Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams 1953(1)

1
The first morning when I showed up on the lot he
called me into the office and wanted me to go out in
the country somewhere and repossess a car.
“I’m tired of fooling with that bird,” he said. “So
don’t take any argument. Bring the car in. Miss
Harper’ll go with you and drive the other one back.”
I was working on commission, and there wasn’t
any percentage in that kind of stuff. I’d just started
to tell him to get somebody else to run his errands
when I saw the girl come in and changed my mind.
He introduced us. “Miss Harper,” he grunted,
shuffling through the papers on his desk. “Madox is
the new salesman.”
“How do you do?” I said. She was cool in summer
cotton and had very round arms, just slightly tanned,
and somehow she made you think of a long-stemmed
yellow rose.


She nodded and smiled, but when he told her
about going with me to pick up the car I could see
she didn’t like it.
“Can’t we wait a little?” she asked doubtfully. “I
think I can collect those back payments. I did once
before. Let me go out and talk to Mr. Sutton myself.”
He gestured curtly with the cigar. “Forget it,
Hell Hath No Fury — 2
Gloria. We’ve got more to do than chase him all over
hell every month to get our money. Bring in the car.”
We took a ‘50 Chewy off the lot and started out. I
drove. “You’ll have to tell me where,” I said.
“Straight through town and south on the
highway.”
The business district was only one street about
three blocks long. There was a cotton gin beyond
that, and a railroad station, with the tracks shining
in the sun. It was just nine o’clock, but it was a
bright, still morning with the smell of pine and hot
pavement in the air.
She was very quiet. I turned and looked at her.
She was sitting in the corner of the seat staring
moodily at the road and the breeze set up by the car
riffled gently through her hair. Any way you tried to
describe the hair itself would make it sound like a
thatched roof instead of the way it really looked.
Maybe it was because it was so straight and wasn’t
parted anywhere. It was the color of honey or of
straw, with sun-burned streaks in it, and flowed
down from the top of her head in a short bob with a
kind of football helmet effect and on to her forehead
with a V-shaped bang or whatever you call it. Her
face was the same golden tan as her arms, and while
I couldn’t see her eyes very well, I remembered the
impression when we were introduced of an almost
startling violet splashed into all those shades of
honey.
“Cigarette?” I asked.
She took one. “Thank you,” she said. Her manner
was friendly enough, but I could see something was
bothering her.
“What’s with this repossession deal?” I asked. “He
carry his own financing on the cars he sells?”
“Yes. He’s actually in the loan business. He just
added the used-car lot the last year or so. Did you
see that building right across the street from the lot,
the Southland Loan Company? That’s Mr.
Harshaw’s.”
Hell Hath No Fury — 3
“And you work in the loan office—is that it?” I
hadn’t seen her around the lot yesterday when I got
the job.
She nodded. “I run it for him. Most of the time,
that is.”
“I see.”
We were silent for a moment, and then she asked,
“Where are you from, Mr. Madox?”
“Me? Oh, I’m from New Orleans.” It would do as
well as any.
We hit the highway and went on down it for
another ten miles. There were heavy stands of
timber along here, and not much farming land. I
remembered from driving up yesterday that it
shouldn’t be too far now to the long highway bridge
over the river. We turned off to the right before we
got to it, though, taking a dirt road which led uphill
through heavy pine. At the top there were a couple
of farms, abandoned now, their yards grown up with
weeds and bullnettles and the unpainted buildings
staring vacantly at the road. The land began to drop
away on the west side of the ridge and then we were
in the river bottom, driving under big oaks, and it
was a little cooler. Most of the sloughs were dried up
now, in midsummer, and when we came out to the
river itself it was low, with the sandbars showing,
and fairly clear. After we crossed it, I stopped the
car and got out and went back to stand on the end of
the wooden bridge looking at it.
It was beautiful. The river came around a long
bend above and slid over a bar into the big pool
under the bridge. Part of the pool was in the shadow
of the dense wall of trees along the bank and it
looked dark and cool and deep. The only sound
anywhere was a mockingbird practicing his scales
from a pin oak along the other bank. There was a
peace here you could almost feel, like a hand
touching you.
I went back to the car. As I got in she glanced at
me questioningly. “Why did you stop?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I just wanted to look at it.”
Hell Hath No Fury — 4
“It’s pretty, isn’t it? And peaceful.”
