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Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 132 introduced her to Samuel Hearthway, seven years older than her, established, respectable, and so forth. She was melancholy talking about it, not that she didn't love the Bishop now, but she'd had to leam it after she was already his wife for time and all eternity. We were warm friends after that, and the more I studied Sister Hearthway the more obvious I saw she wasn't satisfied in life. Next time I tended the Bishop's yard, she asked right off would I smear suntan lotion on her back. I felt immodest but did it anyways, though later I needed double hot peppers on my hands and prayed up a storm for forgiveness. She called me Levi and I called her Noelle like how friends do. She had me for sun-tea while her babies napped, and asked about my thoughts and so forth, and I asked hers, too. One day the middle of June we were extrapolating scripture when she got solemn and sat the books away and said she wasn't feeling the spirit. She said she didn't feel the spirit much these days and asked if I thought bad of her. I'd suspected as much for a while but couldn't think bad of her for all the world. She put her hands over her eyes and said, "Oh, but you don't know what I've done!" And she was up running to the house. Came back all nervous giggles with a black gallon garbage bag. She dumped it out on the sun porch and stood over it like a triumph. "This is all stuff I've stolen!" she gasped. It was good as Christmas. Dolls, clothes, movies, CDs, tools, furniture polish, a fancy cigarette lighter, high heeled shoes, cheep jewelry, some nice cuff-links, a set of oven mitts, my Uncle Boss' personally engraved pen set, and all manner of things-even a Bible. I said, "You stole all this?" |