Page 68 of Doozer

“Sure. You’ve been yapping away about her for an hour. You’re obviously ass-over-brains in love with the girl. Why not make her your wife?”

“Make her my wife? What are we, back in the eighteen-hundreds?”

“I ain’t that old, pecker head,” Duke growled. “Young people are so goddamned touchy about marriage these days. Back in the day, if you loved a woman, you married her before she had the good sense to go off and find someone better.”

“Relationships are a bit more complicated these days.”

“You only think that because you’re young and dumb. Do you really love Trouble?”

“Of course, I do, and I’m freaked the fuck out that she’s gonna dump me now that she’s starting this new life, but I don’t think marriage is gonna solve anything.”

“I didn’t say it would,” Duke said. “In fact, marriage doesn’t solve anything. Ever. That’s not what marriage is about.”

“If getting married doesn’t solve anything, then why encourage me to do it?”

“Because there’s nothing more beautiful in this world than a kept promise.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Look, son. Getting married is nothing more than two people who love each other making a promise between them.Beingmarried is the daily fulfillment of that promise, and that, my boy, is where all the hard work is. It’s also where you’ll find the good stuff.” Duke grinned wide through his bushy, grey beard.

“The good stuff, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. Trying to “out-love” each other every day. You can’t go wrong with that, my boy.”

“How do you “out-love” someone?”

“Most people think a relationship is a fifty-fifty kind of a deal. I give fifty, they give fifty, and together we’ve got one hundred percent. Right?”

“Sounds right,” I said.

“Pig shit,” Duke replied. “I say both sides have to give one hundred percent of themselves to the relationship for it to work. I give one hundred, and Pearl gives one hundred and together we get one hundred. I can’t rightly explain how the math works, but after fifty or so years of marriage, I know that it does.”

“Okay, but Trouble and I have been together for barley a year. It’s a little early to be thinking about marriage.”

“Is it?”

I cocked my head. “How long was it after you met Pearl that you knew you wanted to marry her?”

“The night we met, but in fairness, I didn’t ask her until the next day.”

“You asked Pearl to marry you the day after you met?”

“I suppose we knew each other back when we were little kids, but I’d forgotten about that.”

“What did she say when you asked?”

“Whatta you think? She told me to buzz off. Thankfully, after much wooing, I convinced her to hitch her cart to my horse.”

“So, how long did you date before you got married?”

“Four.”

“What are you getting on my case for? Trouble and I have only been together—”

“Days.”

“What?” I asked, barely able to process what I’d heard.

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