Hill Girl Part 9

"Where are you going to drop me off?"

"Drop you off?" I asked. "Where'd you get that idea?"

"You're not really going to go through with it, are you?"

"Of course we are."

"Why? I didn't think you liked me."

I lit a cigarette. "I don't."

"Then why, for G.o.d's sake?"

"I thought we went over all of that a while ago."

''But if it was just on account of Lee, he's had a chance to get away by now. And if Papa's fool enough to let us go off alone-"

"It was a horse trade and he kept his end of it, and I'm not going to double-cross him. Maybe you don't know what you're fooling with, but I do."

She sniffed. I started to go on and tell her the rest of it and then I thought, Oh, what the h.e.l.l? Why try to get anything through her thick skull? Why try to explain to her that it didn't make any difference if Lee did get away this morning? He still had to live in this country and he'd never be able to do it with Sam Harley after him. And neither would I if I crossed him up now. And why try to get it through her head how important it was that Mary didn't find out about it?

We drove up South Street in silence and I stopped the car in the alley behind the bank and got out.

"I've got to cash a check," I said. "It'll be a half hour or more before the bank opens. Do you want to buy anything or have some breakfast or something?"

"No," she said curtly. "I don't want anything."

"Suit yourself," I said.

When the bank opened I went in and wrote a check for three hundred dollars. Julian Creed raised his prim eyebrows at the amount. "What are you doing, Bob? Buying more mules?" he asked in his high-pitched voice.

"You might call it that," I said.

I went back out in the alley. It was getting hot already, and I took off the flannel coat and pitched it across the shelf behind the seat and got in.

"We're off," I said. "How's the panting bride?"

Her eyes were smoldering. "To h.e.l.l with you."

When we came to a stop at the mouth of the alley I saw Mary and another girl walking along the other side of the street. She was in fresh white linen and had on white shoes and she was going the other way and hadn't seen us, walking slowly along with that long-legged grace it was so delightful to watch. She waved at someone across the street I couldn't see and I slammed into low and rubber burned as we shot out of the alley and swung east.

"You drive like you was crazy," Angelina said.

When I didn't say anything, she went on, "Who was that girl?"

"Was there a girl?" I asked. "Where?"

"The one you were looking at. The redheaded girl in white. You must know her, you stared at her hard enough."

"You mean you don't know her?"

"Well, I wouldn't have asked you if I did."

"You should get acquainted. You've been doing enough of her work. That was Mrs. Leland Crane."

"Oh," she said and was silent for a minute. Then, "I don't think she's so pretty. Do you?"

"Am I supposed to?"

"I don't give a d.a.m.n what you do. I just asked you a question."

"Ask me another one. We'll make a game out of it. Go on, ask me the capital of Omaha."

"Oh, go to h.e.l.l."

"Don't we want to be a well-rounded girl? Or do you think just your heels are enough?"

She glared at me and didn't say anything. I shut up then and we drove for an hour in complete silence. I pushed the car hard and kept my eyes on the road and she sat rigidly on her side of the seat with her hands in her lap and stared straight ahead. I kept expecting her to cry, but she never did, and I began to be conscious of a grudging respect for her. She was taking a lot, for an eighteen-year-old, and she was taking it standing up and fighting back, with no tears and no hysterics. This thing wasn't any more fun for her than it was for me, and I hadn't made it any easier for her the way I'd been riding her. I began to be ashamed of the way I had been acting, the way I had been wanting to take a swing at something or somebody and had been taking it out on her because she was here within reach. I'd been blaming her for the whole stinking mess just because I didn't like her, and if anybody was to be blamed for it, it was Lee, and I knew it.

"I'm sorry about being nasty," I said after a while.

"What? You mean you're not nasty all the time?" she asked scornfully.

Now, hold onto yourself, I thought. Don't let her get your goat again. Maybe she is scared and all this hard-sh.e.l.led antagonism is a defense. Maybe it's just what she does instead of crying, the way another girl would.

"Not all the time. There are moments when I'm almost human."

"n.o.body would ever know it from looking at you. You're too big and ugly to be human."

"You certainly are a gracious little punk," I said, beginning to forget some of my n.o.ble compa.s.sion. "What you need is a good whipping."

"You lay a hand on me, you big ape, and I'll kick you where you won't forget it in a hurry."

"Well, well, the little expert on male anatomy. Is that what they're teaching the girls in the tenth grade now?"

"I wonder how anybody like Lee could have a brother like you. I just don't believe you're any kin, as homely and as mean as you are."

What's the use? I thought. Trying to be civil is a waste of time.

We rolled into Shreveport a little before noon and I parked the car and hunted up a doctor to get the medical certificate. Then we went up and got the license and by that time it was twelve o'clock and the justice of the peace was out to lunch. We came out of the building and stood there on the sidewalk in the hot sun for a moment, undecided where to kill an hour. We started walking slowly along the street, headed for a drugstore for a sandwich and something to drink.

