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lasted all day. Extremely chilly and disagreeable. In contrast to last year, this November was one of the rainiest on record here with 10.15 inches of rain. We finished the bulbs and got our pay this evening. I have another bad cold.
    M ARRIAGE WASN’T TURNIN OUT to be like I imagined. Raymond was kind, always askin after my health, tellin me not to overdo, but he was still serious as a Sabbath sermon. He hadn’t loosened up at all.
    When he had work around Grants Pass, he set out before daylight, walkin, and it was well after dark when he got back. If the job was farther away, he took the Greyhound bus and stayed in a cheap hotel. I was lonesome. My folks was clear out at Cave Junction and I didn’t have a way to git there. I missed my Papa’s funny stories, I missed Mama, I even missed seein Flossie and Rheba. I wanted company. I wanted to laugh.
    When Raymond was home, he was sober and grown up all the time. He treated me like a student, tellin me what I could do, what I should read, givin me Bible verses to memorize. I told myself I was lucky to have a good husband, that I shouldn’t think about what I didn’t have, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to git out of the apartment, go someplace, but it was cold and the rain turned the roads to mud. So except for when I needed to buy food, I stayed inside. And when I couldn’t take any more of what Raymond told me to read, I got out my old magazines and leafed through em. I done it so many times they was fallin apart, but I didn’t dare spend money on new ones.
    “Couldn’t we git a radio?” I asked Raymond one of the times he was home.
    He said no. “It will put ideas in your head. Worldly ideas.”
    I told him Mama had a radio, and she always had it tuned to The Voice of Prophesy. “I could learn a lot from The Voice of Prophesy.”
    He still said no. “You’d be tempted to listen to other things. Lead us not into temptation, Veda. Remember that. You mustn’t let yourself be led astray.”
    Raymond was right. I would have listened to other things. Other kinds of music. Popular songs like the ones Rheba and Flossie taught me. Songs like “Puttin on the Ritz” and “Good Night Irene.”
    Once winter came on, Raymond, like thousands of others, had almost no work. I fretted about how we would buy groceries and pay our rent, but he told me not to worry, that the Lord would provide for us. He reminded me how people from church often times asked us to supper. Reminded me of the box of hand-me-downs Mrs. Shaunessy sent over.
    Her dead husband’s suit was too good to throw away, she said, and there was some shoes and a couple of dresses she thought I could use. Raymond put the suit on. It made him look like a undertaker, but it fit him perfect.
    “Try the dresses on,” he said.
    “I don’t want to. They’ll make me look like an old woman.”
    “Veda, we can’t turn down perfectly good clothes.”
    So just to show him, I put one on and stuffed the front to make it look like my breasts were down around my waist like Mrs. Shaunessy’s. Then I put on the pair of lace-up oxfords, scrunched my stockins around my ankles, and groaned a little about my “rhumatiz” for effect. Instead of thinkin it was funny, Raymond bawled me out. Said I ought to be ashamed, makin fun of a good Christian lady like that.
    It made me mad, him always bein such a sorehead, and I decided to teach him a lesson. The next day I got my scissors and cut every other stitch in the crotch of the dead man’s suit pants. Sabbath mornin, when we set down in the front pew of the church, I heard the seam give way. Raymond’s eyes got round as saucers, and it was all I could do to keep a straight face.
    “Now Brother Ames will lead us in a hymn,” the pastor said, and Raymond shook his head. Then the pastor asked him again, “Will you lead us in a song, Brother Ames?” Raymond shook his head harder.
    “Well,” the pastor said, “it appears Brother Ames isn’t feeling well.”
    After the