Read Online Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick - Free Book Online

real deal here?”
    Boaty waited while the man poured himself another shot and drank it down, his lips pursing to the edge of the glass like a baby at the nipple. When he had set the glass down, pushed his hair back from his eyes and looked up again, Boaty finally spoke. He spoke very quietly, and lowered his eyes, dipped his chin so that the roll of flesh rose around his buttoned white shirt. “I want the girl.”
    “You what?”
    “I want the girl. I want to marry her. Give her a better life.”
    “How old are you?”
    “Forty-three.” He thought of exaggerating even more, how would this man know, but he didn’t want to push his luck.
    “I can’t do that.”
    “Course you can. One less mouth to feed. A better life than you could give her. Three thousand dollars, let’s say; that’s a lot of money. And a tractor. I’ll buy you a new tractor.”
    The man looked wistful, helpless. Having never been offered a choice in anything he ever did, even choosing a wife, the one he had being four months pregnant when they married, after having had a single encounter after a church supper when he was sixteen and didn’t even know how to do the thing with any respect or affection or thought. Again, now, he didn’t know what to do and knew there was nowhere to go for advice.
    “Which girl?”
    “She’s out there right now, picking beans in the garden.”
    “Sylvan. My first girl. She’s got my heart, that girl.”
    “And what’s that heart worth to her now, you reckon? How old is she?”
    The man paused, ruffled his fingers. “Sixteen. I think. No, seventeen.”
    “What use is a girl on a farm? What good is she to you now? You want her grabbed up by some trash? Maybe she has been already. She’s seventeen. I don’t pay top dollar for used goods. Maybe I should reconsider.”
    “Sylvan is a good girl. She’s special. Not just to me. Ain’t nobody been near her, that’s for sure. I’ve been careful. Real careful.”
    “Can she read?”
    “Course she can read.”
    “Mathematics?”
    “Some. Not division. But she’s bright. Listens to all them shows on the radio.”
    “Good. A good girl. A little older than I hoped, but she’ll do.”
    “You’re the one that’s asking, mister. If you don’t want her, and I ain’t saying this is a done deal, you don’t want her, just walk away.”
    “I’m offering you, say, three thousand dollars, a new tractor, and a better life for both you and your family and the girl Sylvan.”
    “And I hear you and I’ll think about it. Now, with all due respect, I want you to leave my house.”
    “There’s one condition,” Boaty said as he stood.
    “Figured,” said the father.
    “If she runs off on me, you lose the farm. I take it back, and you have nowhere to go. Understand?”
    There was a long pause. “What if she dies or something else?”
    Boaty hadn’t thought that far. “There is no something else,” he said. “No divorce. No running off. But I guess if she dies, you stay put. As long as she dies my wife. So it’s kind of ‘for richer or poorer’ for you, too. You got that?
    “When she’s gone, she’s gone. She won’t be coming back, and you won’t be seeing her. Not at Christmas, not at Easter. You’ll never see your grandchildren, at least not by her.”
    “That’s pretty hard.”
    “Life is hard, isn’t it?”
    The man looked out the window at his oldest daughter, straining in the hot sun to find every last bean on the vine. The white shirt was soaked with sweat, and her hair clung in tendrils to her neck. Boaty thought she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
    “I got to consider her. Whether she’d like it. Don’t even know I could convince her. She’s got ideas, like I said.”
    “When can I come back?”
    There was a long pause. Two men in a kitchen, the woodstove, always hot, the flypaper hanging down, encrusted, the whiskey clear and still in the jar, the girl in the garden, the boys bawling for lunch and the baby for the