Beneath the table the shaft hummed in its bearings, and the girl’s round knees were pale balloons above her tightly rolled stockings. The pulleys ran silently; the one-inch flat belt had broken, and he brought it together over the shaft, cut its ragged edges straight, crimped on new knuckles, inserted the pin and got ready to snap it back on the moving pulley. The width of the knuckles, he hoped, would make up for the leather he had trimmed off. Guiding it toward the pulley with both hands, he let the force of the shaft begin to pull it along his palms until it was going almost as fast as the shaft and pulley, then firmly pressed it into place. Suddenly it was all the machine’s; with a crack it resumed its strength and purpose, turning so fast and steady the knuckles disappeared, and it was all one taut, humming piece again. He got up.
“Did Bessie give you an eyeful?”
He shook his head.
“You’re a nice boy,” the woman said seriously. “Don’t let us get you down. We don’t mean nothing by it.” She took her place again, and he went toward the elevator, where Al Coutermarsh waited for him.
“Be awful careful, Wood,” Al said, holding up the stump of his finger. “This is a mighty dangerous place.”
“I’m pretty careful,” Wood said.
“I know you are.” It was strange to see Al stopped, contemplative, not on his way somewhere. Now, for a moment he looked at Wood appraisingly. “I can’t figure you out, Wood,” he said. He paused, then spoke too softly, and Wood couldn’t hear him.
“Can’t hear you.”
“I said you don’t seem so damned innocent, somehow.”
Suddenly Wood felt great tenderness for Al, and he put his hand on Al’s shoulder. “You’re a good man,” he said, and Al actually blushed. It was like a dark light passing across his usually pale, bluish face and scalp—a dark color, not really red at all. Al patted him on the arm with his wounded hand, and turned to go. “I wish you weren’t headed for the Army,” he said. “But then I don’t suspect we could keep you here anyway.”
Back in the cellar at his push trucks, Wood wondered why he had felt it necessary at that moment to put his hand on Al’s shoulder—why, without really thinking at all, he had done that little thing. It was almost as though he asked for the authority he didn’t want. Perhaps it was because he wanted to say to Al, “Look, here’s another one like you, living in a world of irresponsible children, never without the curse of responsibility.” But that was to ask for duty, and he knew it.
At eighteen he seemed to have been an adult all his life—a grown man, even an old man. He resented the loss of his childhood, and for a moment remembered with nostalgia jumping from a barn beam twenty feet into hay—that feeling of being totally in the power of some higher force. Gravity. He could do nothing for twenty feet but fall, fall, and land in the hay that was infinitely soft and forgiving. And then to climb again up the sticks of ladder nailed to the heavy upright, and inch out on the beam where danger disappeared, where any fall was safe.
When he got up to cut more lath into struts, a girl stood next to the elevator, looking at him. Her face was in shadow, but she looked familiar to him—a big girl. Then she turned and went up the stairs, her blue skirt rippling above the flash of her leg. Beady immediately stuck his head around the corner by the stairwell and said, “Missed again, dammit!”
“Too bad,” Wood said, and then asked, because it was always something that had puzzled him, “Beady, how can you want it all the time, when you’re married?”
“Ah, youth,” Beady said, coming over. “I thought the same thing, once. ‘Get married, and when it itches, scratch it’”
“So?”
“There’s a lot of different kinds of itches, Woodie.”
“What do you mean?”
Beady looked at him and shook his head. He pulled the lobe of one ear, and his whole face seemed to tilt upon his stationary head, as if his hardened face were all one piece. “You really want an answer to that question?”
“Yes.”
“You really do.”
“Yes.”
Beady took his marking pencil from behind his other ear and began, idly, to draw stripes on the white laths. “Woodie, I don’t know why I want to do it, but I want…I really want to do it to every broad in Leah. There’s something about a woman makes me think I have to do it to her. Does that explain it?”
“No.”
