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.”


“I know. But he understands dogs. He says you
mustn’t break a dog’s spirit if it’s going to be a good
hunting dog.”
“I don’t think he ever broke your spirit.”
Hill Girl — 106
“No. He never would have. I guess I’m just as tough
as he is. I sneaked out and I’m not ashamed of it. I
guess I’m no good, the way you think, but I’d rather be
that than the way he wanted me to be. I’m away from
him now and I’ll never go back.”
“But what about your mother? She’s never been like
that to you, has she? And you didn’t even say good-by
to her when we left.”
“I feel sorry for her. She hasn’t got any mind of her
own any more. And I didn’t say good-by to her because
I was afraid I’d cry. I hated you and I hated him and I
would have died before I would have let either one of
you see me cry.”
“But you don’t hate me so much now?”
“No. Because you were nice to me. And because you
bought me those clothes. Maybe it wasn’t just the
clothes themselves, but the idea of anybody doing
anything that nice for me. I know I’m letting you
believe you just bought me with them, but I guess
you’ll just have to think that, and maybe it’s true.”
“Did they really mean that much to you?”
“Yes, Bob. There isn’t any way I can make you
understand just how much they do mean. You’d have to
be a girl to understand.”
“Are you in love with Lee?” I asked.
“No.”
“Weren’t you? Not at all?”
“No. I like him, and he can be awfully sweet to you,
but that’s all it was.”
“Did you think he was in love with you?”
“He said he was going to divorce his wife and marry
me.
“He would,” I said. “And you believed him?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Not at all?”
“You don’t think I’ve got much sense, do you, Bob? Of
course I didn’t believe him. I knew what he wanted,
and that was all he wanted.”
Hill Girl — 107
“Then, in Christ’s name, Angelina, why did you do
it?”
She was quiet a long time and I thought she wasn’t
going to answer. After all, it wasn’t any of my business.
Then she said quietly, “Does there have to be a
reason?”
“Well, hell, there ought to be a reason for
everything.”
“Maybe I just wanted somebody to say he loved me,
even if he was lying. And I guess I didn’t care much,
anyway.”
I lay there for a while, wondering what it was like not
to care when you’re eighteen.
I got up and mixed another drink and sat in the chair
by the window while she was getting ready to go out.
After I finished the drink I got a clean shirt out of the
bag and put it on and finished dressing and wandered
impatiently around the room waiting for her, feeling
irritable about the heat but not quite as savage about it
as I was a while ago.
When she did come out I wasn’t quite prepared for
the shock of her altered appearance. I don’t know
whether it was the new clothes or the new expression
in the eyes, but Angelina had a different look. And that
look was lovely.
She had on the brown linen suit and it fitted her
perfectly. She was wearing a soft yellow blouse with
the suit and had on a pair of very sheer nylons and the
high-heeled white shoes. She could have been any girl
you’d see on a college campus except for the hair. She
had it rolled into a soft knot at the back of her neck,
and while it was difficult to get used to the idea of a
young girl with long hair, I found myself wondering
why women had to cut it off anyway.
She turned completely around, turning her head to
keep watching me, and there was that teasing smile in
her slightly almond-shaped eyes. “Well, how do I look?”
“Wonderful,” I said.
“How do you like my stockings now?”
“Fine, You have beautiful legs.”
Hill Girl — 108
“Thank you. You know, Bob,” she went on, “you’re
nice. Why are you so hard to get to know?”
“I’m antisocial. Let’s get going. You remember, don’t
you? The justice of the peace?”
“Do you still want to do it?”
“What do you mean, do I still want to? I never did.”
“Well, thanks a lot! If I’m so repulsive, why do you
insist on going on with it?”
So we’re going through all that again, I thought
wearily.
“Come on, for Christ’s sake,” I said. “Let’s get
married.”
She looked at me distastefully and turned toward the
door. “I give up,” she said. “I’ll never understand you.
You say something nice about me with one breath and
then get mean again with the next.”
