Cabin Fever - Page 7/118

At nine o'clock Bud went home. He was feeling very well satisfied with

himself for some reason which he did not try to analyze, but which

was undoubtedly his sense of having saved Bill from throwing away six

hundred dollars on a bum car; and the weight in his coat pocket of a

box of chocolates that he had bought for Marie. Poor girl, it was kinda

tough on her, all right, being tied to the house now with the kid. Next

spring when he started his run to Big Basin again, he would get a little

camp in there by the Inn, and take her along with him when the travel

wasn't too heavy. She could stay at either end of the run, just as she

took a notion. Wouldn't hurt the kid a bit--he'd be bigger then, and the

outdoors would make him grow like a pig. Thinking of these things, Bud

walked briskly, whistling as he neared the little green house, so that

Marie would know who it was, and would not be afraid when he stepped up

on the front porch.

He stopped whistling rather abruptly when he reached the house, for it

was dark. He tried the door and found it locked. The key was not in the

letter box where they always kept it for the convenience of the first

one who returned, so Bud went around to the back and climbed through the

pantry window. He fell over a chair, bumped into the table, and damned

a few things. The electric light was hung in the center of the room by

a cord that kept him groping and clutching in the dark before he finally

touched the elusive bulb with his fingers and switched on the light.

The table was set for a meal--but whether it was dinner or supper Bud

could not determine. He went into the little sleeping room and turned on

the light there, looked around the empty room, grunted, and tiptoed into

the bedroom. (In the last month he had learned to enter on his toes,

lest he waken the baby.) He might have saved himself the bother, for the

baby was not there in its new gocart. The gocart was not there, Marie

was not there--one after another these facts impressed themselves upon

Bud's mind, even before he found the letter propped against the clock

in the orthodox manner of announcing unexpected departures. Bud read the

letter, crumpled it in his fist, and threw it toward the little heating

stove. "If that's the way yuh feel about it, I'll tell the world you can

go and be darned!" he snorted, and tried to let that end the matter so

far as he was concerned. But he could not shake off the sense of having

been badly used. He did not stop to consider that while he was working

off his anger, that day, Marie had been rocking back and forth, crying

and magnifying the quarrel as she dwelt upon it, and putting a new and

sinister meaning into Bud's ill-considered utterances. By the time Bud

was thinking only of the bargain car's hidden faults, Marie had reached

the white heat of resentment that demanded vigorous action. Marie was

packing a suitcase and meditating upon the scorching letter she meant to

write.