My American

by Stella Gibbons

  “No, thanks. It looks kind of alarming,” she said firmly, and they both laughed.

  “Well … what’ll we eat?” He turned away to the ice-box. “I guess supper won’t be for hours yet. You don’t have to get back, do you, Helen?”

  “I said I’d be back about half-after eight; Jonas is coming over to see Stebby.”

  “Oh yeah? I guess he is. He just adores Stebby. Smoked turkey … have some?”

  He sat down in an old hickory rocker with a scrapwork cushion, that seemed more suited to its setting than the chromium faucets, ice-box and other up-to-date appointments of the old kitchen. This was the property of Myron, who preferred it to the Seats Scientifically Planned to Give Perfect Support with Complete Comfort provided for the maids. “Give my bottom enough room and it’ll look after its own support and comfort,” pronounced Myron.

  Helen, whose appetite was not large, nibbled the turkey and studied her cousin. It was a long time … mercy! it must be a year! since she and Bob had raided the ice-box together on an evening like this when everybody had been out and he and she had come back from a swim at Roselands. Since then there had been so much to do; so many boys asking her for dates and being a darned nuisance, so much to learn about World Drama, so much writing, and studying, and social life at College, that although she had seen her cousins two or three times every week she had not once been alone with Bob. But she had often thought about him. Why (she was staring at him as this thought struck her, and at once looked quickly away) he had been in her mind more often than any of her beaux! Not that Bob was a beau, of course. He was just Bob, and had none of a beau’s annoying yet flattering habits. He isn’t anybody’s beau, he’s too young to be, she thought. But he’s going to be darned attractive.

  Bob had grown so much in the last few years that he was now noticeable in any group of his own age by his height and big frame. He wore his Swedish-fair hair rather long and never would do anything about the lock that fell over his forehead when he moved his head quickly. He looked lazy and sweet-tempered and tough. He seldom got angry, and when he did it was over something no-one thought would have angered him. When angry, he hit as hard as he could, knocked teeth out, and was not sorry afterwards. He had just a dash of unselfconscious charm, like a trace of coffee in pure milk, that was not enough to make him rotten when he grew older but quite enough to make girls already a little dreamy about him. He was quietly pleased with himself, laughed a good deal because he found life as amusing as it was good, and was popular wherever he went.

  Mercy! Am I getting a crush on Bob, thought Helen in sudden panic, frowning down at her shoes while struggling with a desire to go on looking at her cousin (just as she did at Eva le Gallienne!). Bob—and Eva le Gallienne! She must be crazy! She swung her feet and smiled with relief.

  “What’s funny?” He looked across at her amiably, ready to laugh too.

  “Nothing. Just a crazy notion. Bob, are you going to be a doctor? Do tell me about it. When did you get the idea?”

  “Well, the way things get around with you girls!” he said disgustedly. “I only said something about it this morning at breakfast when they were talking about what Lou would do when she’d graduated, and now I suppose she’s been shooting off her big mouth about it to you.”

  “She only said you told Uncle Webster you wanted to be one. Bob, where’d you study? I think it’s lovely, honestly I do. I’m not laughing at you,” she ended kindly.

  “There’s nothing to laugh at, anyway,” he growled. “I guess I’d go to the Owen Vallance Medical School in Morgan. That’s a good hospital, too; Doc Roberts says so.”

  “Yes, it is; Eleanor Boadman’s brother goes there and she says it is, too.”

  “Then it must be swell, of course,” he interrupted with cubbish sarcasm, and began to whistle The Star-Spangled Banner.

  “Where’d you practise?”

  “Right here, I guess.”

  “Here in Vine Falls?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s … well, it’s so small.”

  “Folks get sick here the same as they do anywhere else, don’t they?”

  “Yes, of course, they do, smarty. But what I meant was, you won’t have much scope, will you?”

  “I’ll get all the scope I can manage.”

  “But don’t you want to get on, Bob, be famous, and have a splendid career?”

  “No one can have careers since the Depression.”

  “Well, prosperity’ll come back. Everybody says so. Besides, you might want a career, even if you couldn’t have it.”

