Free One Hundred Years of Marriage by Louise Farmer Smith Page B

get out of the car and walk the last hundred miles home. “How could anyone say that about me. We may not have a lot of land and a big house, but we—?”
    “Wouldn’t you like a big house, Alice?” He glanced over at her. “How about a real pearl necklace like Elinor’s. I saw you staring at it. Huh? Be honest. You’re crushed my family has fallen on hard times. You thought you were getting a rich boy. My daddy’s thirty thousand dollars in debt. He’s lost everything but the land and nobody will buy it from him. He’s filed for bankruptcy on the mercantile. I drove out from Chisom last month to bail him out of jail for fighting.”
    Her breath. She couldn’t get her breath. Finally she said softly, “You didn’t tell me any of this.”
    “Well you know now.” He said this last with such a bitter stab she knew it was all ended, her romance with Cecil Brady was over. He was withdrawing the strong arms he’d offered. The car began to slow down. Was he about to dump her beside the road?
    “God damn it!” Cecil said. The car bucked up onto the weedy shoulder beside a field of dried corn stalks. Cecil jumped out.
    Against the very last purple light along the horizon he stood and wiped his hand down his mouth before folding open the hood of his old Ford. It served him right, this old car breaking down. But this was a bad spot. There wasn’t a house in sight and they must be twenty miles yet from Ada which wasn’t half way home. She pulled to the edge of her seat and watched his fingers checking the clamps on the hoses, tightening the cap on the radiator, and knew he wasn’t working on the problem yet. This was just the fiddling he always did, calming his mind while he thought about the problem. Was the throttle stuck? That wouldn’t be so bad. He could fix that.
    He walked back and handed his jacket through the window without looking at her. It was getting dark now. She opened the glove compartment, took out the big flashlight, and quietly got out to come around behind him and shine the light where his hands were working.
    “Higher!” he snapped, and she moved the light a fraction of an inch. His fingers were black up to the knuckles. He wasn’t working on the throttle. This was something more serious. A car approached. Maybe they should flag it down for help, but it wasn’t her place to suggest this. In another few hours Mother and Daddy would start to worry. The wind had come up and whipped the hem of her jacket and pressed her skirt against her legs. She should get Cecil’s jacket from the car. He was sweating and could take a chill.
    “Steady!” he barked and she switched hands with the flashlight and tried to breath lightly so the beam of the light came down steadily at just the right angle to cast the least shadows.
    “Don’t you have any tools in the car?” she asked as sweetly as she could. “Surely a few wrenches under the seat.”
    “It wouldn't make any difference. I need a spanner. Couldn’t reach this with a wrench.”
    Maybe at a farmhouse down the road he could borrow a spanner. Maybe if he took the battery out he could reach down to whatever it was he needed to turn. Could her slim fingers reach down? Maybe they should find a house and telephone home to ask Daddy to come to get them. Cecil looked up and down the straight road. There wasn’t a headlight coming in either direction. The wind was loud now, rattling the dry corn stalks. Where was the house of the farmer who’d strung this fence?
    Cecil dropped his hands to his sides, and she switched off the flashlight. They were in total darkness. There was no moon, no stars, just Cecil’s labored breathing beside her. She shook with the cold and felt a little faint. She’d eaten so little at dinner and then the long walk and the shooting. Cecil didn’t care about her anymore; and the long black corridors between the corn stalks could hide any kind of danger. She felt the darkness choking her.
    Cecil was the phony. His family had