Chapter 20: Ask Me Right

He didn't answer from the couch for so long that I thought he had fallen asleep.

"Ask me in the morning," he said, at last, to the ceiling. "When it's light and I can see your face."

In the morning there was frost on every fence wire, and the yard looked like somebody had salted it.

He had fixed the flue cap by seven.

He ate my toast without a word and drove home to change his shirt.

It was a Thursday, and Thursday is cribbage.

At two o'clock I walked down to the creek bottom instead, and I did not take the board.

The cottonwoods along Rattlesnake Creek had gone the color of a school bus.

The new wheat had come up thin and bright green between the rows, an inch tall, in the best ground in Pratt County.

Colby came down the slope from the north fence with his hat in his hand.

He had known where to find me.

I stood on the bank with my back to the water.

"All right," he said. "It's light."

"I'm going to say this once. Then you can say whatever you want."

"Okay."

"I don't need the clause."

He stopped walking.

"The year runs out at eleven o'clock on the tenth of May. After that, nobody can make me stay or leave, and nobody gets a farm if I fail."

"I want to get married to you that same night with nothing hanging on it. No folder, no lawyer, no Travis."

I took a breath.

"I wanted that to be a different day than the first one, so I'd know it was mine."

He didn't say a thing.

His thumb went around the brim of his hat, over and over.