Sweet Blonde baby, I’m in love with you
You made me cry when we said good-bye.
Sweet blonde baby I’m in love . . .
She couldn’t hear the rest of the song until that water-rushing stopped. She listened to noises on the stairs, sounds from the street and creaking sounds all through the big house.
Once the drunk on the bed stirred, and muttered in sleep. Once she felt a nameless dull aching, where her breast used to be.
And she ceased to rock, and she slept.
Footsteps cautiously across the floor woke her when gray morning came. The drunk was standing by the window looking down; in the early morning light she saw the scar on his chin and thought it was dirt there. She watched him looking, and wondered what it was that held his eyes in a stare; as she watched he paled and drew back out of sight of the street. He grew so white for a moment that it made her a little afraid just to watch him. Then he turned toward her.
“Y’all got to keep me here a spell, ah reck’n,” he said.
In the dimness it was hard to tell just how high this mug still was. No use getting him sore though, or he might sock her. He wouldn’t have been the first and he looked pretty tough. But he didn’t look as though he knew many tricks.
“I don’t keep nobody, ballsy,” she told him, “I get along O.K. all by myself. Gum-bye, please.”
It was hard to tell. Maybe the bastard wasn’t still high. He kept picking at his chin all the time and she wished he’d stop doing it. He was kind of red-headed, and he talked like some kind of kike. Norah didn’t like kikes. She shrugged off the jacket and handed it to him. Maybe that was what he was waiting for. Maybe that was why he was standing that way with his head cocked off to one side and looking like a down-in-the-mouth hound.
“Ah’ll pay y’all,” he said; he spoke sadly.
That was horsecrap, Norah knew; they all told her they’d pay. But she wouldn’t say no, because then he might sock her. So she just sat silent and looked down at her palms. On the left one a tiny crevice ran in an arc down from her wrist to the base of her thumb. Something had come loose all right. If he tried to hit her, she’d yell like fury.
No, he wasn’t sober even yet. He kept creeping up to the window, and then stepping back out of sight.
He saw her watching him and he guessed her thought. He went straight to the window and ripped the cord off the shade; he laid it straight out on the floor, glanced over at her, and began walking its length without stepping off once.
“That proves you got cash I suppose?” she asked.
“Oney proves ah’m sober,” he mumbled; and walked it again without stepping off.
“Only a little more flat then sober, eh?”
He fumbled inside his vest-pocket a minute, then grew pale about the mouth again.
She shouldn’t have said that to him, she thought. He might try to sock her now.
“Y’all kin hand over that fin,” he said, and added slowly, “Hay-bag.”
Hay-bag whore. Everyone hated a hay-bag. She was in for it now, kikes had hot tempers.
“I had to give it to the cop, daddy. It’s his cut. Don’t get sore. Take it out in trade.”
“Ah’m too hungry to get sore,” he answered, “an’ ah don’t feel like tradin’ right now.”
She went to the dresser and tied her hair into a tight yellow knot behind her head. It was cold in the room. Too cold for October. But behind the dresser were nine sticks of wood and eleven lumps of coal. Big lumps, little sticks—she had counted both kinds when she’d put them both there. One kind was little and one kind was big, and she wouldn’t let on to a soul what she’d hid there.
And then, sometime when she was all alone, she’d burn up a part of it in the stove. Not now. Not all of it. Not any of the big lumps. Just some of the little ones when she was all by herself. It’d be all for herself then. She’d have it all.
From where she stood she sensed again that the drunk was afraid of something. Maybe police; maybe his mob. No, it wasn’t for her he was sticking around here; it wasn’t even for his fin. He was afraid, that was all. And her own fear faded a little.
He was standing by the window with his straw hat on lop-sided; the hat was too big for him, his ears alone saved it from slipping down.
“Ah’ve more money, Blondie,” he said, and it surprised her to hear his voice sounding friendly. He was calling her “Blondie” now, but he’d called her Hay-Bag at first. So he wasn’t so hard, he was kind of soft. He was kind of soft and kind of nasty; and the softnasty ones were the ones she feared most. They were the smartest and meanest, both at once. But she wondered whether he’d called her Blondie more for her eyes than for her skin, or for her hair more than both eyes and skin put together. She looked in the mirror, but she coutdn’t tell for certain.
