Hill Girl Part 2

Mike gave him a look of sheer adoration and cleared the burrow pit beside the road with one bound and disappeared down the rows of old cornstalks and pea vines that lay downhill. We loaded the guns and followed.

The sun was just coming up over the top of a far-off ridge to the east and it felt good on my back and strung the frosty vines with diamonds, and the red-gold shafts of light broke against the far hill ahead of us in a spreading extravagance of color among the dogwood and hickory and red oak. October's blue haze of smoke was in the air and the unforgettable smell of it was in our nostrils, and our breath was steamy in the absolutely still air.

"He's found birds," Lee said happily. I looked up ahead and saw Mike had slowed and was coming along the edge of the field stealthily and his very pose said as plain as words, "They're here. And close." Then he stiffened in a point.

It was a small covey and they got up from the pea vines almost at our feet, half a dozen or so small brown-feathered bombs that ripped the hush of the morning apart with their explosion. Lee knocked one down with an effortless swing of his gun, but I was jumpy and missed with both barrels, missed clean without drawing a feather, which is the only way to miss if you have to.

"I used to know a guy once," Lee said gravely as Mike brought up his bird and he stowed it in the game pocket.

"Yeah? You did?"

"Quite a hunter, this guy was. And what he always did was to shoot at the birds. Or at least in their general direction."

"All right, all right." I grinned. "So I missed one."

"You missed one?" He grabbed my coat collar and shook it affectionately. "Why, you big Swede, you couldn't hit a Jersey cow in the a.s.s with an ironing board."

And that was the way it went most of the morning. Mike would find the birds, we would kick them out, Lee would get one and sometimes a clean double, and I would miss. By noon I had only two birds in the game pocket of my coat. I couldn't get the old swing back, and Lee kidded me unmercifully.

"They went that way, mister," he would shout excitedly, pointing after a vanishing covey after I had missed two shots on the rise.

All hunters have days like that, even exceptional shots, and I have lots of them, so I didn't mind. The day was beautiful and it was all right just to be out with Lee like this after an absence of two years.

He was in high spirits. "d.a.m.n it, Bob," he said, "I'm sure glad you're back. We've missed you around here. I don't see why you couldn't have gone to some school around home. They're always just as much in the market for beef as that place you went. And I always wished you and the Major could have got together some way."

"Well," I said, "it was just one of those things."

"I think it got to worrying him the last year. The way the two of you had split up, I mean. He used to ask me right often if I'd heard from you."

"He did?" I tried to work up some interest in it, but it was pretty thin.

"You missed a lot of fun, Bob." He stopped and lit a cigarette and grinned at me in the sunlight. "Don't go so fast. We're not hunting birds for a living.

"But you did miss a lot of fun," he went on. "You know how much money he used to give me when I was going to Rice. And the parties we used to throw the last few years before he died, when I was working for him. That last one, in Houston, sweet Jesus! He had a whole suite of rooms at the Rice Hotel and I don't know how much whisky-the real McCoy, too, no moonshine-and I had all the telephone numbers from the days when I was going to school down there. And for a man who was crowding fifty, he was quite a lad with the gals. A little on the salty side, especially when he'd had a couple of snorts, and sometimes they didn't quite know how to take him, but he was a good sport. You remember how he used to be sometimes when he'd had too much, he'd think about when he was in France with the Engineers, and he'd start talking French to the girls, and it's a d.a.m.n good thing none of 'em ever understood anything he was saying. And then he'd sing the Engineers' song, you know, the one about 'Oh, the Engineers, with hairy ears, they live in caves and ditches,' and when he'd come to the third line it was a little too rough for some of 'em unless they had a snootful too, and if they got too snotty about it he'd let out a roar and say, 'Lee, take these G.o.dd.a.m.n campfire girls back to their sorority house and go down on Congress Avenue and dig us up some women with guts,' and then I'd have to pacify everybody all over again."

