But they all said, "No, your time will come.
Enjoy being a bride while you can".

There was no room for company in the tiny Weaning House (where the Albright boys always took their brides, till they could get a house and a farm of their own).
So when the Big House filled up and ran over, the sisters-in-law found beds for everyone in their own homes.
And there was still not anything that Linda Kay could do.

So Linda Kay gave up asking, and accepted her reprieve.
Without saying so, she was really grateful;
for to attend the dying was something she had never experienced, and certainly had not imagined when she thought of the duties she would have as Bobby Joe's wife.
She had made curtains for all the windows of her little house, and she had kept it spotless and neat, shabby as it was, and cooked good meals for Bobby Joe.
She had done all the things she had promised herself she would do, but she had not thought of this.
People died, she would have said, in hospitals, or in cars on the highway at night.

Bobby Joe was gone all day now, not coming in for dinner and sometimes not for supper.
When they first married he had been working in the fields all day, and she would get in the car and drive to wherever he was working, to take him a fresh hot meal.
Now there was no work in the fields, nor would there be till it rained, and she did not know where he went.
Not that she complained, or had any cause to.
Four or five of the cousins from East Texas were about his age, so naturally they ran around together.
There was no reason for her to ask what they did.

Thus a new pattern of days began to develop, for Granny Albright did not die.
She lay still on the bed, her head hardly denting the pillow;
sometimes she opened her eyes and looked around, and sometimes she took a little milk or soup.
They stopped expecting her to die the next minute, but only in the next day or two.
Those who had driven hundreds of miles for the burial would not go home, for she might die any time;
but they might as well unpack their suitcases, for she might linger on.

So the pattern was established.
When Linda Kay had put up her breakfast dishes and mopped her linoleum rugs, she would go to the Big House.
There was not anything she could do there, but that was where everyone was, or would be.
Bobby Joe and the boys would come by, say "How's Granny"?
And sit on the porch a while.
The older men would be there at noon, and maybe rest for a time before they took their guns off to the creek or drove down the road towards town.

The women and children stayed at the Albrights'.
The women, keeping their voices low as they worked around the house or sat in the living room, sounded like chickens shut up in a coop for the night.
The children had to play away from the house (in the barn loft or the pasture behind the barn), to maintain a proper quietness.

Off and on, all day, someone would be wiping at the powdery gray dust that settled over everything.
The evaporative cooler had been moved to Granny's room, and her door was kept shut;
so that the rest of the house stayed open, though there was a question as to whether it was hotter or cooler that way.

The dust clogged their throats, and the heat parched them, so that the women were always making ice water.
They had cleaned up an old ice box and begun to buy fifty-pound blocks of ice in town, as the electric refrigerator came nowhere near providing enough ice for the crowds who ate and drank there.

One afternoon, as the women sat clucking softly, a new carload of people pulled up at the gate.
It was a Cadillac, black grayed with the dust of the road, its windows closed tight so you knew that the people who climbed out of it would be cool and unwrinkled.
They were an old fat couple (as Linda Kay described them to herself), a thick middle-aged man, and a girl about ten or twelve.

There was much embracing, much exclaiming.
"Cousin Ada!
Cousin John"!
"Cousin Lura"!
"Cousin Howard"!
"And how is she"?
"About the same, John, about the same".

All the women got up and offered their chairs, and when they were all seated again, the guests made their inquiries and their explanations.

"We were on our vacation in Canada", Howard explained, in a muffled voice that must have been used to booming, "and the news didn't catch up with us till we were nearly home.
We came on as soon as we could".

There was the suggestion of ice water, and -- in spite of the protest "We're not really thirsty" -- Linda Kay, to escape the stuffy air and the smothering soft voices, hurried to the kitchen.

She filled a big pitcher and set it, with glasses, on a tray.
Carrying it to the living room, she imagined the picture she made: tall and roundly slim, a bit sophisticated in her yellow sheath, with a graceful swingy walk that she had learned as a twirler with the school band.
Almost immediately she was ashamed of herself for feeling vain, at such a time, in such a place, and she tossed back her long yellow hair, smiling shyly as she entered the room.

Howard (the thick middle-aged man) was looking at her.
She felt the look and looked back because she could not help it, seeing that he was neither as old nor as thick as she had at first believed.

"And who is this"?
He asked, when she passed him a glass.

"Oh that's Linda Kay", Mama Albright said fondly.
"She married our baby boy, Bobby Joe, this summer".

"Let's see", Cousin Ada said.
"He's a right smart younger than the rest"?

