Big city girl Read online

  Five

  Mitch lay on his narrow cot in the shed behind the house and listened to the slow drip of water from the eaves. The violent downpour of that afternoon was gone but at dark the sky had been sullen and heavy, with weeping drizzle that might go on for days.

  It was a hot night in spite of the rain, and he lay there sweating in just his underwear, with no cover over him thinking of Sewell and of the crop they were going to lose if it didn’t stop raining, and trying to think of Joy without seeing her, which he had found out some time ago was not easy to do. It was a job that could have been accomplished easily enough by another woman, this clinical probing into the troublemaking potentialities of the inner Joy without being disturbed by the body the lived in, but for a man twenty-three and too long woman-less it was almost impossible to achieve. The problem itself was simple enough. In his opinion she was a tramp and he couldn’t see how Sewell had married her in the first place—forgetting, illogically, Sewell’s own flagrant contempt for morality—but he had, and there it was. You could see she was a bad influence on Jessie and she was going to cause trouble with those Jimerson boys, especially with Cal, if she didn’t quit waving it at them like that, because there would be trouble and plenty of it before there’d be any dogs sniffing after a hot bitch around the Neely place with Jessie taking it all in. All that was simple and easy to understand, but what were you going to do about the fact that you couldn’t think about it without seeing her and you didn’t want to see her when you were lying there alone in the hot darkness with the ache in you. The mind possessed the ability to sort the accessible and the inaccessible into two clearly defined and neatly labeled little pastures with the insurmountable boundary fence running down between them, and to illuminate all this neatness and happy segregation with the clear, bright light of reason, but the sad fact always remained that this helpful light never extended any farther south in a man than the bottom side of his brain, and from there on down the rest of him was operating in a gorged and distorted sort of wine-colored twilight where one luscious and long-legged bitch sticking too far and too tantalizingly out of a sun suit looked just like any other bitch doing the same thing.

  She could have gone somewhere else, he thought, driving her off in the darkness. Why in hell did she have to come here?

  He heard running footsteps spatting on the rain-packed sand of the yard, and a white wraith appeared n the doorway.

  “Mitch,” it whispered. “Are you asleep, Mitch?”

  “What’s the matter, Jessie?” he asked. “Come inside. You’ll get wet there in the door.”

  He sat up on the cot and moved his tobacco off the box and pushed the box out for her to sit on. She located it with her hands and sat down. He rolled a cigarette and raked a match across the bottom of the cot. It flared, and he could see her sitting up very straight on the box, with her hands folded in her lap, the long shapeless sack of a muslin nightgown coming down to her unlaced shoes and her brown hair tousled and damp with the rain. She looked like a solemn and somewhat frightened child, and she had been crying.

  “He was Sewell’s dog, Mitch,” she said defiantly.

  “Yes,” he said. Damn Sewell. Damn the old man. Damn me because I can’t help her.

  “He can’t sell old Mexico. You won’t let him, will you, Mitch?”

  “How can you stop him? You know how he is.”

  “Can’t you just tell him no?”

  Can you say no to the river with a minnow seine? Mitch thought. Can you hold water in a basket? Water is soft and wishy-washy and it don’t fight back, but while you’re holding it in one place it’ll get away from you somewhere else. It’ll be the same way it was about that last car. We argued with him till we were blue in face and he says yes, yes, it’d take some thought, can’t rush into nothing, reckon we really can’t afford to buy no car, sliding away from you like water all the time, and then he goes and spends every cent of the money on a broken-down bunch of junk that don’t run a month.

  “He’s going to the pen, Mitch. All his life he’ll in the pen, and now we won’t even have Mexico.” She began crying very quietly in the darkness and Mitch reached out and took hold of her hands, feeling awkward and foolish because she was his sister and raging inside because there was nothing he could do.

  She quit after a while because she wasn’t much given to crying and because she realized she was just making Mitch feel worse.

  “Do you think he did it. Mitch?”