"You must have had your hands full," I said absently. I was trying to keep an eye on Mike, who was cutting around the edge of a blackberry patch.

"I'll say I did. And say, speaking of girls-"

"We were?" I said. "What are girls?"

"Speaking of girls, you sap, I want to take you out to Sam's sometime soon so you can see this Angelina. Until you see that, you haven't lived, I'm telling you."

"Lay off," I said. "Forget this Angelina stuff. You know what Sam Harley'd do if he caught you fooling around with one of his girls."

"What a sucker!" He grinned. "If I ever get a chance to get into that, d'you think I'm going to do it on the courthouse lawn and give out invitations to everybody in the country?"

"For Christ's sake, Lee," I said. "Quit talking like that. You'll have me believing you mean it before long."

"O.K.," he said. "O.K., Grandma. But when you see her, don't say I didn't warn you. There's a lot of fun there in one pair of flour-sack pants, for the guy that can get it."

"Speaking of sport," I said, "did you ever hunt any quail? Now, back where I come from, it's a lot of fun. You have a dog, see, and a shotgun; and this dog goes out and finds the birds-"

"All right, all right. Maybe we had better get going, or I'll be whinnying and pawing the ground, just thinking about her. Let's go."

We would hunt over a field and then move the car down the road to another bit of good cover and go over that. By noon we were close to the field where I had met Sam Harley the day before. We started across a piece of pastureland near the road, headed for a spring branch below, where we could eat the sandwiches we had brought. Mike found a big covey of quail in the blackberries along an old fence row and Lee connected again. I shot and missed.

"Now, you take croquet. That's a nice game I could recommend," Lee said as we sat down at the base of a big oak beside the spring. "I knew a man once. Just like you in a lot of ways. Had eleven thumbs and three left feet and he got to be a h.e.l.l of a player. Maybe All-American."

"You certainly know a lot of people," I said. "Any of 'em named Joe?"

"Sure. All of 'em. Joe's a nice name."

"Had a kind of green mole on the left side of his face, just under the eye?"

"No. This guy had an aunt named Irma who used to dance at Elk stag parties."

I shook my head. "Must be another guy."

"You're nuts. I'm glad you're home, but you're nuts."

I threw a chunk of rotten wood at him and he ducked and it went into the spring and splashed a little water on Mike, who looked at us sitting there on the ground laughing like hyenas. He whined eagerly deep in his throat and started up out of the ravine, padding noiselessly on the damp brown leaves where the frost had melted, and his manner clearly indicated that he'd had enough of this stalling around and thought we should get back to the pressing business of hunting birds.

Lee whistled at him. "Don't work so hard, Mike," he said. "You'll just get promoted to a better job and then you'll have worries."

He lay back at full length on the steep incline of the bank, with an arm crooked under the back of his head to keep it off the wet ground and leaves. The sunlight of a cloudless autumn day poured through an opening in the trees above and he stretched lazily in the warm rays and bit enormously into a sandwich.

"This is the life," he said.

It was, all right, I agreed silently. And I was happy to see him enjoying it so much and I tried to pretend to myself that I didn't know he would be bored with it before the day was over. There wasn't enough excitement in hunting quail to keep him interested for a full day.

After lunch we went on down the road and stopped to hunt over the field where I had met Sam yesterday. But, as I had known, he began losing interest in it. He didn't kid me any more about the shots I missed and he took less and less pleasure from even the difficult ones he completed.

The silence between us lengthened out. I tried to keep him going by bringing up people we knew and funny things that had happened, but it was no use. He was growing moody and irritable.

By two o'clock we were down by the little creek at the lower end of the big Eilers field and the car was a long way back, a mile or more. Beyond the creek was a wooded ridge and I remembered that there were a few scattered sandy fields and open pastures up on top of it but that it wasn't good bird country. I couldn't understand why Lee kept turning in that direction.

