by Packer, Vin
He thought, Oh, you poor kid, Charlie. You’re too nice. Too nice a kid to have it happening this way. It ought to happen better for you. You made straight A’s and said your prayers when you were a kid, remembered Mother’s Day and stood up when old ladies came in a room.
It was dark. He had been walking for hours before he came to this street. It seemed like hours. Hours during which he told himself if there was one street he wasn’t going down that street was Deel Street. Then he was there. Then he was in front of her house. Then he was walking across her lawn, stealing across the grass and crouching at the window. For a moment the room looked empty and then he looked at the floor and saw them there. Lofton’s back was to him and her arms were around his neck. That was what he saw.
He did not stay. He wanted to, but he was frightened because he did not understand. It had been a very long time since he had known that really there was no one, he was alone on this hellhole earth and there was no one for him. He did not even have the freedom to imagine there was, because the stark realization of his plight hung on his brain like a ball and chain. This was it! This was living! If the world would stop, he’d get off. No one would miss him for more than ten minutes. Not really, for God’s sake. Whatever happened to old Charlie Wright? He was a creep! Dead? No kidding? Charlie Wright dead! That’s all it would amount to.
Look, Charlie boy. This girl never said she was your girl. She’s an old woman, son. Just as old as Old Daddy Lofton.
Listen, damnit. No matter what I say. From now on, no matter what I say, I don’t give two cents for her! That’s the spirit.
See, I’m surprised to see him there. Lofton. But gee —
Gee, sure.
Sure.
Sure.
I’m a liar.
I’ll say you are.
I love her.
Poor guy.
Leave me alone.
O.K., pal. Poor old pal.
Charlie walked off the lawn to the sidewalk, tears blurring his eyes. He wanted to cry, wanted to walk along with the tears streaming down his cheeks, his head held high in the light, he wasn’t ashamed. Hell, no. He was tough, he could take it…. He was not. He couldn’t.
In the bushes at the Bartells’ he kept thinking over and over, Why did she do it to me? He felt like an animal taking shelter in the brush. Hiding. When he got home, if his mother asked him where he was, what would she say if he said, “Sitting in the Bartells’ bushes”?
Why did she do it to me?
He thought of something he had not thought of in a long time. All his thoughts were old ones, half forgotten. He remembered this from the time he was a kid. When he got in fights with other kids, when they called him sissy sometimes, he wanted to run home. He wanted to lay his head in his mother’s lap and have her smooth back his hair and wipe the dirt off his cheek and call him “my boy” and tell him he was safe.
Wishful thinking. It wasn’t that way at home. Maybe it was his fault it wasn’t that way, but it wasn’t that way. He could kill Russel Lofton. Kill him and kick him after and laugh up a storm.
Charlie got up off his haunches. He didn’t care who saw him come out of the bushes. He would come out of any damn bushes he felt like coming out of. God, didn’t anyone love him? Didn’t anyone?
Why did she do it to me?
I don’t love her and I don’t give a damn, but why did she do it to me? I’m just a kid!
Chapter Eleven
It’s all such a shock…. I try to think back on that week and I can’t remember how I felt. I can’t even remember whether my brother and I even talked to each other, or what we said. I was having my own troubles. I didn’t think much about Charlie. We always sort of took Charlie for granted. He was never upset or depressed that I knew. And like I said, I was having my own troubles.
— From the testimony of the sister of the accused
I’M TELLING YOU, BABY, it’s the last time I’m going to call.”
“I don’t care.”
“You mean that? You really mean that?” “Jim Prince, I told you. I told you I never want to see you again.”
“You don’t want to say why?”
“No,” Evie said. “There’s no reason to explain it. You should know why.” “You mean because — ”
“Because I don’t want to see you again,” Evie interrupted. “I’ve changed. I’ve changed a lot.” “I’ll say you have! God!”
