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closin prayer, folks kept comin up to us sayin they hoped Raymond felt better soon. He nodded but he didn’t budge, just set there with his nose in his Bible, like he was studyin it. After ever’body left, he got up and hightailed it home faster’n I ever seen him walk, holdin his hat behind him the whole way. I didn’t even try to keep up. I didn’t want him to see me laughin.
    I was disappointed in Raymond, and I knew he was disappointed in me. He had picked me to marry ’cause I wasn’t “silly like other young women,” and here I was cuttin up when I was supposed to be serious. I wanted to be a good wife, and I tried. I really did. I studied the Bible with him in the evenins, and prayed with him, and read the lessons he told me to read. I fixed our meals and kept our place clean. Washed and mended his clothes, shined his Sabbath shoes, and made sure I had all my chores done before sundown on Friday so I wouldn’t be doin any work on the Lord’s Day. I even double stitched the seam in his trousers. But it still bothered me somethin awful that I couldn’t make him laugh.
    December was a miserable month. Cold and rainy, lots of fog. Raymond went out day after day, lookin for work. But if somebody said to come on Saturday, he turned em down. He got a few little piddly jobs. Pruned a few bushes. Cleaned up a yard or two. And he was always comin down with colds from bein out in the weather.
    When I learned about the program called Works Progress Administration, I tried to git Raymond to sign up. He wouldn’t do it. Said he’d worked on crews like that in Salem once and wouldn’t do it again. Said it was all riff-raff workin them jobs, men that smoked tobacco and used crude language, and he couldn’t abide bein around people like that. By January we didn’t have rent money and I had to ask my folks to take us in.
    “On one condition,” Papa said. “Raymond signs up with the WPA.”
    Raymond said he couldn’t.
    “Looky here,” Papa said, “you married my daughter and you promised to take care of her. If you don’t come up with a better idea, I’m goin to drag you down to that office and sign you up myself.” Raymond set in a corner the whole evenin, slump-shouldered, knees together, poutin. I didn’t like Papa talkin to my husband that way, but I didn’t think Raymond should be turnin down work either. Finally, after a week of not findin anythin, he give in and let Papa drive him to the government office. He was issued a card and told to come back the next day ready to spend a week workin in the woods. Papa was pleased, but then when he seen Raymond gittin his kit ready, he got provoked all over again.
    “That boy don’t have sense enough to make up his own bedroll,” he told Mama. She always took Raymond’s side against Papa, but I think even she was beginnin to wonder if Raymond would ever amount to a hill of beans.

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    9
    January 18, 1938 (Tues.) [Max. 55°, Min 44°.] A delightfully soft, mild, springlike day; changeable and unsettled with light showers. I left Veda’s folks’ place to go to work for the WPA.
    R AYMOND GOT TWO, sometimes three days’ work a week, and always come back complainin about the other men and their filthy habits. In March he got laid off, and not wantin to deal with Papa again, bought bus tickets to Salem. We could stay with his folks, he said, and find work there. “You will like it,” he said, “Salem is pretty this time of year.”
    I was lookin forward to seein Salem and the pretty new Capitol buildin Raymond told me about, but I was nervous about his family. His sister and younger brother still lived at home, and I didn’t want us to be in the way. Besides, I had only met his parents, and that was just the one time, at the weddin, and I didn’t think his mother liked me.
    It was late afternoon when we got off the bus. Raymond said it was just a short walk to his folks’ house, so I picked up my suitcase and followed him, gawkin at the big houses with