Aron sat up and said almost angrily, “I don’t hardly ever cry unless I’m mad. I don’t know why I cried.”

Abra asked, “Do you remember your mother?”

“No. She died when I was a little bit of a baby.”

“Don’t you know what she looked like?”

“No.”

“Maybe you saw a picture.”

“No, I tell you. We don’t have any pictures. I asked Lee and he said no pictures—no, I guess it was Cal asked Lee.”

“When did she die?”

“Right after Cal and I were born.”

“What was her name?”

“Lee says it was Cathy. Say, what you asking so much for?”

Abra went on calmly, “How was she complected?”

“What?”

“Light or dark hair?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t your father tell you?”

“We never asked him.”

Abra was silent, and after a while Aron asked, “What’s the matter—cat got your tongue?”

Abra inspected the setting sun.

Aron asked uneasily, “You mad with me”—and he added tentatively—“wife?”

“No, I’m not mad. I’m just wondering.”

“What about?”

“About something.” Abra’s firm face was tight against a seething inner argument. She asked, “What’s it like not to have any mother?”

“I don’t know. It’s like anything else.”

“I guess you wouldn’t even know the difference.”

“I would too. I wish you would talk out. You’re like riddles in the Bulletin.”

Abra continued in her concentrated imperturbability, “Do you want to have a mother?”

“That’s crazy,” said Aron. “ ’Course I do. Everybody does. You aren’t trying to hurt my feelings, are you? Cal tries that sometimes and then he laughs.”

Abra looked away from the setting sun. She had difficulty seeing past the purple spots the light had left on her eyes. “You said a little while ago you could keep secrets.”

“I can.”

“Well, do you have a double-poison-and-cut-my-throat secret?”

“Sure I have.”

Abra said softly, “Tell me what it is, Aron.” She put a caress in his name.

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me the deepest down hell-and-goddam secret you know.”

Aron reared back from her in alarm. “Why, I will not,” he said. “What right you got to ask me? I wouldn’t tell anybody.”

“Come on, my baby—tell Mother,” she crooned.

There were tears crowding up in his eyes again, but this time they were tears of anger. “I don’t know as I want to marry you,” he said. “I think I’m going home now.”

Abra put her hand on his wrist and hung on. Her voice lost its coquetry. “I wanted to see. I guess you can keep secrets all right.”

“Why did you go for to do it? I’m mad now. I feel sick.”

“I think I’m going to tell you a secret,” she said.

“Ho!” he jeered at her. “Who can’t keep a secret now?”

“I was trying to decide,” she said. “I think I’m going to tell you this secret because it might be good for you. It might make you glad.”

“Who told you not to tell?”

“Nobody,” she said. “I only told myself.”

“Well, I guess that’s a little different. What’s your old secret?”

The red sun leaned its rim on the rooftree of Tollot’s house on the Blanco Road, and Tollot’s chimney stuck up like a black thumb against it.

Abra said softly, “Listen, you remember when we came to your place that time?”

“Sure!”

“Well, in the buggy I went to sleep, and when I woke up my father and mother didn’t know I was awake. They said your mother wasn’t dead. They said she went away. They said something bad must have happened to her, and she went away.”

Aron said hoarsely, “She’s dead.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if she wasn’t?”

“My father says she’s dead. He’s not a liar.”

“Maybe he thinks she’s dead.

He said, “I think he’d know.” But there was uncertainty in his tone.

Abra said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could find her? ’Spose she lost her memory or something. I’ve read about that. And we could find her and that would make her remember.” The glory of the romance caught her like a rip tide and carried her away.

Aron said, “I’ll ask my father.”

“Aron,” she said sternly, “what I told you is a secret.”

“Who says?”

“I say. Now you just say after me—‘I’ll take double poison and cut my throat if I tell.’ ”

For a moment he hesitated and then he repeated, “I’ll take double poison and cut my throat if I tell.”

She said, “Now spit in your palm—like this—that’s right. Now you give me your hand—see?—squidge the spit all together. Now rub it dry on your hair.” The two followed the formula, and then Abra said solemnly, “Now, I’d just like to see you tell that one. I knew one girl that told a secret after that oath and she burned up in a barn fire.”