JOHNTOWN. TENN.
407
was going to push the little pill bottle closer, and say nothing.
But he was not going to take any pill. You might as well swallow
a couple of buck-shot.
"Dear John T.," she whispered, and roughed up
his
hair, ever
so lightly, with her hand, the way you rough up a dog's head or a
kid's, and went soft-footed out of the room, leaving him to take,
without shame, the pill he would not take.
And he wanted her to be dead, for she had roughed up his
hair that way, the way she had done in the dogwood dark, on the
mountain when he had been on his knees before her, and he thought,
with a burst of elation, that if then, that instant, long back on the
mountain, he had turned and seized her, not falling on his knees,
and ripped her, and ripped out of her what he wanted, and flung
her aside on the grass and run on over the mountain, his feet scarcely
touching the rocks as he ran under the dark, barely star-teased sky,
then nothing would ever have happened like this. All would be dif–
ferent, he would not be dying in a wheel chair. He would have run
on forever, over the mountain, under the dark sky.
Then the elation was gone. The tears came into his eyes, for
he was ashamed of himself, and he truly loved Celia Hornby Harrick.
He thought maybe he was going crazy, the way his mind ran off in
all directions.
He thought of her hand roughing his hair, and croaked out,
out loud, "I love you. I love you."
Then, in the cold distance, he thought how he had never really
taken it away from anybody, just ripped it off 'em. He had seen it
done, in the AEF, long back. Many a girl he had walked out in
places so woods-dark and private and still you could have heard a
goat cough two pistol shots and a spit down the mountain, and with
him as strong as he had been in his days and time of strength a girl
would have had about as much chance with him as a moon-bemused
crawfish on a sandbar with a hungry he-coon sashaying out of the
willow shade. But he never wanted any partaking that way. He had
reckoned he was too proud. He never had to rip it off anybody. A
little, squeally scuffle maybe, but just in friend-fun, everybody know–
ing how it would come out and not even a thumb-mark to show.
Then he thought he would never know how it was that way.
"Am
I going crazy?" he demanded inside.
