Montgomery - The Awakening Part 5

Amanda's feet were hurting and she was so worried about being off her schedule that her stomach was feeling a little queasy. Dr. Montgomery wanted to walk around the town of Kingman and look in shop windows and talk to people and, in general, waste time. Taylor had repeatedly told Amanda how precious time was and that it was not to be wasted on frivolous matters, yet here she was doing nothing to improve her mind. And also, Taylor had told her what awful people the citizens of Kingman were. Hadn't they ostracized her mother? They didn't like the Cauldens and she was better off not a.s.sociating with them. Yet here she was, standing behind Dr. Montgomery and nodding in recognition to pa.s.sing people, some of whom knew her name.

"Hasn't hurt you to speak to a few of the common folk yet, has it?" Dr. Montgomery said in an angry tone to her when she mentioned returning to the ranch.

And another thing that made this outing so unpleasant was this stranger's att.i.tude toward her. He smiled at pa.s.sing women but at her he glared and frowned and made very disagreeable remarks. She wanted to go home to the safety of Taylor and her books.

She almost b.u.mped into Dr. Montgomery when he stopped in front of the drugstore. There was a sign there telling of a dance next Sat.u.r.day.

"You and Mr. Taylor going?" he asked her. "Planning to paint the town red?"

She understood his meaning if not the slang. "We do not attend dances," she said stiffly.

"Is it the dances or the townspeople who aren't good enough for you?"

Again she felt anger. "Dancing is a waste of time, and as for the townspeople-" She was on the verge of telling him about her mother but she didn't. She was not going to be rude merely because he was. "Dr. Montgomery, I would like to return home now. It is late and there are other things to do."

"You go back, then," he said angrily, thinking that he had to get away from her and the whole Caulden clan. The two cold fishes of Amanda and Taylor, the rude, belligerent J. Harker and the mother who was locked away somewhere and spoken of in mysterious half-sentences, was more than he could bear.

But as he looked at Amanda, standing there absolutely straight, her thin little shoulders thrown back, her eyes with just a spark of fire in them, he knew he couldn't leave. Something was holding him.

"All right," he said, "we'll go back."

Amanda could have cried with relief as they walked back to the waiting limousine. He didn't speak to her on the drive back and she was grateful. She needed to gather her strength for the coming meeting with Taylor.

Once in the house, Taylor came to the hall to meet them, and Amanda could tell he was angry. He waited for Dr. Montgomery to go upstairs, then he called her into the library.

For a moment he stood with his back to her, then he turned on his heel and faced her, his dark eyes glittering, his cheeks pulled in in fury. "I am disappointed in you, Amanda. Very disappointed. You knew you were to be back here at noon, yet you were not. No! Do not give me excuses, I will listen to none of them. Don't you realize how important your a.s.signment is? If unionists come here and make trouble, we could lose this year's crop altogether. And all because you did not keep to the schedule."

Amanda looked down at her hands. How could she keep Dr. Montgomery to the schedule? Somehow she had to. It seemed that everything-the whole future of the ranch-depended on her.

"Now, go to your room and think on what you have done. Do not come to dinner tonight, but later come to the parlor and read for Dr. Montgomery. Perhaps if you are here with me you can keep on schedule." And I will not be worried about you, Taylor thought, frowning at her bowed head. "Go on, Amanda," he said, controlling the anger in his voice.

Amanda went up the stairs slowly, feeling as if she had gained fifty pounds. Mrs. Gunston was waiting for her. Amanda was to go to the bas.e.m.e.nt to do her exercises, then a bath, no dinner, and reading for Dr. Montgomery in the evening. She was beginning to despise that man!

Hank stayed in his room until dinner, trying his best to read a couple of his students' essays. Sometimes when a student had done well, but not as well as he liked, Hank allowed him or her to raise his grade with a research paper. So, between terms, Hank sometimes had papers to grade. But he couldn't keep his mind on the papers; all he could think about was Amanda. He wasn't sure what about her infuriated him so much, but something did. He remembered the way she had looked at lunch, her eyes closed, that look of sublime happiness on her face. "I wish I could cause her to look like that," he muttered and turned back to the essay.

Amanda didn't come out of her room for dinner, and Hank was sure it was because she couldn't bear his company. He sat in unnatural silence beside ol' stiff-necked Taylor, eating veal cutlets while Taylor ate more boiled fish. Hank wondered what Amanda ate in her room when she was out of Taylor's sight. Boiled fish or perhaps fried chicken?

