Well, I put another thirty dollars in the bank this week. It’s beginning to add up. I hope Uncle Matt don’t get tired of having you and the kids around the place. You make them help out now. We don’t want to be beholding to anybody. It looks like I might get in some overtime next week and that will sure help. Don’t forget to keep an eye open for any small farms put up for sale. It shouldn’t take me long to get enough for a down payment, and I know if we can get a little piece of ground somewhere everything will work out this time. We just had some bad luck before.
I am fine and hope you are the same,
The letters were pretty much the same every week, and the answers were pretty much the same, too, because he and Amy had never had to write letters to one another before and didn’t really know how. If he missed her, and he did, he couldn’t put it down on paper without feeling foolish; and if he hated every minute in the city, and he did, he didn’t want her to know it and worry. It was just one of the hard things that happened in life, like the kids getting whooping cough or the hail stripping the corn when it was ready to tassel. It was just one of the things that had to be endured.
The winter months were bad, but, when the last of the snows had melted and the first rains came, it was harder than ever. Spring was planting time. Even in a back room of the rooming house he could smell the earth around him. He took to walking out nights, smoking his pipe and looking for a plot of grass at his feet, or for a star in the strip of sky showing above the rooftops. The city wasn’t quite so ugly at night. The dirt didn’t show in the shadows. He walked slowly, and he never spoke to anyone until the night he met Blanche.
It was a Saturday night and warm. Spring came early along the river. There had been a shower earlier, and pools of water still stood in the street. When he came to the corner, he looked down and saw a star reflected in the puddle. It seemed strange. He’d looked for stars in the sky and never found them, and here was a star at his feet. He hesitated a moment thinking about it, and while he stood there a woman came and stood beside him. He knew it was a woman by the smell of her powder and perfume.
“It sure is warm tonight,” she said.
He didn’t answer or look around. The neighborhood was full of women of her kind, and he didn’t like to look at them. He hadn’t had any woman but Amy for the seventeen years of their marriage, and he missed her too much to dare look at a woman now.
But she didn’t go away.
“Lose something in the puddle?” she asked.
“The star—”
The words slipped out. He didn’t want to talk to her about anything, but especially not the star. That was crazy. Only she didn’t think so.
“Oh, I see it! It’s pretty, ain’t it?” She crowded closer to him. He could feel her body next to his. “You don’t see many stars in the city,” she added. “It’s because of all the lights, I guess.”
Her voice wasn’t the way he expected it to be. It had a kind of wonder — something almost childish in it. He looked at her then and was surprised at what he saw. She was young, not much more than a schoolgirl. She did wear powder, but not very much, and she had a soft look about her. She was small and dark and wore a plain blue sweater over a cotton dress.
“Are you—” He struggled with words. He hadn’t used them much for many months. “—from the country?”
She nodded. “A long time ago — when I was a little girl. I was born on a farm on the other side of the river.”
“Now that’s funny,” he said. “I was born on a farm, too, only I come from the other way — back towards Jefferson City. I only been here a few months.”
“Alone?” she asked.
“Yes, alone. That is, I got a wife and two girls, but they didn’t come.
I didn’t think this was any place—” He caught back the words. He’d started to say that he didn’t think this was any place to bring up his girls, but he didn’t want to insult her. “I just came to make a little money and go back,” he explained.
It was hard to be sure with her face ducked down and only the street lamp to see by, but she seemed to be smiling. Not a happy smile, but a kind of twisted one. Then she looked up, and for a moment he looked straight into her eyes and saw that they weren’t young at all.
But it was a warm spring night, and he hadn’t talked to a woman for a long time.
“I was just going down to the corner for a beer,” she said. “Maybe you were going the same place. We could walk together.”
He wasn’t; but he did. Some, of the faces that peered at them as they walked past the bar to the booths in the rear were familiar. He could see the grins and the heads wagging. The farmer had a woman. The farmer was going to spend some money. By this time he wished he hadn’t come; but the woman sat down in the last booth and he sat down across from her. They ordered two beers and he put a fifty-cent piece on the table.
“I didn’t mean that you had to pay for mine,” she said.
She didn’t seem at all like what he knew she was; and he did know. There was never any doubt about that. They talked a little more about the country, and about the weather, and then one of the men who had been drinking at the bar — one he didn’t recognize from the warehouse came back to the booth and stood looking down at them. He was a little man compared to the farmer; but his suit had wide shoulders, and he wore his roll-brimmed hat at a cocky angle as if he were the biggest man on the river-front.
“Well, if Blanche ain’t got herself a new friend!” he said.
“Knock it off, Morrell,” she answered.
Her voice had turned hard; but Morrell didn’t go away. Instead, he sat down beside her in the booth. He looked straight at the farmer.
“I heard about you,” he said, after studying him for a few seconds. “You’re the one they call ‘the farmer’ — the one who saves all his money.”
“I got a reason,” the farmer said.
“Who needs a reason? You think I’m like those stupid bums over at the bar? You think I make fun of a guy who saves his money? Look at me, I got a few put away myself. Only trouble is, Blanche don’t seem to like the color of my money. How do you figure that, farmer?”
“I said knock it off,” Blanche repeated.
“I guess there just ain’t no accounting for tastes,” Morrell added. “I guess a woman can have it for one guy and not for another.”
Morrell grinned at Blanche, but she didn’t even look at him. It was hard to know what to do or what to say. Maybe there was something between these two, and the farmer didn’t want to get mixed up in anything. He finished his beer and came to his feet.
“Leaving so soon?”
Blanche looked disappointed.
“I’ve got to get back to my room,” he said. “I’ve got to write a letter.”
“But it’s early.”
Morrell laughed.
“Leave him alone, Blanche. Can’t you see he don’t want any? Leave him be smart and save his money. It’s a good thing somebody has sense. Go ahead, farmer. I’ll buy Blanche another beer. Go write your letter.”
He didn’t like to go then. He didn’t like the way Blanche looked up at him, or the way she edged away from Morrell. But he still didn’t want to get mixed up in anything. He walked out, trying to not to hear the laughter behind him, and went back to the rooming house to write the longest letter he’d ever written.
It was a full week before he went out for a walk again. He didn’t pay any attention to the cracks made around the warehouse about him buying a beer for Blanche, and he tried not to listen to the things they said about her. He just made up his mind not to be so foolish again. When Saturday night came, he sat down and started his letter: