REUNION from American Folk Song Suite

I waited a long time. I came first, got a job in this hotel down by the river. Folks stay here before they go on the riverboats. Mostly they’re nice people, but things can get rough sometimes. I’m glad I’m in the kitchen. He said he’d come right after he helped the parents with the butchering and the beans, but that time was well past, and I hadn’t even had a letter. “It’s a long way,” Cook kept telling me, “a long walk. But he’ll come, I can feel it in my bones.” Cook caught me crying this morning while I was stirring up the buckwheat cakes. “How long since you’ve eaten, child?” she wanted to know. “You’re getting mighty thin.” I told her I guessed I hadn’t had anything for a day or so, I’d been that worried. “That man of yours, he’ll get here,” she said. “Only a fool wouldn’t come for a woman like you.” She made me sit down and eat a plate of cakes, all buttered up. While I was eating them, I looked out the kitchen window, and there he was, coming down the hill in the rain.