Peter Taylor

by Peter Taylor

  The Fancy Woman

  HE WANTED no more of her drunken palaver. Well, sure enough. Sure enough. And he had sent her from the table like she were one of his half-grown brats. He, who couldn’t have walked straight around to her place if she hadn’t been lady enough to leave, sent her from the table like either of the half-grown kids he was so mortally fond of. At least she hadn’t turned over three glasses of perfectly good stuff during one meal. Talk about vulgar. She fell across the counterpane and slept.

  She awoke in the dark room with his big hands busying with her clothes, and she flung her arms about his neck. And she said, “You marvelous, fattish thing.”

  His hoarse voice was in her ear. He chuckled deep in his throat. And she whispered: “You’re an old thingamajig, George.”

  Her eyes opened in the midday sunlight, and she felt the back of her neck soaking in her own sweat on the counterpane. She saw the unfamiliar cracks in the ceiling and said, “Whose room’s this?” She looked at the walnut dresser and the wardrobe and said, “Oh, the kids’ room”; and as she laughed, saliva bubbled up and fell back on her upper lip. She shoved herself up with her elbows and was sitting in the middle of the bed. Damn him! Her blue silk dress was twisted about her body; a thin army blanket covered her lower half. “He didn’t put that over me, I know damn well. One of those tight-mouth niggers sneaking around!” She sprang from the bed, slipped her bare feet into her white pumps, and stepped toward the door. Oh, God! She beheld herself in the dresser mirror.

  She marched to the dresser with her eyes closed and felt about for a brush. There was nothing but a tray of collar buttons there. She seized a handful of them and screamed as she threw them to bounce off the mirror, “This ain’t my room!” She ran her fingers through her hair and went out into the hall and into her room next door. She rushed to her little dressing table. There was the bottle half full. She poured out a jigger and drank it. Clearing her throat as she sat down, she said, “Oh, what’s the matter with me?” She combed her hair back quite carefully, then pulled the yellow strands out of the amber comb; and when she had greased and wiped her face and had rouged her lips and the upper portions of her cheeks, she smiled at herself in the mirror. She looked flirtatiously at the bottle but shook her head and stood up and looked about her. It was a long, narrow room with two windows at the end. A cubbyhole beside the kids’ room! But it was a canopied bed with yellow ruffles that matched the ruffles on the dressing table and on the window curtains, as he had promised. She went over and turned back the covers and mussed the pillow. It might not have been the niggers! She poured another drink and went down to get some nice, hot lunch.

  The breakfast room was one step lower than the rest of the house; and though it was mostly windows the venetian blinds were lowered all round. She sat at a big circular table. “I can’t make out about this room,” she said to the Negress who was refilling her coffee cup. She lit a cigarette and questioned the servant, “What’s the crazy table made out of, Amelia?”

  “It makes a good table, ’spite all.”

  “It sure enough does make a strong table, Amelia.” She kicked the toe of her shoe against the brick column which supported the table top. “But what was it, old dearie?” She smiled invitingly at the servant and pushed her plate away and pulled her coffee in front of her. She stared at the straight scar on Amelia’s wrist as Amelia reached for the plate. What big black buck had put it there? A lot these niggers had to complain of in her when every one of them was all dosed up.

  Amelia said that the base of the table was the old cistern. “He brung that top out f’om Memphis when he done the po’ch up this way for breakfas’ and lunch.”

  The woman looked about the room, thinking, “I’ll get some confab out of this one yet.” And she exclaimed, “Oh, and that’s the old bucket to it over there, then, with the vines on it, Amelia!”

  “No’m,” Amelia said. Then after a few seconds she added, “They brung that out f’om Memphis and put it there like it was it.”

  “Yeah . . . yeah . . . go on, Amelia. I’m odd about old-fashioned things. I’ve got a lot of interest in any antiques.”

  “That’s all.”

  The little Negro woman started away with the coffee pot and the plate, dragging the soft soles of her carpet slippers over the brick floor. At the door she lingered, and, too cunning to leave room for a charge of impudence, she added to the hateful “That’s all” a mutter, “Miss Josephine.”

