“It’s a lot to ask,” I said.
“No, it ain’t that. It’s—everthing costs more than you think, when you get down to it.”
“I can dress chickens and take in ironing,” I said. “I reckon we’ll make out.” I looked all over his face. Seemed like I couldn’t get enough of just looking at it, every inch of it.
Now he smiled big, like he done. “I believe you. Don’t know why, but I do.”
I put my hand on his arm. “It ain’t just—this ain’t just about . . .” I felt my face go red, but I wasn’t afraid. “When I seen you at the dance, up there singing and playing, I told Alta Bea, that’s the one I want, right there.”
He cocked his head like he didn’t believe me.
“Ask her,” I said. “You think I ever rode out to the river with nobody else? Well, I never did. I never felt this way about nobody. There’s something about you—I don’t know what.”
He fidgeted, and I pulled my arm away. “I feel like—I feel like, if you and me get married, it will be lucky for me, and you, too. I was looking for just somebody, but I found you.” I took his hand and raised it up and kissed it. I felt a rush of desire, and I put my arms around him. He took a breath out loud and pulled back. He stared at my face, and I seen the rims of his eyes was pink.
He blinked hard a few times. “Well, if you’re bound and determined—”
“The girls, they’ll learn to love you,” I said softly. “Us three, I know we’re kin, but you’ll be a better daddy to them than they ever knowed. We’ll be happy together. You’ll see.”
Now he pulled out his hankie and blowed his nose. “Oklahoma,” he said.
“What about it?”
“Down there, you can get married without your folks signing for you.” He put his hankie back in his pocket. “If you’re bound and determined.”
“You know I am.” I felt light as light itself. I felt I could float away.
“Only problem is, the money.” He pulled out a piece of paper with numbers on it. He’d wrote down the train tickets, a hotel (we’d sleep on the train coming and going, but we’d need rooms for the wedding night for him and me, and for the people standing up with us), and meals (nine or twelve meals apiece, depending). Then there was the marriage license, along with bride’s and groom’s expenses (he’d put down six dollars for me, twice as much as him). It all added up to $127.00. I was shocked, tell the truth—happy he’d done the figuring, but shocked at how much it was.
“I can cover the twenty-seven dollars,” he said, “but that leaves us a hundred short. And that don’t count no gewgaws you’ll be wanting for the house.” He stared at the paper miserably, like a man will, like numbers has a meaning all on their own besides what they stand for.
“Could we borrow it?” I said.
He folded up the paper and put it in his shirt pocket. “I don’t owe nothing to nobody, and I don’t intend to start.” His mouth was set. He sounded wroth.
“I don’t see no other way, do you?” I said.
He put his hands on my elbows. “You could make up with your dad. If he’d sign for you, we could get married here, wouldn’t cost much atall.”
I pulled away from him. “I ain’t asking him for nothing.”
“Well, if you’re going to be pigheaded—”
“Me pigheaded?”
This argument went on for two weeks. Turned out I was the most pigheaded. Sam finally said he’d borrow the money if we could find somebody to loan it to us.
* * *
Of course the only person I wanted to stand up for me was Alta Bea, and she was also the only person I knowed who could get their hands on a hundred dollars. The next day after Sam agreed to borrow the money, I asked Alta Bea over to the house, and we set out on the back porch. It was April by now, and we’d had good rain for a couple days. As me and her looked up at the slope into the south pasture, you could see patches of green among the black dirt. You could smell things waking up.
I thought she might bolt when I told her me and Sam was wanting to elope, but she just set there with her arms wrapped around her knees.
“We been seeing each other,” I said. “We neither one of us is the kind to sneak around—you know me. It’s been hard.”
She raised her face, cool and composed. You could see it took an effort.
“I love him, Alta Bea.” It was the first time I said it out loud. “I’d marry him even if I didn’t have to.”
Her eyes widened. “You love him? When did you decide that?”
