Earthly Possessions by Anne Tyler Page B

I thought he meant she worked in a mine. I saw a rich, black, underground world opening at my feet,where everyone was in some deep and dramatic trouble. I felt too pale for all this and I drew away, folding the letter primly. “She’s too young to have a say,” said Jake, but even after I understood I kept picturing her in someplace dark. “She’s not but seventeen years old. But in my estimation they should have let her decide for herself, and me as well. I mean me and her been going together for three whole years, off and on.”
    “Well, wait,” I said. “Three
years?”
    “She was fourteen,” said Jake, “but right well developed.”
    “I never heard of such a thing.”
    “Okay, Miss Priss, but it wasn’t
my
fault. She just set her heart on me. She just fixed on me and wouldn’t let go. See, she lived down the road from me and my mom a ways, Route Four outside of Clarion on the Pimsah River. Know the place? We’d been half acquainted for years, but not to speak to. Then her and her family come to watch this derby, and it just so happened I was driving in it and won. I guess in her eyes that must have made me some kind of a hero. After that she commenced to following me around, calling me on the telephone and bringing me picnic lunches and beers she had stole from her daddy. Her daddy was Darnell Callender, owns a feed store, you may have heard of him. Always wears a Panama hat. Well, at first I thought she was too young and besides I didn’t like her all that much but I couldn’t seem to shake her. She was forever hanging around and didn’t take offense when I sent her away but went off smiling, made me feel bad. Just a
little
gal, you know? It was summer and she wore these sandals like threads, real breakable-looking. Finally it just seemed like I might as well go on out with her.
    “But we weren’t never what you would call steady,” he said. “I would oftentimes be seeing other girls and all. I would ask myself, ‘Now how did I get mixed up with this Mindy anyhow, what’s the point of it?’ She talked too much, and not about nothing I cared for. Sometimes it seemed like she was soboring I just couldn’t find enough air to breathe when I was around her. But sometimes, why, she’d say something to me direct that showed me how she watched me, how she
saw
me, you know? And I would think, This person is bound to have something to do with me. I mean it ain’t love, but what is it? Worse than love, harder to break. Like we had to wear each other through, work something out, I don’t know. I swear, she like to drove me crazy. I’d say to myself, I’d say, ‘Why, she ain’t nothing but a hindrance. I don’t need to put up with this.’ Then we would part. But like always, she’d go smiling. And then later she’d keep coming around and
coming
around, and somehow I’d end up in the same old situation again. You understand?”
    I nodded. I could see it all happening but had not, up till now, imagined that it could happen to Jake.
    “Then last fall, she calls me on the phone. Tells me she’s expecting. A fluke: we were having one of our partings. I hadn’t been near her since August. Ordinarily I would try not to tamper with her anyway, but you know how it is sometimes. And I
will
say she had some part in it. A big part. I mean she would just … so there I was. What could I do? It had come up so sudden. Well, if she had wrote a letter maybe, give me time to think. But no, she has to telephone. ‘Going to have a baby, Jake.’ Happy as a queen. Says to me, ‘I think we better get married.’
    “I was surprised, that’s all. If I’d have thought I would have said, ‘Now cool down, Mindy, we’ll figure some other way of doing this.’ But I was surprised. I said, ‘Are you out of your flipping mind? Have you lost your marbles? Do you really believe I would get married, go that whole soft-living route?’ I said. ‘Let alone marry
you.’
Then I hung up. I was fit to be tied, I was as