"Oh yes", Mama laughed.
"He's ten years younger than Ernest.
We didn't expect him to come along;
thought for the longest he was a tumor".

This joke was not funny to Linda Kay, and she blushed, as she always did;
then, hearing the muffled boom of Howard's laughter, blushed redder.

"Who is Howard, anyway"?
She asked Bobby Joe that night.
"He makes me uncomfortable".

"Oh he's a second cousin or something.
He got in the oil business out at Odessa and lucked into some money".

"How old is he"?

"Gosh, I don't know.
Thirty-five, I guess.
He's been married and got this half-grown kid.
If he bothers you, don't pay him any mind.
He's just a big windbag".
Bobby Joe was thinking about something else.
"Say, did you know they're fixing to have a two-day antelope season on the Double J"?

He was talking about antelope again when they woke up.
"Listen, I never had a chance to kill an antelope.
There never was a season before, but now they want to thin 'em out on account of the drouth".

"Did he ever visit here when he was a kid"?
Linda Kay asked.

"Who"?

"Howard".

"Hell, I don't know.
When he was a kid I wasn't around".

Bobby Joe took a gun from behind the door, and with a quick "Bye now" was gone for the day.

Almost immediately Howard and his daughter Debora drove up in the Cadillac.

"We're going after ice", Howard said, "and thought maybe you'd go along and keep us company".

There was really no reason to refuse, and Linda Kay had never ridden in a Cadillac.

Driving along the caliche-topped road to town, Howard talked.
Finally he said, "Tell me about yourself", and Linda Kay told him, because she thought herself that she had had an interesting life.
She was such a well-rounded teenager, having been a twirler, Future Farmers sweetheart, and secretary of Future Homemakers.
In her sophomore year she had started going steady with Bobby Joe, who was a football player, Future Homemakers sweetheart, and president of Future Farmers.
It was easy to see that they were made for each other, and they knew what they wanted.
Bobby Joe would be a senior this year, and he planned to graduate.
But there was no need for Linda Kay to go on, since all she wanted in life was to make a home for Bobby Joe and (blushing) raise his children.

Howard sighed.
"You lucky kids", he said.
"I'd give anything if I could have found a girl like you".
Then he told Linda Kay about himself.
Of course he couldn't say much, really, because of Debora, but Linda Kay could imagine what kind of woman his wife had been and what a raw deal he had got.
It made her feel different about Howard.

She was going to tell Bobby Joe about how mistaken she had been, but he brought one of the cousins home for supper, and all they did was talk about antelope.

Bobby Joe was trying to get Linda Kay to say she would cook one if he brought it home.

"Cook a whole antelope"?
She exclaimed.
"Why, I couldn't even cook a piece of antelope steak;
I never even saw any".

"Oh, you could.
I want to roast the whole thing, and have it for the boys".

Linda Kay told him he couldn't do anything like that with his Grandma dying, and he said well they had to eat, didn't they, they weren't all dying.
Linda Kay felt like going off to the bedroom to cry;
but they were going up to the Big House after supper, and she had to put on a clean dress and fix her hair a little.

Every night they all went to Mama and Papa Albright's, and sat on the open front porch, where they could get the breeze.
It was full-of-the-moon (or a little past), and nearly light as day.
They all sat around and drank ice water, and the men smoked, and everybody had a good time.
Once in a while they said what a shame it was, with Granny dying, but they all agreed she wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

That night the older men got to talking about going possum-hunting on a moonlight night.
Bobby Joe and two or three of the other boys declared they had never been possum-hunting, and Uncle Bill Farnworth (from Mama Albright's side of the family) said he would just get up from there and take them, right then.

After they had left, some of the people moved around, to find more comfortable places to sit.
There were not many chairs, so that some preferred to sit on the edge of the porch, resting their feet on the ground, and others liked to sit where they could lean back against the wall.
Howard, who had been sitting against the wall, said he needed more fresh air, and took the spot on the edge of the porch where Bobby Joe had been sitting.

"You'll be a darn sight more comfortable there, Howard", Ernest said, laughing, and they all laughed.

Linda Kay felt that she was not exactly more comfortable.
Bobby Joe had been sitting close to her, touching her actually, and holding her hand from time to time, but it seemed at once that Howard sat much closer.
Perhaps it was just that he had so much more flesh, so that more of it seemed to come in contact with hers;
but she had never been so aware of anyone's flesh before.

Still she was not sorry he sat by her, but in fact was flattered.
He had become the center of the company, such stories he had to tell.
He had sold oil stock to Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in person;
he had helped fight an oil-well fire that raged six days and nights.