“They?” I said.
“Dorry and his new wife. I forgot to tell that. News passes Blizzard about four times before it ever lights. News happens in Pittsburg, say. All right. It gets radioed, passing right over us to Los Angeles or Frisco. All right. They put the Los Angeles and Frisco papers into the airplane and they pass right over us, going east now to Phoenix. Then they put the papers onto the fast train and the news passes us again, going west at sixty miles an hour at two A. M. And then the papers come back east on the local, and we get a chance to read them. Matt Lewis showed me the paper, about the wedding, on Tuesday. ‘You reckon this is the same Darrel House?’ he says. ‘Is the gal rich?’ I says. ‘She’s from Pittsburg,’ Matt says. ‘Then that’s the one,’ I says.
“So they were all out of the cars, stretching their legs like they do. You know these pullman trains. Folks that have lived together for four days. All know one another like a family: the millionaire, the movie queen, the bride and groom with rice still in their hair like as not. He still never looked a day more than thirty, with this new wife holding to him with her face lowered, and the heads of them other passengers turning when they passed, the heads of the old folks remembering their honeymoons too, and of the bachelors too, thinking maybe a few of the finest thoughts they ever think about this world and the bride thinking a little too, maybe, shrinking against her husband and holding him and thinking enough to imagine herself walking along there nekkid and probably she wouldn’t take eleven dollars or even fifteen for the privilege. They come on too, with the other passengers that would come up and pass the stretcher and glance at it and then kind of pause like a house-owner that finds a dead dog or maybe a queer-shaped piece of wood at the corner, and go on.”
“Did they go on, too?”
“That’s right. They come up and looked at her, with the gal kind of shrinking off against her husband and holding him, with her eyes wide, and Dorry looking down at her and going on, and she—she couldn’t move anything except her eyes then—turning her eyes to follow them, because she seen the rice in their hair too by then. I guess she had maybe thought all the time until then that he would get off the train and come to her. She thought he would look like he had when she saw him last, and she thought that she would look like she had when he saw her first. And so when she saw him and saw the gal and smelt the rice, all she could do was move her eyes. Or maybe she didn’t know him at all. I don’t know.”
“But he,” I said. “What did he say?”
“Nothing. I don’t reckon he recognized me. There was a lot of folks there, and I didn’t happen to be up in front. I don’t guess he saw me a-tall.”
“I mean, when he saw her.”
“He didn’t know her. Because he didn’t expect to see her there. You take your own brother and see him somewhere you don’t expect to, where it never occurred to your wildest dream he would be, and you wouldn’t know him. Let alone if he has went and aged forty years on you in ten winters. You got to be suspicious of folks to recognize them at a glance wherever you see them. And he wasn’t suspicious of her. That was her trouble. But it didn’t last long.”
“What didn’t last long?”
“Her trouble. When they took her off the train at Los Angeles she was dead. Then it was her husband’s trouble. Ours, too. She stayed in the morgue two days, because when he went and looked at her, he didn’t believe it was her. We had to telegraph back and forth four times before he would believe it was her. Me and Matt Lewis paid for the telegrams, too. He was busy and forgot to pay for them, I guess.”
“You must still have had some of the money the husband sent you to fool her with,” I said.
The Mail Rider chewed. “She was alive when he was sending that money,” he said. “That was different.” He spat carefully. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth.
“Have you got any Indian blood?” I said.
“Indian blood?”
“You talk so little. So seldom.”
“Oh, sure. I have some Indian blood. My name used to be Sitting Bull.”
“Used to be?”
“Sure. I got killed one day a while back. Didn’t you read it in the paper?”
Two Dollar Wife
“Ain’t she never going to be ready!” Maxwell Johns stared at himself in the mirror. He watched himself light a cigarette and snap the match backward over his shoulder. It struck the hearth and bounced, still burning, toward the rug.
“What the hell do I care if it burns the damn dump down!” he snarled, striding up and down the garish parlor of the Houston home. He stared at his reflection again—slim young body in evening clothes, smooth dark hair, smooth white face. He could hear, in the room overhead, Doris Houston and her mother shrieking at each other.