“Y’all behave yo’seff an’ ah’ll give y’all a smell o’ real money,” he boasted, “but right now get yo arse downstairs an’ bring me back beans an’ coffee with some o’ my fin. Don’t spend it all. Ah’m hungry.”
So he still thought she had it. The soft-nasty ones were the meanest. Norah didn’t move an inch from the dresser.
“I gave it to the bull I told you,” she said. She wasn’t so afraid of him any more. She’d stay far enough away so that he couldn’t sock her, and she’d talk back a little perhaps. She’d like to get even for what he’d called her before.
“Ah got more,” he said in the soft-friendly voice.
She knew the answer to that. She spoke into the mirror.
“Don’t tell me you got more, lunk, ’cause I been all through you. You’re flat as a matzoth, an’ it’s time to scram. Hop off, beat it. You smell like a sniffer. But say—if the landlady asks you questions downstairs, don’t say you was tight when you come up here last night. She don’t like it much.”
She heard him coming toward her, and turned to face him. Maybe he was sore about being called a sniffer. Maybe he wanted to sock her now. The soft-nasty ones were the kind that socked you. Sometimes they were the worst. He was coming up to her pulling up his shirt. What the hell. And he’d walked a straight line. She saw two thin white strips binding his navel. The tape was dry and brought the flesh with it as he pulled; he had to loosen it with spittle. When both strips were off he picked out a pellet that looked like one of the oversized spitballs she used to make in high school. When he unrolled it she saw enough there to keep a man with a woman for almost as long as just about any man ever feels like keeping any woman around.
On the top was a ten, and when she took it he said to her, “All ah want is fo’ y’all to keep me here a spell. Ah jest don’t want to go downstairs fo’ a spell. All ah want is to stay up here fo’ a spell. A man with a gun is lookin’ fo’ me. Get it, Blondie?”
She hesitated, and then she got it, her eye on the ten on the top. “It’ll cost you a penny for this, lunk,” Norah Egan said.
12
DURING THEIR FIRST days together Norah and Cass did not exchange many words. He gave her money, she bought what he ordered, and they quarrelled like children over the change. For three days and nights each kept his own silence, save for dickering over the cost of groceries. But on the third night they spoke long.
Cass had small desire to caress this girl; she had no desire to be caressed. At night he lay on one edge of the bunk and she on the other rail, like two diffident adolescents.
“First he called me Hay-Bag, but now he says, ‘Blondie’,” Nora thought suddenly, waking in the night. “That means he’s gettin’ ready to put over a fast one.”
“Ah don’t like bein’ alone,” Cass thought, drowsing in the night. “Ah wonder how sister is.”
On the third day a police squad sirened up to the house, Norah watched him close. He looked pretty scared when bulls came down the hall, and she had her own alibi all ready; but the cops were looking for somebody else, some woman who’d helped turn a neat job down-state.
Norah wondered then whether this lunk himself had ever pulled anythi
ng very neat; whether he might not pull a neat one again pretty soon. She’d have to be careful as long as he stayed. She’d have to watch all he did pretty close. He might be a junkie, sometimes you couldn’t tell. Maybe his cash was running out already: and that was what she’d have to watch closest of all.
On the Saturday night of their first week together he walked out on her. Just grabbed his straw hat off the dresser and walked out in the rain without so much as an aye, yes, or no. Just like he was sore about something and had walked out instead of socking her.
He had often stood at the window, looking down; and now Norah looked out of the window and hoped he wasn’t gone. She stood concealed behind the curtain, and she saw him crossing the street in the rain. He was walking fast with his shoulders hunched, and rain was running off the brim of his hat. It was a straw hat, a little too big. She wished he had turned up his collar.
