Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(7)

“He walks forward with the two suitcases, puts them in that
steel box in the trunk, and latches it. If he takes one more step,
up the side of the car toward you, the whole thing goes up. If he
tries to pass you a gun or a tool of some kind, she blows. He’s
been told all that already. So he goes back to his pickup, turns
around, and heads back to the highway. It’ll be hours before he
gets there; that’s been explained to you—the rock slide. He’ll
have to walk most of the way.
“The rest of it’s marked on your map, the turns you make and
the distances. We’ll pick you up and disarm the thing before you
go out of transmitter range. It’ll be dark very shortly after then,
and we’ll be out of the country in a different set of vehicles
before they even find out what direction we went. Okay?”
Man on a Leash — 134
“If you could call it that,” Romstead said.
“So you can take off the blindfolds when I sing out. Then just
wait.” Footsteps receded. Sing out, Romstead thought. Exseaman.
So far, that was the only slip Top Kick had made.
“Okay,” Top Kick called, some distance behind them. At the
same moment a car door slammed, and he heard the other
vehicle accelerate in low gear, going away.

Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(6)

“And I always loved sex,” she said. “Do you suppose I’ll ever
be capable of it again?”
“Sure,” Romstead replied. “Barnyard matings never bothered
you before, did they?”
She lighted another cigarette. “It’s a wonder the great genius
didn’t put a TV camera in here so they could watch us as well as
listen.”
“Oh, we’re being watched.” He gestured toward the front
wall. “The mirror’s a phony.”
She looked at it with interest. “You mean like those they’re
supposed to have in some of the casinos? How does it work?”
“You just have to have more light on the front side than the
back. It’s probably in a closet out there, or there’s a curtain over
it.”
“Oh. What was all that about a burro?”
He explained about finding the skeleton with its broken ribs.
“It was a demonstration, to put the old man in a receptive frame
of mind. They strapped a bundle of dynamite to the poor little
bastard, tied some tin cans to his tail to make him run, and then
blew him up several hundred yards away.”

Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(5)

“Personally,” Brubaker said, “I think they set him up with a
sucker phone call sometime this morning, because he took off
right from his sister’s funeral without even going home to
change clothes. But now we’ll never know. Any more than we’ll
ever know what he found out in San Francisco or what they
were afraid he’d found out. That’s the beauty of amateurs
showing the police how to do it. By God, they don’t waste half
their time sitting around on their dead asses making out reports
like a bunch of dumb cops or even bothering to tell anybody
what they’re doing.” Brubaker removed the cigar from his
mouth as if to throw it against the wall but merely cursed again
and reclamped it between his teeth.
“Well, he did give you the letter,” Romstead said. “When did it
come, and specifically what did it say?”
“It came yesterday morning,” Brubaker said. “But you might
as well read it, since it concerns your old man.” He grabbed it
out of the confusion on his desk and passed it over.
It was written with a ball-point pen on a single sheet of cheap
typing paper. Romstead read it.

Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(4)

“Well, you’re pretty cool yourself, Hotshot,” Romstead said.
While he didn’t like any of it, he still didn’t want to scare her
over what so far was just a feeling. “But don’t let it go to your
head. If there are prowlers working those apartments, keep the
chain on your door the way I told you, and don’t let anybody in
until you’ve finished the first two volumes of his biography. I’ll
call you tomorrow, and I’ll be back early tomorrow night.”
They talked a few minutes more, and as soon as he’d hung up,
he put in a call to Murdock. His answering service said Mr.
Murdock wasn’t at his office or at home yet, but that he should
report in shortly. Romstead gave her the number of the motel.
“Ask him to call me as soon as he comes in.”
All he could do then was wait. And wonder about it. Too many
things were wrong with the picture, Naturally, any prowler
could get names off the mailboxes down below, but this guy
wasn’t some punk who’d wandered in off the street with a strip
Man on a Leash — 69

Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(3)

“There was never any question of marriage. I was in no hurry
to be married again, and certainly not to him, and he said from
the start he’d never try it again, that he wasn’t cut out for
domesticity—which I could see even then was probably the
understatement of the century.
“I have no doubt he had another girl, or perhaps several of
them at different times, in San Francisco, but whether she or
one of them was Jeri Bonner, I don’t think so. She was only
twenty-four, for one thing, and surprisingly, he didn’t go for
very young women. I know this is contrary to the classic pattern
of the aging stud, needing younger and younger girls to get it
off the runway, but maybe he was saving that phase for his
eighties and nineties; his theory was that no woman under thirty
even knew what it was all about. And there was the drugs; if she
was using heroin, he wouldn’t have had anything to do with her
at all.”
And still the stuff had been in the house, and she’d known it
was and just where to find it, Romstead thought. You never
came up with any answers, only more questions. And though he
liked her, the sexy Mrs.

Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(2)

“Oh, no, that wasn’t it. It was just that he took a dim view of
the whole overblown ritual and what he considered the funeral
industry’s exploitation of family grief. Said it’d do them good
now and then to have to deal with a hardheaded businessman
who was still alive. So he picked out the cheapest package they
had, beat them down to the rock-bottom price, and paid it and
gave me the receipt. I pointed out that since he’d probably live
to a hundred and ten, he was losing the interest on the money,
but he said with the chronic rate of inflation he wasn’t losing a
cent. And he was right, when you stop to think of it.”
“Yeah. And then the same man’s supposed to have gone
wandering around the streets of San Francisco like some kind of
nut with a suitcase full of money.”
Bolling spread his hands. “The same man.”
Romstead stood up. “Well, thanks for filling me in, Mr.
Bolling. I won’t take up any more of your time.”
“We’ll be in touch with you. Are you going back to San
Francisco right away?”

Man on a Leash by Charles Williams 1973(1)

1
Dawn was just breaking when he pulled into town after the latenight
drive from San Francisco, and it would be hours yet before
officialdom was astir. A boy in an all-night service station
worried the spattered insects off his windshield while the tank
was being filled and told him how to find the cemetery. It was
about two miles south of the city limits, he said, and if he
wondered why an out-of-state license wanted to visit Coleville’s
burying ground at this strange hour, he made no mention of it.
Romstead wasn’t sure himself, since he had no flowers to
deposit on the grave and would have felt too uncomfortable and
self-conscious in such a lavender gesture anyway, knowing the
Rabelaisian laughter this would have evoked in the departed.
Maybe he simply had to see the grave before he could accept it.
Certainly Sergeant Crowder’s few facts over the telephone
had sounded as improbable as a bad television script, and the
big stud was indestructible anyway. Nobody who’d survived
waterfront brawls, typhoons, picket-line battles, a lifetime of
exuberant and extramarital wenching, torpedoings, western
ocean gales, and fourteen months on the Murmansk run in
World War II could have got himself killed in this plastic desert
town on the edge of nowhere. And not merely killed, Crowder
had said, but executed.

Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(8)

“What do you think, Bob?” she asked quietly.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I didn’t want to tell you. That’s the reason I wanted
to come down there with you, so I wouldn’t have to be
Hill Girl — 170
here. I guess I could have just gone off and hid in the
woods all day, but it seemed kind of crazy to do that.
He came out here every day, even during the time he
was coming out at night to have supper with us.

And he
was drinking a lot and lots of times I’d have to fight
him off. And that’s the reason he hasn’t been out here
at night the last week, because one day I hit him real
hard in the face and it gave him a black eye. I guess he
didn’t want you to see that. There wasn’t anything I
could do. I couldn’t tell you because I knew how you
are and I was afraid of what would happen. He kept
begging me to go away with him somewhere and
hinting that if I didn’t people might find out about that
—that thing that happened and why you and I were
married. He didn’t say he would tell anybody, but he
said that if I didn’t go with him he couldn’t stand it and
drank too much and that he might let things fall when
he was drunk. Of course, I didn’t mind that part of it
because he was just silly and nobody cares what he
says or tells—we don’t, do we?—but when he was
drunk and I had to fight with him it was bad.”

Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(7)

“Oh, he’s been on a ring-tailed tear for the past week
and I get tired of keeping him out of trouble.”
Somebody behind us began blasting his horn
impatiently, so Butler stepped back and waved and we
drove on. I was worried as we went out North Elm and
didn’t feel any better when we pulled up in front of the
old house and found it dark. There was nobody home at
all and I wondered where Mary was.
There wasn’t any use in wasting any more time
tonight, I thought, so we drove on out to the farm.
There was no light in the house across the road when
we turned into the driveway, but I hadn’t expected any
because it was past Jake’s and Helen’s bedtime.

Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(7)

“What’s the matter, Whitey?” she asked. “Come on.”
“Don’t rush me,” I said.
“Well, I must be slippin’,” she complained. “It’s the
first time I ever took my clothes off and a man could
just sit there smokin’ a cigarette.”
“You’re not slipping, Billie,” I said. I fished a fivedollar
bill out of my pocket and tossed it on the bed by
her arm and stood up. “I’ll see you around sometime.”

I opened the door and went out, and as it closed
behind me I heard her say, “Well, I’ll be damned. Of all
the crazy bastards!”
Hill Girl — 128
Seventeen
It was about three the next afternoon when I went into
this bar on 24th Street, the one where the trouble
started. I had the car with me by this time, and I
remembered going back to the hotel for something, I
wasn’t sure what. I had been drinking steadily ever
since I had come into town, but it didn’t seem to have
much effect except to make me feel worse.

Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(6)

“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.”

Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(5)

“Where’s who?” I asked, not liking it and wondering
how he was going to take the stalling. I wasn’t the one
he was after, but there was no telling just how much of
that simple-minded repartee he could handle, the way
he was feeling now and with that gun in his pocket.
“I don’t want no trouble with you, Bob. We always
got along all right I want your brother an’ I know he’s
here. Jest for his sake, in case he’s listenin’, he won’t
move that car out there right away. I fixed that.”
I guess I already had my mind made up before he
finished talking. Maybe even before he came in. There
wasn’t any other way. He’d get Lee sooner or later; he
was that kind of man. And there was a damned good
chance he’d get him tonight. And there was Mary, and
what it would do to her. There wasn’t any other way,
but I didn’t feel heroic about it. I felt like a damned
fool.
“Lee’s not here,” I said. “He went to Dallas a week
ago.” I still didn’t like it, and the hair on the back of my
neck was sticking into me like goose flesh when you
have a hard chill. I knew how he was feeling, and when
you get like that you’re not in very good condition for
cold, rational thought. And what I had to tell him was
worrying me. That was the bad part of it. There was no
way of knowing whether he was going to be in any
mood for a horse trade and I didn’t know how fast his
mind worked. He might even believe me and shoot
before he got the thing worked out in his mind.
Hill Girl — 84

Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(4)

“It’s good land. Make a half bale to the acre.”
I nodded, waiting. I thought I knew what was on his
mind and was trying to size him up.
“I looked her over a couple times,” he went on,
rubbing his hands briskly together and holding them
out toward the blaze.
“You live around here?” I asked. I had never seen him
before,
“Nope. I’m from Gregg County. Jest a-visitin’
kinfolks. The Harperses, down the big road about four
mile.”
I lit a cigarette and waited. He refused one, gesturing
smilingly toward the swollen lump in his cheek.

Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(4)

“It’s good land. Make a half bale to the acre.”
I nodded, waiting. I thought I knew what was on his
mind and was trying to size him up.
“I looked her over a couple times,” he went on,
rubbing his hands briskly together and holding them
out toward the blaze.
“You live around here?” I asked. I had never seen him
before,
“Nope. I’m from Gregg County. Jest a-visitin’
kinfolks. The Harperses, down the big road about four
mile.”
I lit a cigarette and waited. He refused one, gesturing
smilingly toward the swollen lump in his cheek.
“I’m sorta lookin’ around for some land to farm on
the halves. Ain’t made a crop now in a couple years.
Been doin’ public work mostly, workin’ on the highway
over by Mineola, an’ some shingle-mill work, but it ain’t
like havin’ a crop somehow. Now, I see you got a good
tenant house over acrost the road, leastwise it would
be with a little fixin’ up an’ a few window glasses, an’
you got more land than you can work by yourself. I
kinda reckoned we might make a dicker.” He stopped
and looked at me questioningly.
“Sounds all right to me,” I said. “I’ve been looking
around for a tenant. You’ve farmed before, I suppose?”
“All my life except the last couple years. Give me a
good pair of mules, ain’t air man I ever seen can plow
more ground in a day or do it any better.”
Hill Girl — 65
“I think we could make a deal,” I said.
“You got any stock yet? What kind of mules you got?”
I shook my head. “Haven’t bought any yet. Haven’t
had much time to look around, and thought I’d wait
until I needed them.”
“Fine,” he said. “If’n we get together on this, mebbe I
can help you pick ‘em out. I know mules like I know
myself, an’ we want good mules with a lot of the old
Ned in ‘em. None of them old poky bastards that’s dead
from the ass both ways.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” I said.
He stood up abruptly. “Well, s’pose I come over
tomorrow an’ we work it out. I better hightail now
before the Old Lady freezes out there.”
“Good God,” I said. “Is your mother put there? Why
didn’t you bring her in?”
“Not Ma,” he laughed. “My wife. I call her the Old
Lady. She was kinda bashful about comin’ in, not
knowin’ you an’ all.”
“Bring her in, man,” I told him. “I’ll warm up some
coffee.”
He went down the hall and I heard him at the front
door. “Hey, Old Lady, come on in.” I went out in the
kitchen and picked up the coffeepot and brought it
back and put it on a bed of coals on the hearth.
She was bigger than he, a robust girl with dark curly
hair and happy black eyes that lit up when they rested
on him. She had on an old dress of dark woolen
material and lisle stockings and a coat with some kind
of reddish fur on the collar, the fur looking moth-eaten
and a little shabby. You could see she was destined
always to be a big woman and someday she would be
fat, but that she didn’t much care, for there was about
her face the mark of a sweet and unruffled disposition
and the serene content of a healthy woman who is well
loved and likes it. There was a scrubbed cleanliness
about her and her face was pink-flushed with the cold
and possibly a little from embarrassment as she stood
in the doorway, looking at me and then at him, and
Hill Girl — 66
when her eyes were on him I envied him. It was that
kind of look.
“Honey, this is Mr. Crane,” he said. “We jest about to
make a dicker.”
She put out her hand, man-fashion. “I’m proud to
know you, Mr. Crane,” she said, smiling a little selfconsciously
and staying close to Hubbard.
“I’m sorry we left you out there in the cold,” I said.
“It wasn’t nothin’,” she laughed deprecatingly. “I
don’t mind the cold much. An’ I hadn’t orta come in.
Men don’t want no womenfolks around when they’re adickerin’.”
I brought her a chair and she sat down and I poured
the coffee.
“Do you live here all by yourself, Mr. Crane?” she
asked wonderingly.
“Yeah,” I said. “Incidentally, my name’s Bob. Couldn’t
we drop some of the formality?”
She said hers was Helen. He never called her that,
though. “He jest calls me Old Lady,” she went on,
smiling proudly at Jake.
“Who on earth cooks for you?” she asked then.
“I do my own,” I said. “It’s pretty bad.”
“Why, man,” Jake put in, “you cain’t do that an’
handle a crop too. Man’s got to have vittles ready for
him when he comes in at night. He’s too tar’d to be
putterin’ around cookin’.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “But I don’t
know of any answer to it. I don’t know what— Wait!
Maybe I do.
“How does this strike you?” I went on. “I turn over
half the land to you to work on the halves, with the
usual arrangement, with me to furnish the tools and
the seed and stock and so on. But instead of you living
over there in the tenant house, why don’t all three of us
live in this one? It’s big enough. There’s another
bedroom up front. Helen could do the cooking for the
three of us and I could pay half your grocery bill. That
sound O.K. to you?”
Hill Girl — 67
They smiled enthusiastically. “Say, that sounds good.
An’ the Old Lady can shorely cook, too, you jest wait
an’ see.” And then the same idea must have hit them
both, for they looked at each other and frowned.
“Well, now, I don’t rightly know,” Jake said. “Sounds
like a right smart idea except fer one thing. You see—”
He stopped uncertainly.
“What is it?” I couldn’t imagine what had come over
them.
“Well, it’s jest that we don’t much cotton to the idea
of livin’ with anybody in the same house. Oh, it ain’t
nothin’ agin you, Bob. But we had to live with kinfolks
the first few months we was married an’ it kinda
disheartened us. You understand, it ain’t you,
personal?” He looked at me earnestly.
“How long have you been married?” I asked.
“About six months,” Helen said, blushing.
I began to see what was troubling them and went on,
“Well, if you want it that way, we can still fix up the
house across the road and you can live over there. That
is, you can sleep there, and we can use the kitchen and
dining room here. How’s that?”
They liked that and we let it stand that way. I found a
deck of cards after a while and we played rummy until
ten o’clock and Helen made us some more coffee. It
was the first good coffee I’d had since I had been out
here.
They both came over early the next morning and we
went to work on the house across the road. In two days
we had it in good condition, and a week later they
moved in.
The day after they moved in I bought a secondhand
crosscut saw and Jake and I went to work on the new
ground in earnest. We worked early and late and when
we would come back to the house in the cold dusk with
the bite of frost and the smell of wood smoke in the air
Helen would have supper ready for us.
* * *
Hill Girl — 68
I saw Angelina in February. I had walked across the
bottom with some plow points to see if Sam would
shape them up for me in his home blacksmith shop, and
found the family butchering a hog. It was a clear day
with a cold northwest wind blowing and Sam was
cutting up the hog on a table on the south side of the
house. Mrs. Harley was helping him, dicing up the flat
strips of fat for the lard-rendering kettle. The two little
girls, bundled up in heavy coats and with their noses
running, were standing around underfoot, and when I
came up they backed away and regarded me silently
with fright in their brown eyes.
“Howdy, Bob,” Sam said. Mrs. Harley nodded, a little
shyly. She was a big woman, but somehow colorless
and beaten-looking, and she always seemed to be
trying to stand behind somebody or something when
she was talking to you.
“You’re just in time for some spareribs. You all could
use some over there, couldn’t you?” He had met the
Hubbards already; Jake was a fellow fox-hunter.
We talked about the plow points and he said he
would do them for me, and when I was ready to go he
chopped up the spareribs and said, “Look jest inside
the kitchen, Bob. They’s some brown paper to wrap ‘em
in.”
I went around the corner and in the back door.
Angelina was sitting at the kitchen table cutting a big
sheet of newspaper with a pair of scissors. She had on
a heavy blue woolen dress with long sleeves, and it was
bigger than that thing she’d had on before, and looser,
so she didn’t seem about to burst out of it in so many
places. But even as loose as it was and as poorly as it
fitted, it couldn’t disguise that figure. Her hair was
down over her shoulders in two blonde braids, tied at
the bottom with little wisps of pink ribbon. She didn’t
look quite so much like a sex crime looking for
somebody to happen to, but her eyes were still the
same. They regarded me sullenly and she didn’t say
anything.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello.”
Hill Girl — 69
“Sam said there was some brown paper here.”
“Right there.” She nodded curtly to the end of the
table. I walked over and picked it up.
It was warm in there, and the kitchen was clean, the
pine boards of the floor gleaming white from long
scrubbing, and there was the smell of boiling turnip
greens coming from the pot on the cookstove. I could
hear the big clock ticking out in the front room and the
occasional crackle and pop from the fireplace, and I
lingered a moment, glad to be in out of the cold, and
feeling again that same unaccountable urge to get her
to talk that I had felt before. She always puzzled me.
And, too, she was a girl, and when you’re twenty-two
and have lived for four months alone there’s something
about even one you don’t like. She ignored me and
went on working with the scissors.
“What’s that you’re cutting out?” I asked. It couldn’t
be some clipping she wanted to save, for she was
cutting it diagonally across columns and in every
direction. “Aren’t you a little old for paper dolls?”
Her eyes looked up and hated me. “It’s a pattern.”
“Pattern for what?”
“A blouse I’m going to make.”
“What color is it going to be?” Clothes interested me
very little, clothes of any kind, and hers not at all, but I
wanted strangely to keep the conversation going.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you learn it in school?”
“Learn what in school?” she asked without looking
up.
“How to make clothes and things.”
“No.”
I went out and closed the door. There wasn’t any use
in trying to talk to her.
Hill Girl — 70
Nine
The days are long in April, longer in May, and longer
still in June, but they are never long enough. They
begin with dew on the grass and the long-legged
shadows of sunrise and end with whippoorwills calling
in the darkening bottoms and swallows circling and
diving at dusk. And all day long, through the hot,
sweaty hours, the work goes on.
I lost weight and grew harder as the weeks went by. I
was in better condition than I had ever been in college,
even with the football and fighting. I took to leaving my
shirt off, a few minutes the first day and increasing the
time gradually until I was burned black. I liked the
work, as I had liked it when I was a boy, and I liked the
dog-tiredness, the peaceful feeling of exhaustion at the
end of the day that left the mind pleasantly at rest and
made the simple act of stretching out on the dark back
porch and listening to Jake and Helen talk a sensation
of absolute luxury. And after they had gone across the
road to the little house I would go down to the well and
draw up a tub of cold water, strip down on the shortcropped
grass of the mule lot, and splash myself free of
the sweat and caked dust out there in the open with
just the privacy of the black June night about me. Then
I would go back to the house naked except for shoes,
which I would kick off when I sat down, and would
Hill Girl — 71
stretch out on the clean sheet and wonder if I wanted a
cigarette badly enough to stay awake to smoke it.
Sometimes I would think of Lee and Mary and wonder
what Lee was going to do with himself, but it would be
a short thought and I would be asleep in the middle of
it without ever getting to Angelina. It was a beautiful
feeling of exhaustion.
It was down there in the bottom one day in June that
I saw Angelina again. I was running the cultivator and
when I came out to the end of a row and turned around
she was there in the edge of the timber. She had on a
long-visored sunbonnet and was carrying a lard pail
half filled with dewberries. She was barelegged and I
could see where the briars had scratched her legs,
little red tracings in the golden tan of her skin.
I stopped the mules and wiped the sweat off my face.
“Hello,” I said.
She looked at me distastefully. I was bareheaded and
stripped to the waist, burned black by the sun, and
shiny with sweat, and dust was caked on my arms.
“You must think that’s fun,” she said.
“It is.”
“Anybody that’d farm when he didn’t have to is crazy.
The sun must have cooked your brains. If you ever had
any.”
“Did anybody ever tell you,” I asked, “that what you
needed was to have that lovely backside of yours
tanned with a razor strap?”
“I guess this is the place for you, all right,” she said
spitefully. “You ought to be a farmer.”
“And a farmer is a type of criminal, as far as you’re
concerned?”
“No. A type of idiot. I guess Lee was right. Four years
in college was just wasted on you.” She realized then
what she’d said, but it was too late.
I turned around and got out from between the
cultivator handles and started toward her. “Who?” I
said. “Who did you say? Where’ve you been seeing
Lee?”
Hill Girl — 72
She backed away from me. “It’s none of your damn
business.”
“I’ll make it my business,” I said. “You goddamned
little heifer. Lee’s married. And he’s alive. And he won’t
be either one if he gets to fooling around with you.”
She was like an old she-coon at bay. She backed up
against a tall ash and held the lard pail like a weapon,
ready to hit me if I came nearer.
“Who said I saw him? Maybe I got a letter from him.”
“You got a letter from him, all right. He never wrote
a letter in his life.”
“Who told you to run my business for me?”
“You little punk,” I said. “I ought to slap your ears
off.”
She gave me a glance full of seething dislike and
turned and disappeared down the trail.
* * *
During those months I began to think of Jake Hubbard
as a man of whalebone and rawhide. The days were
never long enough for Jake, and he highballed from
sunup to sundown behind a fast pair of mules and he
sang as he worked, and once or twice every week he
would go “fox-huntin’” and chase around the
countryside all night. He hated slow mules and walked
behind the cultivator with a bouncing spring in his
step, singing and talking to Big Lou and Ladyfingers
with loving blasphemy.
“Haw, dammit, mule. Lou, you big ignorant hunk of
muleheaded bastard, one more bobble out’n you an’
I’m gonna skin you alive. Ain’t got no time to waste
fiddle-faddlin’ around like this. Grass growin’ in the
cotton an’ you draggin’ along like an old sow that’s
down in the gitalong.”
It was June and the chopping was all finished and
Jake and I were running the cultivators in the long
twelve-acre bottom field. The sun was halfway down in
the west and as hot as it had been at noon. There was a
light breeze blowing, just enough to stir the dust we
were raising, and it felt good on our sweat-soaked
Hill Girl — 73
backs when the little puffs came by. The dry-weather
locusts were buzzing in the trees up on the hillside
between us and the house. I turned around at the end
of a row and stopped just as Jake made the end of the
tenth or twelfth row over.
“Let’s get a drink, Jake,” I said.
We wrapped the lines about the cultivator handles
and walked down toward the little spring branch that
ran down past the end of the field. There was shade
here and I felt cool in my wet clothes. We lay down on
the sand and drank out of the little stream.
We sat down for a minute in the shade and Jake bit
the corner off a plug of Brown’s Mule, wiped his face,
and grinned.
“She’s a-comin’ along, Bob. That there cotton’s
growin’ nice. An’ it’s good an’ clean.”
“Looks good, doesn’t it?” I said. “Where we’ve swept
it up, I mean.”
We were silent for a moment, enjoying the sitting
down and the coolness. Once or twice Jake seemed on
the verge of speaking, as though there were something
he wanted to say but didn’t know how to bring it up.
“Say, Bob,” he said.
“What’s on your mind, Jake?”
“I always been a man fer mindin’ my own business. I
mean, I got a long nose, but I ain’t one to stick it in
other people’s doin’s.”
“That would seem to describe you, Jake,” I said.
“Let’s have it, though. What is it?”
“Well, I thought mebbe I ort to tell you this. It ain’t
none of my business an’ you can tell me so an’ I’ll shut
up. But it’s about your brother. Lee, his name is, ain’t
it?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Well, I hear he’s quite a stud around the gals. But
that ain’t what I’m drivin’ at. I always figger a man ort
to get all he can, an’ where he gits it is his own
business. Unless,” he looked up at me and his eyes
were suddenly serious, “unless he’s a brother of a good
Hill Girl — 74
friend of yourn an’ he’s in a fair way of gittin’ hisself
