by Oakley Hall
“Listen,” he said. “Let’s talk about this later. I know how you feel, but you can’t do this. We shouldn’t talk about it when you feel like this.”
“I’m going to do it!” her voice rasped. Her throat tasted sour and dirty from the cigarette. “I’m going to do it!” she cried, and her voice rose and broke and she pounded her fist on the arm of the couch. It made a small, thudding sound. “I’m going to,” she said. “I’m going to.”
She saw Jack snatch up his hat from the floor, rise and take a step toward her. He stood there for a moment and she could see written on his face how this had hurt him. She could see fear and anger on his face and she whispered, “I’m going to,” leaning forward so that her face almost touched him, and saying it over and over again as he turned and half-ran out the door. And when the door slammed shut behind him she slumped down on the couch, sobbing and laughing and gasping for breath.
12
And she went through with it. Afterward she would wake up in the night sometimes, saying over and over again, “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” not waking from a dream, but from the remembrance of the smell of blood: her legs up on the bandaged racks and the animal screams that had come from her, and the smell of blood; a smell like no other, like everything ever smelled and nothing ever smelled, hot-smelling, salt-smelling, sweet-smelling; the Mexican doctor with the blood like paint on his rubber gloves and the steel, bloody hook in his hand. And the anesthetic that hadn’t worked and hadn’t worked and hadn’t worked again, so that she had to have her consciousness and her eyes when she would have cut them out with a dull knife not to have them; the pain, the dull, insistent pain, and the sharp, tearing, killing pain, and the basin. If only she had not had to see the basin. She had fainted when she had seen it, but the fainting had printed the sight with acid somewhere inside her.
Waking in the night with it she would ask herself why she hadn’t died then. She had asked herself that a thousand times; why hadn’t she died? Coming back to the border in the car, leaning her head against the glass, her head hitting against the glass of the window as her mother drove the car slowly over the rutted road, the road rutted so deeply that at each jolt she thought she would die, hoped she would die; why hadn’t she died?
It was her mother who saved her. It was her mother who stood by her, found out about the little Tijuana hospital where a Dr. Mendez would perform the operation for two hundred dollars, American; who took her down in the old Hudson and held her hand through the nightmare of pain and blood and anesthetic that hadn’t worked, who brushed the flies away from her eyes when she thought she would go insane because of the flies, whose hand was the thin, bony grip of reality that held hers and pulled her back when she was on the edge. When she thought she would die, had no reason not to die, wanted to die, it was her mother who fought with her and talked and pleaded and ordered her back to life, knowing when to use harshness, when kindness, and who nursed her night and day until fatigue and worry were painted on her face with coarse, cruel brushstrokes.
Then came the weak, lucid feeling when pain and all emotion had dropped from her body like discarded bandages, and only remorse remained. Remorse over the loss of the child, the killing of the child, swept over her and beat into her head until she thought she could not bear the realization of what she had done. And then remorse too was gone, and there was nothing except remembered pain and grief; those hours, so long, when nothing would stay on her mind, as at first nothing would stay on her stomach, when there was nothing to do but stare at the outline of her body in the bed, and the tapestry chair and the white bureau and the mirror. And slowly what at first had been only a vaguely aching lack gathered shape and crystalized. She still loved Jack. She did not want to give him up.
And Jack had come to her.
She heard him first arguing and pleading with her mother. His voice sounded louder, nearer, and then he had come, huge, through the doorway. His shoulders were slumped, the flesh of his face was tight over the bone, his cheeks dark with beard. She called out to him.
And when she heard her voice say his name and saw his eyes, she was sure he loved her with everything that was decent in him. She was sure of it, and it was what she wanted desperately now; he loved her with everything in him that was not cursed by V. With an awkward stumbling motion his arms were around her and his rough, tobacco-smelling, liquor-smelling face was against hers. He whispered words she could not understand into her ear and suddenly she found that it was she who was comforting him, trying to give him strength, and it was she who asked him to forgive.
She saw her mother standing in the doorway. Her hands were working in her apron and her face was twisted savagely. She was screaming at Gene, but Jack was talking hoarsely and Gene looked down and smoothed his hair, saying over and over again that it would be all right; it was all right and they could have another baby as soon as she was well; and when she looked up again her mother was gone.
Jack was half-kneeling beside the bed and half-lying on it. His heavy arm hurt where it pressed against her chest, but she did not try to move it. “You need me, don’t you, Jack?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“You needed me and I failed you, didn’t I? But I won’t again.”
“No,” he said thickly.
“Yes, I did. But I won’t again.”
“You didn’t. That’s not it.”
“You married me to get away from her, didn’t you? No, I don’t mean that like it sounds. I know you love me. But you wanted someone to keep you away from her because she’s a devil, didn’t you?”
He raised his head and looked down at her. His forehead was creased. He moistened his lips as though he were going to speak, but he did not, and she pressed her fingertips on his mouth.
“I know now,” she went on. “It doesn’t hurt me, Jack. I’m proud.”
He stared down at her, frowning, pain deep in his eyes, as though she did not understand. But she knew she did and when she took her fingers from his lips he did not say anything, and she smoothed her hand over his crumpled black hair, sobbing now, but smiling and talking to him.
