Big city girl

by Charles Williams

  The next day was hot and clear, and then the next while he fought his way down the hillside and started out across the bottom, driving the mules and the cultivator ahead of him like a lank and bitter-faced avenging angel in pursuit of devils. Cass sat by the radio through the long hours drawn by the secret and magic ecstasy of hearing his name broadcast over the air, but they had not found Sewell. Neely has disappeared, the radio said, carrying his name into millions of homes along with Truman’s and Stalin’s.

  Neely has disappeared into air.

  * * *

  In the long, bright afternoon Joy lay on her bed and tried to sleep. Jessie was ironing clothes in the kitchen and she could hear the rattle of irons on the cookstove and on beyond, in the front room, the droning voice of the radio where Cass waited for the news. It was hot in the room and she had taken off her dress and slip and lay there in the brief and fragmentary covering of her under-things with the door out into the kitchen partly open to catch any passing current of air. I hope Cass don’t take a notion to go out in the kitchen, she thought. Oh, to hell with him. I’m not going to lie here and roast in a lot of clothes just because he might be snooping around. Let him look if he wants to. What the hell do I care?

  She put an arm up across her face to shut out the light and the barren harshness of the room, but took it away in a minute because it was too hot to touch herself. There was no ceiling, and as she lay on her back with her bare arms and legs stretched out to keep from touching herself she could see the dusty rafters and the hot underside of the corrugated sheet-metal roofing fastened down to the lath with long nails that came through and splintered the wood. The walls were unpapered, constructed of rough one-by-twelves running vertically from floor to roof with battens nailed over the cracks on the outside. One of the battens had been torn off, and as the sun moved down in the west a lengthening shaft of golden light came through the exposed crack and across the room. In the two hours she had been watching it she had seen it crawl across the old ironbound trunk against the wall and then onto the bed, and now it stretched across her thigh like a thin gold band. Her imitation-leather Gladstone bag lay open atop the trunk, and as she turned her head wearily in the heat she could see the shaft of light probing into the piled and disordered jumble of sleazy underthings and shoddy dresses with powder spilled over them, the bottle of cheap perfume, and her last pair of unsnagged nylons, and she wanted to scream.

  She could feel the scream welling up from somewhere deep inside her like some bloating, nauseous pressure that had to escape somehow, and she put a hand across her mouth to hold it in. Oh, Christ, why can’t I die and get it over with? Do I have to lie here in this goddamned heat and look at what I’ve got left to show for twenty-eight years? A paper suitcase full of cheap clothes a whore wouldn’t be found dead in, and a cheap marriage to a cheap gangster, and before that a cheaper one to a cheap tout selling tip sheets to a bunch of cheap suckers at racetracks, and before that . . . But, Jesus Christ, what’s the use in going any further back than that—to all the cheap, greasy hash houses and all the cheap bastards. Cheap! Cheap! Cheap! She put her hands up alongside her face to keep it from flying apart with the pounding repetition of the word through her brain.

  Imagine trying to kid myself I’m only twenty-five and I that I look just the same as ever. That’s a laugh. That’s a hot one, all right! That’s good. Jesus, but that’s rich! With the lousy cold-blooded ape laughing right in my face in a stinking county jail like I was some slut asking him for a dollar. Twenty-eight years old and stranded without a nickel in a God-forsaken hole like this with everything I own in a paper suitcase, and beginning to droop like a share-cropper’s wife who’s had eleven brats and I’m trying to kid myself I’ve still got it and can go on from here. I couldn’t get a job in a Congress Avenue burlesque show taking off my clothes for a bunch of bald- headed stew bums. Lying about my first husband connected with racing and the dances at the Roosevelt Hotel when the nearest ever got to the Roosevelt was tending bar in a broken-down beer joint while my precious husband bet the rent money on his own stupid tips out at the Fairgrounds. The glamorous Joyce Gavin Broussard Neely! I’m a cheap, lousy bitch who never had anything but looks, and now they’re gone and I’ve got a paper suitcase full of trashy clothes to show for it. For all twenty-eight years of it. Oh, God, if that ain’t a scream!