“Listen at ’em squall!” he grunted. “You’d think it was a knock-down-and-drag-out going on instead of a flounce getting into her duds. Oh, hell! Their brains are fuzzy as the cotton we grow!”
A colored maid entered the room and puttered about a moment, her vast backside billowing like a high wave under oil. She glanced at Maxwell and sniffed her way out of the room.
The screams above reached a crescendo. Then he heard rushing feet, eager and swift—a bright eager clatter, young and evanescent.
A final screech from above seemed to shoot Doris Houston into the room like a pip squeezed from an orange. She was thin as a dragonfly, honey-haired, with long coltish legs. Her small face was alternate patches of dead white and savage red.
She carried a fur coat over her arm and held onto one shoulder of her dress with the other hand. The other shoulder, with a dangling strap, had slipped far down.
Doris shrugged the gown back into place and mumbled between her red lips. A needle glinted between her white teeth, the gossamer thread floating out as she flung the coat down and whirled her back to Maxwell. “Here, Unconscious, sew me up!” he interpreted her mumbled words.
“Good God, I just sewed you into it night before last!” Maxwell growled. “And I sewed you into it Christmas Eve, and I sewed—”
“Aw, dry up!” said Doris. “You did your share of tearing it off of me! Sew it good this time, and let it stay sewed!”
He sewed it, muttering to himself, with long, savage stitches like a boy sewing the ripped cover of a baseball. He snapped the thread, juggled the needle from one hand to the other for a moment and then thrust it carelessly into the seat cover of a chair.
Doris shrugged the strap into place with a wriggle and reached for her coat. Outside a motor horn brayed, “Here they are!” she snapped. “Come on!”
Again feet sounded on the stairs—like lumps of half-baked dough slopping off a table. Mrs. Houston thrust her frizzled hair and her diamonds into the room.
“Doris!” she shrieked. “Where are you going tonight? Maxwell, don’t you dare let Doris stay out till all hours again like she did Christmas Eve! I don’t care if it is New Year’s! Do you hear? Doris, you come home—”
“All right! All right!” squawked Doris without looking back. “Come on, Unconscious!”
“Get in!” barked Walter Mitchell, driver of the car. “Get in back, Doris, damn it! Lucille, get your legs outa my lap! How the hell you expect me to drive?”
As the car ripped through the outer fringe of the town, a second car, also containing two couples, turned in from a side road. The drivers blatted horns at each other in salute. Side by side they swerved into the straight road that led past the Country Club. They raced, roaring, rocking—sixty—seventy—seventy-five, hub brushing hub, outer wheels on the rims of the road. Behind the steering wheels glowered two almost identical faces—barbered, young, grim.
Far ahead gleamed the white gates of the Country Club. “You better slow down!” shrieked Doris.
“Slow down, hell!” growled Mitchell, foot and accelerator both flat on the floorboards.
The other car drew ahead, horn blatting derisively, voices squalling meaningless gibberish. Mitchell swore under his breath.
Scre
-e-e-e-each!
The lead car took the turn on two wheels, leaped, bucked, careened wildly and shot up the drive. Mitchell slammed his throttle shut and drifted on down the dark road. A mile from the Country Club he ground the car to a stop, switched off engine and lights and pulled a flask from his pocket.
“Let’s have a drink!” he grunted, proffering the flask.
“I don’t want to stop here,” Doris said. “I want to go to the Club.”
“Don’t you want a drink?” asked Mitchell.
“No. I don’t want a drink, either. I want to go to the Club.”
“Don’t pay any attention to her,” said Maxwell. “If anybody comes along I’ll show ’em the license.”
A month before, just after Maxwell had been suspended from Sewanee, Mitchell had dared Doris and him to get married. Maxwell had borrowed two dollars from the Negro janitor at the Cotton Exchange, where Max “worked” in his father’s office, and they had driven a hundred miles and bought a license. Then Doris changed her mind. Maxwell still carried the license in his pocket, now a little smeary from moisture and friction.