I pictured me and Sam in the cold cabin that first time. “At first he said . . .” I sniffed back tears, and then I felt a smile break out on my face. “But then he looked it up, Alta Bea—he found out you can get married in Oklahoma without your folks signing if you’re sixteen. He asked around, all on his own.”
She leaned her head toward me. I couldn’t tell if she was mad or she thought I’d lost my mind. I wanted to make her understand. “Don’t you see? Before I even—”
“How are you going to get to Oklahoma? Do you even know how far away that is?”
My face went red. “Well, that’s just it.”
She opened and closed her mouth. Then she slumped down and laid her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. “Oh.”
There was a lot in that “oh.” Everthing, all the seven years we’d knowed each other. For a moment neither one of us said nothing.
Then she dropped her hands. In an even voice she said, “How much do you need?”
I told her what Sam had figured up, the train and meals and hotel. Then I asked her would she go with us and stand up for me. She listened to the whole thing, and by the time I was done she had tears in her eyes.
“I thought maybe your mother, she’d help us out,” I said finally. “She’s always been so kindly to us.”
Tears come down her cheeks. “The truth is, I’m jealous, Bertie. I wish I loved someone.”
This touched me. I didn’t know what to say.
Then she set up straight and wiped her face with her hands. “I’m sure Mother would give us the money if she could, but she can’t. She hasn’t any cash, never has.” Turned out, Alta Bea’s dad had everthing in his name and never let her mama have more than a few dollars at a time. But Alta Bea herself had near twenty dollars squirreled away, and she had a notion of how to get the other eighty. Her daddy, he always left the bank where he was president at three o’clock on Wednesdays to get his hair cut and his shoes shined, and then he played dominoes with the men from his lodge. The night man, name of Walter, he stayed and balanced the accounts. Now Walter, he was sweet on Alta Bea, and, from her being at the bank off and on since she was a little girl, she knowed where the window was at where you could tap on it after hours and he would see who it was. She figured she could sweet-talk him into giving her the money, acting like it was for her dad.
I set there with my mouth open. “When did you think up this-all?”
She was silent for a moment. “I’ve been thinking about things for a long time. Since I’m not going to college . . . Well, it’s time I left this godforsaken place.”
“But your daddy, he—”
“And Bertie, I’ve been seeing Harold Satterfield. No one knows.”
“The banjo player? He’s the one’s going to stand up with Sam!” I pictured Harold in my mind, and I recollected how I was leery of him when we met the night of the dance.
She dropped her eyes. “He didn’t tell me about your plans. I guess he was waiting until things were—”
“You two serious?”
She hesitated. “He is.”
“But you ain’t?”
She smiled. “Not everyone falls in love as fast as you do, Bertie.”
We was silent for a while, till finally I said, “But your daddy, he’s liable to get the law on us, ain’t he? It’s stealing, ain’t it?”
She shook her head. “He’ll be furious all right, but he values his reputation too much to do anything so public. He’ll just w
rite it off. And Mother . . .” Quick tears come now. “Mother wouldn’t let him do anything to harm me. That I know.”
I took aholt of her hand.
“Though he might disown me,” she said.
“Oh!”
She looked me square in the face. “I’ve thought about that for a long time, and I’ve made up my mind. I can’t live with him holding that threat over me and everything I do.” From somewhere, Alta Bea’d got her some nerve, sure enough.
I decided not to tell Sam how exactly Alta Bea was getting the money. He was already edgy about even borrowing it. Me, I was worried, too—you’d be a fool not to be—but I swallowed back my disquiets. Mama always said, “Worry is interest paid on troubles you ain’t had yet.”
That night I dug through Mama’s green trunk and found the nightdress she’d made me for my wedding night. She had tatted the lace herself around the neck, and it was brittle from being packed away. The gown was mouse-chewed in a couple places, and I mended it. I didn’t have no fancy dress to get married in, but I had a pretty white blouse with embroidery at the cuffs and a clean brown skirt, faded to almost lilac.
Me and Sam, we went and told my brothers. We was going to be gone three days—more, if the train run late—and somebody had to check on Dacia and the children while we was gone. Sam, he give a good account of himself, which I knowed he would, and William and Buck, they shook his hand and give me a hug.
