not so bad if you expect it. And anyway it did not show very much on Uncle Jim not for a very long time anyway.
Living on the farm at first was hard on George it was so different from the school, for one thing they gave him a room all to himself and that was much better but for the longest time he could not get used to more than three walls around his bed, it was like your mouth was taped up and half your nose, you could breathe all right but never enough. But in time George got to like the room to himself real good. Also there was always this about George, put him in a new place with new people and he clammed up even more than usual and for a long time he could see Aunt Mary and Uncle Jim thought he was simple, just Yes and No and All right and when they said to tell them something like how was it at the school or back home, just sort of smile and spread out your hands and don’t say nothing.
So for the first part of the time, eight, nine months, while George was like settling in, he had to go into the woods a whole lot and long as he done his work which he did, they let him. There was real good woods around there better even than Kentucky, he even seen bears a couple of times although he never did get one. But you never seen such possum, big and fat, and coons and rabbits and even beaver but not much. So at first George went hunting because somehow he had to and then he went just to keep making sure he could and then he met Anna and cut it out altogether, why it was like the first two years at the school, he did not even think of it no more.
He was past sixteen when he met Anna and she was older maybe eight years. Her old man had close to two hundred acres where Aunt Mary had but 46 and that mostly clay pasture, rocks and wood hillside. Anna’s pa’s place was worse even, and seven kids. George always thought how nice that must be, all those folks like belong to each other, here he was with nobody to talk to. But talking to Anna he found out how she used to think all the time, how nice it must be for him, a small place, so quiet, only thirteen head to milk night and morning, and a room of your own. It was really funny how they envied each other.
George met Anna at the creamery one time when her pa was laid up with a wrenched shoulder falling off a hay tedder. She drove a team to the creamery and he helped her get the forty-quart cans off the buckboard on to the stage. They did not talk very much at first, she was not what you would call good looking which is why she was stuck so long on that farm, nobody was about to marry her. She had a wide pink face and brown eyes and hair, and carried her head sort of forward the way women do who have that lump up between their shoulders they call the widow’s hump. She was big around the upper arms and thighs both but very small in the waist and forearms and ankles and feet. Somehow a woman built like that did not get George all excited but it made him feel comfortable.
He said to her about the third time he saw her that it was close to twelve miles by road from Aunt Mary’s around to her pa’s place, but did she know it was not more than a mile and a half through the woods. She thought about it and gave him a smile and said yes that’s so, and it was because the two farms was around the mountain shoulder from each other, and the roads followed the valleys. Well he said maybe some time he was out hunting he would see her in the fields. She said maybe and that was all just then because the next time he went to the creamery it was her pa. He never did talk to her pa.
So not long after, it was in the summer time and light for a couple hours after milking, sure enough he went out into the woods and struck off up the mountain and down again and before you know it there he was.
And she was sitting outside the barb wire at the edge of the woods by her pa’s north pasture.
And he said, What are you doing sitting out here?
And she laughed and said, I reckon I was waiting for
Living on the farm at first was hard on George it was so different from the school, for one thing they gave him a room all to himself and that was much better but for the longest time he could not get used to more than three walls around his bed, it was like your mouth was taped up and half your nose, you could breathe all right but never enough. But in time George got to like the room to himself real good. Also there was always this about George, put him in a new place with new people and he clammed up even more than usual and for a long time he could see Aunt Mary and Uncle Jim thought he was simple, just Yes and No and All right and when they said to tell them something like how was it at the school or back home, just sort of smile and spread out your hands and don’t say nothing.
So for the first part of the time, eight, nine months, while George was like settling in, he had to go into the woods a whole lot and long as he done his work which he did, they let him. There was real good woods around there better even than Kentucky, he even seen bears a couple of times although he never did get one. But you never seen such possum, big and fat, and coons and rabbits and even beaver but not much. So at first George went hunting because somehow he had to and then he went just to keep making sure he could and then he met Anna and cut it out altogether, why it was like the first two years at the school, he did not even think of it no more.
He was past sixteen when he met Anna and she was older maybe eight years. Her old man had close to two hundred acres where Aunt Mary had but 46 and that mostly clay pasture, rocks and wood hillside. Anna’s pa’s place was worse even, and seven kids. George always thought how nice that must be, all those folks like belong to each other, here he was with nobody to talk to. But talking to Anna he found out how she used to think all the time, how nice it must be for him, a small place, so quiet, only thirteen head to milk night and morning, and a room of your own. It was really funny how they envied each other.
George met Anna at the creamery one time when her pa was laid up with a wrenched shoulder falling off a hay tedder. She drove a team to the creamery and he helped her get the forty-quart cans off the buckboard on to the stage. They did not talk very much at first, she was not what you would call good looking which is why she was stuck so long on that farm, nobody was about to marry her. She had a wide pink face and brown eyes and hair, and carried her head sort of forward the way women do who have that lump up between their shoulders they call the widow’s hump. She was big around the upper arms and thighs both but very small in the waist and forearms and ankles and feet. Somehow a woman built like that did not get George all excited but it made him feel comfortable.
He said to her about the third time he saw her that it was close to twelve miles by road from Aunt Mary’s around to her pa’s place, but did she know it was not more than a mile and a half through the woods. She thought about it and gave him a smile and said yes that’s so, and it was because the two farms was around the mountain shoulder from each other, and the roads followed the valleys. Well he said maybe some time he was out hunting he would see her in the fields. She said maybe and that was all just then because the next time he went to the creamery it was her pa. He never did talk to her pa.
So not long after, it was in the summer time and light for a couple hours after milking, sure enough he went out into the woods and struck off up the mountain and down again and before you know it there he was.
And she was sitting outside the barb wire at the edge of the woods by her pa’s north pasture.
And he said, What are you doing sitting out here?
And she laughed and said, I reckon I was waiting for
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