Hill Girl

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. Nobody will ever understand them, I thought. They’re in a class by themselves. You get one catalogued and classified 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 analyze 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 glass. 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 hell 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 bastard. 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 hell 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 damn 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.”

I turned around and she was smiling teasingly. I tried to put the drink on the window sill but I dropped it and the glass broke and the ice skidded across the rug. I got off the bed and caught her, roughly, as you would any old bag, not half knowing what I was doing and not caring much, heedless of anything but the wildness of having to get my hands on her. She took the first kiss without much more than a gasp, but the next time she hit me and she hit me hard, with her fist doubled up, and then she was pounding on my face with both hands and struggling. I let go of her and she ran back and picked up a glass off the dresser and threw it at me. It bounced off my neck and hit the wall but it didn’t break.

Her eyes were hot as she glared at me like a female wildcat. “I’ll teach you,” she said. “I’ll teach you how to grab me like that, like a crazy man.”

“O.K.,” I said. “Keep your shirt on. I ought to break your damn little neck.” I went back and lay down across the bed and lit another cigarette and looked out the window.

There was a long silence, as though she hadn’t moved, and I began to wonder what she was doing back there, but I was so angry I didn’t care. To hell with her.

Suddenly she was there beside me on the bed, facing me with her head cradled across her folded arm and looking at me contritely.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I’m awful sorry, Bob. Will you forgive me?”

“O.K.,” I said. “Forget it.”

“Not until you say you forgive me.” Her eyes looked at me pleadingly and her hair was spread out across her arm within inches of my face. It was beautiful hair, a little darker than golden, and I was thinking it was just the color of wild honey.

“It wasn’t anything,” I said. “And it was my fault.”

“No. It was mine. But you scared me and made me mad, the wild way you acted. You were so rough.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She regarded me a moment, wide-eyed, and then went on softly, “You don’t have to be that rough, do you?”

She didn’t hit me this time. She put her arms up around my neck and pulled my head down like a swimmer who was drowning.

We lay side by side on the bed for a long time afterward, not saying anything and just being quiet under the cool breeze from the overhead fan. She sighed after a while and murmured something.

“What?” I asked.

“I said it’s nice here, Bob. Don’t you like it?”

“It’s nice anywhere,” I said.

She ignored it. “You know what I mean. Our room is nice.”

“Why did you do it?” I asked. I was beginning to think that Angelina was something I wouldn’t ever understand. There were too many of her.

“Do what?” she asked quietly.

“You didn’t do anything?”

“I just wanted you to see my new clothes. Because you were so nice and bought them for me.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “And then the strangest thing happened. You just can’t account for it.”

She turned her face and smiled lazily.

“If you’re really interested in an unbiased and analytical criticism of those tag ends of clothes,” I said, “let me give you a little advice. Display them unoccupied. When you get in there you only confuse the issue.”

“I didn’t think you liked me.” She always got back to that.

“It isn’t a question of liking you, any more than of liking being hit between the eyes with a sledge hammer. It has the same effect.”

“You know something?” she said suddenly, raising up and resting her elbows on my chest and looking at me with little devils of mirth in her eyes. “Someday you’re going to slip and say something nice about me.”

“No doubt.”

“We’re getting to be better friends, aren’t we?”

“Sure, sure,” I said. “If we just keep on breaking the ice with these friendly little gestures. May I call you by your first name, now that we’re sleeping together? I somehow feel as if I knew you.”

I could have kicked myself after I’d said it. Why did I have to keep on riding her? But she didn’t flare up as I expected she would.

“You think I’m pretty rotten, don’t you?” She wasn’t angry that I could see. She was just quiet and her eyes were a little moody. I hated the thing I had said for the way it had driven the laughter out of her eyes, and I hated myself for saying it.

“No,” I said. “And I apologize for that last crack. It was just from habit, I guess. But I didn’t mean it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We don’t have to pretend anything, do we?”

