And Gratt Shafer would be in Memphis today for the wedding rehearsal and then tomorrow he would marry just like everybody knew he would, just like everybody knew all along. Like Mattie and the mayor up there gripping the microphone and Toonker Burkette back in his office yanking out teeth, like they all knew he would. Just like the balloon would go up and you could sit all day and wish it would spring a leak or blow to hell up and burn and nothing like that would happen. Or you could hope the parachute wouldn't open just so you could say you saw it not open, not because you meant any harm to Starkey Poe in his suit of red underwear, but mainly because you were tired of being an old maid -- a thing which cannot admit when it thinks it might be pregnant, but must stand the dizzy feeling all alone and go on like everything is all right instead of being able to say to somebody in a normal voice: ``I think I'm pregnant.'' You could wish that. Or you could wish your daddy would really do it -- kill Gratt Shafer like he said when you all the time, all along, could feel the nerve draining out of him like air out of a punctured tire when you are on a muddy road alone and it is raining and at night. So you sit in the car and listen to the air run out and listen to the rain and see the mud in front of the headlights, waiting for you, for your new spectator pumps, waiting for you to squat by yourself out there in your tight skirt, crying and afraid and trying to get that damned son-of-a-bitch tire off, because that is being an old maid too, if you happen to drive a car, it is changing the tire yourself in the night, and in the mud and the rain, hating to get out in it but afraid to stay and afraid to try to walk out for help. And every sound that might be the rain also might be the man who thinks after he has raped you he has to beat your brains out with a tire tool so you wonn't tell, a combination like ham and eggs, rape her and kill her, and that is being an old maid too. It is not having his baby nestled warm and fat against your breast and it is not having somebody that really gives a damn whether some tramp cracks your skull. And most of all it is not having the only man you could love, whether he drives a bread truck or delivers the mail or checks the berry crates down at the sheds, or owns seventeen oil wells and six diamond mines, for if you are anybody what he is or does makes no difference if he is the one. He can even be a mild voiced little town guy with big town ideas and level gray eyes and a heart even Houdini couldn't figure out, how it is unlocked. And he can be on the way to Memphis, your Gratt Shafer can, and you discover you can stay alive and hate him and love him and want him even if it means you want him -- really want him -- dead. Because if you cann't then nobody else can either, nobody else can have him. For you don't share him, not even with God. If it is love, you don't.