“Good-by,” Evie said. She dropped the arm of the phone in its cradle and looked at her watch. It was four-ten in the afternoon. Her mother was upstairs resting and Charlie had gone to the library after work. Evie walked through the rooms of the house in a bored manner, touching the tables with her fingers and scuffing her loafers on the rugs. First she sat in a chair and flicked through the pages of a magazine, and then she walked to the window and stared out at the rain. The earth needed the rain, and for a while Evie watched the water soak into the parched earth and she could imagine how the earth felt, cool, wonderfully relieved. She thought that everything in the world was that way — in need of relief, thirsty for something cool and refreshing. She thought her own heart must look the way the dirt had before the rain came, wizened and rough and hard. It had been a whole day since she had seen Russel Lofton. She wanted to talk to him, to tell him these things she was thinking. She wanted more than that. His presence to tell her she was not useless and frivolous and too young to be important. He respected her. He didn’t have to and he did. Why did she want more, and what more? A million times she made up speeches she would say to him about wanting more. They seemed like easy speeches to say, but when she was face to face with him she never said them. They were not easy speeches to say.
Evie walked to the hall closet and got her raincoat from the hook. She took a scarf from the shelf and tied it around her hair and then she put her wallet in her pocket and walked out the front door. Actually she knew where she was going, but she would not admit it to herself yet. She walked as though she were not in a hurry and she was in a hurry. At the corner she ran for the bus. She knew he always stayed at his office until five-thirty on Fridays.
What more did she want? She decided it as she rode along on the bus, rain streaking the window out of which she stared. She wanted his love. She had known that for a long time but she had not dared to put the feeling stirring inside of her into a serious thought. Even though that was the way she felt, she had not wanted to admit it honestly because she would have to reject the idea as impossible. She would have to. Words she did not want to come to her head would follow automatically as they were doing now, and she did not want those words on her mind. Infatuation. Crush. Words that ridiculed an emotion that could not stand up to ridicule because it was fragile. Because unless he disproved those words, they would be appropriate and their fitness would make her a fool.
Was she going to ask him? Oh, God, Evie Wright, don’t. You’re walking right into fire. Why embarrass him? Yet she remembered his eyes, the night she had held his hand to her lips, she had seen something there. She had not imagined it. Why was it better left alone? She knew why. She was afraid that it would be like ripping a Pandora’s box open and watching all the hope and magic go. When the magic went it was always bad. Don’t let the magic go, Evie Wright.
In a way Evie was rather pleased with herself for having such thoughts. She had never before sat on a bus in Azrael and pondered over problems such as these. She was sure too that no one else on the bus was thinking the way she was. The woman across the aisle was planning her grocery list. The man in front of her was thinking about money, worrying about unpaid bills. The little boy on the front seat was wishing he could be a bus driver when he grew up. No one else on the bus to town was thinking big thoughts. Only Evie. It made her feel special and sensitive and dramatic. She seemed to have a mission, really. A mission.
• • •
When she was announced through the intercom by his secretary, Russel Lofton’s first reaction to Evie’s visit was one of extreme pleasure. The next
reaction was certainly a darn fool one. He thought, Lordy, how will it look to have Evie paying calls on me during working hours? How will it look to everyone? That was a darn fool thought. Geehosopher, he didn’t have anything to hide about his friendship with Em Wright’s daughter. Anyone in Azrael would testify that he had been an intimate friend of the Wrights for years and years and years.
She looked pretty. She sure looked pretty. The front locks of her dark hair were damp, and her skin seemed to glisten, her eyes were soft and earnest in their expression, and when she slipped out of her raincoat, she was wearing a skirt and a tailored white blouse. Lofton had always liked white blouses on women. There was something about it. Something innocent and defenseless, young and vulnerable.
He got up and crossed his office to take her hand. “Well, well, this is a surprise. Well, sit down, E-venus.”
