River Girl

  “And,” she asked softly, “whose lipstick have you been avoiding?”

  “Jesus, I don’t know,” I said, almost irritably. I wished we could get those bedroom overtones out of the conversation. “After all, I’ve been married for over four years.”

  “But you’re not any more,” she said. “Your wife’s husband is dead. By the way, I hope you didn’t carry any life insurance. And not because I have anything against your widow.

  “No,” I said. I knew what she meant, because I’d already thought about it. “It lapsed a long time ago. We needed a new car worse.”

  “That’s good. For you, I mean. You can fool the police sometimes, but nobody ever got rich trying to make suckers out of those insurance investigators.”

  Again she puzzled me. How did she know things like that? And how did she get that way? Was she convinced she was some sort of dilettante criminal, breaking laws for excitement? Or had she just been reading too many detective stories? I didn’t believe either one was true. There was too much education and native intelligence showing at times in between some of the crazy things she said.

  Then she jarred me again. She could keep you off balance better than a professional fighter. “You don’t like obvious girls, do you? I should have known.”

  “Why?” I asked, playing dumb again. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re rather confusing to a girl. It’s because you look like one thing and are something else. You look like a football player or a professional fighter, but somewhere along the assembly line they got mixed up and gave you a mind that works. That’s what I mean I should have known. No moronic muscle man could ever have figured out all that mess the way you did.”

  I was beginning to feel like a chump again. “If all this is a gag, Dinah, how about knocking it off?”

  I glanced around at her. She took a long puff on the cigarette and stared back at me without the usual humor in her eyes. “It’s not a gag.”

  “What is it, then?” I knew it was a stupid question, and one I shouldn’t have asked, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Well, since I’ve decided not to be obvious, I’ll be shameless. Or outright predatory. It’s not a gag, because I’m in dead earnest. You couldn’t give a girl a little help, could you?”

  Lord, I should have taken the freight, I thought. This is a mess, and that’s not the half of it. It could get to be dangerous. This girl knows too much to run any risk of getting her angry.

  “You’re kidding,” I said lamely.

  “I’ve just told you I’m not kidding. And you must think I have a queer sense of humor. Maybe I should go into burlesque and undress myself before a bigger audience.”

  “All right,” I said. “You’re not kidding. And I’ll admit you’re devastating, if that’s what you’re out to prove. You’re good-looking and you’re smooth, and I’d be eating out of your hand in a minute if it weren’t that just at the moment I happen to be looking in the other direction—back over my shoulder.”

  She relaxed a little. “That’s partly what I’m talking about, darling. I want to go with you. Look. I have most of my clothes in five bags in the back of the car, and a little odd change I’ve managed to save here and there, and this Lincoln with fancy leather upholstery and a surprising power plant under the hood, in case you’d care to investigate it. And I might be a little surprising too, if you’d take the trouble to try to become acquainted with me. I’m not really as dumb as you think I am, to be going at you this way. It’s just that I haven’t got time to follow any traditional feminine tactics. Bayou City is too near. And I’m not always too conventional, anyway. I get bored with it—”

  “Dinah, cut it out,” I said uncomfortably.

  “I want to go with you.”

  “In God’s name, why?”

  “Well, to spring something entirely new, maybe it’s biological. But that’s not all of it. Jack! Will you get this car off the highway and stop the damned thing? I can’t talk to you while you’re driving. It’s like trying to talk to a machine. Get it off the road. Jack! Please!”

  I couldn’t argue with her and drive at the same time. There was no telling what she might do, and I was convinced by now that she was capable of anything. I saw a dirt road up ahead, leading off into the timber on the right, and slowed to swing into it. Maybe I could talk or shake some sense into her.

  Nineteen

  I stopped the car and looked around at her in the dim light of the instrument panel. She remained curled up in the corner of the seat, staring moodily at me with the long cigarette in her fingers like some precocious and highly ornamental child.

  “It’s all right. I’m not going to attack,” she said. “And you could probably defend yourself. I weigh a hundred and ten.”

  “Now, look, Dinah—” I began.