“Yeah,” I said.
I started the car. We went on across the bottom
and up a sandy road through more timber on
another hill.
“Who is this guy Sutton?” I asked. “A hermit? The
car must have been worn out before he got home
with it.”
She came out of her moody silence. “Oh. He’s the
watchman at a well they started to drill back in
here.”

“Watchman?” I asked. “Are they afraid somebody’ll
steal a hole in the ground?”
“No. You see, it’s an oil well, and all the equipment
is still over here. Tools, and things like that. They
started it over a year ago and then there was some
kind of lawsuit which stopped everything. Mr. Sutton
lives on the place to look after it.”
“Do you know him? If he’s got a job, why doesn’t
he pay off his car notes?”
She was looking down at her hands. “I just know
him when I see him. He’s been around here about a
year, I guess. He doesn’t come to town much,
though.”
For some reason she seemed to be growing more
nervous. Once or twice she started to say something
and never did quite get it out.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Well, not anything, really,” she said
uncomfortably. “I was just thinking it might be
better if you let me talk to him. You see, he’s—well,
in a way he’s kind of a hard man to deal with, and
suspicious of strangers. He knows me, and maybe
he’ll listen to me.”
“What does he have to listen to? We just take the
car. That’s simple enough.”
“Well, I just thought perhaps—I mean, I might be
able to get him to pay and we wouldn’t have to take
the car.”
Hell Hath No Fury — 5
I shrugged. “It’s O.K. with me.” It wasn’t any of my
business. I was supposed to be selling cars, not
collecting for them.
We went on a mile or so across the second ridge
and then came abruptly to the end of the road.
Across the clearing a derrick climbed above the dark
line of trees behind it and on this side a rough frame
shack roofed with tar paper was huddled against the
overhanging oaks. The car, a ‘54 Ford, stood in the
open near the small front porch. I stopped and we
got out. Both the front and rear doors of the shack
were open and we could see right through it to the
timber beyond, but there was no one around nor any
sound of life.
“He must be home,” she said. “The car is here.”
We walked over and stood before the porch. “Mr.
Sutton,” she called out tentatively. “Oh, Mr. Sutton.”
There was no answer.
I stepped up on the porch and went inside, but
there was no one there. It was only one room, untidy
—but not dirty—as if a man lived there alone, with a
wood cookstove in one corner and an unmade threequarter
bed in the corner diagonally across from it.
A kitchen table with dirty dishes still on it stood by
the rear door, and clothing—mostly overalls and blue
shirts—hung from nails driven into the walls. An
armful of magazines lay stacked against the wall and
two or three more were scattered on the bed. There
was an ash-tray made of the lid of a coffee-can
perched on the window ledge, and as my eyes swung
past it, they stopped suddenly. About half the butts
were smeared with lipstick. She hadn’t said he was
married. Well, I thought, maybe he’s not.
I heard a step on the porch and turned. She had
come in and was looking at me a little
apprehensively. “Do you think we ought to come in
like this when he’s not here?” she asked. I kept
getting the impression she was scared of him.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe not. Say, is he
married?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Hell Hath No Fury — 6
She saw the ash-tray then and looked away from
me. I watched her as she kept glancing nervously
around and it was obvious she didn’t like the idea of
our being in here. We went back outside. I walked
out to the car and hit the horn-button three or four
long blasts. Sound rolled out across the timber and
then died away while we listened. There was no
answer.
A small shed stood beside the derrick platform,
over across the clearing, but from here we could see
that the door was locked and he wasn’t anywhere
around it. At the side of the shack a trail led down
into a wooded ravine, and when she saw me looking
down that way she said, “He might be down at the
spring where he gets his water. I’ll walk down and
see.”
“All right,” I said, starting to go with her.
“It’s all right,” she protested. “I’ll go. Why don’t
you just wait by the car?”
I started to say something, and then shut up. For
some reason she didn’t want me to go. Maybe she
was afraid of me. I’ve got a homely, beat-up face,
and I’m pretty big.
