Hill Girl

Two

It was around ten as I drove slowly up South Street toward the square. The town was quiet and the square almost deserted. It was Friday. Tomorrow the place would be full of Fords parked fender to fender and farmers and their wives would be standing in bunches around the sidewalks and going in and out of the stores, but right now the whole town seemed to drowse under the washed blue of the sky, soaking up the warmth of the sun.

I braked to a standstill at the stop line where South Street opens into the square and looked up at the old courthouse, red and dusty and ugly, with white bird droppings spattering its walls, and swallows and sparrows circling around high up under its ornate eaves.

Swinging through the right-hand side of the square, I turned and went out North Elm, where the trees almost met over the street like a tunnel and the houses were friendly old landmarks and the lawns were wide and well kept. Eight blocks out I turned off the street to the left in the middle of the block onto the graveled driveway.

Nearly all the rest of the houses along the street were close to the sidewalks on small lots and they had grown up there long after the old Crane house was built. It sat back in the far corner of a big sloping lot half as big as a city block, with a driveway going back to it and two enormous oaks in front, and a hedge along the sidewalk.

It was one of the ugliest houses it would be possible to imagine. Built around 1910, it had all the gingerbread and scrollwork and hideousness of its time, and its last coat of white paint was now about six years old and peeling in places. My grandfather, who was a salty old gentleman and possessed of a caustic wit that was widely respected, referred to it invariably as “that architectural abortion.” It was built by the Major while he was still a young man.

At the housewarming he had asked my grandfather, so the story goes, what he thought of the parlor.

“I don’t know why, son,” the old man is said to have answered, “but I keep expecting a woman to come in and say that the girls will be down in a minute.”

I got out and went up the walk under the big oaks, feeling warmly happy about it and wondering why, for there had never been much happiness attached to the old pile when I was growing up.

I banged the big brass knocker and a Negro girl came in a minute. “Is Mrs. Crane in?” I said. “Tell her I’ve got a search warrant.”

Her eyes opened wide, showing a lot of white, and she went back down the dark hallway. I stepped inside and saw it hadn’t changed much; there was the same old milky mirror by the hat-rack and the hard-bottomed bench and the straw carpeting.

From the living room at the end of the hall came the clicking of spike heels and then she was in the doorway.

“Hello, Mary,” I said.

She came down the hall toward me, walking fast, with that long-legged gracefulness I remembered so well, and the red-haired loveliness of her gave me the same old feeling of warmth. I was never really in love with Mary, I guess. As accurately as I can describe it, the feeling she always gave me when I saw her was one of pride that she was a friend of mine and liked me.

She came close to me and I took both her hands. “Hello, you big horse,” she said. “Don’t step on me.”

“I’m glad to see you, Mary,” I said.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” she demanded. “Don’t just stand there like a stadium or something and grin at me.”

I kissed her lightly on the cheek and was conscious of the amusement in the cool green eyes so close to mine.

“Well,” she said, “that’ll put me in my place, all right. Middle-aged housewife.”

She was twenty-three and she and Lee had been married a little less than a year. “You’re looking great,” I said. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Bob. Come on back to the kitchen and tell me about yourself. Rose just made some coffee.”

We went through the living room, where a small fire was burning in the big fireplace, and on back to the kitchen and sat down at the table.

“Darn it, Bob, but I’m glad to see you. It’s a shame you just missed Lee. He left a little while ago and won’t be back for an hour or two. Tell me about yourself. You’re home for good this time, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad you’re through college. But I’ll always hate the way you had to go.”

I stirred my coffee and broke off a piece of the coffee cake Rose had put on the table. “Why? It suited me.”

She leaned back and looked at me and sighed, shaking her head gently. “I guess it did, at that. It’s a wonder you didn’t turn professional like all the rest of the mastodons.”

I didn’t tell her about turning pro fighter and the whipping I’d taken. It was something I’d rather forget. I was good enough in intercollegiate boxing to begin to get the impression I was good, but it didn’t take me long to find out I was slow and too easy to hit, and when those heavies can get to you and keep on getting to you they can hurt you, whether you can take it or not. I’d had eight professional fights and I took the short end of six of them and quit it before I was slapped silly. It’s no racket for the second-rate.

“I see your nose has been broken again,” she said, leaning her elbows on the table and cupping her chin in her hands. “I suppose they gave you credit for six semester hours in Romance languages for that.”