kilt. Then mebbe something ort to be said.”
I lit a cigarette and waited. “All right, Jake. Let’s
have it.”
“Well, y'know I was huntin’ last night with Sam an’
the Rucker boys over beyond Sam’s place, an’ ‘long
around midnight the Rucker boys started home an’
Sam an’ me come on back this way. Well, I was a little
in front of Sam when we hit that little lane that runs
from his house out to the big road. It was up there on
that sand hill in the pines. They was a little moon last
night, you recall, an’ jest as I hit the road I seen a car
parked there, with its lights off. I was only about a
hundred feet from where it was. Jest then Sam’s dog let
out a yip an’ the man in the car must ‘a seen me back
there because he stepped on his starter an’ gunned the
motor an’ started out down the lane like hell after a
man. Sam come a-runnin’ up behind me an’ out into the
lane, but by that time the car was out of sight around a
turn. Sam didn’t see what kind of car it was, but I seen
it plain enough. It was a big roadster, an’ it was a
Buick. I can tell all kinds of cars, jest by lookin’ at ‘em.
It was that car your brother drives, no mistakin’ it. Sam
kept askin’ me if I could tell what kind of car it was, but
I told him no, an’ he got kinda quiet an’ didn’t talk
much more.”
“Just a minute, Jake,” I said. “Did anybody get out of
the car before it started?”
“Well,” he said quietly, “I’ll tell you because I know it
won’t go no farther. I don’t like to tattle on gals an’ I
don’t like to do ‘em no harm, an’ I wouldn’t say nothin’
now only I think you ort to know. They was a gal in
there, all right, an’ she popped outta the car when he
stepped on the starter. She lit out like a greased shoat
into the trees on the other side of the lane. She was
outta sight before Sam got there.”
“How far was this from Sam’s house?”
“Less’n a quarter of a mile. Oh, it was that oldest gal
of Sam’s, all right. They ain’t another house within two
mile, an’ if it’d been some gal from town he’d brought
out there she wouldn’t have got out. Anyway, ain’t
Hill Girl — 75
nobody else in this here country built like that gal.
Good Jesus, jest a-seein’ her scootin’ across the road
with her pants in her hand, an’ thinkin’ about it, I was
so horny I woke up the Old Lady when I got home.”
“Do you think Sam got home before she got back,
and caught her going in?”
“No. Not a chanc’t. I walked real slow the rest of the
way, like I was awful tar’d, an’ kept him back. She got
in ahead of him, all right. This time.” There was a
significant emphasis on the last two words and I knew
that Jake had said all he intended to say on the subject
and considered his obligation at an end.
I finished the cigarette and threw it away and got up.
“Thanks, Jake.”
That night after supper I got in the car and drove in
to town. Lee wasn’t at home and Mary said she hadn’t
seen him since around noon. I finally found him in the
back room of Billy Gordon’s café, the second time I
went in there. He and Peewee Hines were shooting
craps. He was drinking beer, but he wasn’t drunk.
“Well, if it isn’t the old clodhopper himself.” Lee
grinned as I walked in. “Have a bottle of beer. It’s bad
for your kidneys.”
“Hi, All-American,” Peewee said and grinned at me.
He was in high school about the time Lee was and I
never did care a lot for him. He always grinned as if he
were watching something through a keyhole. He was a
little guy with a fresh way of looking at you.
“Excuse us, Peewee,” I said. “I want to talk to Lee a
couple of minutes. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not at all. Go right ahead.” He threw down the dice
and sat down at one of the tables, leaned back, and put
his feet up.
“It’s private,” I said.
“And this is a public place. Or maybe you own it?”
“Beat it, you little sonofabitch.” I reached for him and
he jumped up and made for the door.
Lee looked at me. “You’re going to get yourself killed
someday, talking to people that way.”
Hill Girl — 76
I sat down. “Well, when I do, it won’t be Peewee
Hines. And speaking of getting yourself killed, maybe
you know what I’m here for.”
“I have no idea. Maybe you just came in so I could
refresh myself looking at your beautiful face. When I’m
shooting craps with people, I don’t appreciate having
‘em chased off when I’m four bucks in the hole.”
“Sam Harley damned near caught you with that
Angelina the other night,” I said. “Does that mean
anything to you?”
“No. Except that you must be nuts. I haven’t seen
that wench since we were hunting in October.”
“That’s your story?”
“That’s it.”
“Lee,” I said. “Use your head. Stay away from there.
Can’t you see he’s going to be laying for you now?
What do you think he’s going to do when he catches
you? Write a letter to his Congressman?”
“Look, Bob, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
And if it’s what I think it is, you’re all wet, and why
don’t you mind your own business?”
“O.K.,” I said. I got up and started for the door. I
stopped once and looked back at him sitting there and
started to try once more.
“For Christ’s sake,” he said, picking up the bottle,
“why don’t you learn to knit?”
Hill Girl — 77
Ten
It was the first week in July and we were almost
finished laying by the cotton. There was only about two
days’ work left, plowing out the middles, and then we
would be through with it until picking time.
It was a hot night. Jake and Helen had gone across
the road to their house at about eight-thirty and I had
taken a bath out in the mule lot and gone to bed. But I
was restless and had a hard time getting to sleep. The
work had been slacking off the past week and I was
getting that old feeling of being overtrained and stale
and wasn’t even comfortably tired when night came. I
had been staying too close to the job and away from
dances and girls too long, and as long as the work kept
up at that grueling pace and I was worn out at night it
was all right, but now it was beginning to catch up with
me.
I awakened and reached for my watch on the table
beside the bed. It was one o’clock. The room was
stifling and I was sweating, and I lay there a few
minutes savagely restless, hating the waking up and
knowing I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep.
I cursed and got up and went out on the back porch,
still naked, the way I had been sleeping, and went
down to the well. I drew up a bucket of water and had
a drink of it and marveled at the coolness of it and then
Hill Girl — 78
upended the wooden bucket over my head and poured
the whole thing over myself. It felt deliciously cold as I
stood there in the hot blackness with the short grass
springy under my feet. I could hear the mules walking
around down by the corn crib and heard one of them
kick at something and thud against the planks of the
barn. I felt that way myself. I wanted to kick at
something.
Back in the house I slipped on a pair of shorts and lit
one of the kerosene lamps and sat down at the oilclothcovered
table to try to read, but I couldn’t keep my
mind on the book. I was just getting ready to blow out
the lamp and go out on the porch and smoke a
cigarette in the dark when I heard a car coming up the
road fast and it turned into the driveway. The
headlights flashed down the hall for a short second as
it made the turn. The brakes squealed and the car slid
to a stop out in front.
I started to get up when I heard the front door open
and somebody was coming down the hall, walking fast.
It was Lee. He had on a white linen suit and white
shoes and he looked as expensive and patrician as ever
except that his face was almost as white as the suit and
his eyes were scared.
He stopped in the doorway to the dining room. “God,
I’m lucky to find you at home,” he said. “I was afraid
you’d be gone too.”
“You’re lucky, all right,” I said. “I just got back from
the Mediterranean in my yacht. Where the hell did you
think I’d be?”
“All right, all right. But this is no time for wisecracks,
Bob.” He wouldn’t sit down and he couldn’t stand still.
He was walking jerkily back and forth and stopping to
lean on the doorframe and then he’d move again. He lit
a cigarette and then after one drag or two on it he went
around me and threw it out the back door. His face was
greasy with sweat.
“You got any money around here? I need a little, and
I need it bad. And fast.”
“What’s the gag? Don’t tell me you’ve already gone
through all the dough the Major left?”
Hill Girl — 79
He gestured impatiently. “Oh, I’ve got money. I’ll pay
you back. But I can’t get into the bank until nine. And
I’m flat broke and I’ve got to get out of here fast. I need
dough for gasoline. You’ve ten or twenty, haven’t you?”
I went into the bedroom and fished in a suit and
found my billfold. I came back and handed him a
twenty and a five, all I had in the house. He shoved it
into his pocket nervously. I could see that fear still
crawling in his eyes but his nervous pacing subsided a
little when he had the money in his pocket. He
muttered a short thanks and turned as if in a hurry to
get started. Then he hesitated again and turned back.
“How bad is it?” I asked. I sat down at the table again
and lit a cigarette.
“Sam Harley’s after me.”
The match burned my fingers. “He finally caught
you?”
“Caught me? I hope to hell he caught me. It was
awful.” He was shaking and he came over and sat down
across from me under the light of the kerosene lamp
and drummed on the table with his fingers. I thought of
the old saying that animals could smell fear, and
wondered how he would smell to one of them right
now.
He just had to talk. I didn’t want to ask him about it
because I didn’t want him to waste any time. With Sam
Harley after him he wasn’t in any position to be
dawdling around with small talk, because he was in a
bad spot and it was getting worse with every minute. It
was something I had been trying to tell him for a long
time but he had to find it out for himself and now he
was doing it the hard way.
But he had to get it out of his system. I knew it had
been bad, from the way he had to talk. “Now, for God’s
sake, don’t preach to me, Bob. I’ll admit I’ve been
getting to that Angelina and you warned me about it,
but dammit, don’t preach to me.” I hadn’t said a word.
“He almost caught me once before. Or somebody did.
But I got away with it. Only I didn’t have sense enough
to stay away. I can’t. Christ, if I only could. I tell you,
that girl’s a witch.”
Hill Girl — 80
“Or anyway, something that sounds almost like it,” I
said.
“He got wise, all right. Because he was laying for me
this time. But I had the car parked farther up from the
house, and we weren’t in it. I took a blanket out there
with me and we had it spread out in a pine thicket
fifteen or twenty yards from the car. Because she
enjoys it. Jesus, how she enjoys it! She’ll almost beat
you to death in the seat of a car. So I brought this
blanket. She’d been getting word to me the nights he
was going foxhunting and she was sneaking out. She
has a room of her own and her mother is a sound
sleeper. Only this time I guess he wasn’t going hunting,
or else he sneaked back and found she was gone.
Anyway, he was looking for us, and I guess he found
the car. But he never would have found us if that
damned girl didn’t make so much noise. You’d think
she was being killed.”
“Look,” I said, “I’ve been living out here alone for a
long time, and I mean alone, so would you mind leaving
out some of the stuff about how much she likes it and
how much noise she makes?”
He didn’t even hear me. He was trying to light a
cigarette but his hands were shaking so much he
couldn’t strike the paper matches.
“Hold it over the lamp chimney,” I said. I had to light
it for him. He went on, talking jerkily. “The first thing I
knew about it was just after we’d got quiet and all of a
sudden I heard a footstep in the dark behind us and a
gun cocking and he said, ‘Get up from there, Crane. I
don’t want to kill her too.’ Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus.
“I rolled and got up running and he shot twice but it
was awful dark in there in the pines and he missed
both times. I heard one of ‘em hit a tree and glance off
and whine and I ran that much harder. I hit a tree and
took a lot of skin off my hip and I fell down once, but I
made it to the car, I’ll never know how. I was lucky I’d
left the keys in it instead of in my pants because I was
naked except for a shirt. My clothes were back there on
the blanket. If he found the car first I’ll never know
why he didn’t take the keys himself. If he had, he’d
Hill Girl — 81
have got me. I guess he didn’t think of it. Anyway, I got
it in gear and stepped on the starter and the gas all at
the same time, without even shutting the door. I must
have thrown sand for a hundred yards, getting started.
He shot once more and it went through the back of the
top and blew a hole in the windshield. I wouldn’t drive
that road again at night at that speed for a thousand
dollars.
“I drove home with just the shirt on and sneaked in a
window and got these clothes on and packed a bag and
then remembered all my money was there in my other
pants. I found Mary’s purse without waking her up, but
she only had two dollars in it. I drove over to Billy
Gordon’s house and a couple of other places but I
couldn’t find anybody home and I couldn’t get away
without some money. So I came out here. And just as I
was coming through the square, headed this way, I saw
Sam’s car coming into town. He didn’t see me.”
“He’ll be here. You better get going.”
I couldn’t figure him out. He was scared to death and
he knew Harley was going to kill him if he caught up
with him and he knew that the only thing that would
save him was distance, and still he couldn’t get started.
He seemed to want to stay and talk about it.
“I thought I’d go to Dallas this morning and then as
soon as I can get some money through from the bank
I’ll go on to California or somewhere for a while.”
“For a while?” I asked. “For good, you mean. If you
come back here five years from now, Sam will kill you.”
“You’re kidding. He’ll forget it in a while.”
I shook my head. “I know. I was kidding before, too,
wasn’t I? When I said you were going to get in a hell of
a mess if you didn’t leave that alone.”
“You think he’ll remember it that long?”
“Listen,” I said, “you’re washed up here. You can’t
ever come back, as long as Harley’s alive. And I guess
you’re finished with Mary, too. How are you going to
explain it to her?”
“I don’t know, Maybe I can think of something.”
Hill Girl — 82
“Well, you’d better get going,” I said. “Sam will be
here as soon as he tries in town.”
Then we both heard it. It was a car coming down the
road, and from the way it sounded it was going as fast
as they’ll run.
It turned into the driveway. The lights flashed down
the hallway, dim at first, and then very bright as it
went into low in the sand. I could see Lee’s face in the
flash of it and it wasn’t a pretty sight. A man that sick
with fear isn’t something you want to look at.
“Duck out the back way,” I said, grabbing him by the
arm. “He’ll come in here and I’ll try to stall him long
enough for you to get back around to the car. You got
the keys?”
He nodded and patted his trousers pocket. He
couldn’t talk. Going on out the back door, he
disappeared into the darkness and I sat there at the
table facing the hall, thinking for a second of what a
putrid joke it was to be wearing a white linen suit when
you’re playing hide-and-seek in the dark with a man
after you with a gun.
I heard the door of the Buick slam and knew Sam was
in there after those keys. He’d missed the boat once
tonight by forgetting about them. Thank God, Lee had
them with him. And then I heard something else. It was
unmistakable. It was the sound you hear in the filling
station when the man raises the hood of your car to
check the oil. The Buick wasn’t going anywhere for a
while now when Sam finished with the ignition wiring. I
heard the front screen door open and then his slow
steps in the hall. He stopped in the doorway to the
dining room and looked at me carefully. Then he
thought better of it and came all the way in and
stepped to one side and put his back up against the
wall.
“Howdy, Bob,” he said quietly.
“Hello, Sam,” I said.
He had on overalls tucked into those big laced boots
and no shirt and was wearing a faded blue denim
jumper that was tight across his big shoulders and wet
with sweat under the armpits and I could see the
Hill Girl — 83
tangled mat of black hair on his chest above the overall
bib, where the jumper was open. In the right-hand
pocket of the jumper was the big bulge of a gun, and I
knew it was a .38 or .45 from the size of it. There was
shiny sweat on his face, and his eyes were like wet
black marble in the lamplight. There was a two or three
days’ growth of black stubble on his face, and now as
he passed his hand across his mouth to wipe off the
sweat I could hear the rasp of it against the calloused
hardness of his palm in the silence.
“Where is he, Bob?” He didn’t raise his voice. He
might have been asking a stranger how to find the
men’s room.

Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(4)

“It’s good land. Make a half bale to the acre.”
I nodded, waiting. I thought I knew what was on his
mind and was trying to size him up.
“I looked her over a couple times,” he went on,
rubbing his hands briskly together and holding them
out toward the blaze.
“You live around here?” I asked. I had never seen him
before,
“Nope. I’m from Gregg County. Jest a-visitin’
kinfolks. The Harperses, down the big road about four
mile.”
I lit a cigarette and waited. He refused one, gesturing
smilingly toward the swollen lump in his cheek.
“I’m sorta lookin’ around for some land to farm on
the halves. Ain’t made a crop now in a couple years.
Been doin’ public work mostly, workin’ on the highway
over by Mineola, an’ some shingle-mill work, but it ain’t
like havin’ a crop somehow. Now, I see you got a good
tenant house over acrost the road, leastwise it would
be with a little fixin’ up an’ a few window glasses, an’
you got more land than you can work by yourself. I
kinda reckoned we might make a dicker.” He stopped
and looked at me questioningly.
“Sounds all right to me,” I said. “I’ve been looking
around for a tenant. You’ve farmed before, I suppose?”
“All my life except the last couple years. Give me a
good pair of mules, ain’t air man I ever seen can plow
more ground in a day or do it any better.”
Hill Girl — 65
“I think we could make a deal,” I said.
“You got any stock yet? What kind of mules you got?”
I shook my head. “Haven’t bought any yet. Haven’t
had much time to look around, and thought I’d wait
until I needed them.”
“Fine,” he said. “If’n we get together on this, mebbe I
can help you pick ‘em out. I know mules like I know
myself, an’ we want good mules with a lot of the old
Ned in ‘em. None of them old poky bastards that’s dead
from the ass both ways.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” I said.
He stood up abruptly. “Well, s’pose I come over
tomorrow an’ we work it out. I better hightail now
before the Old Lady freezes out there.”
“Good God,” I said. “Is your mother put there? Why
didn’t you bring her in?”
“Not Ma,” he laughed. “My wife. I call her the Old
Lady. She was kinda bashful about comin’ in, not
knowin’ you an’ all.”
“Bring her in, man,” I told him. “I’ll warm up some
coffee.”
He went down the hall and I heard him at the front
door. “Hey, Old Lady, come on in.” I went out in the
kitchen and picked up the coffeepot and brought it
back and put it on a bed of coals on the hearth.
She was bigger than he, a robust girl with dark curly
hair and happy black eyes that lit up when they rested
on him. She had on an old dress of dark woolen
material and lisle stockings and a coat with some kind
of reddish fur on the collar, the fur looking moth-eaten
and a little shabby. You could see she was destined
always to be a big woman and someday she would be
fat, but that she didn’t much care, for there was about
her face the mark of a sweet and unruffled disposition
and the serene content of a healthy woman who is well
loved and likes it. There was a scrubbed cleanliness
about her and her face was pink-flushed with the cold
and possibly a little from embarrassment as she stood
in the doorway, looking at me and then at him, and
Hill Girl — 66
when her eyes were on him I envied him. It was that
kind of look.
“Honey, this is Mr. Crane,” he said. “We jest about to
make a dicker.”
She put out her hand, man-fashion. “I’m proud to
know you, Mr. Crane,” she said, smiling a little selfconsciously
and staying close to Hubbard.
“I’m sorry we left you out there in the cold,” I said.
“It wasn’t nothin’,” she laughed deprecatingly. “I
don’t mind the cold much. An’ I hadn’t orta come in.
Men don’t want no womenfolks around when they’re adickerin’.”
I brought her a chair and she sat down and I poured
the coffee.
“Do you live here all by yourself, Mr. Crane?” she
asked wonderingly.
“Yeah,” I said. “Incidentally, my name’s Bob. Couldn’t
we drop some of the formality?”
She said hers was Helen. He never called her that,
though. “He jest calls me Old Lady,” she went on,
smiling proudly at Jake.
“Who on earth cooks for you?” she asked then.
“I do my own,” I said. “It’s pretty bad.”
“Why, man,” Jake put in, “you cain’t do that an’
handle a crop too. Man’s got to have vittles ready for
him when he comes in at night. He’s too tar’d to be
putterin’ around cookin’.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “But I don’t
know of any answer to it. I don’t know what— Wait!
Maybe I do.
“How does this strike you?” I went on. “I turn over
half the land to you to work on the halves, with the
usual arrangement, with me to furnish the tools and
the seed and stock and so on. But instead of you living
over there in the tenant house, why don’t all three of us
live in this one? It’s big enough. There’s another
bedroom up front. Helen could do the cooking for the
three of us and I could pay half your grocery bill. That
sound O.K. to you?”
Hill Girl — 67
They smiled enthusiastically. “Say, that sounds good.
An’ the Old Lady can shorely cook, too, you jest wait
an’ see.” And then the same idea must have hit them
both, for they looked at each other and frowned.
“Well, now, I don’t rightly know,” Jake said. “Sounds
like a right smart idea except fer one thing. You see—”
He stopped uncertainly.
“What is it?” I couldn’t imagine what had come over
them.
“Well, it’s jest that we don’t much cotton to the idea
of livin’ with anybody in the same house. Oh, it ain’t
nothin’ agin you, Bob. But we had to live with kinfolks
the first few months we was married an’ it kinda
disheartened us. You understand, it ain’t you,
personal?” He looked at me earnestly.
“How long have you been married?” I asked.
“About six months,” Helen said, blushing.
I began to see what was troubling them and went on,
“Well, if you want it that way, we can still fix up the
house across the road and you can live over there. That
is, you can sleep there, and we can use the kitchen and
dining room here. How’s that?”
They liked that and we let it stand that way. I found a
deck of cards after a while and we played rummy until
ten o’clock and Helen made us some more coffee. It
was the first good coffee I’d had since I had been out
here.
They both came over early the next morning and we
went to work on the house across the road. In two days
we had it in good condition, and a week later they
moved in.
The day after they moved in I bought a secondhand
crosscut saw and Jake and I went to work on the new
ground in earnest. We worked early and late and when
we would come back to the house in the cold dusk with
the bite of frost and the smell of wood smoke in the air
Helen would have supper ready for us.
* * *
Hill Girl — 68
I saw Angelina in February. I had walked across the
bottom with some plow points to see if Sam would
shape them up for me in his home blacksmith shop, and
found the family butchering a hog. It was a clear day
with a cold northwest wind blowing and Sam was
cutting up the hog on a table on the south side of the
house. Mrs. Harley was helping him, dicing up the flat
strips of fat for the lard-rendering kettle. The two little
girls, bundled up in heavy coats and with their noses
running, were standing around underfoot, and when I
came up they backed away and regarded me silently
with fright in their brown eyes.
“Howdy, Bob,” Sam said. Mrs. Harley nodded, a little
shyly. She was a big woman, but somehow colorless
and beaten-looking, and she always seemed to be
trying to stand behind somebody or something when
she was talking to you.
“You’re just in time for some spareribs. You all could
use some over there, couldn’t you?” He had met the
Hubbards already; Jake was a fellow fox-hunter.
We talked about the plow points and he said he
would do them for me, and when I was ready to go he
chopped up the spareribs and said, “Look jest inside
the kitchen, Bob. They’s some brown paper to wrap ‘em
in.”
I went around the corner and in the back door.
Angelina was sitting at the kitchen table cutting a big
sheet of newspaper with a pair of scissors. She had on
a heavy blue woolen dress with long sleeves, and it was
bigger than that thing she’d had on before, and looser,
so she didn’t seem about to burst out of it in so many
places. But even as loose as it was and as poorly as it
fitted, it couldn’t disguise that figure. Her hair was
down over her shoulders in two blonde braids, tied at
the bottom with little wisps of pink ribbon. She didn’t
look quite so much like a sex crime looking for
somebody to happen to, but her eyes were still the
same. They regarded me sullenly and she didn’t say
anything.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello.”
Hill Girl — 69
“Sam said there was some brown paper here.”
“Right there.” She nodded curtly to the end of the
table. I walked over and picked it up.
It was warm in there, and the kitchen was clean, the
pine boards of the floor gleaming white from long
scrubbing, and there was the smell of boiling turnip
greens coming from the pot on the cookstove. I could
hear the big clock ticking out in the front room and the
occasional crackle and pop from the fireplace, and I
lingered a moment, glad to be in out of the cold, and
feeling again that same unaccountable urge to get her
to talk that I had felt before. She always puzzled me.
And, too, she was a girl, and when you’re twenty-two
and have lived for four months alone there’s something
about even one you don’t like. She ignored me and
went on working with the scissors.
“What’s that you’re cutting out?” I asked. It couldn’t
be some clipping she wanted to save, for she was
cutting it diagonally across columns and in every
direction. “Aren’t you a little old for paper dolls?”
Her eyes looked up and hated me. “It’s a pattern.”
“Pattern for what?”
“A blouse I’m going to make.”
“What color is it going to be?” Clothes interested me
very little, clothes of any kind, and hers not at all, but I
wanted strangely to keep the conversation going.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you learn it in school?”
“Learn what in school?” she asked without looking
up.
“How to make clothes and things.”
“No.”
I went out and closed the door. There wasn’t any use
in trying to talk to her.
Hill Girl — 70
Nine
The days are long in April, longer in May, and longer
still in June, but they are never long enough. They
begin with dew on the grass and the long-legged
shadows of sunrise and end with whippoorwills calling
in the darkening bottoms and swallows circling and
diving at dusk. And all day long, through the hot,
sweaty hours, the work goes on.
I lost weight and grew harder as the weeks went by. I
was in better condition than I had ever been in college,
even with the football and fighting. I took to leaving my
shirt off, a few minutes the first day and increasing the
time gradually until I was burned black. I liked the
work, as I had liked it when I was a boy, and I liked the
dog-tiredness, the peaceful feeling of exhaustion at the
end of the day that left the mind pleasantly at rest and
made the simple act of stretching out on the dark back
porch and listening to Jake and Helen talk a sensation
of absolute luxury. And after they had gone across the
road to the little house I would go down to the well and
draw up a tub of cold water, strip down on the shortcropped
grass of the mule lot, and splash myself free of
the sweat and caked dust out there in the open with
just the privacy of the black June night about me. Then
I would go back to the house naked except for shoes,
which I would kick off when I sat down, and would
Hill Girl — 71
stretch out on the clean sheet and wonder if I wanted a
cigarette badly enough to stay awake to smoke it.
Sometimes I would think of Lee and Mary and wonder
what Lee was going to do with himself, but it would be
a short thought and I would be asleep in the middle of
it without ever getting to Angelina. It was a beautiful
feeling of exhaustion.
It was down there in the bottom one day in June that
I saw Angelina again. I was running the cultivator and
when I came out to the end of a row and turned around
she was there in the edge of the timber. She had on a
long-visored sunbonnet and was carrying a lard pail
half filled with dewberries. She was barelegged and I
could see where the briars had scratched her legs,
little red tracings in the golden tan of her skin.
I stopped the mules and wiped the sweat off my face.
“Hello,” I said.
She looked at me distastefully. I was bareheaded and
stripped to the waist, burned black by the sun, and
shiny with sweat, and dust was caked on my arms.
“You must think that’s fun,” she said.
“It is.”
“Anybody that’d farm when he didn’t have to is crazy.
The sun must have cooked your brains. If you ever had
any.”
“Did anybody ever tell you,” I asked, “that what you
needed was to have that lovely backside of yours
tanned with a razor strap?”
“I guess this is the place for you, all right,” she said
spitefully. “You ought to be a farmer.”
“And a farmer is a type of criminal, as far as you’re
concerned?”
“No. A type of idiot. I guess Lee was right. Four years
in college was just wasted on you.” She realized then
what she’d said, but it was too late.
I turned around and got out from between the
cultivator handles and started toward her. “Who?” I
said. “Who did you say? Where’ve you been seeing
Lee?”
Hill Girl — 72
She backed away from me. “It’s none of your damn
business.”
“I’ll make it my business,” I said. “You goddamned
little heifer. Lee’s married. And he’s alive. And he won’t
be either one if he gets to fooling around with you.”
She was like an old she-coon at bay. She backed up
against a tall ash and held the lard pail like a weapon,
ready to hit me if I came nearer.
“Who said I saw him? Maybe I got a letter from him.”
“You got a letter from him, all right. He never wrote
a letter in his life.”
“Who told you to run my business for me?”
“You little punk,” I said. “I ought to slap your ears
off.”
She gave me a glance full of seething dislike and
turned and disappeared down the trail.
* * *
During those months I began to think of Jake Hubbard
as a man of whalebone and rawhide. The days were
never long enough for Jake, and he highballed from
sunup to sundown behind a fast pair of mules and he
sang as he worked, and once or twice every week he
would go “fox-huntin’” and chase around the
countryside all night. He hated slow mules and walked
behind the cultivator with a bouncing spring in his
step, singing and talking to Big Lou and Ladyfingers
with loving blasphemy.
“Haw, dammit, mule. Lou, you big ignorant hunk of
muleheaded bastard, one more bobble out’n you an’
I’m gonna skin you alive. Ain’t got no time to waste
fiddle-faddlin’ around like this. Grass growin’ in the
cotton an’ you draggin’ along like an old sow that’s
down in the gitalong.”
It was June and the chopping was all finished and
Jake and I were running the cultivators in the long
twelve-acre bottom field. The sun was halfway down in
the west and as hot as it had been at noon. There was a
light breeze blowing, just enough to stir the dust we
were raising, and it felt good on our sweat-soaked
Hill Girl — 73
backs when the little puffs came by. The dry-weather
locusts were buzzing in the trees up on the hillside
between us and the house. I turned around at the end
of a row and stopped just as Jake made the end of the
tenth or twelfth row over.
“Let’s get a drink, Jake,” I said.
We wrapped the lines about the cultivator handles
and walked down toward the little spring branch that
ran down past the end of the field. There was shade
here and I felt cool in my wet clothes. We lay down on
the sand and drank out of the little stream.
We sat down for a minute in the shade and Jake bit
the corner off a plug of Brown’s Mule, wiped his face,
and grinned.
“She’s a-comin’ along, Bob. That there cotton’s
growin’ nice. An’ it’s good an’ clean.”
“Looks good, doesn’t it?” I said. “Where we’ve swept
it up, I mean.”
We were silent for a moment, enjoying the sitting
down and the coolness. Once or twice Jake seemed on
the verge of speaking, as though there were something
he wanted to say but didn’t know how to bring it up.
“Say, Bob,” he said.
“What’s on your mind, Jake?”
“I always been a man fer mindin’ my own business. I
mean, I got a long nose, but I ain’t one to stick it in
other people’s doin’s.”
“That would seem to describe you, Jake,” I said.
“Let’s have it, though. What is it?”
“Well, I thought mebbe I ort to tell you this. It ain’t
none of my business an’ you can tell me so an’ I’ll shut
up. But it’s about your brother. Lee, his name is, ain’t
it?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Well, I hear he’s quite a stud around the gals. But
that ain’t what I’m drivin’ at. I always figger a man ort
to get all he can, an’ where he gits it is his own
business. Unless,” he looked up at me and his eyes
were suddenly serious, “unless he’s a brother of a good
Hill Girl — 74
friend of yourn an’ he’s in a fair way of gittin’ hisself