“O.K.,” I said. I sat down on the side of the porch
and lighted a cigarette. She went down the trail. I
could catch only glimpses now and then of the
blonde head and the crisp blue of her dress, and
then she went out of sight around a turn. I waited,
smoking, and wondering what she was nervous
about. When I looked again she was halfway up the
trail, coming back. I watched her, thinking how it
would be, the way you always do, and how pretty she
was. She was a little over average height and had a
lovely walk, even in the flat sandals, and there was
something oddly serious about her face, more so
than you’d expect in a girl who couldn’t be over
twenty-one. She looked like someone who could get
hurt, and it was strange I thought about it that way
because it had been a long time since I’d known
anyone who was vulnerable to much of anything.
Her legs were long and very nice, and she wore
Hell Hath No Fury — 7
rather dark nylons.
I stood up. “We might as well go,” I said. “He may
not be back all day.”
“Oh,” she said. “I found him. He was down at the
spring.”
I probably stared at her. She hadn’t been out of
sight more than two or three minutes. Arid why
hadn’t he come back with her?
“Did you get the car keys?” I asked.
She didn’t look at me. “No. He paid me. Both
payments. We won’t have to take it.”
I shook my head. “You must be a fast talker,” I
said. “I’m glad I don’t owe you any money.”
She turned towards the car. “Oh, he’d been
intending to pay it. He just hadn’t been to town.
Hadn’t we better go?”
“I guess so,” I said. The whole thing was queer,
but if he’d paid her there was no use hanging
around.
We had just reached the car and were starting to
get in when I looked up and saw the man walking
towards us. He had come out of the trees on the
road we had come in on, and was carrying a gun
which looked like a .22 pump in the crook of his arm.
She saw him, too. Her eyes were uneasy and when
she glanced quickly sidewise at me, I knew it was
Sutton and that she had been lying when she said
she’d seen him down at the spring.
Hell Hath No Fury — 8

2
He was A big man, around six feet and heavy all the
way up, and walked with a peculiar short stride
which some people might have called mincing but
wasn’t. It was the flat-footed shuffle of a bear or a
heavyweight fighter, and men who move that way
are balanced and hard to push off their feet. He was
dressed in bib overalls and a faded blue shirt, and
besides the gun he was carrying two fox squirrels by
their tails. He appeared to be around thirty-five or
thirty-eight, with a stubble of dark beard on an
unlined, moon-shaped face, and he had the
expression in his eyes of a man enjoying some secret
and very dirty joke.
“Hello,” I said.
He came up and stopped, glancing from Gloria
Harper to me and back again. “Hello. You boys
looking for somebody?”
“Yeah,” I said. “A man named Sutton. Would that
be you?”
“You’ve got me, men. What can I do for you?”
Before I could say anything she spoke up
hurriedly. “It’s about the car, Mr. Sutton. I—I mean
could I talk to you for a minute?”
Hell Hath No Fury — 9
I waited to see what was going to happen next.
She’d already told me he had paid up, which was
obviously impossible, so what was she going to do? I
could feel her begging me not to say anything.
He turned and looked at her again. “Why, you sure
can, honey.” He was affable and cooperative, while
the grin he gave her was crawling with that secret
joke of his. It was edged with something like
contempt and left her standing there naked and hotfaced
and without any pride at all.
Her eyes were miserable and they begged
“Please,” as she looked towards me and then turned
to walk to the shack with him. I leaned against the
door of the car and watched them. He sat down on
the porch and left her standing and took out a
cigarette without offering her one. Just the way he
sat there and watched her was a slap in the face, full
of calculated insolence and that dirty humor of his. I
couldn’t hear what she was saying, but he was
apparently enjoying it.
In a minute she turned away from him and came
back to the car. Her face was still crimson and she
avoided looking at me. “We can go now,” she said.
“What about the car?”
“It’s all right. We don’t have to take it.”
“He didn’t pay you anything. What are you going
to tell Harshaw?”
“Please,” she said. She was very near to crying.
“O.K.,” I said, and we got in. It was her funeral.
She ran the loan office and it was her business and
Harshaw’s, not mine. I backed up and turned the car
into the road while Sutton watched us from the
porch and grinned.
We were almost back to the river before she said
anything. “Maybe I’d better tell him,” she said
hesitantly. “Mr. Harshaw, I mean.”
“It’s your baby,” I said. “Tell him anything you
want.”
“I—I know it must look a little funny, Mr. Madox.”
“Is Sutton a relative of yours?”
Hell Hath No Fury — 10
“No.”
“Well, a hundred and ten dollars is a lot of money.”
