by Oakley Hall
The next day at noon he parked the cat a little more in the sun, whistling as he cut the engine and climbed out of the seat. V came down the hill, carrying her lunch in a paper bag. She hadn’t brought the dog with her, and she wore her levis and a fresh white shirt with the sleeves rolled up on her brown arms. Sitting down beside him, she opened the sack and took out two waxed-paper-wrapped sandwiches.
The day was hot and the trees left checkerboards of brightness and shadow on the cool ground. They didn’t talk while they ate. V seemed shy. She thanked him stiffly when he let her drink some of his coffee.
He let his shoulder touch hers. She moved away at first, but then they touched again. When he put his arm around her she looked up at him with an embarrassed smile, and said, “Jack.” He thought she was going to tell him to stop, but she said, “Who did you have a date with the other night?”
“When?”
“You know. You said you had a date.”
“Girl named Peggy,” he said.
“Where did you go?”
He shrugged. “To some dance.”
“Where?”
“At the Chamber of Commerce Hall.”
“Is it a nice place?”
“It’s all right.”
She leaned against him and he pressed her closer, smoothing his hand in the soft hollow of her back. He felt her shiver. “Is she pretty?” she asked.
“Who?”
“This girl. Is she prettier than me?”
“She doesn’t even come close,” Jack said. He could feel the heat of the sun spreading up between them. He stroked her back. Her lips parted over her teeth as she smiled, and her eyes, half-closed, shone through the blonde lashes. When she turned her face away he touched her throat with his lips. She gasped and put her hand up to the place, but he didn’t kiss her again. He stroked her back slowly, softly, feeling the warmth creep up between them.
Gently he ran his hand around and over her belly; it was hard and flat and she sucked it in under his hand. When he moved his hand back she stretched, and then her arms went around his neck.
He could feel the hot points of her breasts against his chest, and he kissed her, slowly and softly. Then he kissed her harder, gradually harder, until he felt her breath quicken. Her lips were sweet and pressed back against her teeth and she made a tiny, thick sound in her throat, as though she’d known all along what it would be like, but now, although it was proved to her, it was still wonderful and new.
He had never known a virgin before and at first it was impossible. It hurt her and she was afraid, but he realized ashamedly that she was trusting him. But she was too nervous and too scared, and he did not force himself upon her.
The next time it hurt her again, but crying, she made him go through with it; crying and laughing at the same time, her arms holding him to her with strength he would not have believed was there. And afterward she would not release him, holding him with the strong arms and crying and talking to him and to herself and to no one, and laughing hysterically, her eyes shining with tears.
Then had come the night in the shed. He heard her make a sound that wasn’t the right kind of sound, he felt her body tense, and looking up, he saw the old man standing in the doorway; short and stocky, with just enough light behind him so that Jack could see his thick bush of white hair. He took a step back, and then he stood motionless, staring down at them. And then with a quick motion he turned and disappeared.
Everything was quiet. They were both silent, hardly breathing, and Jack could pick sounds out of the silence; the buzz of flies around the manure pile behind the shed, the crickets calling, the horse stamping a foot, the sound of the old man’s steps as he went up the hardbeaten path to the house.
“Get up!” V whispered. “Get up!” Her face was averted, her body felt cold and she was shivering. They stood up and stared at each other in the darkness. He put out his hand toward her. He was glad he had. She snatched at it and pressed it to her cheek.
“Jack,” she said, just “Jack,” trembling, gripping his hand as though it were the only thing in the world she had to hold onto. Jack felt his shirt trembling over his chest; he had realized suddenly what this meant. He had been playing the game, but she was not, and now it wasn’t a game anymore. She had lost, but he hadn’t realized all she would lose. He took a deep breath.
“I’ll go talk to him,” he said loudly. His legs felt weak; he didn’t want them to be weak; he tensed the muscles in his calves. He felt very young and very frightened.
“Oh, God, Jack!” V whispered.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go talk to him.”
“Wait!” she said. “Wait,” she whispered. “What’re you going to say?”
“I don’t know.” He tried to take her arm but she wouldn’t let go his hand. Hay crunched under their feet as they moved over to sit on the low stack of oat sacks that lined the wall. Opposite them the door was a rectangle of lighter blue in the darkness of the shed. He put his arm around her.
“Jack,” she whispered hoarsely. “What’ll we do?” Suddenly he was surprised she wasn’t crying.
“Don’t cry,” he said. He licked his lips. “I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll have to go talk to him.”
“But what will you say? What’ll you say?”
“Goddamn it, I don’t know. You want to wait here while I go?”
“No,” she said breathlessly. “No. Please don’t go yet,” trembling as he tightened his arm around her. When she relaxed it was all at once, and she clung to him, still not crying, but holding him fiercely, her fingers digging into his back, her face tight against his chest. “What can you say?” she whispered.
“I’ll think of that when I see him. Maybe I’ll tell him we’re going to get married.”
She was silent, pressed against him. After a long time she breathed, “Oh, yes!”