After dinner, just as the clocks all over the house chimed 7:15, Amanda appeared in the parlor. Hank looked around his newspaper, nodded curtly to her, then hid behind his paper again. He wondered if she'd leave when she found her beloved Taylor wasn't alone.

Taylor announced that Amanda was going to read for them.

"Don't let me stop you," Hank said from behind his paper, but he was aware of the heavy silence in the room and knew he was supposed to give proper attention to the show. Slowly, he folded his paper, put it aside, then sat primly with his hands folded in his lap like a proper young gentleman.

Amanda, wearing a prim little blue dress with a sedate lace collar, was standing perfectly straight before the two of them, holding her poetry book open. As he would have guessed, she read the most boring poems ever written: William Collins's "Ode to Evening," Sh.e.l.ley's "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." He would have fallen asleep except that her reading gave him a chance to look at her: long, thick, lush lashes, a full mouth that moved enticingly as she talked. He listened to her voice, felt it caress the lovely words and wondered how it would sound if it were murmuring love words to him.

But any love words she said would be to Taylor. Hank looked at Taylor and saw the man wasn't enjoying her reading so much as judging it. He looked like a teacher with a student-not like a man listening to the woman he loved.

Hank was aware that Amanda had stopped reading and he watched while she walked toward Taylor and handed him the book. She gave him a soft, tentative smile and said, "Please," in almost a whisper. Hank felt a pang of jealousy as cold, unsmiling Taylor took the book from her. Hank thought that if Amanda had smiled and said please to him, he'd certainly smile back; in fact, he just might do anything she wanted. But Taylor just took the book, opened it and began to read John Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity."

While Taylor read in a monotonous voice, Hank watched Amanda, saw the way she looked at Taylor as if he were a G.o.d, as if he had the power of life and death, yet Taylor seemed to be oblivious to her adoration. It suddenly made Hank angry that Amanda should give so much and get so little in return. If she were his he'd give to her. He'd give all she could take and then some. If he were engaged to her he'd not spend his evenings reading poetry to her, he'd take her into the lanes where the jasmine grew and he'd kiss her while slipping that awful dress from her shoulders. He'd - "Dr. Montgomery?"

He came out of his reverie to hear Amanda. She was holding out the book of poetry to him.

"Perhaps you'd read something for us?"

Hank was so deep in his thoughts that at first he didn't understand what she was saying.

"Dr. Montgomery is an economist," Taylor said in that brittle way of his. "I doubt if poetry interests him."

Hank didn't take the book but looked at Amanda, his eyes as hot as he was feeling, and he began to quote from William Butler Yeats.

"A sudden blow: the great wings beating stillAbove the staggering girl, her thighs caressedBy the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

"How can those terrified vague fingers pushThe feathered glory from her loosening thighs?And how can body, laid in that white rush,But feel the strange beating where it lies?"

There was silence in the room when he stopped speaking, and he was aware only of the lovely blush stealing up Amanda's neck and onto her face.

"I cannot say that that was to my taste, Dr. Montgomery," Taylor said in a remote voice. "Amanda!" he said sharply, making her turn her attention back to him. "I think you should read another selection."

Suddenly, Hank couldn't bear to be in the same room with them. "If you will pardon me," he said, and without waiting for anyone to do so, he left the room. He went outside, but even there he felt hemmed in, as if he were suffocating and couldn't get enough air. He went to the big garage where his car was, and before he thought about what he was doing, he was in the Mercer and driving away.

The cool wind on his face and body made him feel better. He drove down the rough dirt road, faster and faster still, pushing the Mercer to its limits, knowing that its brakes weren't worth a d.a.m.n, but he needed the speed and the feeling of freedom. He needed to put some distance between himself and that house. "... her thighs caressed," he thought. "... fingers push the feathered glory from her loosening thighs."

The car was doing sixty when he saw the girl. She was standing in the middle of the road, startled by the car's headlights as she crossed. She just stood there, frozen in s.p.a.ce, as Hank approached faster than she'd ever seen anything move.

Hank had the reflexes of a race car driver, and he swerved to the right a foot before he hit her and plowed into a fence, tearing up posts for fifty feet as Hank used all his strength to slam on the brakes, trying to stop the speeding car. He took up about twenty feet of a row of Caulden's hop plants before the car at last stopped.