He came back, in less than an hour, with a box of candy and a bottle of cheap perfume. Twenty cents for the candy, she guessed, and fifteen for the perfume. For Christmas, he said, and threw them on the bed instead of handing them to her like a gentleman ought. Christmas in October. Then he pulled two more packages out of his pocket, and these were both just for himself. One was a cigar-store Ingersoll that must have cost almost a dollar, and the other was sotol straight in a half-pint bottle. Where he’d gotten sotol he wouldn’t say; all he’d say was that he’d paid ten bucks for the eighty-cent watch. She could tell that he’d had a nip on the way by the way he began to talk about himself.
He had ridden all over the louse-ridden country, he told her, had bummed from El Paso to Niagara Falls, from the Falls to Tacoma, from Tacoma to Shreveport, from Shreveport to Chicago and back to El Paso; and here he was back in Chicago again. He’d ridden boxcars East and West, North and South so many times, he said, that now it was all kind of mixed up in his head; so that he no longer remembered just where he had been. But his name was Bad-Hat wherever he went, and he treated his women right. So she could start calling him Bad-Hat any time now.
Norah only said, “Horseguts, I’ll call you Hick. An’ you ain’t been west of Whiting”; but she didn’t say that very loud, and he didn’t seem to hear. She sat on the bed with the perfume and candy and tried pumping him to pass the time. She tried to do a little lying herself. She wanted to say that her folks had been movie actors, or something big like that, but he wouldn’t be interrupted for a second.
He just kept spooshing his line all over her.
His spoosh was about a pal of his who’d helped him pull a job or two, and how they had been living for six months, like two millionaires, in a big hotel on the North Side. He had forgotten the name of the hotel, but the pal was a judge from Texas . . . Well, the judge had once or twice pulled a shirt off a line and run like the devil when the dog started barking, but he’d never pulled anything really big, he’d never known very much till the hick here had taught him a little.
Hick had jimmied the window and cracked the cash box while the judge silenced the sound the way Hick showed him how. The judge had watched in the ailey white Hick cleaned out the place—“An’ mah name is Howlin’-Coyotee McKay,” he finished, “an’ that’s how ah always works. When we come out in the alleyway there wasn’t a sound, an’ we split it right there underneath the flash ’cause ah’d tuk a fancy to the lad. An’ he went uptown an’ ah went down, an’ ah ain’t seen mah gonsil since.”
“Who you hidin’ from? What’s a gonsil anyhow?”
“Gonsil’s a punk, Blondie, an’ ah’m hidin’ from po-lees o’course. Who yo’ s’pose—a lan’lady? Bulls been troublin’ mah tracks fo’ two years now an’ ain’t never caught up yet.”
“How come then you go out and get high in an L station if you’re runnin’ from bulls?” She had him at an advantage now, for his eyes could scarcely keep her in focus.
“Who’s runnin’ from bulls? Ol’ Nubby got a rod.”
“Who’s Nubby?”
“Who y’all s’pose? The judge.”
“Who’s the judge?”
“‘Who’s the judge?’” he mocked, “listen at her—‘Who’s the judge?’ The judge is Nub, who y’all think is judge—me?”
He laughed, and his laughter was half-nasal.
“Well, what if the judge is around? You just said you split with him fair an’ square.”
“Jest kiddin’ y’all, Blondie, that’s all. S’posed to meet ol’ Nub front of hotel—oney ah copped a mope instead. Smart, eh Blondie? Get smart, kid—watch mah smoke an’ all y’all see is ashes.”
Norah thought, “He’s swifter than he looks maybe. An’ maybe he knows more fast ones than I could count. Maybe he’ll slip over a fast one pretty soon. Maybe I’ll come out on the dirty end of this stick too.”
“Where did you see him?” she asked, “He ain’t in the house that I seen. There’s lots here, but no judge.”
“Seen him first mo’nin’ ah was sober, standin’ ’cross the street, lookin’ up an’ waitin’.”
“Seen him since?”
“Twicet since, in the same spot lookin’ up. He ain’t sure.”
“Figurin’ to hide out till he’s too old to chase you? Must be a mighty hard-bitten boy to scare you.”
She had him straight now. And she wasn’t going to be rooked by every bastard with plunder in his eye who came along.
