Behold, This Dreamer

by Charlotte Miller

  The girl quietened back down as Dobbins pacified her and several of her friends with free ice cream sodas from the fountain, and Janson relaxed slightly, relieved at having been spared the indignity of having been publicly thrown out of the place. He shoved his wages back into his pocket and debated on whether he should stay here and wait for the other hands to leave so that he could hitch a ride back to the Whitley place, or whether to take off walking and just hope that someone might pick him up—but his eyes came to rest on a girl sitting only a few stools away at the soda fountain. She was pretty, probably at least quite a few years older than Janson, in her late twenties, with bobbed red hair and a tight green dress that did not quite cover her crossed knees. She had on face powder and lipstick and rouge, and, as she smiled, a slight dimple showed in her left cheek.

  She stared at Janson openly, her fingers toying with the rim of the near-empty fountain glass of Coca-Cola before her. A tall, heavy-set man was leaning over her shoulder, saying something against her ear as he looked down toward her breasts—but she was paying him little attention. Her eyes were set on Janson instead; she smiled, and he smiled in return, and, after a moment, she stood and pushed past the heavy-set man to come and sit on a vacant stool next to the one where Janson sat.

  “Hi,” she said, the dimple showing in her cheek again. “I ain’t seen you around here before.”

  “No, I don’t guess you have.” Janson smiled.

  “My name’s Delta; what’s yours?”

  “Janson Sanders—” He was going to say more, but the heavy-set man who had been trying to talk to her before was suddenly there, his hand on her arm, trying to pull her to her feet.

  “Com’ on, Delta; I ain’t got all night—”

  She looked up at him, anger showing plainly in her clear hazel eyes. “Go away, Les. I ain’t goin’ nowhere with you tonight.”

  “But you promised you’d—”

  “I don’t care what I promised,” she snapped, jerking her arm free of his grasp. “You go away and leave me alone or I’ll tell your wife about you, Les Jenkins.”

  “Now, sugar, you know you wouldn’t—” he began, putting his hand on her arm again, but she only pushed it away.

  “I mean it! Go away, Les!”

  “You heard what she said.” Janson rose to his feet, and the man turned to look at him.

  “Wasn’t nobody talking to you, boy.”

  “Maybe not, but she’s done told you t’ leave her be—”

  “This ain’t none of your business, boy. You just keep your mouth outta—”

  “I’m makin’ it my business—an’ my name ain’t boy—’

  The big man’s hands tightened into fists—he was ready to fight. But, then again, so was Janson.

  “Now Les—” The girl’s hazel eyes moved quickly around the room. “You behave. Just go on—”

  “You heard what th’ lady said,” Janson told him, but suddenly the man snorted, and then laughed out loud, his ruddy face becoming only redder.

  “Lady! She ain’t no—”

  But suddenly the girl’s hand was on his arm, her tone somehow different. “Now, Les, you be a good boy an’ go away, an’ I’ll let you call me tomorra’ night—”

  The man stared at her for a moment, and then glanced at Janson, seeming to consider the possibilities. After a time, he nodded his head, then retrieved his hat from a nearby stool, reaching up to put it on his head and adjust the brim. “Okay, tomorrow night,” he said, and looked at Janson again before turning and crossing the fountain area going toward the front door of the drugstore. He went out onto the sidewalk, glancing back through the windows one last time, his heavily jowled face unreadable.

  Somehow something did not feel right—but the girl turned to Janson again and smiled, the dimple coming back to her cheek, and the feeling was gone. All he could think of was that she had the prettiest red hair he had ever seen, even if she did wear it bobbed off too short.

  She was not a lady. Janson knew that by the time they left the drugstore together, but it did not seem to matter. They went out into the chilly darkness, her arm firmly hooked through his—they were going for a drive in her motor car, she had said; but he knew what she wanted. She wanted the same thing he wanted. That was all that was important.