  “You can drop the fatherly attitude. You’re twenty-seven, and I’m twenty-four.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re acting like some nitwit high-school girl, and it doesn’t fit you.”

  “I know. I know,” she said impatiently. “For heaven’s sake, darling, I know the manual of basic maneuver just as well as the next one. I could sprain my ankle. And I just adore Hemingway. And I just love to putter around in a kitchen. And I don’t think for a minute that people really have to go to expensive places to have a good time, do you, dear? But, for the love of heaven, don’t you see there isn’t time for that? Can’t we dispense with that bird-with-a-broken-wing routine? Aren’t we old enough, and intelligent enough—”

  “But Dinah.” I objected, “what the devil are you after?” I might as well be dumb to the last. I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Now who’s stupid?”

  “All right,” I said. “But why? What for?”

  “Does there have to be a reason? Is it like geometry?”

  “But for God’s sake,” I protested. “Of all the men in the world, why some crooked ex-deputy sheriff on the run from the cops?”

  “Well, if you really think we have time for me to draw a diagram, it’s because I happen to be crazy about you. Or had you already managed to guess, from some subtle little hint I’ve given you?” She laughed, but there wasn’t much fun in it. “It’s just because I want you more than I ever wanted anybody or anything in my life. Right from the moment you walked into that living room which the cultured and sardonic Mr. Buford provides for me and his gun collection. Before you opened your mouth and started to talk, I thought you were just some magnificent thug—which wasn’t too bad in itself, for I do have all of a normal, wholesome girls interest in thugs. And then I began to see a lot of other things about you. Imagination. Daring. And excitement. Always excitement. Don’t you understand, Jack? To me you’re the world’s only defense against dullness. You’re the personification of excitement.”

  “The personification of horse saliva,” I said roughly. “Stop acting like a high-school girl. I told you it didn’t fit you. It’s not your type.”

  “I know it sounds idiotic when it’s put that badly,” she cried out. “I can’t explain it to you, not in a hurry like this. But, Jack, can’t you see we belong together? Can’t I go with you?”

  “No,” I said desperately, trying to think of something. I couldn’t just brush her off. I didn’t know how, in the first place, for I’d never had enough girls chasing me in my life to get any practice at it. And there was another and more important reason. She knew too much, and if she got furious there was no telling what she would do. “Look, you’ve got everything—”

  “Except you,” she interrupted.

  “—everything a girl would want. And you’d like to throw it all away and go chasing around over the country with some man on the lam. Do you have any idea at all what it’s like, hiding from the law?”

  “Can’t you see it doesn’t matter? I don’t care what it’s like.”

  “You think it’d just be exciting. Well, let me tell you. The thrill wears off fast.”

&n
bsp; She threw the cigarette out the window. “Wait, Jack,” she said softly. “You think I’m still some idiotic adolescent, just because I don’t like boredom. Well, I meant what I said about excitement, but running from the police wasn’t the only excitement I was referring to. I don’t appear to have much success in trying to put what I feel into words, so maybe I could show you.” She slid over a little in the seat and looked up at me with the gray eyes very large. “Jack. Look here at me. Just bend your head down—a little…”

  The next thing I was conscious of was a soft, wild mouth, and the importunate, tightening arms about my neck, and the knowledge that, even with somebody else on my mind, I couldn’t take too much of that. I got hold of myself and straightened up.

  She slid back on the seat a little with her shoulders slumped, not looking up. “All right,” she said. “You don’t have to draw me a picture.”

  “I’m sorry, Dinah,” I said. “Maybe we’d better go.”

  “Yes. But you could have told me, before I made a fool of myself. Is that where she is, in Bayou City?”

  “Where who is?”

  “Look. You’ve insulted me once. Don’t do it again.”

  “There’s not—” I began.

  “If you don’t mind, let’s go! I told you I was going to take you to Bayou City, and I’m going to!” She grew quieter then, and went on, “If you’ll slide over, I’ll drive—”

  If I’d had any sense I’d have stayed behind the wheel, but I was too relieved at getting started again to heed any warning signs. By the time we were out on the highway, though, I knew what I was in for.