“I reckon you know what you’re in for when you get back,” William said.
“It’ll be over and done with,” I said. “He won’t be able to undo it.” Him and Buck, they even give us seven dollars and a half for a wedding present. We all bawled a little bit.
The next Wednesday, Alta Bea went and got the money like she’d said, and early the next morning, April 14, 1916, the four of us got on the train in Milan, bound for Oklahoma.
Chapter 12
Sam, Alta Bea, and Harold, they’d been on a train before, but it was my first ride. The footstool wasn’t hardly tall enough for me, so the porter grabbed aholt of my elbow and helped me climb up into the car. I felt a spark fly up my spine, having a strange man touch me like that. I hadn’t hardly been touched in my life, except for punishment, before the last two weeks.
Buying our tickets at the last minute like we did, we had to take the long way down through Kansas, and we had some layovers where we had to wait. But I never minded it. All them hours with no chores was like a dream to me.
The four of us, we had seats facing each other—me and Sam on one side, and Alta Bea and Harold on the other. At first it was odd seeing them two together, but after while I got used to it and seemed like they always had been a couple. Alta Bea, she was near as tall as Harold, and she had grown into her womanhood. She had a nice long face with high cheekbones and full lips, and of course her hair, which any woman would love to have half that much of, had a nice natural wave in it.
Harold, he never let a minute go by without filling it up with talk. Right off he talked about his job. Like I thought, he was a salesman.
“Right now I’m calling on retail stores in eastern and northeastern Missouri—that’s my ‘territory,’ as we say.” He was talking to me mainly, since Sam and Alta Bea already knowed what he done. “Cleaners, patent medicines, mouthwash, waters, ladies’ elixirs, that sort of thing. Sundries, too. If you’ve bought Brasso or Listerine in the past year, I probably sold it!” He combed his fingers through his hair, something he done a lot.
Alta Bea, I seen her put her hand on his wrist, and he lowered his voice. “But I never stop investigating other opportunities that I have every reason to believe will be even more remunerative.” Harold’s talk was like the man teacher’s but different some way I couldn’t put my finger on. Harold and Sam, they made an odd pair, Sam being quiet and plainspoken like he was, but wasn’t none of us had a lot to choose from in friends, coming from where we come from.
Now Harold, wasn’t hardly nothing he talked about—and he talked about a lot of things—but what he mentioned how much it cost, how much you could get it for if you knowed people, how much commission he got, how much the stores marked things up, and on and on. Now the people I knowed, they’d as soon talk about their bowels as their money. But Alta Bea, she never said nothing, only put her head back and half closed her eyes.
After while Harold dozed off. Sam, he pulled two pieces of paper out of his vest and give them to Alta Bea. He leaned over and talked low to the both of us. He’d wrote up a note for the eighty dollars she loaned him—he had managed to save up another twenty dollars himself. The note promised to pay Alta Bea seven dollars ever month for eleven months, then fifteen dollars, total ninety-two dollars.
“That’s too much interest,” she said softly. “You could get it for a lot less from any bank.”
“Couldn’t get it from no bank at no rate,” he said, frowning.
She signed both copies and give one back to Sam, and nobody said nothing much for an hour or so, till Harold woke up and said, “Who’s hungry? Let’s break out those sandwiches.”
After we eat, Harold brought out cards and we played pitch for a while and then hearts. These was games Mama’d showed me when I was a little girl, to teach me my numbers. Then the three of them got to playing pinochle, which I never learned, and I set back and looked out the window at the scenery passing by, though I hardly seen anything. I thought about Sam, about getting married tomorrow, about what was going to happen tomorrow night, about the years to come. I couldn’t get a clear picture of none of it. I could picture Mama, the children, the places us Winslows had lived at, but I had a strong feeling things was going to be different for me and Sam. I wondered, did Mama think about the future when she was first married? Did she picture the new things in the world that wasn’t there when she come of age? And Daddy—did she have any notion how he was going to turn out, or was that a miserable surprise?