We were pa.s.sing a big department store, going slowly and aimlessly and looking in the windows. She stopped for a moment in front of a window display of women's dresses. I stopped and waited for her, lighting a cigarette, and watched the traffic going by in the street. She started ahead again, and looked back over her shoulder at the window full of clothes, and just for a second I saw her eyes without that defensive sullenness in them. They were hungry, and hopeless, and there was heartbreak in the way she looked back and then went slowly on.

She waited dully for me to come on. I looked at the clothes she had on, probably actually seeing them for the first time since she had come out of her room this morning, and all at once acutely aware of the dowdy shapelessness of the cheap dress and the crude way the cracked shoes were repaired.

"Wait a minute," I said. "What were you looking at?"

"Nothing," she said. "Let's go."

There were four dummies in the window dressed in different dresses and one was displaying a brown linen skirt and a little jacket and carrying a price tag of $35.

"Was that it?" I asked.

"Well, I was just looking at it."

"Do you like it?"

"What difference does it make?"

I took her by the arm and started toward the door. It was dim inside after the glare of the sun and it smelled of new cloth and floor-sweeping compound. A gray-haired saleswoman came toward us smilingly behind one of the gla.s.s counters.

"Could I help you?"

"Yes," I said. "My wife would like to look at that brown linen thing you have in the window."

"Certainly," she said, giving Angelina a quick glance, "I believe we have it in just her size." I could see the sharp feminine appraisal in the gray eyes and the half-concealed envy of that terrific figure. "Right this way. Please." She started back toward the rear of the store.

Angelina's face was hot. I guess the only thing she had seen in the clerk's scrutiny was contempt for the clothes she had on.

"I can't buy that," she whispered, embarra.s.sed and angry. "I've only got about seven dollars."

I pulled out five twenties and stuffed them into her handbag and gave it back to her.

"Now you've got a hundred and seven. I think you can just about get what you need worst with that. And, for G.o.d's sake, when you come to stockings get some nylons and the best ones they have. It should be a crime for a girl with legs like yours to wear the stockings you've got on."

She flushed again. "I didn't think you liked anything about me."

"Well, let's don't go into it. Just put me down as a patron of the arts. I love beauty."

I started for the door. "I'll be back in about a half or three quarters of an hour. You'd better run along. The clerk's waiting for you."

She looked after me with her eyes bewildered and confused and then she tried to smile but it didn't quite come off and she turned and went rapidly down the aisle.

I suddenly remembered when I was back out in the street again that I was trying to be married without a ring and stopped and bought one. Then I took the bags around to the hotel and registered. It looked strange on the card: Mr. And Mrs. Robert E. Crane. When I got up in the room I gave the bellboy some money and told him to hunt up a bottle and he was back with one in less than five minutes.

I poured a big drink and sat down in an armchair by the window and looked out into the sun-blasted street and thought sourly of what a sap I was. Why did I have to give that surly little brat a hundred dollars? That was more money than I'd spent in the past four months. Sugar daddy from the cotton country, I thought, taking a big drink and shuddering at the fiery taste of it. But all the time I was calling myself a thickheaded idiot I kept seeing again that beaten look there had been in her eyes as she turned away from those things beyond the plate gla.s.s.

What the h.e.l.l, I thought defensively, a girl is ent.i.tled to get something out of a wedding. Even if she is a mule-headed little punk who doesn't know the meaning of civility, and even if the wedding is by courtesy of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, she should have something out of it she can remember without wanting to cut her throat. That's right, let's have a good cry. Let's build her up. You know what always happens whenever you start feeling sorry for Angelina. Angelina, the young bride. Nuts! I poured the rest of the drink in the basin in the bathroom and went back to the store.

She and the saleswoman were still hard at it and the packages and opened boxes were scattered over the counter. Angelina's back was turned toward me and she didn't see me coming, but the clerk smiled and she turned around and it was an Angelina I'd never seen before who looked at me. She still had on the same clothes and nothing was changed except her eyes, but they were altogether different. I guess it wasn't anything, really, except that they were happy, and I had never seen that expression in them before.

She smiled a little hesitantly and said, "Do you like these-Bob?" It was the first time she'd ever called me by name. She was holding up a pair of very sheer nylons, holding them as caressingly as a mother might a baby.

"They're very nice," I said, trying to overcome the traditional male indifference toward any stocking that doesn't have anything in it.

"And look at the shoes I got." She rummaged around in the pile of merchandise and came up with a pair of slender-heeled white shoes with practically no soles to them. Each time she would dredge up something else out of the confusion of stuff she would look happily at me for some approving comment and then before I could think of something to say she would be off after another item.