He realized he had used her nickname. Well, heavens, it wasn’t as if she were with him in a private place. The Azrael National Bank Building was just about as public as you could get. Evie did not correct him and he was grateful. He sat down beside her on the brown leather couch in his office and for a moment they only looked at each other. Evie seemed satisfied merely to watch his eyes, now and then looking up at his forehead and his hair and then back to meet his glance. Lofton was nervous and uncomfortable. He wanted to think of something to say and he said the rain was awful but we needed it.
“I was thinking about it ever since it started,” she said.
“Were you now?”
Lofton didn’t know why he didn’t want to start a serious discussion there in his office, but he didn’t want to. Suppose Miss Bates walked in. Now what would Miss Bates think? Then Lofton remembered last night’s experience and he thought of telling Evie about it, but he checked himself. He did not want her to know he had gone to Jill Latham’s to plead with her to hire Evie. It would sound foolish or something.
“Want a cigarette?” he said.
“I have some.” Evie pulled a crumpled pack from the pocket of her skirt and Lofton flicked the table lighter to flame.
“Yes,” Evie said, “I was thinking about the rain, and about you.”
Lofton laughed. “Golly,” he said, “you were doing a lot of thinking.” How could he stop her from continuing? It was a quarter to five. Miss Bates left at five-fifteen.
“I wish I knew how to say something,” Evie said. She sat back on the leather couch with her arms behind her head, her cigarette near her hair. Lofton told her to watch out or she would singe her hair. She was awfully pretty, all right.
“Tell me something,” Evie said. “What have you thought about our friendship so far?”
Lofton got up and began to walk around pointlessly. “What do you mean?” he said. He chuckled. “What’s on your pretty mind?” he said lightly.
“Don’t make jokes of this, please.”
She was dead serious. Lordy, he ought to be able to say something about being busy. He felt guilty as sin because he couldn’t respond. There was just something about it. Here in his office and all. It just wasn’t the proper place.
“I’m sorry. Guess I don’t think well during office hours.”
“Are you sorry I came?”
“Sorry? Am I sorry? Gee whiz, E-venus, you know I’m not sorry. Why should I be sorry? I’m delighted, that’s what I am! Not every day something nice like this happens!”
He sat down in the swivel chair behind his desk and Evie stayed on the couch. There was a sign in front of him, a printed sign with an advertisement for life insurance. The lead sentence was in bold block print: A YEAR FROM NOW WHAT WILL I WISH I HAD DONE TODAY?
He wished she had not come. He kept wishing she were not there. He knew it was a terrible way to act and he tried not to show it. He said, “What do you think of my little place?”
Evie’s face was sullen. “It’s fine,” she answered, “fine.”
“Yes, sir,” Lofton said. “This is my hangout, you might say.”
He was startled when Evie said, “You’re different at the office, aren’t you?”
“Nonsense!”
“You are.”
“Don’t be silly. Why would I be different? What reason would I have to be different?”
“I don’t think you wanted me to come,” Evie told him.
He picked up a plastic letter opener and tapped it against the green blotter on the top of his desk. “You know better than that. Now, don’t be silly. My land, I’m glad to have a young lady caller. You know life gets pretty stodgy when you have nothing but fat old men trooping in and out of your office all day, carrying their brief cases and smoking their cigars. Yes, sir, it just — ”
Lofton stopped and stared at Evie. He sat forward and stared at her. Then he dropped the letter opener and ran around the desk to the couch. He said, “E-venus, E-venus, you’re not crying?”
Her arms came around his neck and her face burrowed into his chest and the sobs started loud and heavy. Lordy, Miss Bates would be in before you could say Jack Robinson and what would she think of him when she saw this situation? A young girl crying in his arms!
He said, “Hush now, hush now. What’s the matter? Hush now, that’s no way to be. What’s the matter?”
“I love you,” she sobbed. “I’m in love with you.”