"There's no use in crossing the creek," I said. "Let's go back to the car."

"Oh, come on. There are some fields up there, over by Sam Harley's house."

I began to see the light, but I followed him. There wasn't anything else to do. He had the car keys. And he was already crossing the creek on the foot log, and he stalked across the swampy bottom without looking back.

"I'll tell you," I said, "you and Mike go on along the ridge here, cutting back toward the highway, and I'll go back and pick up the car and meet you."

"No," he said shortly. "It's only a quarter mile on to Sam's. Let's go on over there and get a drink and he'll drive us out to the car. I want to pick up a quart."

I shrugged. "O.K."

It was easy to see now where the hunting trip was going.

Five

We came out of the scrub pine and there in the clearing with the sun behind it was Sam's place, quiet and apparently deserted. It hadn't changed any in the two years since I had seen it. The sandy road ran on past it and turned to the left beyond the barn, going on down toward the big bottom country behind the place, and there was a wire gate leading into the close-cropped cow pasture surrounding the house and farm buildings. The house was still the same, the unfinished pine boards silvery gray with age and weather. A large mud and stone chimney stood solidly against the south wall, and there was a long "gallery" extending the width of the house in front.

On beyond the house was the barn and the corn crib and the cow lot enclosed in stripped pine sapling poles, a wagon shed and a crazily leaning rough-board shed where Sam kept his Ford, a big woodpile, and a little well house covered with gray oak shakes.

There was no sign of life. The door of the shed was closed and we couldn't see whether the car was there or not. We stopped at the front gate and looked around.

"h.e.l.lo in there! Hey, Sam!" Lee called experimentally.

"They're all in town," I said. "It's Sat.u.r.day evening."

"Not like Sam." Lee shook his head. "He doesn't go to town much."

"Well, let's go," I said. "No use hanging around here."

"I wonder where he keeps the whisky," Lee said.

"Well, not in the house. That's a cinch."

"We might take a look around."

"Sure," I said. "The sheriff has been trying to find it for ten years, so we'll just walk right into it."

Lee swore disgustedly and we had turned to go when I heard the front door open.

Angelina Harley stood there in the doorway, looking out at us. I don't know how I knew it was Angelina unless it was what I saw on Lee's face when he turned around. I knew then it wasn't Sam he had been hoping to see.

She came out on the porch. "What did you want?" she asked. There was no friendliness in her eyes or any word of greeting; just the question.

Her eyes were on Lee and I doubt that she knew I was there, but I felt compelled to reply. Any answer from Lee would have been superfluous anyway. She could see what he wanted. Not that she seemed to mind.

"We were looking for Sam," I said. "Is he home?"

So this was Angelina. This was the scrawny little girl with the thin arms and legs and chapped knees and the wide, frightened brown eyes I remembered. I felt myself growing uncomfortable and tried to take my eyes off her.

It wasn't that she had grown so much. She wasn't big, even now. But it was as if she had received twenty-five pounds or so in the mail with instructions to put it on where she thought she needed it most.

She had on an old cotton dress that she had outgrown in every direction and overwhelmed until it had completely surrendered its cheap shapelessness and lay taut across her hips and b.r.e.a.s.t.s in obedient submission, and it was obvious she had on practically nothing underneath that dominated and slavish garment and that she didn't give a d.a.m.n.

Her hair was blonde, a little too dark to be called golden, but you could see it was natural, and it was long, thrown back over her shoulders, straight and fine-spun and silky and slightly damp, and it was obvious she had just washed it and had been drying it in the sun in the back yard, for she had an old blue bath towel pinned across her shoulders.

I learned later that her hair was long because Sam wouldn't stand for her bobbing it. Sam was pretty strong for the Scriptures, aside from his whisky-making, and there wasn't anything in there about women cutting off their hair. I was to learn that and a lot of other things about this girl before I was very much older.