  They got in her car and she let him drive. He choked the engine too much and it coughed and sputtered, but soon they were driving up Main Street, her warm hand resting on his thigh.

  “Wait, hold on!” she said as they came abreast of the billiard parlor, and was out of the car almost before he could stop it. She went to a large, expensive-looking motor car parked alongside the street and quickly leaned inside, giving him a good view of silk-encased calves, and, for just a moment, even the backs of her knees, and the tops of her rolled stockings. She straightened up quickly and returned to the car with something in her hands, getting in and slamming the door after herself. “I figured Les would have some corn liquor stashed in his car, but I did even better’n that,” she said, holding a bottle of gin up for him to see.

  Janson started to protest, but suddenly her mouth was on his, her body pressed against him, her tongue sliding into his mouth. She looked up at him a moment later, rather breathless.

  “Why don’t we go to my place? I got some glasses for the gin—”

  He nodded, but did not speak—he had known that was where they were going all along.

  Her house was small and dark, sitting off on a country road a few miles from town. The parlor seemed gaudy under bright electric lights, the chairs and sofa upholstered in a worn brocade of some red and gold design, with a dark rug on the floor showing even darker stains in places. They sat on the sofa and had a drink, but she was soon in his arms, warm and soft, and willing. He had been with women before, girls, but somehow this was different. She was older, more experienced; forbidden, and yet exciting.

  She led him toward the bedroom, toward a wide spindle bed that sat against one wall. Her dress was suddenly off, and he marveled at how full and round her breasts were in his hands. She was pulling at his overalls, his workshirt, as he unlaced his shoes and kicked them off; and then they were on the bed, and the world went away.

  Her body moved beneath his as no woman’s ever had before, her nails biting into the flesh of his back. She said things, did things, that no lady should—but it did not matter. His urgency came, the pleasure, and he strained forward, giving into the feelings. The tension mounted and peaked and he found release, collapsing into her arms, breathing heavily.

  “Honey, get off ’a me. You’re too heavy—” she said, pushing at his sweating shoulders, her voice sounding annoyed.

  Janson rolled away, seeing her reach for the quilt at the foot of the bed and pull it up over herself—not out of embarrassment, he knew, but simply as a matter of course. He felt self-conscious now beneath her hazel eyes as they moved over him, and he reached for his underdrawers and sat up to pull them on.

  “Honey, don’t be gettin’ ready to go an’ all just yet. There’s a whole lot more lovin’ we can do tonight. I know some tricks I can teach you, how to last longer for a lady. You’re no worse than any other young fella your age, s’ eager an’ all; you just got t’ learn that it takes more sometimes for a lady to get what she—”

  As Janson’s eyes came to rest on her again, she seemed to realize she had said too much.

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong, honey. You sure got what a lady wants. It just takes learnin’ to—”

  But he was standing up, pulling on his shirt and reaching for his overalls. “I can find my way back int’ town,” was all he said.

  “I didn’t mean to get you mad at me.” She sat up, letting the quilt drop from her breasts as she leaned forward. “Come on back to bed, honey. We got the whole night to love—”

  Suddenly he was dizzy and his stomach hurt—love, this was not love. He did not even
know this woman, and he wished now that he had never met her. Not being a lady was one thing, but she was something so much worse.

  And, even worse still, he was drunk and he knew he was going to be sick. He fought down the nausea that rose to his throat, refusing to allow himself to be humiliated even further in front of this woman.

  “Come on back to bed, James—”

  “No, ma’am,” he said, and thought—and my name’s not James, though he did not bother to say it. He pulled the galluses of his overalls up over his shoulders and hooked them, then began to look for his socks and shoes, finding them under the bed. When he straightened up she was sitting up in bed, the quilt having fallen now to her waist. She held his coat in her hands.

  “When you get ready for some more lovin’, you just give me a call,” she said as he took his coat in one hand, his shoes and socks in the other, and left the room.

