Love's Labor Won

Browne took a look around him, tossed his head back like a stallion,
then sort of snorted--I swear that he did. It was good to be back, he
thought. But underneath he was wondering, "Is it really?" Browne moved
immediately to see his sister at her house.

When he got there, Gennie was standing near her porch window, looking
thoughtfully out the glass pane, and lifting her long hair back in her hands.
She saw Brown approaching, and ran out to meet him.
"I've got to see him right away, Gennie," he almost cried. "And her too, I guess."
"All right, I'll take you," Gennie agreed. Then she led him off to the cemetary.

The gravestone lay flat within the shaggy grass; appearing for all the world, Gennie thought, like a gray, turned-off computer pad.
"There she is," was all she could say to Browne, while pointing down.
"How'd it happen?" inquired the man who was about in his mid-thirties;
"I never knew. There was no way to tell you. No one knew where you were. She died of sadness, maybe; I don't really know. Maybe she died of a broken heart? She felt really bad about what she had done, brother. The police said it was suicide."
"Where's Buster?"
That was the question she had known would be coming, and which she
dreaded.
"With Billie."
"Then let's go see them next." They did.

The following day, after getting a troubled night's rest at Gennie's house, he glanced over later in the day at what she was reading. It was a book with a brown cover that, in scarlet letters, read, Love's Labor's Won!
She set the book aside upon seeing Browne, and said, "Well, what's
next?"
Browne scrunched his eyes up the way that he did, and replied, "For now it's no go."
Darn, was all she said. Then Gennie picked her book back up.

Browne spent the days after that getting cleaned up, and working. He
got his old job back at the gas station, and between pumping fuel and fixing cars he was pretty busy nearly all the time. Between work, he thought about Buster, about how things had been before--how they'd been right, and how they'd gone wrong.

Easing a nut off a tire, one day, he thought about how she'd been sweet
as fresh oil when they had first gotten together, and how something had
gone rancid not long after that, not long after Buster was born. He dropped the nut into a metal pan; heard it plunk.

It was time to go there again.

Browne took his heart in his throat and went over to see Billie; that was the only way this was ever going to get done. It was a dusty day at
Billie's place; flies was buzzing round the windows, Billie was sitting in an old swing on the porch; everything was worn wood. Buster was playing off to the side of the porch, pushing a tin can in the dirt.

Billie's eye caught Browne approaching.
"Get or I'll let your breath out." As Browne knew, Billie always had
within easy reach, a gun.
"We've got to settle this now. You got a right to be mad, Billie. You took good care of my boy, but he's my son. It's time we went home."
"Just like that you son-of-a . . . "
"It weren't my fault, Billie. I swear it's true: I left because she told me to. There's wasn't no other way out of it. I couldn't reason with her; I was afraid of what might happen. Think about it yourself, Billie. Think about how she was."

Browne picked up the little boy and slung him onto his shoulder; he
hoisted him upright, and straightened him out in his seat as if he were in a saddle. "Come on, Mr. Buster; it's time to go home."
The little boy in the red jacket smiled.