Behold, This Dreamer

by Charlotte Miller

  But it was not politics or Prohibition that concerned William Whitley at the moment; it was Cooper’s son, J.C., instead.

  The boy had not been to call on Elise in weeks now. He had never been too attentive, but it seemed as of late that he had lost all interest in the girl. He was always elsewhere occupied, with his mind on things other than what he should be thinking of—namely that of a wife and a family and settling down as he should. And he was spending altogether too much time with Phyllis Ann Bennett.

  William had been almost unable to believe his own hearing when he had been told that Hiram Cooper’s son was spending so much of his days, and his evenings, at the Bennett house. The boy had never seemed the type to go sniffing around after a cheap little piece like that—and, truly, William had never thought him man enough. He had even allowed himself to wonder on occasion what kind of wedding night his daughter would have once married to the boy—but perhaps J.C. was a man after all, and perhaps that was for the best. Elise needed a strong hand to deal with her; William himself had been faced with enough trouble in the past just in keeping her in line, and had known that J.C. would never be able to handle her—but perhaps he had been wrong. That possibility made J.C. Cooper an even more attractive candidate for a son-in-law—and William was not about to allow Phyllis Ann Bennett to ruin his plans at this late date. Elise had become much less argumentative in the past few weeks, much easier to handle, and perhaps she had at last seen that her father was doing only what he knew was best for her, and for all else concerned. Now all William had to worry about was one backwards boy—and J.C. Cooper would not present a problem of himself now; William would not allow it.

  “We haven’t been seeing too much of J.C. lately,” William said, finally broaching the subject he had intended to bring up all along. “Elise has been saying how much she misses not seeing the boy.”

  “I haven’t seen too much of J.C. myself, lately,” Hiram said, glancing toward the front of the drugstore building, as if he expected J.C. to reappear at any moment. “He’s always off somewhere, busy—”

  “I hear he’s spending a lot of time out at the Bennett place.”

  For a moment Hiram Cooper’s eyes came back to him, and then he looked away again—but not before William had seen in them a look he had found in his own eyes once, in the days before he had seen to it that Elise and the half-breed farmhand—

  When Hiram did not speak, William continued on his own, feeling sorry for the man in a way that only one father could feel for another, and, yet, in the same moment, despising him for the weakness that would not allow him to take the situation in hand, as William himself had done. “Do you really think it’s a good idea for J.C. to be seeing so much of a girl like Phyllis Ann?”

  “There’s not much I can do with J.C.; there’s not much that anyone can do with him anymore,” Hiram said, staring again toward the front of the drugstore, speaking almost as if he had forgotten William’s presence. “He’s changed since he’s taken up with that girl, and he won’t listen to me, or to anyone, about her. I’d always hoped that he and Elise would—” For a moment he fell silent. “I just don’t know now. I just—”

  William opened his mouth to respond, but quickly closed it as he saw J.C. walk out the front door of Dobbins’s. The boy stopped on the sidewalk before the drugstore and stared at him for a moment, and then came toward the car—he even looks different, William thought. I’ll be damned if he doesn’t even look—

  J.C. stopped at the passenger side of his father’s car, looking at William across the hood of the Packard. He stared through the round lenses of his glasses, a self-assurance in his expression that William had never seen there before—I’ll be damned if he’s not getting under Phyllis Ann’s skirts, William thought. I’ll be damned if—

  “Hello, Mr. Whitley,” the boy said, a tone in his voice showing a maturity that even further surprised William.

  “Well, hello yourself, son—I was just telling your father how much we miss not seeing you around our place anymore. Elise had been wondering why you’d quit calling on her.”

  “I’ve been busy lately, I guess.”

  Yeah, and I know doing what—William thought, watching as J.C. moved toward the car door in preparation of getting into the vehicle.

  “Well, I hope you won’t be too busy to come to dinner after church on Sunday. Elise would really like to see you.”

