It was a touché. ’Bama grinned, wryly. “Okay,” he said. “I won’t. I was only tryin to keep you from losin yore reputation was all. And, to keep you from gettin yoreself in a position where none of the rest of the brassiere factory gals won’t go out with you.”
“Well, just stop worryin about it.”
“Okay, I will,” ’Bama said with that same wry grin. “Just take one of the other ones out, too, once in a while to protect yoreself.”
“I will,” Dave grinned.
And he meant it, too. But sitting that evening in Smitty’s, after he had left ’Bama and Doris in the house, he decided it just wasn’t worth the effort—not tonight anyway—and decided to put it off until another time. It was so much easier to just go get Ginnie, no buildup and no fuss, when he needed anyone at all.
And tonight he needed somebody. Because now that he had turned her proposition down—and was still glad he had—he nevertheless found himself, thinking about Doris Fredric and wishing now that he had taken her on, though he knew just as clearly that if the opportunity ever came up again he would still turn it down, just as he had the first time. And then brood over it, he said to himself, grinning, God! If she had only kept her damned mouth shut . . .
After sitting with Dewey and Lois Wallup and Hubie and Martha Garvey—and with Ginnie and Mildred, who were there with them—for a while, he went to the phone and called ’Bama at the house. ’Bama had said he would meet him later at the Eagles.
“Is your friend and mine still there?” he said when ’Bama answered.
“Yeah,” ’Bama said. “Why?”
“What do you say we just call off the game tonight, then? I’m a little bit worked up myself, it appears like.”
He heard a thin chuckle over the phone. “Preyin on yore mind a little bit now, hunh?”
“Oh no. Not exactly. Well, what do you say?”
“Well—okay. Just as well, in fact.” Then he half-muffled the phone and Dave heard dimly, in an amused tone: “Now damn it, let me alone for a minute.”
“I’m bringin the fat one down with me,” Dave said.
“Yeh? Well, okay,” ’Bama said. “It’s yore dong.”
“Right,” Dave said. “See you in the morning then.”
He hung up and went back to the table to get Old Ginnie, whom he had not asked yet until he had checked with ’Bama that it would not be discommoding him any.
Chapter 51
HE REALLY HAD INTENDED to take out more of the brassiere factory girls. He just kept putting it off, was all. He even went so far as to ask different ones of them out, but almost always they already had dates for that particular night, or else didn’t feel like going out. And in point of fact, he did have a rather short-lived affair with Mildred Pierce in late November and early December. But then Mildred got interested in another guy—one of the younger laborers who worked in the Sternutol plant—and he himself was often busy nights either gambling with ’Bama or going over to Gwen French’s for consultations, and the thing just kind of died stillborn for lack of its own enthusiasm.
Then, too, it was obvious that Mildred had always felt a little uneasy about going out with him on account of Ginnie, and he learned later on that Ginnie had gone and talked to her about it and had cried. That was shortly before Mildred had started going out with the young guy from the Sternutol whom, Dave was astonished to find, she soon married quite happily.
Most of the brassiere factory girls came from one of two sections in town, either from the northeast corner back of Smitty’s, or else from the southeast corner, which was clustered around the Sternutol Chemical plant. Both corresponded to the tenement sections of a city. The houses got progressively poorer the closer you approached the edge of town until when you reached the very outskirts they were little better than just shacks. Consequently, most of the brassiere factory girls could only hope to marry someone who worked for the Sternutol or one of the other two plants in Parkman—as Mildred had finally managed to do. That was, in fact, Lois Wallup’s trouble with Dewey Cole; while Dewey was of the proper class for her he was not the marrying and breeding kind as he should be expected to be; but Lois could never quite get used to this. And as a result, she remained his girl but unmarried.