  She was doing forty by the time she straightened out, and then I heard rubber scream, in high gear, and knew what she had meant by looking under the hood. The highway ran straight here for six or eight miles, and I sat back in the seat lighting a cigarette and watching the speedometer climb. I thought she would begin to flatten it off at ninety, but she didn’t. At a hundred and five I quit looking.

  It was a good road that would have been reasonably safe for eighty, in broad daylight, and there was very little traffic, but it was the cows I had the most trouble with They have a bad habit of finding holes in fences and wandering out onto the roads at night, and I wondered if anybody would be able to separate enough of us from the hamburger to make burial worth while in case we found one tonight.

  I thought that after the first blaze of anger burned itself out she might take it a little easier, but I was wrong. She apparently knew the road, for she cut it down before we came up to the turns and then gunned it again for traction as we started into them. Of course, it wasn’t all as fast as that first straightaway, but she managed to stay pretty close to thirty miles per hour above what would be considered an absolute limit for night driving. Seeing, in a little while, that it was going to be like this all the way to Bayou City, I began to worry about patrol cars. We’d run across one sooner or later, and I thought hopelessly about my idea of getting clear out of the country without being seen by anyone who might remember me. Of course, a speed cop would never remember us, I thought bitterly—just a big overgrown gorilla and a hundred-pound dream of a flame-headed doll doing ninety-five at night in a souped-up Lincoln. He’d never give us another thought.

  She slowed down going through Colston. I had to give her credit. She didn’t want to kill any defenseless bystanders. When we hit the city limit on the other side, the speedometer began winding up again.

  “All right, Dinah,” I said. “I’m impressed, and I know you can drive. So how about knocking it down a little before we pick up a cop?”

  “They can’t catch me with one of those Fords unless it’s souped up. And it won’t stay on the ground if it is.” She was right. We picked up a patrol car just after we hit the first of the seventy-five miles of four-lane pavement. He never had a chance. Why they didn’t set a road block for us, I’ll never know. Maybe they’d chased her before and had just decided the best plan was to leave her alone and let her kill herself without any help. I had thought we’d be in Bayou City around two in the morning. At a quarter of twelve we were rolling into the downtown section. Traffic was beginning to slacken off and people were going home from the late movies.

  “Is there any particular place you want out?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “Anywhere will do. I wish you wouldn’t go off angry, Dinah. I appreciate this, and I think you’re a nice guy.”

  “You’ve already told me what you think, if you’ll recall.”

  She pulled up at the curb. I got out, and then leaned back in the open window, holding out my hand. “Don’t go away like that, Dinah.”

  At first I thought she was going to ignore me. Then her face relaxed and she reached out and took it, her hand very soft and warm and almost lost in mine. “Good luck, Jack,” she said quietly. She started to say something else, but choked on it; the face turned away, her hand jerked back, and I got out of the window just as the tires shrieked. I stood on the curb watching her disappear down the street. It’s not too good, I thought. But what could she do? She was smart enough to know that after hauling me down here she was implicated in the thing herself, and that if she had any regard for her own safety she’d have to keep her mouth shut. There was one serious flaw in this, ‘however, and I knew it. She wasn’t exactly the overcautious type.

  I shook the worry off impatiently. I had other things to think about than that wild-haired girl. Luggage, for one, I thought. Of course, I could check into the hotel without any, but the room clerk would be more likely to remember me that way. From now on I had to be careful always to do nothing in the slightest degree odd or out of the ordinary. I couldn’t do anything that would make me stick in people’s memories.

  In the next block a chain drugstore was still open. I went in and bought a cheap overnight bag and some shaving gear and a toothbrush. Across the street at a newsstand I picked up two heavy magazines and an out-of-town Sunday paper. As I went back out into the street I snapped the bag open and slipped them inside. So far, so good, I thought, but I still don’t know what room she’s in. She’d be in bed now, and obviously I couldn’t ask the room clerk.

