Free Journeyman by Erskine Caldwell Page B

looking as if he had been taken by surprise. “Oh, Vearl got loose from me. He jumped loose from me before I got more than a mile or so away. I don’t know where he is now. I reckon he went up the creek, though. He’ll show up at Susan’s before dark. He don’t ever stay away all night.”
    Tom filled the glasses, placing one in Lorene’s hand. Semon picked up two and gave one of them to Clay.
    “And you didn’t take Vearl to see the doctor?” she asked, biting her lips.
    Clay drank half of his glass and set it on the floor beside him. Semon promptly filled it up again and handed it back to Clay.
    “Vearl? No. I didn’t get him all the way into town. But I happened to run into the doctor, though, and I said something to him about it. He said to give him the bottle of medicine, and bring him to town the next time I came in.”
    “I should have taken him myself,” Lorene said coldly. She glared at Clay. “I might have known you wouldn’t.”
    “I done the best I could, Lorene,” he said meekly. “That’s the truth, if I’ve ever told it, too. I wouldn’t run counter to you if I could help it.”
    “You didn’t half try,” she said. “You didn’t want to take him, and you didn’t try to keep him in the car. You let him jump out because you didn’t want to bother with him.”
    She drank the glass of liquor and set it down heavily on the floor beside the chair. Semon picked up Clay’s glass and handed it to him. He raised his own, urging Clay to follow his lead. Clay drank and wiped his mouth.
    Clay took out his harmonica and tapped it on his knee. He drew it across his mouth two or three times.
    “Let’s have a tune, Horey,” Semon urged.
    Clay blew several notes and shook his head.
    “It’s a little too early in the day for music,” he said, shaking his head from side to side. “I can’t be playing a mouth-organ before dinnertime.”
    After he had replaced it in his pocket, Semon urged him to drink some more.
    “Where’s Dene?” Clay demanded, placing the empty glass at his feet.
    “She’s around here somewhere,” Tom told him, “I saw her in the kitchen just now when I was after the glasses.”
    Clay looked across at Lorene. She was sipping the brimming glass Tom had only a moment before refilled. With several glasses of corn whisky inside of him, Clay liked to look at her. She wore well-fitting clothes, and her dark hair made something turn over inside of his mind.
    “Now, there’s a woman for you,” he said, pointing at her with one of his fingers.
    “Who?” Tom said.
    “Lorene, there.”
    “I wouldn’t say too much about her, Clay. Dene is around somewhere. She’ll be listening.”
    “That’s right,” Clay said. “I clear forgot about Dene. Now, Dene’s a woman for you.”
    “How about Sugar, Clay? Is she one for you, too?”
    “Aw, shucks, Tom. You know good and well I don’t mess around with Sugar no more.”
    Semon smiled all around. He was delighted with the progress he was making with Clay. He decided to let him talk a little while longer in the hope that he could press another glass of corn upon him.
    “Dene satisfy you, Horey?” Semon said, winking at Lorene and nodding approvingly.
    “Dene? Well, I reckon! And then some. Why, Dene can stay a jump ahead of me all the doggone time. I never have to know my own mind around Dene. She’s always giving me what I crave long before I know I crave it. And she’s always been like that. When I used to see her down there in front of her daddy’s house, she used to come up and give me a kiss on the sly, and a big hug—just like that! Soon as I got it, I knew I wanted it. But not till then. Dene never has got behind yet. She stays that jump ahead all the time.”
    “That’s her way of anticipating you,” Semon said.
    “That’s it!” Clay shouted. “That’s the big word! I never can think to say it myself, but what’s the use, anyhow? You’re always here to tell it to me.”
    “I’ve noticed that in her