  “Well, I don’t. Too much trouble.”

  His cousin stared at him. This very un-American statement really shocked her; it sounded more like the things Englishmen said in books. Then she remembered that Aunt Sharlie, of course, was a Southerner, and the South, even nowadays, was naturally, shamefully, unprogressive. Bob must inherit his peculiar streak of laziness from his mother.

  “You’re not a bit like Boone, are you?” she said curiously. “He’s crazy to get on and make a fortune.”

  “Swell chance he’s got, hasn’t he, tagging around after that little … after Jeanette all the time.”

  “Well, he does want to, anyway … and so do I! Not the money so much, but to be famous … oh, Bob!” She pressed her slender long fingers on the edge of the table leaning eagerly forward, her lovely face flushing. “Sometimes I feel I just can’t wait until I’m through High, and can go on to Cedars and really start my work! I feel I want to go out on the top of a mountain and … and shout out loud, and tell everybody how wonderful the Drama is, and about all the wonderful things men of genius have written and … and how it’s all linked up with religion and everything—”

  She stopped, gave him her lovely smile, and shook her head as if her feelings were too much for her.

  He was looking at her curiously.

  “Helen, you’re very pretty. Doesn’t everybody tell you so?”

  She nodded tranquilly.

  “Yes, they do. But that’s just luck, Bob, like your being … being tall, and not a skinny little katydid like Stebby. It isn’t a credit to me to be pretty, like it will be if I get on and study hard and become famous.”

  “But don’t you like it?” he persisted. “Gosh, you’re as pretty as Mary Astor and your face is kind of good, too. Only I never noticed it till now, somehow.”

  “Oh, I like it, of course,” she answered simply, “because I get plenty of dates, and girls always like that, and candy, and I get bunched most every day by somebody. Any girl would like it. But I’m kind of used to it, too. Ever since I was little, you see, people’ve been saying how pretty I was, just the same way that they say a child’s like its mother or father, and so I take it for granted.”

  “And how about all these stags who bunch you and call you up and ask for dates? Who’s your special?” He was teasing her now, and his voice, his manner, made him seem much older than she was.

  “I haven’t got one,” she drawled sweetly, looking slowly away from him.

  “Quite sure?”

  She nodded, still looking away from him, and unable to speak because of the strange, bewildering feeling that was making her feel both happy and sad, and the sudden beating of her heart.

  “Maybe I’ll be your special one day.”

  He spoke very quietly, without taking his eyes off her averted face. There was a little silence, then she said in the same sweet slow drawl, still not looking at him, almost in a whisper:

  “Maybe you will.”

  Then the front door slammed, and a moment later Myron came in carrying two chickens. He glanced at Bob sitting in his chair, raised his eyebrows, muttered “Evenin’,” to Helen, opened the ice-box, stowed away the chickens and slammed it shut.

  “Where’s Dad?” asked Bob.

  “Hain’t seen him,” retorted Myron, as though accused of a crime. “Git up out of my chair, Bob, I want to sit down.”

  “You’re welcome.” Bob stood
up, and Helen slid off the table. “Where’s Mother?”

  “Be in any minute now and Lou too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Saw the Ford on the Square outside Frankwoods.”

  “What time’s supper?”

  “Half after eight.”

  “Gosh, Myron, you ought to take a look at the tennis net some time, it’s falling to pieces.”

  “Hevn’t time.”

  “Boloney. You haven’t got so much to do now we’ve got this new girl.”

  “She won’t stay the week out.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Said so.”

  “Oh, well … Helen, I guess I’ll walk down with you.”

  “That’s sweet of you, Bob, but I’ll be all right. I’d rather have a … a little walk by myself, if you don’t mind,” she said gracefully, giving him her charming college-social smile.

  “Oh, well, of course, if you want to make up a poem or something, I won’t intrude,” he said, looking a little bewildered.

  “No, it’s all right. G’d night, and thanks a million for the tennis.”

  The kitchen door softly shut, and she had gone.

  “You been tryin’ to kiss her?” demanded Myron.