kilt. Then mebbe something ort to be said.”
I lit a cigarette and waited. “All right, Jake. Let’s
have it.”
“Well, y'know I was huntin’ last night with Sam an’
the Rucker boys over beyond Sam’s place, an’ ‘long
around midnight the Rucker boys started home an’
Sam an’ me come on back this way. Well, I was a little
in front of Sam when we hit that little lane that runs
from his house out to the big road. It was up there on
that sand hill in the pines. They was a little moon last
night, you recall, an’ jest as I hit the road I seen a car
parked there, with its lights off. I was only about a
hundred feet from where it was. Jest then Sam’s dog let
out a yip an’ the man in the car must ‘a seen me back
there because he stepped on his starter an’ gunned the
motor an’ started out down the lane like hell after a
man. Sam come a-runnin’ up behind me an’ out into the
lane, but by that time the car was out of sight around a
turn. Sam didn’t see what kind of car it was, but I seen
it plain enough. It was a big roadster, an’ it was a
Buick. I can tell all kinds of cars, jest by lookin’ at ‘em.
It was that car your brother drives, no mistakin’ it. Sam
kept askin’ me if I could tell what kind of car it was, but
I told him no, an’ he got kinda quiet an’ didn’t talk
much more.”
“Just a minute, Jake,” I said. “Did anybody get out of
the car before it started?”
“Well,” he said quietly, “I’ll tell you because I know it
won’t go no farther. I don’t like to tattle on gals an’ I
don’t like to do ‘em no harm, an’ I wouldn’t say nothin’
now only I think you ort to know. They was a gal in
there, all right, an’ she popped outta the car when he
stepped on the starter. She lit out like a greased shoat
into the trees on the other side of the lane. She was
outta sight before Sam got there.”
“How far was this from Sam’s house?”
“Less’n a quarter of a mile. Oh, it was that oldest gal
of Sam’s, all right. They ain’t another house within two
mile, an’ if it’d been some gal from town he’d brought
out there she wouldn’t have got out. Anyway, ain’t
Hill Girl — 75
nobody else in this here country built like that gal.
Good Jesus, jest a-seein’ her scootin’ across the road
with her pants in her hand, an’ thinkin’ about it, I was
so horny I woke up the Old Lady when I got home.”
“Do you think Sam got home before she got back,
and caught her going in?”
“No. Not a chanc’t. I walked real slow the rest of the
way, like I was awful tar’d, an’ kept him back. She got
in ahead of him, all right. This time.” There was a
significant emphasis on the last two words and I knew
that Jake had said all he intended to say on the subject
and considered his obligation at an end.
I finished the cigarette and threw it away and got up.
“Thanks, Jake.”
That night after supper I got in the car and drove in
to town. Lee wasn’t at home and Mary said she hadn’t
seen him since around noon. I finally found him in the
back room of Billy Gordon’s café, the second time I
went in there. He and Peewee Hines were shooting
craps. He was drinking beer, but he wasn’t drunk.
“Well, if it isn’t the old clodhopper himself.” Lee
grinned as I walked in. “Have a bottle of beer. It’s bad
for your kidneys.”
“Hi, All-American,” Peewee said and grinned at me.
He was in high school about the time Lee was and I
never did care a lot for him. He always grinned as if he
were watching something through a keyhole. He was a
little guy with a fresh way of looking at you.
“Excuse us, Peewee,” I said. “I want to talk to Lee a
couple of minutes. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not at all. Go right ahead.” He threw down the dice
and sat down at one of the tables, leaned back, and put
his feet up.
“It’s private,” I said.
“And this is a public place. Or maybe you own it?”
“Beat it, you little sonofabitch.” I reached for him and
he jumped up and made for the door.
Lee looked at me. “You’re going to get yourself killed
someday, talking to people that way.”
Hill Girl — 76
I sat down. “Well, when I do, it won’t be Peewee
Hines. And speaking of getting yourself killed, maybe
you know what I’m here for.”
“I have no idea. Maybe you just came in so I could
refresh myself looking at your beautiful face. When I’m
shooting craps with people, I don’t appreciate having
‘em chased off when I’m four bucks in the hole.”
“Sam Harley damned near caught you with that
Angelina the other night,” I said. “Does that mean
anything to you?”
“No. Except that you must be nuts. I haven’t seen
that wench since we were hunting in October.”
“That’s your story?”
“That’s it.”
“Lee,” I said. “Use your head. Stay away from there.
Can’t you see he’s going to be laying for you now?
What do you think he’s going to do when he catches
you? Write a letter to his Congressman?”
“Look, Bob, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
And if it’s what I think it is, you’re all wet, and why
don’t you mind your own business?”
“O.K.,” I said. I got up and started for the door. I
stopped once and looked back at him sitting there and
started to try once more.
“For Christ’s sake,” he said, picking up the bottle,
“why don’t you learn to knit?”
Hill Girl — 77
Ten
It was the first week in July and we were almost
finished laying by the cotton. There was only about two
days’ work left, plowing out the middles, and then we
would be through with it until picking time.
It was a hot night. Jake and Helen had gone across
the road to their house at about eight-thirty and I had
taken a bath out in the mule lot and gone to bed. But I
was restless and had a hard time getting to sleep. The
work had been slacking off the past week and I was
getting that old feeling of being overtrained and stale
and wasn’t even comfortably tired when night came. I
had been staying too close to the job and away from
dances and girls too long, and as long as the work kept
up at that grueling pace and I was worn out at night it
was all right, but now it was beginning to catch up with
me.
I awakened and reached for my watch on the table
beside the bed. It was one o’clock. The room was
stifling and I was sweating, and I lay there a few
minutes savagely restless, hating the waking up and
knowing I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep.
I cursed and got up and went out on the back porch,
still naked, the way I had been sleeping, and went
down to the well. I drew up a bucket of water and had
a drink of it and marveled at the coolness of it and then
Hill Girl — 78
upended the wooden bucket over my head and poured
the whole thing over myself. It felt deliciously cold as I
stood there in the hot blackness with the short grass
springy under my feet. I could hear the mules walking
around down by the corn crib and heard one of them
kick at something and thud against the planks of the
barn. I felt that way myself. I wanted to kick at
something.
Back in the house I slipped on a pair of shorts and lit
one of the kerosene lamps and sat down at the oilclothcovered
table to try to read, but I couldn’t keep my
mind on the book. I was just getting ready to blow out
the lamp and go out on the porch and smoke a
cigarette in the dark when I heard a car coming up the
road fast and it turned into the driveway. The
headlights flashed down the hall for a short second as
it made the turn. The brakes squealed and the car slid
to a stop out in front.
I started to get up when I heard the front door open
and somebody was coming down the hall, walking fast.
It was Lee. He had on a white linen suit and white
shoes and he looked as expensive and patrician as ever
except that his face was almost as white as the suit and
his eyes were scared.
He stopped in the doorway to the dining room. “God,
I’m lucky to find you at home,” he said. “I was afraid
you’d be gone too.”
“You’re lucky, all right,” I said. “I just got back from
the Mediterranean in my yacht. Where the hell did you
think I’d be?”
“All right, all right. But this is no time for wisecracks,
Bob.” He wouldn’t sit down and he couldn’t stand still.
He was walking jerkily back and forth and stopping to
lean on the doorframe and then he’d move again. He lit
a cigarette and then after one drag or two on it he went
around me and threw it out the back door. His face was
greasy with sweat.
“You got any money around here? I need a little, and
I need it bad. And fast.”
“What’s the gag? Don’t tell me you’ve already gone
through all the dough the Major left?”
Hill Girl — 79
He gestured impatiently. “Oh, I’ve got money. I’ll pay
you back. But I can’t get into the bank until nine. And
I’m flat broke and I’ve got to get out of here fast. I need
dough for gasoline. You’ve ten or twenty, haven’t you?”
I went into the bedroom and fished in a suit and
found my billfold. I came back and handed him a
twenty and a five, all I had in the house. He shoved it
into his pocket nervously. I could see that fear still
crawling in his eyes but his nervous pacing subsided a
little when he had the money in his pocket. He
muttered a short thanks and turned as if in a hurry to
get started. Then he hesitated again and turned back.
“How bad is it?” I asked. I sat down at the table again
and lit a cigarette.
“Sam Harley’s after me.”
The match burned my fingers. “He finally caught
you?”
“Caught me? I hope to hell he caught me. It was
awful.” He was shaking and he came over and sat down
across from me under the light of the kerosene lamp
and drummed on the table with his fingers. I thought of
the old saying that animals could smell fear, and
wondered how he would smell to one of them right
now.
He just had to talk. I didn’t want to ask him about it
because I didn’t want him to waste any time. With Sam
Harley after him he wasn’t in any position to be
dawdling around with small talk, because he was in a
bad spot and it was getting worse with every minute. It
was something I had been trying to tell him for a long
time but he had to find it out for himself and now he
was doing it the hard way.
But he had to get it out of his system. I knew it had
been bad, from the way he had to talk. “Now, for God’s
sake, don’t preach to me, Bob. I’ll admit I’ve been
getting to that Angelina and you warned me about it,
but dammit, don’t preach to me.” I hadn’t said a word.
“He almost caught me once before. Or somebody did.
But I got away with it. Only I didn’t have sense enough
to stay away. I can’t. Christ, if I only could. I tell you,
that girl’s a witch.”
Hill Girl — 80
“Or anyway, something that sounds almost like it,” I
said.
“He got wise, all right. Because he was laying for me
this time. But I had the car parked farther up from the
house, and we weren’t in it. I took a blanket out there
with me and we had it spread out in a pine thicket
fifteen or twenty yards from the car. Because she
enjoys it. Jesus, how she enjoys it! She’ll almost beat
you to death in the seat of a car. So I brought this
blanket. She’d been getting word to me the nights he
was going foxhunting and she was sneaking out. She
has a room of her own and her mother is a sound
sleeper. Only this time I guess he wasn’t going hunting,
or else he sneaked back and found she was gone.
Anyway, he was looking for us, and I guess he found
the car. But he never would have found us if that
damned girl didn’t make so much noise. You’d think
she was being killed.”
“Look,” I said, “I’ve been living out here alone for a
long time, and I mean alone, so would you mind leaving
out some of the stuff about how much she likes it and
how much noise she makes?”
He didn’t even hear me. He was trying to light a
cigarette but his hands were shaking so much he
couldn’t strike the paper matches.
“Hold it over the lamp chimney,” I said. I had to light
it for him. He went on, talking jerkily. “The first thing I
knew about it was just after we’d got quiet and all of a
sudden I heard a footstep in the dark behind us and a
gun cocking and he said, ‘Get up from there, Crane. I
don’t want to kill her too.’ Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus.
“I rolled and got up running and he shot twice but it
was awful dark in there in the pines and he missed
both times. I heard one of ‘em hit a tree and glance off
and whine and I ran that much harder. I hit a tree and
took a lot of skin off my hip and I fell down once, but I
made it to the car, I’ll never know how. I was lucky I’d
left the keys in it instead of in my pants because I was
naked except for a shirt. My clothes were back there on
the blanket. If he found the car first I’ll never know
why he didn’t take the keys himself. If he had, he’d
Hill Girl — 81
have got me. I guess he didn’t think of it. Anyway, I got
it in gear and stepped on the starter and the gas all at
the same time, without even shutting the door. I must
have thrown sand for a hundred yards, getting started.
He shot once more and it went through the back of the
top and blew a hole in the windshield. I wouldn’t drive
that road again at night at that speed for a thousand
dollars.
“I drove home with just the shirt on and sneaked in a
window and got these clothes on and packed a bag and
then remembered all my money was there in my other
pants. I found Mary’s purse without waking her up, but
she only had two dollars in it. I drove over to Billy
Gordon’s house and a couple of other places but I
couldn’t find anybody home and I couldn’t get away
without some money. So I came out here. And just as I
was coming through the square, headed this way, I saw
Sam’s car coming into town. He didn’t see me.”
“He’ll be here. You better get going.”
I couldn’t figure him out. He was scared to death and
he knew Harley was going to kill him if he caught up
with him and he knew that the only thing that would
save him was distance, and still he couldn’t get started.
He seemed to want to stay and talk about it.
“I thought I’d go to Dallas this morning and then as
soon as I can get some money through from the bank
I’ll go on to California or somewhere for a while.”
“For a while?” I asked. “For good, you mean. If you
come back here five years from now, Sam will kill you.”
“You’re kidding. He’ll forget it in a while.”
I shook my head. “I know. I was kidding before, too,
wasn’t I? When I said you were going to get in a hell of
a mess if you didn’t leave that alone.”
“You think he’ll remember it that long?”
“Listen,” I said, “you’re washed up here. You can’t
ever come back, as long as Harley’s alive. And I guess
you’re finished with Mary, too. How are you going to
explain it to her?”
“I don’t know, Maybe I can think of something.”
Hill Girl — 82
“Well, you’d better get going,” I said. “Sam will be
here as soon as he tries in town.”
Then we both heard it. It was a car coming down the
road, and from the way it sounded it was going as fast
as they’ll run.
It turned into the driveway. The lights flashed down
the hallway, dim at first, and then very bright as it
went into low in the sand. I could see Lee’s face in the
flash of it and it wasn’t a pretty sight. A man that sick
with fear isn’t something you want to look at.
“Duck out the back way,” I said, grabbing him by the
arm. “He’ll come in here and I’ll try to stall him long
enough for you to get back around to the car. You got
the keys?”
He nodded and patted his trousers pocket. He
couldn’t talk. Going on out the back door, he
disappeared into the darkness and I sat there at the
table facing the hall, thinking for a second of what a
putrid joke it was to be wearing a white linen suit when
you’re playing hide-and-seek in the dark with a man
after you with a gun.
I heard the door of the Buick slam and knew Sam was
in there after those keys. He’d missed the boat once
tonight by forgetting about them. Thank God, Lee had
them with him. And then I heard something else. It was
unmistakable. It was the sound you hear in the filling
station when the man raises the hood of your car to
check the oil. The Buick wasn’t going anywhere for a
while now when Sam finished with the ignition wiring. I
heard the front screen door open and then his slow
steps in the hall. He stopped in the doorway to the
dining room and looked at me carefully. Then he
thought better of it and came all the way in and
stepped to one side and put his back up against the
wall.
“Howdy, Bob,” he said quietly.
“Hello, Sam,” I said.
He had on overalls tucked into those big laced boots
and no shirt and was wearing a faded blue denim
jumper that was tight across his big shoulders and wet
with sweat under the armpits and I could see the
Hill Girl — 83
tangled mat of black hair on his chest above the overall
bib, where the jumper was open. In the right-hand
pocket of the jumper was the big bulge of a gun, and I
knew it was a .38 or .45 from the size of it. There was
shiny sweat on his face, and his eyes were like wet
black marble in the lamplight. There was a two or three
days’ growth of black stubble on his face, and now as
he passed his hand across his mouth to wipe off the
sweat I could hear the rasp of it against the calloused
hardness of his palm in the silence.
“Where is he, Bob?” He didn’t raise his voice. He
might have been asking a stranger how to find the
men’s room.

Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(3)

“You’re mashing those birds in your pocket,” I said.
Lee was lying back on the corn with the quail in the
game pocket under him.
“The hell with the birds. The world is full of birds.”
“And I’d better point out another thing. We’re
wearing out our welcome around here. Fast. Sam
makes whisky, but he’s not running a bar. We’d better
get going.”
“I paid him for the rotgut, didn’t I? Do I have to ask
him where I can drink it?” His face was becoming
redder and I could see the stuff working on him.
Hill Girl — 44
I didn’t say anything.
“Did you ever see such a shape in your life?” he
asked.
“Sam? I guess he’s not my type.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! You and your goddamned stale
jokes. You know who I mean.”
“O.K.,” I said, “I know who you mean.”
“I wonder if she really wants it that bad. Or if she’s
just dumb.”

Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(3)

“You’re mashing those birds in your pocket,” I said.
Lee was lying back on the corn with the quail in the
game pocket under him.
“The hell with the birds. The world is full of birds.”
“And I’d better point out another thing. We’re
wearing out our welcome around here. Fast. Sam
makes whisky, but he’s not running a bar. We’d better
get going.”
“I paid him for the rotgut, didn’t I? Do I have to ask
him where I can drink it?” His face was becoming
redder and I could see the stuff working on him.
Hill Girl — 44
I didn’t say anything.
“Did you ever see such a shape in your life?” he
asked.
“Sam? I guess he’s not my type.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! You and your goddamned stale
jokes. You know who I mean.”
“O.K.,” I said, “I know who you mean.”
“I wonder if she really wants it that bad. Or if she’s
just dumb.”
“Why don’t you ask Sam? If you’ll just talk a little
louder he can hear you.”
“Look,” he said, setting down the jar and staring at
me with disgust. “I’m getting a little sick of hearing
about Sam. The sneaky bastard. Why doesn’t he get on
with his work and quit spying around here?”
It was getting bad. And I knew there wasn’t anything
I could do about it. It wasn’t his getting ugly, or the
fact that he might start trouble with Harley by trying to
pick a fight or cursing him or something, that worried
me. Sam would probably just charge that off to a bad
drunk who couldn’t handle his liquor. At least, I hoped
he would. But the thing that scared me was Lee’s
sitting here getting drunker and drunker with that girl
inflaming his mind. I’d seen drunks with something on
their minds before. Pretty soon, about the time
everything else began to close down for him, there’d be
nothing left but the girl.
It would be easy to reach over and take the stuff
away from him and throw it out the door. They didn’t
call me Mack Truck for nothing. I thought of doing it
and wondered why I didn’t, but deep down inside I
knew why. It was the thought of facing his ridicule
when he sobered up and I had to explain why I’d done
it. It would look so silly and old-womanish then. It’s
funny, I thought, how you’re afraid of a lot of things all
your life, but the thing you always fear most is ridicule.
In a little while we heard Sam going by outside and
then drawing water for the mules.
“Hey, Sam,” Lee called. There was no answer. He
shouted even louder. “Sam! Come in here!”
Hill Girl — 45
He turned and stared intently at me as though trying
to fix me in his mind. He frowned and weaved slightly
from side to side and you could see he was having
trouble bringing me into focus. The stuff was working
on him rapidly. He’d only had about six drinks.
“Jesus, but you’re a homely bastard. Where’d you
ever get a face like that?”
Maybe it would be easier if I got a little edge on
myself, I thought. I reached for the jar and took a
drink.
“You ought to take that face out somewhere and bury
it. You look like a gorilla. Does it hurt?”
“This is what is known as a good, clean, wholesome
face,” I said. “I’m a good, clean, wholesome American
youth.”
“You’re a good, clean, wholesome sonofabitch.
Always worryin’ about something. What’re you worryin’
about now, Grandma?”
“All right,” I said. “I’m always worrying about
something.”
“But right now. What’re you worryin’ about right
now?”
“Nothing.”
“Must be something. You wouldn’t be complete
without that face and something to worry about.”
I didn’t say anything. He kept on staring at me
owlishly, with that scowl of concentration screwing up
his face.
“Why don’t you worry some more about Titsy out
there? Whether she’s goin’ to throw one of ‘em right
out through that dress sometime? Or whether she’s
goin’ to get what she’s looking for?”
I can see why you get in so many fights, I thought. I
can just guess how far you get with that stuff with
somebody who doesn’t love you for what you are when
you’re all there.
‘Did you ever see anything like it?” he asked. Every
time he stopped talking for a minute and then started
in again, it was about the same thing.
Hill Girl — 46
“Why don’t you and Sam take the guns and go off
hunting for a while?”
I didn’t say anything, so he yelled for Sam again.
“Hey, Sam!”
In a minute the door opened and Sam looked in.
There was still that uneasiness in his black eyes.
“Sam, you old devil, where you been?” Lee shouted at
him. “Come on in and have a drink.”
Sam climbed in and squatted down on his heels by
the door. Lee kept saying, “You old devil,” and “You old
bastard,” and holding out the fruit jar. Sam tried to
give me one of those knowing and indulgent smiles out
of the side of his eyes, the look that two sober people
always have between them for a noisy drunk, but it was
pretty weak and strained.
“Sam, old boy, old boy, I want to show you the best
damn shotgun in the United States,” Lee said noisily,
reaching back on the pile of corn to where he’d thrown
the gun. It wasn’t until that moment that I remembered
that he hadn’t unloaded it.
“Yeah, that’s a right nice gun, Lee,” Sam said
politely.
“Right nice! I hope to tell you it’s a right nice gun.
You can’t miss with it. Ask old Plug-Ugly here how
many shots I missed with it today. Go on, ask him.”
“Yeah,” Sam said dutifully. “I shore wisht I could git
me one like it. It’s right smart of a gun.”
“Take it outside and feel the balance of it. Take a
shot at something. It’s loaded. Say, I’ll tell you what.
Look, you old boar, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you go
out and locate a covey and try a couple of shots? Gable
here’ll go with you. I want you to try it out. I’ll just stay
here and catch a couple of winks while you’re gone.”
Sam shook his head regretfully. “I wisht I could, Lee.
But it’s gettin’ close to feedin’ time.”
“Oh, what the hell. It’s not late. Go ahead.”
“No, but I wisht I could. Mebbe some other time.”
Hill Girl — 47
Lee’s slightly glassy eyes fastened on his face with a
hard stare. “What’s the matter, you snoopy bastard?
You afraid to?”
Sam looked at me questioningly and then back to
Lee, as though he couldn’t make it out. Before I could
do anything or say a word, Lee cut loose again.
“Oh, I know what you’re up to. You been snoopin’
around here the last hour, afraid I might get next to
that little bitch. Well, you’re not so goddamned smart,
mister. She’s gettin’ plenty of it from somebody, and
don’t you forget it.”
Sam still had the shotgun in his hands. I was afraid to
make a sudden move and I knew that any move I made
would be too late to do any good anyway. I was
watching his eyes and I saw the hot, crazy urgency
flooding into them and I could feel the skin on the back
of my neck tighten up until it hurt, the way it does
when you have a hard chill and it seems like every hair
is stabbing you. It was just the way it is when you’re
skating over deep water when the ice is thin and you
hear it start to rumble under you and you try to lift
your weight off your feet by sheer will and hold your
breath and pray, “Don’t let it break. Don’t let it break.”
He raised the gun slowly and I could hear the ice
breaking under all of us, but he was just setting it down
in the corner, and he turned his face toward me and
the murder was going out of his eyes and there was
something hurt in them, a naked and shameful pain
that he couldn’t hide.
“Sam,” I said quietly, and put a hand on his arm.
“Come outside a minute.”
He nodded dumbly and we went out the small door,
leaving Lee cursing behind us. Just before I went out I
picked up the gun and took out the two shells and put
them in my pocket and took the ones he had in his coat.
“I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry as hell,” I said as we
slowly walked away from the little building, and I was
conscious of how futile it was to try to apologize for
something like that.
Hill Girl — 48
He was silent for a minute and I was afraid he wasn’t
going to answer. Then he said, “It’s all right, Bob. It
don’t mean nothin’. He’s just drunk.”
There was still that awful hurt in his eyes and his
hands were shaking and I knew he was thinking now of
how near he had been to killing a man.
“I’ll try to get him away from here. But the best idea
is to let him take a few more and he’ll pass out.”
“He oughtn’t to never drink, Bob.”
“I know.”
“He jest can’t handle it.”
“I know.”
“Something awful is goin’ to happen to that boy
someday.” He said it quietly and there was regret in his
voice.
“I know it, Sam.” It was the first time I had ever
admitted knowing it, even to myself. I looked down at
the ground and aimlessly pushed a piece of oak bark
around with the toe of my boot.
“You’ll tell him for me, won’t you, that I ain’t goin’ to
sell him no more?”
“I’ll tell him.”
“He oughtn’t to have no more, ever. An’ I’d rather he
didn’t come back, nohow.”
I didn’t say anything and he stood there for a
moment, a little embarrassed, and then he said
something about feeding and started off. As I stood
there watching him I was thinking that there was a lot
of man in Sam. If there hadn’t been I would have had a
brother over there in the corn crib with his guts blown
all over seventy bushels of corn.
“Oh, Sam!” I called after him. “I know it’s asking a
lot, but would you give us a lift out to the highway,
where the car is? When he passes out, I mean. I can’t
carry him.”
“Well, I’d do it for you, Bob,” he said hesitantly, “but
my car ain’t here. One of the Rucker boys carried
Mama and the two little girls to town in it. He left his
Hill Girl — 49
car here, but it’s jest one of them stripdowns. It’ll only
take two.”
I went back to the corn crib and Lee was still sitting
there where we had left him. He had the dead, vacant
stare of the very drunk.
“Well,” he said. “It’s my handsome brother.” He said
“hansshm,” so I guessed that’s what he meant. He was
back on my beauty again.
“You’ve really played hell this time,” I told him.
“Jeesus, but you’re a homely bastard.”
It’s like being on a merry-go-round, I thought.
“Sam can’t take us out to the car. His car’s not here.
All he’s got is some kid’s stripdown.”
“I’ll say she’s stripped down.”
It wasn’t any use. We were just going to keep on
playing the same records over and over.
“Let’s worry about something.”
“Go to hell,” I said.
I thought about this morning when everything was so
bright and fresh and cold and old Mike was holding
firm close over the birds, and Lee was Lee and
everything was perfect. Oh, hell, I thought.
“Why don’t you have a drink?” I asked. If he’d only go
on and pass out.
“You want to get me drunk so you can get it.”
It’s funny, I thought, how they can fix their minds on
only one thing.
He took another drink, though. When he put down
the jar, which was nearly empty now, it fell over and
the rest of the moonshine ran through a crack in the
floor He lay back on the corn after a while and closed
his eyes