  She began to cry. Why do I go on trying to kid myself, looking in a mirror? I look like an old bag, and I know it. No woman ever knew whether she was beautiful or not by looking in a mirror. They don’t tell you anything. Men tell you, not mirrors. And when they laugh in your face . . . Oh, Jesus, I wish I could die.

  Her shoulders shook with the crying and she turned wretchedly on her side and gave way to the storm of self-pity. In a moment, however, she became aware there, was someone else in the room and looked up through the tears to see Jessie standing inside the door and watching her with anxiety.

  “Joy, what is it?” Jessie asked. “Are you all right?”

  Joy choked down the sobs and drew a hand across her eyes. She nodded dumbly. Jessie went over to the suitcase and found a handkerchief and took it to her, feeling shy and self-conscious because of her nakedness and looking only at her face. Joy reached for it and dabbed forlornly at her eyes.

  “What is it, Joy?” Jessie asked again. “Can I help?” She stood very straight beside the bed, like a grave-eyed and worried child being introduced for the first time to the sickbed and the ills of adults.

  “I—I got to thinking about Sewell,” Joy said. Well, in a way I was, she thought defensively. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess, honey.”

  “Poor Joy,” Jessie said, her own eyes beginning to grow misty. “I’m sorry, Joy.”

  Joy began to cry again and Jessie sat down on the side of the bed with her back toward the foot because she was still embarrassed about the other’s almost nude body. She shyly placed a hand on her head and Joy moved convulsively toward her and threw an arm across her lap while she shook with sobs and pressed her face into the bed.

  “Oh, Jessie, I’m so alone,” she wailed. “I haven’t got anybody and I’m not pretty any more and I’m such a mess.”

  Nine

  Jessie stroked her head soothingly. “Joy! That’s no way to talk. You know it’s not so. You’ve got us. And I don’t know anybody as pretty as you are.”

  “You don’t have to say that, honey,” Joy said miserably. “It’s sweet of you to try to cheer me up, but you don’t have to say things like that.”

  “But I mean it, Joy.”

  Maybe she does, at that, Joy thought. She’s a funny kid. She wouldn’t lie to a bear that was going to eat her.

  “You’ve got to quit worrying so much about Sewell,” Jessie went on. “I know how it tears you up, but it can’t help things to worry about it. Now, you just wait here a minute.”

  Maybe fixing herself up would take her mind off things, she thought. She went out in the kitchen and returned in a moment with a basin of water and a washcloth. “Now, Joy, you sponge your face off and I’ll get your purse for you. And while you’re fixing up I’m going to iron a dress for you. Not pretty! The idea!”

  Joy sat up and began washing away the tear streaks. Jessie set the basin down carefully beside her on the bed and went over to the suitcase again for her purse.

  “Which dress would you like pressed?” she asked.

  “They’re all a mess,” Joy said dully. “They’re terrible.”

  “They’re not, either. You have the prettiest things. How about this print one you haven’t worn?”

  Joy nodded listlessly. “All right.”

  She went on sponging her face. The water was cool and it made her face feel better, and without too much interest at first she bathed her eyes to take away the redness and puffiness of crying. Jessie came back in a minute with a towel and she rubbed her face dry and began combing her hair. This improved her spirits, as it always did, for she loved the feel of running the comb through it and shaking it back un
til the ends just touched her shoulders. But it was the honest admiration in Jessie’s eyes that did the most for her.

  Jessie came in carrying the dress she had ironed. She smiled and held it out at arm’s length, admiring it. “Are you ready for it, Joy? Can I get you a slip?”

  ”It’s too hot to wear a slip, honey,” Joy said. She wiggled up through the dress, mussing her hair a little. It was a short-sleeved dress with big bows on the shoulders. “Do you want to tie the bows?”