Lucille shrieked with laughter.
“Max, you behave yourself!” squawked Doris. “Take your hands away!”
“Here, give me the license,” said Walter, “I’ll tie it on the radiator. Then they won’t even have to get out of the car to look at it.”
“No you won’t!” Doris cried.
“What you got to say about it?” demanded Walter. “Max was the one that paid two dollars for it—not you.”
“I don’t care! It’s got my name on it!”
“Gimme my two dollars back and you can have it,” said Maxwell.
“I haven’t got two dollars. You take me back to the Club, Walter Mitchell!”
“I’ll give you two bucks for it, Max,” said Walter.
“Okay,” agreed Maxwell, putting his hand to his coat. Doris flung herself at him.
“No you don’t!” she cried. “I’m going to tell daddy on you!”
“What do you care?” protested Walter. “I’m going to scratch out yours and Max’s names and put mine and Lucille’s in. We’re liable to need it!”
“I don’t care! Mine will still be on it and it will be bigamy.”
“You mean incest, honey,” Lucille said.
“I don’t care what I mean. I’m going back to the Club!”
“Are you?” Walter said. “Tell them we’ll be there after while.” He handed Maxwell the flask.
Doris banged the door open and jumped out.
“Hey, wait!” Walter cried. “I didn’t—”
Already they could hear Doris’ spike heels hitting the road hard. Walter turned the car.
“You better get out and walk behind her,” he told Maxwell. “You left home with her. Get her to the Club, anyway. It ain’t far—not even a mile, hardly.”
“Watch where you’re going!” yelped Maxwell. “Here comes a car behind us!”
Walter drew aside and flashed his spot on the other car as it passed.
“It’s Hap White!” shrieked Lucille, craning her neck. “He’s got that Princeton man, Jornstadt, with him—the handsome one all the girls are crazy about. He’s from Minnesota and is visiting his aunt in town.”
The other car ground to a halt beside Doris. The door opened. She got in.
“The little snake!” shrilled Lucille. “I bet she knew Jornstadt was in that car. I bet she made a date with Hap White to pick her up.”
Walter Mitchell chuckled maliciously. “ ‘There goes my girl—’ ” he hummed.
Maxwell swore savagely under his breath.
There were already five in the other car. Doris sat on Jornstadt’s lap. He could feel the warmth and the rounded softness of her legs. He held her steady drawing her back against him. Doris wriggled slightly and his arm tightened.
Jornstadt drew a deep breath freighted with the perfume of the honey-colored hair. His arm tightened still more.
A moment later Mitchell’s car roared past.
Lurking between two parked cars, Walter and Maxwell watched the six from Hap White’s car enter the club house. The group [passed] the girls in a bee-like clot around the tall Princeton man, whose beautifully ridged head towered over them. The blaring music seemed to be a triumphant carpet spread for him, derisive and salutant.
Walter handed his almost empty flask to Maxwell. Max tilted it up.
“I know a good place for that Princeton guy,” he said, wiping his lips.
“Huh?”
“The morgue,” said Max.
“Gonna dance?” asked Walter.
“Hell, no! Let’s go to the cloak room. Oughta be a crap game in there.”
There was. Above the kneeling ring of tense heads and shoulders, they saw the Princeton man, Jornstadt, and Hap White, a fat youth with a cherubic face and a fawning manner. They were drinking, turn about, from a thick tumbler in which a darky poured corn from a Coca-Cola bottle. Hap waved a greeting. “Hi-yi, boy,” he addressed Max. “Little family trouble?”
“Nope,” said Maxwell evenly. “Gimme a drink.”
Max and Walter watched the crap game. Hap and Jornstadt strolled out, the music squalling briefly through the opening and closing door. Around the kneeling ring droned monotonous voices.
“E-eleven! Shoot four bits.”
“You’re faded! Snake eyes! Let the eight bits ride?”
“C’mon, Little Joe!”
“Ninety days in the calaboose! Let it ride!”
The bottle went around. The door began banging open and shut. The cloak room became crowded, murky with cigarette smoke. The music had stopped.
