(And what if Lowry was gone and left her? She knew, this might be. Any place they stopped it might be. And so walking out there she had to appear hopeful and happy like a girl who'd never had such a mean thought.)
Lowry might tease when she returned breathless to slide into a booth across from him, “Kid, I was worried where you'd gone: thought you'd fallen in.” Or, to make her smile and blush with pleasure, all the more if a waitress was there looking on, “Kid, you look like a million bucks. That's my girl.”
She wasn't, though.
She wasn't Lowry's girl. Not the way Carleton would think, or Nancy. Or anybody who saw them together, maybe.
If Lowry was in one of his moods, it was like Clara did not exist. Or she was some kind of thing tied to his ankle, or a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a weight, a burden but not too much of a burden; for Lowry wasn't the kind of man who endures much of a burden.
“What's he, some kind of ex-soldier? Marine? Good-looking guy.”
Women asked such questions of Clara when Lowry was out of earshot. Cutting their eyes at her thinking What's so special about you, he chose you? What about me?
Waitresses, bar girls, shifting their shoulders just-so, in Lowry's presence. Must be an instinct like a cat arcing its back to be petted, a female displaying her breasts for a man's drifting eye.
Clara stroked her small hard breasts in secret. Pinching the nipples to make them grow.
“Naw,” she'd say, keeping a straight mouth, “he's just out of Leavenworth, y'all know what that is?”
The looks on their faces! If, say, Lowry was playing pinball or dropping coins in a cigarette machine, hearing Clara giggle he'd glance around to see the woman startled and fearful-looking backing away quick.
Lowry liked it that Clara struck up conversations with people they met, he said it wasn't healthy for a girl her age, a growing girl like her, to talk with only him. “Sooner we get you where you're going the better, kid.”
Clara heard this clearly. Clara heard the statement beneath Sooner I can get rid of you the better. But she pretended not to hear, just laughed. There was a high breathy laugh you heard on the radio, a feminine way of laughing. And twining her hair strangers said was the prettiest hair around her fingers in a way she'd seen Nancy do, in the days when Nancy had been younger, prettier; and Carleton Walpole had liked to look at her.
Clara had heard the two of them in the night lots of times, on their mattress in a corner of whatever room in whatever tar-paper shanty or cabin or unit, Nancy whimpering and moaning and Carleton panting, grunting hard, and groaning too like somebody was raking his back he could not bear it, yet had to bear it. Going at it was the expression Rosalie had used. Going at it like dogs in heat Rosalie had said of such behavior spitting in disgust.
Clara said to Lowry she'd known a girl once up in Jersey, had a baby that was born dead and guess who the daddy was?
Lowry, lighting a Camel and shaking the match out, tossing the match onto the floor, looked at her with a mean-playful smile saying, “Her own daddy. Right?”
Clara felt her face burn. Goddamn: she'd meant to shock Lowry and she never could.
“Are babies like that always born dead? That's some kind of curse?”
Lowry shrugged. He had a way of dismissing Clara's willfully naive questions the way you'd dismiss the prattling of a baby.
“If you believe in curses, kid, that'd be one of them.”
Did she believe in curses, no she did not. For some folks maybe but not for her. She figured that God had more important things to care about than Clara Walpole.
“Where're we going, Lowry? You got to tell me.”
“Where's who going? You, or me?”
Clara hesitated. She knew this was a tricky question.
“Both. I guess.”
“Naw, kid. I told you, you got to make your mind up what to do.” Lowry paused in his eating, and wiped his mouth on a napkin in a way that maddened Clara, made her want to tear the napkin from his fingers. “Happens that I'm going to where I'm going day after tomorrow, sweetheart.” He paused after saying this.
Clara stared at her plate. Oh, she'd been so hungry!—and so happy eating this gristly hamburger with ketchup and mustard both, and greasy french fries, sugary coleslaw. Even the stale bun was delicious. Now she wanted to push her plate away like Carleton used to do with the heel of his hand, signaling he'd had enough and had not liked what he'd had.
