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Show 103 darkness gathered earlier each evening, so that even though it was only a little past supper, the stack of nickels had become indistinct gray knobs on Andy's back porch. "Don't get sore at me, Andy," Karl said, "but I'd feel silly picking out a wedding present all by myself. Anyway, I'd probably get the wrong thing. I never bought a wedding present before." "I'm not sore at you." Andy scooped the nickels into a handkerchief and twisted the edges to make a sack. "Listen, I've got a better idea. If we could come up with sixty-five more cents between us, that would make two dollars. We could change the money into two one-dollar bills. That way each of us could have one for the bride's dance." "Bride's dance?" "Yeah. There's always a bride's dance at a Slovak wedding party," Andy said. "The musicians play a real long dance, and every man who can afford a dollar gets to take a turn dancing with the bride. At a big wedding, they sometimes collect as much as fifty bucks for the bride and groom to buy furniture and stuff for their house. If you can put in thirty cents, I'll try to sneak the other thirty-five cents out of my pay on Friday." "Sneak it out? Don't you get to keep any of your pay?" Karl asked. Andy let out a short, derisive laugh. "I never get a cent. My old man takes every penny of my pay. If I need anything, from a pencil to a pair of shoestrings, he doles out the cash to me, and does he every gripe about it! But maybe this Friday he'll be too busy |