“No, ah ain’t scared. Oney Nub got a rod an’ don’t care fo’ nothin’.”
“Well, where’s your big blow?”
“Ah left it down in the Big Bend country. Ah’m always fo’gettin’ things.”
She’d have to look around a little, while he slept later on.
“Ah’m fixin’ to get me another one. Ah’m figgerin’ on a long cut short.”
“What’s your name? Shtunk?”
He didn’t seem to notice what she called him now. She’d like to call him a downright son of a bitch to his face because he was such an ugly bastard. She had to ask him a second time what his name was, and all he answered was, “What’s yours?”
So she said, “Stella.”
“Stella what?”
“Stella Howard.”
“An’ mine’s Two-Gun McKay from West Presidio an’ mah middle name is Hickok. Ah don’t like no Mexican-man, but them Mexican gals like me. Say, gal, they call me Bad-Hat down where ah come from. How long yo’ been hay-baggin’?” he asked, and Norah made no reply.
“Hay-baggin’ don’t pay, Btondie. Y’ought to get in a good game. With me. With your looks an’ mah brains we’d clean up in a hurry.”
After a minute Norah rose from the bed. She brushed the box off the pillow onto the floor so that the small chocolates rolled in a dozen directions at once, under the chair and under the dresser. Then she went to the table and drank out his sotol without taking breath.
She wanted to strike out at something, to hurt something as she had been hurt.
“Y’all talk sometimes like mah sister used,” Cass told Norah one morning.
There was resemblance in the voices, both were low; likeness too in the way Norah walked. But there resemblance ceased. Norah was not so tall as Nancy, and she was not so handsome. She did not appear to be a full-grown woman. Her mouth was a pouting child’s mouth, and all her ways like a child’s. Her bearing alone betrayed what pain she had borne: she went about without speech, never laughing, always complaining a little. She found it difficult sometimes even to smile.
Yet, as Cass boasted to her of places he had seen and of things he had done, there grew within her the hope that this man might not try to possess her.
On their fifth night together he spoke softly to her, and she said out to him that she did not desire. He let her be then without persistence. Norah felt a little grateful for that, for a minute.
“You’re a gentleman,” was her spoken praise for him. “He’s got something up his sleeve,” she thought after a minute.
And so he stayed on untroubled by his ignorance of that motive which most strongly kept him
from leaving.
Of what he had told her of himself with his tongue, the scars of his body told her yet more. She had heard, with never a spark of emotion, that his father had been cruel. Of cruelty she had learned something herself. But on the night that they had been a week together he stood half-undressed in the light, and she saw two furrows cut into the flesh like two thin pink hoops around his shoulders. His back was turned, outside it was raining, he did not know that she saw. Pity surprised her that time. For one long moment, pity held her like love. But she struggled free, she would not be held.
She feared that which held her lest she be pinned by it.
After the light was out that night he told her of his earlier days; he spoke of West Texas and the cities of the North. He told her how life on the road differed, South and North, West and East. Then he told how he had once been beaten in a brothel in New Orleans; when he told that a strange thing happened. Norah reached out her hand and with one finger touched the line of the scar that ran down under his chin, traced it down in the darkness to the top of his throat, felt the blood of his body pulsing there.
Although this thing which the girl did was small, yet to one like Cass it was very much. He took her hand, and he held it as he once had held Nancy’s hand. And when he released it, love for her was in him. He turned to her slowly, as she turned toward him . . . After a while she gave him her memories. At first her voice was flat and hard, as Nancy’s had become; but as she spoke on, it softened somewhat, and she spoke more swiftly. She told him how long hunger had driven her, how shame, cold and mockery had driven her. She spoke of high school days. She told him how she had danced in a little burlesque house, of all that had happened before that time and what had happened to follow.
Then she tried to tell him of something else, something he did not quite understand because of a sudden huskiness in her voice. She broke off, and being helpless then to do otherwise, she wept. Cass did not attempt to quiet her, albeit it seemed to him that sobs tore her throat’s flesh. He could only hold her and feel the whole body shaken, and it seemed to him that her heart bled from ten thousand wounds. Sleep alone stilled her tears.
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