Journeyman by Erskine Caldwell Page B

burnt.”
    “I used to think a lot of Lorene, and I can’t sit here and see nothing like that go on right under my roof.”
    “You’re married to Dene, Clay. I wouldn’t blame you for putting up a fight for her. But it’s different with Lorene. She’s been fooling with a lot of men in the past year or so. She won’t think no more of Semon than she did of all those others.”
    “Semon ought to be content with Sugar,” Clay said doggedly.
    “He ought to be, but he ain’t. Let him go ahead, and Lorene’ll burn him for a fare-you-well.”
    “He ought to stay content. He ought not to want more than what’s furnished him.”
    “That’s what he ought to do, I grant you. But he ain’t doing it. That’s why I say, let him burn.”
    While they were talking with lowered heads, Semon had got up. He strode across the room to the window and back again. He did not appear willing to sit down again. When he left Lorene, she waited for someone else to speak to her.
    When Tom looked up and saw that they were no longer talking to each other, he took Semon by the arm and led him to a corner. He spoke to him in a whisper for several minutes. After he had finished, Semon shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. He went back to his chair and sat down in front of Dene.
    “How long are you aiming to stay here, Lorene?” Clay asked.
    “Maybe I’d planned to stay all the time,” she smiled. “I said, maybe I had.”
    Clay did not know what to say to that. He wished, somewhere down in himself, that she would not leave and go back to Florida right away. He hoped something would occur that would keep her from ever going back again. He had lived with her for almost five years, and he missed her. After he married Dene, he began to forget her. But now that she was back in the house, sitting there before him, he wondered if he should try to keep her there, or to allow her to leave. He knew he could not keep both Lorene and Dene; one of them would refuse to stay in the house with the other in it at the same time. He knew without thinking that such a plan would not work out. Dene had not said anything since Lorene came home with Tom, but he could see by the way she looked at Lorene that she did not wish her to stay even for the rest of the night. There was nothing that could be done about it, though; Lorene had every right in the world to come back to see Vearl whenever she wanted to.
    It was getting late. The clock on the mantelpiece was not far from right, and it was eleven by it. Tom was getting up to leave for home then. His wife would not know what had happened to him. If she had known then that he had driven Lorene out to Rocky Comfort, and was in the same room with her at that moment, she would have walked down to the Horey place to take him home. Tom’s wife would take no chances with Lorene Horey.
    “I reckon I’ll be going home now,” Tom said. “It’s past me and my wife’s bedtime already.”
    “Come back soon, Tom,” Clay said. “We’re always glad to have you.”
    “I may drop down sometime tomorrow with a new jug of corn for you and the preacher and Lorene.”
    Semon got up to shake hands with him.
    “That was a man’s drink, Tom,” he said. “I’ve got you to thank for it.”
    “You’ll be doing that again, then,” Tom said, winking at Clay. “I’ll be back tomorrow with another gallon just as good. It all comes from the same run.”
    He went out the door and walked down the hall to the door. No one offered to go with him.
    After he had left, and when they could hear him starting his car, Semon stood up and said he thought it was past his bedtime.
    “Where in the world are we going to put Lorene tonight?” Clay said, thinking of it for the first time. “Now, I don’t know what to do about that.”
    He glanced at Dene to see if she had a suggestion to offer, but he soon saw she had nothing to say.
    “If we just had another extra bed, it would be no trouble at all. But we ain’t, and I don’t