Horace Q. Ball Lor Governor

I ALWAYS say pure chance has a lot to do with the turn a man’s career will take. Like that time Claudie lost the grocery list. It was the summer he worked for Mrs. Lola Bender, the lady that ran the Lazy Day Guest Ranch below Fort Stockton, Texas. Claudie was a singing cowboy, while I managed his act and played the guitar.

One afternoon in the early part of August, Mrs. Bender sent Claudie to Fort Stockton to get a broken bridle fixed and bring back some groceries, so I went along for the ride in the ranch car. Claudie, who cannot keep but one thing at a time on his mind, got the bridle fixed, but lost the grocery list, He bought everything he could remember and charged it to Mrs. Bender; then, along about dusk, we went down to the city park so Claudie could sit. on a bench and try to think up the other things on the list. But before he thought of anything, a big voice blared out, “Come on over, folks.”We looked and saw that a crowd was gathering around the bandstand in the middle of the park, and beside it we saw the sound truck that kept telling people to come on over. It had four big horns on top and a red sign on the side that said “ HORACE Q. BALL FOR GOVERNOR.” I and Claudie went right over.

A slick-faced citizen with long sideburns and a sharp mustache was standing there on the bandstand in front of a microphone, He had a big diamond stickpin in his tie that sparkled in the lights as they came on. He told us to move in closer, and by this time people were coming across the park from every direction — men, women, and children, all craning their necks to see what was going on.

I sidled up to a tall fellow wearing duckins and a big hat and asked him if the man up there talking was the Horace Q. Ball that was running for governor. He said, “Nope. That’s the magician drumming up the crowd. Horace Q. Ball don’t speak till after the show.”

Claudie, who is very slow at times, looked as if he didn’t get it, so I asked the man, “What show?”

“The magician’s gonna put on a show,” he told me. “A speaktn’ don’t draw much of a crowd around here if they ain’t a good show first.”

This was whim I saw the magician’s assistant, standing there on the bandstand beside a little square table that had a blue velvet cover with yellow tassels and fringe hanging down all around. On the front part of the velvet cover it said “THE GREAT VAN AND HIS ASSISTANT, FLOSSIE,” in gold letters. It was a mighty classy table, but I barely noticed it with Flossie herself there beside it. She was some shucks. On her head she wore a bright green scarf, pinned at the side with a gold clasp, and her lips were very red. Her little nose tilted up, and her eyes were cast down a mite, the way any lady’s eyes would be in front of a strange crowd, but she had everything in every way that a magician’s assistant or the Queen of Sheba ought to have, and she was well enough dressed for either part.

The yellow and blue striped jacket Flossie had on was a neat fit if I ever saw one, but it missed by several inches joining up with her skirt, which came in tight at the waist and then flounced out long and wide in a colored pattern of stars and moons and comets. At first I thought the lily-white strip around her waist was a satin sash, but when she turned around, I saw it was not silk or satin at all; it was the magician’s assistant plumb bare in the middle, and for a girl so well filled out everywhere else, she had the smallest waist you ever saw.

I glanced at Claudie to see what effect Flossie was having on him. His mouth sagged, and his eyes bugged out until you could have knocked them off with a stick. Jacob couldn’t have been more admiring of any angel on Jacob’s ladder.

As soon as The Great Van started to do his tricks, it was plain that he was good, all right — as country magicians go, that is. He pulled rabbits, playing cards, quarters, silk handkerchiefs, and finally a big pearl-handled six-shooter right out of Flossie’s ear. All of this time Flossie never batted an eye; she only stood there, while a shy sweet smile flickered across her face from time to time, the way a light breeze will ripple across a still pond. When The Great Van did the trick of sawing Flossie in two in a big box, Claudie about halfway believed it, and he stood there twitching and fidgeting all over like a horse mule with the heaves.

Then the act was over, and the crowd cheered. The Great Van and Flossie went over to one side of the bandstand and sat there while the speaking got under way. Horace Q. Ball got up and walked to the microphone, He was a short, barrel-chested citizen of around forty with a shiny bald head, a square face, and a big mouth full of uneven teeth. He had on regular black politician’s clothes, and high-heeled, square-toed boots to go with West Texas.

