You damn right.
You want me to get out of bed to help you?
Just give me a minute, he said.
Finally he succeeded in hauling both boots off and he stood up and got out of his clothes and stood naked, shivering, looking down at her, and she opened the bed covers to him and he crawled in. Lord, you’re just freezing, Maggie said. Come closer here. In bed she felt unbelievably warm and smooth and she was the most generous woman he’d ever known. He could feel her like satin all along his body.
But listen to me, she said.
What.
You don’t actually think I’m scary, do you?
Yeah, I do.
Tell me the truth. I’m serious now.
That is the truth. At times I can’t say I know what to make of you.
Can’t you?
No.
What do you mean? Why not?
Because you’re different than everybody else, he said. You don’t seem to ever get defeated or scared by life. You stay clear in yourself, no matter what.
She kissed him. Her dark eyes were watching him in the dim light. I get defeated sometimes, she said. I’ve been scared. But I’m just crazy about you. She reached down and touched him. Here’s one part of you that seems to know what to make of me.
You do make a person feel interested, said Guthrie.
. . .
Afterward they slept. The stars wheeled west in the night and the wind blew only a little. About four-thirty she woke him and asked if he wanted to go home before daylight.
Does it matter to you?
Not to me, she said.
They went back to sleep and then at gray dawn she got up when they heard the old man moving about in the kitchen. I need to get up and fix his cereal, Maggie said.
Guthrie watched her get out of bed and put a robe on and leave the room. He lay in bed for a while, listening to them talk, then got dressed and went into the bathroom. When he came out into the kitchen, Maggie’s father was sitting at the table with a dish towel tied around his neck and a bowl of oatmeal before him. The old man looked at him. And who do you think you are? he said.
Dad, you know Tom Guthrie. You’ve met him before.
What’s he want? We don’t need another car. Is he trying to sell you a car?
Guthrie told her goodbye and went home and traded his boots for gym shoes and went back out and drove over to the depot where a ragged stack of Sunday Denver News lay sprawled out beside the tracks, wrapped in twine. He sat down at the edge of the cobblestone platform with his feet out in the ballast and rolled the papers, and then rose and loaded them into the pickup cab and drove through Holt along early morning streets almost empty yet of traffic or any commotion at all, and hurled the papers from the pickup window in the approximate direction of the front doors and porches. He climbed the stairs over Main Street to the dark apartments above the places of business, and about midmorning he finished the boys’ paper routes and returned home and went out to the barn and fed the one horse and the cats and the dog. At the house he fixed himself some eggs and toast and drank two cups of black coffee, sitting in the kitchen with the sunlight slanted across his plate. He sat smoking for a while. Then he lay down on the davenport to read the paper. Three hours later he woke with the newspaper folded across his chest like a bum’s blanket. He lay still for a while, alone in the silent house, remembering the night before, what that had been like, wondering what might be starting. Thinking did he want it to start, and what if he did. Late in the afternoon he called her. You doing all right? he said.
Yes, aren’t you?
Yes, I am.
Good.
I enjoyed myself, he said. You think you’d like to get together again sometime?
You’re not suggesting an actual date, are you? Maggie said. In broad daylight?
I don’t know what you’d call it, Guthrie said. I’m just saying I’d be willing to take you out for supper at Shattuck’s and invest in a hamburger. To see how that would go down.
When were you thinking of doing that?