Crimes of Passion

by Toni Anderson

  Beth wasn’t a pushover. She tossed her head and swam away, calling something over her shoulder to Boots so that the other boy followed her. Instead of going after her also, Edison Gallant stayed where he was, talking to Margaret and Rebecca. The three of them exchanged names and told where they lived and what they had been doing that summer as if they didn’t already know all about each other.

  As he talked, Edison’s gaze strayed back and forth over the soft globes of the girls’ breasts under their suits. Finally he gestured toward the top of Margaret’s ruffled two-piece. “Are the two sweet things you have under there real, or are they just falsies?”

  Margaret gasped and looked wide-eyed at Rebecca. Nobody had ever dared to come right out with such a thing before. If this was south Louisiana manners, they weren’t sure they liked them.

  “Come on,” he insisted, “a guy likes to know where he stands.”

  Margaret ducked her head in acute embarrassment, stammering her denial of wearing falsies. Rebecca’s own embarrassment made her angry. She scowled at Edison before she spoke. “I’ll tell you where you stand. We stand over here and you stand way over there, that’s where!”

  “Oh, a little spitfire. I like that,” he said, and moved toward her in the water. Rebecca felt his hand graze her waist and his leg slide along hers. Before she could move, he was behind her, his arms encircling her and coming up under her breasts so that their pale and tender swells were pressed above the neckline of her suit. “Nice, little spitfire, both are very nice, indeed.”

  Warmth flowed through Rebecca as she felt him behind her, surrounding her. His audacity took her breath away, but even more shocking was her own tingling reaction to his nearness. This new sensation inside her clashed with her outrage. It was purest instinct that made her drive her elbow backward toward his rib cage. The blow did little damage, for he was already releasing her and gliding toward her sister. Rebecca staggered in the water, off balance. Margaret gave a muffled scream as Edison swam past her with his hand reaching out under the rippling surface toward the tops of her legs.

  “Hey!”

  It was Boots who called out as he waded toward them with Beth right behind him. He was bigger than Edison, and his face was set in a heavy frown. He considered Margaret his girl, even if she didn’t always choose to recognize it. Then Beth dove forward, big sister to the rescue, flailing past Boots, shoving Edison, and splashing water in his face.

  Edison retreated, backstroking, spluttering. “What do you think you’re doing!”

  “You know what, you big joker! Go pick on somebody in your own league.” She surged upright with her hands on her hips. Water poured down her magnificent Amazonian shape, and anger blazed in her eyes.

  Edison gave her a cocky smile. “Like you, maybe?”

  “I’m a match for you any day.”

  “Think so?”

  “I know so,” she said, and tossed her head with its mane of hair as she stared him straight in the eye.

  “A spitfire, a prude, and a wonder woman. What a choice!”

  “You sound like some bad movie,” Beth said, her tone scathing as she turned back to Margaret, who seemed on the verge of humiliated tears. Boots was already there, however, encircling the sniffling girl with a protective arm.

  Beth’s quip surprised Rebecca into a chuckle. “He does sound like a movie, a gangster movie.”

  The insult had gone home, for a flush crept under Edison’s skin. “Do I, now? Maybe you’d like to see what gangsters do to smart-mouthed girls?”

  “Back off,” Boots said, a low warning.

  Edison looked at the other young man, his gaze moving over Boots’s deep-chested form. Edison’s belligerent stance eased a little. “Come on, coz, I was just having a little fun.”

  “The wrong kind.”

  “Is that so? Will it make it all right if I get down on my knees and say I’m sorry?”

  “You don’t sound sorry to me.”

  There was a dogged note in the bigger boy’s voice. They all knew Boots; he was peaceable, never started a fight, but he usually finished the ones he took on. That Edison called him coz was a reminder that the two were related in some distant fashion, third or fourth cousins. It was no great matter. Most people in the town, which was once an isolated farming community, could scratch up a kinship with each other if they tried hard enough, went back far enough.

  “Never mind, Boots,” Beth said. “I think we’d better be going.”

  “Don’t let me run you off,” Edison said in swift protest. “We were just getting to know each other.”

  “I’m not sure we want to know you,” Beth told him. Margaret and Rebecca swiftly agreed.

  “Don’t you?” Edison said softly. “Don’t you, now?”

  They left the pond without answering and returned to their house.

  Not much was seen of Edison Gallant for a time. The summer grew hotter and the civil rights situation more tense. Beth began to write to her husband once a week instead of twice. Other nights she mooned around on the front-porch swing in the dark, or else sneaked out of the house in the late-night hours, driving off in their mother’s old orange and white Mercury. She never said where she went except “just driving to get cool.”

  One Saturday night, however, Rebecca and Margaret rode into town with friends to a movie. The story was sappy, but at least the movie house was air-conditioned. Afterward, not quite ready to go home, they walked around the courthouse square.

  There had been a demonstration that day with blacks carrying signs and marching in the streets. Several arrests had been made on the charge of disturbing the peace. Most of the demonstrators would be held overnight and then released; their arrests were as much to avoid trouble between them and the irate crowds that had gathered to watch the marching as from any wrongdoing. The jail on the top floor of the courthouse had neither fans nor air-conditioning and the windows were open. Through them could be heard the voices of the demonstrators shouting slogans and singing “We Shall Overcome.”