We were quiet for a long time and finally I said, “How do you feel about getting married? Have you ever thought about it before?”

“What girl hasn’t?”

“Anybody in particular?”

“No-o,” she said thoughtfully. “But then, I don’t know many men. Papa would never let me go anywhere or have dates. The only way I could go out with boys or even meet ‘em was to sneak out. And you know what they expect right away if you do that.”

“What could he have done if you’d just told him you were going to a dance or something in spite of his orders?”

“He would have whipped me with a leather strap.”

“You mean, when you were little?”

“No. I mean in the past two months.” She said it quietly, but with an unforgiving bitterness.

“Doesn’t he know you can’t raise a girl that way? You can’t even treat a dog like that.”

“I know. But he understands dogs. He says you mustn’t break a dog’s spirit if it’s going to be a good hunting dog.”

“I don’t think he ever broke your spirit.”

“No. He never would have. I guess I’m just as tough as he is. I sneaked out and I’m not ashamed of it. I guess I’m no good, the way you think, but I’d rather be that than the way he wanted me to be. I’m away from him now and I’ll never go back.”

“But what about your mother? She’s never been like that to you, has she? And you didn’t even say good-by to her when we left.”

“I feel sorry for her. She hasn’t got any mind of her own any more. And I didn’t say good-by to her because I was afraid I’d cry. I hated you and I hated him and I would have died before I would have let either one of you see me cry.”

“But you don’t hate me so much now?”

“No. Because you were nice to me. And because you bought me those clothes. Maybe it wasn’t just the clothes themselves, but the idea of anybody doing anything that nice for me. I know I’m letting you believe you just bought me with them, but I guess you’ll just have to think that, and maybe it’s true.”

“Did they really mean that much to you?”

“Yes, Bob. There isn’t any way I can make you understand just how much they do mean. You’d have to be a girl to understand.”

“Are you in love with Lee?” I asked.

“No.”

“Weren’t you? Not at all?”

“No. I like him, and he can be awfully sweet to you, but that’s all it was.”

“Did you think he was in love with you?”

“He said he was going to divorce his wife and marry me.

“He would,” I said. “And you believed him?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Not at all?”

“You don’t think I’ve got much sense, do you, Bob? Of course I didn’t believe him. I knew what he wanted, and that was all he wanted.”

“Then, in Christ’s name, Angelina, why did you do it?”

She was quiet a long time and I thought she wasn’t going to answer. After all, it wasn’t any of my business. Then she said quietly, “Does there have to be a reason?”

“Well, hell, there ought to be a reason for everything.”

“Maybe I just wanted somebody to say he loved me, even if he was lying. And I guess I didn’t care much, anyway.”

I lay there for a while, wondering what it was like not to care when you’re eighteen.

I got up and mixed another drink and sat in the chair by the window while she was getting ready to go out. After I finished the drink I got a clean shirt out of the bag and put it on and finished dressing and wandered impatiently around the room waiting for her, feeling irritable about the heat but not quite as savage about it as I was a while ago.

When she did come out I wasn’t quite prepared for the shock of her altered appearance. I don’t know whether it was the new clothes or the new expression in the eyes, but Angelina had a different look. And that look was lovely.

She had on the brown linen suit and it fitted her perfectly. She was wearing a soft yellow blouse with the suit and had on a pair of very sheer nylons and the high-heeled white shoes. She could have been any girl you’d see on a college campus except for the hair. She had it rolled into a soft knot at the back of her neck, and while it was difficult to get used to the idea of a young girl with long hair, I found myself wondering why women had to cut it off anyway.

She turned completely around, turning her head to keep watching me, and there was that teasing smile in her slightly almond-shaped eyes. “Well, how do I look?”

“Wonderful,” I said.

“How do you like my stockings now?”

“Fine, You have beautiful legs.”

“Thank you. You know, Bob,” she went on, “you’re nice. Why are you so hard to get to know?”