Russel Lofton felt himself quake inside. He wanted to be touched by this, to be terribly, terribly touched, to know this moment as a very tender moment, an important moment when he would be able to handle this emotion with all the reverence due it. With the reverence and the dignity he knew he should feel himself, with the control and maturity he knew he should show. It might be true that he had somehow expected and anticipated this moment, when this girl — this pretty and wonderful girl-would tell him she loved him. He had thought that it would happen, yes, he had, and he had hoped for the wisdom he knew he was capable of, the wisdom Evie herself would have expected from him on reflection. But he had never expected it to happen in his office in the Azrael National Bank Building, one wooden door and two desks away from Martha Bates, the secretary whom he had employed for thirteen years. Lordy, he had a reputation to think of. How had it ever happened? How had he let it happen? Let it go this far?
He found himself saying, “I’m an old man, Evie, you know that. You just have a schoolgirl’s crush on an old man. That’s all.” He resisted an impulse to stroke her hair. He thought, geehosopher, he sure had got himself into a pair of pretty odd situations in the last two days. It wasn’t even like living in Azrael any more. It was like living in New York City or someplace, where anything could happen!
Evie seemed to stop sobbing abruptly. She shrank away from him and pulled her handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt. She blew her nose and sniffed, turning her head from him. Neither of them said anything and Lofton finally said, “There now. There now. Feel better?” It was a grossly inadequate thing to say. He was a clumsy small-town bumpkin. Worse than that. He knew something that made him worse than that. He knew that once he got her out of his office, once he could relax and not worry and think about this, he would imagine what he might have said. He would play out his own emotional reaction. He would tell himself that a beautiful girl had come to his office and confessed her love and he would wonder what might have happened if he had held her and put his lips on hers. Because sometime during the midst of all of it, he knew he had thought of doing just that. He could feel the warmth churn through him in his stomach near his belt buckle, but he was afraid. He was not the eternally young person he had told his mirror he was last night. He was old and staid and cautious and there was not an ounce of sophistication in him. For once and for all it was settled. He was a hick lawyer, short on fire and fully aware and afraid of how easily fire started, how rapidly it spread.
Evie did not look at him. She stood up and held her head down.
She said, “I’m an awful fool.” Her words were clipped and sour.
“Nonsense. Look, don’t even think about it.”
; He knew he was responsible, he had let it go this far. He had spent time with her he had no right to spend. He had known what it would lead up to and he had waited. He knew that now. He would admit it at that second of that moment if he never admitted it again.
“I’ll be going,” Evie said.
, Lofton wondered if her eyes were red from crying. Lordy, he could simply tell Miss Bates she had some kind of problem with her mother. He hated himself for thinking this way, but that was it. That was the kind of fellow he was.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.” He could make it better in the car. Make it all seem better.
Evie shook her head and walked to the door. He could tell by the back of her head that it was too late now to make anything better. He could never describe what it was about the back of her head that made him know, but it was obvious and clear and he did not protest when she said, “I’m sorry I bothered you. Good-by.”
After the door shut he stood dumbly in his office. It was as though a tornado had whirled into his office and whirled out again, taking something of his from him. It was uncanny and very nearly comical and for a second or two he really believed that it would all be forgotten. That it was one of those things that happens sometimes, one of those inexplicable crazy things that happens between two people for no reason. It was like a dream that happened during a brief nap and yet was so intense that even after waking it seemed real. Russel Lofton shook his head and walked to the window to stare out at the rain beating down on the gray stone steps in front of the building.
A slight figure in a raincoat and a red bandana hurried down the walk, and as Lofton watched it fade into the distance he wondered why he felt nothing. Why he only watched her go as though he had always known this was inevitable — as though it was one of those inevitabilities that he would like to think really mattered.
Suddenly, and with a vague feeling of relief, Russel Lofton turned from the window and walked directly to the desk. He dialed the number with a determined manner, and when he spoke to Em Wright his voice was resonant and confident. He began, “Look, Em, a little something has happened I think you ought to know about. When Evie comes home, I think she’ll be a little upset. Nothing she won’t get over or anything like that, but you see, the kid’s going through some sort of a stage now — you understand….”