The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  And what did the patch of pants mean? It meant that Slater was still very much interested in Margaret, desperately interested, and that he had gone to Dall’s house last night, hoping to find Margaret, and instead had found only Bowzer.

  “So it looks like I better go have a little talk with him,” Dall said. “Face to face.” Now he was on his way out there. He suggested that I keep a good eye on Margaret in the meantime, until he had the whole thing settled. I told him I was going back to Naps’s house very shortly. Then Dall got into his squad car and headed off for his showdown.

  “Come on back to the kitchen and shell a few peas for me,” my grandmother requested.

  “Okay.” I shrugged and went back to the kitchen and sat down with an aluminum bowl in my lap and shelled a mess of peas while she worked on a pie.

  “For a fact,” she let fall while rolling out the dough, “Dall has sure got a real head between his shoulders. Just like his daddy was. Slick as a whisker.”

  “He’s all right,” I granted, mechanically snapping open the peapods.

  “It aint his fault he’s not much to look at,” she continued reflectively, almost apologetically. “His daddy wasn’t no knockout hisself. And his momma…Homely! Why, they used to say that when Dall was a baby he had to be blindfolded before he’d nurse!”

  I laughed a little.

  She eyed me. “Well, you aint lost your funnybone yet, anyway,” she said.

  While I snapped open the peapods I lapsed into a brown study of reflection. Now that Margaret was successfully removed from her mother and Slater, I could do whatever I wanted with her. I visualized the two of us vagabonding our way around the world, seeing everything, making up for the emptiness of our youths, having a great time. As soon as I saw her again I would persuade her to run away with me.

  Oh, of course before we went it might be a good idea for me to learn a little more about this curious creature, to satisfy myself that she really was earnest in her feelings toward me, that she was no longer seriously contemplating her own demise as a solution to her problems, that she was not so dependent on or morbidly attached to her mother that she could not get away from her permanently, that she would not be disposed to embarrass our future guests or friends by decorating the walls with obscenities in mock-feculent colors, that her chronic self-defeating tendencies did not require extensive therapeutic treatment, and that she had not been somehow perpetually corrupted by her deviant contacts—whatever they were—with her former consort.

  Golly, son, I said to myself, you’ve got a long way to go yet.

  “You bet you,” my grandmother remarked as I was finishing the peas for her, “he aint a real Christian gentleman, I reckon not, but sure as I’m astandin here he’s the keenest and two-fistedest jasper that ever come out of Newton County. They broke the mold after he was made, and aint nobody up there got the spleen and spunk of him.”

  “Who?” I inquired.

  She cast me a look of annoyance. Then she said, “Your pal Dall.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  The first thing I did after lunch was to call the Missouri Pacific baggage agent once more and ask—rather hesitantly—if they had had any success yet in locating my lost suitcase. There’s really no great rush, I assured him, but I would just sort of like to get it back, you know? We’ll call you, he said.

  Then I called Naps’s house. Tatrice answered. I asked to speak to Margaret. Who’s this? asked Tatrice. I told her. My Lord, she said quietly but intensely. You want to speak to Margaret? she asked puzzledly. Yes yes, I said, feeling a stupefying suspicion of something gone wrong. Tatrice said: She’s not over there at your house? It took me a moment to realize that this was a question, not a statement, then I answered: No, why should she be? Well, Tatrice said, I thought that must surely be where she went. I said: You mean she’s not there? Yes, Tatrice said, she left about an hour ago after talking to—I thought it must be you—on the telephone; she didn’t say anything at all when she went out, but I simply took it for granted she was going to walk over to your place for a while. On foot? I said. I’m sorry? she said. I said: You mean she just walked out the front door and went walking off up the street? Yes, she said, just went walking up Ringo in the direction of your house; Naps left early in the car to go out to Mr. Slater’s place, or else I would have offered to drive her over to your place, but it isn’t far, is it, eight or nine blocks? She didn’t come over here, I stated flatly. Maybe she went home, I said sadly. Maybe she just went on back home to her mother. Oh, goodness, that would be too bad, Tatrice said; I guess I should have stopped her, but I—Hey! I said. What did Naps go out to Slater’s place for?