It was three o’clock and the streets were scorching
under the midafternoon sun. We walked slowly along
toward the courthouse with Angelina craning her neck
to catch glimpses of herself in shop windows. She
couldn’t get over the way she looked in her new
clothes.
The J-P.’s office was hot and not very clean, and he
mumbled on forever through a ragged mustache that
was brown-stained on the bottom, and there were two
political hangers-on for witnesses. When the mumbling
was over I handed him an envelope with ten dollars in
it and we came back out on the street. We stood for a
minute on the courthouse steps in the shade and I
began to realize it. I wasn’t a single man any more. I
was married. I laughed, and Angelina looked at me
queerly.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“I just thought of a funny story, that’s all,” I said. “It
seems there were two Irishmen and one of them was
named Pat and I’ve forgotten the name of the other one
but I think it was Morris—”
“Do you realize that we are married?” she
interrupted.
Hill Girl — 109
“Why, no,” I said. “I hadn’t given it a thought.”
“Sometimes I think you’re as crazy as a bedbug.”
“Where do we go from here?” I said.
She looked at me blankly and I knew that neither of
us had thought of what was going to happen after the
ceremony. The thing had been forced on us and we had
been rushing toward it to get it over, or at least I had,
and now that we had reached it and the marriage was
an accomplished fact we were left standing there on
the steps with nothing but an empty feeling. There was
nowhere to rush to now.
“I guess this is as far as we go, isn’t it?” she asked
emotionlessly. She was looking out into the street.
“I guess so. Are you going back home?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re your own boss.”
“Yes, I know.”
We were silent for a moment and then she said,
“Where are you going? But I guess it isn’t any of my
business, is it?”
“New Orleans, I think.” But that part of it seemed to
have lost its interest. I couldn’t work up any
enthusiasm for it. “I’ll start on tonight. You can stay at
the hotel. I’ll go back and get my stuff and clear out.”
She shook her head, still not looking at me. “No. It’s
your room and I don’t want to owe you anything. I owe
you too much now.” She gestured toward the linen
jacket.
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Yes, I do too. I would promise to pay you back for it,
but I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to.” There
was a queer streak of stubborn honesty in her, I
thought.
We stood there uncomfortably a little while longer.
Then she turned to me and said, “Well, thank you for
everything. Good-by.”
“Good-by,” I said.
She turned and walked down the steps and out into
the traffic on the sidewalk, paused for a second as if
Hill Girl — 110
undecided which way to turn, and then went on up the
street. I watched her, feeling like hell for some reason,
noticing how straight she held her shoulders and the
clean, beautiful lines of her legs as she walked and the
proud tilt of her head. She was a lovely girl and very
proud and stubborn, and more alone than anyone else
in the world, and she probably had about twenty
dollars. She wouldn’t ever go home and she didn’t
know any way to earn her living except the way she
would probably wind up by earning it, and there was
something too tough in her to let her cry.
Well, what the hell, I thought, it’s no skin off my
nose. Am I supposed to be running a girls’ school? She
got herself into it; let her worry about it. But did she?
What about Lee? Well, what about Lee? It takes two to
get into a mess like that. If she hadn’t been willing to
string along, he couldn’t have got anywhere alone.
Yeah, with her experience, she had a lot of chance
against Lee, didn’t she?
Why all this moralizing? I asked myself. What
difference does it make? A mess like this isn’t
anybody’s fault, so why worry about it? The thing is,
she’s nothing to me, so why worry about her? Let her
go.
She was in the middle of the next block before I
caught up with her. I came up to her and took her arm.
“Wait a minute, Angelina,” I said. “You can’t go off
alone like this. Let’s go back to the hotel and talk it
over.”
Hill Girl — 111
Fourteen
She didn’t try to shake off my hand. She just stopped
and looked at me stonily. “Why?”
“How the hell do I know? It doesn’t make sense, but I
can’t let you walk off this way. What’d become of you?”