She glanced at me and said nothing. She either
had to pay those two car notes herself or juggle the
books to make it look as if they’d been paid, and she
knew that I knew it. When we came to the bridge
over the river I pulled off the road under the trees
and stopped. She didn’t say a word, but when I
turned to her, she was watching me a little uneasily.
I put my arm around her and bent her head back.
She didn’t struggle or try to slap me. She didn’t do
anything. It was like kissing a passed-out drunk. I let
go and she drew away from me as far as she could.
She didn’t look at me. I put a hand under her chin
and turned it.
“Get with it, kid,” I said. “Sutton sent me.”
I could see the shame and distaste in her eyes.
“You must be proud of yourself.”
“We could still go back and repossess the car,” I
said.
She didn’t answer.
“Or we could go in and tell Harshaw he wouldn’t
let us have it. That ought to be good for a laugh.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“You never get anywhere if you don’t try.”
“Well, would you mind driving on, or shall I get
out?”
“You’re a cute kid. How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Why’re you afraid of Sutton?”
She blushed and looked out the window. “I’m not.”
“Cut it out, blondie. How’d he get on your back?”
“It’s—it’s nothing. You’re just imagining it.”
“The way you imagined you saw him down at the
spring? And collected the car notes?”
“All right, all right,” she said desperately. “I lied
about it. But why can’t you leave me alone?”
“When I see something being passed around I like
Hell Hath No Fury — 11
to get my share. I’m just a pig that way.”
Her shoulders slumped and she looked down at
her feet. “Well, now that you’ve expressed your
opinion of me, could we go on to town?”
“What’s your hurry? We’re just getting acquainted.
And besides, you haven’t taken care of my car
payments yet.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You, angel. Did I tell you that you had nice legs?”
I started to go on from there, but she brushed the
skirt down and shoved away and finally she did hit
me. “O.K.,” I said. “You don’t have to call the
Marines. I can take a hint.” I switched on the
ignition and turned the car back on the road. She
was silent all the way back to town, just sitting in
the corner of the seat rolling her handkerchief into a
ball in her hands.
It was easy to see something was wrong before we
got there. A column of black smoke climbed straight
into the sky from somewhere in town and a highway
patrol car came boiling up behind us and careened
past with its siren howling. I hit the accelerator and
fell in behind it, wondering where the fire was and
hoping it wasn’t the rooming house I’d moved into
yesterday.
It wasn’t. It was a greasy-spoon hamburger shack
beyond the cotton gin on the other side of the street.
Smoke, red-laced with flame, boiled out of the rear
door and the window while the front of the place
was a traffic jam of men trying to get in with hoses
and other men trying to fight their way out with
tables and chairs and a big jukebox. The street was
blocked with swollen white hoses and the one piece
of fire-fighting equipment, an old pumper left over
from the ‘Twenties, while volunteer firemen ran
back and forth carrying axes and yelling at each
other. I slowed down, trying to get a better look, but
the highway cop waved me on with a furious gesture
of his arms, shouting something I couldn’t hear
above the uproar and pointing to the cross street
detouring around the block.
Hell Hath No Fury — 12

I went up a couple of blocks and then turned back
to the main street again, past the corner where the
bank was. It was deserted here. Everybody was
down at the other end fighting the fire or just
gawking and getting in the way. When I turned in at
the lot the other salesman was gone and Harshaw
was alone in the office. As I got out I looked at her,
wondering if she was going to say anything, but the
big eyes were stony and blank, not even seeing me.
She was probably scared blue of what I might say to
Harshaw but she’d die before she’d plead again. She
was a sweet-looking kid taking a beating about
something, and suddenly I was ashamed and wanted
to apologize.
“Wait—“ I started. She turned her head and looked
at me as if I were something crawling out of a
cesspool and went on into the office with her back
straight.
Harshaw was on the phone when I came in and
she was waiting to talk to him. He hung up in a
minute and looked across at me.
“You get the car?” he asked.
“No,” I said. I sat down and lighted a cigarette.
“Why not?”
He had a habit of barking like a non-com, and he
looked like one, like an old master sergeant with
thirty years in. He was stocky and square-faced,
around fifty-five, with a mop of iron gray hair, and
the frosty gray eyes bored into you from under
bushy overhanging brows. There were little tufts of
hair in his ears, and he always had a cigar clamped
in his mouth or in his hand.
