River Girl

  “Where are this guy’s clothes?” I called out, and looked behind me. Abbie was coming back up the stairs again. Apparently she’d run down when he floored me with the table.

  “Get his clothes,” I said.

  She was still waving the gin bottle as if she had forgotten she had it. “Jesus, I don’t know where his lousy clothes are,” she began, when suddenly one of the doors opened.

  It looked like a sequence out of a movie comedy. The door flew open apparently of its own volition and a pair of blue serge trousers sailed out to land in the middle of the hall. A shirt followed it, then two shoes at once, and a tie. Just for an instant, the white, staring face of a girl appeared around the frame and then ducked back inside and the door slammed. She hadn’t said a word. That’s odd, I was conscious of thinking; he’s trying to beat up this girl, but his clothes are in another girl’s room. He must not have been with this one at all.

  I picked up the clothes and tossed them to the boy. Now that I had time to get a good look at him, I saw he was a big blond kid who needed a haircut and that there wasn’t anything vicious about his face.

  “Put these on,” I said. “You going to behave yourself?”

  “All right,” he mumbled. “Ain’t no use fightin’ laws.”

  “You took a hell of a long time finding it out,” I grumbled, but glad he was getting some sense at last I could still hear the girl inside the room cursing obscenely and shrilly with the monotonous repetition of a phonograph record with the needle stuck. Afraid she would get him started again, I stepped over and stuck my head in through the smashed panel.

  “Pipe down,” I said. Then I saw her, and began to feel scared for the first time. She was sitting on the bed in a sleazy-looking kimono with her blonde hair rumpled as if she’d just got up, and if she was a day over sixteen, I was sixty.

  Six

  She saw me. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “Just stop that noise.”

  “Why, you jerk!”

  I heard the boy behind me and turned around. He was putting on his clothes, stuffing the shirttail inside his trousers. He had quit crying, but his face was white and trembling and I could still see that wild look in his eyes.

  “Move down the hall,” I said, trying to get him out of earshot of the girl. “Then put your shoes on. We’re going for a ride.”

  He looked for an instant as if he wanted to jump me again, then he thought better of it and walked down toward the stairway.

  “What are you going to do, Jack?” Abbie asked. “Ain’t you going to lock him up? My God, I don’t want the crazy ba—”

  “Yes,” I said roughly, still thinking about the girl. “I’m taking him out. Give him a chance to get his shoes on. I’ll be back here in about ten minutes, and while I’m gone don’t let that girl out of here! And don’t let anybody in.”

  “All right, but—”

  “Look,” I said. “Don’t let anybody in! And I mean anybody. Tell ‘em you’re dead, or the girls have gone to summer camp or the country club, or anything. But keep ‘em out.”

  I motioned for the big kid to go on ahead of me and we went out and got in the car. “Where we going?” he asked. “Jail,” I said, turning the car around. I could see his face begin to harden up again. “I reckon I’ll get worked over when you guys get me in there—for fighting a cop. I’ve heard about that.”

  “You won’t if you keep your big mouth shut,” I said.

  “You mean you ain’t going to tell ‘em?”

  “No,” I said. “Just keep clammed up and don’t say anything to anybody. Especially about that girl.”

  “I’ll get her yet,” he said, with that tight sing to his voice.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Look. That’s probably the stupidest thing in the world, making a statement like that. If anything ever happens to that girl, you’ll go to the chair for saying what you just said if anybody can prove it. What’d she do to you, anyway?”

  I shot a quick glance at him. His face was all screwed up as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to fight again or to cry. “She’s a lousy, chippy little—”

  “Never mind what she is. What did she do?”

  “Me and her was married about eight months ago. We run off. Then her old man caught us and had it un-nulled because she ain’t but fifteen.”

  “She’s what!”

  “She ain’t but fifteen. I told her I’d wait around till she was old enough to get married proper and they couldn’t un-null it on us, but she run off with another fella, an old guy twenty-five or thirty that didn’t want to marry her.”

  “You’re sure that’s how old she is?” I asked. “Yeah. Of course. Ain’t I knowed her since she was a little girl? I always figgered on marrying her.”

  “All right,” I said, easing through the traffic in the square. “You just keep your mouth shut and you won’t get in any trouble.”

  I turned him over to Cassieres and called Buford from the jail. “Lorraine back yet?” I asked when he answered. “She’s just coming in now. How’d you make out? Did you get it straightened out?”

  “Part of it,” I said. “Can you meet me in front of the jail? Right now?”

  “I’m on my way.” He hung up.

  In about two minutes his car pulled up behind mine. I went back and leaned in the window. “What is it?” he asked quietly, looking worried. “I’ve got the guy in there,” I said. “He’s just a kid about nineteen or twenty and he’s all right, but he’s off his rocker about the girl. I think I’ve got him shut up so he won’t do any talking. But here’s the thing. It’s that girl. She’s fifteen.”

  “Sweet Jesus! If Soames ever—”

  “I know. And it’s straight too. The kid says he’s known her all his life. We’ve got to get her out of there. You got any money on you?”

  “A hundred or so. Can you handle it all right?”