“Let’s go,” he said gruffly. “Let’s get it to hell over with.” He heard the faint whack of a door slamming.
“Oh, please, wait!” V said. She put her lips up for him to kiss. They were cold and pressed flat against her teeth and she was trembling again. “I love you, Jack,” she said. “I love you.” He closed her lips with his mouth but still they moved; she was telling him she loved him. He pushed her away and stood up. He could talk to the old man now.
“Come on,” he said, and holding each other they went out past the corral. V didn’t look at Tony who snorted gently as they passed. She clung to Jack’s arm, slowing him down. He pulled her on toward the lighted windows of the house.
Then he saw the bags. At first he couldn’t make out what they were; merely squarish shapes in the darkness on the driveway. Then he saw they were suitcases and he gasped at the stupidity and righteousness of them. He hated them. He hated what they meant and he cursed the old man. He cursed himself.
He stopped as V’s hand tightened on his arm. She made no sound as they stared down at the suitcases. Jack felt his breath whisper through his lips, dry and hot. “Goddamn you to hell,” he whispered.
Turning, he pulled her along behind him as he hurried back to his car. They drove up beside the suitcases, he got out and slung them savagely into the rumble seat. When they passed the house through the window he could see the old man bent over his food, shoveling it in. “Goddamn you to hell for this,” he whispered.
They drove down the rutted road between the trees to the highway. The Ford squeaked and jolted and V clung to his right arm with both hands, her body pressed close to his. She was silent, staring at the short slice of road ahead that was bathed in the hard, white glare of the headlights. When he turned onto the highway, she had begun to cry.
2
At first it had been fine. He had been charmed by V, by her naivete, her complete trust. He knew she worshipped him and she never bored him. He enjoyed teaching her to dance and to swim and he enjoyed learning how to bowl with her; they always had a good time together. Always, with her, everything they did was slightly different than it had ever
been before, new, and exciting. But this newness and excitement puzzled him, and sometimes he was ashamed of it.
Sometimes he was ashamed of it because he felt himself being carried along in her enthusiasm for everything they did together, as though they were children, or puppies. He had never seen anyone so completely happy; he could feel it in her and she told him of it time and time again, as though she had never been happy before, and he had always thought about happiness as being something you either had or didn’t have, and which there wasn’t much use thinking about.
She had no shame with him and no false modesty; she said always what she thought or felt, or showed him what she thought or felt, and although many times it thrilled him deeply, as many times he was embarrassed by it. But she must have known, instinctively, what it took him most of his life to find out: that especially when they made love they had something between them they could never equal elsewhere, that lived just in them and because of them, realized a thousand times beyond itself because of them; a perfection to be found once in their lives and only once. V had known—she must have known, must have realized it deeply, or, when she had lost him, she would not have tried so fiercely and ruthlessly to get him back—but he had been unable to recognize it for what it was.
It was as though he was incapable of any kind of perfection. He had mistrusted it, had been afraid of it. He had been afraid of being moved so completely by anything, and he had to obliterate it, smudge it with dirt, shy away. He had been incapable of what they had.
And there was the nagging suspicion that he had been trapped. He had always told himself he wanted to be free and he felt himself held by something mysteriously strong. The feeling grew on him that he had broken some vague rule in the game, either in taking her, a virgin, or in the slip when he had spoken of marriage. He felt there was a debt he owed, a bill he should pay.
And the fact that he had not known about the bill until now made him rebellious. He knew the bill was fair and he didn’t want to be a welsher, a poor loser, but he was not ready to get married, and he was sure it would be happy for neither of them if they did. Something seemed to demand that he not hurt her, for he was aware that she was not like the other girls he knew, but much as he liked her, he hated the bonds she was imposing on him. He felt guilty and frightened about what he had done to her, about what she might become. He felt responsible, and he hated it, for he wanted no responsibilities. They had no part in his life.
Ben Proctor had thrown them up to him one day, and Ben was the only person whose opinion he cared about. Ben’s judgment of him hurt him, and he was hurt more when he came to the conclusion that Ben must be in love with V. When, without notice, Ben left town, this seemed confirmed, and he thought bitterly how it must have been for Ben to see what he had seen. The whole thing had turned bad. He wished he had never seen V, that he had never taken the job dozing stumps for her father. It was something strange and complicated and frighteningly strong in his mouth, and it had to be spat out.
He had thought it was to be finished the night of Push’s birthday party at the Hitching Post, and he was so ashamed of that night that whenever afterward he remembered it, he would feel himself flush and his eyes would grow hot and he would curse himself, trying not to think about it. He had been drunk, there with V and Push and Harry and Petey Willing and three other girls, all of them drunk except V.
He remembered arguing with Petey. Petey had wanted to play Rose of San Antone on the jukebox for Carol Lester, who was from Texas, and Jack had insisted on playing The One O’Clock Jump over and over again. Carol sat on Petey’s lap, crying because she wanted to hear Rose of San Antone, her lipstick smeared all around her mouth and around Petey’s mouth. Harry was telling jokes, and Push and the two other girls were leaning on the table, listening to him. The girls snickered from time to time. V sat silently beside Jack.