“Even the ugly ones. I mean it. Sometimes it’s like a holy place I’ve got to visit. I mean like a shrine. It’s like religion to me. I really mean that, Woodie. I don’t know why the hell I’m telling you. I never thought of it that way before. But I mean it. When a girl turns me down, hell, I laugh and make out it was a joke all the time, but I’ll tell you I feel like God cast me out. I do. Cast me out into the everlasting darkness. Out of grace. Out.” Beady shook his head sadly. “I’m nuts, of course,” he added. “And just now, hell. Susie Davis. I guess it’s not my day.”
“That was Susie Davis?”
“She’s learning buttonhole machine. Al sent her down for some tape.”
“I didn’t know she’d quit high school.”
“She’s only seventeen, but man, oh, man!” Beady said reverently.
“It’s too bad,” Wood said, and was aware that Beady looked at him strangely.
“You mean that?” Beady said. “You think she ought to join the Rainbow Girls or something?” He giggled nervously.
“I like her,” Wood said.
“I saw her standing there looking at you. I was going to throw some Gre-solvent at you through the elevator shaft. You really pissed me off for a minute. I’m a jealous son of a bitch. T.S. for old Beady. You and the whole Leah football team, God damn it, and she turns me down flat.”
“You don’t know about all that,” Wood said.
“I know you probably never, but I’m pretty sure about the football team. After the Northlee game, in October sometime. They got her high on rum and took her out back of…”
“You don’t really know what happened,” Wood said, hearing a familiar steadiness enter his voice. Always unbidden, that sound of authority came between him and Beady now, and Beady shrugged his shoulders defensively.
“No, I’m not absolutely one hundred percent sure. I wasn’t there. But I’ve heard some pretty convincing stories about it. Anyway, I’ve got a feeling she’d hand it to you on a platter. Here.” He handed Wood a little square of paper, folded small like a secret high-school note. “She asked me to give you this.”
Wood took it and put it in his shirt pocket.
“You going to read it?” Beady said.
“Sure.”
“Well, don’t worry about me, because I read it already.”
Wood opened the thick little square and read the round, neat handwriting:
Dear Wood,
Don’t believe everything you hear. Please.
Sincerely,
Susie D.
P.S.
Can I meet you after work today by the side door on Pleasant St. I want to tell you something.
S.D.
“You want to borrow a couple rubbers?” Beady asked.
“No.”
Beady looked a little exasperated. “Why don’t you get mad at me? You trying to insult me to death? At least you could get slightly peed off. Don’t you ever get mad?”
“Sure.”
“Sure,” Beady said, imitating him. “Jesus H. Baldheaded Christ, Woodie. You got to be seen to be believed.”
Then Beady turned, shaking his head as hard as a dog with something stuck on his nose, and went back to the shipping room.
The afternoon went on; occasional flashes of the winter day, seen across the busy rooms, seemed at once more real and yet dead against the warm yellow lights on dark beams. The metal shafts and wheels seemed alive in their thin oil, almost as if they had skin. The pale sewing girls bent to their machines. Wood fixed another flat belt, the slim lines of a girl’s legs in the corner of his eye, and later a V belt. On this one he di
dn’t dare snap the belt on until he took a hammer and chisel and cut out a finger-deep notch in the wooden floor; the pulley came too close to the wood, and if his fingers slipped along with the belt they would have been crushed. Al saw him do this, and merely nodded.
Then back to the basement to fix the wobbly push trucks that really couldn’t be fixed, and soon the old building began to sigh—a turning down of breath, little by little, as the machines slowed down and stopped. Above him he heard the small taps of heels as the girls left their tables to check out at the time clocks-dainty taps through the thick floor that no longer hummed. He washed with Beady at the shipping-room sink, Gre-solvent like cold Cream of Wheat between his fingers.
“You going to see her?” Beady asked.
“Yes.”
“Why do you say ‘Yes’ like that? Why don’t you say ‘Yeah,’ or ‘Yup,’ or something human, for Christ’s sake?”
“Are you mad at me, Beady?”
“Why the hell should I be?”
“You just sound like it.”
“Why the hell should I be? You’re going in the Army, probably get your ass shot off.”
“Probably not.”
“You’re a Whipple. I know why you look down on me. I ain’t high society. You got your nose a mile in the air.”
