Hill girl

  “I wonder if we’ll ever come back to Galveston again, Bob,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “We can come back.”

  “I don’t know whether I want to or not,” she said slowly. “Maybe we oughtn’t. Somehow it couldn’t ever be like this again, because nothing could be, and it would be better if we could always remember it like this.”

  I didn’t say anything and we turned from looking at the fire, and it was the way it had been that morning at the river when we couldn’t get enough of seeing each other, only this time there was no Lee or the thought of Lee, and after a long time I kissed her and there was a wildness in her like that of the sea running out there in the darkness, a wildness and a fierce urgency that was like nothing I had ever known before. The booming of the surf was a sound we would both hear as long as we lived.

  We left at noon the next day and as I drove the car across the causeway she was quiet. She looked back once and when she caught my glance on her she smiled a little but didn’t say anything.

  Twenty

  It was about ten P.M. When we arrived back in town. Our reception was anything but heartening. When we rolled up to the stop line going into the square, Grady Butler, one of the sheriff's deputies, flagged me. He came over and put his foot on the running board.

  “Bob,” he said, “I wish you and that wild-haired brother of yours would get together about this car.”

  “What’s the trouble?” I asked.

  “Trouble? Why, he comes in the office in the courthouse about three days ago and reports his car stolen. We get the license number and everything and put out pickup notices on it, and then I find out from somebody else that it’s not stolen at all and that you’ve got it. So I jump him about it and he says he don’t remember it, he must have been drunk.”

  “Was he?” I asked.

  “Drunk? Sure he was. He was drunk both times. I wish you birds would get together. There’s enough headaches in this business without guys like Lee Crane makin’ it worse.”

  “O.K.,” I said. “I’m taking the car back to him now and I’ll see if I can’t straighten him out. You haven’t seen him around the last hour or so, have you?”

  “No, thank God.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, he’s been on a ring-tailed tear for the past week and I get tired of keeping him out of trouble.”

  Somebody behind us began blasting his horn impatiently, so Butler stepped back and waved and we drove on. I was worried as we went out North Elm and didn’t feel any better when we pulled up in front of the old house and found it dark. There was nobody home at all and I wondered where Mary was.

  There wasn’t any use in wasting any more time tonight, I thought, so we drove on out to the farm. There was no light in the house across the road when we turned into the driveway, but I hadn’t expected any because it was past Jake’s and Helen’s bedtime.

  We stopped under the sweet-gum trees and I turned to Angelina and said, “This is it. We’re home.” She had been very quiet since we had left town. We went up on the porch and when I had opened the door I picked her up and carried her through.

  “I’ve been hoping all the way that you’d do that, Bob,” she said simply.

  I walked down the hall, still carrying her, feeling my way, and went into the back bedroom. It was hot inside the closed house and absolutely still and the blackness seemed to press in on us.

  “Hold me, Bob,” she whispered. “Don’t put me down. I’m scared.”

  I could feel her trembling. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I said.

  “I know it. I’m just nervous, I guess. But something scares me.”

  I sat down on the bed and held onto her for a while until the shaking subsided. Then I got up and opened the back door and raised the windows and lit, one of the lamps. She smiled at me, a little shamefaced.

  “I don’t know what was the matter. I must be crazy. I won’t be like that any more.”

  We went around to all the rooms so she could see them. She had seen the place before, of course, having lived all her life across the Black Creek bottom, but she’d never been inside it. She liked it and was pleased with the furniture I had collected, but there was something subdued in her manner.

  When we came to the kitchen she examined everything thoroughly, even looking at the cooking utensils and into the cupboards where the food was kept.

  “Don’t worry about the kitchen now,” I said. “Helen will be over in the morning and cook breakfast for us.” I had already told her about our arrangement, of course.

  I thought she looked at me queerly, but she didn’t say anything, and I forgot it. Mary and Lee were on my mind anyway and I was too preoccupied to notice much.

  The next morning when I opened my eyes it was just becoming light. It was too early to get up, at least for this time of year when the crops were laid by and there wasn’t much to do, so I started to go back to sleep when I noticed she wasn’t there with me. Then I heard stove lids clattering out in the kitchen.

  I crossed the dining-room linoleum on my bare feet and looked in. She was fully dressed and was building a fire in the cookstove. There was such deadly seriousness in her face and she was so oblivious to everything else that I grinned. She hadn’t even heard me get up.

  “What’s all this activity?” I asked. “Come on to bed and relax. Helen’ll be over pretty soon and cook breakfast for all of us.”

  She turned on me, bristling like an outraged porcupine. “Over my dead body, she will!” she said, banging one of the stove lids down on top of the wood in the firebox.

  “Keep your shirt on,” I said, without thinking. “Helen’s a good cook and she won’t poison us.”

  “Bob Crane, I don’t doubt but what she’s a good cook. She’s probably the greatest cook in the world, from the way you go on about her.” I couldn’t recall having even mentioned Helen’s name more than twice since we’d been married. “Maybe I’m not so good and I’ll poison us, but no woman is going to come in my kitchen and cook! I’ll burn the house down first.”

