William Wallace Jamieson’s wife Hazel was going to have a baby. But this was October, and it was six months away, and she acted exactly as though it would be tomorrow. When he came in the room she would not speak to him, but would look as straight at nothing as she could, with her eyes glowing. If he only touched her she stuck out her tongue or ran around the table. So one night he went out with two of the boys down the road and stayed out all night. But that was the worst thing yet, because when he came home in the early morning Hazel had vanished. He went through the house not believing his eyes, balancing with both hands out, his yellow cowlick rising on end, and then he turned the kitchen inside out looking for her, but it did no good. Then when he got back to the front room he saw she had left him a little letter, in an envelope. That was doing something behind someone’s back. He took out the letter, pushed it open, held it out at a distance from his eyes . . . After one look he was scared to read the exact words, and he crushed the whole thing in his hand instantly, but what it had said was that she would not put up with him after that and was going to the river to drown herself.

“Drown herself . . . But she’s in mortal fear of the water!”

He ran out front, his face red like the red of the picked cotton field he ran over, and down in the road he gave a loud shout for Virgil Thomas, who was just going in his own house, to come out again. He could just see the edge of Virgil, he had almost got in, he had one foot inside the door.

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 hat-ful 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.

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