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kids she had been fat but after the second one she’d worked on those diets and gotten down pretty well. Not all the way down to the hundred and fifteen like when they were married, but down to a hundred and thirty about.
    She’d been so damn cute. That black hair and those dark blue eyes and that cute build. Just about danced his feet right off him. Couldn’t think of anything but dancing. On her feet all day long in that store on Canal Street, and then want to dance all night long. Good dancer, too. Lot of rhythm. She’d had a steady boyfriend when he met her. What was that joker’s name? Carl something. Big bastard. It all happened like he imagined it happened with just about everybody. You think it’s for kicks and then it turns out to be something you want permanent. And that old crap about not chasing a streetcar after you caught it was just that. Crap. God knows how many times it was in the back seat of that old Chev of his, and sometimes in motels and once that time in her own room in her own house when her folks had gone over to Lake Charles that time her married sister was sick. It had made him feel strange to be there in her room with the school pictures on the walls and those stuffed dolls and things.
    He wished she hadn’t let him. He wished she hadn’t let him until they were married and then he wouldn’t be thinking what he was thinking now. She probably let Carl too, even though she claimed she didn’t.
    He wanted it to be permanent. She met his folks and he met hers and pretty soon the wedding was all planned and pretty soon the wedding was over and he was married to Gloria. They could have moved in with either set of folks but they didn’t want to, and he put the down payment on the used trailer and they had moved in. My God, that had been one hot son of a bitch in the summertime. Lay there in the narrow bed with sweat pouring right off them, but it was the first summer and they did more joking about it than complaining.
    She wasn’t real bright. Tell her something and she couldn’t remember it worth a damn. Couldn’t cook much either, but she got better at that. Not bright but always laughing, making jokes, jumping around. Did all her thinking with her body. Talk a blue streak and not say a damn thing. Always wanting to go to the movies—just like now she can’t hardly tear herself loose from that television. Not bright, but good. He thought she was good. And it was good to be married. It made you feel settled. You had kids and it made you think you were doing something, building something. And you settled into the job better and you got more dependable and so you got the better hauls and a better rating.
    The house wasn’t much, but they’d fixed it up pretty good. They did a lot of inside painting they couldn’t get the landlord to do. The kids getting old enough to be sort of fun. Hated like hell to be away from them so much, but the money was good, and they were putting some aside, and it all looked fine. Until Sunday night.
    He knew he could live to be a million and never forget a second of it, how it was, how things looked—so clear—like it had been engraved somewhere in his mind like a bunch of pictures in an album.
    It was the thing that happened to other guys. And it was an old joke, too. A corny old joke. The guys down at the shop would ride each other. “Who’s taking care of that while you’re away, Dix?”
    “I just fix it before I go so it don’t need anything in between.”
    “Nuts. I bet you got yourself one of them there what they call it chastity belts. Let me see the key, Dix.”
    “Not you, you bastard. You’ll get a copy made and you just aren’t man enough to handle it.”
    You made jokes about it. Sometimes the jokes got a little raw on account of Gloria is really a dish, but you didn’t let them see you were getting sore. If they knew they could make you sore they’d never let up on you one minute.
    He’d taken one of the usual runs to Denver, the