Petey had upset his glass and when Peggy came over to mop up the liquor, Jack patted her on the hip. “Hi, honey,” he said. She smiled down at him and he put his arm around her waist and pulled her onto his lap.
Peggy smelled of cheap perfume and face powder. She took his face between her hands and kissed him, long and sloppily, and he kissed her back. He tightened his grip when she tried to pull away, a little sickened by the smell of her. And V was watching.
“Whew,” Peggy said, when he let her go. “Your little girl’ll be mad, honey.”
“To hell with her,” Jack said. “She’s a sorehead, anyway.” He didn’t look around at V. Push was watching him from across the table, his eyes fixed on a point at the exact center of Jack’s forehead. Jack kissed Peggy again. He put his hand up under her dress, but suddenly he felt sick. He jerked his head away. V was gone.
Push was looking toward the door, an expression around his mouth as though he had tasted something rotten. Rose of San Antone was playing on the jukebox. Jack thrust Peggy from his lap and got to his feet, holding onto the back of the chair.
“Goddamn you, Petey, you bastard,” he said. “Did you change that record?”
“You leave him alone!” Carol said.
“Somebody else changed it,” Petey said.
“You better…”
“Why don’t you go away?” Carol said. “You’re filthy!”
He felt himself flush. “Shut up!” he said. He didn’t look at Push. He crossed unsteadily to the machine, put in a quarter and punched number 19 five times. He knew what was the matter with that little Texas bitch; she’d been on the make for him ever since she’d come to town, and he’d never even looked at her. Then he remembered that this was Push’s birthday party and Push had been talking about it for a month. He wondered where V had gone. He stood punching the red plastic button, feeling sick, feeling as he had when he’d shot his first rabbit and it had screamed and jerked its mangled body around on the ground until he could get his father’s old shotgun reloaded and kill it.
He started back to the table. He changed his course and made for the door. Hurrying, he bumped into a chair, and he stopped to set it on its feet again. “Oh, you bastard,” he muttered. “Oh, you bastard.” Behind him The One O’Clock Jump blared.
V was packing her bags when he came into the room. Her hair parted up the back of her head as she leaned forward over the bed, folding her clothes into one of the suitcases. The other was already closed and strapped. She didn’t look up as he stood just inside the door, watching her, and finally he stepped forward and grasped her elbow and turned her around. She was limp and unresisting, but she turned her face away from him.
“Listen, V,” he said. No more words seemed to come and after a moment he let her go and sat down on the other bed. V returned to her packing, and Jack stared at the bags, remembering when he had seen them in the darkness on the driveway at the ranch. V was folding the black dress he had bought her the first day she had been in Bakersfield. “Listen, V,” he began again, and finally he said, “Where you going?”
“Away.”
“What do you mean, away? Where?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Listen, what the hell’s the matter with you?”
She closed the suitcase and snapped the locks and buckled the straps. She turned to face him. He looked down and shook a cigarette from his pack and lit it. He blew a cloud of smoke between them. “Well, what the hell’s the matter?” he said.
“This is what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“What?”
She laughed shakily and he couldn’t meet her eyes anymore. “Hell,” he said. He could feel her eyes seeing him. “Listen, V,” he said. “I’m tight. Let’s talk this over tomorrow, unh?”
“No,” she said. “You’re not drunk anymore. I know when you’re drunk.”
His hand trembled as he raised the cigarette to his lips. He blinked smoke out of his eyes. “You’re all mixed up,” V said. “Aren’t you? I always thought you knew what you wanted. You always said so. But you’re all mixed up.”
“Yeah,” he said, grimacing. “I�
��m tight, is all. We ought to talk this over, though. There’s a lot of things I got to explain.”
He lowered his head. She was waiting for him to go on, but he didn’t know what to say or how to say it. After a long time she put out her hand. “Goodbye,” she said.
He pretended not to see the hand and she let it drop to her side. The streamliner went by in the yards with a long sucking rush, its horn blaring. He heard it slowing down.
“Goodbye,” V said again.
“Well, okay,” Jack said. “If that’s the way you want it. Will I see you again?”
“Do you want to?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
“You’ll see me again if you want to enough,” V said.
“Oh, Jesus, now you’re getting cute with me.” She didn’t say anything, and he added, “You’re not leaving town, unh?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe I will.”
Jack took out his wallet and slid the bills from it. There were two twenties, a ten, and two fives, and he replaced the two fives in the wallet, and the wallet in his hip pocket. He stood up unsteadily and held the money out to her.
“Have you got any dough?” he asked. He knew she hadn’t. “Here,” he said. “You’ll need this.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Take it.”
“No!” she said tightly.
He grasped her hand and pushed the money into it. “Take it, for Christ’s sake! You don’t have a damn cent.”
She stood looking down at the three bills that lay in her hand. It was a long time before she spoke. She said, “I guess we know what this makes me.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Jack said. He sat down again.