Hill girl

by Charles Williams

  “Here’s to the two of you, Bob,” he said, raising his glass.

  I told him to have another and got out my safety razor and brought a pan of water and propped a mirror up on the table. I shifted the lamp around so I could see, and shaved. My face looked funny with the lather on it. I was burned black with the months in the sun and my hair was bleached the color of cotton.

  I wondered where Lee was. Under the porch? Or down in the barn? He probably had heard Sam going into the ignition wiring of the car and knew there wasn’t any use in going around there.

  I packed a bag and got a gray flannel suit out of the clothes closet and shined my shoes. Sam and I talked about the crops and the weather and the large number of quail that had hatched out around his place.

  We went out front together and it was beginning to grow light in the east with a strip of pink above the ridges the other side of Black Creek bottom. It was a cloudless morning with no breeze, and I knew it was going to be a scorching day. We haywired back the ignition wiring Sam had torn out of the Buick.

  I had an idea that after we got the wiring back Sam wouldn’t leave the car, and he didn’t. He knew Lee was still around somewhere and he wasn’t taking any chances. I guess he was afraid we’d both get the jump on him and light out together. He sat in the car and I went back in the house, saying I had to get my bag and the car keys.

  I ducked out back and went down to the barn on the run. I was pretty sure Lee would head in that direction when it became too light for him to hide out around the house.

  He was up in the loft, sitting in the hay and smoking a cigarette.

  “For God’s sake, throw that cigarette out,” I said. “Do you want to burn the barn down with the mules in here?”

  He sullenly pitched it out the door. “Where is he?”

  “Out front in the car. Give me the keys.”

  “Where you going?”

  “To a wedding,” I said.

  He looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry, Bob.”

  “You’re sorry?” I said. “Give me the keys.”

  He fished them out and handed them over. “How’m I going to get back to town?”

  “I don’t give a God damn how you get back to town. You can walk if you want to. Or use my car. It’s in the tool shed.”

  “Why don’t you go in yours and leave the Buick here?”

  “And tell Sam it drove itself out here? He knows you’re here, all right, but do you want to slap him in the face with it while he’s carrying that gun?”

  “All right”

  “And don’t forget I’m going to a wedding. Nothing but the best for the young bride. She’ll probably feel more a’ home in the Buick.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re making me cry,” I said. I went down the ladder and he looked after me, not saying anything.

  When I got back out front Jake and Helen were coming across the road from the little house to start breakfast. When they came up everybody said, “Good mawnin’” all around and looked embarrassed and I could see the concern in their eyes. They knew something serious had happened and Jake was pretty sure what it was.

  “Jake,” I said, “I’ll be gone for a few days. If you’ll finish plowing out those middles I’ll make it right with you for my half when I get back.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, Bob,” he said reassuringly. “Ain’t but about three days’ work for one man.”

  They went on into the house, turning when they went through the door to look curiously back at us. Helen’s eyes were troubled and I knew she was worried that I’d got into some kind of jam.

  “Well, let’s get started,” I said. Sam got out of the roadster.

  “I’ll go ahead, Bob. An’ you follow me in the Buick.”

  “Like hell I’ll follow you. I’ve told you I was going over there and that’ll have to be good enough for you.” I was a little sick of being shoved around. And I’d be damned if I was going in there after that girl with Papa at my heels with the gun.

  “I’ll be there when you get there,” I went on, getting into the car. I got it into gear and shot out onto the road, looking at the bullet hole in the windshield and not finding it very comforting.

  I gunned it all the way, raging inside and getting some relief from the fast driving and the powerful smoothness of the big car. And I wanted to have it out with that damned girl before Sam arrived. There was no telling what the little fool would do or say.

  The sun was just clearing the tops of the pines when I drove in through the gate into the clearing. The front door of the house was open and smoke was coming out of the stovepipe from the kitchen. There was the clear, hot smell of a summer morning and I wished I were going out to work in the fields or going fishing with Jake, the way we had planned it, when the work was done.

  I went up on the front porch and knocked and then went on in. Mrs. Harley and the two little girls were eating breakfast. There was no sign of Angelina. They looked up at me apprehensively as I walked in and suddenly I felt sorry for them. The little girls were so obviously scared with all this mysterious business of Papa going off somewhere mad in the middle of the night, and this big man they didn’t know coming in like this. Their big brown eyes regarded me fearfully and they forgot to eat.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Harley,” I said.

  “Howdy, Mr. Crane,” she replied timidly, and you could see what it had been like with her all night. The last four or five hours must have been hell for her. I wondered what it was like to be a woman and know your man was gone to commit a murder that would probably land him in the pen for the rest of his life and know that you were going to live the rest of yours with the disgrace and the shamed daughter and the children without a I father to support them.

  “Sam will be along in a minute,” I said.

  “Is he—I mean, did he—” She couldn’t get it out.

  “Everything is all right,” I said. “There wasn’t any trouble.”

  I could see the relief go through her in a big swell and there were tears in her eyes.

  “Maybe you would like to have a bite with us, Mr. Crane?”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m not very hungry, but I’d sure like a cup of that coffee in a minute. But could I see Angelina for a second first?”