I didn’t like the turn my thoughts had took, so I went back to when I was real little, far back as I could, before Dacia come. I don’t know if Timmy was even born yet. All I could recall was scraps and snatches, but I did remember Mama laughing one time with her head throwed back and her mouth wide open—a happy laugh, not mocking—and she rocked back and forth and closed her eyes and squeezed out happy tears and rubbed her eyes and laughed some more. I remembered her hair—back then she had it did once in a while—and it was dark brown and curly and smelled sweet. Seems like she had on red lip rouge, and we was outside in dappled shade setting on a quilt, though I might have made that part up. I didn’t have no notion what she was laughing at, but remembering this moment, I shivered and felt alive and new all over again, like I was still four year old.
That may be my oldest memory—either that or the bad dream I often had about heavy drapes rippling next to my bed, casting shadows where devils might lurk.
Next thing I knowed, the train whistle was shrieking and we was in Kansas City. We had to wait an hour there to catch the westbound train to Topeka, so we walked around in the train station. You never seen a building so big, all made out of white stone. They had a clock must have been six foot tall.
Alta Bea and Harold, they went into a place and tried to order a drink, but they found out there wasn’t no sales of alcohol allowed in Kansas. They was laughing when they come back—it turned out they’d both brought a flask. Sam, he took a sip out of Harold’s, but I didn’t have none. Alta Bea and Harold kept on drinking after we got back on the train.
Wasn’t long before Harold started telling jokes. He told one about a man in a hotel went to complain about mice fighting in his room, and the hotel man said, “What do you expect for a dollar? A bullfight?” I reckon a salesman’s got to know them kind of stories. After while, and after he drunk some more, he said, “You know what a lady says—‘You loved me before we were married’—and the husband says, ‘And now it’s your turn.’” He looked from me to Sam and winked, and Alta Bea giggled and took a drink out of her flask. Then Harold told a couple mo
re off-color stories like that.
I excused myself to use the bathroom. As I squatted there over the hole, with the crossties flying by, I welcomed the swirling air underneath me. I didn’t hardly want to go back, tell the truth. Harold give me a feeling like being wrapped up tight in cotton batting, smothered.
From Topeka we went south through Emporia and El Dorado. When we got to El Dorado, why, Harold pointed out there was a big oil derrick right in the middle of town. He’d been looking into the oil business in this part of southeast Kansas, he said. They’d had a huge strike the year before, and they was putting up derricks all over. Sure enough, when we got to the countryside again, why, there was bunch of them—maybe thirty or forty—sticking up like Christmas trees in a one-square-mile section. Harold, he got excited when he seen them oil derricks. To me they looked ugly. Didn’t belong there in the prairie grass, seemed like.
After a little bit, it got dark outside. There was sleeping berths on the train, but we’d bought the cheapest tickets and didn’t have no place to sleep. We laid back our heads and dozed as best as we could. I reckon I fell clear asleep sometime after midnight.
* * *
We got to Turner Falls, Oklahoma, about mid-morning. When I climbed down off the train, the air hit me—breezy, warm, dry, and sweet-smelling, with things in bloom. After the smoky train car, the outside air felt so good you could taste it, seemed like.
We walked three blocks to the justice of the peace’s house. His wife, only thing I remember about her is she had her hair coiled up like a snake. She give us papers to fill out, which we done. I wrote my name, Albertina Sweet Winslow—Sam didn’t know Mama’d give me her maiden name for my middle name. That tickled him. I give my true age of sixteen, and nobody said nothing about it one way or the other.
The justice of the peace, I don’t remember him at all, except he smelled like cigars.
It cost two dollars, and I believe Harold give him fifty cents extra for his trouble. We didn’t have no ring, which I didn’t care about, long as it was legal.
When the four of us walked out of the house, I remember thinking Oklahoma was the prettiest place I’d been in since I was a girl in Kentucky. I felt like I didn’t have no cares at all.
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