OCR Text |
Show •13 "Jenny, Jenny," I said. I was twenty years old, almost twenty-one, and I had been a soldier for three years, one of them in( another country, but this was like my very first time, with that other Jenny, in the back seat of my Chevrolet under the fir trees in the rain, when I was sixteen. Afterwards we wrapped ourselves in her blankets and she went to sleep instantly, but my eyes wouldn't stay closed; I stared up through the treetops at Orion rising; the hunter, with his cloudy sword and his blue-headed dog at heel, looked like a friend. In the morning, I told myself, I '11 ask her last name and we'll make plans about Los Angeles. I was definitely in love. I drove us out of Eugene and found the road to Marysville before I tried to answer Jacob. The fields were drowned in muddy water; multitudes of green shoots poked their heads through it, making a general green haze. Raindrops as big as marbles bounced on the windshield and the wipers flung them away. We passed wooden farmhouses set far back from the road; big silver-gray barns floated out of the fog like ghost ships as we rolled by- Jacob was heavier in body than when I last saw him, but his features hadn't changed. He had always worn an older man's face, weighted down with the seriousness and ambition he showed from the start. He didn't look like me much, except, people |