  And when the door closed, Miss Josephine said under her breath, “If that black bitch hadn’t stuck that on, there wouldn’t be another chance for her to sneak around with any army blankets.”

  George, mounted on a big sorrel and leading a small dapple-gray horse, rode onto the lawn outside the breakfast room. Josephine saw him through the chinks of the blinds looking up toward her bedroom window. “Not for me,” she said to herself. “He’ll not get me on one of those animals.” She swallowed the last of her coffee on her feet and then turned and stomped across the bricks to the step-up into the hallway. There she heard him calling:

  “Josie! Josie! Get out-a that bed!”

  Josephine ran through the long hall cursing the rugs that slipped under her feet. She ran the length of the hall looking back now and again as though the voice were a beast at her heels. In the front parlor she pulled up the glass and took a book from the bookcase nearest the door. It was a red book, and she hurled herself into George’s chair and opened to page sixty-five:

  nity, with anxiety, and with pity. Hamilcar was rubbing himself against my legs, wild with delight.

  She closed the book on her thumb and listened to George’s bellowing: “I’m coming after you!”

  She could hear the sound of the hoofs as George led the horses around the side of the house. George’s figure moved outside the front windows. Through the heavy lace curtains she could see him tying the horses to the branch of a tree. She heard him on the veranda and then in the hall. Damn him! God damn him, he couldn’t make her ride! She opened to page sixty-five again as George passed the doorway. But he saw her, and he stopped. He stared at her for a moment, and she looked at him over the book. She rested her head on the back of the chair and put a pouty look on her face. Her eyes were fixed on his hairy arms, on the little bulk in his rolled sleeves, then on the white shirt over his chest, on the brown jodhpurs, and finally on the blackened leather of his shoes set well apart on the polished hall floor. Her eyelids were heavy, and she longed for a drink of the three-dollar whiskey that was on her dressing table.

  He crossed the carpet with a smile, showing, she guessed, his delight at finding her. She smiled. He snatched the book from her hands and read the title on the red cover. His head went back, and as he laughed she watched through the open collar the tendons of his throat tighten and take on a purplish hue.

  At Josephine’s feet was a needlepoint footstool on which was worked a rust-colored American eagle against a background of green. George tossed the red book onto the stool and pulled Josephine from her chair. He was still laughing, and she wishing for a drink.

  “Come along, come along,” he said. “We’ve only four days left, and you’ll want to tell your friend-girls you learned to ride.”

  She jerked one hand loose from his hold and slapped his hard cheek. She screamed, “Friend-girl? You never heard me say friend-girl. What black nigger do you think you’re talking down to?” She was looking at him now through a mist of tears and presently she broke out into furious weeping.

  His laughter went on as he pushed her across the room and into the hall, but he was saying: “Boochie, Boochie. Wotsa matter? Now, old girl, old girl. Listen: You’ll want to tell your girl friends, your girl friends, that you learned to ride.”

  That was how George was! He would never try to persuade her. He would never pay any attention to what she said. He wouldn’t argue with her. He wouldn’t mince words! The few times she had seen him before this week there had been no chance to talk much. When they were driving down from Me
mphis, Saturday, she had gone through the story about how she was tricked by Jackie Briton and married Lon and how he had left her right away and the pathetic part about the baby she never even saw in the hospital. And at the end of it, she realized that George had been smiling at her as he probably would at one of his half-grown kids. When she stopped the story quickly, he had reached over and patted her hand (but still smiling) and right away had started talking about the sickly-looking tomato crops along the highway. After lunch on Saturday when she’d tried to talk to him again and he had deliberately commenced to play the victrola, she said, “Why won’t you take me seriously?” But he had, of course, just laughed at her and kissed her; and they had already begun drinking then. She couldn’t resist him (more than other men, he could just drive her wild), and he would hardly look at her, never had. He either laughed at her or cursed her or, of course, at night would pet her. He hadn’t hit her.