When they were all wrapped up and we were ready to go, I told the clerk to have them delivered to the hotel. Angelina's face fell slightly. "Can't we carry them, Bob?" she asked hopefully. "They're not very heavy."

"O.K.," I said, and we gathered them up. We went out and when we were in the street and headed for the hotel she looked up at me over the bundles she was carrying, the ones she wouldn't trust out of her own arms, and said, simply, "Thank you. I don't know why you did it, but it was the nicest thing anybody has ever done for me since I was born."

"You're welcome, Angelina," I said uncomfortably. Her eyes were beautiful, I thought, when she wasn't using them as weapons.

Thirteen

We went up to the room so she could change into her new things before the ceremony. As soon as we were inside she threw the bundles on the bed and began unwrapping them excitedly.

She held up a slip and admired it and turned to me. "I can't get over it, Bob. But I'll never know why you did it."

"I'm not very bright," I said. "I was kicked on the head too much playing football."

"I don't think you're as mean as you pretend to be."

"I'm just a campfire girl at heart," I said absently, pouring another drink and pushing some of the stuff off one end of the bed so I could lie down across it. I lay there glumly, propped on one elbow, sipping the whisky and water and watching her. n.o.body will ever understand them, I thought. They're in a cla.s.s by themselves. You get one catalogued and cla.s.sified and tagged and before you can tie the tag on she's changed into something else. The sullen little brat who was in a jam from rolling back on her round heels once too often and getting caught is now the starry-eyed young girl going to her first prom and trying to decide which of her new dresses to wear. She didn't look angry or defiant now. I tried to a.n.a.lyze just how she did look and watched her curiously. She was eager, and happy, and her eyes shone as she unwrapped her parcels, and I wondered if she had forgotten what we were here for.

She ran into the bathroom and turned on the water in the tub. "Oh, it's such a beautiful bathroom," she said eagerly. "Do you think I have time for a bath?"

"Sure," I said. I went to the phone and ordered some soda and ice and when it came up I mixed a good drink.

It was hot, even with the overhead fan running. I took off my coat and swished the ice around in the gla.s.s. I could hear Angelina splashing around in the bathroom and wondered sourly what was keeping her so long. I cursed the heat and the waiting and Shreveport. And then I cursed Angelina and Sam Harley and Lee and then the heat again.

What do you suppose is keeping the young bride? Let's get the h.e.l.l out of here and get this thing over with so I can get going. Get going to New Orleans or somewhere. This is going to be a good one. I'd been living out there a long time alone, too long when you're twenty-two, with that ache you get, and those dreams. Living in the country and farming is fun, but you have to take time off to relax. And you have to have the ashes hauled once in a while or you'll go crazy. You're overtrained. You get sour. You get so you want to fight everybody. No, not everybody, you phony b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You didn't want to fight Sam Harley, did you? Not while he was carrying that gun. It didn't take any six or seven men to hold you back then, did it? Now, don't start that. You didn't get into this stinking mess because you were afraid of Sam Harley. You got into it because you didn't want Mary to find out about Lee and this Angelina and because you didn't want Lee to find out what it's like to be shot full of .38-caliber holes. At least, it sounds better that way. And a lot of good it'll do. What about the next one? And the one after that? Are you going to marry them all? Lee is your brother and you love him and he's a wonderful guy, but he's not a husband. He's a stallion.

I thought some more about New Orleans. It was going to take one h.e.l.l of a good binge to get the taste of this business out of my mouth. Oh, well, I thought, I've got that money I've hardly even touched, and the time, and nothing stopping me. Except a wife, of course. Don't forget the young bride.

I heard a padding of bare feet behind me. The young bride was out of the tub.

A voice said happily, "Well, aren't you going to turn around? I want to show you the rest of my new clothes."

I turned around and she was standing near where my feet extended over the side of the bed. I dropped the cigarette I had in my hand and it fell on the bedspread and started to burn it and I picked it up and ground out the coal between my fingers without feeling it.

I saw the rest of her new clothes, which weren't extensive. She had on a pair of very brief pants and a thin robe of some sort and her hair was down around her shoulders. She smiled gently at me and said, "I think they're awful nice, don't you?"

I turned back to the window and said, "They're very nice."; I must have said it, for there wasn't anybody else in the room, but it didn't sound like my voice. It sounded like someone being strangled.

Remember, that's Angelina. She's a snotty little brat and you don't like her and you're just over here to marry her to untangle a messy situation that you don't want to get any worse. You can't stand the sight of her. You can bet your life on that, brother. You can't stand many more sights of her like that.

"Go put your d.a.m.n clothes on," I said. I wondered how my voice sounded to her. It didn't sound so promising to me.

She reached down and took hold of my ankle and shook it. "You turn around, Bob, and tell me what you think of them. You didn't say a word, and you bought them for me, and I want you to like them."