One night when there had been a particularly unrestrained drinking orgy at the house, Dave had staggered out with an equally drunken Ginnie onto the patio porch. Half drunk, and half asleep, he had lain and listened dimly to Dewey and Lois quarreling in the kitchen about this, and as he lay listening
Lois had begun to cry. She could not understand why Dewey refused to marry her; and Dewey was making it volubly plain to her that he did not intend to. And Lois, weeping, could only say over and over “I want a home for my two kids!” It was, for everybody, always a reminder of the war and her husband who had been killed in it. Lying where he was, drugged by liquor and sex, Dave’s heart suddenly went out to her—went out to her and Dewey both. And he suddenly had a strange feeling that there was something dangerous hanging over all of them there. It was the first time he could ever remember having had that particular feeling, but he was to have it often enough again later on and when he did, he could always remember clearly with some strange kind of terror back to that moment when he had first had it. Although, of course, there were plenty of times when he did not have it at all or even think of it. He could never discover any psychological reason for it.
He never did know just exactly when he came to be regarded universally as Ginnie’s “boyfriend.” If there was any exact point, it must have come some time after the little affair he had with Mildred Pierce—which itself had come after the trip down to ’Bama’s farm. As far as he himself was concerned, he was not Ginnie’s “boyfriend,” and nothing anybody else thought or said made a damn bit of difference. He was simply a guy who was sleeping with her because he was either too shy, or else too lazy, to work up something else. By that time, Ginnie had already told him about having gone to Mildred Bell née Pierce and cried to her about him, and this amused and even flattered him a little. She told him she did it because she loved him so and was afraid he was not going to ask her out anymore, and this doubly amused him.
The trip down to ’Bama’s farm was a delightful experience, if not very much of a revelation about ’Bama’s wife. Apparently, as far as Dave could discover, she was just exactly what ’Bama had said and he was forced to tell ’Bama he had to agree with him entirely.
They started late one afternoon, November 11, throwing a bunch of old clothes and a game bag into the back seat of the Packard with a pair of ’Bama’s guns, and just taking off. He had seen to it that Dave got himself a pair of good hunting boots—which according to him was the only special equipment needed, except for a gun. It was a fine day for it, bright blue and sunny, with a few high cumulus sailing slowly along like stately ships, warm in the sun, a little chill in the shade, all of it together making everything seem unexcitable, making the world itself seem as though it was actually truly secure. They drove along slowly, out of town, and then down the Route 1 highway south. The road to the Dark Bend River section in the south and southeast end of the county angled off to the left just outside the little village of New Lebanon to the south.
’Bama had acquired his Dark Bend farm (he explained to Dave as they drove along) on a good deal two years before the war. Run-down, uncared-for, less than a third of it was level enough to be tillable and what was, was worn out by generations of heavy corn farming that took everything out of the soil and put nothing back. In all, he had 160 tillable acres out of a 480-acre farm, and for those two years before the war, he had worked at building it back up, and while he was gone in the Army, his wife had carried on the work.
“Hell, I could have been let off as a farmer,” he said with a thin-lipped grin. “Only I didn’t have any relatives or good friends on the draft board—and I didn’t belong to the same caste—like the important people’s sons who got deferments.”
“Why didn’t you ask them?”
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“Ask them?” ’Bama said with his most caustic sneer.
It was during the war, when he himself got drafted, that they had taken on the Alabama cropper, a one-eyed distant cousin of his wife’s who had been farming down around Birmingham, and he and his family had been with them ever since.
“He’s a hell of a good banjo player,” ’Bama grinned, “and there were two old houses on the place anyway.”
Dave did not know, from all of this, just what kind of a place he expected to see; but it was certainly nothing at all like what he actually did see, as first they drove down into a wide, thickly wooded hollow, crossed on an old wooden bridge the tumbling creek that ran through its bottom, and then came up on the other side.
“There it is,” ’Bama said.
About 150 yards back off the road, up at the top along the same low ridge they occupied, was a large white fresh-painted frame house three stories high with a two-story Southern Colonial colonnade across the front, set in a thin grove of massive, old bottom oaks under which a ten- or twelve-year-old boy toiled raking leaves on the well-kept grass. A quarter of a mile further on behind it stood another house almost exactly like it but smaller, its colonnade only one story high. Between them, but at a low point in the ridge was a large, squat, red fresh-painted barn that dwarfed them both. And from the barn toward both the houses stretched other outbuildings, and pens, and corrals, all painted white.