13
The winter of 1947 was a bad one in San Diego. It was cold and it rained so much, and Coronado, where they finally found a furnished apartment, was a bleak, cheerless place when it rained.
Gene did not go back to work. She was weak and half-sick, her appetite was gone and she lost weight, but she was happy. She felt a new strength and she felt she had a new relationship with Jack. He needed her now, and he was looking forward to the child they would have as soon as she was well. But she did not seem to be getting well very quickly.
Hogan and Griffith had transferred Jack to the new Mission Bay airport, where he was grade foreman. It was a much bigger job than he had had working under Smitty, and the pay was better. He began talking about taking some correspondence engineering courses, and one night they wrote for a brochure.
Jack looked older now, and Gene, who was not yet twenty-eight, could mark gray hairs at her temples when she looked in the mirror. The gray hairs were new, and her eyes seemed to have sunk into her head, eyes that hurt with constant headaches.
Her health did not seem to be improving at all, and once after she had had to spend a week in bed she went to Tijuana, to see Dr. Mendez. He assured her that nothing was wrong, that it was only after-effects and shock, and that it would soon pass. But it did not pass, and a month later she went back again. This time she could not find Dr. Mendez and there was no one about who could speak English.
And finally she had the pains, and after a night spent crying with fear, she made up her mind to go to a doctor in San Diego. She did not tell Jack. She was afraid of worrying him and he was working hard lately. He no longer had time even to come home for lunch. She knew he was trying his best to make good in the new job, his face had a constant strained, harried look, and she did not want to worry him when there might be no reason for it. She went to the general practitioner who had been her mother’s doct
or for as long as she could remember, and he sent her to a Dr. Phillips in the Medical-Dental Building—a specialist.
The visit to Dr. Phillips’ office was now only a haze of horror in her mind. Although she had seen him since, she remembered him only as the stocky, hearty man with freckled hands, in a spotless white tunic that buttoned down one shoulder, whom she had seen that day. She had been too shocked to cry, too terrified to think, too dazed at first to understand, and all she could remember was the pity in his eyes when he told her she had an infection. She would have to have an operation soon. She would never be able to have a baby.
She did not take a taxi home. She walked slowly down to the ferry slip and waited for the ferry to bump and fit itself in among the creaking piles. Aboard she still did not cry. The tears seemed dried up in her. She climbed to the top deck and stood clinging to the rail, feeling the salt wind blow the hair around her head. The water of the bay was a deep blue, speckled with gold motes of sun. Lean, gray, numbered prows leered at her as the ferry passed three destroyers herded together, and porpoises wove in and out of the water beside the ferry in an endless procession of plump black bodies and triangular fins.
Her hands were clenched fiercely on the wet, sticky rail. With revulsion she looked down at the body that was outlined against the wind beneath her dress. What had they done to it? A life torn and hacked apart in it, the only reason she, a woman, had for being, bludgeoned to death in it; diseased, now the disease to be hacked out like the other. She retched weakly as she looked down at herself. What had they done to her? Inside her the flesh was slashed and mutilated and diseased; it was her body, and she was chained to it like a dog to a fence-post, until she died.
At home she lay down on the bed without removing her hat. She opened her mouth wide, straining her jaws, expecting that now the tears would come. But nothing came. Her eyes felt as though they had been dipped in sand.
She lay for a long time without moving, waiting for Jack to come home. She had to tell him. How could she tell him? Why hadn’t she died? A dry sob convulsed her, and inside her the pain cut sharply.
When the phone began to ring she opened her eyes to the dark whiteness of the pillow. She could not loosen her clenched fists. The phone rang again. She let it ring still again before slowly, wearily, she raised her body from the bed and went in to answer it.
Part V
JACK
1
When Jack had been in his early twenties the relationship between men and women seemed very simple. It was not something he had ever sat down and thought through. In a way it had just developed, and it seemed, among his friends, to be pretty generally accepted.
Men wanted to go to bed with women, and women, in turn, wanted to go to bed with men. But for some reason, perhaps because of the way they were made, women had to put up a fight. So the man’s part was the attack, the woman’s was defense. It was a struggle, with the odds on the side of the man; he realized that. But there was nothing really lost either way. If the woman lost, well, she enjoyed it as much as he did, because, underneath, it was what she had really wanted too. And if he should lose he had only to look elsewhere.
Before he left the CCC camp he had never had many opportunities to play the game. He had gone to whores a few times, but he had not liked that much; it was as though you were going deer hunting and there was some way you could pay the deer to walk up near you where you could shoot it. But in Fresno there had been a waitress at the café around the corner from his rooming house, where he and Ben ate every night. She had been fat and much older than he, but she was his first real conquest, and he learned much from her. From her he learned about the second struggle.
The second struggle came always after the man had won the first one, and in this the positions were reversed; the man went on the defensive and the woman pursued him. The waitress had talked about getting married, and he had been so frightened he had almost left town. But after the original fright was over he had known intuitively how to handle her. At first he had stayed away, and when that hadn’t worked and she had come up to his room once, and another time bothered his landlady, he got to talking to a truck driver who ate in the same café, and discovered that the truck driver had been sleeping with the waitress too. He picked a fight with her on this count, and that had finished it.