I don’t know why I did it. “Because he paid Miss
Harper,” I said.
He grunted. “Just have to do it again next month.
The guy’s a dead-beat. What’s afire down there? The
gin?”
“No. Hamburger joint across from it.”
“Well, how about hanging around while I go to
dinner?”
Hell Hath No Fury — 13
That burned me a little. I’d wasted the whole
morning running an errand for him and now he
wanted me to wait around while he went to eat. I got
up from the table and started to the door. “Sure,” I
said. “As soon as I get back from mine.”
He glared at me. “Maybe you won’t like this job.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Maybe I won’t.”
I went out, and as I started angling across the
street she caught up with me, headed for the loan
office. She walked alongside, not looking up, and
when I glanced around at her the top of that blonde
strawstack was just on a level with my eyes.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“Forget it.” I turned at the curb and went on up
the sidewalk.
Down the street I could see the smoke still boiling
into the sky and the jam of cars and people around
the fire engine. The restaurant was deserted, like
everything else in this end of town, and when I sat
down at the counter the lone waitress hurried up
eagerly.
“Are they going to save it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t been down there.
How’d it start?”
“Somebody said a grease fire in the kitchen.”
“Oh. Well, how’s the grease here? You got a
menu?”
She shook her head. “The dinner’s not ready.
Cook’s gone to the fire. I could fix you a sandwich,
though.”
“Never mind,” I said. “Just a glass of milk and a
piece of pie.”
It was awful pie and the crust was like damp
cardboard. I wasn’t hungry anyway, because of the
heat, and I kept thinking about the girl and the
whole crazy thing out there at the oil well. Why was
she taking the responsibility for Sutton’s car
payments, and why had he looked at her that way?
He hadn’t been just taking her clothes off; he was
Hell Hath No Fury — 14
doing it in company, with his face full of that dirty
joke of his. The simplest explanation, of course, was
that he knew something about her and she didn’t
dare take the car away or even try to collect for it.
But when I’d tried a little pressure politics myself I
got smeared in nothing flat. Why? I gave up, but I
couldn’t get rid of her entirely because random parts
of her kept poking into my mind, the odd gravity
about her eyes, the way she walked, and the way the
top of her head reminded you of a kid with
sunburned hair. She added up to something I
couldn’t quite place, and then I knew what it was—
an ad-writer’s picture of The Girl Back Home. For
God’s sake, I thought. I got up and pushed some
change across the counter and went out. I had to go
to the bank.
I still had about two hundred dollars in a bank in
Houston which I hadn’t had time to get when I left
there, and if I didn’t put through a draft for it right
away I’d be going hungry. I had about forty dollars
in my pocket. I went up the street in the white
sunlight, not meeting anybody and absently
watching the confusion down at the other end. A
shower of sparks went pin-wheeling upwards in the
smoke and I decided the roof of the place must have
fallen in at last.
The bank was a little deadfall on the corner, and
when I went inside it was dim and a little cooler than
the street. It had a couple of tellers’ cages and a
desk behind a railing in the rear, but there was
nobody in the place—nobody at all. I stood there for
a moment looking around, wondering if they
operated the place like a serve-yourself market. I
went over and looked through the grilles above the
cages, thinking somebody might have passed out
with a heart attack and be lying on the floor. Money
was lying around on the shelf but there was no one
in either cage.
Then I heard someone step inside the door behind
me. A voice said, “Wheah the fiah, Mister Julian?
Heered the sireen and the people a-runnin’ but ain’t
nobody tell me wheah the fiah is at.”
Hell Hath No Fury — 15
I looked around. It was a gaunt, six-foot figure, a
Negro, dressed in what looked like the trousers of
some kind of lodge uniform and a white T-shirt with
a big, frayed straw hat on his head. Then I saw the
cane and dark glasses. He was blind.
“I don’t think there’s anybody here, Dad,” I said.
“Mister Julian must be heah. He always heah.”
“Well, damned if I see him.”
“You know wheah the fiah is at?” he asked.
“Yeah. Down the street just this side of the gin. It’s
a hamburger shack.”
“Oh. Thank you, Cap’n.” He turned and tapped his
way out with the cane.

Just then a door in the rear opened and a man
came out, apparently from a washroom. He must
have been around sixty and looked like a high-school
maths teacher with his vague blue eyes and high
forehead with thin white hair.