  “But, Christ,” I said, beginning to get sore, “what do you expect Jake and Helen to do? Go into town for their meals? They haven’t even got a cookstove over there in that house.”

  “You’re just deliberately trying to misunderstand me. I didn’t say they couldn’t eat here with us. I said she couldn’t run my kitchen. Of course they can eat with us. But if you think for a minute—”

  “I don’t think for a minute. I guess I haven’t thought for years,” I said, beginning to see that she was right, as usual. And she looked so small and lovely and belligerent drawn up there for battle I had to grin. I walked in and grabbed her up until her feet were off the floor and kissed her.

  “All right, Lady of the Manor, I’ll go right over now and murder Jake and Helen in their bed. What do we have for breakfast?”

  “Bacon and eggs. Do you love me, Bob? And hot biscuits.” Her voice was muffled down against my neck.

  “Of course I love you and hot biscuits. Now you take one that’s cooked right on top of that hot head of yours—”

  “I’m sorry,” she broke in. “I’m ashamed of myself. But the idea of anybody else coming in my house and cooking for you makes my blood boil.”

  I laughed. “I know, you little wildcat. Your blood has the lowest boiling point of any fluid known to science.”

  After I had shaved and dressed I went out on the front porch and saw Helen and Jake come out of the house and start across the road. They saw the Buick parked under the sweet-gum trees and must have noticed the smoke coming out of the kitchen stovepipe, for they turned around after a brief conference and went back inside. I was puzzled by this until they came out again in a few minutes and came on up to the front yard and I saw that Helen had changed into another dress and had put on stockings.

  They were glad to see me and we went on back to the dining room, where Angelina had breakfast on the table. She and Jake knew each other, of course, from Jake’
s foxhunting trips with Sam, but she and Helen hadn’t met before.

  Breakfast came off successfully. Jake and I did most of the talking at first, but gradually Angelina and Helen got over their polite sparring around and became a little warmer. It would be hard for anyone to resist Helen for long, with her simple and greathearted friendliness, and after Angelina had established her beachhead with several references to “my kitchen” and what she was going to do with the house and had decided that Helen was a very plain girl, pleasant-looking but homely and therefore nice, everything went along all right.

  There, was some embarrassment about the cooking arrangements, Jake and Helen insisting after breakfast that they didn’t feel they should impose on us now that I was married. I had to return Lee’s car, so I said I’d pick up a stove for their house while I was in town.

  I went in alone. Angelina said she wanted to unpack the bags and clean up the house, and I didn’t much want her to go anyway until I found out what was happening or had happened. It was a little before nine when I stopped under the big oaks in front of the house.

  My Ford was parked in the driveway, with one fender knocked off. It hadn’t been there last night. I went up on the porch and knocked, but no one came to the door. I knocked again and then tried the door. It wasn’t locked and I went in and walked down the dark hallway to the living room, hearing my footsteps echo in the silence.

  There were cigarette butts and ashes on the rug in the living room and one of the pillows on the sofa was half burned up and feathers were all over everything. There was a fruit jar sitting on the hearth in front of the fireplace.

  I knew then I wouldn’t find Mary there, so I went in all the bedrooms looking for Lee. In their room the bed looked as if somebody had been sleeping in it with his shoes on, and there was a girl’s coat over a chair, a coat I knew didn’t belong to Mary.

  I found him in the kitchen. He was sitting in a chair, asleep, with his head and shoulders slumped over the table. Near his arms there was a half-eaten sardine sandwich that a fly was buzzing around, and a cigarette butt that had burned a long charred furrow in the top of the table before it had gone out.

  I sat down across the table from him and shook him gently by the shoulder. “Wake up, Lee,” I said. “It’s Bob.” It took several shakes to stir him, and when he finally did come to he sat up shakily, pushing himself slowly up with his arms, and stared at me without saying anything. His eyes were shot with red and there were dark circles under them.

  “Hello,” I said.

  He looked at me stupidly for a minute. “You sonofabitch,” he said.

  I got up and went back into the living room and got the fruit jar. There was about an inch of whisky in the bottom of it and I poured it into a water glass and gave it to him. His hands were trembling badly but he got it up to his mouth and swallowed it and then coughed and retched. He shook his head, but when he looked up at me again I could see the stuff working on him. His eyes began to come alive a little.

  “Well,” he said, “if it isn’t Handsome himself. So you finally came back?”

  “Yes. I’m back.” I sat down again, across the table, and lit two cigarettes and handed one to him.

  “Where’d you leave her?” he demanded. He leaned across the table and took hold of my arm and I could feel him shaking.

  “Leave who?”

  “You know who I mean. Where’d you leave her? Jesus Christ, I’ve almost gone nuts the past ten days, thinking about you off in a hotel room somewhere with that.”

  “Take it easy,” I said, but he began talking louder. He looked like a madman.

  “Hell, haven’t you been with her? What’ve you been doing all this time? If you’ve been with her this long, what’s holding you up? I don’t see how you’d be able to walk.”

