“What wouldn’t do no good! What are you talking about now?”

“Why, a gun,” I said. “You know, one of them things you shoot with. But it sure wouldn’t do no good with Rose, her bein’ scared of her own shadder, so—”

“That’s it!” Myra cut in. “We’ll get her a gun! She ought to have one anyway, a woman alone as much as she is.”

“But what good will it do?” I said. “Rose wouldn’t shoot no one to save her life.”

“I’m not so sure about that—not if her life was at stake. At any rate, she could point it. Make that big brute of a husband keep away from her.”

“Well, now, I just don’t know about that,” I said. “If you ask me—”

“I’m not asking you! I’m taking Rose out to get a gun this very day, so just finish your dinner and shut up!”

I finished eating, and went back down to my office. I rested and dozed some more, but not as good as I had in the morning. I was kind of puzzled with myself, you know, wondering why I’d wanted Rose Hauck to have a gun. Because, of course, I did want her to have one.

I tried to tell myself that it was just for her own protection, just in case someone tried to bother her. But I knew that wasn’t my real reason. My real reason, I guessed, was something I hadn’t quite figured out yet. It was part of something else, some plan-wishes I had for Myra and Lennie—and I hadn’t quite figured out what they were either.

Maybe it don’t seem to make sense for a fella to be doing things for a reason that he don’t know about. But I reckon I’ve been doing it most of my life. The reason I went to see Ken Lacey, for example, wasn’t the one I let on that it was. I’d done it because I had a plan for him—and you’ve seen what that plan was. But I didn’t know it at the time I’d called on him.

I’d had kind of a goal, and I’d figured that a fella like Ken could be a lot of help in bringing it about. But just how I was going to use him I wasn’t even halfway sure.

And it was the same situation now, with Rose and the gun. All I knew was that they probably fitted into a plan for Myra and Lennie. But I didn’t have no real idea of what the plan was; I purely didn’t.

Except that it was probably pretty unpleasant . . .

Rose got to the courthouse around four o’clock that afternoon. I was on the lookout for her, and I got her in the office for a minute before she could goon upstairs.

She was looking prettier than I’d ever seen her, which was really saying something. She said she’d slept like a goddam baby all night long, and she’d woke up laughing, thinking about that son-of-a-bitch of a Tom being dead out in the mud somewheres.