“I have?” Wood said.
Suddenly Beady was angry, and a mean look, surprising on Beady, turned his mouth white and shriveled.
“You think you’re so goddam superior, don’t you? So how about your brother? He learned how to be a thief up there in that mansion of yours, didn’t he?”
Wood saw that Beady was astounded by what he was saying. Through Beady’s angry face he saw Beady horrified by his own words.
“I could say a lot more, about every goddam one of you Whipples, buddy boy,” Beady said, his voice high and cramped, desperation in his eyes. “Every goddam one of you. So don’t play high and mighty with me! Understand?”
Wood meant to say something, and felt cruel in his silence, but he could think of nothing to say. He merely watched, sadly, what his silence did to Beady. Then Beady turned away and nearly ran to the cloak rack, where he jammed his feet into his overshoes, took his coat and scarf and again half ran to the stairwell and up, the wings of his open overshoes brushing together and hindering him, as though he waded through water.
Wood finished washing, got his coat and walked upstairs, past the empty tables and the silent machines. Without the solid noise, the bright gray winter day came more strongly through the high windows, and the room seemed cold. At the time clock he took his card from the in rack, placed it in the slot and pushed the lever that stamped it, then put it in the out rack. A hand touched his arm. Susie Davis stood close to him in the empty hallway.
“Oh, Wood!” she said, and smiled worriedly at him. She was a big girl, but this close to him she had turned smaller, and he realized that she was several inches shorter than he was. Her babushka was tied tightly over her brown hair and down under her wide cheeks. Skin of a warm color, creamy; she was the color of rich cream. A pretty girl, big and a little plump, mostly always smiling as if delighted. Now delight and worry appeared together, and her pinkish, big hand touched his sleeve again. “I was afraid you wouldn’t wait to see me.”
“I was going to, Susie,” he said.
“Oh, Wood.”
“Come on. I’ll walk you downstreet.”
They were looked at by the girls and men who waited at the door for their rides. Everybody knew about her. She walked along beside him, bulky in her wool coat, taking delicate yet long steps in her rubber boots.
“You were nice to me once,” she said. She looked at him quickly, and he saw that tears made her dark blue eyes shiny.
“I was?”
“Yes. In school. In hall, once. Junior Stevens was goosing me in hall, and you told him to cut it out.”
He remembered her embarrassed smile when Junior Stevens put his fists together under her crotch, from behind, and lifted her up over the last step onto the second floor. At the time he wasn’t sure she didn’t like it, somehow. But he hadn’t liked it, and he told Junior not to do it again.
“I remember telling him to stop,” he said.
“You’re the only one I care about knowing…” she said, and was silent.
“Knowing what?” They had reached the end of Pleasant Street, and turned onto Bank Street toward the Town Square. The sky above the bare elms was as white as the snow.
“The truth,” she said.
“All right.”
She touched him with her shoulder, lightly, deliberately, and he was flattered, and sorry for her. He considered her a casualty, in a way, of the war and its disruptions. This big, complaisant, creamy girl. Maybe he was wrong.
“When can I tell you? Can I see you sometime?” she said. He felt a twinge of shameful caution. Her reputation…But her reputation was a prison, her prison, wasn’t it? And beneath this kinder thought was the thrill of her offering—whatever it was she offered him. Shame because it was love, and he thought, saw, a sudden picture of her creamy long thighs. He stopped, and she turned quickly, frightened.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Oh, I know. I’m sorry.”
“No,” he said quickly. “No, don’t think—”
“Oh, what’s the use,” she said, more tears over her eyes. One went down her cheek and was absorbed in the rayon of her babushka. He saw it sucked in by the cloth. “Last year nobody thought anything about me, did they? I mean bad things?”
“All right,” he said. He heard authority, that unwanted force, come into his voice. “All right, Susie. What’s the truth you want to tell me?” He heard authority and other things in his voice; responsibility, and a sweet, shameful martyrdom too. Part of him resented all this. Perhaps down there inside somewhere was a screech of laughter.