“ ‘Day after tomorrow.' What's that mean …”
Clara felt her lips go into a pout. She'd have gone all eyes leaning over the sticky tabletop but Lowry just returned to his eating.
A damn pig, he was. Men were. Hear them eating, chewing; hear them guzzling beer; hear them belching. Enough to make you sick.
It was true, sometimes Clara ate a lot, herself. Nancy used to tease her, try to shame her. Sometimes Clara was ravenous with hunger, ate and ate till her belly swelled tight against the elastic band of her underwear; not that she ate as much as Lowry, but she ate as long, and sometimes longer. And she drank from his beer, if nobody was watching to scold saying she was underage. Sometimes in a sad mood, or her head aching from the day's drive, Clara chewed food without tasting it and felt it settle into her stomach like a hard little knot and even Lowry's beer left a bad taste in her mouth; this was one of those times when she felt like laying her head down on her arms, and crying.
Lowry signaled the waitress: another beer. Might've been sitting in the damn booth alone for all the notice he gave Clara.
“Fucker.”
Clara mumbled biting her lip. Lowry could hear, or choose not to hear.
One thing Clara knew, they were headed north. Wished she had a map to see where they were, where they'd come from and speculate where they were going. She had only a vague sense of geography from some faded old map hanging down a blackboard at some school in a place now forgotten but she knew that Carolina and Virginia were still south but Pennsylvania was getting to be north. She wondered if they would pass through Kentucky, or if they were going some different way, and would not. She'd told Lowry about Kentucky and he had seemed more interested than he usually was in her talk. Actually asking her questions like where her father's people were from? and her mother's?—but Clara was vague. Asking had her relatives worked the mines?—and Clara asked what kind of mines? She didn't know. What she knew was Pearl's stories of being courted by Carleton Walpole, her wedding when she was only just fifteen (“Maybe Ma wasn't old enough to be served beer in some damn old tavern but she was old enough to be married”) and the wonderful snapshots Pearl had had, that Nancy had denied she'd tossed away. Clara's eyes filled with tears of indignation thinking of that bitch Nancy taking Pearl's place and showing poor Pearl no respect.
Lowry had asked why Clara's mother had died, and Clara had to say she didn't know. “Pa told us it was her time. That's all he'd say over and over. ‘It was your ma's time.' ”
Now Clara said, shoving her plate from her, “I'm gonna pay you back for all this, soon as I can. I don't take no charity.”
Lowry smiled at her, picking his teeth with a toothpick.
“Sure.”
“I am! Goddamn you, I'll get a job and pay it back.”
“You will, will you? Where?”
“Anywhere I can.”
“So what's your skill, sweetheart? Name one.”
“Name one? Name a dozen: I can pick fuckin green beans, I can pick fuckin tomatoes, I can pick fuckin strawberries, I can pick fuckin lettuce—”
Lowry laughed, relenting. “All right, kid. Any other skill?”
“I can take care of a baby. I can clean house. I can cook, sort of. I could be a waitress, I bet. I could …” Clara paused, thinking a sly dirty thought: I could lay down on my back and spread my legs. Be a whore.
This word Clara had not uttered aloud, for fear of getting her face slapped by someone. But she'd heard it plenty of times. Had no idea how it was spelled but it was pronounced ho' and always with an intonat
ion of contempt.
Lowry saw her cat eyes going flat and calculating and must've known exactly what she was thinking.
“Best thing for you's to get married soon as you can. A girl with hair your color, and trusting as you are …” Lowry made a gesture signaling there's no help for such a one.
“Married! Shit, I ain't gonna get married, ever.” Clara spoke vehemently, bravely. “You just end up having babies. Whoever you married don't give a damn for you once you get pregnant. He's tomcatting around, and never home.”