Horace Q. Ball pushed the microphone aside and said he didn’t need any newfangled contraptions to talk to his old friends. I didn’t try to pay him much mind as I stood there, stealing a look now and then at Flossie, but I couldn’t help listening. He had a voice that cut through the night air the way a sawmill whistle does. He said his trip 1o Fort Stockton was like coming back home — not because he had ever lived there, but because he had always wanted to. He told us he had been born very poor and had to grow up in the mosquito swamps of deep Fast Texas, but he loved West Texas people just as much as if he had been privileged to live in that great sunkissed climate all of his life. He said there were some of the finest open faces in the crowd he’d ever seen anywhere, and at this Claudie stood up real straight, took a deep breath, and swallowed.

Then Horace Q. Ball told us what he was in favor of, and he covered a lot of ground, too. He was for good roads — state highways, county roads, rural roads, and farm-to-market roads; he was for big ditches beside them all that could carry off the water when it rained. He was for higher prices for cattle and all kinds of farm produce and lower prices on plows, hay balers, and other farm implements. “Why,” he asked, “haven’t you good people got all of these things you so richly deserve? I’ll tell you why. There is waste and extravagance yonder in Austin! That’s why. It will be stamped out, fellow Texans, if you will go to the polls on August 27 and elect Horace Q. Ball your governor.”

He then told us about some things he was against, and from the way he put it, nobody in Texas was actually for these things except one person– Tornado Timpson.

“Who’s Tornado Timpson?” Claudie whispered.

“ He’s the other guy running for governor, Claudie; he’s the one that’s got the hillbilly band,” I stated, while Horace Q. Ball went on reeling off the things he was against.

He was against Wall Street; he was against liquor and gambling; he was against cattle stealing and the foot-and-mouth disease; he was against monopolies, and on this subject he bellowed like a Brahma bull. He hated monopolies, he said, worse than the devil hated holy water. Everybody cheered, and some men back in the crowd yelled, “Pour it on ‘em, Q. Ball! Pour it on ‘em!” Then he got to trusts. He was fierce about trusts. Fact was, he said, he believed he hated them more than he did monopolies, and he was in a steamy lather about them both. From the way he was going on up there, I figured he would like to drop everything else right then and there so that he could go out and fight a trust or a monopoly all the rest of his born days, without even so much as stopping for a drink of water. I was about ready to go out and help him, too.

Horace Q. Ball then took up the subject of Tornado Timpson. He said he despised to bring personal abuse into a race he had tried to run on a very high plane, but he had been driven toil by the treacherous tactics of his worthy opponent. “It is not true,” he said, with his right hand on his left chest and his left fist, in the air, “that the trusts and the monopolies are supporting me; they are supporting that snake in sheep’s clothing, Tornado Timpson, and he knows it! Ask him, when he speaks here tomorrow night, if he’s not their stooge. He won’t admit it, but make him deny it.”

“Too bad,” I told Claudie, “we can’t be here tomorrow night to hear him deny it.” I was pretty mad at Tornado Timpson by then — as mad, that is, as I could be at anybody so long as I had that pretty Flossie up there to look at.

2

I AM a man with more than a little romance in my nature, and that night after I turned in I could hardly get Flossie out of my mind. The red of her cheeks and lips against the green of the scarf kept flashing up in front of my eyes, and so did the milkwhite waist that was not satin after all. I thought a lot about the odds on ever seeing Flossie again, and the more I thought, the longer they looked, but since I am used to outside chances, I finally went on to sleep.

The next morning it turned out that Claudie had forgotten more groceries from the list than he had remembered; also he had brought back a lot of stuff that had never been on Mis. Bender’s list in the first place. This all meant just one thing; Claudie had to go back to Fort Stockton and, after stalling around all day, we went late in the afternoon so we could make the Tornado Timpson rally that night.

When we got to the park in Fort Stockton about sundown, the rally was just about to start. First some cow-boys with guitars and some cowgirls with mandolins sang up a crowd with about an hour of good sound mountain music. It was loud and sweet. “Then Tornado Timpson made his speech. He spoke in a high-pitched voice that had a snarl in it, and when he got to the part about trusts and monopolies, he was rough; in fact, he seemed to begin about where Horace Q. Ball had left off. With Tornado standing up there on the platform in his shirt sleeves, yelling bloody murder about trusts while the sweat poured down his face, I and Claudie got stirred up all over again.

On the way back to the ranch that night, I told Claudie that I was afraid the Tornado was going to beat Horace Q. Ball. “Notice the size of that Crowd?” I asked. “Twice as big as the one last night.”

“ Horace Q. Ball didn’t have no mountain music,” he said.