  “I think so. I’ll take her down the highway and put her on a bus.”

  “She’ll just wind up in another cat house somewhere else. So you know about not buying her a ticket into some other state, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m not going to buy her a ticket of any kind if I can help it. I think I know a way to handle it.”

  “So she won’t come back?”

  “There’s no way to guarantee that. If I work it right, though, she probably won’t.”

  He took out his wallet and handed me a couple of fifties and some twenties. “There’s a hundred and sixty. Jack, I’m glad there’s somebody around that office can use his head.”

  “Now’s as good a time to tell you as any other,” I said. “I’m quitting as soon as this stink blows over. I don’t like it.”

  “No,” he said. “You think it over. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I’ve already thought it over. But we haven’t got time to argue about it now. I’ve got to get back down there.”

  “That’s right. I’ll have that kid booked on a vag or something, and as soon as we get the girl out of town well tell him to beat it.”

  “O.K.”

  I went back to my car and drove down to Abbie Bell’s. The Negro girl came to the door, still looking scared. “Ain’t nobody heah,” she said, trying to close it. “Miss Abbie say ain’t nobody comin’ in heah.”

  “I know,” I said, pushing past her. Abbie heard me and came out of the parlor into the hall. She’d got her hair straightened out and had a drink in her hand this time instead of the empty bottle.

  “Come on in, Jack,” she said, and then to the maid, “Bring this man a Collins, Kate. And put some gin in it; he’s not a customer.”

  We went into the parlor and I closed the door- “God, I’m glad you got rid of that big gorilla, Jack,” she said.

  “Never mind. Where’s the girl?”

  “Up there in her room still bitching her head off. Did you ever hear such a foul-mouthed little bag in all your life?”

  “How did she get in here, Abbie?” I ask
ed curtly. “And how long ago?”

  She took a sip of her drink and looked at me with puzzled innocence. “What do you mean, how did she get in here, Jack? She just came in through the front door and said she was a hustler.”

  “Do you know how old she is?” I asked.

  “How old? Lord, no. Why should I?”

  “She’s fifteen.”

  “No! Is that all? She looks older than that.”

  “Yes,” I said sarcastically. “She looks sixteen.” She lit a cigarette and stared at me with amiable exasperation. “Well, what am I supposed to do, Jack? Send her back to get ripe? She—”

  “Didn’t you even ask her how old she was?”

  “Of course not. Why the hell should I? Look, Jack, this is a cat house, not a girls’ boarding school. Jesus, if they’re old enough to give it away, they’re old enough to sell—”

  I cut her off. “How long’s she been here?”

  “I don’t know. Three, four days.”

  “Well, she goes out. I’m going to take her clear out of the county and put her on a bus.”

  She looked at me and saw I meant it. “Oh, O.K. She’s a pain in the neck, anyway. Stays plastered about half the time, and she never makes any money. She’s so foul-mouthed even the roughnecks can’t stand her.”

  “Well, tell her to get her stuff packed.”

  “She hasn’t got any stuff. All she had when she came in here was the clothes she was wearing, and that’d better be the way she leaves, too.”

  “She had on a kimono a while ago.”

  “I gave her that to keep her from running around here naked. It stays. And, by the way,” she went on, “who pays for my door?”

  “You do, I guess.”

  “I’ll see Buford about it and get him to make that big ape—”

  “You’d better stay away from Buford. The way he feels right now, about that girl being in here, he’d just as soon shoot you.”

  She rattled the ice in her glass and shrugged. “God, men! What a bunch of muttonheads! Why don’t they let women write the laws?”

  “How did all that fuss start anyway?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, exactly. He was here all night, and as near as I can get it from Bernice—the girl he was with, the one who had his clothes—everything was all right and peaceful until this morning he opened the door and started out in the hall for something. I guess he must have seen this other little bag then—she must have been going down the hall. She’d been swacked to the ears all night in her room, and I guess he hadn’t seen her before. Anyway, Bernice said he let out a roar like a stuck pig and lit out down the hall, yelling at every jump.”

  The maid brought in my drink. Abbie went out, leaving the door open, and in a moment I could hear her going along the hall on the upper floor. There was the sound of shrill feminine argument and after a few minutes she came back.

  Picking up her drink from the table where she’d left it, she sat down, shaking her head. “She’ll be down in a minute. I’d tell you what she said you could do, but I can’t repeat it.”

  I took a sip of my drink. “And that big kid’s completely off his nut about her. How do you figure a thing like that?”

  “It’s men, I tell you. They should never let ‘em out alone.”

  In a minute the girl came down the stairs and stood in the doorway. She had combed her hair, which was dirty blonde, and had on a blue summer dress with a wide, dark-blue patent-leather belt and high-heeled white shoes with no stockings. She might have been pretty if she hadn’t shaved off all her eyebrows except a thin line and painted them on with black grease or something. She had rebuilt her mouth, too, the upper lip an exaggerated cupid’s bow that went a third of the way up to her nose. She looked at me with edged contempt.

  “Sit down,” I said. “We’ll be going in about half a minute.”

