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Show 66 "Do you think s o ? " Nettie asked, and took his advice. She didn't mention marriage to Uncle Ase any more. This didn't stop Ase from dreaming, though, and finally Jim came down and talked to him. "Ase, Nettie was only joking you about getting married. You don't want to pay any attention to her. " But Uncle Ase preferred to believe that Nettie did mean it and that Jim had broken them up. As long as he lived after that he cursed "Jimmoore, " repeating the whole gamut of conversations from the first of the affair to the last. When he was thinning beets he would creep up on a hill like a brigand with a knife, seize it about the throat, raise it high in the air and smash it to the ground with an accompaniment of "God-damned, god-damned son-of-a-bitch. Jimmoore!" Nettie married a doctor and moved to Provo, but Uncle Ase didn't stop his soliloquys about the affair. By the time Papa had built up quite a herd for Uncle Ase, amounting to some two or three-thousand dollars worth we had a visit from Papa's other brother, George. George had a large family of children whom we had never seen. He had married Aunt Rosie when she was about fifteen and their children outran his resources in matters of making money. He saw Uncle Ase as a martyr to Papa's ambition, an unpaid servant, in spite of the herd, and quickly convinced Uncle Ase he should leave Papa's employ. Naturally, the herd should go with them. Mama held her breath for fear something would stop them, but Papa was realistic. |