“I’m antisocial. Let’s get going. You remember, don’t you? The justice of the peace?”

“Do you still want to do it?”

“What do you mean, do I still want to? I never did.”

“Well, thanks a lot! If I’m so repulsive, why do you insist on going on with it?”

So we’re going through all that again, I thought wearily.

“Come on, for Christ’s sake,” I said. “Let’s get married.”

She looked at me distastefully and turned toward the door. “I give up,” she said. “I’ll never understand you. You say something nice about me with one breath and then get mean again with the next.”

It was three o’clock and the streets were scorching under the midafternoon sun. We walked slowly along toward the courthouse with Angelina craning her neck to catch glimpses of herself in shop windows. She couldn’t get over the way she looked in her new clothes.

The J-P.’s office was hot and not very clean, and he mumbled on forever through a ragged mustache that was brown-stained on the bottom, and there were two political hangers-on for witnesses. When the mumbling was over I handed him an envelope with ten dollars in it and we came back out on the street. We stood for a minute on the courthouse steps in the shade and I began to realize it. I wasn’t a single man any more. I was married. I laughed, and Angelina looked at me queerly.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“I just thought of a funny story, that’s all,” I said. “It seems there were two Irishmen and one of them was named Pat and I’ve forgotten the name of the other one but I think it was Morris—”

“Do you realize that we are married?” she interrupted.

“Why, no,” I said. “I hadn’t given it a thought.”

“Sometimes I think you’re as crazy as a bedbug.”

“Where do we go from here?” I said.

She looked at me blankly and I knew that neither of us had thought of what was going to happen after the ceremony. The thing had been forced on us and we had been rushing toward it to get it over, or at least I had, and now that we had reached it and the marriage was an accomplished fact we were left standing there on the steps with nothing but an empty feeling. There was nowhere to rush to now.

“I guess this is as far as we go, isn’t it?” she asked emotionlessly. She was looking out into the street.

“I guess so. Are you going back home?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re your own boss.”

“Yes, I know.”

We were silent for a moment and then she said, “Where are you going? But I guess it isn’t any of my business, is it?”

“New Orleans, I think.” But that part of it seemed to have lost its interest. I couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for it. “I’ll start on tonight. You can stay at the hotel. I’ll go back and get my stuff and clear out.”

She shook her head, still not looking at me. “No. It’s your room and I don’t want to owe you anything. I owe you too much now.” She gestured toward the linen jacket.

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“Yes, I do too. I would promise to pay you back for it, but I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to.” There was a queer streak of stubborn honesty in her, I thought.

We stood there uncomfortably a little while longer. Then she turned to me and said, “Well, thank you for everything. Good-by.”

“Good-by,” I said.

She turned and walked down the steps and out into the traffic on the sidewalk, paused for a second as if undecided which way to turn, and then went on up the street. I watched her, feeling like hell for some reason, noticing how straight she held her shoulders and the clean, beautiful lines of her legs as she walked and the proud tilt of her head. She was a lovely girl and very proud and stubborn, and more alone than anyone else in the world, and she probably had about twenty dollars. She wouldn’t ever go home and she didn’t know any way to earn her living except the way she would probably wind up by earning it, and there was something too tough in her to let her cry.

Well, what the hell, I thought, it’s no skin off my nose. Am I supposed to be running a girls’ school? She got herself into it; let her worry about it. But did she? What about Lee? Well, what about Lee? It takes two to get into a mess like that. If she hadn’t been willing to string along, he couldn’t have got anywhere alone. Yeah, with her experience, she had a lot of chance against Lee, didn’t she?

Why all this moralizing? I asked myself. What difference does it make? A mess like this isn’t anybody’s fault, so why worry about it? The thing is, she’s nothing to me, so why worry about her? Let her go.

She was in the middle of the next block before I caught up with her. I came up to her and took her arm. “Wait a minute, Angelina,” I said. “You can’t go off alone like this. Let’s go back to the hotel and talk it over.”