“What’s Lee doing now?” I asked. My face doesn’t intrigue me as a topic of conversation.

“Nothing.” She grinned at me suddenly. “Why? Did you think he was going to be doing something?”

“Well, people have been known to work.”

“Oh, he’s working, all right. I was just being feminine and cynical. He’s busy with something called ‘looking into a couple of little deals.’ I understand it isn’t at all vague to the masculine mind.”

“I guess he sold out all the rest of the Major’s holdings when the estate was settled, didn’t he?”

“The Major sold most of it before he died, Bob. He lost a lot in some big lawsuit over a timber tract—I never did try to get it straight—and he sold both the sawmills and the gin and said he was going to quit trying to make money. You know how he could be.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know.” I took out a pack of cigarettes and shook one out. She held out her hand and I looked at her in surprise.

“I took it up about six months ago, Bob. Am I depraved?”

I lit it for her. She exhaled and gazed moodily at the cloud of smoke. “You’re funny,” she said. “You’re funny, Bob.”

“Why?”

“Why didn’t you ever try to break the will?”

“Why should I?”

“Well, Lee said the estate, house and all, amounted to nearly thirty thousand. And he left you one dollar, and you didn’t contest it. Why?”

“Did you want me to? You know whose pocket it’d come out of, don’t you?”

“Silly. I know how much you’ve always liked Lee. But nobody lets a little affection stand in his way when that much money is concerned in it.”

“No,” I said. “That wasn’t it. I just never wanted anything from him when he was alive. Why should I after he’s dead?”

“After all, you were his son. One of the only two he had.”

“We wore that out a long time ago.”

“It was a lot your fault, too, Bob. Maybe I’m taking advantage of the fact that you and I always thought so much of each other and I could say things to you nobody else could. But you’ve always been just as hard as he was.”

“Well, let's forget it,” I said.

“He was always good to Lee. He let him have anything he wanted.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. I just couldn’t get along with him. I didn’t know how, I guess, or maybe I didn’t try hard enough. But I’m satisfied. Let’s drop it.”

“You never change, do you, Bob? You’d rather be stubborn than right, always.” She reached over and patted my arm. “But I love you anyway. You’re my favorite bear.”

I grinned at her. “And you’re my favorite redhead. Whenever you get tired of Lee, let me know.”

“God forbid. One Crane per lifetime is all any girl should have to face.”

We went into the living room after a while and sat down on the sofa and stretched our legs out toward the fire. “What are you going to do now, Bob?” she asked. “Now that you’re home?”

“Take over the farm,” I said.

She smiled. “I thought you would. That was what you always wanted to do, wasn’t it?”

“It always seemed like home to me,” I said. “It’s funny, I guess, because I only lived out there three months out of the year, while school was out, but that was the way it seemed.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t because you were so fond of your grandfather? And back here, you didn’t—well . . .” She let it trail off as though she didn’t know how to put it. “Partly, I guess,” I said. “But I like living in the country better anyway.”

It was almost noon before Lee came home. We were sitting on the big sofa before the fire when we heard the scream of tires on pavement and then a scattering of gravel as he slid to a stop out front under the trees.

“You know, lots of people think it’s necessary to slow down to make that turn into the driveway,” Mary said musingly.

I heard his footsteps in the hall, hard-heeled and fast as always, and I could picture his long-legged stride.

He stopped in the doorway and I got up from the sofa.

“Sir,” I said, “your wife and I love each other and we think the three of us should be civilized and talk it over. All we want is a divorce and three hundred a month.”

He came on into the room and hit me on the shoulder and grabbed my hand, and there was that old wild, happy look in his eyes.

“You big homely bastard! I thought it was you when I saw that junk heap out in the drive. I’ll call a wrecker and have it towed away for you.”

No one would ever have taken us for brothers. Ever since I can remember, people have been saying, “Isn’t it funny how little resemblance there is between those Crane boys? They don’t look anything alike.”

Lee always was a handsome devil. He never seemed to go through that pimply, awkward stage the rest of us suffered. Even when we were children, girls could never keep their eyes off him. He was an even six feet tall, a full inch shorter than I, but he always looked taller because he was so rail-thin and walked so erectly. And for all his wildness and the boundless and misdirected energy he had, there was something smooth about him; maybe the self-assurance in his eyes and manner, and the way he wore his clothes.

