thought, It must be akin to a terrible fever, only it races happy through you and not heat. Maybe there is some heat, too. It is a sight to watch if you ain’t got it yourself.
Jack Bull stared at her kind of sheepish, and she kept giddying about ’til he said, “Whoa, mule! Settle down, there.”
Calling a lovestruck girl a mule in company is not a winning comment. I learned that quick by the way Sue Lee’s face twitched straight from giddy to grumpy. She turned a look on Jack Bull that showed plain that she saw no great compliment in the comparison.
“Mule?” she said. “Whoa, mule?”
There was snowmelt trickling over his face, and he wiped at it. He looked my way as if I might relay him a good lie that would slide him out of this.
“Just calm down,” he said.
She leaned over so her face was just above him. She pinched her cheeks and said, “Do I look muley to you?”
“Well, no.”
Then she did this thing that I would have plunked down five cents to see if I hadn’t gotten it free. She spun about, put her hands on her knees and sashayed her butt practically into his surprised nose. Despite her many garments the movement showed some charms.
“That look like a mule to you?” She stood straight while he looked stupid, then she did it again. He took his punishment well. “That look like the rear end of an animal that heehaws in the night?”
Jack Bull smiled at that and dug himself in deeper.
“It looks like it might could be.”
I am afraid Holt and me laughed. We were always loitering in the midst of their carrying-ons. Romance is a sweet enough enterprise but it makes you lonely to watch it. Holt grinned at me and I sent the same back to him.
“Jack Bull Chiles,” Sue Lee said, “just because I’m a widow it don’t mean you can get that familiar with me.”
“Pardon me, ma’am, but I believe it was you that shoved your rump into my face.”
“Oh!” she went. “That was only just to make a point!”
“You made it,” he said. He could be rough at the oddest moments. “I will always know your rump from a mule’s now. There are several differences. I don’t know how I missed them.”
Now, Sue Lee Shelley was not the sort of plantation belle that would be contented by a mere exchange of rhyming insults. She came of practical people in a practical land. She smote him a good one on the chin.
Twice in my life I had also taken swings on Jack Bull, and her blows shook him even less than mine had. She wound up to fling another at him, but he sprang to his feet and grabbed her in close to him. His arms were all around her.
My Lord, Holt and me wanted out of that dugout. Some things you ought not to ever see your best friend do up close. Love is one of them. Me and Holt went dirt-quiet and faced every way but their way.
“Don’t be mean,” she said, and this time she sounded about twelve years old and lost. “I can’t tolerate meanness.”
There was some breathy silence, then wet noises were made and several sighs accompanied them. I have a fragment of the gentleman in me, but I ditched it and looked over my shoulder at all the friendliness. Jack Bull was doing some moist mouth work on her neck and cheeks and lips. He nuzzled her all about. Pretty soon she was doing similar deeds on him.
He had a slit-lidded look on him. His arms kept her in the hug and all those noises went on.
In peacetime he might have been shot for this.
“Is that too mean?” he finally asked.
“No,” she answered in a tiny tone. “It’s not really too mean at all.”
I guess a woman wants a man in wartime. While there still are any. People in hell want springwater.
Holt found all kinds of fascinating aspects to the dirt between his feet. He knew he better not look anywhere else. A nigger’s path is awful narrow when white women are around.
This big huggy smooching match changed the dugout. It happened in a blink. There I was squatting on the dirt with Holt, feeling just about as useful as a Christian impulse at an ambush, while Jack Bull kept up at his new sport of mashing on widows. It seemed he found this new game to be less than heroically difficult.
I about screamed.
But