“Well, what do you care?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I haven’t got good
sense.” But I turned her around and she came back
with me, not saying a word. Both of us were silent as
we walked back to the hotel and went up to the room.
She went over and sat down by the window and looked
out.
“What are we going to do?”
“Frankly,” I said, “I haven’t got any idea. But we’ll
stay here tonight and try to think of something. The
only thing I know is that I can’t leave you stranded
here. And you can’t go anywhere without money.”
“I don’t want your money.”
I sat down and lit a cigarette. “I don’t give a damn
what you want or don’t want. The fact remains that I
can’t let you wander off alone.”
She didn’t reply. She only lifted her shoulders
irritatingly and stared out the window. Damn such a
pigheaded little brat, I thought. Why couldn’t we get
along without fighting?
Hill Girl — 112
“Look,” I said, “have you ever been to Galveston?
Why don’t we go down there for a week and stay at the
hotel right on the beach? We could have a vacation and
maybe work this thing out. We might be able to decide
what’s to be done with you. Maybe you’d change your
mind and go home.”

She turned around and there was some friendliness
in her eyes. “That sounds nice. I’ve never been to
Galveston, and I always wanted to see the ocean. I’ve
dreamed about it. But I’ll tell you beforehand that
you’ll be wasting your time trying to get me to go
home. I’m not going back.”
“You just don’t like it, do you?”
“I’d rather be dead.”
“Well, what did you plan to do? After we were
married, I mean? You surely didn’t look forward to
living with me, the way we fight.”
“I didn’t plan on anything. I didn’t even plan on
marrying you. That was your idea, wasn’t it?”
“Look, sister,” I said, “if you think you’ve been
haunting my girlish dreams all these years, let me set
you straight. You know why we’re married, so let’s
drop it.”
“You’re going to go on harping on that, aren’t you?”
“No, not if I can help it. But it looks as if we’ll go on
fighting as long as we’re in the same state. Why in hell
can’t we get along together? Which one of us is it, you
or me? What about the other people you know? Do you
fight with all of them? Did you fight with Lee?”
“Of course I didn’t fight with Lee. He’s nice. And he
knows how to treat girls.”
“Well, maybe it’s me.” I went over and sat down on
the bed close to her. She half turned toward me,
raising her eyebrows inquiringly. “Now tell me just
what’s wrong with me that we start swinging at each
other the minute we get within range.”
“All right,” she said, “I’ll tell you. You’re always
looking for trouble. You’re big and tough, at least on
the outside, and you’re sarcastic, and you never try to
be friendly, and you don’t want people to be friendly
Hill Girl — 113
with you. You just want to be left alone, and if people
don’t leave you alone you want to fight ‘em. You can
say nice things to a girl if you want to, but the trouble
is you never want to. Today was the only time you ever
did try to be nice, and that only lasted an hour or so.
The rest of the time you just make nasty remarks at me
and say things that don’t make sense and try to give
me the idea that you think I’m a little slut. Well, I’ve
told you before it don’t make any difference to me
whether you think I’m no good or not, and you haven’t
got any right to set yourself up as a judge. Now, does
that satisfy you?”
“Yes, that would seem to answer the question.”
“You’re stubborn and you think you’re the only one
who can be right and you’re too hard-boiled for
anybody to get along with and you don’t care what
people think, and you go out of your way to say things
that hurt because you think it’s smart to make tough
remarks like that.”
Well, I asked for it, I thought, and sat there silently
until she finished. Her eyes were angry and flashing
and I caught myself thinking they still were beautiful
even that way.
“There’s one more thing,” she said.
“Haven’t you said enough?”
“No. It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t say this too. You
could be nicer than anybody else if you wanted to be.
There is something awfully nice about you, but you
keep it covered up for fear somebody will see it. Now,”
she went on, “you might as well tell me what you think
of me. If it’s fair for one, it’s fair for the other. What is
it about me you don’t like?”
I studied this for a minute, looking at her, while she
waited with her eyes questioning.
“Well?”