  “Who says we’ll go anywhere?”

  “I do,” I said, lighting a cigarette.

  “Why, you stupid jerk! You know what you can do?” She told me what I could do.

  Abbie smiled at me. “She’s a dear little thing, isn’t she?”

  I got up. “Come on, kid. Let’s go.”

  “And what makes you think I’ll go?”

  I shrugged with elaborate indifference. “You either go where I’m trying to take you or go to jail. And you won’t care for our matron. She’ll like you, but you won’t like her,” I said, making it all up. The matron at the jail was all right.

  “Oh.” She hesitated. “And where do you think you’re going to take me?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it on the way. You going?”

  “All right,” she said harshly. “It can’t be any worse than this dump.”

  We started out. “Good-by, dear,” Abbie said, still smiling sweetly. The girl stopped in the doorway and told her what she could do.

  “You are a dear,” Abbie said. The girl told her some more.

  “How about knocking it off before we get out in the street?” I said. “There might be men present.”

  We went on out to the car. I had it all pretty well thought out by this time. It was about seventy miles down to Colston, and if I remembered correctly, the New Orleans bus went through there around one in the afternoon. It was a little after eleven now. We could make it. I threw the coat with my wallet in it into the back seat and got in.

  The girl climbed in, crossing her legs with her dress up over her knees. “How about a cigarette?” I gave her one and we started out. “God, what a jerk burg this is,” she said. “Anything would beat this.”

  We skirted the back streets to hit the highway without going through town, and when we got out on the road I opened it up to about sixty. “Where’s your home?” I asked.

  She took a drag on the cigarette and threw it out the window. “I haven’t got any.”

  “You must have come from somewhere.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “I’m not trying to take you home.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Oh, you’ll like this place,” I said. “It’s just outside Bayou City, kind of like a farm, you might say. Only not a real farm. And it’s not a reform school, either. I mean, when you see it, reform school would be the last thing you’d ever think of. It’s run by a man and his wife, by the name of—oh, nuts, I know their name as well as I know my own. It’s—ah—Look in my coat, back there, and get my wallet out, will you? I think there’s a card with the address and their name and everything.”

  “It sounds like a crumby dump to me,” she said, but in a minute she turned around in the seat and lifted up the coat, slipping the wallet out. “Here,” she said. “Look and see if you don’t find a card in there,” I said. She looked through it. “I don’t see anything.”

  “I must have lost it, then,” I said. “Well, doesn’t matter. I know how to get there. Just throw the wallet back in the coat.”

  She put it back. “You don’t think I’d go to a joint like that, do you?”

  “Well, if you’d rather go to jail—” She was silent for a moment. “What do they do down there?” she asked.

  “Oh, it’s a nice place. They work in the vegetable gardens and milk the cows, things like that—lots of outdoor exercise. Have movies, too. Once a week, travelogues and science stuff, you know. The girls like it. No boys there, of course. It’s for girls only.”

  “Jeezus!”

  I didn’t say anything. After a while she turned to me with a smile and said, “You know, big boy, maybe you’re not such a sticky creep, after all. You have got a good car, and you’re kind of good-looking, in an ugly sort of way. Why don’t you and me just go on to Bayou City and go on a little party? I could show you a good time.”

  “Relax, kid. Put it away. I’ve been to parties.”

  “God, what a jerk!”

  She shut up after that and was silent the rest of the way to Colston. It was about five minutes of one when I pulled up and parked across the street from the bus
station.

  “Well, what are we going to do here?” she asked with that same insolence.

  “I thought I’d better phone ahead so they could get a ce—I mean a room ready for you. Probably have a phone in the bus station over there. You stick here in the car and I’ll be right back.”

  It was Saturday afternoon and cars were jammed in the streets and hordes of people roamed about. I took out the car keys and walked across to the bus station.

  “What time does the New Orleans bus go through?” I asked the girl at the ticket window.

  “Due here in about three minutes. And it’s only a five-minute stop. You want a ticket?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m expecting somebody.”

  I went back to the car. She looked at me without interest. “They didn’t have a pay phone. There’s a drugstore just around the next corner. I’ll try there.”

  “Well, don’t drop dead of anything. It would just kill me.”

  “I won’t be gone more than ten minutes,” I said. “Don’t you try to run off.”

  “Now that I’ve thought about it, you can drop dead.”

  I went around the corner to the drugstore and bought a pack of cigarettes, then went over and squeezed in at the fountain and ordered a lemon Coke. When the boy brought it I heard the big air horn of the bus down the street and knew it was on time. I drank very slowly and looked at the clock. It was four minutes past one. Then I heard the blasting roar of its exhaust in low gear, and saw it go past the corner, headed for New Orleans. I paid for the Coke and went back to the car.

  She was gone. I reached in for the coat, hoping she had left the wallet. It wasn’t a very good one, but it was my only one. It was still there. She’d just taken the money.

  I locked the car and went up the street to a beer joint, taking my own money out of my watch pocket and putting it back in the limp wallet. It was dim inside and I found a place at the bar. “A bottle of Bud,” I said, wondering why I always got these headaches in the afternoons.