Chapter 18: The Feed Store

I did not sleep for two nights.

I went into her room across the landing and stood among her things.

Her books were stacked on the sill, with a bookmark in every one.

Her white nightgown hung on the bedpost.

I took it down and lay on her narrow bed with the cotton against my face.

It smelled of her hair and of the soap she used.

My hand went to my cock without my deciding.

I came in a minute, hard and miserable, saying her name into the cloth.

Afterward I felt worse than before.

On Sunday I did the chores alone.

The heifers came to the fence for her, and not for me.

A calf had come in the night, and I stood over it with nobody to tell.

I said good girl to its mother out of habit.

The words made me sick.

On Monday morning I cut the road gate chain with bolt cutters.

She had taken the Ford and the gate key.

I started the old stock truck from the barn and drove to town at forty miles an hour.

I had no list.

For the first time in my life I was going to Pryor Bend for no reason at all.

The feed store was full of men with coffee in paper cups.

Five ranchers stood at the counter, and one of them was the young man in the seed cap.

He saw me and set his cup down slowly.

Dottie was behind the register with a pencil behind her ear.

She looked up when the bell rang, and she took off her glasses.

"Morning, Jack," she said.

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