“Enough,” Charlie said. “I thought she ought to know what kind of company she was keeping so she could choose not to keep it if she didn’t want.”
“But here she still is,” Buck said. “You got a thing for bad-asses, girl?”
“Buckman, please?” Charlie said.
“All right, all right,” Buck said. “So now we’re all properly introduced, can we get something to eat? I’m about starved to death.”
He signaled for the waitress. She was an older woman and had probably seen a few things in her time because she never batted an eye at Belle’s face.
When Charlie asked Belle what she wanted to eat, she stared at the table and shook her head slightly. She seemed to be trying hard to make herself invisible.
“Tell you what,” Charlie said, “I’ll get bacon and eggs and you get pancakes and sausage and we’ll eat whatever we want off each other’s plate, okay?”
But all she did was nibble at a piece of toast and sip her coffee while the rest of us ate like farmhands without much pause for conversation.
Then we were on the road again, me at the wheel and Buck in the shotgun seat, Russell at a back window, Charlie between him and Belle. I’d take a look at her in the mirror every so often, and every time she was staring steadily out at the passing countryside like an immigrant entering some strange new world.
Pretty much like us all.
The highway rose and fell and rose again. The towns smaller and fewer and getting farther apart. Hills and cedars and dwarf oaks. The grass turning dull, going sparse, giving way to stony scrub. Mesquites. Low clumps of cactus. The hills shrinking, scattering, the vistas widening, the sky deepening dead ahead.
In the early afternoon we stopped in some burg along the highway to get gasoline. When I shut off the engine the silence was profound. We all sat mute for a moment and all I could hear was the ticking of the hot engine. “Goddam,” Buck said. “For minute I thought I’d gone deef.” We all got out to stretch and use the restroom. I told the attendant to fill it up.
Russell asked the guy how it felt to live in the middle of nowhere. The guy got the pump going and spat a streak of tobacco juice and said, “It’s another four, five hundred miles to anywhere near the middle.”
Belle still hadn’t said a word other than her name the night before. At one point Russell had casually asked where she was from, but she only gave him a spooked look and then turned her face back to the window. “Nice chatting with you,” Russell said. Charlie punched him on the arm and said to leave the girl be. We’d gone along without anyone saying much after that, just listening to the sporadic music we’d pick up on the radio, usually more of the stringband stuff.
While the others were buying the sandwiches and sodas I stood at the side of the highway and stared off into the barrenness ahead, marveling at its vastness. I hadn’t known New Orleans could feel so far away.
Buck came up beside me, sipping from a bottle of Dr Pepper and munching a Clark Bar. “We can at least take her somewhere else,” he said, trying to mimic my voice. “Well…here’s somewhere else. How about we leave her here?”
I didn’t know he was joking and my face must’ve shown it, judging by the way he laughed. “Hell kid, the more I think on how she looked without a stitch, the more I believe we done the smart thing to bring her.” He walked off to the car before I could think of what to say.
Then we were on the road again and pretty soon another station faded off the radio. Buck fiddled with the tuning knob, static rasping along the dial until we picked up a hissing and crackling rendition of “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby.” We started singing along—all but Belle, who kept staring out the window for a minute and then put her face in her hands and broke into sobs.
“Honey, what?” Charlie said. She took her in her arms.
“That song…it was playing when those…those men, they were…it was so…awful!”
“Easy, baby,” Charlie said, patting her shoulder, rocking her like a child. Russell arched his brow at me in the rearview and I shrugged and turned the radio down. Buck rolled his eyes and shook his head.
And then she told her story. Told it bit by bit as the miles went by. Told it by fits and starts and mostly out of sequence. Told it with pauses to cry some more and to gently blow her tender nose and take a sip of Charlie’s strawberry Nehi before resuming.
What it came to was this. She was Kathryn Belle Robinson—Kitty Belle, her daddy’d called her—seventeen years old, born and raised in Corsicana, Texas, and every passing mile was taking her farther from there than she’d ever been before. Her daddy had worked in the oil fields. Her mother came from Tyler, where she’d won some kind of rose festival beauty contest when she was in high school, but she hated oil towns and lamented her foolishness in marrying so young and ruining her dream of becoming a photography model. From the time Belle was a child, her mother advised her not to make the same mistake.
“Don’t waste your good looks like a rose in a mudpit” was how her mother put it. Finish school, she told Belle, and then grab the first chance that came along to get away from the stink and grime of oil-town life.
Her daddy himself had been killed in the fields a year ago, gassed to death, him and eight others, by a leak at one of the rigs. They’d brought the bodies into town and laid them all in a row and every man of them had a bright red face and huge eyeballs and their bulging tongues were black. She hated that she still couldn’t get that picture of him out of her head. He didn’t leave any money so they’d had to move in with his brother Lyle and sickly wife Jean. To help with expenses Belle got a job at a bakery that specialized in fruitcakes. Her mother didn’t do much of anything for a couple of months except sleep or sit at the window and stare out at the derricks, and then finally took a job as a waitress at a hotel restaurant.