  “Why, yes, she’s in her room. It’s the front one, on the right as you come in.”

  I knocked on the door. “Who is it?” Angelina called out.

  “Bob Crane.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Never mind. I want to come in. Are you dressed?”

  “Yes. But I don’t want to talk to you.”

  I went in and closed the door so they wouldn’t hear me in the kitchen. She was sitting on her bed in a white bathrobe and looked at me sullenly.

  “Get dressed,” I said. “And start packing your stuff.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re going to Shreveport this morning. This is our happy wedding day.”

  “You think I’m going to marry you?” she spat at me.

  “Yes. Now put your clothes on and shut up.”

  “Why, I wouldn’t marry you if—if— Get out of here!”

  I sat down on a big trunk and lit a cigarette and looked at her. She was pretty, all right, with the blonde hair mussed up and her brown eyes shooting fire at me.

  Her room was nicely fixed up, with fluffy white-and-green curtains across the windows and handmade rag rugs on the floor. There were pictures cut from magazines on the walls, and from somewhere she had picked up printed copies of three of Frederic Remington’s pictures. They had been stuck on the wall with frames of brown paper.

  I took a drag on the cigarette and threw the ashes on one of the rugs.

  “Now get this through your fat head once and for all,” I told her. “You started this thing and now we’re going to finish it in the only way that’s left. I don’t give a God damn what you think or want or anything else. I don’t know what goes on in that so-called mind of yours, but
I’d think that you would understand after the shape Sam caught you in last night that your position is pretty thin around here. He may beat you to death or throw you out yet. Not that I give a damn what he does to you, but there are some innocent people that are going to get hurt if Sam isn’t pacified pretty shortly.”

  “What have you got to do with it?” she asked, giving me a surly look.

  “Never mind. Sam’ll be here in about ten minutes. You’d better be packing when he shows up. I don’t think this thing has sunk into your skull yet; you don’t seem to realize what kind of spot you and Lee are in. Sam catches you out there in the bushes flat on your calloused back and you think he’s going to write a letter to the Times about it? Get wise to yourself. We get married today or Sam is going to kill Lee. And don’t fool yourself that the sheriff or a peace bond or something else is going to stop him.”

  “If he thinks it was you, why would he shoot Lee?”

  “He doesn’t think it was me. He knows who it was. But I’m not married, and he’d rather have a bridegroom than a corpse.”

  She hitched around on the bed until her back was toward me and she was looking out the window. “All right,” she said bitterly. “I’ll do it. But, I wouldn’t live with you if you paid me.”

  “Write me about it sometime,” I said. I went out and closed the door.

  The children were gone outside but Mrs. Harley was still sitting at the table. She poured me a cup of coffee.

  “Mrs. Harley,” I said, “I don’t know exactly how to go about telling you this, but Angelina and I are going to Shreveport this morning to be married.”

  “Yes, I kinda guessed that was it.” She flushed and looked away, and I felt uncomfortable.

  It took a long time for her to get it out and she started several times only to break down in confusion, but finally she said it.

  “I know it wasn’t you. I mean, last night, Sam said—”

  I didn’t say anything. There didn’t seem to be any answer to that. There wasn’t any use in lying to her, for she knew the whole thing, and there wasn’t anything to be gained by confirming the fact that her daughter had been lying with a married man.

  She started to cry then, with her face buried in the crook of her arm on the table, and I felt worse than ever. There was such a beaten hopelessness about her grief that you knew there wasn’t anything you could do for her.

  After a while she stopped and said quietly, “It ain’t all like you think, Mr. Crane. It ain’t all her fault or your brother’s fault. She hasn’t had—Well, Sam has always been so strict with her, and she ain’t never had no fun like other girls. He was so stern with her.”

  I heard Sam driving up in front then, and Angelina came out of her room with a small imitation-leather handbag. She was wearing a poorly made cheap dress and lisle stockings and her shoes were half-soled and clumsily repaired. Her clothes were a mess, but they couldn’t completely cover up what she really looked like.

  She didn’t even say good-by to her mother and only stared coldly at Sam as we went out the front door. Sam shook my hand with embarrassment and Mrs. Harley tried to say something and then her face broke up and she turned and ran back into the room and I could hear the heavy weight of her fall onto the bed and the muffled crying into the blankets.

  Twelve

  She sat in silence way over on her side of the seat, staring straight ahead and ignoring me. It wasn’t until we were almost in town that she spoke.

  “Where are you going to drop me off?”

  “Drop you off?” I asked. “Where’d you get that idea?”

  “You’re not really going to go through with it, are you?”

  “Of course we are.”

  “Why? I didn’t think you liked me.”

  I lit a cigarette. “I don’t.”

  “Then why, for God’s sake?”

  “I thought we went over all of that a while ago.”

  ‘’But if it was just on account of Lee, he’s had a chance to get away by now. And if Papa’s fool enough to let us go off alone—”

  “It was a horse trade and he kept his end of it, and I’m not going to double-cross him. Maybe you don’t know what you’re fooling with, but I do.”