Clara made herself laugh scornfully. She felt a stab of love for Lowry, a sensation of desperate helplessness like drowning. At the base of her spine was a cold numb place into which all her blood ran leaving her sickened, faint. She loved this man for his handsome face and his strong arms and the way he'd protected her, saving her from harm; but she was coming to hate him for the way he didn't give a damn for her really, she was just some stray mutt he'd found along the roadside and pitied, and would get rid of as soon as he could. He meant to do the decent thing by her, she guessed. And she hated him for that, too. She hated him for how, in any public place, his eyes could move about alert and restless and affable and his mouth shape itself into a smile, that easy smile of a man who knows he's attractive to women, and to men, too; and forgetting her who stared at him so avidly it was like a flame in the air between them, of which he took no notice. She hated knowing that Lowry could toss a few coins on the table of this booth for the waitress and stroll outside to his car whistling and if Clara didn't trot after him, damn if he wouldn't drive away without her. And no looking back.
Clara asked, pouting, “What kind of a job d'you have, where you're going?” It wasn't for the first time, and she guessed he would not answer.
Lowry just shrugged. That look in his face like he's getting bored.
“Why couldn't I be with you, Lowry? I could cook for you some. I could clean house for you. What women do …” Clara spoke clumsily, her tongue too big for her mouth.
“Clara, you're just a child.”
“Fuck! I am not a child.”
“I can't be dragging you around with me. You're underage.”
“Don't you like me?”
“Oh, Christ—”
“Don't you think I'm—pretty?”
“No.”
“Hell you don't! You do.”
But Clara was shaken, uncertain. Lowry was looking like a man who could walk out on her any minute.
“There's lots of pretty girls. Damn good-looking women. A man can have his fair share, and more. That's not it.”
Then what is? Clara wondered. She wondered why, if Lowry felt like this about her now, he'd ever looked at her the way he had back in that tavern, after she'd left LeRoy. Maybe he'd thought she was older than she was, maybe he hadn't looked at her close. And now he'd looked too close. She trembled with rage, suddenly.
“You better listen to me, mister!”
“Yeah? Says who?”
“I can love a man like any grown woman. I can do things for a man like any woman. I can! You got to let me prove it.”
Lowry smiled at her, amused. But he was looking at her with interest, as if seeing her for the first time.
Clara said, “I don't want no damn old picker's life. No more, it ain't gonna kill me. I want more things than just babies, I'll show you.”
“I bet you will.”
“I will! Even if I can't name it yet, I want it.”
“Going to steal it?”
“If nobody gives me what I want, I'll steal it. I want somethin— I'm gonna get it.”
“Calm down, kid. You're talking kind of loud.”
Clara's heart was pounding furiously and out of her rage came something like joy. She knew now, from the way in which Lowry was watching her, with a certain wariness, as you'd watch a coiled snake, that she would discover what she wanted; and she would get it.
“First I got to learn how—how things are.” Her words were plaintive suddenly, her voice was almost apologetic.
Without a word Lowry slid out of the booth, tossing a handful of coins onto the table. He was halfway out the restaurant door before Clara caught up with him flush-faced and craven, yet without his having seen she'd pocketed one of the silver quarters he'd left behind in his improvident generosity.
I can steal. I will. If you make me.
After that, things changed between them.
He was more respectful, Clara thought. But he didn't touch her as he had, the way you'd touch a child, or animal. He did seem wary of her. More frequently he spoke of getting to where he was going.
Each night they'd slept in the car. Clara fell into a doze while Lowry was driving, sometimes she crawled dazed with exhaustion into the backseat and slept, waking to discover the car stilled, in darkness like the darkness at the bottom of a deep pond, and only after some minutes of disorientation would Clara realize that Lowry was asleep in the front seat, his breath wetly audible. Clara would listen to him breathe, scarcely breathing herself. So many years of sleeping in the same room with her family, now she was sleeping almost-alone, and almost-lonely; for Lowry kept himself from her, at nighttime. She had believed that he would love her in that way she'd been warned men and boys would wish to love her, yet he had not, and would not. Don't touch me like that, Clara. You're underage. He'd spoken sharply, he meant it.
All he'd given to her of himself was his name: Lowry. And she could not be certain of that.
Clara lay huddled in the backseat listening to the sound of nocturnal insects outside. So loud! She thought of her pa who was somewhere behind her. She would not have minded being hit by him, she'd known she had deserved it, but his words shouted at her had hurt. Bitch just like your mother!
