by Pete Dexter
His voice seemed to shake the cans on the shelves. °'What in hell is it you want from me?"
It was quiet a moment, she waited. Then Paris again: "I will not be abused like this. No sir, not over a Negro debt .... "
She thought it must be Harry Seagraves in the office with him because her husband did not use the word "Negro" except in legal matters. She could not hear the attorney's reply, however, and then Paris was speaking again.
"I warn you," he said. "More blood will spilt than it already has."
He was shouting now, and it frightened her. He kept guns in his office. He kept guns everywhere. The reply, if there was a reply, was so soft she could not even hear the tone of the voice. It seemed to infuriate her husband, though.
"By God, I'll finish this now!"
And she knew in that instant that Paris would shoot him, and she ran to stop it. Her skirt caught her knees, and she stumbled. She heard him again, a wordless scream, just as she got to the office. She turned the knob, expecting to find the door locked. It moved with her hand, though, and the door opened.
Her husband was sitting at his desk, pointing a heavy — looking square pistol at the ceiling. There was no one else in the room. Slowly he brought the muzzle of the gun down until it rested, together with his one open eye, in the middle of her chest. He was unshaved, and there was dried food in a corner of his mouth.
The other eye opened, blood red.
"Dear Jesus," she said. She was faint and leaned against a folding chair near the wall.
He stood up, holding the gun at his side now, and crossed the room.
She thought he meant to explain himself, but he walked past, smelling of urine, and looked out the door, one way and then the other.
"There's no one in the store," she said. "I haven't opened."
He turned back into the room and looked at her like six crates of melons that showed up unordered. His pants were spotted and his zipper was open. She smoothed her skirt and brushed a piece of lint off her blouse, hoping in some way that normal motions would make things normal.
He watched her, without a hint of movement in his face. It came to her that things were changing now, right in the room, and would never be retrieved.
"Sometime ago," she said, "you borrowed a sum of money from me. In light of the circumstances, it might be prudent to return it now."
She had no idea how those words came to her or how they were received.
He walked back to his desk and sat down. "You're my wife," he said.
"I had that money before."
He shook his head. "This mess with the Negroes," he said — there was the word again — "it don't have the first thing to do with you."
She began to speak, but he interrupted her. "It don't have nothing to do with the law either. I make my deals and live by them, and Jesus save those that don't do the same."
"I don't want what's yours," she said. "I want my loan repaid."
He slammed the side of the gun against the desktop, upsetting the bottle of mineral water. Mineral water was always somewhere around, here and at home. Paris Trout would not drink from the tap. The bottle rolled across the tabletop, leaving a trail of small puddles.
He made no move to stop it.
The room was quiet except for the sound of the bottle rolling across the wood and then dropping onto the floor. She met his stare, then looked away. In that moment she saw he was afflicted.
"I am sorry for you," she said, looking at the floor.
He made a noise she understood to be a laugh. "That's a lie," he said. "You're sorry for every child ever come out of its mother's pussy barefoot, and people that's old, and all the sumbitches play with their own toes up to the asylum, but you ain't sorry for me."
She looked up again and saw he was laughing at her. "I caught you fibbing," he said.
"I want my money returned," she said.
"You know what else?" he said. "I know why you said that. You want me pitiful, so you can feel the way you're supposed to. Because if somebody ain't pitiful or sick, you don't know how to act nice."
She blushed at the words and stepped backwards toward the door. The smell of his urine was fresh in her nose again.
"Well?" he said. "Is that a fact or not?"
"I don't know," she said.
°`You lied again."
She began to back out of the room. He came up off the desk, and the pistol came up with him. She stopped dead. "You lied," he said.
She said, "What do you want?" She could not anticipate him at all now.
He looked at the empty bottle on the floor. He said, "Get me a drink from the store, then clean up what's spilled."
The mineral water was sitting on a shelf at the front of the store, near the door. Her intention was just to walk out. When she got to the door, though, there was a woman waiting on the other side. A small child hung from her arm, lifting his feet to swing or tip her over, it was hard to say which.
Hanna recognized the woman — she was married to one of the deans at the college — but could not remember her name. Hanna let her in. She waited until the woman was past and then kicked the wedged stop under the door. Open for business.
"Can I help you find something?"
"Thank you," the woman said, "but I'll manage." The woman's accent was southern, but not local. She carried herself in a dignified way, even with the child swinging from her arm. Hanna straightened herself, thinking of her own dignity.
She picked a bottle of mineral water off the shelf and headed back toward the office. She did not want this woman to see Paris, she did not want to be thought of in a piteous way. Something hung on the woman's opinion.
"I'll be back directly," she said.
Paris was in the spot where she'd left him. Precisely the spot. The bottle was still on the floor near his feet, a trail of spilled water formed half an ellipse across the desk. The gun, thankfully, was back on the desktop and out of his hand. She crossed the room and handed him the mineral water.
