Backwoods Girl

by Peggy Gaddis

  Lorna watched her in amazed disbelief.

  Cindy put her face in her hands, and through her broken weeping, stammered, “So I reckin that’s why he left—so’s he wouldn’t never have to look at me ag’in.”

  Lorna lit another cigarette, frowning at the fire, giving the girl time to pull herself together, before she asked gently, “Just what have you ever done, Cindy, that makes you such a terrible creature?”

  Lifelessly, after a long moment, Cindy told her. The words came slowly, painfully, so that Lorna listened with shock and a deepening pity. When Cindy told her of the tiny grave beneath the apple tree, Lorna swore furiously under her breath.

  “You told him all that, Cindy, and then he just walked out on you?” she demanded at last.

  Cindy lifted a white, tear-ravaged face, and her eyes were dark with surprise. “Well, what else could he ‘a’ done? I would ‘a’ lived with him, slep’ with him and been proud. I couldn’t marry him ‘thout tellin’ him the truth. But when I did, he—well, he just left.” She caught her breath on a sob.

  “And who the hell is he, to despise a girl who’s been through such an experience? Didn’t he have brains enough to realize it wasn’t your fault? Any of it? And believe me, baby, he’s several million light years away from being a saint—and I ought to know!” blazed Lorna.

  Cindy offered no answer. She was so sunk in misery that she could not find one. Lorna got up and walked the brief length of the cabin and back again, smoking furiously, her brows furrowed with thought.

  “This is all the truth you’ve told me, Cindy?” she demanded sharply. “You’re not keeping anything back? This is really the reason Jim left?”

  “I reckin so. I don’t know nuthin’ else that would make him go sudden-like,” Cindy told her.

  Lorna said suddenly, “You know what we’re going to do, Cindy?”

  “Well, no, ma’am, I reckin not.”

  “You’re coming to Atlanta with me, and I’m going to get you all done up, show how lovely you can be, and then I’m going to give a party, and invite Jim and fling you straight in his teeth! We’ll show him a thing or two, maybe three or four.”

  Cindy shook her head stubbornly. “Thank ye kindly, ma’am. That’s real kind of you, but no ma’am, I couldn’t go. No, indeed, Miss Blake, I couldn’t do that.”

  “And why the hell can’t you?” Lorna snapped.

  “Well they’s Seth, an’ Bessie, an’ Sadie-May to take keer of, an’ nobody to do it but me,” Cindy pointed out. “An’ they’s the fire to keep a-burnin’. I wouldn’t dast let it go out. It’s the same fire folks brought to my grandsir and his wife the night they was married. It come from the Indian village, and it ain’t ever been let go out. It’s ‘most a hundred year old, an’ effen I was to let it go out, the old folks would purely come back and ha’nt me. It’s awful bad luck to let a fire go out.”

  Lorna stared at her. “Well, I’m damned,” she said. “Look here, this Haney lug who’s supposed to be so crazy about you—wouldn’t he come and look after the animals for you and keep the fire burning for a few days?”

  “No, ma’am. His maw wouldn’t let him,” said Cindy.

  Lorna’s eyebrows went up. “Wouldn’t let him? For Pete’s sake, I thought he was a grown man!”

  “Yessum, he is, but his maw keeps him right tight to her apernstrings, ‘count o’ she raised him when his paw run off an’ left ‘em. She ain’t got no use for me, an’ you can’t blame her, the kind o’ girl I been,” said Cindy. “I reckin maybe some day, when she’s dead and gone, me and Enoch might live together. It’ll be right lonesome for him when she’s gone, an’ I know ‘bout bein’ lonesome. So effen he wants me to, I’ll let him come here an’ live with me when his maw is gone.”

  “You’d marry him then?”

  “Oh, no ma’am, I wouldn’t marry him. I ain’t fitten to marry no man,” said Cindy with a bleak, desolate humility. “But effen he was as lonesome as I’ve been, an’ us likin’ each other since we wus childern, I’d let him come an’ stay here effen he wanted to.”

  Startled, Lorna studied her for a moment. “You think having Enoch here would keep you from missing Jim?” she demanded.

