Big City Girl by Charles Williams 1951(8)

Cass was wailing again, beside him. “I got to take
my boy in. I lound him. and I got to take him in!”
“Shut Up,” Mitch said, without anger, without even
hope that the noise would cease.
He and Lambeth worked Sewell onto the legless,
stretched canvas of the cot, and lifted him into the
wagon, being as gentle and careful as they could with
the poisoned arm. He grabbed up the sacks and the
raincoat and threw them across the box of the wagon
to keep off the rain. Then they were going up the hill.
Sewell felt the wagon begin to move, and thought.
It ain’t much longer now. The trail goes left, then
right on a switchback turn, and there’s an oak the
lightning struck, and it runs past the end of the
hillside field, going up. I saw a fox there, with a
chicken in its mouth, one morning going after the
cows. There’s a plum thicket beyond the end of the
rows and a long time later, after the fox, the fat girl
from somewhere, picking cotton, said, “You know
there ain’t no plums in October, you dog,” and
Big City Girl — 164

Big City Girl by Charles Williams 1951(7)

“Why, yes. I’ve thought of that. He was coming this
way, wasn’t he? I mean, when he— Oh, it’s so awful!
You don’t know what it’s been like all day, not
knowing.” The idea of Sewell’s coming back to her
Big City Girl — 142
began to blossom and take shape, and she knew. She
just knew. Why hadn’t she realized it before? Why, of
course. It really couldn’t have been anything else. He
had been headed right this way, hadn’t he?

Big City Girl by Charles Williams 1951(6)

“What is it?” he shouted back, throwing another
shovelful of dirt on a low spot on the levee. For a man
who’s so stove up in the legs he can’t get around, he
thought, he’s making pretty good time.
“It’s Sewell,” Cass shouted, reaching the upper end
of the levee and puffing on through the rain atop it
like a man walking a log. Goddamnit, Mitch thought,
does he have to walk up there and tear it down as fast
as I get it built up?
Then it hit him. It was as if the levee and the rising
water and the desperate urgency of holding up this
straining bulwark against disaster, together with the
somber and uneasy dread in his thoughts of Jessie,
had occupied every corner of his mind to the extent
that there was no room for anything else, and it took
time for any other idea to filter in and find room for
itself.

Big City Girl by Charles Williams 1951(5)

Ten miles back there was a secondary road taking
off to the north. There were no cars in sight when he
made the turn. The road was narrow and in poor
condition, not safe for over forty miles an hour, but it
wound north, in the direction he wanted to go. A few
miles farther along another one led off to the right
and he took that, swinging east again. If I can keep
heading north and east, he thought, I ought to hit the
highway going north. He looked at the clock on the
dash. It was almost two.
He wound for miles through the maze of country
roads, past dark farmhouses and through desolate
second-growth timber. The worn macadam pavement
gave way to gravel in places, and then went back to
macadam again.’He was on a graded dirt road when
the rain began. I got to get out of this mess and back
on the highway before it begins to get slick, he
thought. If I get stuck out here I’ll be in a hell of a
mess.
Then, shortly after three o’clock, he came into a
small town and there was the pavement going north.
Big City Girl — 96
The town was asleep, dark in the rain, except for an
all-night filling station. He turned left and picked up
speed again.