The cigarettes have been gone for years, and the bottle has been empty even longer. This night I feel like I have just emptied a bottle and smoked a pack of cigarettes. It's one of those long lonely--oh so lonesome nights. I am sitting here listening to Hank Williams Sr. sing his sad songs.  Now George Strait is singing about hating everything. I've got a fool-hearted memory this night. My memory is a fool sometimes--especially when I am listening to some sad country songs. You know the kind I mean--the kind of song that brings back the memory of a love gone wrong--one you seldom think about, and when all is said and done you are glad it didn't work out.

This is the true story of one of those so called romances.

It happened before I met my wife that I was dating a young woman and had been for a few years.  I should have known her better, but I was friends with the entire family and especially the brother that was just a couple of years older than her.  Her brother and I had been friends for years probably 10 or 12 at least and possibly more, so I guess I liked the family better than I did her when you get right down to it. I finally asked the woman to marry me. She put me off, but the next day she said yes. I found out later that she asked her mom should she say yes or no. I can't remember which one of her brothers told me that she had asked her mom, but one of them did. I didn't know she couldn't make a decision on her own. One day a couple of months later we got into an argument about something, and I accused her of not being a virgin. She never argued with me, and only said something about I had never done anything with her. We broke up during that argument.

A week or two later one of my brothers came by my house and said that he had heard she was pregnant, and they were saying I was the Daddy. My brother told me that his wife's brother told him that her mom said, "Everybody knows Mr. Yuma has plenty of money and we are going to make him prove it."  I suppose she thought Dad would have paid for an abortion, or he would have paid to adopt the baby one or the other. Perhaps she thought he would pay to prove it wasn't mine. I don't know what she thought for sure, but I assume it was one of those three things.  I only know that she would have been out of luck, because no one in my family believed in abortions. Dad knew that I was a little wild in some ways, but he also knew that he had taught me to treat women with respect, and that the baby wouldn't have been mine unless I had married her first. No he wouldn't have paid her any amount of money. I would have married her daughter before I let that happen, but not until she had the baby which she never did.

I took my brother's advice and didn't go back around their house for months, and when I did she was already married and still no baby. The reason I went back was to see her brother--not her. I didn't see her again until years later after my wife and I had moved back to Arkansas from Georgia then I saw her in town one day.  Someone told me that she and her boyfriend had killed her husband.  I don't know which one of the two actually pulled the trigger

I guess it was true about him getting murdered because when I saw them in town that day she wasn't with him.  She was hanging on the arm of some man, howeve, just like her mom always had been when the girl was younger.  I don't know if it was the man that helped her kill her husband, or if he was still in prison. Perhaps she was still with that murderer or maybe he was still in prison and she had found another boyfriend.   Her mom was never with her husband either except at night and when they were working in the field to make a living.  Other than that she would be found hanging on the arms of another man--any man, and the daughter I saw that day was no different in that way.

I am definitely glad that one didn't work out for me. If it had, and we had gotten married I would likely be the one residing in the cemetery, and I am sure I wouldn't like that for an address.