  “Did what?” he asked.

  “All those horrible things they said he did. Do you think it’s true? You knew him better than anybody else. Do you think he held up people and shot at the police and beat up people for gamblers? What do gamblers want people beat up for? And if they had to, why didn’t they do it themselves and not get Sewell mixed up in it? Do you think he did those things?”

  “Yes,” he said. She’d know it if I tried to lie to her, he thought.

  “But why? Why, Mitch?”

  “Jessie, I don’t know.”

  “He used to make wagons for me. At Christmas. With wheels sawed off the end of a round sweet-gum log.”

  I reckon an argument like that wouldn’t hold up in court, he thought, but it would take a long time to explain to her why it wouldn’t.

  “Do you remember the wagons, Mitch?”

  “Yes,” he said, dropping the cigarette on the ground and looking down at the red coal. “I remember.”

  “And the rawhide harness he made for Mexico to pull the wagon with? That was just one year. I was too big the next year for Mexico to pull me.”

  It’s fine, Mitch thought, when you’re as tough as Sewell and they can’t hurt you. Sewell’s so stinking tough nobody can hurt him.

  * * *

  After Jessie had gone out Joy lay on her back in the dark room in her bed, across from the small one Jessie slept in, and wondered if it was going to happen again tonight. For some time, and especially the past few weeks, she had had trouble in the dark. It would begin with the gradual appearance before her, whether her eyes were open or closed, of a bust of herself something like the one there had been in the high-school library of Shakespeare or maybe it was Daniel Webster or some other famous writer, except that it was unclothed and somewhat more comprehensive as to detail below the neckline and a little longer to include a full view of her breasts. Then the horrifying part of it would start. It wouldn’t matter that she had looked at herself, or this much of herself, quite searchingly and thoroughly in the mirror not an hour ago, just before she went to bed. It would still happen. The breasts would be leathery and sagging, and her face would be lined, not really wrinkled like that of an old, old woman, but just faintly tracked across by time, like the face of a woman in her late thirties or forties in too strong a light. It would be the same face, there would be no mistaking that, with the little brown beauty mark of a mole just beyond the corner of the slightly pouting red-lipped mouth, but there would be now the revealing evidences that flesh has weight and can fall, and the skin would be coarser and all the pathetic camouflage of make-up would not be able to hide entirely the pitiless erosion of the years. Then would begin the panicky urge to fly from the bed and turn on the light to look in the mirror and drive it away. She would lie perfectly still and try not to think about the mirror, the way a man with bladder trouble would try not to think of the bathroom so far away down the hall. It’s not true, she would tell herself. There’s no sign of it. And then she would start to hear again the brutal laughter of Sewell there in the jail.

  Three years ago he wouldn’t have done that, she thought. Not even two years ago. I could have anything I wanted then. God, do you suppose I’ve lost that much of it in three years? I couldn’t have. I can’t tell any difference at all when I look in the mirror. I look just the same. I do. I know I do. I had a picture of myself then an held it up alongside the mirror, they’d look just alike.

  Didn’t that man in the bus station try to pick me up when I asked him how to get out here? Didn’t h
e get that old look in his face and offer to drive me out? Oh, hell, he was forty-five, and one of those small-town smart alecks that’ll make a pass at anything that’s alive as long as ain’t his own wile. The wheezy old bastard, smelling like tobacco juice. Then making me walk the last hall mile.

  But there was that deputy sheriff up there where Sewell was in jail, the one named Harve. He wasn’t even married and he didn’t seem to think I was any old relic. He was a great kidder and a lot of fun to go out with and he could make a girl feel like somebody still wanted her, even if he did have that funny habit of laughing sometimes when nobody had said anything. And that photographer from the Houston paper who came up to take pictures of the trial and wanted me to pose without any clothes on for his private collection. I guess he thought I still looked all right, because who ever heard of collecting pictures of old bags? I guess he knew a good-looking girl when he saw one, even if he was a kind of screwy sort of stew bum and said things that didn’t make sense, like calling me Narcissus all the time like that was my name. Narcissus. That does have a cute sound. He was cute, too, in a way, even if he was a stew bum. He never wanted anything except to take pictures of me like an artist’s model, and I liked that. Men are so damn messy and rough, always wanting to go to bed with you. But he was nice. It was a cute picture, too, and I wish I’d kept it, the copy he gave me, but Harve wanted it so bad I just had to give it to him.