  Cindy looked up and her eyes were bleak and terrible. “I ain’t never missed nobody like I miss Jim,” she said quietly. “I missed Granny, but Granny was old an’ tired an’ all wore-out, an’ I knowed she needed her rest. I got used to bein ‘thout Granny. Me an’ Seth, we kinda got used to just bein’ here by our own two selfs. Then Jim come.”

  Her voice broke in a ragged sob, and for a moment she was unable to go on. At last she said through her teeth, “I dunno why he had to come. I dunno why me an’ Seth couldn’t just ‘a’ been left alone. But now I ain’t never gonna know no more peace ‘thout Jim. It’s gonna be so lonesome.”

  Lorna walked to the window and stood looking out with unseeing eyes at the landscape that spread out below her. Her hands were jammed hard in her pockets, and her face was set and grim. At last, when she could trust herself to speak, she turned to the girl.

  “I’ve got news for you, baby.” Her voice was harsh because she was trying so hard to be her usual flippant, brittle self. “Missing one man is something you can never wipe out by taking another man. Believe me, I know!”

  Cindy lifted wide, tragic eyes and studied Lorna’s set face. “You missin’ somebody like that?” she asked.

  “Since I was nineteen, and that’s more than ten years ago, baby,” Lorna said. “And believe me when I say that no matter how many men you take into your bed, it doesn’t help, not one single tiny damned bit! Nothing helps, Cindy. Nothing!”

  Cindy’s small, ravaged face was twisted painfully, with her effort to control the bitter tears. “Then what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?” she wailed.

  “That, pet, is the sixty-four-dollar question, and I have never yet heard of a woman who had managed to work out an acceptable answer,” said Lorna grimly. “I get drunk.”

  Cindy gasped, “You, Miss Blake?”

  “Who else?” Lorna’s voice was thin and anguished. “I admit it only helps for a little while, but if you drink yourself into a stupor, you have a few hours of freedom from memories. Of course, you also have one hell of a hangover when you wake up, and a mouth that tastes like the bottom of a bird cage, and a headache five times bigger than you are.”

  Cindy was wide-eyed and appalled.

  Lorna said dryly, “That wouldn’t work for you, I’m sure, with your conscience.”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t reckin it would,” admitted Cindy. “Granny allus had such a feelin’ about likker. She purely hated it.”

  “Granny had a point,”Lorna said dryly.

  “Yessum, Granny was right smart.”

  Lorna stood thoughtfully for a moment in silence, and then she said briskly, “Promise me something, Cindy?”

  “Yessum,” said Cindy without hesitation.

  “Promise me you won’t do anything you’ll be sorry for?”

  “Like what, Miss Blake?”

  Lorna hesitated, and then she blurted, “Like heaving yourself down the mountain side, like one of the Indian gals the legends are always yapping about.”

  “You mean kill myself?” Cindy was horrified. “Law me, Miss Blake, I couldn’t go ag’in Granny’s raisin’ like that! Why, she’d purely ha nt me!”

  “So would I,” Lorna assured her firmly, deeply relieved that no such thought had occurred to the girl, despite her bleak bitterness. “You just be a good girl and keep your door locked, and sic Seth on Enoch or any other man who comes snooping around. I’ve got plans for you, Cindy, and they don’t include any such foolishness as your sharing your bed with a man, believe me!”

  Cindy was scarlet with shame, but her eyes held a warm gratitude that was very touching. “Reckin maybe wouldn’t
nohow, Miss Blake,” she confessed. “I just feel so kinda lost, knowin’ I ain’t gonna see Jim no more.”

  “Well, you keep your chin up, my girl, and you leave everything to me, you hear me?” said Lorna firmly.

  “Yessum, and I sure thank ye, Miss Blake.”

  As much to her own surprise as to Cindy’s, Lorna bent swiftly and brushed her lips across the girl’s cheek, and took herself off. When she reached the curve in the trail, she turned to see Cindy standing in the open doorway, the dog beside her. As Lorna waved and went down the trail, there was a mist of unaccustomed tears in her eyes.

