- These are puzzling questions, especially the second. The opening sentences of the story state Parker understood why he had married herhe couldnt have got her any other waybut he couldnt understand why he stayed with her now. Still, this beginning answer seems hardly satisfactory after we learn later that Parker has had involvements with a number of women (from which he seems to have formed the impression that he is devastatingly irresistible) and that he had no intention of ever getting married. At the beginning of the story, Parker is genuinely disgusted and ashamed with himself for not being able to leave his pregnant wife: he stayed as if she had him conjured (par. 1).
Indeed, this odd couple seems to be grossly mismatched. Although the story suggests they come from similar backgroundslittle education and even less moneythey have little else in common. For reasons even he cannot articulate, from their first meeting Sarah Ruth allures Parker in a way that is much more than merely sexual. From a sermon preached by Father Paul Yerger of the Orthodox Church in 2004, which interestingly enough took Parkers Back as its text: something attracts him to Sarah Ruth; he is hungry for something: to love something greater than himself, to partake of beauty and glory and mystery, like the tattooed man he saw at the fair.
Harder to understand may be Sarah Ruths motive for marrying O. E. Parker. In The Ultimate Heresy: The Heartless God in Parkers Back, Stephen Sparrow suggests one possibility: Sarah Ruth is also a girl who, in the manner of most Old Testament women, expected some day to become somebodys wife, and in spite of O. E.s naturally crude nature, for her there was a certain amount of attraction in that his names initials stood for two Old Testament characters.
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