  There was an almost imperceptible change in the boy’s expression, the raising of an eyebrow, the hint of amusement at one corner of his mouth. William had the clear impression that J.C. was fully aware of what he was trying to do—and that he had no intention of going along with anything that he did not want to go along with.

  “Yes, I’d like to see Elise,” the boy said after a moment. “I know I’ve been neglecting my friends lately—and Elise is certainly one of my oldest friends—” The word was stressed purposefully, that damned amusement again playing at one corner of the boy’s mouth, irritating William all the more. “I’d like very much to come to dinner on Sunday—but I’ll have to leave early. I promised to take Phyllis Ann for a drive Sunday afternoon.” He got into the car and shut the door behind himself, then leaned across the seat to speak out the open door at his father’s side. “We’ll see you in church Sunday, Mr. Whitley—Phyllis Ann and I, that is—”

  William took his foot from the running board of the Packard and stepped back, watching as Hiram Cooper shut the door and got the car in gear, and, after a moment, backed it out into the traffic on Main Street. He stepped up onto the sidewalk, and then turned back to find J.C. staring at him through the window as the car started away. Irritation filled William—J.C. Cooper was going to be more difficult to handle than he had ever thought it possible for him to be. William could see that clearly now—for it was a young man, and not a boy, who stared at him from the window of that car; a young man William feared he would never again be able to control.

  “You promised to spend Sunday with me!” Phyllis Ann threw herself down on the sofa in her parlor a short while later, shooting an angry look at J.C. where he stood across the room near the mantlepiece.

  “And I will, most of the day, anyway.”

  “You can’t go to dinner at her house; I won’t let you!”

  J.C.’s eyebrow rose, but he did not respond, making her only angrier—damn him, he was developing a habit of responding to her demands in that way, with silence, sometimes even with a smile. There was little she could do with him now, for there was little left in him of the boy she had always been able to control and second-guess; instead was this man she could increasingly seldom seem to maneuver or cajole. He still loved her—she was quite certain of that—but in the time since her father’s death, he had somehow changed, had matured, become more assured and self-confident. And she hated him for it.

  In the days after her father had died, there had been a hundred decisions to be made, arrangements to be taken care of, the business to consider, running the house and looking after the sharecropped farms; and it had all seemed to fall on her shoulders. Her mother had never once made a decision in all her life, and had been completely unable to cope with all that now had to be done, until even she had turned to Phyllis Ann. There had been so many pressures, so many burdens falling on her, so many people asking so many questions—and then J.C. had stepped in. He had been there all along, looking at her as if he were an adoring puppy each time she turned his way, stupidly trying to console and comfort and help, and doing a poor job of it all—and then, when she had needed someone the most, he had stepped in and had begun to make the decisions for her. He had made arrangements for the funeral, had explained and advised on matters concerning the business that had now seemed her responsibility, and had looked after the problems of the sharecroppers—the more he helped, the more she leaned on him, and the more she leaned on him, the stronger he had seemed to become. Within weeks, the air of backward, self-conscious sh
yness that had always seemed to be about him was seldom apparent anymore. He no longer went into fits of blushes at her look, or fidgeted nervously with his glasses whenever she was near, but instead looked her in the eye and spoke up in a voice that was rapidly taking on the tones of a self-assured man.

  The first time she had thrown a tantrum with him, he had simply walked out. After days when he had not come back, she had called and apologized—she had missed him; it was as simple as that. And she needed him—that had been the hardest thing of all for her to realize; she needed J.C. Cooper, not for what she could use him for, or for the amusement and distraction he could provide, but because of who and what he was.

  They were intimate—“discretely,” as J.C. put it, in order to protect her reputation and her mother’s sensibilities, and Phyllis Ann had begun to find herself looking forward to their times together. Somehow it felt good for him to hold her, knowing that he had seen something of her at her worst, and that he still cared. She even wondered at times if she could be falling in love with him—but she knew that could not be. How could she be in love with someone she had laughed at and ridiculed all his life.