  I ducked into an all-night cafe and went back to the telephone. Looking up the number of the hotel, I dialed and waited.

  The fan didn’t work and it was stifling inside the booth. “State Hotel.” It was a girl’s voice. The operator was still on duty.

  “A Mrs. Crawford, please. Is she registered? This is United Airlines.”

  “Just one moment, please.” She paused. “Yes, sir. I’m ringing.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I waited, feeling the tightness growing inside my chest as I realized how near I was to her at last. How long had it been since I had let her out of the car in Colston?

  “Hello.” It was Doris.

  I wanted to cry out, “Darling, this is Jack!” Instead I asked smoothly, or as smoothly as I could, “Mrs. Crawford? This is United Airlines, the reservation desk.” Would she recognize my voice and not say anything wrong? “We’re very sorry, but so far we’ve been unable to confirm your reservation west of Salt Lake. I think we’ll have it in another hour or two, however. Shall we call you then, or wait till morning?”

  I heard a barely audible gasp and then she came through beautifully. “Thank you. Tomorrow morning will be all right. Just call me at Room Three-twelve here at the hotel.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I hung up.

  It was still hot in the street where the neon was beginning to die. A street-cleaning truck went by, swishing water into the gutters, and the traffic lights were flashing amber along the emptying canyon. Two yellow cabs stood idle at the stand up by the corner.

  “State Hotel,” I said, feeling the rasping of impatience.

  I didn’t have any name. I was nobody. I didn’t exist. I stood with the pen in my hand, sweating, poised above the blank white card while the man behind the desk regarded me with the supercilious detachment of all hotel clerks. It had never occurred to me until
this moment that if I was no longer Jack Marshall I must be somebody else, and that everybody had to have a name.

  I had to put down something. He was watching me. “J. K. Mallard, Nashville, Tenn.,” I scrawled across the card. He hit the bell.

  The boy would never leave. He turned on the light in the bath. He turned on a floor lamp. He looked inside a closet. What does he expect to find? I thought. Ten million boys have looked inside ten million closets searching for something they’ve never found. I took two quarters out of my pocket and tossed them in my hand. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “No,” I said, waiting.

  He went out and I heard his footsteps going away. Give him two more minutes, I thought, to get out of the corridor. The way he moves...I put the key in my pocket and went out and closed the door. My room was on the fifth floor, but I bypassed the elevators and walked down the two flights of stairs. I went along looking at the numbers on the doors, going softly on the carpet through the quiet, dim, impersonal tunnel that is the same identical corridor of a thousand different hotels. I walked past doors bearing the numbers 340 and 338; I was going the wrong way. I retraced my steps and started down the other way. I found 308, then 310. I stopped before the next door. I knocked softly, twice, and then once, the sound lost and absorbed in the empty, noise-proofed tunnel walled in by darkened cubicles of sleep. “Jack?” The whisper was very faint, barely reaching me through the door. “Yes,” I said.

  I heard the night latch click and the door opened a minute crack. “Give me just a minute,” she whispered. I waited. She doesn’t have a robe, I thought, and not even a nightgown unless she’s bought one. I pushed open the door, stepped quickly inside, and latched it. The room was dimly lighted by a single small bulb in the floor lamp in one corner, and she sat up in bed with the sheet clutched to her breast. The dark hair fell down across her shoulder and she was very beautiful and all at the same time a little afraid and full of yearning and inarticulate happiness as I came across the room. It’s the same with her as it is with me, I thought. We’ve both dreamed of this minute for all this time, and we don’t know—there isn’t any way we can know—what it will be like with us now. Would we ever be alone again? Had we escaped from Shevlin, or had we tied him to ourselves forever? I stood looking down at her, wanting to tell her how beautiful she was and what I felt, but no words would come. She forgot the sheet and lifted her arm up to me, letting it slide unnoticed from her breast and the cheap, peach-colored nightgown she had bought. I sat down on the side of the bed and gathered her up to me with my face down against her throat. And then when I raised my head and looked at her I knew that neither Shevlin nor anybody, nor anything, could ever reach us as long as we were together.