  “Well now,” she said haltingly, and I sensed that it was going to be hard for her to explain, “you see, what happened was, after you left last night, we sat around talking a long time and…well, you know Naps, he likes to see to it that a person gets enough to drink, and Margaret…well, I said to Naps, getting him off in a corner, I said to him, Hadn’t you better let up a little on that girl? She’s already had half a pint at least,’ but he just laughed and said, ‘Honey, don’t you want to hear some lively bedtime stories?’ and he winked at me and went on back and poured her another one, and after she’d had a couple more and couldn’t even turn them up without spilling them I said to hex myself, ‘Margaret, you are getting kind of pie-eyed and far-gone. Want me to make you some coffee?’ but she wouldn’t pay me any mind because she was too busy answering the question Naps had just asked her.”

  “What sort of questions did he ask?”

  “Oh, everything,” she said. “Just everything, and then after a while he didn’t have to ask her very many questions because she was answering them all by herself, I mean, she was just talking a blue streak. At the beginning he would ask her things like what she thought of Little Rock, and what she thought of you, and what she thought of her momma, and all like that, but then before too long he didn’t have to ask her much more, because she was doing all the talking, and he just sat back and listened and I…well, I did too, because, honestly, some of it was very interesting, even if I’m awfully ashamed of myself this morning for sort of peeking in on her private business like that.”

  I begged Tatrice to pass along to me anything Margaret had said which might be of interest to me, and Tatrice, after making me promise not to tell anyone that she had told me, told me.

  Margaret, in the advanced stages of intoxicated loquacity, had spoken frankly about Slater’s wife Ethel, that old, bent, bitter woman confined to a wheelchair and confined to her own room in that large old Spanish hacienda, a woman Margaret referred to more than once as “the last gasp” of the original Little Rock aristocracy—whose people, the Crittendens, had governed and overlorded the town for most of the nineteenth century. Slater implied to Margaret that he was convinced his wife’s invalidity was psychosomatic; she wanted to be cared for and babied. He resented his wife because all the money was hers and she knew it and behaved accordingly, was conniving and parsimonious. Horrible woman. He hadn’t been between her legs for twenty years. Enough to spoil a man forever. Impulsively Margaret laughed, then realized it wasn’t funny. But she felt sorry for Ethel Slater, and liked her; sometimes they talked together over tea in Ethel’s room while Slater was busy tending to his horses. “I can’t stand men,” Mrs. Slater said, “and I see so few ladies worthy of the name, so it is a pleasure to talk with you.” At another time (the next day? two weeks afterwards?) the woman said, “My thighs are like iron. Feel them. Ah. There. Now, higher.” Now higher Margaret tilts her glass, draining it, gulps, coughs, clearing her throat, says (quotes): Now, higher. Ah. Horrible woman. But she felt sorry for her. No, not because of Slater. They were both victims. We are all victims. All of us are crazy fucked-up victims. (Tatrice leans at Naps and whispers: Can’t you see when she starts talking like that she has had enough to drink? Naps answers: Shut up. You say that word yourself sometimes when you’re feeling blue. Then Naps says to Margaret: Did he ever do you wrong?
) Wrong? You mean, wrong? No. I mean, yes. He was going to help me cover my overdue charge account balances at Blass and Pfeifer’s. I had lost my job and couldn’t pay them. But then he said, “Ethel has me tied down, it’s hard for me to get a cent out of her, but I’ll try, only don’t you think I ought to get something out of it, I mean, let’s be practical and pragmatic about this thing, don’t you agree that I’m entitled to get something in return?” (Naps coaches: He was trying to swap for a hump—?) What? (Naps: I mean, he had a flop on his mind—?) I’m sorry, I don’t quite—(Naps: That Mr. Slater, what he wanted was to go the route—?) Go the route? (Naps: Yeah, you know, the limit, he wanted to hit it off, take it out on trade, tear off a piece—?) A piece of what? (Naps: Aw, you know what I mean, girl. He wanted to plant his oats.) Oh. No. He doesn’t have any oats. (Naps: I see. Well, go on. Don’t let me interrupt you.) My glass. Could I—Just a little—(Naps: Sure, Margaret, all you want.)