  “Do you think I could do it right?” Jessie asked eagerly.

  “Of course you can, baby. It’s just a bowknot.” She sat still on the bed while Jessie tied them, making the bows large and fluffy. Then she started combing her hair again.

  “Would you be an angel, honey, and bring me the mirror? The one on the back porch.”

  Jessie brought the mirror and held it for her while she finished with her hair and made up her face. She studied her reflection appraisingly. Her hair looked nice, coming down in a long golden sweep across the tops of the blue bows riding so jauntily on her shoulders, and her eyes showed very little aftereffect of the crying.

  “You look so wonderful,”-Jessie said. It made her feel good to be doing something for Joy and it helped to take her mind off the awful thing Sewell had done.

  “Do you really think so, honey?” Joy asked. She tilted her head back a little and narrowed her eyes. What am I afraid of? she thought. I can see I haven’t changed any. But the minute I put the mirror away I start getting scared again. Look at the moon-eyed way the kid watches me. She thinks I look wonderful and says so, but somehow it’s not the same as a man saying it. Why does it always have to be a man? But they’d still turn and look at me. I know they would. I get scared too easy, that’s all, just because I’m broke and down on my luck. And just because that stupid, cold-blooded gorilla laughed at me, and that dumb, stuck-up Mitch pretends he don’t even see me. You’d think there wasn’t any other men. What about Harve? And that photographer? Oh, I could show that Mitch, all right. But, for God’s sake, why do I care? What do I want him following me around for? I wouldn’t have him on a bet. God, you’d think he was Gable, the way I stew about it. The lousy share-cropper, what do I want him looking at me for? If I was one of those women that just has to have one in bed with her all the time it’d be different and I could understand it maybe, but I’m not like that. I don’t care anything about that, one way or the other. They muss you up so, especially the wild ones like that damn Sewell.

  I know what’s the matter with that Mitch. He’s just afraid of me, that’s all. Trying to pretend like I’m an old bag that nobody’d want, and he’s just afraid of me. I could twist him around my finger any time I wanted to. And I’ll do it, too.

  “My, but you look pretty,” Jessie was saying. “Don’t you feel better now?”

  Joy smiled. “Honey, I feel like a new woman.”

  Ten

  Cass had left the supper table. Jessie sat down with a plate of peas and some corn bread and went through the motions of eating, paying less and less attention to the food until at last she stopped altogether without even knowing it. It was dark outside now but still very hot in the kitchen. A gray moth fluttered its death dance about the lamp chimney, making a rustling sound with its wings, and down in the bottom they could hear the whippoorwills beginning to call. Mitch looked up from his plate to see Joy watching him.

  “How are you getting along with the plowing, Mitch?” she asked.

  “Oh. All right,” he said, surprised. It was the first time she had ever asked about the crop, or indicated she even knew they had one. She had on a dress with some kind of big bowknots on the shoulders that came up under the golden waterfall of her hair and made her look like a movie actress or a girl on the cover of a magazine.

  “Do you think you’ll get caught up with it?” she asked. She leaned her elbows on the oilcloth and put her chin on her hands and watched him with flattering attention.

  “If it don’t rain no more, maybe,” he said. She was very beautiful to look at whether he liked her or not, and he felt the anger in him now that she could disturb him.

  “Isn’t he going to help you any more?” Jessie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mitch said. He would never ask help of a man who needed asking.

  “Has he really got rheumatism, or is it just the radio that cripples him up?” Joy asked.

  “I don’t know,” he answered shortly.

  He did know, or was reasonably sure he did, but felt it was a family matter and none of her business. Cass was nothing any more but the wreckage of a man, but he did not want to talk about it to an outsider.

  “Well, it’s not fair,” Jessie protested.

  ”Don’t make no difference,” Mitch shrugged. “All I want is clear weather. I can handle it if it don’t rain no more.”

  “What if it starts in again?” Joy asked.