“Horses,” he muttered.
I sat down and took out a cigarette. “What about
horses?”
I don’t know whether he heard me or not. He seemed
to be asleep, but he muttered stupidly now and then
“Sharon liked the horses. Horsh is a noble anim’l.”
Hill Girl — 50
I sat there moodily smoking the cigarette, being very
careful not to start a fire in the corn.
“Poor Sharon. Always hav’n arms twisted. Twists h’r
arms.”
“Who does? The horse?” Certainly a brilliant
conversation, I thought.
“No.”
He didn’t say anything more and I sat there and
watched him for five minutes and he didn’t move. It
was sooner than I had expected. He usually didn’t pass
out so quickly. But then, I thought, it hasn’t been much
over an hour and a half, but he’s drunk nearly a quart
of the stuff.
I went outside and found Sam.
“He’s gone to sleep,” I said. “Passed out.”
He nodded.
“I’m going out to the highway and get the car. I’ll
come back and pick him up. “
“That’s a long ways,” he said thoughtfully.
“Two or three miles.”
He didn’t say anything else, but walked over toward
the corn crib. I went with him, and he opened the door
and looked in at Lee, who was sleeping noisily, with his
mouth open. There was something queer about it, but I
couldn’t quite place it. He hadn’t moved.
“I’ll drive you out to your car, Bob,” Sam offered.
“It’s too fur to walk.”
“That’s fine, Sam,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
He pushed the stripdown out of the garage and
cranked it. I climbed up with him and we started down
the lane. As we went out through the wire gate I saw
Angelina come out of the house with a milk bucket.
The car was just a chassis with an old seat cushion
thrown on top of the gasoline tank. It was an old Ford,
and there weren’t any fenders on it or any hood, just
the bare essentials. I could see what Sam had meant by
not being able to haul a passed-out drunk. It was all we
could do to stay on it ourselves.
Hill Girl — 51
I don’t know why it didn’t hit me sooner. Maybe I just
wasn’t up on my toes mentally, after the experiences of
the afternoon. Anyway, it wasn’t until we had reached
the Buick and Sam had turned around and started back
that this awful suspicion began to creep up on me. He
had passed out too quickly and too easily.
I cursed the cunning of a drunk with only one thing
on his mind. He’d figured that maybe Sam would do
just what he had, drive me out to the car and leave him
alone there on the place with that girl. Then I knew
what it was that had been queer about the way he
looked. He’d been lying there with his head over on one
side, asleep with his mouth open. And it had been the
first time I’d ever seen a drunk sleeping that way
without saliva drooling out the corner of his mouth.
The car was doing fifty by the time I shifted out of
second and I passed Sam in the old stripdown as if he
had a broken axle. I made the sharp, cutback turn off
the highway where Sam’s road came in with a long
screaming slide and a cloud of dust.
As I blasted through the pines up there on the ridge
in that narrow pair of ruts I was praying I wouldn’t
meet anybody. If I did, it would be plain murder. The
road was clear all the way.
Just before I hit Sam’s place I pressed the horn as
hard as I could. As I shot through the gate and slid to a
stop in front of the house I got a quick flash of the girl,
running to the house from the direction of the corn
crib.
I ran past the house without even looking toward her
and headed for the crib. As I rounded the corner of it I
almost kicked over the bucket of milk she’d left there
right in the path. The damned fool, I thought. The
damned, stupid, insane little slut. The door was closed,
but I could hear Lee moving around inside and cursing.
“Come back here! Come back!” he was yelling at the
top of his voice.
I grabbed up the milk and ran toward the house and
burst right into the kitchen. She was there on the other
side of the oilcloth-covered table, leaning against it,
Hill Girl — 52
with her hands gripping the edge, breathing hard and
glaring at me.
“Here, you little fool!” I said. “And for Christ’s sake
pin up that dress or put on another one before Sam
sees you. Quick!”
“You go to hell!” she spat at me. Her eyes were hot
and smoky and her hair was tangled and there was a
long tear right down the front of that tight, sleazy
dress, almost to her belly.
I got back to the corn crib just as I heard the Ford
pulling up in the lane. Lee had the door open and was
weaving around, trying to climb out. I heard Sam
stopping in front of the house and I could tell from the
way he sounded that he was in a hurry too.
I pushed Lee back inside, not being gentle about it,
just shoving him back through the door like a bundle of
old rags.
“Where is she? Where is that juicy little bitch? Tell
her to come back here!” he kept saying.
I could hear Sam coming around the house, walking
fast, and there wasn’t anything else to do or any time
to lose. I hit him. I slugged him hard on the side of the
jaw and he folded up at the base of the pile of corn. I
stretched him out the way he had been when we left.
Sam opened the door and looked in.
“Maybe I better help you with him, Bob,” he said
after a hard look at Lee. Whatever he had been
thinking, he was apparently satisfied by the sight of
him lying there just as he had been. I felt a little weak.
We carried him out and put him in the car and he
never stirred a muscle. I went back and got the guns
and whistled for Mike and then just stalled a minute or
two. I wasn’t afraid Lee would come out of it any time
soon.
I wanted to keep Sam out there for a few minutes so
he wouldn’t get in the house and see that damned girl
before she changed her dress and got that wild look
out of her eyes. We talked there at the car for several
minutes, but I have no idea what we talked about. I
didn’t hear a word.
Hill Girl — 53
I stopped where the road ran close to the little creek
just before we got back on the highway and got a little
water in my hat and washed Lee’s face with. it. He
didn’t come around for five minutes and when he did
he was still limp and white. I helped him out of the car
and he was sick.
I pulled the birds out of the game pocket of his coat
and they were mashed and beginning to smell. There
were nine of them and I threw them out on the ground.
Mike looked at me questioningly and we both looked at
the birds and I felt like hell.
Big thunderheads were piling up in the west when we
got out on the highway and the sun was just going
down behind them. It looked as if it might rain in the
night. Neither of us said anything as I drove home in
the dusk.
Hill Girl — 54
Seven
It was raining the next morning when I looked out, not
a sudden shower with a blue sky behind it, but a slow,
leaden drizzle that could go on for days.
It was very early, and Sunday, and no one else was
up. I went down to the kitchen and drank a cup of
coffee with Rose and then went out to the car. I wanted
to go out to the farm today, and I didn’t want to get
mixed up in any Monday-morning rehash of the game
yesterday. Lee had still been limp and very drunk when
we got home, and if he and Mary were going to have an
argument about it I wanted to stay in the clear.
I ate some breakfast at Gordon’s café and drove out
to the farm. It lies about seven miles from town,
directly across the Black Creek bottom from the Eiler’s
place, where Sam lives.
I pulled up in front of the house and sat there a
minute in the car under the sweet-gum trees, looking at
the place. It sat back from the road about a hundred
yards, with a sandy driveway going back to it, and the
tenant house was across the road on a bare sand hill
with a big china-berry tree in the front yard.
The house seemed in better condition than the old
house in town. My grandfather had always taken great
pride in keeping it up and there had been a renter on
the place for three of the four years since he had died.
Hill Girl — 55
Right now the place looked dead and empty with the
dark windows staring vacantly out into the rain and I
listened moodily to the sound of water dripping into the
barrel at the end of the front porch.
I ran through the rain and up onto the porch,
fumbling for the key. The hallway was dark and I
walked slowly down it toward the dining room at the
rear of the house, hearing my footsteps echo hollowly
and thinking of my grandfather and grandmother and
of the fun I had had there in my childhood.
The room on the left at the front of the hall was the
parlor and there was a fireplace in it, while the room
across from it was the bedroom that had been mine
during the summers I had lived there. The hall went on
back to the dining room, and the kitchen was to the
right of that, while on the left of it was the back
bedroom, which had another fireplace. I went on to the
back bedroom and kindled a fire to take the chill
dampness off the place.
My grandparents had died within a few months of
each other, my grandmother in April and my
grandfather in the following July. He was past seventyeight,
but I had never believed old age had anything to
do with his death. They had lived together for more
than fifty years and after she was gone he died of
loneliness.
He had left me the farm and some eight thousand
dollars that was variously invested in savings bonds,
timber land, and some lots in town. It had become mine
on my twenty-first birthday, just about a year ago. He
had left it all to me, I guess, because we had always
been so close and I had lived there so long, and
because he knew, of course, that the Major had cut me
off entirely when I had left home.
My father had fought with the Engineers during
World War I and had come home a major, and after
that he was always called by his rank. It suited him.
The Major had been a headstrong and violent man as
long as he lived, and I guess the one love in his life had
been as consuming as his other passions. I had always
heard, from the few people who knew him well, but
Hill Girl — 56
never from the Major himself, that he had been utterly
devoted to my mother, who was a frail and gentle girl
as completely opposed to him in temperament as it was
possible to be. She was considerably younger than he,
and when she had died so young—when I was born—it
had hurt him far worse than he would ever admit. It
had added to his legend of callousness and brutality
when he had refused to go into any mourning, but had
only gone back to work more profane and hard-driving
than ever. It was said he had fired two men for loafing
on the job the next day after the funeral, and when they
had talked back he threatened to shoot them both if
they weren’t off his property in five minutes.
He had been a big man with a big voice. He had
always worked hard, and he drank harder, and he was
a difficult man to work for because of his temper. Lee
was the only person I ever knew who could handle him.
No matter what Lee did—and he did plenty—he could
always bring the Major round to his side.
Lee had been expelled from college in his junior year
for a wild week end in Galveston involving a stolen taxi
and a girl from Postoffice Street. Lee always claimed
he hadn’t stolen the taxi, that it was just that the driver
had got even drunker than they were and had
wandered off and left them. Anyway, the police had
picked up Lee and the girl at dawn on Sunday morning
going swimming in the nude out of the cab, which was
seventy-five yards out from the beach in a heavy surf.
They had driven it out until the motor stalled, at low
tide. The Major had paid the damages and got the theft
charges quashed and forgave Lee for it, but he never
tried to send him back to school. Lee was a junior
partner in the firm from then on, a partner whose
duties consisted largely of driving a car as fast as it
would go over rough country roads. Lee knew how to