  She passed out. Tatrice said: Now look what you’ve done. Naps said: All right, make us some coffee.

  With the help of the coffee he managed to revive her for a brief time, during which she said, in answer to his persistent insistence: Why do we have to talk any more about this? it’s over. Let sleeping dogs lie. He was going to get rid of her so he could marry me and I told him if he did that I wouldn’t marry him but he wouldn’t let that stop him and he was out of his mind so I told him it was quits leave me alone leave me alone. He left me alone. So let’s talk about somebody else let’s talk about Clifford or Doyle or you or anybody.

  Get rid of his wife? Naps poked.

  Yes yes that’s what I said yes he was going to push her down the stairs in her wheelchair and make it look like an accident but he’s not any more I mean he’ll give up the whole idea if everybody will just leave him alone so forget about it leave him alone leave me alone please please don’t bother him about it because he is sad and wretched a miserable fool he’s under a curse don’t make it worse that’s a poem of verse good night thanks for all the booze good night.

  She went to sleep and they carried her upstairs and put her to bed. Then Naps called his friend Feemy Bastrop at Slater’s house and talked to him for a while and then told him that he would be out there first thing in the morning.

  “This morning she had an awful hangover, of course, but she didn’t seem so very blue or anything,” Tatrice said to me. “She was kind of quiet, and seemed to be doing a lot of thinking. But then when she was reading the Gazette at the breakfast table she seemed to find something in it that bothered her. Then after breakfast she asked if she could use the phone, and I said sure, and she talked for a little while to somebody—I thought for sure it must’ve been you she was talking to—and then she went out, so I just took it for granted she was going over to your house. Oh, I’ll never forgive myself if she’s gotten lost again.”

  I thanked Tatrice and told her to ask Naps to get in touch with me when, and if, he came back from Slater’s.

  I told her I was going to go out and get Margaret.

  Chapter thirty-three

  “There you are!” the woman said, opening the large Gothic door a brief moment after I had rung the chime. “Just the person I’ve been looking for.” She narrowed her eyes at me, and what she thought must have been a smirk actually was a sneer. She took my arm and led me into the parlor and parked me among the Victorian gewgaws. She did not herself sit down. “Now,” she said, fixing me with a schoolteacher’s impatiently quizzical stare, “what have you done with my daughter?”

  I came back at her unnonplusedly: “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

  “Oh, you were, were you?” From her standing position above me she was able to look down a very long nose at me, arching her eyebrows and bulging her eyeballs.

  “Yes,” I said and stood up so that I could be offensive too. I looked her in the eye. “Is she here? I think she is. If she is, I think I have a right to know about it. I want to talk to her.”

  She laughed. “Oh, you do, do you?” She moved closer to me. “All right now, you can quit playacting. I want to know where she is, and you’d better tell me, quick.”

  “Sure,” I said and pointed viciously at the ceiling. “She’s up in her room. Right this minute. Up there where you’re trying to hide her.”

  “Oh, she is, is she?” Again she laughed. “Come on, Clifford, you can’t fool around with me. Tell me what you’ve done with my daughter.”

  “You tell me what you’ve done with your daughter. I haven’t done anything with her.” Dammit, the woman’s inflections were infectious.

  “Oh, you haven’t, haven’t you?” she said.

  This sort of insane exchange ricocheted between us for another ten minutes or so, until at last I was convinced that she really did not have her daughter in captivity and really was not hiding anything from me, and until she was at last convinced that I knew nothing about the present presence of her daughter. Then we both sat down. “Tea?” she said. “Thank you,” I said.

  She poured and we held our cups and sipped gently at them from time to time. I studied the ornately framed chromolithographs on the walls, imaginary Arcadian landscapes.