Suddenly pandemonium broke loose: the rising wail of a fire siren, the shrieks of whistles from the cotton gins scattered about the countryside, the crack of pistols and rifles and the duller boom of shotguns. On the veranda girls shrieked and giggled.
“Happy New Year!” said Walter viciously. Max glared at him, shucked off his coat and ripped his collar open.
“Lemme in that game!” he snarled.
A tall man with beautifully ridged hair had just sauntered past the open door. On his arm hung a lithe girl with honey-colored hair.
By three o’clock, Maxwell had won a hundred and forty dollars and broken the game. One by one the gamblers arose, stiffly, like people who have been asleep. The music was still droning along but the cloak room was full of flapping overcoat sleeves. Youths adjusted their ties, smoothed their already patent-leather-smooth hair.
“Is it over?” asked Maxwell.
“Damn near it!” grunted Walter.
Fat Hap White sidled in through the door. Behind him was Jornstadt, his face flushed, hesitant.
“That Princeton guy sure can put away the likker,” grunted a voice behind Max. “He’s still got a quart flask of prime stuff, too.”
Hap White eased up beside Maxwell, speaking in a low voice.
“That license you got, Max,” he hesitated.
Maxwell gave him a cold look. “What license?’
Hap dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. “You know, that marriage license for you and Doris. We—we want to buy it, since you won’t be needing it yourself.”
“I ain’t selling, and it wouldn’t do you any good if you did have it. It’s got the names already written in it.”
“We can fix that,” wheedled Hap. “It’s easy, Max. Johns—Jornstadt. See? They look alike on paper and there wouldn’t anybody expect a county clerk to be able to write so you could read it. See?”
“Yes, I see,” said Maxwell quietly, very quietly.
“It’s all right with Doris,” urged Hap. “Look, here’s a note she sent.”
Max read the unsigned scrawl in Doris’ childish hand: “You leave me be, you old bigamist!” He scowled blackly.
“What say, Max?” persisted Hap.
Maxwell’s lean jaw set grimly.
“No, I won’t sell it; but I’ll shoot Jornstadt for it—the license against his
flask.”
“Aw, come on, Max,” protested Hap, “Jornstadt ain’t no crap shooter. He’s a Northerner. He don’t even know how to handle the dice.”
“Best two out of three, high dice,” said Max. “Take it or leave it.”
Hap pattered over to Jornstadt, muttered a few words. The Princeton man protested, then agreed.
“All right,” said Hap. “Here’s the flask. Put the license beside it on the floor.”
“Where’s the dice?” asked Maxwell. “Who’s got some dice? Peter, gimme that set of yours.”
The darky rolled the whites of his eyes. “My dice—they ain’t—they—”
“Shut up and give them here!” blazed Maxwell. “We won’t hurt ’em. C’mon!”
Peter fished them from his pocket.
“Here, lemme show you, Jornstadt,” exclaimed Hap White.
Jornstadt handled the dice awkwardly. He fumbled them onto the floor. A five and a four showed.
“Nine!” chortled Hap. “That’s a good roll!”
It was plenty good. The best Max could get was three and four—seven. The first round went to Jornstadt.
Max won the next one, however, nine against five. He clicked the dice together.
“Shall I go on shootin’?” he asked Jornstadt.
The Princeton man looked inquiringly at Hap White.
“Sure, it’s all right,” said Hap. “Let him shoot first.”
Clickety-click! The dice tumbled from Maxwell’s hand, rolled over and over and stopped.
“Whoopeee!” cheered Walter Mitchell under his breath. “Two fives! That’s a winner!”
“Any use for me to shoot?” asked Jornstadt.
“Sure, take your roll,” said Hap gloomily, “but you ain’t got no more chance than a female in a frat house.”
Jornstadt fumbled the dice awkwardly from hand to hand. He tossed them out. A five showed. The other cube spun dizzily on a corner for a spine-crawling moment and settled. Maxwell stared at the six black dots winking at him like spotty-eyed devils.