Before He Wakes by Jerry Bledsoe Read Free Book Online Page A

strictures of her past. Now that she was out on her own, she would do exactly as she pleased.
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    In the same way Larry had backed into his relationship with Barbara, he would continue having reservations about their marriage. His unhappiness with it as time went on would lead him to withdraw ever more inward. Neither would Barbara find marriage what she hoped it would be, but she would react in a different way, her dissatisfaction and overpowering desires pushing her outward for gratification that could never be achieved.
    The need to please and impress others that Barbara had absorbed from her mother would evolve into twin compulsions that would prove Larry right in his reservations. Barbara’s strong sexual urges would drive the first wedge into their relationship, but it would be her second compulsion—her spending—that eventually would prove more damaging.
    No signs of the coming strife were evident in their early days together, however. They were consumed by the immediate problems they faced. With a baby on the way, Larry had to find a job. He and Barbara had to have a car, a place to live, furniture and all the other accoutrements necessary to start a household, a family. There would be obstetrician bills to pay, baby things to buy. For a brief period after Larry finished his sophomore year, he and Barbara moved in with his parents. He got a job at Varco-Pruden, a manufacturing plant in nearby Kemersville. Barbara went to work at Wesley Long Hospital in Greensboro, filing insurance forms for emergency room patients.
    Although less than pleased about their daughter’s hasty marriage, Barbara’s parents stood by her, making the best of the situation. Her father helped her and Larry to buy a used mobile home in Durham, and Larry had it moved to a rented lot not far from his parents’ house. With a finance company loan, Larry also bought a used car, his first, a Rambler. With their combined incomes, Larry and Barbara made enough not only to get by but to save a little for the baby and to ensure that Larry would be able to return to college in the fall.
    When summer ended, they decided that Barbara should keep her job and remain in Colfax so that she would be near her doctor. Larry would return to Boone alone to start his junior year at Appalachian, going back to life in the dorm. His parents would help to look after Barbara.
    Larry’s sister Jane, a senior in high school, sometimes spent nights with Barbara to keep her company and to help out if she could. Jane liked her new sister-in-law, found her to be perky and peppy and sometimes giggly. She could talk with Barbara about things that she would have been embarrassed to bring up with her mother or others, and Barbara made her feel good about herself. Jane looked up to her. “I guess I really put her on a pedestal,” she said years later.
    But Jane recognized that despite her upbeat facade, Barbara was unhappy with the way her own life was going. Only a year before, Barbara had been excitedly starting college with a bright future. Now she was out of school, married, seven months pregnant, feeling that she had let her mother down, living among strangers in a trailer in the country, driving miles to work at a job that was mostly drudgery. Larry, meanwhile, was off at college, seeing his friends, having a good time, as if nothing had changed.
    Barbara never voiced her feelings to Larry’s parents, but they knew that she was unhappy. She clearly resented her situation, hated living in a trailer, detested her isolation, disliked the hovering presence of her watchful in-laws. She was resentful that Larry was able to go on with his life while she was trapped by economics and the child in her belly. Larry’s place, she thought, was at her side, and she said so to Jane. But he remained at college, coming home only on weekends.
    In October, Barbara quit her job at the hospital, citing complications with her pregnancy, although the Fords would not be able to remember any