Hill Girl Part 17

"I'd have scratched their eyes out."

"No, you wouldn't. You don't scratch. You double up your little dukes and start throwing punches like a good bantamweight."

"I guess that's the only reason you like me, because I fight like a man instead of a girl."

It wasn't all play those two months, even though I neglected a lot of things to be with her. Jake and I cut corn tops and shocked them and sawed a lot of wood for the coming winter. But in addition to the work there were always the swimming down in the bottom and the white perch fishing, and the watermelons to be eaten, and the books to be read on the gra.s.s under the towering white oaks, and always the ever increasing fun of just being together. That summer was one I would never forget.

Twenty-two

Early in September we started picking cotton in the upper fields, with just a few pickers at first and increasing as the days went by and the bolls began opening faster under the hot sun. It was still dry and little dust devils chased each other across the fields like miniature cyclones and the drone of the dry-weather locusts went on throughout the dusty, sweaty afternoons.

Lee was released from jail a week after we started picking. We were becoming busier then and I didn't have time to go to town. Jake was running the wagon, hauling the cotton to the gin, and I was doing the weighing for the pickers in the field.

I heard that he was out, though, and that he had gone back to the big house on North Elm and was living there alone. I sent word to him to come out and see us, not much expecting that he would since he had been so sour and unfriendly the times I had gone to the jail to visit him. So I was surprised to see the big roadster drive up late one Sat.u.r.day afternoon.

He came down the hall and I noticed first that he was sober and that he was looking well. Apparently sixty days in jail and being at least partially cut off from his liquor supply had been good for him. He was dressed in brown tweeds that fitted him the way all his clothes did, and he was wearing that gravely smiling demeanor that had disarmed so many people in his life.

He lounged in the doorway and looked at me and said smilingly, "h.e.l.lo, yokel. I hear I'm invited to supper."

Angelina came in from the kitchen and stopped when she saw him. It was the first time they had met since we came back and I supposed all of us were trying not to think of the last time they'd met. At least, I knew Angelina and I were, but no one was ever sure what Lee was thinking.

He stepped forward with that urbane gravity that reminded me so much of the way he used to be when he wanted to put on an act, and said, "h.e.l.lo, Angelina," and they shook hands. He might have been a Supreme Court justice greeting his favorite niece.

Angelina said, "h.e.l.lo, Lee," and I was proud of her. I hadn't known there could be so much simple dignity in an eighteen-year-old.

He was quietly courteous to her throughout the meal, never ostentatiously attentive but on the other hand never asking me a question or saying anything to me without turning to include her and to get her view. I was proud of the way he was behaving and happy to see him like this. They were the two people I loved more than anybody else in the world and I wanted that ugly thing that had been between us buried once and for all, and when he casually mentioned tfiat he was thinking of going back to work I was suddenly satisfied with everything in life.

"You know much about hardwood, Bob?" he asked, finishing his coffee. We had lit the kerosene lamp and he looked handsome as the devil himself with his smooth brown head and dark eyes.

"Not much. Why?" _ "Oh, I was just thinking. You know, just before he finally decided to get rid of both his mills, the Major had been looking into the hardwood business. He never did do anything about it, but he had gathered a lot of figures and had some of the best oak and walnut stands spotted, and I've been giving it some serious thought lately. I might try to get one of those mills back and start cutting oak. There's good money in it if you get into a good stand and know how to run the business."

"Well, you should know enough about it, all those years with the Major," I said.

"I may do it. I can't go on doing nothing all my life."

He stayed until about ten and we talked a lot and played the phonograph, and the evening was almost perfect. There was one moment when I wasn't so sure, but afterward I wondered if perhaps I hadn't imagined it, or at least exaggerated it. It was while I was lighting a cigarette and Angelina had got up to go across the room for something and for a second when he must have thought he was un.o.bserved I saw what was in his eyes as they followed her figure across the room.

When he had gone I said, "Maybe he'll come out of it yet. Don't you think so, Angelina?"

"Maybe so, Bob." She was rather quiet.

"He's all right when he's behaving himself, isn't he? What did you think?"

"He was nice, all right. And he's the best-looking man I ever saw, even in the movies."

"Well, I asked for it," I said, a little sore.

She laughed. "Are you mad because you're not as pretty as he is, Bob?"

"No. But, Christ, no man wants to sit there and hear his wife-" She kissed me and I shut up and was satisfied.

For the next week or ten days he came to see us often, nearly always coming around suppertime, and often bringing us a steak or some ice cream or something else from town. But I noticed that after each visit Angelina was a little more preoccupied and moody, and one day she asked me if we ought to have him so often.

