Galatea

Chapter XX

So now we’re out in Nevada, on a ranch she bought, after she wound up the business and picked a church in Virginia where we could slip off and be married. We’re doing for other people what I did for her, and it gives her a boot to take some wreck of a guy, all shot from booze and food, and build him into a man, clean, lean, and hard. Just the same, in all that the papers carried and all that she said in court, too much was made over what I did for her, and practically nothing at all over what she did for me. I know what that was, and it’s more than you might think. After that fall, I’ll never fight again, never even be able to punch my way out of a paper bag. That I didn’t go haywire, that I found a meaning in life, work that might be some good, and ideas that make some sense, was due one hundred per cent to her.

So I want it known, and I’ve told it, all as it was, exactly, so if she ever wants to go back, her people will know we tried to walk in the right. They’ll also know, in the little St. Mary’s church, what she said the other night as we stood watching the sun drop back of the hill beyond the Tonopah road. Those hills look five miles off, and are actually fifty-five. She said: “Duke, they’re like the ocean, that’s why I love them. I saw the ocean once. We went to Ocean City, as my mother had heard salt water might make me lose weight. It didn’t, but I watched the waves, and realized they’d always been there, even before Columbus discovered America. So have those hills. They’re eternal, that’s why they speak to me. You know what they talk about?”

“God.”

“That’s it. God.”