  “That ain’t lovin’,” he said aloud, but to himself, as he walked up the dark road a few moments later. He had not gone more than a few paces from the house before he collapsed to his knees by the side of the road and vomited silently into the ditch.

  He continued to retch long after there was nothing left to come up, then knelt there in the dirt at the roadside for a long time, allowing the cold night air to clear his head somewhat. He felt sick and alone, the memory of the woman’s words bringing a burning embarrassment to his face now even as they had not before.

  After a time he moved to sit in the winter-dead grass beside the road, taking the time to pull on his socks and shoes and shrug into his coat, feeling chilled now all the way through to his soul. He got to his feet and started down the lonely stretch of road toward town, shoving his hands deep into his worn coat pockets—then he froze, panic filling him. The money, it was gone. He turned the pockets of the coat inside out, then searched his overalls pockets—gone, those few coins that were his only pay for almost two weeks worth of work. Gone. Then suddenly he understood—the way the woman had held his coat in her hands, the look that had been on her face when he had straightened up from finding his shoes, and, even earlier, when she had first smiled at him in the drugstore—she had seen the coins in his hand. That was the only reason she had taken him to her home, to her bed. She had seen the coins.

  Anger and shame fought within him as he clenched his fists and turned back toward her house—but he could go no farther. If he went back—but he could not strike a woman, so he stayed where he was in the road and stared at her house and cursed himself. Those few coins were so little. They would not buy her a dress. They were worth so little to anyone else—

  But they had been worth the world to him.

  He fought to control the rage building within him, knowing there was nothing he could do—and knowing she knew there was nothing he could do. Then he forced himself to walk on, toward town, toward that bricked section of Main Street, toward the drugstore, and the men who could give him a ride in the truck back to Whitley’s place.

  When he arrived, Main Street was deserted. Dobbins’ Drugstore was dark; the moving picture theatre was dark; even the billiard parlor at the far end of the street was closed—and there was no sign of the truck or of the men from Whitley’s. He was alone.

  He sighed and looked up the long, dark stretch of road he had ridden down earlier, then sat down on the sidewalk to remove his shoes and socks—there was no more need for them tonight. Then he began to walk, cursing his stupidity every step of the way, swearing to himself that he would never again be taken, that he would never again trust anyone through the remainder of his life, no matter who that person might be.

  The night was cold and he was shivering in the worn old coat long before he had covered the miles to Whitley’s place and to the lonely, dark room that was now his home. The fire he had built earlier in the black stove had gone out, but he did not take the time to rebuild it. He shrugged out of the old coat and lay down on the cot, too tired and too sick to even bother to pull off his overalls and change into a nightshirt.

  Outside the winter wind rustled the dead branches of a tree, whistling through the cracks in the walls and banging a shutter off somewhere in the distance. Inside there was only the sound of his own breathing, the beat of his own heart.

  It was a long time that night before he slept.

  6

  The spring rain had blown up quickly. Only a short time before the sky had been blue and the sun shining, but now all was gray and wet outside. Elise stared out the window in silence, watching as the rain washed away the remnants of what had been a beautiful late-April day. Water stood now in muddy red puddles on the campus grounds, hanging in droplets from the shrubs outside the window, and running in narrow, red-stained rivers alongside the streets. Girls in pale spring dresses ran from the dormitory to their classrooms, holding folded Atlanta newspapers over carefully crimped bobs, laughing and giggling and splashing in puddles of water as if they were still no more than children. Elise watched them, envying their carelessness, their minds without trouble or worry or thought beyond new chiffon stockings or the latest shade available in lipsticks. Such a short while ago she had been much as they were now, worry free, with little more than the discontents of children—but in these past hours she had come to realize how the world could change, and, though she knew she could still stop it, she also knew she would not.