“I’ll be damned if I know. Maybe it’s because most of
the time you’re such a pigheaded little brat. And I was
afraid of you.”
“Afraid?” she asked incredulously.
Hill Girl — 114
“Afraid of what you could do to Lee and Mary if you
didn’t stay away from him. They’re two people I happen
to like a lot and I didn’t want them to break up, and
that’s exactly what would happen if she ever got wise
to you. And he needs her.”
“Since when have you had to run everybody’s
business for them?”
“Skip it,” I said. “What do you say we try to see if we
can’t get along the rest of the day without fighting?
Let’s pretend we’re a newly married couple on their
honeymoon.”
“We are.”
“Let’s pretend we’re a newly married—” I started,
and then caught myself and shut up. Maybe she was
right, I thought. I do look for trouble. If I’d stop riding
her we’d have a much better chance of getting along
peaceably.
“I think I’ll have my hair cut,” she said. She had
apparently decided to ignore my latest witticism. “I’ll
go first thing in the morning and have it bobbed. I’ve
been dying to for years, but Papa never would let me.”
“That’s silly. Your hair’s pretty. What do you want to
cut it off for?”
“Do you really like it?” She swiftly pulled a few
hairpins and shook her head and her hair fell about her
shoulders in a cloud. “But it’s too long this way, isn’t
it?”
She got up out of the chair and sat down beside me
on the bed, sitting close and looking up at me. She took
one of my hands and pushed it into the mass of hair
and it felt cool and soft and fine. I let it run between my
fingers.
“That’s better than fighting, isn’t it?” she asked. She
leaned a little toward me and smiled. I shoved my face
into the cascading blondeness at the side of her throat
and I could feel the pulse in my temples thumping and
making the same kind of noise you make hitting the big
bag. One-two. One-two.
“And I’m going to get some perfume. What kind do
you like? I never had any in my life.”
Hill Girl — 115
“You don’t need it.”
“Why not?”

“It’d be shooting the birds on the ground.”
“Who’s talking about birds?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Is somebody?” The noises out
in the street were closing down now and going far
away and there wasn’t anybody left in the world but
the two of us and I tried taking a deep breath to see
why breathing was so laborious and it just wouldn’t go
down. There didn’t seem to be any room in my chest
for it. She sounded a long way off and I tried to hear
what she was saying. “You can be so sweet when you
want to be, Bob.”
I picked her up in my arms and stood up and walked
around the bed away from the window. She let her
head tilt back and looked up at me quietly, her eyes
wide and dark.
“You’re not so tough,” I said.
“I don’t want to be. You make me not tough.”
“You’re not very big either. Not big enough to be
looking for trouble all the time. I could throw you right
out the window from here.”
“Throw me out the window, Bob. Afterward.”
“Maybe I will.”
She put an arm up around my neck and drew herself
up until her lips were right against my face. “Say
something nice to me, Bob,” she whispered. “After a
while you’ll probably say something mean, but right
now something nice. Just a little nice.”
“You’re the goddamnedest girl I’ve ever seen.”
Her eyes regarded me questioningly from a distance
of three inches, very soft and wide and lovely. “Is that
nice?” she asked. “If it is, I like it.”
I was having a hard time talking and just nodded my
head. She hit me harder than anything ever had before.
Hill Girl — 116
Fifteen
Something awakened me in the dark and I looked at
the luminous dial of my watch. It was three o’clock.
And then I felt again the thing that had brought me out
of my sleep; it was a hand running softly along my arm
and across the shoulder. It was a small hand and
smooth and cool and its touch was caressing.
“Are you awake, Bob?” she asked softly.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry I waked you up.”
“It’s too hot to sleep anyway.”
“What time is it?”
“Three. I must have been asleep for a couple of
hours. It was about eleven when we came back from
getting something to eat, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know. You keep track of the time for us. But
I’m real sorry about waking you up. I was feeling all
the muscle in your arm. And behind your shoulder.
There’s regular ropes of it. Why are you so strong?”
“Clean living. Avoiding alcohol and tobacco and loose
women.”