“You can say that again, Claudie,” I told him. “Flossie and The Great Van ain’t holding their own with Tornado’s mountain music.”

“I reckon Flossie is about the purtiest girl I ever seen,” Claudie said,

“She’s pretty around the waist too.”I told him; then we had the wreck. With that part of Flossie on his mind, Claudie hadn’t noticed a detour sign in the road ahead, even though it was as big as the side of a barn. The sign said “HIGHWAY UNDER REPAIR-BRANIGAN AND SCHWARTZ, ROAD CONTRACTORS,” and we hit it. We bashed in the front of the car and knocked out the lights, so we didn’t make it back to the ranch until late that night.

Along about daylight the next morning the whole thing dawned on me. It was an enormous idea, and my mind froze on it like an old coon dog on a new trail. I was wide awake, sitting up in my bunk with this thought boiling around in my head: Horace Q. Ball needed music, and there wasn’t a bigger, sweeter bass voice than Claudio’s between the Pecos River and the Sabine. If I could borrow the guitar from the Lazy Day Ranch, we could go out and lick Tornado “Timpson before August 27. We had just three weeks. I knew we didn’t have to depend on pure chance any more. Lady Luck had dealt us a career on a silver platter.

I got up and dressed and went down to the mailbox and waited for the newspaper. When it came,

I found that Horace Q. Ball was going to speak that night at Pecos, and as I walked back to the ranch house, I could just see that sweet, shy Flossie up there being sawed in two again for a cause that could never win without our help.

At breakfast I and Claudie both had an extra helping of eggs, and I told him about my idea. He didn’t much want to leave, but when I told him his country ought to come first, his patriotism started getting the better of him. I pointed out that the state of Texas was a very large part of his country and that Mrs. Bender was apt to fire us anyhow when she saw what we had done to the ranch car.

When Mrs. Bender came around, she gave us the gale all right; she said she didn’t see how anybody that wasn’t blind could hit one of those big Branigan and Schwartz signs. She wouldn’t pay us for the part of the week we’d worked, but she did let us take the guitar, and we left for Pecos in our own car about noon.

We waited until nearly six o’clock that afternoon for the Ball sound truck to reach Pecos. When it came, The Great Van was driving it, and he told us Horace Q. Ball and Flossie were coming along behind in the campaign car. I told The Great Van that we had a very important message for the candidate; then I put some questions to him, and from a lot of his talk that didn’t count for much, I sifted out a few things that I really wanted to know.

For one thing, Flossie’s name was Flossie Widgeon, and she had once been the Sweet Potato Queen of East Texas. She came from Beaumont, Texas, he said, and she was not married at the present time, I told The Great Van she was as pretty a magician’s assistant as I had ever seen.

“She is right pretty in a drab way,” he admitted. ’Then he went on, “But she don’t add a great deal to my act. We ain’t getting the crowds.”

Such remarks about Flossie made me and Claudie both a little sore, but I figured that it was no time to be getting into an argument with The Great Van.

“Why do you keep her, then?” I asked him.

“She’s Horace Q. Ball’s stenographer, and he used his influence with Branigan and Schwartz to get her this job,” he answered.

“What’s Branigan and Schwartz got to do with it? ” I asked.

“They’re big road contractors. They are financing the entertainment for Horace Q. Ball.”

“ Who’s paying for Tornado Timpson’s mountain music?” I asked him.

“Branigan and Schwartz,”he said.

3

WHEN Horace Q. Ball came along with Flossie, he parked his car by the courthouse. The car had campaign signs and slogans written all over it in white paint. One I remember said “TEXAS CAN’T STALL WITH HORACE Q. BALL.” The people flocked out of the courthouse and crowded around.

Flossie wasn’t wearing the scarf or anything on her head, and her light brown hair, combed back from her high forehead, looked soft and fluffy: but, seeing her for the first time in broad daylight, I noticed that she looked a little older than she had on the bandstand. There was a trace of sadness around Flossie’s eyes that made me wonder if she hadn’t had some troubles that she didn’t deserve.

There wasn’t much of a crowd that night at the picnic grounds where the rally took place, and about half of them left when The Great Van got through sawing Flossie Widgeon in two. I could just feel it in my bones that they were losing to Tornado Timpson every day that the campaign went along on such an unsound basis.

Alter the speaking we followed them to the hotel. When we found what Horace Q. Ball’s room number was, we went up, and I started to knock on the door, but since we couldn’t help hearing The Great Van and Horace Q. Rail talking in there, we waited a minute on the outside.