  “That girl,” Mrs. Austin meditated aloud.

  “Ah yes,” was all I could say, and it sounded fruitily phony.

  “Such a trial,” she remarked a short while later. “Such a burden.”

  I slowly shook my head in knowing sympathy.

  “I’ve tried so hard,” she said.

  “Ttch,” I clucked, almost inaudibly.

  “Somewhere I must’ve failed her,” she said.

  I slowly nodded my head in knowing agreement. But she was no longer looking at me; her eyes were lost among the dregs in her cup.

  A glassy-eyed teacup reader, she read aloud: “I’m afraid she’s become a bad girl. You must know it. Whatever your intentions are, I think I should tell you that she is wicked. And sinful. I tried so hard to give her a proper upbringing. But it didn’t work, somewhere I must’ve failed her. I guess you know her father ran off when she was little…well, she wasn’t more than eleven or twelve years old. He was an evil man. Thoughtless and cruel. I didn’t want Margaret to know that he ran away of his own free will, so when she asked me, ‘Why did Daddy leave home?’ I told her that I made him leave, I drove him away, and she’s blamed me ever since. Me! I told her that her father was hurting me. And that was the truth. He was a…a cruel person. He forced himself upon me. You know?” Her eyes darted away from the cup for a brief glance at me. Then, still looking at me, as if I were to blame, she exclaimed, “Lust! Carnal torture! God help us!”

  Then she returned her eyes to her cup and, continuing in a quieter voice, told me how she had tried to prepare Margaret for the eventuality that she might some day encounter such a sex demon herself. Basically, of course, she said, all men are evil and cause pain to women. It was God’s way, she supposed. But she wanted to make sure that Margaret knew what the world had in store for her, and she had spared no words in trying to shock Margaret at the prospect of the whole nasty business. “But look where it got me,” she said. “Just look where it got me! You’d think she wanted to be hurt! You’d think she was just dying to have some filthy man take advantage of her and inflict God knows what all kind of sores and aches on her!”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well” she said, “I guess I had better tell you something. It’s embarrassing, but as long as we’re discussing this on such a high intellectual plane, you know, I suppose I could tell you. This may be hard to take, so prepare yourself. It’s the worst thing Margaret’s ever done, and it convinces me beyond any doubt that she is filled with sin and evil. Oh, it’s awful, but I’m going to tell you, I think you ought to know, just so you can see what I mean when I say you ought to wash your hands of her. All right, I’m going to tell you, here it is: the other day Margaret took her own excrement and wrote dirty words on the walls of her room! Understand? Isn’t that horrible? Now don’t you
think that—”

  “Madam,” I politely interrupted. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. It was only paint. Nothing but paint.”

  “How would you know?” she demanded.

  “I saw it,” I said.

  “Then I’m afraid you are mistaken. Because I saw it too. With my own eyes. And I smelled it with my own nose. And I touched it with my—”

  “Apparently your senses have played tricks on you,” I said. “It was really nothing but paint, and as a matter of fact I helped your husband clean it up.”

  “But don’t you see?” she ranted onward. “She’s past praying for! She’s possessed with the devil! She’s ungodly and shameful and monstrous, and it was all her father’s fault, there’s nothing can be done about it! Just wait till I find her,” she said. “Just wait till I get my hands on that girl!”

  “I wonder where she could be,” I idly reflected, trying silent telepathy: Margaret, wherever you are, stay there! Keep away from this place and this utterly godawful excuse for a mother.

  “You don’t have any idea?” she asked.

  “None whatever, I’m afraid. I’m going to look for her.” And then it was time for me to end my politeness. I said, “However, if I do succeed in finding her, I shall do my utmost to prevent her from returning to this house again.” Prissy as this sounded, it was nevertheless precisely my sentiment, and I felt an upsurge of pride and, yes, even valor.

  “Beg pardon?” she double-took.

  “I said, if I do find her, I will do everything within my power to keep her from seeing your face ever again.”