  “We’ll lose it,” he said curtly. He didn’t like to think about the rain’s starling again.

  Jessie began to scrape up the dishes. He got up and went outside to smoke a cigarette, hoping it would be a little cooler in the yard. Before Cass had brought home the radio he would go sit on the front porch at night for a smoke before going to bed, but now he would not go near it. The sound of the radio’s incessant jabbering came through the open front window and the door and there was no escape from it on the porch. The thought of Sewell was hard enough to bear without hearing the whole brutal mess turned into a circus for the hundreds of thousands who had nothing better to do than listen like ghouls for the sordid and shameful end of a man who could have been something different. And the thought of Cass in there in the dark keeping his macabre vigil before the idiot mouthings of the detested box and waiting along with all the others for the inevitable destruction of his son was a thing to be avoided, and he kept away from it.

  He wandered down by the barn and leaned against the rails of the mule lot. There was no moon, but the sky was aflame with stars and he could make out the faintly sway-backed silhouette of Julie standing beyond him by the gate and the solid black mass of Jack lying in the dust where he had rolled. The other two were inside the barn and he could hear the sibilant rasping of their muzzles against the bottom of the feed trough as they searched out random grains of corn left over from their feeding, and when one of them kicked the ground he could hear the thudding impact across the night.

  He finished the cigarette and dropped it, grinding out the red coal in the dirt with the toe of his shoe. There was the sound of soft footsteps on the sand behind him and he turned, thinking it was Jessie. The figure was taller than Jessie’s, though, and in the starlight he could see the faintly gleaming cascade of soft blonde hair.

  “Is that you, Mitch?” she asked softly. “I thought I saw a cigarette.”

  “Yes,” he said. Why couldn’t she stay in the house where she belonged?

  “I think I can see you now. My eyes are getting used to the dark.” She came toward him and put out a hand, feeling for the rails of the fence. The hand brushed gently along his arm. “Oh. There you are. I didn’t mean to bump into you.”

  He said nothing. She leaned against the rail. “It’s so hot in the house.”

  “It ain’t very cool anywhere,” he said.

  “It’s a little better out here, though. Don’t you think? And it’s such a beautiful night. I want to look at the stars. Do you know the name of any of them, Milch?”

  “No. Only the North Star.”

  “Do you know how to locate it? I never can remember.”

  “You sight along the two pointers on the Big Dipper.”

  “Isn’t it silly? I can’t even find that. Will you point it out for me, Mitch?”

  She was standing very near, and he could smell the faint fragrance of the perfume she used. There was a tight band pulling across his chest and he knew if he tried to talk his voice would be thick and unnatural. He said nothing, and swung an arm toward the north, pointing just above the dark line of
the trees around the clearing.

  “I don’t see it,” she said. “I can’t see where you’re pointing. But wait, Mitch. I’ll sight along your arm.”

  She moved in very close to him, with the top of her head just under his chin, and turned her face the way he was pointing. One hand came up and rested lightly on his shoulder to steady herself. Stray tendrils of hair brushed against his throat. Then she tilted her head back and looked up at him with her eyes very wide and the stars reflected in them.

  “Why don’t you like me, Mitch?” she asked softly.

  Blood roared in his ears, the way it did when he held his breath too long, swimming underwater, and the weight on his chest was choking him. All the hard ache of all the womanless nights boiled down to a concentration of agony on a pin point of time, this brief and exploding moment out of all time and beyond which nothing mattered. He would have to move his arms so little to possess the end of torment, the sweet and silken oblivion, the dark, wild ecstasy, and at last relief. His arms hurt and his hands were heavy as he moved them. They shook as he put them on her waist, and he could feel the smoothness of her there just beyond the flimsy cloth. He brought them on up with a rush, placed them against her shoulders, and shoved. She shot backward, tripped over a high heel in the sand, and fell sprawling with a pale flash of bare arms and legs in the starlight.