Horace Q. Rail was saying, “Now that Flossie’s gone on to bed, there is something I want to talk to you about, Van. We had another lousy crowd tonight. I’m afraid no magician is going to he able to hold his own with Tornado Timpson’s hillbilly band.”

“Listen, Q. Bail,” The Great Van told him, “you can’t run me down any more. Everybody knows why my act don’t draw. Flossie hasn’t got no appeal. Did I pick Flossie? No. Did Branigan and Schwartz pick Flossie? No. Who did? You did.”

“That’s a mighty lame excuse for the poor showing you’ve made,” Horace said, and his voice quivered the way it had when he talked about trusts and monopolies. “That’s a mean, cowardly thing, to lay it on Flossie. I guess I lost this race anyway when I let Branigan and Schwartz palm off a cheap magician on me.”

I knocked on the door, loud. Horace Q. Ball said, “Who is it?” and I said, “Clint Hightower. I’ve got some important business to talk over with you.”

He opened the door, and I and Claudie went in as The Great Van went out. Horace Q. Ball seemed a little agitated. I saw I had to get him sort of cooled off and used to us, so I said, “Are you one of the Balls from East Texas?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Why?'’

“They’re mighty good folks,” I told him. “Staunch people.”

“Thank you,” he said. Then I went on: “Mr. Ball, there is just one thing I want to know.”

“Go ahead; what is it ?” he said. ” I’m tired, and I want to go to bed.”

“Can Flossie Widgeon carry a tune?”

“She has a real nice soprano voice, he told me. “Now, good night, men.”

“Horace,” I went on, “when I heard you speak in Fort Stockton the other night, you sounded to me just like a man that wanted to be Governor of Texas. If you are ever going to be elected, you need some good music, and you need it bad.”

“I need mountain music,” he said.

“Exactly!" I told him. “My associate, Claudio Hughes, who is standing right here before you, sings the finest country bass in this state, and I can play a guitar. What’s more, I have already got the guitar. We can do mountain music, and we can teach it to Flossie. We’ll work up an act with Flossie that will put you in the Governor’s chair. .Just think of it: Governor Horace Q. Rail!”

I could see from the better look that came in his eyes that we had him. He put in a call for Branigan and Schwartz in Galveston, and in ten minutes he had us on their payroll in The Great Van’s place. He told us they would pay us each a hundred dollars for the rest of the campaign, with room and board thrown in.

“Now that we’re hired,” I said, “that reminds me. We haven’t had any supper yet, and the sign on the coffee shop downstairs says it’s open all night.”

Horace Q. Ball said that could be arranged.

4

WE WOKE Flossie up at six o’clock the next morning, and after we’d had a bite of breakfast we rehearsed until nearly ten, when we had to leave for Rig Spring. Sure enough, she had a light, sweet voice and could carry a tune. I figured we would put her close to the microphone and move Claudie a little way back, and it would about make up for the difference. You see, Claudie has a very loud bass voice.

We picked a theme song first — one I had heard some Austin people sing at the Lazy Day Ranch — and I taught it to Flossie and Claudie. The tune didn’t amount to much, but the words were all about Texas. I don’t remember them all now; the general idea was: Texas first and last, and to hell with everywhere else.

Then we worked up a program from other popular songs about river valleys, homes in the West, Blue Bonnets, blue mountains, blue skies, true love on the plains, and rivers that flow. From the way the crowd took on over us that night in Big Spring, I knew we were on the righl track.

We got billed as Horace Q. Rail and the Texas Sweet hearts — Claudic and Flossie being the sweethearts — and we got famous. I stayed out of the billing on purpose, but behind the scenes it was plain from the first that Flossie was meant for me.

“Claudie,” I stated after the rally in Lubbock the next night, “I don’t mind it if Flossie is your stage sweetheart, but leave her to me off the stage, if you will be so kindly. I saw her first, you know.

“I thought we both seen her about the same time,” he argued.

“You ought to know better than that, I told him. “I always see things before you do.

He didn’t answer me right off, but before we went to bed that night he said, “Flossie shore is a purty girl, Clint.”

As the campaign went on, we moved toward the big towns in the east part of the stale, and the news of the Texas Sweethearts always beat us there. They were ready for us, and they called for more and more music until Horace had to cut down on his speeches. In Waco he didn’t even get around to the part of his speech on trusts and monopolies before the crowd started yelling for the Texas Sweethearts. He spent all the time we gave him there talking about good roads.