That was wrong, to speak so of Pearl. To speak so of the dead, who can't speak for themselves.
Clara smiled to think that Carleton would never catch up with Lowry. He was too old, Lowry was younger. Lowry slept in the front seat of his car with no fear of being discovered and attacked. Carleton had killed a man once, but he'd almost been killed himself. If it came to a fight, Lowry would beat Carleton down with his fists.
Clara drifted back into sleep thinking He will never find me. I am nobody's daughter now. Jamming fingers into her mouth as she'd done as a little girl, for consolation.
Next morning they were driving north into New York State.
Hill country, but as the sky lightened Clara saw that the hills close beside the country highway fell back in waves to mountains, and that the boundary between the mountains and the mountainous clouds in the sky was feathery and unclear. Like between waking and sleep, you couldn't know for certain. Clara drew her knees up to her chest and hugged herself like a little girl. The mountains were so beautiful!
“Lowry, I bet you're from around here.”
Lowry glanced at her, surprised. His jaws were glittering with blond stubble. “How'd you know that?”
Clara just smiled mysteriously.
Somehow, she'd known.
Lowry was taking pride in this landscape, you could see. Descending one of the long broad hills, the blacktop road and the land spread out so vast Clara thought you could get lost in it, so much for the eye to see, and sunlight in patches, and cloud-shapes of shadow swift-moving across the fields. There were cornfields, and wheat fields, and what was maybe rye fields, rippling-green like water, and there were small farms, houses, barns, outbuildings amid acreage neatly plotted as a map; and the rest was trees, some of them of a kind Clara had not seen before, white-barked, growing in clusters. Straight as she could Clara sat staring. Her new home: Lowry was bringing her to her new home.
“I love you.”
It was the merest whisper. Wind rushing through their rolled-down windows, Lowry couldn't be expected to hear.
In a loud voice she asked, were they going to stop somewhere around here?—and Lowry said, “Maybe.”
An hour later they were descending into a town: TINTERN POPULATION 1650, Lowry said it wa
s an old river town, the name of the river was the Eden River and the time of Tintern as a “living” town had been a hundred years ago, when his folks had first arrived. Clara stared at brick streets between tall gaunt steep-gabled brick and stone houses that looked like elderly toothless men. Here was a town that looked like a city, what Clara would have believed to be a city, but the neighborhood was old and run-down and there were children playing in the streets—white-skinned, but noisy and frantic like kids in the farmworkers' camps. You didn't think that people could be poor in a city, only in the country. This was a surprise.
The funny old brick street narrowed as it began to ascend to a high, humpbacked bridge so narrow vehicles could pass over it but one at a time. Clara's heart began to thump.
“Jesus! I'm scared we're gonna fall in.…”
Lowry just laughed at her and continued across the bridge that made a nervous whirring noise beneath the tires of his car, not slackening and not increasing his speed. Clara tasted panic: you could see the water through the grid of the bridge's floor! If she'd been driving, she would have maybe fainted, the damn car would crash through the railing—
Lowry pointed out buildings along the river, most of them shutdown and boarded-up. Railroad yards, granaries. A tomato-canning factory that was still in operation part of the year. “The Depression hit Tintern pretty hard. Lots of people I knew left, but not me.” Yet he spoke regretfully as if he'd wanted to leave, and somehow hadn't been able. Clara listened closely to these rare words of Lowry's, for he'd never answered questions she put to him about himself, in all those hours of intimacy in the car; as if now, seeing this town, that was run-down and jumbled but somehow beautiful he was shaken in some way, and moved to speak.
On the north side of the river, as Lowry spoke of it, there was a Main Street; there was a River Street, and there was a Bridge Street; there was a railroad depot where trains only stopped a few times a week now; along the downtown streets were threeand four-story buildings, made mostly of dark brick, with false fronts Clara was curious to see: from the front the building looked sort of impressive, but from the side and back it was some old run-down thing. Clara's eye lit onto taverns, a restaurant, a movie house, clothes stores and a shoe store and a Woolworth's Five & Dime. She hoped they would be living downtown: she hoped they would be living somewhere above a ground floor.