“Something,” she said, and seemed coy all of a sudden. She lost value in his eyes, and the wind seemed to turn colder. He shivered, and wanted to turn and go home. “Can I tell you?” she asked. “Will you believe me?”
“I’ll believe you if you want to tell me the truth,” he said coldly.
“If you can get your father’s car, I can get a T stamp from my father’s tractor ration. He’s got plenty of gas. We could go for a ride and talk. I’ll tell you the truth.” She seemed desperate. “Would you think of doing that, Wood?”
He was thinking about it. The truth, he thought. As if he didn’t know the truth.
“Please,” she said. “I can’t talk to anybody else in Leah. There isn’t anybody else. Even my father called me a whore.” Her voice turned harsh. “Everybody else is after my big sweet ass.”
He was cold. She smiled at him grimly, sarcastically, and it astounded him. “Is that all I’ve got to offer you?” she asked. “What did I do, scare you to death?”
“Yes,” he said. “No, I scare myself to death. I don’t want to treat you badly, Susie.”
“You seem so much older. But just because I said ‘sweet ass’ you got all frozen. It’s just something I heard. I don’t know why I said it. Oh God, I hate this town!”
Then she turned and ran away from him. He watched her run down the sidewalk toward the Town Hall, a little hippily, yet graceful, one hand in a red knit mitten pressed to her face. Her father waited there in his pickup truck, and she opened the door and climbed into the seat. Immediately the truck started off. He felt that she and her father had exchanged no greetings. Her father was evidently ashamed to wait for her at Milledge & Cunningham, under the eyes of all those women.
After supper that evening he went to his room and saw only her stricken face. He saw her in her father’s house, nobody saying a word. He went downstairs to the phone in the hall—his mother and father were listening to Gabriel Heatter, so they wouldn’t hear—and called her up. Her father answered.
“I’d like to speak to Susie,” Wood said.
“Who the hell is this?”
“Wood Whipple. May I
speak to Susie?”
“What do you want?”
“I want to speak to her.”
“Don’t get wise with me! I want to know what the hell she’s got that you want!”
“Daddy!” he heard in the phone. “Daddy! Daddy! Please!”
A tinny thunk as the receiver hit the box, then crying, then loud breath. “Wood!” Susie said, and there was a man’s harsh grunt as her voice fell away, crying. The line was dead.
He was shaking, and full of indignation. Something had to be done. In the living room Gabriel Heatter was over, and his mother had turned the volume down. He went up to his father, who looked up, surprised.
“I want to use the car. Can I?” His father looked at him carefully.
“What for?” his father said, and Wood saw, with surprise of his own, that his father was not going to use his urgency against him. For a moment he thought of this, and didn’t speak.
“What for? We haven’t many coupons left, you know.”
It was almost as if Wood could see past the sick flesh of his father to the man he vaguely remembered, the man of years ago, to whom he remembered speaking without caution.
“It’s important,” Wood said. “I won’t use a quarter of a gallon, I promise.”
“Wood, you’re in a state,” his mother said. “What’s the matter?”
Wood spoke to his father. “I want to go out to the Davis place and talk to Susie’s father. I just called and I think he’s beating her up.”
“And you want to go there?”
“Yes.”
“That’s jailbait. You know that, don’t you?”
“It’s a girl that doesn’t deserve to get beaten up just because I called her.”
“Well, son of a bitch,” his father said wonderingly. “You’ve got more guts than brains, I’ll say that. Sam Davis is a hell of a man to tangle asses with. Go ahead. Well get the bandages ready.”
“No! Wood!” his mother cried, but he was going. He grabbed his coat and ran out to the garage before his mother could say anything more. The Chevrolet started easily, thank God, and he eased down over the cinders of the shoveled driveway, between the white banks, and out onto High Street. The feeling of relief that he couldn’t be stopped gave way to fear of this next absolute thing he had to do. He supposed the most the man could do would be to throw him off the side porch, but he was afraid of Sam Davis—not just the man, but the man in his anger, and what his anger was all about. His daughter more or less declared available. To groups. To conventions—like the sign over the banquet room of the hotel. To football teams. “Shut up,” he said. The car went on toward the Davis farm. Such a short distance.
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