Then there were others; a girl who worked in the cannery, a redheaded girl named Mary Ann MacNicoll, whose father owned a big furniture store and who had gone for a while to the college at Fresno, Peggy, the waitress at the Hitching Post, and Ruth Adams. It was a simple and exciting game with one goal and no rules that he knew of, and he was good at it. He played it with a great many women in Fresno and Bakersfield and Visalia and Porterville; he nearly always won, and he always got out of it when they wanted to hang onto him, or tried to get him to marry them. He was attractive to women and he knew it, he liked playing the game and he didn’t want to get married and drop out of it for a long time yet.
The fact that V was a virgin did not seem to exempt her from playing the game. It meant that he would be the first, but someone had to be the first. He had seen her a great many times around the Baird ranch before he had a chance to talk to her; he would look up to see her sitting motionless on the copper-colored horse on the top of the far hill behind the ranch buildings, watching him. She would watch him for a long time, sitting up very straight on the horse, and then when he would look up again she would have disappeared, as suddenly as she had come. She was blonde, young, and she had a nice build, and he liked the way she sat on the horse, but he had never seen her closely until she rode down into the bottom one day when her father was talking to him, and that night after work he got her to let him ride the horse.
She was standing at the corral gate when he returned. His legs were stiff and his hands ached, because Tony had got the bit in his teeth and had run all the way back to the corral. Tony was panting and sweating and V grabbed the reins from him when he dismounted. Her face was flushed. Her hair was done up in two short braids tied with blue ribbons, that swung out when she jerked her head toward him.
“You know a lot about horses!” she said fiercely.
“Boy, you’ve sure got him spoilt,” Jack said. She pulled on the reins and Tony clopped past him. He stepped over to the fence and leaned on it, grinning, as V threw a blanket over Tony’s back and walked him around the corral. She looked at him angrily from time to time. Her levis were tight over her bottom, the legs rolled up around her brown ankles.
“Aren’t you going to give him his bottle?” he said.
“Shut up!”
He watched her, leaning against the fence, till she had rubbed Tony down and led him into his stall. When she walked out toward him, he said pleasantly, “That’s a good horse, V.”
She said nothing, sulkily wiping her hands on the seat of her levis. Jack slapped at a fly. “How come you want to spoil him like that?” he said.
“Oh, shut up!” V said. She started past him, but he grabbed her arm, swung her around and kissed her, hard. She relaxed for a moment, as though she didn’t know what he was doing, but then she stamped on his foot. When he released her arm she hit him in the face.
The blow made his eyes water. He put his hand to his mouth and looked at it to see if he was bleeding. “Oh…” V said.
“You pack a mean right.”
Her eyes narrowed and she rubbed her hand roughly across her lips. “You get out of here!” she cried. “I ought to tell my father on you.”
“Okay, okay,” Jack said. “Just don’t hit me again.” He pretended to be staggering as he went around the shed to his car, and when he drove past the corral she was still standing in the gateway, her fists doubled up on her hips and her legs braced apart, glaring at him. He could see her breasts tight under her white shirt. He waved at her and laughed to himself, racing the car around the jutting corner of the house.
He didn’t think she’d stay mad. The next day he brought her a box of candy and apologized, and whe
n he had finished dozing the stumps in the bottom she invited him up to the house for iced tea with her and Baird. And when he had the D-4 in the orchard clearing the irrigation ditches, she began packing her lunch and coming down to eat with him. They ate together every day.
One day they were sitting in the shade, leaning against the cat with their feet in the sun, teasing the glass-eyed dog. After a while Jack slid down and covered his face with his cap, listening to V chatter about Tony and about a Mr. Denton. But finally she stopped, and after a pause, said in a low voice, “Why did you kiss me that day, Jack?”
Without moving he peered out at her from under the brim of his cap. Her face was turned down and she was sitting with her legs crossed, intent on plucking out blades of grass, one by one, and arranging them in a pattern on the blue cloth of her knee. “Because I wanted to,” he said.
“Do you always do what you want to?”
“Well, sometimes I don’t get away with it.”
He saw her frown. He pushed his cap back from his face and sat up. He said seriously, “I didn’t get away with that.”
She brushed the blades of grass from her knee and wiped her hands together, still frowning. When she looked up at him there was an embarrassed smile on her lips. Jack put his hand on her arm and smoothed the hairs on her wrist, knowing that she wanted to be kissed again, but that it would be best not to kiss her yet.
Her arm was warm from the sun, brown, the hairs golden. He stroked her forearm gently, ready to take his hand away if she moved. But she let it stay.
Finally he stopped and they both leaned back against the side of the cat. Their shoulders touched. The sun was hot on their legs, and they said nothing more until it was time for Jack to go to work. When he had started the cat and climbed into the seat, V walked slowly away through the trees toward the house. The dog followed her, barking and jumping at her legs. Jack saw her put her hand down to pat its head as he swung the D-4 around toward the irrigation ditch.