"Well, we don't have to," I said, surprised. "But, after all, he's my brother. And it seems to help keep him from drinking."

"Maybe" was all she would say.

Suddenly he didn't come out any more for supper. A whole week, the last week in September, went by with no visit from him. We were finishing up the cotton in the bottom now and Jake and Helen and I were down there all day long. Angelina wanted to come down and pick with us, but I refused. I wasn't going to have my wife work like a field hand. Then she wanted to do the weighing or ride the wagon to the gin with Jake. She said she wanted to get away from the house. I thought it was because of the beautiful Indian-summer weather and said I'd think about it.

That same day, late in the afternoon, Jake and I were putting on a bale that was going to the gin the next day. I was pa.s.sing the cotton up to him in a big woven basket from the pile on the ground near the weighing station and he was dumping it and tramping it down in the bed, going round and round the high cotton-frame sideboards and putting all his weight on one foot and pushing down.

He chuckled suddenly. "Bob, that brother of yourn sh.o.r.e does goose a car, don't he?"

"Yeah," I said absently. "Anything under fifty is parking to him."

"I seen him come out of yore driveway this afternoon an' make that there sharp turn onto the road an' I swear they wasn't only two of his wheels on the ground."

"That so? I thought he'd forgotten us, he hasn't been out in so long."

"Oh, he comes out every day. I see him on the road out there a lot. I was wonderin' why you didn't put him to pickin'. Guess that's the reason he stays up to the house, though, so you won't put him to work," he said, and laughed.

"Yeah," I said. I was bent over the pile, pushing cotton down into the basket, and I tried to keep it out of my voice. He was above me and couldn't see my face and by the time I had the basket packed full I had hold of myself and pa.s.sed it up expressionlessly.

We finished loading the wagon and started up the hillside road toward the house with Jake driving. We stopped in the lot next to the barn and I helped unhitch, working mechanically and only half listening to Jake's chatter. I could have left the unhitching to him, but I didn't want him to notice anything unusual.

When we had fed the mules I said, "I'll see you in the morning, Jake," and started up to the house.

Angelina was in the dining room, putting the last of supper on the table. I stopped in the door.

"Do you still want to come down in the bottom with us tomorrow?" I asked.

"Sure. Can I, Bob?" she asked eagerly.

"Every day?" I asked.

"Yes. Until we're through down there."

"You don't like to stay up here at the house, do you?"

"No. I hate it when the weather's so nice."

"Just on account of the weather?"

She must have noticed something strange about it then, for she looked at me sharply with worry in her eyes.

I came on into the dining room and walked over to her and caught both her arms. "Now tell me. Why do you want to get away from the house?"

"I've told you."

My hands were cutting into her arms and I could hear her indrawn breath as she tried to cover up the pain.

"Tell me."

"All right," she said. "I'll tell you, Bob." I released her arms and she rubbed them where my hands had been. "But, please, you won't do anything, will you? Promise me you won't do anything to him."

"Why? Are you in love with him?" I should have known better than to say that but I wasn't thinking very clearly.

"What do you think, Bob?" she asked quietly.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean that."

"I didn't want to tell you. That's the reason I wanted to come down there with you, so I wouldn't have to be here. I guess I could have just gone off and hid in the woods all day, but it seemed kind of crazy to do that. He came out here every day, even during the time he was coming out at night to have supper with us. And he was drinking a lot and lots of times I'd have to fight him off. And that's the reason he hasn't been out here at night the last week, because one day I hit him real hard in the face and it gave him a black eye. I guess he didn't want you to see that. There wasn't anything I could do. I couldn't tell you because I knew how you are and I was afraid of what would happen. He kept begging me to go away with him somewhere and hinting that if I didn't people might find out about that-that thing that happened and why you and I were married. He didn't say he would tell anybody, but he said that if I didn't go with him he couldn't stand it and drank too much and that he might let things fall when he was drunk. Of course, I didn't mind that part of it because he was just silly and n.o.body cares what he says or tells-we don't, do we?-but when he was drunk and I had to fight with him it was bad."

When she stopped talking I said, "Is that all?"

"Just about. Except that sometimes when I watched for the car and saw him coming I would run and hide and he would look all over the house and barn until he found me."

"And he was drunk?"

"Most of the time. Not always. Bob, can't we sell this place and go somewhere else? I know you want to live on a farm, the way you told me in Galveston that time, but you could buy one somewhere else, away from him."

