II
On another night Nathan asked:
“Did you ever think about your marriage, Billy, and wonder what day it would come in the future, and where it would happen, and who the girl was to be, and just where she is and what she happens to be doing right this minute?”
“Yes,” I answered. What boy—or girl—has not?”
“A queer feeling comes over me at times, Billy. Somewhere ahead in life it seems I’m standing in a great church with faces as far as I can see. There’s millions of flowers, Billy, and soft autumn light is coming in at a window on the left. The music’s playing so it makes me want to bawl and everything’s wildly beautiful and there’s laughter and love and fragrance all around me. I can see that picture awfully plain at times, Billy. Down the long aisle from the back there’s a woman in white coming toward me—the most beautiful woman in all the world—really beautiful, Billy, not because I’m in love with her and she looks that way to me. That’s my wedding day, Billy—and it’s fine and grand. Do you ever picture yours that way?”
“Somethin’ like it,” I answered. “Only mine’s in a house at night so my w-w-wife and I can sneak off in the dark and not get our hats busted with old shoes. They threw shoes at Matty Henderson’s weddin’ and broke the windows in the hack and the horses ran away and tipped over a banana stand.”