  The slow, sad sound sent a shiver along Rebecca’s spine. She understood the anger of her neighbors at having integration forced down their throats; she herself could become indignant at the failure of Washington and the liberal press to show any understanding of the money needed to make changes or the emotional problems involved. On the other hand, what the blacks were asking did not seem out of reason. They were citizens and fellow human beings, and deserved the dignity of being treated fairly, equally.

  There was one singer’s voice that rose above all the others, a strident soprano. Everyone knew about the woman who was singing; she was a tough-looking white female with cropped hair who wore army-surplus fatigues and T-shirts without a bra. She was living in the Quarters with a black family. She had been thrown out of one house, however, after being threatened with a razor by the wife who thought the civil rights worker was getting too cozy with her man. The civil rights worker had sworn it wasn’t so, but no one believed her.

  The squeal of tires caught Rebecca’s and Margaret’s attention. The sound came from a Chevy convertible taking the corner in front of the courthouse too fast. Music blared from the car’s radio and the reflection of the street lights gleamed along its shining white paint. At the wheel was Edison Gallant, laughing and shouting something to the girl at his side. The girl was Beth.

  Margaret gasped as she turned to look at Rebecca. Her face was pale with shock and wrath. “How could she? It’s a sin, the sin of adultery, that’s what it is. Just wait till she gets home.”

  Rebecca, staring after the couple, was dismayed. At the same time, there was something about the shiny white car, the wild ride in the warm night air with the music on the wind, the young man leaning so close, laughing, that affected her with helpless longing.

  Beth was late that night. Margaret met her at the front door. There were a great many things the middle Benson sister was embarrassed to talk about, but moral misconduct was not one of them.

  “Have you gone s
tark raving crazy?” she demanded in an outraged whisper, keeping her voice low so as not to wake their mother. “What do you mean riding around town with Edison Gallant where everybody can see you?”

  Beth gave the other girl a hard stare, then reached into her purse, took out a cigarette, and lit it. She took a deep pull, then blew out the smoke, obviously not inhaling but just as obviously enjoying the act. “What’s bothering you, sis? Is it really that I was out with Edison or just the fact that we were seen?”

  Rebecca watched the other two from where she lay sprawled on the living-room couch. She knew what Beth was doing was wrong, but she still had to admire her nerve. She would be glad when she was old enough to take the hurtful things Margaret sometimes said as Beth did, without caring.

  “You have a husband!” Margaret cried, her eyes wide and accusing. “What about him?”

  “He’s not here, and where he is, he’s having his fun. Over there on that island the streets are crawling with women who’ll do anything for a dollar. He wrote to tell me he has some things to show me. Well, I may show him a thing or two.”

  “Oh, Beth,” Rebecca said in sympathy. She could hear the pain behind her sister’s words, even if Margaret could not.

  “That’s disgusting!” Margaret cried.

  “Think so? You should try it.” Beth puffed on her cigarette again.

  “When did you pick up that filthy habit?”

  “Edison smokes.”

  “You’ll catch what-for if Mama finds out.”

  “She won’t.”

  “She just might!”

  “You always were a tattletale.”

  “I am not!”

  “Anyway, Mama will just sigh and say that if I want to ruin my life, that’s my lookout.”

  “That’s just what you’re doing, running around with that smart-alecky Edison Gallant! What you see in him, I don’t know. I thought you hated him.”

  “He didn’t do anything to me. And he apologized for playing games with you and Rebecca. Anyway, he isn’t nearly as bad as he makes out; it’s just an act. The girls he dates in New Orleans expect it, so he obliges.”

  “Oh, sure,” Margaret sneered. “It sounds like an act, him teaching you all those dirty things.”

  “The dirt’s in your imagination, little sister.”

  “Is that so? Boots told me the only reason Edison’s here is because of some trouble with a girl.”

  Beth’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of trouble?”

  “He didn’t say, but you can’t be too careful.”

  “You be careful, and I’ll do what I want.”

  “If you think he means anything, that he’s thinking of anything permanent, you’re sadly mistaken!” Margaret’s lips twisted as she spoke.

  Beth shook her hair back from her face. “Edison has money to spend and he likes to spend it on me, which is more than you can say for most of the men in this town. What makes you think I want anything permanent?”

  “If you don’t, you’re nothing but a whore!”

  “Poor Margaret. If you understood yourself as well as you think you do everybody else, you’d be a hell of a lot better off.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? If you think I like Edison—”

  “Did I say that?” The words were too innocent.

  Margaret seemed to swell with her outrage. “What you’re doing is trashy, you hear, trashy. Keep on, and you’re going to get yourself in trouble. Then see if I help you!”

  Beth ground out her cigarette on the bottom of her shoe before she gave Margaret a crooked smile. “If your help comes with another bawling-out, I guess I’ll pass.”

  Beth pushed by Margaret, then went through the living room and into the hall bathroom.

