Chapter 13: Town

I took her to town on a Saturday, nine days after I said Soon.

I told myself I was choosing the day and nobody was pushing me.

I told myself that if she saw Pryor Bend with me beside her, she would see how little there was in it.

She wore her blue dress and her good boots and sat forward on the seat the whole way.

At the road gate I got out, took off the padlock and swung the chain wide.

She watched me through the windshield and said nothing.

On the county road she read the mile markers aloud as they passed, in a small happy voice.

Pryor Bend was one street, a grain elevator, a church, a bar and the feed store.

The library was an old brick bank with a green door.

She laid her hand flat on the window.

"It's so small," she said.

"I told you."

"It's wonderful."

Dottie Chesbro came around the feed store counter with her reading glasses swinging and took Iris in both arms.

"Look at you in my store," she said. "Look at you."

Iris laughed into her shoulder.

I went to the counter with my list and let them have a minute.

When Dottie came back to ring me up, she watched my face and not the list.

"Your girl's got good color," she said.

"She's fine."

"I can see that, Jack."

Iris had drifted down the third aisle, past the salt blocks and the fencing staples.

Then I heard her laugh.

It was the laugh she gave me in the truck on the north fence, loud and helpless, and it was not meant for me.

I put down the list.

A young man in a seed cap stood in the aisle with a barn kitten in his hands.

He was maybe twenty-five, broad in the shoulders, with a clean jaw and no wedding ring.

Iris had the kitten against her chest, and it was climbing her braid.

"Where're you from?" he said. "I'd remember you."

"The Tarrant place," she said. "Out past the gate."

"You're Tarrant's girl? I heard he kept you in a jar."

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