  I picked up the half-eaten sandwich off the table and shoved it into his mouth, all the way in, to the last quarter inch of it, and held my hand over his face. He choked and tried to pull back and hit at my arm, but I grabbed him by the collar with the other hand and held him still. The glass bounced off the table and broke on the floor.

  “Chew on that,” I said. “That’ll give you something to do with your goddamned mouth. And keep it shut.”

  My hands were shaking as badly as his had been now and I could feel the fluttering in my stomach and the dry stickiness in my mouth from my breath going through it. Take it easy. Take it easy. He’s drunk and doesn’t know what he’s doing. And how does he know what’s happened since that morning you left? How could he know?

  His eyes were fixed on my face, and it must have been tough to look at, for I could see the fear in them. I let go and he spat out the bread and took a deep breath and tried to push back from the table and get up, all at the same time, and he fell over backward with the chair under him. When he untangled himself he stood up and stared at me with his mouth open.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked, still trying to get his breath back. “You’re absolutely nuts.”

  “Pick up your chair, Lee,” I said. “And sit down.” I had hold of myself now. “Let’s just forget the whole thing and start over. I came to town to tell you and Mary that Angelina and I were back from our trip and to ask you to come out and see us.”

  “You mean you brought her back with you? She’s out there? You must be nuts.”

  “You still hungry? There’s some more of that sandwich,” I said.

  He sat down and stopped talking.

  “Where’s Mary?” I asked.

  “How the hell do I know where she is? At her grandmother’s, I guess.”

  “She’s left you?”

  “Yes. What of it?”

  “When?”

  “About two days after you left. She found out about that Angelina business somehow. I guess I spilled it when I was drunk. She was suspicious anyway, because she couldn’t quite swallow that story about you bein’ mixed up in it. I guess she always thought you were some kind of a fair-haired boy or something. Anyway, she found out the whole thing and said she was going to leave me. I’d been drinking and was still half nutty over this Angelina deal, so I told her I didn’t care, to go ahead.”

  “Didn’t you even go over there afterward and try to smooth things over?”

  His face was surly and he looked away. “It wouldn’t have done any good. Not after what happened. The second night her grandmother must have promoted her into coming back over to have a talk about it, because she did come back and she got here at the wrong time. I had called up an old girl I used to run around with at Rice, who was here visiting in town, and she was here when Mary came in. This babe had on one of Mary’s nightgowns and was drunker than a preacher’s bastard son, and in our bed, and you think I ought to go over and smooth things out, do you? Not that I give a damn. We were washed up anyway.”

  I got up to go. There wasn’t anything to be gained by sticking around. “I’m sorry, Lee,” I said.

  “Oh, to hell with it,” he said. “Did you bring my car back?”

  “Yes, it’s out there.” I dropped the keys on the table.

  “Well, that’s nice of you. I’m always glad to have my car when you’re not using it.”

  I didn’t say anything. When I started out of the kitchen, he said, “I almost decided to report it stolen, so you’d be picked up.”

  “You almost did?” I said, and went on out through the living room. When I looked back he was still sitting there at the table.

  Twenty-one

  The next week Lee was sentenced to sixty days in the county jail for drunk driving. He was going through the square at about forty late one night and crashed into a parked car and almost demolished it. It cost him nearly four hundred dollars to have the two cars repaired and he couldn’t get off with merely a fine this time. He’d been fined and warned too many times. He went to jail for the full two months.

  Mary had filed suit for divorce. I went to see her, knowing it wasn’t any of my business and that it wouldn’t do any good. She
listened to me patiently and never once told me not to butt in, but her mind was made up. She didn’t seem to blame Lee and she wasn’t bitter about it; it was just that she was through. I tried to get her to go around to the jail with me to see him, but she shook her head.

  We were sitting in a booth in Gordon’s café. She toyed with the two straws that came with the Cokes.

  “I’m sorry, Bob,” she said. “But what’s the use? The thing is over and done, so why prolong the agony? It just makes me feel bad to see him because I always get to thinking of how it could have been with us. It isn’t a lot of fun to look at him and think what a man he could have been if he’d ever grown up.”

  “I guess so,” I said. “I always had hopes that with you he’d settle down and quit raising so much hell, but I guess that never really happens, does it?”

  Her eyes were a little amused. “No, I don’t think there’s any such thing as a woman making a man out of anybody. You never heard of a man making a woman out of anybody, did you? She can take a man and make a civilized man—that is, a married one—out of him, but she has to have a man to begin with.”

  “Oh, I think he’s man enough to come out of it,” I protested. “I know he’s crazy as hell and wilder than a March hare, but I wouldn’t call him a weakling.”

  She shook her head with what seemed like exasperation. “There goes the professional male speaking again. A man is something that has a lot of hair on its chest, isn’t it, and a deep voice that rumbles down in its belly, and goes around trampling on its hairy brothers with cleats.“

  “O.K.,” I said. “Maybe you’re right.”

  When we got up to go she said something that puzzled me, and it wasn’t until long afterward that I figured it out.

  “Bob, why don’t you go away from this country? I don’t think Lee ever will.”