Off in a field below the barn to the east, a number of Angus beef cattle grazed together under a few big old cottonwoods that dropped to another creek; beyond the creek rose the woods. On the other side of the big house, dropping down the gently falling ridge, was a big field where a corn crop had been harvested.
“That’s the second year,” ’Bama said. “Now next year that’ll be in beans.” He had stopped the car when they came up over the ridge. “Inoculated beans. You see, you buy this inoculation and put it over the seed beans before you plant them. Then these nodules form. Adds nitrogen to the soil. Then after you harvest it you plow that under and put it out in winter wheat. Then in February before it thaws, you sow it in sweet clover or red.”
“Why before it thaws?” Dave said.
“Hell, so you can git in the field,” he said. “You wait till it thaws and you won’t be able to get into it soon enough.
“You can’t see the rest of the cleared land from here,” he said. “It’s scattered out all over.” He put the car in gear again and turned into the lane up to the house. The twelve-year-old in the yard had already seen them and, putting his fan rake down, had started walking unexcitedly toward the house.
“Clint will probably go out with us,” ’Bama said, referring to the cropper, as he drove on in. “He loves to hunt, and works his ass off so he’s free for huntin season. He’s only got one eye, but he can sure as hell shoot a shotgun.”
Clint, it turned out from what ’Bama said as they drove toward the house, hadn’t been off the place to town in over two years. The families did all their necessary shopping in Israel on the river, which was only eight miles from the farm on another road. Consequently, nobody at the farm ever went to Parkman. And Clint would not even go to Israel. He loved the farm, and hunting and fishing, and he read the baseball news in the paper, and that was all he gave a damn about; and he always listened to the World Series on the radio. But other than that, Clint’s wife had to buy everything for him when she went to town on her weekly shopping trips in Israel in the pickup truck, and that even included his farm supplies, which she would have loaded for her by the men at the feed store and which Clint would unload at home.
“But outside of that, Clint has no use for ‘civilization;’ and sometimes I think he resents havin that much,” ’Bama grinned. “They do all their shoppin in Israel. I don’t think my wife has been to Parkman more than twice since we first moved down here.”
Clint was probably still out in the fields with his oldest boy who was fourteen and always helped him after school. “But they’ll be in soon as they know we’re here to hunt,” ’Bama grinned.
“It seems to be just about a perfect setup for you, don’t it?” Dave said.
“Shore,” ’Bama said, pulling the Packard up between the house and the outbuildings, and getting out. “That’s the way I planned it.”
The outbuildings, Dave noted, were all modern, all made of concrete block, all very neatly kept.
“We added all them ourselves,” ’Bama said, following his gaze. “There was nothin here but the old barn and the two old houses when I bought it—and we had to fix them up. My wife raises chickens and sells the eggs and fryers,” he said pointing to one of the buildings. “Matter of fact, there’s quite a few people in Israel and some from Parkman who come down here to buy her stuff. Truck garden there, you see,” he said pointing on behind the house. “Buys almost all the seeds by mail. She loves the pretty colored catalogs.
“Yes,” he said, referring back to Dave’s original question. “It works out just fine. I told you they were all dumb, you know. And they are dumb, you see. Only, don’t make the mistake of thinking dumb means ignorant.
“Come on, let’s go on in.”
The woman met them at the door. She was a long-muscled, heavy-boned, towheaded expressionless woman, not any taller than Dave, and she carried an almost-year-old baby propped on the jut of her hip as she moved about. Behind her stood two little solemn-faced towheaded boys of twelve and ten who looked exactly like her, boned frame, expressionless face and all. The baby was expressionless, too. All four of them stared at him—at Dave—expressionlessly, as if they all thought him some kind of an enemy to be cautious of.