“You always joke about everything, don’t you? Bob,
have you decided yet what we’re going to do? Are you
going to New Orleans today?”
Hill Girl — 117
“No. I don’t want to go to New Orleans now.”
“Why not? I thought you wanted to go.”
“Not now,” I said.
It was very quiet outside now, with only a lone car
going by in the street now and then. We lay there in the
dark without anything over us, listening to the
humming of the overhead fan.
“Bob,” she said after a while.
“What?”
“I want to know why you changed your mind about
going down there.”
“I don’t know why. I just lost interest in it.”
“Is it because you think you have to take care of me?
You don’t have to, you know.”
“No,” I said. “That isn’t it.”
“But you don’t want me around, do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t ever lie, do you? You don’t ever say things
you don’t mean just to keep from hurting people’s
feelings. You could have said you did and it would have
sounded nice even though it didn’t mean anything.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I’m not very smooth.”
“But we don’t have to pretend with each other, do
we? I was sort of forced on you and you don’t have to
play like you like me. You don’t like me, do you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
“How much, Bob?”
“I don’t know how much.”
“You told me this morning you didn’t.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“It seems like years, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve both changed, haven’t we?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Maybe we just found out
things we didn’t know about each other.”
“What did you find out about me?”
Hill Girl — 118
“That a lot of the things I thought about you were
wrong.”
“Do you think we could have fun together if we went
to Galveston like you said? I mean, for us to pretend we
were like other married people and on our
honeymoon?”
“I think we could, don’t you?”
“But it’d be fun for you only just the times you were
staying with me—you know—wouldn’t it?”
“No. I don’t think that. But how about you? Do you
think you’d enjoy it?”
“Yes, I know I would. I’ve always wanted to see the
ocean. And I like being with you more than anything
when you’re not sarcastic or mean.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I said.
“Then we’ll go, won’t we?”

“Yes, we’ll go today.”
“Why couldn’t we start right now? Don’t you think
that would be nice? To start in the dark, I mean, while
it’s cool? Sort of exciting.”
“You’re exciting enough. Do we have to have more?”
“I’m not either exciting. What makes you think so?”
“I have ways of knowing.”
“But how about starting for Galveston now? I’d like
that, wouldn’t you?”
“It’s a crazy time to start anywhere. But maybe we’re
crazy anyway. Let’s go.”
When we had checked out and had the bags stowed
in the back of the car and were started out of town we
pulled up at an all-night café for a cup of coffee. The
place was deserted except for a sleepy counterman.
While he was getting the coffee I looked at our
reflections in the mirror back of the counter. Angelina
was excitedly looking all around the place and I studied
her face in the glass, and wondered why I had thought
there was no animation or sparkle about her. Maybe
there hadn’t been, back there on the farm, but there
was now. Her eyes were shining. She looked into the
Hill Girl — 119
glass and caught my glance on her and our eyes met,
and she smiled at me.
“We look nice, don’t we?” she said.
“Yes, we do, don’t you?”
“Your eyebrows are white. Isn’t it funny we’re both
blonde?”
“We might be sisters,” I said.
“You know, I don’t know anything about you. How old
you are, what your middle name is, the things you like
and don’t like. Do I?”
“When I write my memoirs I’ll send you a copy.”
“Did you play football?”
“Yes.”
“In high school? Or in college?”
“Both.”
“You certainly are talkative. Why do I have to worm
everything out of you? I’ll bet you were a good football
player.”
“I played in the line. Nobody ever asked me to
dedicate a stadium. I was down in the fine print, listed
as Crane, RT.”
“What does RT mean?”
“Right tackle.”
“Did you carry the ball and make lots of
touchdowns?”
“No. Not in that conference.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “You probably could have
carried it better than anybody.”
I grinned. “I don’t know. Nobody ever gave it to me. I
guess I wasn’t popular.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Let’s forget about football. Nothing’s as dead as last
year’s football games.”
