Page 13 of The Auction
Did Mrs. Talley see me in a one bedroom apartment in Seattle while I went to a university to get my nursing degree?
Because that’s how itall works out in the endfor me.
Well, sometimes when I dreamed of my future, it was a teaching degree.
Nursing, teaching, whatever, what it was didn’t matter. It was just away from here.
Also true to his word, Creed hadn’t forced himself on me.
There had been too much sickness in the house.
Herb kept to his room. I moved my stuff from the upstairs bedroom to the downstairs bedroom next to Herb’s so I could check on him throughout the night. Creed took my old room upstairs and didn’t have any complaints about the size of it.
Maybe he’d spent his time in the Navy on a submarine and was used to tight spaces.
Regardless, he kept to his room and I kept to mine.
Herb made a fuss in the beginning about it, but I was able to sell him on the notion that while we were married, Creed wanted to do the noble thing and court me first before we became intimate.
Shortly after the wedding, the only thing Herb cared about was how long it was going to take him to die.
Not very long, it turned out.
I glanced around the tiny church. A non-denominational congregation of devout followers of Jesus Christ, although they liked to spend more time sermonizing about the devil they hated than the God they loved.
There was only a handful of people scattered in the pews. Probably the ladies of the congregation who would attend any funeral. My father didn’t have friends. For that matter, he didn’t have enemies.
Other than me, I suppose.
“Jules,” Creed elbowed me. “It’s time.”
Yeah, he called me Jules.
I told him I despised the abbreviation and he told me to get over it. Juliette was apparently too much of a mouthful for him. So it was either Jules or Jay. I said Jay would be fine and he said, Jules it is.
I stood up from my seat and walked over to the lectern holding the bible open to a page I’d selected. I read the simple parable that had absolutely no meaning to me or Herb, but felt like it was required of me.
When it was done, I sat down.
“You okay?” Creed asked me, his head turned in my direction.
“You care?”
“Nope,” he said. Then faced forward again.
When it was over, I thanked the pastor for his time. And the ladies of the church. A crew would see to the burial in the graveyard behind the church. Neither Creed nor I had any interest in attending that.
Together we left the church, in Creed’s truck, because it was the nicer of the two vehicles.
At least I would have that. Now that we had two vehicles, I would at least have Herb’s truck as my own. Ancient as it was, it still ran.
Creed started the engine and we rode back to the farm in silence.
“Thinking about buying a dairy cow,” he said, a few miles out of town.
I laughed.
“What? We’ve got chickens, eggs, vegetables. We add dairy, we’re nearly self-sustainable.”
