Read Online Gap Creek by Robert Morgan - Free Book Online

looked at the hat in my hand, and I looked toward the arborvitae. And then I smiled, because I knowed Hank had already slipped away into the trees and was far down the mountain. I was even more thrilled than I had been, to think he was safe, and that he had been so clever.
    “Well, what happened to him?” Mama said.
    “He’s done gone,” I said.
    “He’ll have to come back for his hat,” Carolyn said. “A gentleman don’t go anywhere without his hat.”
    Shadows was already reaching across the yard. There was crow calls from the trees on the hill. I tossed the hat up in the air and caught it. It was the happiest day of my life.
    MARRIAGE WAS DIFFERENT from what I ever expected. Like all girls I imagined something wonderful, and it was wonderful, in most ways, but in different ways from what I had thought. Mama had always said that marriage is like everything else: it is work, hard work.
    As I expected, Mama was angry when I told her I was engaged.
    “You don’t hardly know that boy,” she said.
    “How well am I supposed to know him?” I said.
    “Well enough to know his mama’s name,” Mama said.
    I didn’t say nothing. I never was good with talk when somebody was upset. Besides, there was nothing I could say to convince Mama.
    “When are you getting married?” Lou said.
    “Next month,” I said.
    “Where are you going on your honeymoon?” Carolyn said. She was always reading stories in magazines about courtship and honeymoons.
    “I don’t know yet,” I said. “He has only just asked me.”
    “I’ll say,” Mama said. “You only met him last week.”
    “I’ll bake you a coconut cake,” Rosie said.
    “Who is going to do the work around here?” Mama said.
    “The crops is already in this year,” I said. “It’s not like Rosie and Lou and Carolyn is helpless.”
    “This is a fine come off,” Mama said, “after your Papa died in the spring. And you not much more than a youngun.” But I don’t think Mama was as mad as she acted. Or if she was she got over it. Maybe she seen the advantage of getting one of her girls married off. Or maybe she seen there was nothing she could do to stop it. “I just hope he’s a good man,” Mama said, “though he’s really just a boy.”
    “He’s eighteen years old,” I said.
    “That’s what I mean,” Mama said. “You’re both just younguns.”

Four
    Now the week before we was married Hank rented a house over the line in South Carolina. It was way down a little valley called Gap Creek, and it was the farthest I had ever been from home. Hank said he wanted to live there because it was a pretty place, and because it was cheap, and he had work where they was building a cotton mill at Eaton. He had worked before as a carpenter and mason’s helper and he already had a job lined up at the site in Eaton, helping to make brick. I thought later he moved to South Carolina to get away from his ma, because when I got to know her I could see why he would want to.
    We got married on a Saturday, nearly a month after we first met, and we stayed that night at Mama’s house. I felt embarrassed to be spending my first night as a married woman in my own house, but Mama knowed what to do. Since there wasn’t no extra bedroom she told Hank to sleep on the couch in the living room, and I stayed in the bedroom with Lou and Rosie and Carolyn like I always had. I didn’t get hardly any sleep that night, and Lou giggled and teased me.
    “Do you reckon Hank is lonesome out on the couch?” she said.
    “Shhhhh,” I said and pretended to be sleepy.
    The next day we walked down to Gap Creek.
    Like any bride, I thought my husband was wise and on his way to riches. And when I seen the valley of Gap Creek I thought it was one of the prettiest places in the world. The house wasn’t so fancy, but the narrow valley with steep mountains on either side looked like a picture out of a magazine. The valley floor was flat, winding peaceful back into the steep mountains. It was