  He was shoving her along the hall, and she had to make herself stop crying.

  “Please, George.”

  “Come on, now! That-a girl!”

  “Honest to God, George. I tell you to let up, stop it.”

  “Come on. Up the steps. Up! Up!”

  She let herself become limp in his arms but held with one hand to the banister. Then he grabbed her. He swung her up into his arms and carried her up the stairs which curved around the back end of the hall, over the doorway to the breakfast room. Once in his arms, she didn’t move a muscle, for she thought, “I’m no featherweight, and we’ll both go tumbling down these steps and break our skulls.” At the top he fairly slammed her to her feet and, panting for breath, he said without a trace of softness: “Now, put on those pants, Josie, and I’ll wait for you in the yard.” He turned to the stair, and she heard what he said to himself: “I’ll sober her. I’ll sober her up.”

  As he pushed Josephine onto the white, jumpy beast he must have caught a whiff of her breath. She knew that he must have! He was holding the reins close to the bit while she tried to arrange herself in the flat saddle. Then he grasped her ankle and asked her, “Did you take a drink upstairs?” She laughed, leaned forward in her saddle, and whispered: “Two. Two jiggers.”

  She wasn’t afraid of the horse now, but she was dizzy. “George, let me down,” she said faintly. She felt the horse’s flesh quiver under her leg and looked over her shoulder when it stomped one rear hoof.

  George said, “Confound it, I’ll sober you.” He handed her the reins, stepped back, and slapped the horse on the flank. “Hold on!” he called, and her horse cantered across the lawn.

  Josie was clutching the leather straps tightly, and her face was almost in the horse’s mane. “I could kill him for this,” she said, slicing out the words with a sharp breath. God damn it! The horse was galloping along a dirt road. She saw nothing but the yellow dirt. The hoofs rumbled over a three-plank wooden bridge, and she heard George’s horse on the other side of her. She turned her face that way and saw George through the hair that hung over her eyes. He was smiling. “You dirty bastard,” she said.

  He said, “You’re doin’ all right. Sit up, and I’ll give you some pointers.” She turned her face to the other side. Now she wished to God she hadn’t taken those two jiggers. George’s horse quickened his speed and hers followed. George’s slowed and hers did likewise. She could feel George’s grin in the back of her neck. She had no control over her horse.

  They were galloping in the hot sunlight, and Josie stole glances at the flat fields of strawberries. “If you weren’t drunk, you’d fall off,” George shouted. Now they were passing a cotton field. (“The back of my neck’ll be blistered,” she thought. “Where was it I picked strawberries once? At Dyersburg when I was ten, visiting some Godforsaken relations.”) The horses turned off the road into wooded bottom land. The way now was shaded by giant trees, but here and there the sun shone between foliage. Once after riding thirty feet in shadow, watching dumbly the cool blue-green underbrush, Josie felt the sun suddenly on her neck. Her stomach churned, and the eggs and coffee from breakfast burned her throat as it all gushed forth, splattering her pants leg and the brown saddle and the horse’s side. She looked over the horse at George.

  But there was no remorse, no compassion, and no humor in George’s face. He gazed straight ahead and urged on his horse.

  All at once the horses turned to the right. Josie howled. She saw her right foot flying through the air, and after the thud of the fall and the flashes of light and darkness she lay on her back in the dirt and watched George as he approached on foot, leading the two horses.

  “Old girl . . .” he said.

  “You get the hell away from me!”

  “Are you hurt?” He kneeled beside her, so close to her that she could smell his sweaty shirt.

  Josie jumped to her feet and walked in the direction from which they had ridden. In a moment George galloped past her, leading the gray horse and laughing like the son-of-a-bitch he was.

  “Last night he sent me upstairs! But this is more! I’m not gonna have it.” She walked through the woods, her lips moving as she talked to herself. “He wants no more of my drunken palaver!” Well, he was going to get no more of her drunken anything now. She had had her fill of him and everybody else and was going to look out for her own little sweet self from now on.