There was a metal sink in the corner, and she found a dry sponge there, wet it and wrung it out, and wiped the desk. He opened the bottle, following every move. Neither of them spoke. She stepped around him, bending to wipe the spilled bottle up off the floor, and then there was a slamming noise in her ear, and she was suddenly out of focus. She fell against the desk, beginning to understand that he had hit her, and then his hand was around her neck, his weight pinning her to the desktop. There was a heat in her ear and numbness somewhere inside.
Still, neither of them spoke. The only sounds she heard were his breathing and hers and the rush of blood in her head. Her cheek lay flat against the desk, and her eyes were open, but he was working from the other side, where she could not see him.
It was connected somehow to the girl he had shot.
A movement then, above her, and he set the bottle of mineral water on the desk a few inches from her nose. She wondered if she'd closed the door to the office, afraid that the woman would come back to find her when she was ready to pay for her things.
She pulled suddenly, with all her strength, but he only fastened down harder, until she cried out. Not words, only a sound. He lifted her skirt, and she felt a coolness on the back of her legs.
"Paris, please . . ." The voice did not sound like her own, it was squeezed and comic.
He brought the skirt all the way up. It hunched in front and caught against the edge of the desk. He jerked at it, lifting her off her feet. And then it was loose, and a moment later she felt the soft weight of it on her back.
"I will not tolerate this," she said.
There was no answer, and in a moment her sight blurred, and she wondered, in a dreamed sort of way, if he had somehow left. Then she felt his hand on her, running over the cheeks of her bottom. He slapped her once there, the force of it moving her head, rubbing her cheek into the wood.
Then his hand found the elastic at the top of her underpants and pulled them down her legs until they fell of their own accord around her f
eet. She fought him, rising an inch off the desk, but he pushed her back where she had been. She thought again of the woman outside, p picking a few things up on the way home.
No one came in for more than a few things, people did their heavy shopping at the A&P.
She saw his hand. It closed around the bottle of mineral water, taking it at the bottom. There was a moment of calm then; she thought she could talk to him while was drinking.
"Paris, look at yourself . . ."
She felt him move, she thought he meant to let her go. Then she felt him between her legs, pushing to get inside. The thought came to her in that same dreamed way that he had planned this, it was why he hadn't zipped his pants.
He pressed harder, pinching her legs against the edge of the desk, and she cried out. She heard him at the same time, the sound he'd made earlier, almost a laugh. There was something wrong with the location, though; the noise seemed to come from the side..He pressed into her and pushed a little ways inside. She kicked out behind, as high as she could, but there was nothing there.
He pushed deeper, and there was a different pain, this one tearing her and lifting her up onto her toes, and she realized then that it was not Paris inside her.
He used the bottle like a lever. One end was seated deep in her vagina, the opening to her body became the fulcrum, and he lifted her in that way until she felt the warm water running into her and out, running down her legs into her shoes.
He held her there until the bottle was empty.
He pulled it out, almost gently, and then took his hand off her neck. He had yet to speak an intelligible word. He stood over her, holding the bottle, and watched as she slowly straightened up.
She was dizzy, and as moments passed, she noticed a burning sensation growing through her neck. She touched her face, and her cheek was swollen and unfamiliar. She steadied herself against the desk and pulled her underpants up. They were soaked through.
Then she pulled her skirt down, and she was finally away from him. She felt the wet underpants against her skin, though, and she felt what he had done to her. "Look at yourself? she said again, and when he did not answer she left the room, her shoes making wet noises as she walked.
The woman was standing at the counter. There was a box of saltine crackers and some chicken noodle soup in front of her, the child was holding a pack of Dentyne gum. She looked up when she heard Hanna coming.
Hanna stepped behind the cash register and rang the order. She accepted the woman's money, made the correct change. She put the crackers and the soup in a brown bag and thanked the woman for coming in. The woman looked at her face and then glanced back toward the office.
She leaned forward, so that the child could not hear, and said, "Are you all right, honey?"
And Hanna felt the cold underpants underneath her skirt, and her legs had turned sticky. She said, "Yes, thank you. My husband and I had a small emergency, but it's taken care of now."
The woman left, and a moment later Hanna left too. She did not close the door behind her, and as she walked along the campus of the college a few minutes later, she had the impression again that things were, at that moment, changing forever.
That Paris was gone someplace and was lost for good.
* * *
SHE DID NOT Move out. She stayed, because that is what you did.
The house, in some way, was hers.
By the time Paris Trout returned from work that night, however, she had taken several chairs, a lamp, a table, and the rug from the front room and carried them upstairs to her own quarters. She watched him from the window, opening the gate and walking up the sidewalk. She watched until the line of the house cut him off from her, and then she g crossed the room and locked her bedroom door.
He did not force his way in. She heard him on the stairs and then in the hallway. He stopped outside, a long minute, and then she heard his steps moving back in the direction he had come, and somehow a bargain had been struck.
