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.”