  CHAPTER 14

  Jim was whistling as he completed the last of his packing, and looked about the apartment that was stripped now to the bare furniture and rugs. It had been a colossal break to be able to sub-lease the place to someone who also wanted to buy the furniture. The small amount of capital he had been able to raise by disposing of everything that he would not need in his new life would once have seemed to him pathetically insignificant, but now a thousand dollars seemed like a fortune. He was eager and excited about the whole deal.

  That midnight, when he had plunged recklessly down the mountain trail to the settlement, with Cindy’s confession ringing in his ears, seemed months instead of days away. He had gone through a period of bitterness and fury. He had been so certain of Cindy’s purity, of her childish innocence. He had thrilled at the thought that it would be his privilege and his joy to instruct her in the ways of physical love, to teach her the beauty and the joy of sex. Then to have her reveal to him the ugly, brutal story of her past had thrown him for a terrific loss.

  Looking back now on his thoughts, his angry bitterness, he could grin wryly and ruefully. He had prided himself on being a man, grown up, mature, adult. He had boasted that he knew quite a bit about human nature, yet he had come painfully and slowly to realize that in matters of emotion he was embarrassingly adolescent. There had been some bitter, sleepless hours while he had worked his way through those thoughts and had finally come to the realization of what he really wanted out of life.

  The sudden clamor of the door chimes startled Jim from his thoughts, and he glanced at the clock, surprised at having a caller at almost ten o’clock on a wintry evening.

  He opened the door and looked, startled, at Lorna who stood there, eyeing him coolly. She was the city woman, from the top of her smartly-dressed hair to the tips of her alligator slippers. Her mink coat was lush and opulent, huddled snugly about her beautiful body.

  “Well, this is a surprise,” he said after a moment and stood back. “Come in, won’t you?”

  “Thanks,” said Lorna curtly and walked past him, glancing about the apartment, raising her eyebrows as she saw the luggage, the stripped appearance of the room.

  “Going places?” she drawled sweetly.

  “Looks like it, doesn’t it?” He was puzzled by the frank hostility in her eyes, and wondering what her visit meant.

  “Still running away, little boy?” she purred.

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  “What other way is there to put it?” Her mouth was thin. “You low, stinkin’ son-of-a-bitch!”

  Jim straightened and his jaw set hard. “Now, wait a minute—,” he said sharply.

  “You wait a minute, damn you! I’ve had a hell of a time finding you. Your telephone is a private one, unlisted. I had to bribe that fish-eyed old gal in your former office before she’d give me the address. And don’t think I came here to be brushed off, without speaking my piece. You are without a doubt the lowest, vilest thing that ever crawled.”’

  “And you,” stated Jim, “are drunk!”

  “And you are a liar! I never drink when I’m in town. I save that for my weekends up in the mountains, and this is only Tuesday.” She mocked him viciously. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I had a nice weekend?”

  “Frankly, I don’t care one way or the other, though I imagine you did.”

  “I did,” she drawled. “I saw Cindy.”

  His jaw hardened, and his eyes met hers straightly. “How was she?” he asked, and could not keep the hunger out of his eyes.

  “Oh, she’s fine. Just dandy. She’s got Seth, you know,” Lorna mocked him. “And she’s also got Enoch.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “Don’t you wish it was? But it isn’t. Oh, of course, that old bitch of a mother of his is still squawking and flapping against their marriage, like the old buzzard she is. Still the old gal has to sleep sometimes, and those are the times Cindy and Enoch get together.” Lorna’s eyes were snapping with malice.

  “You’re lying!”

  “Cindy told me herself that she’d rather have you, but when you suddenly became too pure and virtuous to be able to ‘forgive’ her and incidentally, where the hell do you get off, forgiving anybody for anything—?” Lorna broke off, because her voice was beginning to shake.

  Jim watched her, waiting, his hands clenched hard in his pockets, lest the impulse to put them about her slender neck and wring it was more than he could resist.