The crowds got bigger and bigger, and the newspapers started saying that we might win if we could ever get over the puny start of the campaign with The Great Van. We figured out a way to hold the crowds by having the Texas Sweethearts begin and end the program, and we put Horace Q. Ball in the middle like a sandwich.

Wherever The Great Van was by this time, he must have been fairly ready to bite himself when he read about the way Flossie was packing them in. He had plumb overlooked Flossie’s drawing power when he left her standing still in his show. I taught Flossie to swing and sway in the middle and roll her eyes at Claudie when they stood up there and sang mountain music. This made the difference, and we could see every night how it was going to pay off in votes.

We had less than a week to go when we got our pay from Branigan and Schwartz, so I and Claudie went into a store in Austin and mucked ourselves out in some good clothes. I figured we had to finish up the campaign in style.

We didn’t have to leave Austin until three o’clock to make the rally in San Antonio that night, so I put on my new clothes and took Flossie for a walk around the state capitol grounds. We sauntered about under the big shade trees, looking at the old cannons and statues until we came to a little waterfall by a pond with cress and lilies growing in it. It was some cooler there, so we sat down on a stone bench and watched the minnows swimming around in schools.

“Flossie,” I said in a nice soft voice, “I don’t think I ever felt about any girl the way I already feel about you.”

She blushed and smiled, and a little dimple showed up in her cheek from nowhere at all. Her brown eyes, as she looked up at me, were wide open and very friendly.

“1 like you, too, Clint,” she said, and if stirred up something inside of me that fell like cobwebs look in the morning when dew is on them.

“Flossie,” I went on, “when I see you up there singing that mountain music with Claudie, and everybody calling you the Texas Sweethearts, it almost makes me jealous of that big lug. There’s nothing between you two, is there?”

“Of course not, Clint,” she said. “Me and Claudie is only chums.” This was the first time she’d said it right out, and it made me feel so good that I wanted to go out somewhere and pull up a fence post and beat some big wild animal to death with it.

I said: “Flossie, you are about the prettiest, thing I’ve seen in the whole state of Texas. Did you ever think any about getting married?”

“I’ve been married some,” she said, as she blushed and looked down, “but I never did marry the right one.”

“When we win,” I told her, “ I’ve got some plans. Want to hear them?”

“Sure I do, Clint,”Flossie said.

“I want to settle down for good right here in Texas. Horace has already halfway promised me a job in the State Highway Department when he gets elected.”

She sat there watching the minnows swim around the lily stems in the pond for a long time; then she asked me a funny question, It was: “What will Claudie do?”

“Probably go back to Alabama,” I said. “I doubt that he could hold a state job, unless it’s in the Department of Agriculture. Claudie’s nothing but a farmer that can sing bass.”

“He sure is a fine bass singer.” Flossie allowed; then, before I could ask her anything more, she looked at the clock down on Congress Avenue and said wasn’t it about time for us to leave for San Antonio? I had to admit that it was.

The rally that night was by far the biggest one we’d had, and the San Antonio people were crazy about us. While Claudie stood up straight with his head thrown back and rolled out the bass, Flossie sang and swayed and rolled her pretty eyes. The crowd ate it up. They cheered and whistled for more music until we almost crowded Horace Q. Ball plumb off the program. The next morning the San Antonio Light said the gamblers in Galveston were giving better odds on us, but it didn’t say how much better.

Our next rally was in Dallas, and I noticed something that bothered me a lot; it was the way that Claudie was getting to look at Flossie while they were singing. It was disgusting. That big Oscar had such a soft, mushy look on his face that it made me want to brush it off with a dirty, stubby broom. Later on I got him off to one side and said: “Listen, Claudie. I know that singing sweethearts are supposed to put a friendly look on each other when they sing, but ain’t you overdoing it a little?”

“I may be,” Claudie said; then he walked away whistling.

5

WE CLOSED the campaign the next night at Hermann Park in Houston. It was a warm, clear night, and a bright full moon was shining through the oak trees. There must have been several acres of people sitting and standing in the park—the men in shirt sleeves and the women fanning themselves. The children were out, too; some little ones in arms and others chasing each other around.

When Flossie and Claudie had sung all the songs they knew, the crowd wanted more music, so they sang some of the same ones again. It was nearly nine o’clock when Horace finally got to go on.