It was still dark when we rolled out of town on the
highway. I stopped and put the top back and the wind
felt cool on our faces. I watched the tunnel the
headlights made in the night and turned now and then
to look at Angelina. She always sat with her hands in
Hill Girl — 120
her lap, the way she had before, only now there wasn’t
any sullen defiance in her eyes and they would smile
happily at me when I looked around.
In another half hour it was growing light. We came
over a hill and started down into the river bottom
ahead of us and the east was flushed. It was still and
cloudless with the summer morning’s promise of heat
to come, but the air was cooler in the bottom and there
were patches of mist near the ground. I stopped the car
off to the left side of the road at the end of the bridge
and we could see the river below in the gray light.
There was a big pool there under the bridge and a long
sand bar below where the water went over shallow and
clear. The big white oaks out across the bottom were
hazy and dark in the scattered patches of mist and on
the ones nearby we could see the gray-brown rings that
marked the high-water levels of the winter floods. A
mockingbird was coming awake and his song was the
only sound above the low gurgle of the water over the
sand bar below us.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “There’s something about rivers.”
There was no traffic along the road and we had the
whole long bottom to ourselves, just the two of us and
the mockingbird. Neither of us said anything for a long
time as we sat there in the early-morning light
watching the river, and the silence remained unbroken
even after I was aware that we were no longer looking
at the river, but at each other. She had turned toward
me and sat with her head tilted back against the top of
the seat and her cheek pressed against the leather, her
eyes on my face. I looked down at her a long time and I
had never known anything like it before and I knew
what it was going to be like with us from this time on
and then I had my arms around her and was kissing
her, feeling the wildness of it and trying to be gentle
with her at the same time. Her eyes were closed and I
kissed them.
“Do that again, Bob,” she said softly. “I love it when
you kiss me like that.”
Hill Girl — 121
It might have been what she said. Or it might have
been some sudden and perverse awareness of the fact
that I was making love to her in the car this way and of
whose car it was. I don’t know which it was, but my
arms stiffened and I felt sick down in my stomach the
way you do when you take a foul punch. That thing Lee
had said—”Jesus, but she enjoys it. She’ll beat you to
death in the seat of a car.”
She felt me stiffen up and she looked up at me
questioningly as I shoved her back and got on my side
of the seat under the wheel and fished out a cigarette.
“Bob, what is it?” she asked, her eyes troubled.
“Nothing, for Christ’s sake,” I said. “I just wanted a
smoke.”

“Something happened. Please tell me.”
“I just suddenly remembered your advance billing.
You’re supposed to be terrific in the car seat.”
“I don’t know what you mean. What’s made you
change all of a sudden?”
I don’t know why I couldn’t shut up and leave it
there, But the thing had hold of me and I couldn’t stop.
“What the hell are we being so lovey-dovey about,
anyway? We don’t have to go through this June-moon
routine just to have a little fun in the car, do we? I can’t
figure how you’ve managed to keep your pants on in it
this long, or is it just Lee you take ‘em off for?”
She moved back as though I had swung at her. “Did
you have to say that?” was all she said, and she looked
quietly down toward the water.
“Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?”
“No. None, I reckon,” she said dully.
“Of course, you could pretend I was Lee, if you’re in
love with him. And there must be some of your old
pants lying around here somewhere, in the glove
compartment maybe, to make you feel at home.”
She looked around at me then, and the old defiance
was coming back into her eyes, that to-hell-with-youand-
everything sullenness, and I grabbed her again,
roughly, like a drunken tanker sailor mauling his two-
Hill Girl — 122
dollar slut, and roughed her up as I kissed her. She hit
me in the face, not scratching or clawing the way most
girls would, but with her fists doubled up. She could hit
hard and I felt my eyes water as she slammed my nose
and I could taste the salty tang of blood in my mouth,
and I laughed and kissed her again. Her left arm was
pinioned against my chest but her right kept slashing
at my face and I laughed again and caught it and held
her. She quit then and went limp.
“All right,” she said. “All right.”