  “Jim,” she said at last, and now her voice was under control. There was a note of wonderment in it. “How can a man like you reconcile your behavior towards Cindy with what you, yourself, have done? You can’t very well try to tell me, of all women, that you’re not an expert lover, and a man doesn’t become an expert without a lot of practice and experience. Yet you walked out on that poor baby just because some man took advantage of her and forced a child on her, a child she would have loved and brought up with the greatest tenderness, if it had lived. Cindy was a victim of the world’s dirtiest trick when she was no more than a child, yet you set yourself up as her judge, and practically kick her in the teeth for something she could not prevent. On the other hand, you feel perfectly free to run around and crawl in bed with any woman who is willing. What makes Cindy, in your mind, a harlot and untouchable, while you’re a fine, upstanding gentleman?”

  Jim’s face was white with anger, and there were little white lines from his nostrils to his mouth, marking the effort he was making at self-control. His eyes were dark with fury. “Have you finished?” he asked.

  She sighed and lifted her hands in a small gesture of defeat. “Oh, I suppose so. I have scads more that I could say, but I don’t suppose it would do any good, so I might as well leave it at that!” With that she turned towards the door.

  “Then, if I may be permitted to get a word in, I might as well tell you that I’ve already realized what a rotten trick I pulled on Cindy,” he told her, biting his words off sharply. “I’m leaving in the morning for Ghost Creek, to marry Cindy.”

  Lorna turned sharply, eyes wide. “You’re lying!” she spat out.

  “So you say.”

  She glanced swiftly around the denuded apartment, and then back at him. “Are you on the level about this? You really are planning to marry her?”

  “Believe it or not, I’ve grown up,” he told her. “All that you said was quite true, only I had realized it a couple of days ago.”

  “Then why the hell have you been hanging around here, letting that poor kid break her heart, thinking you’re never going to show up again?” she demanded.

  “I’m planning to open a law office in Marshallville,” he told her, “and I have to have a small amount of capital. All that I had left, after I made the settlement on my—ex-client’s family, were my personal belongings and the lease on this apartment. It’s taken me a little time to sell out, to collect a few long overdue bills people felt sure I was going to forget, and that I might have forgotten if I hadn’t suddenly needed the money. So now I’ve raised a bit of cash, and I’m going back to Ghost Creek and marry Cindy. I’ll set up shop in Marshallville and see what I can do up there to help people, if they want me to.”

  Lorna stared at him, astounded, incredulous. “You�
��re going back to Marshallville to practice?” she gasped. “Jim, are you completely out of your mind?”

  “I don’t think so.” Jim admitted his slight doubt. “I seem to be in my right mind for the first time in a long time.”

  Lorna’s eyes were wide and shocked. “Then you still believe there’s Indian gold hidden on Cindy’s place?” She offered the only explanation she could conceive of for such a decision on his part.

  Jim chuckled. “I never believed that, Lorna.”

  “But then why are you going to bury yourself up there?” she demanded.

  Jim hesitated, not quite sure just how he could make clear to her the decision he had reached, slowly and painfully.

  “I’ve realized that I’m very much in love with Cindy,” he said slowly, and at her startled look, he nodded. “Sure, I’ll beat you to the punch by saying I have a hell of a way of showing it—but I do realize it now. I know that I want to live with Cindy for the rest of my life. I can’t imagine Cindy giving up her beloved home and all the things she holds dear to live with me down here. So, because I do love her and because I know she and I can have a good life together, I’m going to live where she wants to live.”

  “I have never heard of anything so fantastic in all my life!” Lorna burst out. “Oh, it may be fun for awhile, I suppose, but believe me, Jim, you and Cindy are from two different worlds. As soon as the first fine glow of passion wears off, you’re going to see her for a wild, uneducated, savage creature. Why, you don’t even speak the same language.”

  “That’s easily adjusted,” said Jim, completely untroubled. “We can teach each other the things that will make it possible for us to live in complete harmony and happiness. I’ll be just as much out of place living her kind of life, in the beginning, as she would trying to live my kind, but she can teach me the things I need to know in order to adjust myself, while I can teach her the things she wants to learn. It’s going to be pretty wonderful, I think.”