For a time everything went all right, then her mother started going with a waitress friend to speakeasy parties after work. She sometimes didn’t come home till dawn. Uncle Lyle pleaded with her to no effect. She told Belle not to worry, she was only having a little fun. It was like that for weeks and weeks. And then four months ago a policeman showed up at the door late one night. Her mother and some salesman from Waco had kicked up their heels for a while in a couple of speakeasies and then gone speeding off in the man’s coupe. A few miles outside of town they’d crashed into a tree and were killed. Belle’s mother was at the wheel.
For weeks afterward she felt like she was going around in a kind of trance. School lost the small pleasure it had held for her and she quit going. She stayed with her job because it didn’t require much concentration and she could pass the days in the hum and whirr of the batter machines.
The problem was at night, when she’d lie in the dark and feel more alone than she’d ever imagined it was possible to feel. Her boyfriend, Billy Jameson—the only boy she’d ever “been with,” as she put it—had got in trouble for breaking into a grocery store and left town without even saying goodbye. And her only two girlfriends had recently moved away with their daddies to some new oil boom in Oklahoma. She got along with her aunt and uncle, but in truth they were little more than strangers to her, and they anyway had their own troubles, what with her aunt now bedridden. The only relief she could find from her loneliness was at the movies. She began going every night. She loved sitting in the dark and getting swept into the stories on the screen, into the daring adventures and grand romances.
And then one night about three weeks ago, as she came out of the moviehouse, she was approached by a pair of well-dressed men who politely introduced themselves as Mr. Benton and Mr. Young. She’d noticed them outside the theater the night before and had felt herself blush when one of them nudged the other and nodded at her. They said they were talent scouts for a Hollywood producer who was sending them to towns all over America in search of fresh new faces. They thought she might be one. Would her parents give permission for her to go to Austin—all expenses paid, of course—to take a screen test?
The offer was so unexpected that Belle couldn’t think of what to say except no, thank you. All right, the men said, but in case she should change her mind they gave her a few forms for her parents to sign. They were on their way to Dallas to meet with some other scouts and would then take their talent search into a few more towns in the region before coming back through Corsicana. If she changed her mind, all she had to do was be at the station in exactly two weeks when the Dallas southbound made its daily stop.
She made up her mind before the next sunrise, reminding herself of her mother’s urging to get out of Corsicana at the first chance. She was scared, of course—she didn’t know these men from Cain and Abel—but who knew when, if ever again, she’d have another chance to make her getaway? Over the next thirteen days and nights she bit her nails raw, afraid the men might not come back.
But they did. She met them at the station, suitcase in one hand, forged papers in the other. They had another pretty girl with them, Gladys Somebody from Waxahachie. She and Belle hit it off and talked about how swell it’d feel to be a movie star someday.
They changed trains three times before finally arriving in Austin, but they didn’t get off there, after all. Instead they were joined by yet another girl—Lucy Somebody. Change of plan, the men told Belle and Gladys. The producer had decided to hold the screen tests in San Antonio. If either Belle or Gladys wanted to return home rather than go to San Antone with them, just say so and they’d be on the next train back. Neither Belle nor Gladys wanted that. How about calling home to tell the folks about the change in plan? Neither Belle nor Gladys felt the need to do that either.
“They knew you wouldn’t,” Russell said. “They’d already checked to see if either of you had any family that might be a problem. Asking did you want to call home about going to San Antonio was the last check to be sure.” Buck stared out the window and nodded.
When the train got to San Antonio, Benton and Young took them to supper at a nice restaurant and then checked them into a hotel—the Travis. She and Gladys shared a room, and they figured Lucy must’ve been given a room of her own. She never did see Lucy again.
After breakfast the next morning they went to a room on the third floor that had been made into a sort of studio, with a camera set up in the living room to take what they called portfolio stills, and a movie camera in the other room for the screen tests. The windows were kept draped so the lighting would be consistent in all the pictures. There was a closet full of clothes of all kinds and sizes, and Young took a series of pictures of her and Gladys in turn wearing different outfits. He said they were naturals, the camera loved them. It was fun and she was enjoying herself. Then Benton brought lunch up to the room, sandwiches and a pitcher of ice-cold fruit juice.
“It’s hard to remember things real clear after that,” she said. And started crying again.
“The old Mickey Finn,” Buck said. “In the Quarter one time a guy I knew was having trouble getting past first base with this girl. One night I run into them as they’re coming out of a speak and the girl’s smiling and all shitfaced and the guy’s grinning like tonight’s the night. She’d always said no to more than one drink, see, but I thought he’d finally figured some way to get her soused. Then she gives me a sloppy kiss hello and her breath didn’t smell of booze, it smelled like this girl’s did last night. Few days later the guy tells me she only had the one drink but he’d slipped a mickey in it. Worked like a damn charm, he said. A sweet drink’ll hide the taste at the time but you sure breathe it out afterward.”