They did not speak, not a word, for three days. Each evening she locked herself in her bedroom, and each morning, after he left, she reclaimed her house. She read books in her room, Raymond Chandler novels she borrowed from the public library. She bought a radio. She took long baths and began a diary.
She did not clean anything but herself and her own room, she did no dishes and no cooking and took her laundry out, charging it to her husband's account. She saw him, coming and going, and was careful that he did not see her.
* * *
THERE WAS A SERVICE for the child on Tuesday. She called the coroner, a man named Cliff Collins, and caught him drinking. He gave her the time and place.
The following morning he called back, sober, and said, "Miz Trout, I can't have it coming back that this office was the one gave you information."
She dressed in a dark suit and walked south and east, through the college campus and into Bloodtown. The service was held in a small white chapel across the street from Horn Cemetery.
She took a seat in back — there were only four rows — sweating from the walk over, and listened to a Baptist preacher say a few words over the open coffin. There were six other people in the room, two young black men, an older black man, two children — two little girls.
The smallest child sucked her thumb, staring at Hanna over her small, wet fist all through the service. The preacher read from the Bible and then put his hand inside the box to touch Rosie Sayers. "Come down with me now," he said. "Come down and join hands with me and say good-bye to this child."
Then he leaned into the coffin and kissed her lips.
Hanna Trout stood up with the others and walked to the front of the chapel. She carried her purse under her arm. The preacher took one of her hands, the older man took the other. Her purse fell to the floor. The littlest child swayed between the two younger men, her eyes fastened on Hanna's white skin.
Hanna watched the child and then looked into the casket. There was another child inside, the one she had taken to Comell Clinic for rabies treatment. They had laid her head on a pink satin pillow.
The preacher closed his eyes and spoke. Jesus, thank you for sending us this little girl," he said. '"We return her to You now for safekeeping and pray for You to forgive us that we didn't take better care of her here."
They all said "A-men," even the children.
The preacher closed the lid to the coffin, and he and the three men carried it across the street to a mound of freshly dug dirt. They set the box down, took off their coats, and then lowered it into the ground.
* * *
AN HOUR LATER HANNA walked in the door of her house and found her husband sitting in the front room with his attorney. The attorney stood up to greet her. "Mrs. Trout," he said.
"Mr. Seagraves."
Her husband had not shaved that morning and was wearing the same pants and shirt he had worn the day before. She knew he had slept — even with her door locked shut, she had heard his snoring from down the hall — but he looked as tired as she had ever seen him.
The attorney stepped closer and offered his hand. She took it for I only a moment and then let go. His eyes hung on to her a long time.
"I hope I am not an inconvenience on you," he said.
"Convenience is no longer among my considerations," she said.
He looked at her as if her husband were not in the room at all. "You are a forthcoming woman, Mrs. Trout," he said.
Her husband moved then, shifted himself on the davenport to look out the window. The movement caught her eyes, and when she returned her attention to the attorney, he was leaning closer, as if to take her into his confidence.
"The problem here, as I was telling your husband, is partly psychological," he said.
She stared at him, not understanding what he meant, not caring to have it explained.
"In that vein," he went on, "there are two considerations. One is the age of the deceased. She was fourteen, which as you may know is legal age of consent, and it could be argued that makes her an adult.
"
"Consent to what?"
He did not answer the question. "The other consideration," he said, "is the fact that your husband is perceived as a rich and powerful man, and in some ways that could be used against him now, the circumstances making the girl look more defenseless by comparison."
"Mr. Seagraves," she said, "I have just come from the child's funeral, and I have no interest in the legal problems her death has presented you or my husband, nor in the way you overcome them."
Seagraves turned to Trout, who was still staring out the window.
"A service?" he said.
She looked at the davenport too. She thought of what he had done to her with the bottle, wondering how long it had been there, waiting in his mind, before the act.
"You went to the service?" the attorney said. She was pleased to note the cordiality had gone out of his voice.
She did not answer.
"Mrs. Trout," Seagraves said, "I know that you wouldn't intentionally hurt your husband's case — "
"I have no interest, Mr. Seagraves," she said. "No interest in this subject at all."
He put his fingertips against his temples, as if she had built him a headache. "I don't mean to exhaust your patience," he said a moment later. "I appreciate your abhorrence at what has happened. But please understand that whatever you do now reflects on your husband."
"Mr. Seagraves," she said, looking at Paris, "you cannot begin to appreciate my abhorrence."
And she turned away from them, pleased with the way that had sounded, and walked up the stairs and locked herself in her bedroom. She undressed, drew a bath, and sat in the tub a long time. They were downstairs another hour. She heard the drone of voices, and then, as she became accustomed to the quiet, she began to make out the words.
Much of it concerned the physical location of her husband and Buster Devonne during the firing of the shots. The attorney wanted to know their exact stations, her husband did not seem to know. She heard him say, "It was smoked all through that house .... " again and again.
Her husband was not a good liar, and the words came out sounding unnatural and practiced. She touched the lips of her vulva, softly, and it hurt her. She was discolored and cut.