A Night on the Porch

An August night in Texas was meant for a sleeping porch. Lorena and Henry stepped from the back hallway of their wooden farmhouse on to the screened-in room. Not much of a breeze greeted them, not much of a respite from the heat but just enough for them to drift off to pleasant dreams, eventually.
They were newlyweds, and each night began with whispers, laughter and intimate caresses amid the cricket song and frog serenades. A heavy sigh from Lorena’s full lips caused Henry to lift himself on his elbow.
“You still don’t feel guilty about Billy Boy, do you?” he asked.
“It was those big brown eyes,” Lorena replied. “They were so hurt the night I told him I had decided to marry you instead of him.”
“He couldn’t have really thought you would choose a shiftless cowboy who wandered into town from Virginia just six months ago. He’s a kid.”
Lorena did not like the tone of Henry’s voice, though she knew it was expected. He had the nicest farm for miles around and had worked years to make it the best. Henry hardly looked his forty years of age, lean, surprisingly few wrinkles for a man who had sweated in the sun all day. She could not help, though, to think often of Billy Boy’s awkward smile. And he was so tall. A smile crept across her face.
“Just a year younger than me. That’s why it broke my heart to crush his dreams.”
“He’s gotta learn to work more and dream less.”
Snapping twigs and rustling leaves caused Lorena to sit up. “What was that?”
“Critters. When you live in the country like we do you have to expect to hear the critters at night.” Henry tried to pull her back down on the bed, but she shook his hands away.
“I lived my life around critters,” Lorena said as she slipped from the bed and walked to the screened window. “No owls tonight.” She turned to Henry. “You know, it wasn’t very nice of you to laugh at Billy Boy when he slipped in and sat on the back pew of the church during the wedding. You made everybody else laugh at him too. He turned so red. So pitiful.”
“So pitifully poor he couldn’t provide a proper house for a bride,” Henry replied.
His tone again bothered Lorena, but she admitted in her heart that it didn’t make any sense to pick a man who would have to work twenty years to give her what another man, a perfectly good respectable man, could give her right now. Lorena slid back on the bed and noticed how the moonlight reflected on Henry’s glistening, sweaty chest, deciding she had made the right decision after all.
More snapping and rustling, followed by the click of a shotgun. Lorena leaned forward, straining to look through the porch screen. She saw a tall shadow, then heard a loud pop and squinted at a bright flash. Turning her head, Lorena screamed. Henry’s face was gone, in its place a gooey, bloody mess.

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