Page 306

The Way West (1955)

and sadness, and it was as if she was two persons, the cheerful one ahead and the fearful one by the spring. Why, she had studied herself a dozen times, when the brush offered a place or the tent was empty. She had looked and she had felt, and there wasn't anything wrong. She was flat and slim as ever. There couldn't be anything wrong. For a minute she felt the spurt of comfort and of courage. Things would turn out right. No need to cross a bridge before you got to it. Plenty of bridges never came to be except in the mind that built them. Then her stomach turned with sickness.
The cup trembled from her finger, and she set it down and locked her hands in her lap, trying to catch hold of fear, trying to bring it in from hands and legs and head and lay it deep inside the chest. Ma would throw up her hands and take on terrible, crying, "I tolt you to stay clear of men, didn't I? But, no, you knowed better, and this is what comes of it and serves you right. 'Fore God, I don't know what got into you." What Pa would do or say she didn't know, but it would be like him to go to Mr. Mack and brave around and settle happy for a horse or ox, as if that was the price of her.
While she pulled fear in, she understood it was Aunt Bess who'd made her look on Pa for what he was-a windy man and no-account, "slack-twisted" in Aunt Bess's words, though she never out and gave that name to him. Aunt Bess had kept her when things went extra hard, which generally they did, and by voice and manner had made her eyes to see, so that, when she went back home, she saw the dirt and ugliness of it and Ma dragged out and shriller as the days went by.
If she could talk to Mr. Mackl If she could put her head on his chest and cry to him how it wasl But he