  But she was jealous now, jealous as she had never been before—and of Elise. It made her angry that she felt such jealousy, and angrier still that he seemed to see and recognize it—she wanted to slap him, to wipe that look of knowing and self-assurance from his face; to wipe that look away forever.

  “Phyllis Ann, you cannot stop me from going anywhere I please to go,” he said at last in a quiet voice, making her clench her hands into fists in her lap to keep from striking him.

  “Yes, I can! I won’t let you near me again if you go! I mean it—never again!”

  “Oh?” he asked in that quiet voice, and she felt her nails cut into the flesh of her palms with the effort not to rake them across his face—she wanted to slap him, to hurt him, now even more than she ever had before. She would have been more comfortable with rage from him than this calm self-assurance.

  “I mean it! I won’t let you touch me again!”

  “Fine, if that’s the way you want it.”

  He turned and took up his hat from the chair where he had laid it earlier, then started for the door—but something inside of her snapped. She lunged from the sofa and struck out at him, wanting only to hurt him, but he grabbed her by the wrists instead, dropping his hat to the floor, and held her still in front of him, looking down at her with a concerned expression in his eyes.

  “You goddamn son-of-a-bitch! I won’t let you use me and then just throw me away!” She struggled against him, but he refused to release her, holding her gently but firmly until she finally exhausted herself. “You son-of-a-bitch! You goddamn—you—”

  “I’ve never used you, Phyllis Ann, though God knows you’ve used me.” There was pain in his eyes that she had never seen there before, and she wanted it to stay there, wanted him to hurt as she had hurt all her life—but the pain was soon replaced by pity, pity for himself as well as for her, and she began to struggle against him again, hating him in that moment as much as she had ever hated anyone in her life. “I love you—” he said. “God in heaven, I don’t know why, but I do. If you’d only learn to ask instead of demand—” He let his words fall silent for a moment as he stared at her. “I gave my word that I’d have Sunday dinner with the Whitleys—”

  “Because you want to see Elise!”

  “—because the Whitleys have been friends to my family for years. Elise is a friend of mine—she was once even a friend of yours—but I’m not in love with her. I’m in love with you; the sooner you realize that, the better off we’ll both be.”

  She yanked her wrists free from his grasp, and this time he released her without struggle. She stared up at him, her anger none the less, her hatred, her jealousy—how she despised him, hated him for making her feel this way. How she—“If you go, don’t bother to come back.”

  But he only bent and picked up his hat, and then turned and started for the door.

  “I mean it! If you go to Elise, don’t come back to me!”

  He went on through the door and closed it behind himself. For a moment she could only stare, not believing he had gone, not believing he had left her—and then she picked up a vase from a nearby table and flung it across the room, seeing it shatter against the door he had just gone through, and then watching as it fell in pieces to the rug beneath.

  “Damn you!” she screamed into the empty room. “Damn you—and damn Elise!” She sat down heavily on the sofa again, continuing to stare at the closed door. Her anger would not leave, and neither would her hatred. Her breathing was heavy, furious.

  It was a long time before she moved, before she spoke. When she did, her voice was quieter, but her words were no less filled with hatred.

  “Damn you both,” she said, still staring at the closed door. “Damn you both straight to hell—”

  17

  J.C. Cooper sat in the front parlor of the Whitley house that following afternoon after Sunday dinner, pointedly trying to ignore the remarks William Whitley was making—but it was getting harder to ignore them, harder to ignore them, and also harder to ignore the complacent man who sat there staring at him as he made thinly veiled comments about J.C. and the life he had already chosen to have for himself.

  “A young man has to be careful when it comes to thinking about his future,” Whitley said for the second time, his eyes directed at J.C. and Elise where they sat only a short distance away on the parlor sofa. J.C. stared at him, not speaking—he had known this was coming, had known from the moment he had first been invited here to Sunday dinner. Whitley would never miss the opportunity to once again try to push a match between his daughter and J.C.—but it was a match J.C. was determined to have none of, a match that he would never have, no matter what it was this man wanted.

