'I was living out in Proverbia then, and I used to go to the Baptist Church. I wasn't much on religion, but there were some fine-looking women there. Your mom was one of em, Sarah.'
Naomi laughed in the way women do when they are told something they cannot quite believe.
'Ardelia caught on with the home folks right away. These days, when the folks from that church talk about her - if they ever do - I bet they say things like "I knew from the very start there was somethin funny about that Lortz woman" or "I never trusted the look in that woman's eye," but let me tell you, that wasn't how it was. They buzzed around her - the women as well as the men - like bees around the first flower of spring. She got a job as Mr Lavin's assistant before she was in town a month, but she was teachin the little ones at the Sunday School out there in Proverbia two weeks before that.
'Just what she was teachin em I don't like to think - you can bet your bottom dollar it wasn't the Gospel According to Matthew - but she was teachin em. And everyone swore on how much the little ones loved her. They swore on it, too, but there was a look in their eyes when they said so ... a far-off look, like they wasn't really sure where they were, or even who they were.
'Well, she caught my eye ... and I caught hers. You wouldn't know it from the way I am now, but I was a pretty good-lookin fella in those days. I always had a tan from workin outdoors, I had muscles, my hair was faded almost blond from the sun, and my belly was as flat as your ironin board, Sarah.
'Ardelia had rented herself a farmhouse about a mile and a half from the church, a tight enough little place, but it needed a coat of paint as bad as a man in the desert needs a drink of water. So after church the second week I noticed her there - I didn't go often and by then it was half-past August - I offered to paint it for her.
'She had the biggest eyes you've ever seen. I guess most people would have called them gray, but when she looked right at you, hard, you would have sworn they were silver. And she looked at me hard that day after church. She was wearin some kind of perfume that I never smelled before and ain't never smelled since. Lavender, I think. I can't think how to describe it, but I know it always made me think of little white flowers that only bloom after the sun has gone down. And I was smitten. Right there and then.
'She was close to me - almost close enough for our bodies to touch. She was wearin this dowdy black dress, the kind of dress an old lady would wear, and a hat with a little net veil, and she was holdin her purse in front of her. All prim and proper. Her eyes weren't prim, though. Nossir. Nor proper. Not a bit.
' "I hope you don't want to put advertisements for bleach and chewing tobacco all over my new house," she says.
' "No ma'am," I says back. "I thought just two coats of plain old white. Houses aren't what I do for a livin, anyway, but with you bein new in town and all, I thought it would be neighborly - "
' "Yes indeed," she says, and touches my shoulder.'
Dave looked apologetically at Naomi.
'I think I ought to give you a chance to leave, if you want to. Pretty soon I'm gonna start tellin some dirty stuff, Sarah. I'm ashamed of it, but I want to clean the slate of my doins with her.'
She patted his old, chapped hand. 'Go ahead,' she told him quietly. 'Say it all.'
He fetched in a deep breath and went on again.
'When she touched me, I knew I had to have her or die tryin. just that one little touch made me feel better - and crazier - than any woman-touch ever made me feel in my whole life. She knew it, too. I could see it in her eyes. It was a sly look. It was a mean look, too, but somethin about that excited me more than anything else.
' "It would be neighborly, Dave," she says, "and I want to be a very good neighbor."
'So I walked her home. Left all the other young fellows standin at the church door, you might say, fumin and no doubt cursin my name. They didn't know how lucky they were. None of them.
'My Ford was in the shop and she didn't have no car, so we were stuck with shank's mare. I didn't mind a bit, and she didn't seem to, neither. We went out the Truman Road, which was still dirt in those days, although they sent a town truck along to oil it every two or three weeks and lay the dust.
'We got about halfway to her place, and she stopped. It was just the two of us, standin in the middle of Truman Road at high noon on a summer's day, with about a million acres of Sam Orday's corn on one side and about two million of Bill Humpe's corn on the other, all of it growin high over our heads and rustlin in that secret way corn has, even when there's no breeze.
My granddad used to say it was the sound of the corn growin. I dunno if that's the truth or not, but it's a spooky sound. I can tell you that.
' "Look!" she says, pointin to the right. "Do you see it?"
'I looked, but I didn't see nothing - only corn. I told her so.
' "I'll show you!" she says, and runs into the corn, Sunday dress and high heels and all. She didn't even take off that hat with the veil on it.
'I stood there for a few seconds, sorta stunned. Then I heard her laughin. I heard her laughin in the corn. So I ran in after her, partly to see whatever it was she'd seen, but mostly because of that laugh. I was so randy. I can't begin to tell you.
'I seen her standin way up the row I was in, and then she faded into the next one, still laughin. I started to laugh, too, and went on through myself, not carin that I was bustin down some of Sam Orday's plants. He'd never miss em, not in all those acres. But when I got through, trailin cornsilk off my shoulders and a green leaf stuck in my tie like some new kind of clip, I stopped laughin in a hurry, because she wasn't there. Then I heard her on the other side of me. I didn't have no idea how she could have got back there without me seein her, but she had. So I busted back through just in time to see her runnin into the next row.
'We played hide n seek for half an hour, I guess, and I couldn't catch her. All I did was get hotter and randier. I'd think she was a row over, in front of me, but I'd get there and hear her two rows over, behind me. Sometimes I'd see her foot, or her leg, and of course she left tracks in the soft dirt, but they weren't no good, because they seemed to go every which way at once.
'Then, just when I was startin to get mad - I'd sweat through my good shirt, my tie was undone, and my shoes was full of dirt - I come through to a row and seen her hat hangin off a corn-plant with the veil flippin in the little breeze that got down there into the corn.
' "Come and get me, Dave! " she calls. I grabbed her hat and busted through to the next row on a slant. She was gone - I could just see the corn waverin where she'd went through - but both her shoes were there. In the next row I found one of her silk stockins hung over an ear of corn. And still I could hear her laughin. Over on my blind side, she was, and how the bitch got there, God only knows. Not that it mattered to me by then.
'I ripped off my tie and tore after her, around and around and dosey-doe, pantin like a stupid dog that don't know enough to lie still on a hot day. And I'll tell you somethin - I broke the corn down everywhere I went. Left a trail of trampled stalks and leaners behind me. But she never busted a one. They'd just waver a bit when she passed, as if there was no more to her than there was to that little summer breeze.