His skin was rather dark and his face was thin with high cheekbones, and his eyes were brown and brilliantly alive. Most of the time they gave you an impression of recklessness and high good humor, but when he wanted to put on an act they could be as grave and quiet as those of a Supreme Court justice. When he wanted to turn on that urbane and deferential charm old ladies couldn’t resist him and girls had even less luck. I’d seen him work girls over with his eyes, and I’d hate to have him after one I wanted.

As for me, I think there must have been some Swede in the Crane family tree away back somewhere and I got all of it. Some girl, I’ve forgotten her name, who used to sit next to me in English, said one time that I looked like a composite picture of all the Minnesota fullbacks since 1910. My face is square and flat-nosed and too damned healthy-looking, and it’s just what you’d pick if you wanted to plug a hole in the right side of the line. In high school they called me Cotton, which will give you an indication of the color of my hair and eyebrows, and Mack, which was short for Mack Truck.

“By God, it’s good to have you back,” he said, for about the third time. He was leaning against the mantel smoking a cigarette and smiling at me. He was as well dressed as ever. The suit he had on was a gray tweed and had that custom-tailored look and I knew it had cost plenty. He never bought cheap clothes. “It was a shame you couldn’t get back here for the Major’s funeral. But I told everybody you couldn’t get away on account of final exams.”

“And nobody laughed in your classic face?” I asked.

“Dammit, Bob, don’t be such a porcupine. There’s such a thing as being outspoken, but you wear it out.”

“O.K.,” I said. “I couldn’t get away on account of final exams. They have them in April now.”

He shook his head in exasperation. “You’re hopeless.”

“I was just telling him,” Mary said, “that he should have gone into the diplomatic service. He’d have been something new.”

“The world would have been one big battlefield in a week.”

“I’m shy and sensitive by nature,” I said, “and don’t like to be discussed this way in my presence. Can’t we talk about something else?”

“That we can, Handsome,” he said. “come along, I want to show you a new gun I just bought. Excuse us, Mary.” He led the way up the stairs to the upper hall and back to his old room, the one he had when we were children.

We went in and he fished into a dresser drawer and hauled out a whisky bottle.

“Is that the gun?” I asked.

“Pour one in and shut up.” He grinned. “And then hand it to me. There’s the gun over in the corner.”

I took a drink and passed him the bottle and looked at the gun. It was a beauty, a Parker double. I went over and picked it up and the feel of it was just right. It had that sweet balance you can get in a shotgun if you don’t care how much money you spend for it.

“I’ll trade you my old gun for it,” I said.

“You’ll be the next queen of Rumania, too. Say, let’s go hunting tomorrow. We haven’t been out together in a hell of a time.”

“Now you’re talking,” I said. “By the way, I got a bird a while ago.” I told him about meeting Sam Harley.

“Speaking of Sam—” He put the bottle down and made waving motions with his hands and whistled ecstatically. “Jesus, sweet Jesus!”

“Why, I didn’t know you and Sam were like that,” I said.

“Shut up, you ugly bastard, and listen. You remember that oldest girl of his, Angelina?”

“I don’t know. Kind of a thin kid, with brown eyes?”

“Yeah, she’s kind of a thin kid, all right. You’ve been gone two years, you sap. And don’t ask me what color her eyes are. Anybody who could look at her and notice her eyes is dead and just hasn’t found it out.”

“Must be great,” I said. “She’s probably all of fifteen.”

“Fifteen, hell. She’s eighteen if she’s a day. Nothing could be put together like that in fifteen years. I’d give seven hundred dollars and my left leg up to the knee for just one piece of that.”

“Well, don’t get in an uproar. What’re you trying to do, marry me off? This is a swell gun, Lee. How’s to use it some tomorrow?”

He had forgotten about the gun. “What gun? Oh, sure. And don’t worry about me trying to promote you with Angelina. You keep your big hams off her. I saw it first.”

I looked at him. He was grinning, but I didn’t like the expression in his eyes. I think he meant some of it.

“Are you nuts? I somehow gathered the impression you were married. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

He held out the bottle. “Have another snort, Grandma, and forget the lecture. We’re not have chapel today.”

I took another drink and tried to forget it. But it was in my mind and wouldn’t go away. And I knew Sam Harley. Better than he did.