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Show -11 by that odd seaside light, listening to the old man with half my mind. "Being under the thumb of the woman you love" is an unnatural condition," he said. He drove sitting up perfectly straight, his back firmly against the seat; his hands were laid on the spokes of the steering wheel in a horseman's light grip that allowed the truck to pretty well pick its own path. "You understand what I'm telling you?" "You had to leave," I said. It was the old Protestant hymn that we've been singing in one key or another ever since the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock and tried to survive the winter. In my heart of hearts I liked the tune. In the early afternoon we stopped for gas. J. Cash unhooked the baling wire, propped the hood with a length of broomstick and unscrewed the radiator cap. Boiling rusty water shot up and he jumped back. "You all right?" I said. "Certainly." While he held the water-hose he looked at me seriously. "Did you really understand what I was telling you?" "Idleness is a curse," I said. "Every man has to have something to do with his life." "Don't forget the part about women," he said. The girl who hitched a ride with us carried a plastic suitcase decorated with stick-on daisies, she held a collie-dog |