A VIEW OF THE WOODS
489
he must insure the future. He looked out the window at the moon
shining over the woods across the road and listened for a while to
the hum of crickets and treefrogs, and beneath their racket, he could
hear the throb of the future town of Fortune.
He went to bed certain that just as usual, he would wake up in
the morning looking into a little red mirror framed in a door of fine
hair. She would have forgotten all about the sale and after breakfast
they would drive into town and get the legal papers from the court–
house. On the way back he would stop at Tilman's and close the deal.
When he opened his eyes in the morning, he opened them on
the empty ceiling. He pulled himself up and looked around the room
but she was not there. He hung over the edge of the bed and looked
beneath it but she was not there either. He got up and dressed
and went outside. She was sitting in the swing on the front porch,
exactly the way she had been yesterday, looking across the lawn
into the woods. The old man was very much irritated. Every morning
since she had been able to climb, he had waked up to find her either
on his bed or underneath it.
It
was apparent that this morning she
preferred the sight of the woods. He decided to ignore her behavior
for the present and then bring it up later when she was over her
pique. He sat down in the swing beside her but she continued to
look at the woods. "I thought you and me'd go into town and have
us a look at the boats in the new boat store," he said.
She didn't turn her head but she asked suspiciously, in a loud
voice, "What else are you going for?"
"Nothing else," he said.
After a pause she said,
"If
that's all, I'll go," but she did not
bother to look at him.
"Well put on your shoes," he said. "I ain't going to the city
with a barefoot woman." She did not bother to laugh at this joke.
The weather was as indifferent as her disposition. The sky did
not look as if it were going to rain or as if it were not going to rain.
It was an unpleasant gray and the sun had not troubled to come
out. All the way into town, she sat looking at her feet, which stuck
out in front of her, encased in heavy brown school shoes. The old
man had often sneaked up on her and found her alone in conver–
sation with her feet and he thought she was speaking with them
silently now. Every now and then her lips moved but she said nothing