It took him a second to recover as he just sat there, staring at the hop field illuminated by the car lamps. Then he began to move, to pull hop vines and strings from around him so that he could get out the doorless side. His legs were weak but they gained strength as he started back to the road, so that he was running by the time he reached the girl.

It was dark but he could see her sitting in the middle of the road. He didn't think he'd hit her, but now he wasn't so sure.

"Are you all right?" he asked anxiously, kneeling in front of her.

"I ain't never seen somethin' move that fast," she said in wonder.

As Hank inspected her, he smelled liquor on her breath and realized she was drunk. Gently, he took her arm and hauled her up. "Come on, let's get you home."

Smiling, she collapsed against him, her body like rubber. "You the one stayin' at the Cauldens'?"

"I am. Come on with me. If I can get my car out I'll take you home."

"Home with you? Amanda won't like that."

"She'll never notice," he said, his arm about her waist as he supported her and led her to the car.

He had to tear away more vines and string to make room enough to get her in the pa.s.senger seat.

"Nice," she murmured and leaned back against the leather seat.

He spent another few minutes cleaning off the front of the car and inspecting the ground. It was dry and he thought he could get out without help. He bent the broken fencing back, then got in the car.

The only light was from the moon and the headlamps, but he could see that the woman was young and pretty in a dark, flamboyant way. She wore heavily applied cosmetics on a face that was already strongly featured, but the red lipstick drew his attention to her lips.

When she saw him looking, she smiled in a slow, seductive way. "I like a man who drives fast."

He started the engine and began to back out. "Where can I take you?"

"Charlie's Roadhouse," she said.

Hank hesitated for only a moment, then said, "All right." It might make him feel better to see a little life. "Only if they don't have poetry readings."

She laughed in a way that made him know that she'd been to Charlie's Roadhouse several times before and knew there were no poetry readings.

He enjoyed the ride to the roadhouse with her, enjoyed seeing a woman relaxed in the seat, not sitting stiffly and inhumanly. He liked seeing a woman who looked as if she might be able to laugh.

The roadhouse was about five miles out of town, set a little back off the road behind a graveled parking lot, about three autos parked there now. The lights and the sound of laughter drew Hank inside.

The girl had already got out by the time Hank had walked to her side. She was wearing a cheap red satin dress and her lipstick was smeared at one corner of her wide mouth, but the drive seemed to have cleared her head because she was standing on her feet more steadily.

She took his arm and pressed her body close to his. She was well rounded and pleasing now, but in a few more years she'd be fat.

"The gang's gonna be green with envy when they see you," she said. "What's your name?"

"Hank Montgomery," he answered, smiling down at her. "And yours?"

"Reva Eiler." She pulled a bit on his arm and guided him toward the front door of the tavern.

There were only four customers in the tavern, which was lined with booths around three sides, a long bar on the fourth wall. Half the floor s.p.a.ce was taken up by tiny tables and lots of chairs; the other half was a dance area and bandstand. Reva greeted the man behind the bar, but no one else, as she led Hank to a booth in one corner.

"So tell me all about yourself," she said, taking a compact from a little beaded bag and beginning to repair her face. When she'd finished she removed a cigarette from a silver-plated case with most of the plating worn off. Hank took the matching lighter from her and lit her cigarette as she pushed her heavy hair back. It was cut to shoulder length, and Hank realized that he rarely saw women with hair this short and he liked it. He wondered how Amanda would look with hair like this.

"Not much to tell," he said. "I teach economics at-"

"Economics!" she gasped just as the bartender set two beers before them. "Thanks, Charlie," she murmured. "You don't look like no teacher of economics. I thought maybe you and Amanda were lovers or somethin'."

Hank took a deep drink of his beer. "You know Amanda?"

She looked at him for a long time. There was something about him that appealed to her. He was good-looking, extraordinarily so; dark blond hair, blue eyes, that nose that gave him the look of a prince-those lips. She liked those lips of his a lot. But there was something else, too. It was...

"You're rich, aren't you?" she said, picking a piece of tobacco off the tip of her tongue.

Hank was startled and didn't speak for a moment.

"Don't worry, I won't tell anybody if you want to keep it a secret. It's just that I can smell it on somebody. You develop the sense when you grow up as poor as I have. No, no sympathy, just buy me another beer and tell me what's going on at the Cauldens'."