  That was her trouble, she knew. She’d never made a good thing of people. “That’s why things are like they are now,” she said. “I’ve never made a good thing out of anybody.” But it was real lucky that she realized it now, just exactly when she had, for it was certain that there had never been one whom more could be made out of than George. “God damn him,” she said, thinking still of his riding by her like that. “Whatever it was I liked about him is gone now.”

  She gazed up into the foliage and branches of the trees, and the great size of the trees made her feel real small, and real young. If Jackie or Lon had been different she might have learned things when she was young. “But they were both of ’em easygoin’ and just slipped out on me.” They were sweet. She’d never forget how sweet Jackie always was. “Just plain sweet.” She made a quick gesture with her right hand: “If only they didn’t all get such a hold on me!”

  But she was through with George. This time she got through first. He was no different from a floorwalker. He had more sense. “He’s educated, and the money he must have!” George had more sense than a floorwalker, but he didn’t have any manners. He treated her just like the floorwalker at Jobe’s had that last week she was there. But George was worth getting around. She would find out what it was. She wouldn’t take another drink. She’d find out what was wrong inside him, for there’s something wrong inside everybody, and somehow she’d get a hold of him. Little Josephine would make a place for herself at last. She just wouldn’t think about him as a man.

  At the edge of the wood she turned onto the road, and across the fields she could see his house. That house was just simply as old and big as they come, and wasn’t a cheap house. “I wonder if he looked after getting it fixed over and remodeled.” Not likely. She kept looking at the whitewashed brick and shaking her head. “No, by Jesus,” she exclaimed. “She did it!” George’s wife. All of her questions seemed to have been answered. The wife had left him for his meanness, and he was lonesome. There was, then, a place to be filled. She began to run along the road. “God, I feel like somebody might step in before I get there.” She laughed, but then the heat seemed to strike her all at once. Her stomach drew in. She vomited in the ditch, and, by God, it was as dry as cornflakes!

  She sat still in the grass under a little maple tree beside the road, resting her forehead on her drawn-up knees. All between Josie and her new life seemed to be the walk through the sun in these smelly, dirty clothes. Across the fields and in the house was a canopied bed and a glorious new life, but she daren’t go into the sun. She would pass out cold. “People kick off in weather like this!”

  Presently Josie heard the voices of niggers up the road. She wouldn
’t look up, she decided. She’d let them pass, without looking up. They drew near to her and she made out the voices of a man and a child. The man said, “Hursh!” and the voices ceased. There was only the sound of their feet padding along the dusty road.

  The noise of the padding grew fainter. Josie looked up and saw that the two had cut across the fields toward George’s house. Already she could hear the niggers mouthing it about the kitchen. That little yellow Henry would look at her over his shoulder as he went through the swinging door at dinner tonight. If she heard them grumbling once more, as she did Monday, calling her “she,” Josie decided that she was going to come right out and ask Amelia about the scar. Right before George. But the niggers were the least of her worries now.

  All afternoon she lay on the bed, waking now and then to look at the bottle of whiskey on the dressing table and to wonder where George had gone. She didn’t know whether it had been George or the field nigger who sent Henry after her in the truck. Once she dreamed that she saw George at the head of the stairs telling Amelia how he had sobered Miss Josephine up. When she awoke that time she said, “I ought to get up and get myself good and plastered before George comes back from wherever he is.” But she slept again and dreamed this time that she was working at the hat sale at Jobe’s and that she had to wait on Amelia who picked up a white turban and asked Josie to model it for her. And the dream ended with Amelia telling Josie how pretty she was and how much she liked her.

  Josie had taken another hot bath (to ward off soreness from the horseback ride) and was in the sitting room, which everybody called the back parlor, playing the electric victrola and feeling just prime when George came in. She let him go through the hall and upstairs to dress up for dinner without calling to him. She chuckled to herself and rocked to the time of the music.

  George came with a real mint julep in each hand. His hair was wet and slicked down over his head; the part, low on the left side, was straight and white. His cheeks were shaven and were pink with new sunburn. He said, “I had myself the time of my life this afternoon.”