It was about two o’clock in the morning and we were driving north out of town towards her folks’ place after the annual Fireman’s Ball at the Holt Legion. I was about half drunk, feeling pretty good, but Mavis Pickett wasn’t either of those things. She was stone-cold serious. We had been going out together for at least two years, off and on, and in her view of things our going out to dances and to movies and local parties had not led us anywhere. She was twenty-nine years old. She wanted to be married.
Which is all right, of course. Only I’m still not sure why it was me she chose to be the beneficiary of that. It’s enough to give me pause even now. I wasn’t what you might call a great catch. I was thirty-five. This gut you see here was already beginning to polish my belt buckle. I had knocked around, drunk too much, worked too little, developed bachelor habits. I was never going to be one of your sandhill millionaire successes: I didn’t have the ambition for it. No, if I was ever going to amount to a decent hill of beans or just a load of dung out of the ordinary, then I should have begun to show some sign of it by then. And I hadn’t. So I don’t know what she saw in me. Maybe it was the challenge. At the time Mavis was working as an L.P.N, at the hospital, and she was used to dealing with cold feet and lost causes. On the other hand, I had good reason to believe she loved me. I’m pretty sure she still does. Probably that clouded her view.
But when a woman like Mavis Pickett loves you, says in so many words that you’re her form of It, who are you to argue? You’re a damn fool if you do. I wasn’t that much of a fool. She was level-headed and good-looking at the same time. That’s an unusual combination. She had thick blond hair and green eyes, and when she was crossed she could run the strong stuff out of your backbone like it was so much water; she didn’t appreciate nonsense. We’ve had plenty of good times in thirteen years together. We’ve managed to survive the bad times. If she wasn’t in town right now waiting for me to come in a couple of hours to pick her up so we can visit the hospital again, she would no doubt tell you that I’m too bullheaded, that sometimes I lock gates that should be left open. I don’t think logically, she would say. On my side, I might wish occasionally that she had a sense of humor—but it’s worked out. For both of us.
At any rate, Mavis got us married toward the end of July 1963. I didn’t put up much opposition. I didn’t even argue a lot when she insisted that I had to do the proper thing, that I come to Sunday dinner and ask her father, old Raymond Pickett, whether he had objections. All I said was: “How about if I wrote him a postcard?”
“You’re coming to dinner,” she said.
“What if I called him on the phone?”
“No. You will be there at one o’clock. After we get home from church.”
“I’m not going to church. I don’t believe in it.”
“All right. But you will be there for dinner. And you will ask him face-to-face like you’re supposed to.”
“What if he wants to know what my intentions are?”
“Make something up. You’re good at that.”
“Well, Jesus,” I said. “You’re a hard woman.”
“Yes, and you can stop cussing. It’ll be all right. It’ll be just fine.”
“Like hell,” I said.
“You’ll see,” she said.
Mavis was a little old-fashioned that way. She still is. She has a firm idea of how things are meant to be and she usually sees to it that they turn out the way they’re meant to. They certainly did that Sunday afternoon, cooked chicken and all. I put on a white shirt at twelve o’clock and knotted a tie under my chin, then I drove north through Holt’s church traffic and on another eight miles to the Pickett place, where at a heavy oak table supported by a massive pedestal I ate fried chicken and refrained from sucking the grease off my fingers. It was one of those long quiet awkward dinners. Mavis and her mother talked above the platters of food and fine china while her father and I allowed that it was about normal weather for the time of year. Afterwards, according to plan, the womenfolks cleared the table and Raymond Pickett and I removed ourselves to the parlor. We sat down opposite one another.
After a time I said to him, “I suppose you know what I’m doing here.”
“I see you got your tie on,” he said. “I figured there was some reason for it.”
“There is.”