He smiled apologetically. “I hope I didn’t keep you
waiting. Everybody’s gone to the fire.”
“No,” I said absently. “No. Not at all.”
He came over and went into one of the cages, and
said something.
“What?” I hadn’t been paying attention.
“I said what can I do for you?”
“Oh. I want to open an account.”
I made out the draft and deposited it and went on
back to the lot, still thinking about it. Everybody in
this town must be fire crazy.
I sold a car that afternoon and felt a little better
for a while. I saw Gloria Harper only once, when she
came out of the loan office at five o’clock with
another girl. She went up the street without looking
towards where I was leaning against a car on the lot.
We locked up the office a little later and I got in my
own car and drove over to the rooming house. It was
sultry and oppressive, and after I took a shower and
tried to dry myself the fresh underwear kept sticking
to my perspiration-wet body. I sat in the room in my
Hell Hath No Fury — 16
shorts and looked out the window at the back yard
as the sun went down. It had a high board fence
around it, a little grass turning brown with the heat,
and a chinaberry tree with a dirty rabbit hutch
leaning against it. This is the way it looks at thirty, I
thought; anybody want to stay for forty?
After a while I put on white slacks and a shirt and
went down to the restaurant. When I had eaten it
was still only seven o’clock, and there was nothing
except the drugstore or the movie. I wandered up
that way, but it was a Roy Rogers western, so I got
in the car and drove around without any thought in
mind except staying out of that room as long as I
could. Without knowing why, I found myself
following the route we’d taken that morning, going
over the sandhill past the abandoned farms and
down into the bottom.
There was a slice of moon low in the west and
when I parked off the road at the end of the bridge
the river was a silvery gleam between twin walls of
blackness under the trees. I stripped off my clothes
and walked down to the sandbar and waded in. The
water was a little cooler than the air and went
around in a big lazy eddy in the darkness under the
bridge. I circled back up the other side and waded
out after a while to lie on the sandbar and look up at
the stars.
I was still sweltering when I went back to the
room. I couldn’t sleep. In the next room an old man
was reading aloud to his wife from the Bible,
laboring slowly through the Book of Genesis, a begat
at a time, and pronouncing it with the accent on the
first syllable. I lay there on the hard slab of a bed in
the heat and wondered when I’d start walking up the
walls. Gloria Harper and Sutton kept going around
and around in my mind, and a long time afterwards,
just before I dropped off, I came back to that other
thing I couldn’t entirely forget. It was that bank with
nobody in it.
Hell Hath No Fury — 17
3
The next morning there was another argument with
Harshaw. Just after we opened the office he wanted
me to take a cloth and dust off the cars. I was feeling
low anyway and told him the hell with it. The other
salesman, an older, sallow-faced man named Gulick,
got some dust cloths out of a desk drawer and went
on out.
Harshaw leaned back in his chair and stared at
me. “What’s the matter with you, Madox? You got a
grudge against the world?”
“No,” I said. “I’m a salesman. When I want a job
cleaning cars I’ll get one.”
“The way you’re going, you may get one sooner
than you think. How old are you?”
“Thirty. Why?”
“Well, you haven’t set the world on fire so far or
you wouldn’t be here in this place.”
“I wouldn’t argue with you.”
“You can’t sell dirty cars,” he grunted. “You want
Gulick to do all the work keeping ‘em clean while
you skim off the gravy?”
“I’ll take down my hair,” I said, “and we’ll both
cry.” I got off the desk and went outside, disgusted
Hell Hath No Fury — 18
with the argument and with everything. I leaned
against a car, smoking a cigarette and watching
Gulick work, and after a while I threw the butt
savagely out into the street and went over and
picked up one of the cloths.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said, when I started
in on the other side of the car he was working on. “I
don’t mind it. I like to keep busy.”
He had sad brown eyes, a little like a hound’s, and
his health wasn’t good. The doctors had told him to
work outside and he’d have to give up a job as bookkeeper.
“How long have you worked for Harshaw?” I
asked.
He stopped rubbing for a minute and thought
about it. He did everything very slowly and
deliberately. “About a year, I reckon.”
“Hard guy to get along with, isn’t he?”
“No-o. I wouldn’t say that. He’s just got troubles,
same as anybody.”
“Troubles?”