  She sniffed. I started to go on and tell her the rest of it and then I thought, Oh, what the hell? Why try to get anything through her thick skull? Why try to explain to her that it didn’t make any difference if Lee did get away this morning? He still had to live in this country and he’d never be able to do it with Sam Harley after him. And neither would I if I crossed him up now. And why try to get it through her head how important it was that Mary didn’t find out about it?

  We drove up South Street in silence and I stopped the car in the alley behind the bank and got out.

  “I’ve got to cash a check,” I said. “It’ll be a half hour or more before the bank opens. Do you want to buy anything or have some breakfast or something?”

  “No,” she said curtly. “I don’t want anything.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said.

  When the bank opened I went in and wrote a check for three hundred dollars. Julian Creed raised his prim eyebrows at the amount. “What are you doing, Bob? Buying more mules?” he asked in his high-pitched voice.

  “You might call it that,” I said.

  I went back out in the alley. It was getting hot already, and I took off the flannel coat and pitched it across the shelf behind the seat and got in.

  “We’re off,” I said. “How’s the panting bride?”

  Her eyes were smoldering. “To hell with you.”

  When we came to a stop at the mouth of the alley I saw Mary and another girl walking along the other side of the street. She was in fresh white linen and had on white shoes and she was going the other way and hadn’t seen us, walking slowly along with that long-legged grace it was so delightful to watch. She waved at someone across the street I couldn’t see and I slammed into low and rubber burned as we shot out of the alley and swung east.

  “You drive like you was crazy,” Angelina said.

  When I didn’t say anything, she went on, “Who was that girl?”

  “Was there a girl?” I asked. “Where?”

  “The one you were looking at. The redheaded girl in white. You must know her, you stared at her hard enough.”

  “You mean you don’t know her?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have asked you if I did.”

  “You should get acquainted. You’ve been doing enough of her work. That was Mrs. Leland Crane.”

  “Oh,” she said and was silent for a minute. Then, “I don’t think she’s so pretty. Do you?”

  “Am I supposed to?”

  “I don’t give a damn what you do. I just asked you a question.”

  “Ask me another one. We’ll make a game out of it. Go on, ask me the capital of Omaha.”

  “Oh, go to hell.”

  “Don’t we want to be a well-rounded girl? Or do you think just your heels are enough?”

  She glared at me and didn’t say anything. I shut up then and we drove for an hour in complete silence. I pushed the car hard and kept my eyes on the road and she sat rigidly on her side of the seat with her hands in her lap and stared straight ahead. I kept expecting her to cry, but she never did, and I began to be conscious of a grudging respect for her. She was taking a lot, for an eighteen-year-old, and she was taking it standing up and fighting back, with no tears and no hysterics. This thing wasn’t any more fun for her than it was for me, and I hadn’t made it any easier for her the way I’d been riding her. I began to be ashamed of the way I had been acting, the way I had been wanting to take a swing at something or somebody and had been taking it out on her because she was here within reach. I’d been blaming her for the whole stinking mess just because I didn’t like her, and if anybody was to be blamed for it, it was Lee, and I knew it.

  “I’m sorry about being nasty,” I said after a while.

  “What? You mean you’re not nasty all the time?�
� she asked scornfully.

  Now, hold onto yourself, I thought. Don’t let her get your goat again. Maybe she is scared and all this hard-shelled antagonism is a defense. Maybe it’s just what she does instead of crying, the way another girl would.

  “Not all the time. There are moments when I’m almost human.”

  “Nobody would ever know it from looking at you. You’re too big and ugly to be human.”

  “You certainly are a gracious little punk,” I said, beginning to forget some of my noble compassion. “What you need is a good whipping.”

  “You lay a hand on me, you big ape, and I’ll kick you where you won’t forget it in a hurry.”

  “Well, well, the little expert on male anatomy. Is that what they’re teaching the girls in the tenth grade now?”

  “I wonder how anybody like Lee could have a brother like you. I just don’t believe you’re any kin, as homely and as mean as you are.”

  What’s the use? I thought. Trying to be civil is a waste of time.

  We rolled into Shreveport a little before noon and I parked the car and hunted up a doctor to get the medical certificate. Then we went up and got the license and by that time it was twelve o’clock and the justice of the peace was out to lunch. We came out of the building and stood there on the sidewalk in the hot sun for a moment, undecided where to kill an hour. We started walking slowly along the street, headed for a drugstore for a sandwich and something to drink.

  We were passing a big department store, going slowly and aimlessly and looking in the windows. She stopped for a moment in front of a window display of women’s dresses. I stopped and waited for her, lighting a cigarette, and watched the traffic going by in the street. She started ahead again, and looked back over her shoulder at the window full of clothes, and just for a second I saw her eyes without that defensive sullenness in them. They were hungry, and hopeless, and there was heartbreak in the way she looked back and then went slowly on.

  She waited dully for me to come on. I looked at the clothes she had on, probably actually seeing them for the first time since she had come out of her room this morning, and all at once acutely aware of the dowdy shapelessness of the cheap dress and the crude way the cracked shoes were repaired.