JOHNTOWN. TENN.
395
he would see a woman who didn't even look her years and tears
and time, just a little gray in the yellow hair, like it wasn't gray but
the light just struck it slantwise to silver, and some pink left in her
cheeks, if her blood got up, and her breath sweet-smelling enough, and
her body, you get her stripped down and the light gentle, shaped all
ripe and ready for hand-holt.
Thinking that way, he was suddenly blind-mad like he had
caught somebody peeking on his wife, on Celia Hornby Harrick, on
Mrs. John T. Harrick, and her getting ready for bed or bath tub,
and his hands clenched tight like he would break the bastard's back,
like a piece of too-long kindling over his knee. But there wasn't any
bastard peeking out of the dark under the old green window shade.
It was just himself, and he was sick at the thought.
If
only she were dead, then everything would be as it had been
and not as it was now, and he would not be like an old tramp sneak–
ing up in the dark cold night to a crack in a window to peek in. He
would be for always the man who lived in that house. He would
lock the kitchen door, and bank the fire in the cook-stove so she
wouldn't have any trouble in the morning-oh, yeah, he always was
careful to make things easy for her, and he knew all about fires, be–
ing the best blacksmith between Blue Ridge and Rocky Mountains–
and wind the kitchen clock, and get himself a drag of buttermilk out
of the ice-box to sweeten his digestion, and go down the hall toward
the bedroom.
He would stop just outside the door, and smile to himself in
the dark. Standing in the dark hall he had always been able to see
it so well, in his head. He wouldn't have to peek. He had done his
peeking long back. He would know now she was putting on her
nightgown, standing with her arms over her head for a second with
that position lifting her whole body up like it was a Christmas present
and glad to be one, letting the gown slip down over her arms, then
over her, and her head coming through the collar.
It would be a flannel nightgown, white with tiny little blue
flowers, or some such thing, and it would reach nigh the floor so
you couldn't see her feet. The collar would be sort of high, and after
it got settled down over her head she would tie the little white, or
maybe blue, ribbon that closed the collar. Standing there in the dark
hall, he could see how she would tie that little ribbon, how her lips