  Rebecca sat up. She chewed on the inside of her mouth as she watched Margaret, studying her red face, her heaving chest, and her clenched hands.

  Finally she asked, “Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Like Edison, the way Beth thinks?”

  “No, I do not!”

  “Don’t bite my head off, I just wondered. You don’t seem much in love with Boots.”

  “Boots is…Boots. He may not be too exciting, but he’s safe, and he would do anything for me.”

  “You think Edison’s exciting?”

  Margaret gave her an exasperated look. “Don’t talk about things you’re too young to know about!”

  Rebecca’s head came up. “I’m only two years younger than you, and I know as much as you do! You mean sexy, that’s what!”

  “It’s still an idiotic question.” Margaret sat down on the couch, pulling her skirt down over her knees. “Oh, Edison’s good-looking, but he’s the worst kind of flirt, all smiles and soft words until he gets what he wants. Why, do you know what he said to me last week? He said he bet I kissed better than any other girl in town just because I kept my mouth puckered up like a prune all the time.”

  “I didn’t know he had said anything to you, didn’t know you had seen him.”

  “Well, I did, outside the grocery store. He kissed me, too, before I could stop him!”

  “He did?” Rebecca’s eyes widened. “Did you like it?”

  Margaret shuddered and gave an exaggerated shake of her head. “What’s more, he said you were the sweetest little thing he’d ever seen and that he’d like to gobble you up in one mouthful like a piece of soft candy.”

  “He didn’t!”

  “He meant something dirty, I could tell.”

  “How?”

  “I just could, that’s all. Maybe it was the look in those big blue eyes of his, like he was laughing at us, at me and you and Beth.”

  A frown drew Rebecca’s brows together and her soft young lips thinned. “I’ll make him laugh.”

  “You stay away from him, you hear? Stay away.”

  It wasn’t easy. Edison began to drop in at the Benson house three or four times a week on one pretext or another. He was politeness itself to Mrs. Benson, talking to her as if she were an older sister, making such a charming impression that the older woman encouraged him to come as often and to stay as long as he liked. He soon caught on to the fact that Margaret and Rebecca were not going to make a scene that might disturb their mother. He took shameless advantage of that circumstance, flirting with them, teasing them, and gradually ingratiating himself.

  The truth was that he was not as wild as he pretended, that he could laugh, talk, stir fudge, and shake popcorn kernels over a stove burner just like any country boyfriend. Whole hours could pass without him making an off-color remark or trying to steal a kiss in a corner. He seemed to enjoy being part of the family. It was a rare experience, he said; his own parents had been in their late thirties when he was born. He had never really been a child. His mother had always called him her little man and made him sit and make conversation with her friends when they came to call. His father had been a judge who seemed to mete out restrictions and punishments to his son with no more feeling than he did the most hardened felon who appeared before him. Their deaths within a year of each other had meant freedom to Edison. He was still enjoying the release.

  June eased into July, and July melted into August. September loomed. As the opening of school drew nearer, the civil rights violence that had faded somewhat during the worst of the heat began to pick up again. The marches increased in number. There was a sit-in at the local drugstore. A few crosses were burned in people’s yards in the Quarters or in front of businesses that were too cooperative with blacks. There was excitement one weekend as TV cameras from a national network were seen about town. However, nothing ever appeared on television. Rumors circulated about the possibility of federal officers, or maybe it was federal marshals, being on hand to see integration enforced on the first day of school.

  The thing that the Benson girls paid most heed to was Edison’s trouble with his car. The convertible developed a knock and had to be put into the shop. It was important that it be fixed; Edison would be going home in a
few days since classes would be starting again at Tulane. When he came by that last Saturday evening, he was driving his uncle’s old gray sedan.

  He didn’t stay long. Mrs. Benson was extra tired with the hot spell that wouldn’t let up. Beth wasn’t feeling well, a touch of a twenty-four-hour stomach virus, something that had been going around the past week. Margaret had weathered it the day before and was still pale. When Rebecca pointed out to Edison that he might get the stomach bug, too, he soon found an excuse to move on.

  It was a sultry night, with heat lightning flashing in the southwest and crickets and peeper frogs calling for rain. The air seemed thick, laden with the smell of dust. The unremitting hot weather of the past few weeks had everyone’s nerves on edge. It left them wanting something, waiting for something, without knowing what it was.

  They went to bed early at the Benson house, as if turning off the lights and lying down would make the air being pulled through the screened windows cooler. It didn’t help. Rebecca turned on her narrow bed, lying across the mattress so that her head was practically on the windowsill; still, perspiration gathered under her neck and trickled into her hair.

  Once she thought she heard a sound like a muffled groan. She sat up, but it didn’t come again. She glanced over at Margaret, who shared the other twin bed in the room. She had not stirred. The noise must have been one of the prowling dogs that were always hanging around since Mama sometimes threw table scraps out in the backyard for them to find. Rebecca lay back down again.

  The next time the moaning came, it was more audible. The sound came from the back bedroom beside the kitchen, Beth’s room. Rebecca sat up and slid from the bed. Beth’s stomach ailment must be worse. There was some medicine in the refrigerator.