get along with him, and the Major was always a little
proud of him, I think. He wore good clothes with an air,
knew how to impress people, and knew a lot of good
telephone numbers in a lot of places. The Major was a
man who liked parties.
I don’t know yet why we couldn’t get along together.
I had often wondered, during those years, if he didn’t
Hill Girl — 57
subconsciously hate me because my coming into the
world had killed my mother. She had died three days
afterward, of complications following my birth. I had
never really believed this, though, for he was far too
smart a man to go in for any such crackpot morbidity.
It was more likely that, as Mary had put it once, we
both had too much of the same type of pigheaded
stubbornness to live together. God knows, some of the
whippings he had given me had been terrible to
remember, and some of the provocations I had given
him had been enough to try the patience of a saint.
A lot of things happened that year, the last one I was
at home. Grandmother died in April, Lee came home in
May, kicked out of college, and that same month the
Major and I came to the parting. I graduated from high
school the last of May and began packing to go out to
the farm for the summer, as I had every year, and
knowing that my grandfather would want me more
than ever now that my grandmother was gone.
I will always remember the Major as he was that day.
It isn’t a fair picture, because he wasn’t always that
way, but it is one of those things that are ingrained in
the memory and never come out. I didn’t look any
better than he did that day, either, and I would like to
forget it if I could, but I probably never will.
He met me in the living room as I was going out with
my suitcase. He had been shaving and had come out of
the bathroom in his gray tweed trousers with the
suspenders dangling and shaving soap under one ear.
His face was dark and I could see the nervous
twitching of his right eyelid that always betrayed his
anger.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
“Out to the farm,” I said.
“Take that bag back upstairs and unpack it. You’re
not going to any farm this summer.”
“Why not?”
“Because I say so. No son of mine is going to be a
farm hand all his life. That’s finished.”
“He needs somebody out there.”
Hill Girl — 58
“He doesn’t need you. He’s got plenty of help, and if
he needs any more he can hire ‘em, or I’ll hire ‘em for
him.”
I was eighteen then and bigger than he was and I
could feel our lifelong argument coming to a head. It
was at this point that Lee always pretended to agree
with him and turned on the charm and talked him out
of it, but I never could do it. At about this time I usually
got a whipping or a profane tongue-lashing for my
rebellious attitude and the thing ended with my doing
what I was told, but today I knew it was finished.
“I’m going out to the farm,” I said again.
“God damn you, are you defying me?”
Without answering, I turned and started to go.
“Stop where you are,” he roared, and stalked back to
the bathroom and returned with the razor strap.
“You’ve laid that on me for the last time,” I said.
“We’ll see about that, young man,” he said, and
swung it viciously. It hit me across the shoulders and
hurt, and I caught it and pulled it out of his hand and
threw it far down the hall behind me. He drew back as
though to hit me with his right hand; his left hand had
been amputated during the war.
“Don’t hit me,” I said. “I’ll slug you. You’ll need both
hands if you ever hit me again.” It was something I
would regret saying all the rest of my life, but I had
said it and he stopped.
His voice wasn’t loud now. He sounded as if he would
choke, and I could see his big chest rise as though he
had to fight to breathe.
“Don’t come back. You’re finished here.”
“I’m not coming back,” I said. I picked up the bag
and went on down the hall and out the front door. I saw
him only once after that, for a little while one afternoon
in July, at my grandfather’s funeral, but we didn’t
speak.
I had been home once since then, two years ago, but
it was while he was out of town.
Hill Girl — 59
When the rain slacked a little I went down to the
barn and the mule lot and looked over the buildings
and found them in good repair and then crossed the
road to the tenant house. It hadn’t been used since my
grandfather’s death, for the man who had been farming
the place on the third-and-fourth had lived in the big
house, and it had at one time been used for storing hay,
but it hadn’t deteriorated too badly and could be put
back in good condition with a few minor repairs and a
half-dozen windowpanes that had been broken.
I was anxious to begin getting the place in shape
again. It was mine now, and I intended to build it up to
the way it had been when my grandfather was running
it. I had always admired the way he had lived. I guess if
someone had asked me, I couldn’t have explained why I
wanted to go on being a farmer. There isn’t any money
in it, and there certainly isn’t any prestige, as there is
in being a doctor or a good lawyer or newspaper editor.
But I liked the being outdoors all the time, and the hard
physical activity, and the changing seasons, and the
independence, and the knowledge—when I
remembered my grandfather and the men like him—
that I was in good company.
* * *
I moved out to the farm the second week in November.
I had been pointing toward that ever since I had left
New York after that last humiliating fight, and I was
glad now to get away from the house in town. Lee was
drinking more and more and it was hard to stay there
and see what it was doing to Mary and what it was
going to do to their marriage, to have to see it and still
pretend it wasn’t happening.
They came out to see me often in December,
sometimes bringing me a roast or something else that
Mary or Rose had cooked, for they were convinced I
would starve or poison myself with my own cooking.
And in a way they were right, for that was the one
feature about the arrangement I didn’t like. I hated the
mess I made trying to cook, and I knew that later on,
when the real farming began, I wouldn’t have time
even to try to cook.
Hill Girl — 60
They came out every few days that first month, but
after the first of the year their visits became less
frequent and sometimes Mary would come alone, in a
borrowed car. She never said what Lee was doing, or
why he didn’t come with her, but I always knew. He
wasn’t home. Sometimes he would be gone for a week
at a time. He had made one halfhearted effort to go to
work; he and another man had bought a filling station,
but before they’d been operating a month there had
been a party in the back room one night after closing
and it had burned down. Somebody had left a cigarette
lying around, I guess.
One bright, cold day in January she drove out and,
not finding me near the house, walked on down
through the fields to where I was working in the new
ground, cutting and piling logs and downed limbs and
burning them.
I was swinging the ax lustily in the thin sunlight of
early afternoon. It was cold, only a few degrees above
freezing, but I had my shirt off and sweat was
glistening on my arms and back. I had forgotten about
the soggy and uninspiring cold lunch I had brought
from the house this morning and was wrapped up in
the acute pleasure I always get out of violent exercise,
when I heard an amused voice behind me.
“You look like Thor. And I guess you haven’t got any
brains at all.”
I turned around and Mary was standing by the
burning logs, smiling at me.
“Hello,” I said. “Where’d you come from?”
She had on a big wrap-around coat and she pulled it
closer now, with the collar turned up about her throat,
and shivered.
“From town. It’s a place where intelligent people live,
with heat and comfortable living rooms. It replaced the
Stone Age, but I guess you haven’t heard about it yet.”
I rolled up a short section of log and spread my
jacket on it for her to sit on in front of the fire. She
stretched her long, silk-clad legs out in front of her and
I notice how out of place they looked here and how the
Hill Girl — 61
sharp heels of her slippers poked into the damp
ground.
“For God’s sake, put on your shirt, you idiot,” she
said in exasperation. I slipped into it and squatted
down on my heels near her. She opened the paper bag
she was carrying and brought out a thermos bottle and
some sandwiches and a large piece of cake.
“I brought you some lunch. I wish you’d get married,
so I wouldn’t have to keep on feeding you.”
She sent me a sly glance as I bit into a sandwich. “By
the way, how is Angelina these days?”
It was a little sudden for me, but I think I was
completely deadpan and offhand as I said, “Angelina?
Oh, she’s all right, I guess. Why?”
“I just wondered if you were seeing much of her. She
lives right across the bottom over there, doesn’t she?”
“That’s right,” I said. “The old Eilers’ place.”
I still couldn’t understand what she was driving at. If
she suspected there was something going on between
Lee and the Harley girl, she wouldn’t be so happy
about it.
“Can she cook?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why?”
“Well, you need a girl who can cook.”
“Is that right?”
“Are you really serious about her, Bob? Have you
been holding out on us?”
“No.” I said. “What started all this, anyway?”
“I heard Lee say something about her one time a
couple of weeks ago and the next morning I asked him
who she was. He said she was the oldest Harley girl
and that you were sort of taken with her.”
“Oh,” I said. Well, he wiggled out of it that time, I
thought. “He’s exaggerating, Mary. It’s nothing like
that. I’ve just been—oh—helping her with her
schoolwork.”
“Helping her with her schoolwork? What’s she
studying? Blocking? Or off-tackle plays?”
Hill Girl — 62
She went on back to the car after a while and I
worked hard the rest of the afternoon trying to get a
dead hickory chopped in two so I could roll it into the
fire. But I kept thinking about Lee. He still had that girl
on his mind, especially when he was drinking. Mary
hadn’t said he was drunk when he spilled it, but she
didn’t have to; it was obvious.
Hill Girl — 63
Eight
It was around the middle of January that I first met
Jake. It was around seven of a cold night, with a mist of
fine rain, and I was sitting before the fireplace in the
back bedroom, whittling out a handle for a grubbing
hoe and feeling a little low and alone, when I heard a
car pull up in front of the house. I stopped to listen.
“Hello,” came a shout from the front yard.
I went down the dark hall and looked out. There was
an old Ford touring car huddled under the bare trees.
“Come on in,” I called out
We went back into the warmth and light of the
bedroom and I got a look at him.
“My name’s Hubbard,” he said, grinning. “Jake
Hubbard. Yo’re Mr. Crane, ain’t you?”
I liked the grin. “My name’s Crane,” I said. “But it’s
Bob Crane, not Mister.”
He laughed and I shoved a chair toward him for him
to sit down. He was about my age, maybe a couple of
years older, but smaller, and his movements were fast
and decisive and there was an easy assurance about his
eyes. He had a big chew of tobacco in his right cheek
and now he sat down on the very front edge of the
chair like a bird poised for flight, held his hands out
Hill Girl — 64
toward the fire, and spat a brown stream into the
ashes.
He had on new overalls and an old leather jacket,
patched at the elbows, and a cap of the type that has
ear flaps, and he had the flaps pulled down over his
ears now. There was a pleasant homeliness about his
face, with its oversized bony nose and the stubble of
tough black beard and the long sideburns that came
down almost to the bottoms of his ears.
“I hear you goin’ to farm this here place,” he said.
“That’s right.”