She looked down at the floor boards and I couldn’t
see her face. All I could see was the top of her bent
head and the dark honey-colored hair and the hopeless
slump of her shoulders. She didn’t cry; I don’t think she
could cry if she wanted to. She had always fought back
all her life and when she was whipped she accepted it
silently, hating it but not crying. She lay there in my
arms now, knowing she didn’t have a chance against
my strength and indifferent to anything that might
happen to her. The nausea and reaction began to hit
me and I let go of her and slid back and took hold of
the wheel. I noticed my knuckles were white where I
gripped it.
She tried to straighten out her rumpled clothes a
little and then opened the door and stepped out,
picking up her new purse from the seat, and started
down the road without looking back. I put my head
down on the curve of the wheel and didn’t look after
her but I could hear the click-click of her heels on the
bridge, going farther and farther away, and then there
was nothing but the sound of the water over the riffle
down below.
I looked up after a while and she was growing
smaller in the distance. The road was straight here,
going for a couple of miles through the bottom on a
high fill, and I watched her until she was almost out of
sight. After a while a car came up from behind me and
when it reached her I saw it stop and she got in and
then it was gone over the bill on the far side.
Hill Girl — 123
Sixteen
The sun came up and the morning heat began while I
sat there and a car went by now and then, stirring the
red dust of the road and rattling over the bridge. I
could smell the dust, dry and tickling in the nostrils,
and hear the dry-weather locusts beginning to buzz,
things that had always made me happy and glad to be
alive in the country in midsummer and reminded me of
ripening watermelons and white perch in the river
bottoms, but now they didn’t register at all. I stayed in
the car for a long time, smoking one cigarette after
another, and then I walked down below the bridge and
washed the blood off my face at the head of the shallow
riffle.
I picked up some driftwood and tossed it aimlessly
into the pool and watched the pieces make the slow
circuit of the hole in the lazy eddying current and then
spill out over the bar at the lower end. My thoughts
went endlessly around and around the way the bits of
wood did, but there was no way they could escape into
another channel. They always came back to a bowed
blonde head and a hopeless voice saying, “All right. All
right.”
To a bowed blonde head, and why didn’t you use an
ax? It would have been a lot nicer weapon. To a voice
saying, “Jesus, how she enjoys it. She’ll beat you to
Hill Girl — 124

death in a car.” And another voice saying with bitter
defeat, “All right. All right.” The Crane boys are really
an upstanding pair of lads, all right, and capable, too.
The two of them together can destroy an eighteen-yearold
girl with no trouble at all, as easily as you’d take a
hundred-pound tackle out of a play. You did a good job
there, all right. You fixed everything. Everything is
swell now. Just fine. Well, you’ve got nothing to worry
about now. Remembering the thing Lee said about her
won’t hurt you any more now. No, of course not. And it
won’t hurt her any more either, will it? Probably
nothing will ever hurt her very much again. You get her
to like you and get her to come out of her protective
shell and trust you and then slap her in the face like
that with everything you’ve got and nothing is likely to
bother her again. No, everything is fine now and you
won’t ever remember any of the fine things you’ve
discovered about her the past twenty-four hours and
you won’t fall in love with her. And there won’t be any
more of that corroding jealous sickness like there was
there in the car whenever you remember what Lee
said. Like hell.
After a while I climbed back up the path and got in
the car and started down the road. I thought about
going back to Shreveport, but couldn’t think of any
reason for it. The car was headed in the other direction
anyway, and it was too much trouble to turn it around
for the difference it made.
Late that afternoon I was in Beaumont, and after
wandering aimlessly around for a while I took the coast
highway to Galveston. I checked in at the hotel about
nine o’clock and went up to my room and took a bath
and changed clothes. I couldn’t stand the empty room
afterward, though, and came back down. It was funny,
I thought; I’d spent only one night in a hotel room with
her in my life, and now it seemed that all rooms were
going to be empty without her.