Belle accepted Charlie’s hankie to wipe her tears and swab her nose, then went on with her tale. She said it was like knowing you’re having a dream but you can’t wake up. She was vaguely aware of time going by but she had no idea how much of it passed before she realized she didn’t have any clothes on and that somebody was “doing it” to her. A young curlyhaired blond guy. She was terrified and wanted to tell him to stop, to let her out of there, but it was like she’d forgotten how to talk. She felt so puny—it was all she could do to raise her hands to his chest, never mind push him away.
She heard music and voices and a low steady whirring. She saw Gladys sprawled in an easy chair by the wall, naked under an open robe and looking like she was drunk. The music was coming from a radio on a little table beside the chair—“I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby.” The whirring came from a movie camera. Young was operating it. Benton was at his side. By now her head was clearing and she felt some of her strength returning, but she still couldn’t push the guy off. He cursed her and pinned her arms over her head.
She heard Young say, “She needs another dose.” He sounded farther away than he looked. Benton said, “In a minute.” He was giving the blond kid directions, telling him to change positions on her, to touch her here, there, do this to her, do that. Finally the blond guy scooted up so that he was kneeling next to her face, pinning one of her arms with his knee and the other with one hand, trying to make her—
She broke off and started crying again. Charlie reached for her but the girl held her off. “No,” she said, “I’m going to tell it, I am. He tried to…he was trying to put his…you know, his thing…to put it in my mouth. So I…I bit him. I did!”
Her face dropped into her hands again and her shoulders shook.
Buck turned around to look at her. In the mirror, Charlie was openmouthed and staring at her too.
“You mean,” Russell said, “you bit the guy’s johnson?”
She kept her face in her hands and nodded. “Hard,” she said, the word muffled.
“Not for long, I bet it wasn’t,” Russell said—and we all busted out laughing. Belle looked up and gaped around at us like we were crazy.
“Oh honey,” Charlie said, and hugged her close.
“I’d say you evened the score pretty good,” Russell said. He put his knees together and made a face of pain.
“You’re damn lucky he didn’t kill you,” Buck said.
“It wasn’t for lack of trying,” she said—and for the first time seemed truly angry. “Next thing I knew I was seeing stars. That son of…that man started—”
“Sonofabitch,” I said. “Say it. It’s what he was.”
She looked at me in the mirror. “That son of a bitch started hitting me with his fists. Benton was hollering for him not to mess me up and trying to get him off me and when he finally did, I up and ran.”
“Right out into the hall,” Buck said, “wearing nothing but that shiner, as I recall.”
She blushed under the bruises and cut her eyes away. Charlie shook her head at Buck.
“Benton the mustache guy we laid out in the hall?” Buck said.
Belle nodded. “Thank you for…getting him away.”
“I only gave him the finishing touches,” Buck said. “Sonny here took the ambition out of him.”
She fixed her green eyes on me in the mirror. “Thank you,” she said.
The countryside expanded to an immensity of craggy rockland and thorny scrub under a cloudless sky beyond measure. We’d seen this West Texas country in photographs and in movieshows without having known its colors. Low blue mountains in the distance, long red mesas, conical purple buttes with peppercorn hides. Pale orange dust devils rising off the flats and swirling for miles before vanishing into the emptiness. Hawks sailing high, arcing over the scrub. Charlie
had persuaded Russell to buy her a good pair of binoculars, and they turned out to be so much fun we all wanted a pair of our own. But no other place we stopped at sold them, and so Charlie let us take turns with hers.
All through the day, roadrunners would suddenly appear along the shoulder of the road, scooting with their long bills and tail feathers low to the ground, then veering away into the scrub. In midafternoon we spied a small herd of white-assed antelopes not a quarter-mile from the road and a pair of them butting heads. We pulled off the highway to watch them with the field glasses, and when I cut off the engine you could hear the faint smacking of their tall curved horns. We wished the bucks were distinctly different colors so we could lay bets, but it was impossible to tell them apart at that range.
We were still a couple of hours from Fort Stockton when the engine started to overheat. Luckily we came on a filling station within the next few miles, just beyond the Pecos River. I wheeled into the place with steam billowing from under the hood panels. We’d hoped the problem was nothing more than a ruptured hose but discovered it was a leak in the radiator. The station man said it would have to be soldered but he didn’t have the iron for the job. He did, however, keep a few eggs handy for such emergencies as this and he went inside and got one.
We’d uncapped the radiator to let it steam off and Buck refilled it with water. With the motor idling, the station man broke open the egg and dropped it in the radiator and put the cap back on. As the hot water circulated through the engine it cooked the egg and plugged up the leak. It was an old trick we were all familiar with, one which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. The station man said the makeshift repair should hold us till we got to the Sundowner Motor Camp and Diner about twenty miles down the highway. The place had a garage and a mechanic who lived on the premises.
We bought cold drinks and bags of potato chips. Charlie asked the station man the names of the more common plants around us. He pointed out broad-daggered yucca and skeletal ocotillo and long-stemmed lechugilla, scraggly creosote shrubs, the red tuna of the prickly pear. The tuna had spines so fine you couldn’t see them, and as Russell found out when he touched one, you can’t get those spines out even with tweezers. He’d feel their sting in his finger for days until his body finally absorbed them.
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