“Virginia is where I was borned,” said Simple. “I would be borned in a state named after a woman. From that day on, women never give me no peace.”

“You, I fear, are boasting. If the women were running after you as much as you run after them, you would not be able to sit here on this bar stool in peace. I don’t see any women coming to call you out to go home, as some of these fellows’ wives do around here.”

“Joyce better not come in no bar looking for me,” said Simple. “That is why me and my wife busted up—one reason. I do not like to be called out of no bar by a female. It’s a man’s perogative to just set and drink sometimes.”

“How do you connect that prerogative with your past?” I asked.

“When I was a wee small child,” said Simple, “I had no place to set and think in, being as how I was raised up with three brothers, two sisters, seven cousins, one married aunt, a common-law uncle, and the minister’s grandchild—and the house only had four rooms. I never had no place just to set and think. Neither to set and drink—not even much my milk before some hongry child snatched it out of my hand. I were not the youngest, neither a girl, nor the cutest. I don’t know why, but I don’t think nobody liked me much. Which is why I was afraid to like anybody for a long time myself. When I did like somebody, I was full-grown and then I picked out the wrong woman because I had no practice in liking anybody before that. We did not get along.”

“Is that when you took to drink?”

“Drink took to me,” said Simple. “Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better. By the time I got married I had got to the point where a cold bottle was almost as good as a warm bed, especially when the bottle could not talk and the bed-warmer could. I do not like a woman to talk to me too much—I mean about me. Which is why I like Joyce. Joyce most in generally talks about herself.”

“I am still looking at your feet,” I said, “and I swear they do not reveal your life to me. Your feet are no open book.”