Hank put his hand up to the bartender, then turned back to Reva. "You know Amanda? I mean, do you know the Cauldens?"

She smiled at him. She was young but he sensed that in another few years she wouldn't be. He didn't think she'd age gracefully.

"You meant Amanda," she said. "How is she? Still a brat?"

"Amanda?" he said. "Amanda Caulden a brat? You must mean someone else. Amanda is perfect. She walks perfectly, talks perfectly, discusses only perfect subjects; she eats perfectly healthy food; she loves a perfect man.

Amanda is not a brat."

Reva finished her first beer and started on her second one. "When you were in elementary school, did you have one kid who was your archenemy? Somebody who rubbed you the wrong way no matter what he did?"

"Jim Harmon," Hank said, smiling in memory. "I thought he was the meanest kid ever born. We fought all the time."

"Right. Well, Amanda and I were enemies from the first day of the first grade. I still remember it. My old man had been drunk for three days and my mother'd run off again, like she always did when he got mean, so there was just my big sister and me. She dressed me as best she could, but my clothes were torn and dirty and wrinkled and when I got to school the other kids laughed at me. I was used to being laughed at and it was something I understood, but then little Miss Amanda, all clean and white, came up to me and put her arm around me and told the others to stop laughin'. It made me crazy. I could stand bein' made fun of but I couldn't stand pity. I pushed Amanda down, jumped on her and started beating her."

Hank listened to this with great interest. "And what did Amanda do?" he asked, thinking that she no doubt went crying to the teacher.

Reva grinned. "Blacked my eye is what she did. She got in trouble but I didn't, because the teacher walked out when Amanda was sitting on me and slamming a right fist into my face. We were enemies forever after that -until ol' man Caulden took her out of school. n.o.body's seen much of her since then. It's like she moved to another state. Has she changed much?"

Hank couldn't imagine the Amanda he knew being in a fist fight. What had made her change so drastically? Did she finally realize she was the richest kid in town and that she was better than everyone else?

"She's changed," he answered at last. "She's not the same Amanda she was then. You want another one?"

What I want, Reva thought, can't be found in a bottle. I want somebody like you: clean, smart, strong, somebody to take care of me. How involved was he with Amanda? "So," she said, "are you visiting her or somebody else at the Cauldens'?"

For some reason, he was reluctant to mention the unionists that said they were coming to Kingman. He didn't want the town frightened; people had fanciful ideas of what unionists were and what they hoped to do, so he decided to keep it quiet.

"I'm learning about the ranch. I didn't know J. Harker had a daughter before I came. And Amanda is engaged to her tutor."

Reva leaned back against the bench and smiled sweetly at him. "Then you should get to know the people of Kingman. There's a dance Sat.u.r.day night," she said, and there was hope in her voice.

Hank knew Reva wasn't his type but in the last few days, since meeting Amanda, he wasn't sure what his "type" of woman was. No doubt he was fascinated by a prude like Amanda because she was the only woman he saw daily. It was as if they had been shipwrecked on an island alone. After a while, any woman would start to look good. Maybe if he went to a dance and saw other women, he wouldn't be watching the self-righteous, skinny little Amanda so much.

"Could I pick you up?" he asked at last.

Reva grinned broadly and pushed her hair back. "I'll meet you there. Eight o'clock?"

"Great," he said. "I better be getting back. The Cauldens may lock the door."

She almost said, you can stay with me, but she didn't. He drove her to the corner of Fourth and Front streets and let her off. She wasn't going to let him see where she lived. She watched him drive away toward the Cauldens' big, dark ranch and she knew that once again Amanda had something she wanted. Reva had often pondered and cursed the accident of birth that had given one person everything and her nothing. Amanda lived a life of ease, no worries, no cares, no drunken father threatening her every day, no one telling her what to do or how to do it, while Reva's life was the opposite. Amanda had always had everything good and Reva was handed all that was bad.

Reva started walking toward the railroad tracks. But maybe, this time, Reva could win. She began planning how she could sc.r.a.pe together enough money from her cashier job to buy a new dress for Sat.u.r.day night. Wouldn't everyone be surprised to see her with someone like him?

Chapter Six.

Amanda didn't exactly sneak out of the house but she certainly didn't make any noise either. She took her notebook with her and her fountain pen, but she didn't take a light. She hoped the moonlight would be enough; besides, she wanted to study the constellations and she could do that better in the darkness.