The Collected Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

eighteen.”
    â€œBrowny, don’t you get lonesome in that camp? I mean if Lizzy isn’t around and I’m not around … Don’t you think I have a nice figure?”
    â€œOh, I guess …” He laughed, and put his hand warmly under my shirt. “It’s pretty damn nice, considering it ain’t even quite done.”
    I couldn’t hold my desire down, and I kissed him again right into his talking mouth and smack against his teeth. “Oh, Browny, I would take care of you.”
    â€œO.K., O.K.,” he said, pushing me kindly away. “O.K., now listen, go to sleep before we really cook up a stew. Go to sleep. You’re a sweet kid. Sleep it off. You ain’t even begun to see how wide the world is. It’s a surprise even to a man like me.”
    â€œBut my mind is settled.”
    â€œGo to sleep, go sleep,” he said, still holding my hand and patting it. “You look almost like Lizzy now.”
    â€œOh, but I’m different. I know exactly what I want.”
    â€œGo to sleep, little girl,” he said for the last time. I took his hand and kissed each brown fingertip and then ran into my room and took all my clothes off and, as bare as my lonesome soul, I slept.
    The next day was Saturday and I was glad. Mother is a waitress all weekend at the Paris Coffee House, where she has been learning French from the waiters ever since Daddy disappeared. She’s lucky because she really loves her work; she’s crazy about the customers, the coffee, the décor, and is only miserable when she gets home.
    I gave her breakfast on the front porch at about 10 a.m. and Joanna walked her to the bus. “Cook the corporal some of those frozen sausages,” she called out in her middle range.
    I hoped he’d wake up so we could start some more love, but instead Lizzy stepped over our sagging threshold. “Came over to fix Browny some breakfast,” she said efficiently.
    â€œOh?” I looked her childlike in the eye. “I think
I
ought to do it, Aunty Liz, because he and I are probably getting married. Don’t you think I ought to in that case?”
    â€œWhat? Say that slowly, Josephine.”
    â€œYou heard me, Aunty Liz.”
    She flopped in a dirndl heap on the stairs. “
I
don’t even feel old enough to get married and
I’ve
been seventeen since Christmas time. Did he really ask you?”
    â€œWe’ve been talking about it,” I said, and that was true. “I’m in love with him, Lizzy.” Tears prevented my vision.
    â€œOh, love … I’ve been in love twelve times since I was your age.”
    â€œNot me, I’ve settled on Browny. I’m going to get a job and send him to college after his draft is over … He’s very smart.”
    â€œOh, smart … everybody’s smart.”
    â€œNo, they are not.”
    When she left I kissed Browny on both eyes, like the Sleeping Beauty, and he stretched and woke up in a conflagration of hunger.
    â€œBreakfast, breakfast, breakfast,” he bellowed.
    I fed him and he said, “Wow, the guys would really laugh, me thiefin’ the cradle this way.”
    â€œDon’t feel like that. I make a good impression on people, Browny. There’ve been lots of men more grown than you who’ve made a fuss over me.”
    â€œHa-ha,” he remarked.
    I made him quit that kind of laughing and started him on some kisses, and we had a cheerful morning.
    â€œBrowny,” I said at lunch, “I’m going to tell Mother we’re getting married.”
    â€œDon’t she have enough troubles of her own?”
    â€œNo, no,” I said. “She’s all for love. She’s crazy about it.”
    â€œWell, think about it a minute, baby face. After all, I might get shipped out to some troubled area and be knocked over by a crazy native. You read about something like that every day. Anyway, wouldn’t it be fun to have