?”
    “Well,” he said, “that’s Eddie for you.”
    “That’s not Eddie for me ,” she said.
    “I suppose,” he said.
    “In a civilized place, the widows don’t have much to say about who they marry. There’s too many running around without husbands. But here on the frontier, we’re at a premium. We can take who we want, though it’s not such a bargain. The trouble is you men are all worn down pretty early in life. Are you going to marry again?”
    “No,” he said.
    “No. You just don’t want to work any harder than you do now. Do you?”
    “No, I do not.”
    “Well then, you aren’t going to marry again, not ever.”
    “I was married before,” he said, feeling almost required to defend himself, “and I’m more than satisfied with all of everything’s been left to me.” He did feel as if he was defending himself. But why should he have to? Why did this woman come at him waving her topic of marriage like a big stick? “If you’re prowling for a husband,” he said, “I can’t think of a bigger mistake to make than to get around me.”
    “I’m in agreement with you,” she said. She didn’t seem particularly happy or sad to agree. “I wanted to see if your own impression of you matched up with mine is all, Robert.”
    “Well, then.”
    “God needs the hermit in the woods as much as He needs the man in the pulpit. Did you ever think about that?”
    “I don’t believe I am a hermit,” Grainier replied, but when the day was over, he went off asking himself, Am I a hermit? Is this what a hermit is?
    Eddie became pals with a Kootenai woman who wore her hair in a mop like a cinema vamp and painted her lips sloppy red. When Grainier first saw them together, he couldn’t guess how old she was, but she had brown, wrinkled skin. Somewhere she had come into possession of a pair of hexagonal eyeglasses tinted such a deep blue that behind them her eyes were invisible, and it was by no means certain she could see any objects except in the brightest glare. She must have been easy to get along with, because she never spoke. But whenever Eddie engaged in talk