Her eyes were slightly almond-shaped and brown, but they weren't soft, as brown eyes usually are, but rather there was in them an almost indefinable expression of smoldering defiance. They seemed to be at once sullen and shy. The face was a little too broad and the full lips too near pouting for beauty, and the whole thing too lacking in animation for charm, but she was d.a.m.ned pretty, or she would have been if she'd had anything in her eyes but that to-h.e.l.l-with-you stare.

She answered me, still looking at Lee. "No. He's hauling up some wood. But he ought to be here pretty soon."

Lee wasn't saying anything. He was just looking at her, and I'd never seen him act like that around a girl. Usually he just moved in on them like Stuart's Cavalry. There seemed to be something about her that threw him off his stride. His face was shiny with sweat and he couldn't seem to be able to get his mouth closed.

"Do you mind if we wait for him?" I asked.

"No. I guess not, if you want to."

We pushed through the gate and came up and sat down on the porch, one on each side of the steps, with our backs against the four-by-four posts that supported the roof.

"I wonder if we could have a drink of water?" I asked. For some reason I wanted to get her to talk, if I could. I couldn't figure her out. And the silence between the three of us was oppressive and all that naked staring was making me uncomfortable. I tried to keep my eyes off her, for I knew the way I was looking at her and it embarra.s.sed me slightly, even though it didn't seem to bother her at all.

"I guess so," she said ungraciously. "Wait here and I'll bring you some."

When she had disappeared inside the house, moving with an effortless grace, Lee looked across at me.

"Jesus Christ," he said softly. "Oh, Jesus."

"Let's get going," I said. "You can see Sam some other time."

He didn't hear me.

She came back out with a wooden bucket full of water and a long-handled gourd dipper and put it down on the porch between us and then went over and curled up in the porch swing, tugging once carelessly and ineffectually at the skimpy dress. She had on an old pair of house slippers with no stockings, and her legs were long and smooth and tanned, and the too short and too thin dress did nothing to cover them. I looked out across the cow pasture to where Mike was investigating a gopher hole. I didn't want to sit there and stare at her like the bald-headed row at a burlesque show.

That silence settled down over us again. As I sat there and tried to pretend an interest in the dog I could feel the two of them looking at each other.

I didn't like it. Not that I cared what they did, for it wasn't any of my business. But I knew something about those backwoods men like Sam and knew how they regarded outsiders who tried to fool around with their womenfolks. Sam was soft-spoken and a little shy in the presence of strangers, but I remembered that when I was a boy I used to go to court sometimes when my grandfather was on jury duty and listen to the cases, and I had seen men on trial for brutal and ruthless murder and some of them had been soft-spoken and a little shy of bearing.

I was remembering other things, too. Remembering Sam's telling me one night when we were c.o.o.n hunting long ago and were sitting around a fire down in the Black Creek bottoms there behind the house that Angelina was going to be a schoolteacher. She was a right smart girl and she made good grades in her books and she was going to amount to something, he had said in that way of his of not wanting to appear boastful before outsiders but with the quiet pride showing through nevertheless. Sam thought a lot of his oldest daughter, and anybody- especially any married man-he caught fooling around with her was going to be in one h.e.l.l of a bad spot mighty fast. I felt cold down between my shoulder blades as though there were a draft blowing up my back. I wished Sam would come on so we could get the whisky and get out of here.

It was Angelina who broke the silence. "What did you want to see Papa about?"

"We wanted to ask him if it was O.K. To hunt across the place," I said, "I know what you want. You're after whisky."

I turned quickly and looked at her. I knew Sam had always been careful to keep his moonshining activities away from his family. She said it flatly and distastefully and she had that sulky challenge in her eyes, as though she dared me to deny it.

"What makes you think that?" I asked.

"That's all you town people would come out here for. That's all anybody comes here for."

"How do you know?"

"Oh, I know all about it. He thinks I don't, but I've known about it a long time. Moonshiner!" There was a biting scorn in her voice.