“I have nothing but respect for a figure like that,” said Simple. “Miss, your mama must of been sweet sixteen when she borned you. Sixteen divided by two, you come out a figure 8! Can I have a date? Hey, Lawdy, Miss Claudy! You must be deaf—you done left! I’m standing here by myself.

“Come on, boy, let’s go on in the bar and put that door between me and temptation. If the air cooler is working, the treat’s on me. Let’s investigate. Anyhow, I always did say if you can’t be good, be careful. If you can’t be nice, take advice. If you don’t think once, you can’t think twice.”

Morals Is Her Middle Name

Morals Is Her Middle Name

“IT TAKES a whole lot of not having what you want, to get what you want most,” said Simple, cooling off at the bar.

“Meaning?” I asked.

“Meaning you have got to do without a lot of things you want in order to get the main thing you want.”

“What do you want?”

“Joyce,” said Simple, “to be my wife—soon.”

“And what is it that you will have to do without?”

“My beer and my sport,” said Simple. “I am on an allotment, in other words, a budget. I have made up my mind to make that final payment on my first wife’s divorce myself, so I can be free to marry my final wife. So now I do not buy but one glass of beer per day—which is my allotment. After hours I no longer sport around a-tall, neither gamble—which is my budget. I have opened a savings account and I put Ten to Fifteen Dollars in it each and every week. I soon will have that One Hundred and Thirty-Three Dollars which is the third payment on my divorce. Since my wife’s husband-to-be made the first payment, and Isabel made the second, I have now made up my mind to make the third.

“I think it is no more than right,” I said.

“It is not right,” said Simple. “Isabel run me out of the house. If she wants a divorce, she should pay for it herself. But now that she has found a chump who will marry her, and pay a third of it, too, I figure it will speed things up if I meet that other third—since I want to marry Joyce before I get old as Methusaleh.”

“All this time you’ve been standing Joyce off waiting for your divorce; you should consider yourself lucky. She certainly has more patience than most women.”