I rode downtown on a streetcar and stood around on
Market Street for a while, trying to decide to go to a
movie, but I knew I couldn’t sit through one. Taking a
cab in front of the interurban station, I said, “Down the
line.”
Hill Girl — 125
“Any particular house, Mac?” the driver asked.
“No,” I said.
He let me out at the little café on the corner. It was
the first time I’d been on Postoffice Street in years.
When Lee was still at Rice we had gone down there a
few times.
I went up the steps of a big two-story frame house
and rang the bell. A Negro maid came in a minute and
looked at me through the window and then opened the
door. The parlor was on the right of the hall and I went
in and there was nobody in it. There were the battered
phonograph and the bare floor and the sofas around
the walls and the too bright lights in the overhead
fixture. I sat down on one of the sofas and lit a
cigarette.
Two girls came in. One of them was a tall blonde
wearing a very short dress and gilt slippers without
stockings and she was smoking a cigarette in a long
holder. The other one was dark-haired and smaller and
she smiled at me gaily and said, “Hello, honey. Buy me
a drink?”
“Sure,” I said. They both sat down, the little brunette
on my lap and the blonde across the room. The short
dress hiked up when she sat down and I noticed a
brownish-purple bruise on the front of her thigh just
above the knee.
The Negro girl came in and asked, “What you want?
Rye or beer?”
We all ordered whisky and I wondered indifferently if
the girls would get cold tea.
The blonde said, “You’re awful quiet. What’s
botherin’ you?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I was just wondering why blondes
in whorehouses are always bruised.”
“Well,” she said, “I bruise easy. Don’t you want to
come upstairs and bruise me a little, Daddy?”
“Leave him alone, Peggy,” the little one said. “He’s
my honey. Ain’t you, baby?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m your honey.”
Hill Girl — 126
“Come on upstairs with me, honey. I like big men. I
ain’t ever had one too big.”
“I’ll bet you haven’t,” I said.
“What do you mean by that? Why, you big bastard—”
“Oh, hell, forget it.”
She got off my lap and went over and put a record on
the phonograph. When the music started she came
back out to the center of the floor and stood, tapping
her shoes and wiggling her hips in time with the
rhythm.
I got up and danced with her. “What’s your name, Big
Boy?” she asked, looking up at me. She came only up to
my shoulder.
“Whitey,” I said.
“Mine’s Billie. Don’t you like me?”
“Sure,” I said. “I like you a lot.”
“You sure act like it. What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing. I just haven’t had time to warm up yet. We
need another drink.”
We had some more drinks and then I danced with
Peggy. She would have been a good dancer except for
the professional zeal with which she rubbed herself
against me. She was too busy drumming up trade to
enjoy dancing for its own sake.
A Coast Guard sailor came in and danced with Billie
and when we stopped dancing and had another drink
he took Peggy over in a corner and sat down with her
in his lap. He was about half drunk and insisted on
buying us all a drink, so we had one and then I bought
a round. He kept on asking me if I didn’t have a brother
in the Coast Guard because there was a fella, he said,
when he was up in Alaska on the patrol boat that
looked just like me.
We had some more music and the sailor and Peggy
tried to do an apache routine and the sailor fell down
and she bounced and skidded into one end of the sofa.
They got up laughing uproariously and went upstairs.
“He’s her boy friend,” Billie said. “He comes to see
her all the time and they fight to beat hell. He’s the one
Hill Girl — 127
that put the bruises on her, and last month she hit him
between the eyes with her shoe. Made both of ‘em
black.”
“Very touching,” I said.
“You’re grouchy, baby. Come on, let’s have a little
fun. Don’t you want to go upstairs with me?”
“Sure.” What the hell, I thought. We went down the
hall and up the stairs to her room.
When we were inside she pulled off her dress and she
didn’t have on anything underneath it. She kicked off
her slippers and got a towel out of a dresser drawer
and lay down on the bed, watching me. She was a thin
girl and rather pretty, and nice in a tomboyish sort of
way. I sat down on the side of the bed and lit a
cigarette.