  “No, I have not, and it’s like your blasted cheek to ask,” said Bob in a low voice but furiously.

  “No harm if you hev.” Myron gave a sudden loud cackle which did not disturb his face. “I should hev, at your age.”

  Bob muttered something and strode out of the room.

  CHAPTER IX

  HE WENT ACROSS the lawn of bleached grass now pink in the afterglow, and down towards the woods, walking quickly with hands in his pockets and staring at the ground and only once glancing up when a flight of black duck went over on their way to the marshes. He thought he would go down to Carrs, and have a cigarette and a drink before supper.

  He had taken to doing this lately. The old ban on the Carr place had lapsed since the young Viners and Vorsts had ceased to be children, for it was taken for granted that the squalid noisy place would have no appeal for them when they had so many pleasanter places to go to, and this was how the situation had worked itself out with all the children … except Bob.

  Carr’s still had a fascination for him because of the atmosphere of secrecy and excitement in that shabby ordinary old frame house. He liked to sit on a stool smoking, and slowly sipping the rye that Francey brought out from some hidden cupboard and drawling wisecracks at her while she baked the fruit pies. He would sit quietly when a car stopped outside, watching the men who walked in as noiselessly and casually as shadows, jerked their heads at Francey, and went upstairs at her nod. He never asked any questions and Francey never talked. He knew what they were up to at Carr’s, and the secret—though it was an open one—excited him. He came away from the place with his head ringing, not with drink, but with a confused thrilling pleasure. Everything seemed to move quicker, he got more of a kick out of everything, after he had been down to Carrs.

  He kept his visits a secret from everyone.

  The evening was lovely, calm as a dream and steeped in gorgeous colour. It made him feel disturbed and vaguely unhappy, just as Helen’s face had made him feel when he said to her, “Maybe I’ll be your special one day.”

  He did not know, now, why he had said that, for he certainly did not want to tangle himself up with any skirt (girl, not skirt … skirt wasn’t a nice way to speak of his cousin, anyhow) for years yet. Girls had a dreadful effect on a man. They got him soft. Look at Boone and Jeanette. Look at that sap Jonas over Helen. Their minds were never on their game. Yet he did not like the idea of anyone else being Helen’s special. It made him mad. She was so beautiful! The unfamiliar word slipped into his mind and he said it under his breath as he went down into the dim green twilight of the woods. Beautiful … it was kind of pretty, just the sound of the word. For no reason, he sighed.

  Then, slowly, there rose all about him, from dewy leaves and moss and rainsoaked trunks of young trees, the smell of the woods, making him remember nutting picnics years ago when he was a kid, games of cops and robbers with Boone and Jonas, days spent shooting out in the deep woods with Dan Carr, and his spirits rose.

  Oh, shucks, I don’t want to be Helen’s special or any other skirt’s, he thought, beginning to whistle. Guess I must have been crazy. I upset her, too, going on like that sap Jonas. Her own cousin! If she couldn’t stick by me being sensible and keeping off that line, who could she stick by? I guess I won’t ever say anything more about it and then she’ll forget.

  He scrambled down the briar-covered slope, his eyes fixed on the gap in the fence. There it was, just as it had always been (Carrs never mended anything), a break in the white rails glimmering through the dusk. His heart beating with the old excitement, he slipped through into the yard.

  When he entered the front room of the bungalow, which had been turned into a coffee-room and had a long window overlooking the front porch, Francey was eating her supper alone behind the bar with a steaming cup of coffee in front of her and a hot-dog in one hand, reading a tabloid. Mrs. Carr, a thin woman with dyed hair and a red, permanently angry face was just going out of the room, and nodded at him, but did not stop or speak.

  “’Lo, Francey.”

  “’Lo yourself. Whadda you waunt?”

  “The usual.”

  “Awright. Jus’ let me finish this.”

  She screwed up her eyes as she always did when eating anything good and crammed her mouth with sausage. Bob went round behind the bar and leant beside her, twisting his head to see what she was reading. Standing so, his cheek was very close to her red hair and his shoulder pressed her round bare arm. It was a pleasant feeling, and he moved closer. She twitched herself away. He put his arm clumsily round her waist, still reading, and held her so firmly that she finished her hot-dog and drained the coffee without trying to get free.

