and fairly clear. After we crossed it, I stopped the car and got out and went back to stand on the end of the wooden bridge looking at it.
It was beautiful. The river came around a long bend above and slid over a bar into the big pool under the bridge. Part of the pool was in the shadow of the dense wall of trees along the bank and it looked dark and cool and deep. The only sound anywhere was a mockingbird practicing his scales from a pin oak along the other bank. There was a peace here you could almost feel, like a hand touching you.
I went back to the car. As I got in she glanced at me questioningly. “Why did you stop?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I just wanted to look at it.”
“It’s pretty, isn’t it? And peaceful.”
“Yeah,” I said.
I started the car. We went on across the bottom and up a sandy road through more timber on another hill.
“Who is this guy Sutton?” I asked. “A hermit? The car must have been worn out before he got home with it.”
She came out of her moody silence. “Oh. He’s the watchman at a well they started to drill back in here.”
“Watchman?” I asked. “Are they afraid somebody’ll steal a hole in the ground?”
“No. You see, it’s an oil well, and all the equipment is still over here. Tools, and things like that. They started it over a year ago and then there was some kind of lawsuit which stopped everything. Mr. Sutton lives on the place to look after it.”
“Do you know him? If he’s got a job, why doesn’t he pay off his car notes?”
She was looking down at her hands. “I just know him when I see him. He’s been around here about a year, I guess. He doesn’t come to town much, though.”
For some reason she seemed to be growing more nervous. Once or twice she started to say something and never did quite get it out.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Well, not anything, really,” she said uncomfortably. “I was just thinking it might be better if you let me talk to him. You see, he’s—well, in a way he’s kind of a hard man to deal with, and suspicious of strangers. He knows me, and maybe he’ll listen to me.”
“What does he have to listen to? We just take the car. That’s simple enough.”
“Well, I just thought perhaps—I mean, I might be able to get him to pay and we wouldn’t have to take the car.”
I shrugged. “It’s O.K. with me.” It wasn’t any of my business. I was supposed to be selling cars, not collecting for them.
We went on a mile or so across the second ridge and then came abruptly to the end of the road. Across the clearing a derrick climbed above the dark line of trees behind it and on this side a rough frame shack roofed with tar paper was huddled against the overhanging oaks. The car, a ‘54 Ford, stood in the open near the small front porch. I stopped and we got out. Both the front and rear doors of the shack were open and we could see right through it to the timber beyond, but there was no one around nor any sound of life.
“He must be home,” she said. “The car is here.”
We walked over and stood before the porch. “Mr. Sutton,” she called out tentatively. “Oh, Mr. Sutton.” There was no answer.
I stepped up on the porch and went inside, but there was no one there. It was only one room, untidy—but not dirty—as if a man lived there alone, with a wood cookstove in one corner and an unmade three-quarter bed in the corner diagonally across from it. A kitchen table with dirty dishes still on it stood by the rear door, and clothing—mostly overalls and blue shirts—hung from nails driven into the walls. An armful of magazines lay stacked against the wall and two or three more were scattered on the bed. There was an ash-tray made of the lid of a coffee-can perched on the window ledge, and as my eyes swung past it, they stopped suddenly. About half the butts were smeared with lipstick. She hadn’t said he was married. Well, I thought, maybe he’s not.
I heard a step on the porch and turned. She had come in and was looking at me a little apprehensively. “Do you think we ought to come in like this when he’s not