“Got ulcers pretty bad. And then he’s had a lot of
family trouble. Lost his wife a year or so ago, and
he’s got a boy that— Well, I guess you’d say he’s just
not much good.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah.” He straightened and stretched his back. “I
always figure there’s a lot of things can make a man
grouchy. He may have troubles you don’t even know
any thing about—” He acted as if he intended to say
more, and then thought better of it and went back to
work.
Harshaw came out of the office a little later and
got in one of the cars. “Going out in the country for a
while,” he said to Gulick. “Be back around noon.”
It was Friday and there wasn’t much activity along
the street. The sun began to get hot. We had only
two cars left to dust off when I saw a young Negro in
peg-top pants and yellow shoes wander on to the
end of the lot and begin circling around an old
Hell Hath No Fury — 19
convertible with a lot of gingerbread on it. He kicked
the tires and backed off to look at it.
I nodded to Gulick. “Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll finish
it.”
I watched then as I rubbed off the last car. The
Negro tried the big air-horn mounted on a fender,
and then they both stood there with their hands in
their pockets saying nothing at all. Just then a blue
Oldsmobile sedan slid in off the street and stopped
in front of the office. There was a woman in it, alone.
She tapped the horn.
I walked over. “Good morning. Could I help you?”
The baby-blue eyes regarded me curiously. “Oh,
hello,” she said. “I was just looking for George.”
“George?”
“Mr. Harshaw,” she explained. And then she
added. “I’m his wife.”
“Oh.” It took a second for that to soak in. Gulick
hadn’t said Harshaw had married again. “He said he
was going out in the country. I think he’ll be back
around noon.” She must be a lot younger, I thought;
she couldn’t be over thirty. Somehow she made you
think of an overloaded peach tree. She wasn’t a big
woman, and she wasn’t fat, but there was no wasted
space inside the seersucker suit she had on,
especially around the hips and the top of the jacket.
Her hair was poodle-cut and ash blonde, and her
face had the same luscious and slightly over-ripe
aspect as the rest of her. Maybe it was the full lower
lip, and the dimples.
“Well, thanks anyway,” she said. Then she smiled.
“You must be the new salesman. Mr.—uh—”
“Madox,” I said. “Harry Madox.”
“Oh, yes. George told me about you. Well, I won’t
keep you from your work.” She switched on the
ignition and pressed the starter button. The motor
didn’t take hold the first time and she kept grinding
at it. I’d started away, but turned now and came
back.
“What do you suppose is the matter?” she asked
Hell Hath No Fury — 20
petulantly.
“I think it’s flooded. Hold the accelerator all the
way to the floor while you crank it.”
“Oh,” she said. “Like this?”
I looked in the car. It was stupid, actually, because
anybody would know how to press down on the gas
to cut out an automatic choke, but I looked anyway.
She had very small feet in white shoes which were
mostly heels, and around one ankle, under the nylon,
she had one of those gold chains women wore a year
or so ago. The seersucker skirt was up over her
knees. Well, I thought, she asked me to. What did
she expect?
“Yes,” I said. “Like that.”
She jabbed at the starter again and in a moment
the motor caught and took off. She smiled. “Well.
How did you know that?”
“It’s just one of those things you pick up.”
“Oh. I see. Well, thanks a lot.” She waved a hand
and drove off.
In about twenty minutes she was back. I was
sitting in the office, and when she tapped the horn I
went out. “George hasn’t got back yet?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“Oh, darn. He never remembers anything.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
She hesitated. “I hate to ask you. I mean, you’re
working.”
“I’m not hurting myself. What is it?”
“Well, if you really wouldn’t mind. It’d only take a
few minutes.” She gestured towards the rear of the
car. “I’ve got a lot of papers and old clothes I want
to unload in our storeroom, and I promised to take
the key back before noon.”
“Sure,” I said, “where is it?”
“Are you sure it’ll be all right to leave for a few
minutes?”
“Yes. Gulick can hold it down.” I looked up the lot.
He and the Negro boy were still rooted in the same
Hell Hath No Fury — 21
spot, staring at the old convertible. It’s like a horse
trade, I thought; it’ll be hours before either of them
makes a move.
I slid in beside her and we started down Main
Street. “It’s awful nice of you,” she said. “The stuff is
tied up in heavy packages, and I couldn’t carry it by
myself.”