“Hello, Bill,” the woman said woodenly as she ushered them in—and Dave remembered suddenly that ’Bama’s name was really William Howard Taft Dillert.
“Hello, Ruth,” ’Bama said with a curious mixture of gentleness and absolute authority. “I want you to meet Mister Hirsh.”
Quite suddenly, the woman’s face broke into a merry, bright-eyed smile, and the two little boys grinned in unison. Even the baby seemed to look relieved.
“Well, howdy do,” Ruth said. “I’m most very pleased to meet you, Mr Hirsh. Won’t you step on in? I’ve heard an awful lot about you. Here, set yoreselves down. Are you-all hungry? There’s coffee on the stove and I’ve got some fresh homemade pumpkin pie. You, Johnny,” she said without changing the tone of her voice, and the biggest towheaded boy moved his arm in front of the littler one and swept them both back out of the way in the doorway to the next room, where they stood, silent, smiling, their young little eyes watching everything; and the woman, as she moved back and bent to get the pie out of the oven, continued to carry the baby expertly on the jut of her hip, where it rode like some miniature trick jockey who had been on a horse so much he didn’t even need to use his hands.
Dave, not sure what the protocol called for, sat down at the table and the woman slid an uncut pie in front of him and almost in the same movement reached behind him to the old-fashioned kitchen cupboard for a knife and fork which she pinned to a plate with her thumb and sat in front of him, never once letting go of the baby.
“Just you help yoreself,” ’Bama’s wife smiled. “There’s three more in the oven.”
Dave looked at ’Bama, who had sat down in another chair and was now grinning at him, and picked up the knife.
“We come down to hunt, Ruth,” ’Bama said. “Just a cup of coffee, thank you, for me,” he said.
“William never eats pie,” Ruth said smiling as she moved with the baby toward the stove and reached for cups. “That’s because he drinks so much. You, Ted,” she said, again without changing her tone. “Run out and get Clint and Murray. Tell them yore daddy’s here to hunt. People who drink a lot never eat sweets.”
The smaller boy, Ted, walked—very slowly—to the door from which, as soon as he was outside, he took off in a wild, exuberant run, yelling.
“I drink a lot,” Dave said, playing it along by ear, but unable not to fe
el astonished at her. “But I love pumpkin pie.”
“Then don’t be bashful,” the woman said. “Cut yoreself a real piece. Not just that skinny sliver. Ah’ll be makin more anyways now. I like stout men.”
Dave, although a little taken aback by the allusion to his size, nevertheless took her at her word and cut another, larger piece and slid it on his plate with the small one. The pie was spicy and delicious.
“William ought to eat more,” ’Bama’s wife said. “He just drinks his meals,” she laughed over her shoulder, pouring coffee into the cups. Deftly, she picked both cups up by their handles in one hand and set them on the table while the baby watched from her hip. “There now,” she said smiling. “Ah’ll get the cream.” From the big, modern refrigerator, she took forth a small glass pitcher of pure rich thick cream and set it between them.
“Speakin of drinks,” ’Bama said, “there ought to be some likker around here somewhere, ain’t there?”
“You, Johnny,” Ruth said, nodding her head commandingly. “Go and get yore father’s likker bottle.”
The older boy disappeared silently into the next room, and came back carrying an already opened bottle of Jack Daniels Black Label.
“I took the one of them that wasn’t full,” he said, setting it before his father.
“That’s right,” ’Bama said in that curiously gentle yet authoritative voice, and took the bottle and poured himself a drink, and then handed the bottle on to Dave. The little boy stepped back in silence.
Holding the bottle, Dave hesitated. “Mrs Dillert?” he said. “Pour you one?”
“Oh no. I never touch the filthy stuff,” the woman smiled. “Never have.” The little boy, Johnny, was still standing staring silently at his father. “You, Johnny,” she said. “Don’t stand and watch people eat.”
“Leave him be,” ’Bama said. He turned to look at the boy, expressionlessly. “What is it?” he said.