  “Jeez, that’s pretty hot!” he observed at last, turning the paper over. “I wonder they get away with it. Where’d you get it? Have you been into Morgan to-day?”

  “You’re late to-night, big boy.” Francey, still in the circle of his arm, slid the paper over to her side and folded it up. “Been playing tennis, haven’t you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Who with?”

  “My cousin.”

  “Which one? Dolly Daydreams?”

  He said nothing but twisted her wrist quickly and cruelly behind her back and held it there while she squealed “Lay off, you lousy bastard!”

  “You lay off, then.” He shook her.

  “Awright. But you started it, you big stiff, third-degreeing me like some lousy great bull.” She was whimpering.

  “Oh, all right, all right,” he said disgustedly. “Here, get me a packet of Luckies, will you, and the drink, I haven’t got long.”

  “Awright.”

  She turned away, rubbing her wrist, and groped in a wall cupboard at the back of the bar. “Say,” she went on, “I saw her… your cousin—you know, Helen, goin’ into Frankwoods to-day. Has she got class! Oh boy! Honest, if I had her looks I wouldn’t waste my time in this place, no I wouldn’t, I’d go to Hollywood and try for the movies. She’s got a regla film-face. Honest, everybody says so.”

  He did not answer, for he was thinking about something else. Holding his glass up to the light, he said:

  “Francey.”

  “What?”

  “Francey, don’t think I’m trying to make you say anything you don’t want to. You know me, don’t you? I wouldn’t ever tell about anything you didn’t want anyone to know about, but … how’s Dan?”

  “Awright. Getting along fine.”

  She was busy polishing a glass.

  “No, Francey, listen. I mean, what’s he doing nowadays? I heard he was running a speakeasy in Morgan.”

  “Who said so?”

  “Myron,”

  “Well, he ain’t now.”

  “Oh. Where is he, then? Francey, do tell
. I won’t say a word, honest I won’t. I’m not trying to make you tell. Only when I was coming down here to-night I was thinking how much I’d like to see him again. That’s all.”

  “Well, you can’t. He ain’t visitin’ around much nowadays,” she said over her shoulder.

  There was a pause. Then, in the silence, they heard a door slowly swing back with a long creak, as though someone standing at the top of the stairs, listening, had let it slip from their hand. Bob and Francey stayed quite still, staring up the dark stairs at the back of the room. Then——

  “Bob?” called a man’s voice, low and young, yet penetrating. “That you? Like to come up a minute, kid?”

  Bob glanced at Francey, silently questioning, his eyes blazing with excitement. She nodded, and he went noiselessly across to the stairs and up them two at a time.

  Francey stayed where she was, idly looking over the tabloid. In the last few years she had grown taller and plumper and learned how to paint her face expertly with cosmetics from the five-and-ten, and had shaved her brows and drawn herself a new long elegant pair with an eyebrow pencil. She looked quite twenty and very embraceable, for her body was perfect, but she had not lost that faintly debased look of good stock gone to seed. Skirts were getting longer that year, but she wore her blue and white gingham up to her knees and her limp carrot-gold hair was bound with a bit of the same cotton; it never would take an elegant perm like that of other girls.

  Voices came from upstairs and once a burst of laughter, Bob’s and her brother’s. She liked to hear that, and she was glad Dan had called Bob upstairs because now Bob would see how Dan had got on, and pr’aps Bob would tell that lousy bunch up the hill.

  They never came near her nowadays. Bob was the only one who stopped to speak to her if he saw her downtown. She saw them riding round in their folks’ cars or going off to Roselands to swim or in the best seats at the movies, the girls always dressed in the newest styles and the boys so nice and polite with them and never looking at other girls, and it made her mad. She was as good as they were, her folks had been here since the war, too, and just because the Vorsts and Viners had got on and the Carrs hadn’t, that bunch up the hill stuck it on so you’d think they’d crack sumpin’.