"You don't have to leave the country just because a man won't leave your wife alone," I said. "Not this country."

"Don't you see that's the reason I didn't want to tell you? Can't you see it, Bob?"

I started toward the front door and she came after me and caught me in the hall.

"Don't go without promising, Bob," she said. She couldn't cry, I guess, the way another girl would. All she could do was to look at me in that awful way and keep asking me over and over. I knew then that I didn't have any right to do what I was doing to her.

"All right," I said. "I won't."

I didn't have any idea where I might find him but thought I would try the house first. It was possible he might be there. It was dark when I turned into the driveway off North Elm.

I didn't knock this time. The door was unlocked and I went on in and walked back to the living room and he was there with a girl I didn't know. They were sitting on the sofa drinking highb.a.l.l.s.

The girl was blonde and about twenty-five, I guess, and looked as if she knew her way around. She gave me a cold stare and said, "Well, of all the nerve!"

"Beat it," I said.

"Lee, who the h.e.l.l is this monstrosity?" she said.

"My knuckleheaded brother," Lee said. "Don't you ever knock?" This last was for me. His eyes were bright and I knew he'd had at least enough to be nasty.

"Well, suit yourself," I told the girl. She seemed to want to stay. Lee got up off the sofa and I hit him. He sat back down and a cut place on his lip began to bleed. What with the black eye he already had, he wasn't going to look like much in a little while. He got back up and I caught hold of his lapel.

"How drunk are you?" I asked.

"What the h.e.l.l's the matter with you, anyway?"

"I've got something to say to you and I want it to soak in. Maybe I'd better sober you up."

He swung at me and landed on the side of my neck, and then threw two more that I didn't even bother to knock down. I pushed him back and let go his lapel and hit him over the heart with a right. He started to back up and hit the sofa with the backs of his legs and lost his balance and I caught him again, this time by the arm. I could see he was too drunk to hit a clothing-store dummy, so I shoved him back into the kitchen. The girl was screaming by this time.

He was still trying to hit me and I pushed him hard and he bounced against the wall and sat down. I found a dishpan and stuck it under the faucet in the sink and when it was full I threw it in his face and filled it again. Whenever he got up I hit him and went on with the water treatment.

The girl was standing in the doorway, still screaming, and she got on my nerves. I took a step toward her with a pan full of water and she went out through the living room and I heard her going down the front steps yelling, "Stop him! Stop him!" without ever seeming to pause for breath.

In about five minutes the kitchen was drowned and Lee sat hunkered down against the wall, not trying to get up any more. Water ran out of his suit like a spring branch out of a moss bank and his hair was plastered down in his face. I dropped the dishpan on the floor and went over and squatted down on my heels in front of him.

"You sober?" I asked.

"I can hear you," he said.

"It won't take long. I don't want Angelina to have any more trouble with you."

He began to be afraid then. I mean, really afraid. There was no doubt now that she'd told me, and maybe before he hadn't been sure or the liquor had been holding him up. Anyway, he began to look the way he had that night when Sam was after him. He tried to get up and I pinned him down with a hand on his chest.

"Just stay away from my place from now on. You can remember that, can't you?"

"I heard you the first time."

"O.K." I stood up and walked to the door and looked back. He was still scared, but I was glad he didn't have a gun.

Twenty-three

I drove slowly going home, taking a long time and doing a lot of thinking, and the thoughts weren't very good company. No matter how often I went over it and added it up again, it always came out the same. I had been very near to killing my brother, and if it hadn't been for Angelina I might have done it. It had come out all right- this time. I had warned him, and scared him, and he would leave us alone-for a while, probably, and when he wasn't drinking. But it would wear off. And just suppose that, instead of the way it had happened, I had come home unexpectedly one of those times he was out there drunk and she was having to stand him off. What then? n.o.body knows what he would do under those circ.u.mstances, but it's not a chance you'd like to take.

And nothing had been settled by this business tonight, not a thing. Maybe I had made him think while he was scared and sober, but what about the next time he got drunk?

Angelina and I sat up late on the back porch talking about it. Her idea was the same as the advice Mary had given me weeks ago, advice I hadn't understood until last night. Why didn't we move away from this country? It was really the only thing to do if the three of us couldn't live in the same place without trouble.

"I know you're right," I said. "It adds up, and it's the only thing that does. But it isn't as simple as that. This farm is really the only home I ever had. Maybe I did just live out here in the summers when school was out and in town the other nine months, but this was home. And I don't take to the idea of being shoved off it."