  She sat in the antechamber outside the principal’s office of the boarding school, in a richly-upholstered chair that for all its luxury could not seem to sit her comfortably. Her eyes stared out the window, watching the rain as it washed down the glass and soaked into the closely clipped lawn outside, somehow looking but still not seeing—Phyllis Ann was in there now, talking with the principal. If she would only tell the truth, tell what had actually happened—but Elise knew she would not. Phyllis Ann would lie, or she would remain silent, whichever she thought would better suit her purposes; and Elise would be called in to answer questions she did not want to answer, make choices she did not want to make—choices she should never have to make.

  Only the day before, everything had been fine. Elise had studied through the afternoon and late into the night, using a small, shaded lamp after lights-out had been called on their hall, studying for a history examination that was due in Miss Jackson’s class that following day. Phyllis Ann had come in long after curfew had been called on the school grounds, having gone out riding with several of the boys from town after Elise had refused to go; and she had gone directly to sleep—Elise had reminded her of the examination, and of her near-to-failing grade in the class, but Phyllis Ann had not seemed concerned. She had only groused about the light and the late hour, and then had gone to sleep, as if she had not one care in the world.

  But, still, when the examination had begun that next morning, Elise had been surprised to see her friend referring to a small bit of paper she kept hidden in her hand. Elise had stared in open disbelief until Phyllis Ann’s angry glance made her turn her eyes away—Phyllis Ann was cheating, when Elise had never before seen anyone cheat in all her months at the school. The other students knew better, for they all knew that cheating garnered the most immediate and the worst possible punishment—expulsion, with no defense heard, and none to be given.

  About a half-hour into the examination, Phyllis Ann had dropped her notes—it had been an accident, a clumsy movement of a hand, a shifting of papers, sending the small scrap of cheat notes onto the floor between Phyllis Ann’s desk and Elise. The two girls had looked at each other nervously, that small scrap of paper lying like a damnation between them. Neither could bend to pick it up, for Miss Jackson’s sharp eyes would be sure to catch such a movement, and she would then demand to see what it was that had been retrieved from the floor—but they both knew the notes could never remain where they were.

  Miss Jackson moved about the classroom, first up one aisle and then down another, pausing at the front or rear for just a moment, and then moving on. El
ise’s eyes met Phyllis Ann’s in a desperate nervousness. Phyllis Ann would be immediately expelled if the notes were found, packed up, sent home—Elise could see the fear clearly written on her friend’s face, not at the possibility of expulsion itself, but at what she knew could happen to her once she reached home. Ethan Bennett, Phyllis Ann’s father, was well known to have a violent temper, and Elise herself knew he had beaten both his daughter and his wife on more than one occasion in the past—she had seen the bruises, the bloodied nose, the blackened eye, even the fractured collarbone from when he had slung Phyllis Ann against the stair rail on her tenth birthday. Elise could little doubt the reception Phyllis Ann would receive at home—or the honesty of the fear that now filled the other girl’s eyes.

  Miss Jackson started up the aisle that passed between the girls’ desks, and Elise found herself praying fervently to a God she hoped was there—please, let her go on by. Please, God, just let her go on by—

  The teacher stopped before their desks, and Elise sat, almost holding her breath, as she stared down at the words she had written only moments before on the examination paper. She dared not look up to know for certain—

  Miss Jackson bent, picking up the small scrap of note-covered paper from the floor between them. It was a long moment before she spoke, staring down at the cheat notes in her hand. “Miss Bennett, Miss Whitley, would you please come with me.”

  They had followed her out into the hallway and directly to the principal’s office. There had been only one brief moment when they had been left alone in the antechamber, one brief moment, and hurriedly whispered words.

  “If we stick together, she can’t do a thing to either of us—” Phyllis Ann had said, clinging to her arm, her fingers biting into the flesh until Elise’s wrist hurt. “She doesn’t know who had the notes—if you don’t talk, and I don’t talk, she can’t prove a thing. She won’t expel both of us, knowing one of us hasn’t done anything wrong—you’ve got to stick with me. It’ll be all right; you’ll see—”