  I haven’t changed a bit. I just worry too much, being stranded in a dump like this without any money and not knowing how I’ll ever get out of it. Imagine, thinking I’m beginning to look faded and washed out when I’m only twenty-five. That’s a laugh. I don’t know why I get to imagining these things. Why, right now, as much as I detest him, if I even just smiled at Mitch he’d be pestering me all the time. God knows, I wouldn’t have him on a bet, but if I gave him any encouragement he’d be following me around like an old dog. Him and his stuck-up airs, pretending to look right past me like I wasn’t even there and acting like he thought I wasn’t good enough to be around that kid when all I’d have to do would be to crook my little finger at him and he’d be hanging around till I’d get sick of the sight of him. I’d do it, too, if it was worth the trouble.

  * * *

  It was sometime after midnight when Sewell Neely came up the steep, slippery incline of the road bed and onto the pavement. Rain was still coming down and every thread of his clothing had been saturated and drowned for hours. Water ran out of his hair, and sloshed in his shoes when he walked, and ran into and stung the ugly cut on his arm where the glass had raked it. Harve’s gun was a comforting, hard weight in his coat pocket, and the handcuffs dangled from his right arm. They were still locked, but the other cuff was empty.

  I wouldn’t never want to do it again, he thought. But there wasn’t any other way. In the movies they open locks with guns, but I don’t think these here are movie hand-cuff’s and I’ve often wondered where all that hot lead goes when it splatters off of steel locks. But if it had to be done, I’m glad it was Harve. Nobody ever appreciated a good joke like Harve did, and he’s got one now that’ll stay with him. He was a great clown, all right, even if most of his ideas was old before he ever heard of ‘em, all except that one with the picture. That was a pretty good one, and Harve was just the boy that could help you along with it.

  He turned right and started walking in the direction the car had been traveling when it crashed. When he reached the middle of the long bridge and could hear the river going by down below, he took the knife out of his pocket and threw it as far as he could into the darkness.

  Six

  The rain had stopped sometime during the night and dawn had been gray with mist coming up from the river and hanging wet and dripping among the pines along the hillside. It was midmorning now as Mitch came up toward the house from an inspection of the fields, anxiously watching the sky for some sign that the sun was going to break through. If it cleared now it would be two days before they could work in the upper fields and nearly a week before the bottom was dry enough to plow.

  He came up past the barn and turned the mules out to pasture, thinking impatiently of all the work that cried out to be done if they were to save the crop and could not be started until the ground began to dry. If it rains any more we’re goners, he thought. It’s got to stop. We won’t even pay off the credit and we’ll be rooting for acorns like the hogs this winter if it keeps on. He cut across the yard, walking silently on the white, hard, rain-packed sand, and nodded a solemn greeting to Mexico as the big hound came out from under the house. Mexico approached him with the stately dignity of age and high rank and shoved a moist black nose against his palm in courtly salutation.

  Mitch gave the pendulous chops an affectionate slap with his hand and went on toward the house, hearing now the excited rattle of voices somewhere out in front.. He turned and started around the corner and was hit a glancing blow by Jessie, running full tilt along the side of the house. She bounced off him, frozen-faced, unrecognizing, her eyes full of the horror she was running from, and ran on toward the barn. He saw her go at full flight into the door and turned and ran after her. She was nowhere in sight in the gloomy interior among the empty stalls, but the door of the corn crib was open and he bent over and went in. She was huddled on the pile of unhusked corn with her face in her arms against the wall, not crying, for there-was no sound of crying, but her body was shaking as if with chill.