After the speech, Flossie and Claudie sang “The Eves of Texas Are upon You,” and from out in the crowd the whistles and cheers rose up at us. Horace Q. Ball came over and said some awful nice things to us. He even stated that if he got elected, he believed some of the credit belonged to his musicians. I looked at Flossie, and her face was all lit up with excitement; so much so that tears brimmed up in her eyes and told of special tender ways she must have been feeling inside. She was lovely, and I couldn’t figure when I’d been so all-fired happy before in my whole life.

A long line of people stood waiting to shake hands with Horace Q. Ball; so he asked me to take the sound truck and drive Flossie to her room at the Rice Hotel. He wanted Claudie to stay and bring him along later in the campaign car.

As we drove toward town on Main Street, I glanced down at Flossie, and her face looked as soft and sweet as a ripe Elbert a peach. I said, “Flossie, you look so pretty tonight it makes me want to go climb a big, steep mountain somewhere to find a little blue flower for you to put in your hair. You know I love you, Flossie.”

Then, as we pulled up to a stop sign, the street light fell full on her face, and I could see the tears had spilled over and were streaming down her checks. Now I am strictly no good around any woman that is crying, and that goes double for one as pretty as Flossie was. While the cars lined up and honked behind us I tried to talk to her, but it was no use. All she would say was, “Oh, Clint, I’ll never be married now,”and she kept on saying it as she broke out in heavy sobs.

“What in the world are you talking about, Flossie?” I asked. “I want to marry you.”

“It ain’t no use, Clint,” she went on. “You and Claudie are sweet fellows, but it’s Horace Q. Ball that I love. Me and Horace has been keeping company for a year or more. He loved me when he was only the sheriff of Jasper County and I was the Sweet Potato Queen. He was just about to marry me when them politicians talked him into running for governor. Now it looks like we’ve put Horace in with our mountain music. I’m a loving woman, but I ain’t up to being a governor’s wife. Oh, I wish I’d never seen you and Claudie.” Then she put her face in her hands and started sobbing all over again.

I felt all over like a man that is about to come unglued, and all I could think to say was: “Why did you sing so sweet then, Flossie?”

Flossie looked up, rubbed her eyes, and said, “I didn’t want him to lose, and I didn’t want him to win.”

There’s a woman for you, I thought to myself; then I looked out of the sound truck, and there stood a cop. He said: “I don’t care what you are running for, bub; you can’t block this here traffic. Also, what have you been doing to the little lady there?”

“He hasn’t done nothing to me,” Flossie said.

“She’s right about that, officer,” I added, and we drove off.

I took Flossie on down to the Rice Hotel and sent her up to her room. Then I went up to bed, but I didn’t go to sleep.

Next morning I found that Claudie had gone to Galveston to deliver the sound truck to Branigan and Schwartz, so I wailed around the hotel for him to come back. Late afternoon came, and still I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Claudie, Horace Q. Ball, or Flossie; but there was plenty happening in the election by then. The newspapers were full of headlines. It was a landslide for Tornado Timpson.

I ran into Flossie and Horace Q. Ball in the Rice lobby along about six o’clock—just in time, as it turned out, to tell them both good-bye. Flossie’s eyes were shining, and Horace looked about as well as anybody could that wasn’t carrying a single precinct in the whole state of Texas. Flossie told me they were leaving for Beaumont to get a marriage license, and I told them I didn’t blame them one bit. I even told them I hoped they’d be happy together, but it took about everything I had to say it.

A little later Claudie got back from Galveston, and he was low. He’d already heard the bad news about the election; he knew what had happened to Horace Q. Ball in the governor’s race, but he wanted to know what had happened to Flossie.

“She had to go to Beaumont to see some of her folks,” I told him. “She’s got an aunt over there that is pretty sick.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t go with her, Clint,” he said, “seeing as how you got so sweet on Flossie during the governor’s race.”

“No, Claudie,” I said, “Flossie wasn’t exactly my type, so I told her good-bye for us both. Another thing: ain’t it about time I and you got the hell out of here? I’ve bought some gasoline for the car, and I expect we’d better go down about Rockport for a little vacation. I feel the need for some rest.”

We left Houston about dark, and after we got out on the Angleton road, Claudie said he’d be dadburned if he could figure how I could go off and leave Flossie that way. “I thought you was in love,” he argued.

“Love?” I said. “Love is a high and elegant thing, I am sure. Love is a feeling that can be stout and sweet but it comes and it goes, Claudie. It comes and it goes.”