  “If a man makes a mistake when he’s your age, it’ll haunt him the remainder of his life—you may not believe that now, but it’s true, and it’s the same thing I’ve told my own sons.” Whitley patted his stomach with satisfaction, his eyes moving from J.C. to Elise, and then back again. J.C. clenched his jaw with irritation, wishing there were some way now that he could leave the room, and the house, without his leaving being the height of rudeness—but there was no way. He was stuck here, stuck here to listen to William Whitley’s rude remarks and broad hints concerning J.C.’s relationship with Phyllis Ann, when the relationship was none of Whitley’s business in the first place. J.C. was quite capable of handling his own affairs without interference from anyone, least of all from William Whitley—all the man wanted was to get his hands on the cotton mill anyway, J.C. told himself, and William Whitley was more than willing to sell his daughter in marriage to J.C., or to anyone else if he had to, to assure that.

  But J.C. was not buying. For the first time in his life he knew exactly what it was he wanted, and he knew that he could have it. Phyllis Ann might be spoiled and bad-tempered and unpredictable, more so than he had ever dreamed possible, but still he loved her, as he had always loved her, as he always would. He might love Elise as a sister—but it was Phyllis Ann that he was in love with, often beyond reason or sanity he well knew. He had seen her faults and imperfections; he knew they were there, but he loved her still in spite of them all. Her father had done nothing all her life but teach her violence—now all J.C. wanted was to teach her love. All he ever wanted was to teach her love.

  He had never been so surprised or so happy in all his life as he had been the day of the Fourth of July picnic, two months ago now, when Phyllis Ann had approached him. She had flirted and toyed with him, as no girl had ever done before in his life—and, later, as they were parked in his car in a deserted spot on a country road, they had taken each other. Even in his inexperience, he had known that he had not been the first, but that did not matter. She was loving him, letting him love her as he had dreamed of doing on so many nights when he had awa
kened in his bed in a cold sweat, and that was all that was important.

  That had been the most wonderful day of his life, a day that he had thought would never be—but it had become the darkest day possible for her. She had returned home from their closeness only to be met by her father’s drunken rage. He had beaten her, hurt her horribly, and she had at last had to kill him in order to save her own life—and, even now, J.C. wondered if it had not been his own fault. If he had only had more courage, if he had only been more of a man, he would have walked her to her door that night to ask for her hand, and, in doing so, he might have prevented everything.

  But at least the violence was over for her now, the hurting, and she would never have to face such a horror again. J.C. had been at her side from the moment he had been told, offering her condolence and help, and feeling vastly inadequate to provide either—and then she had needed him. For the first time in his life, someone had really needed him, not for his father’s money or the Cooper name, but for something he could offer from inside himself. There had been arrangements to be made, people to notify, and he had taken care of all that. He had handled matters concerning the business and the many sharecropped and tenanted farms, and had done his best to shield both her and her mother from the more curious and morbid side of their neighbors. From that day on he had openly courted Phyllis Ann, squiring her about publicly, using his own family’s good name in order to lessen the damage done her own; and finally the talk had died down, at least to his own hearing. She had come to ask his opinion only more and more over the weeks, to seek his advice, and, the more she had leaned on him, the more he had dared to allow himself to believe that she might really love him.

  And then he had met with the darker side of her nature. Over the weeks since her father’s death, he had almost allowed himself to forget the girl who had laughed at him and tormented him all his life. He had almost forgotten the selfish, spiteful, mean-tempered creature with an acid tongue and a liking for hurting other people. The Phyllis Ann he knew now was nothing like that; she was soft and beautiful, and she thought well of him—and then her temper had come over some stupid incident, and words he had never thought to hear a woman say, and a viciousness and a cruelty such as he had never seen before. He had been unable to look at her, to see her, and to know how wrong he had been. And so he had walked out.