  “Jessie, what’s the matter? What is it, Jessie?” he asked, afraid, and conscious of the old helplessness he always felt when confronted with her problems because they were never the same as his and he could not understand them or cope with them, no matter how much he ached to help her.

  She did not answer and he knelt down awkwardly beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. It was still shaking badly and she drew away from his touch as if she would burrow into the corn and escape from sight.

  “Go ‘way, Mitch,” she said in a muffled voice.

  “What is it?” he asked again.

  “Don’t look at me. Go ‘way.”

  “Are you hurt?” She shook her head.

  “Do you feel bad?”

  She shook her head again and drew away.

  “Can I do anything?”

  “No,” she said in the same muffled voice. “Only go away. I’ll be all right in a little while.”

  He stood up, wooden-faced, and went back out the door and across the yard, walking fast. Cass and Joy were sitting on the steps of the front porch and Prentiss Jimerson was walking up and down in front of them bursting with his story and they all talked at once.

  “He escaped, Mitch,” Prentiss said breathlessly, in a hurry to get it out before the others could beat him to it.

  “Got clean away. They can’t find hide or hair of him,” Cass broke in.

  “Killed a deputy,” Prentiss said, verbally shoving Cass aside. “It’s all over the radio, in the news. More’n it was before. Wrecked the car, shot the deputy, and couldn’t find the keys to the handcuffs so he sawed off his hand with a pocketknife.”

  “He did what?” Mitch asked.

  “Cut the deputy’s hand off that he was handcuffed to,” Prentiss went on in an eruption of words, too excited to see the fury in Mitch’s face.

  ”And you come over here and told that in front of Jessie? Why, you long-nosed sonofabitch!” Mitch said with the singing edge of violence in his voice. He took a step toward Prentiss and the youth backed up with his hands held out placatingly and shocked bewilderment on his face.

  “Hold on, Mitch,” he pleaded. “I ain’t done nothing. I just said what was on the radio.”

  “You didn’t have to say it in front of Jessie. You better go on home. When we want any more of your goddamned news, we’ll send for you.”

  Prentiss looked from Mitch over to Cass as if for support, with his face puzzled and hurt. He had always been somewhat in awe of both the Neely boys, and this violent reception of his news, especially after the way Cass and Miss J
oy had hung onto his words, was disconcerting and a little frightening.

  “Well, I didn’t mean no harm,” he said. He looked around at all of them and turned to go. Cass started to say something but glanced toward Mitch and changed his mind.

  “Thanks for telling us, Prentiss,” Joy called after him. She threw a spiteful glance at Mitch.

  After Prentiss had shuffled his deflated way up the road Cass stirred uncomfortably on the step. “That was a cruel thing to say to a neighbor, Mitch. You oughtn’t to talk like that,” he said, not looking up.

  Mitch thought of Jessie trying to shut out the sight and the thought of it by burrowing her face into her arms out in the barn and felt no sympathy for Prentiss. It wasn’t his fault, if you thought about it, but maybe the big-mouthed fool would stay away from her the next time he had any news like that.

  “What about Jessie?” he asked coldly.

  “Well, she’d have to know sooner or later. No way you could help that. Now you’ve insulted him like that, he won’t come back no more.”

  “I can stand it,” Mitch said.

  “We won’t hear no more news about Sewell,” Cass said querulously.

  Mitch stared at him. “That’ll be all right, too. I don’t want to hear no more of that news about Sewell.”

  Cass sighed and looked at the ground. “A hard heart is a sin. You got no feeling for your brother.”

  “Listening to it ain’t going to help him.”

  “You just got no feeling for him.” Cass brought out a soiled bandanna handkerchief and dabbed futilely at his eyes. “I tried to raise my boys up to be Christians,” he said tearfully to Joy. “But I reckon it’s a judgment of some kind on me that they’re so hardhearted. It’s a sin visited on the father.”