Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(7)

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

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


It was a cheap sort of place with a rough-board bar
and some flimsy tables. A bunch of seamen were
parked on stools at the other end of the bar, talking
and laughing a lot. I sat down at this end and ordered
whisky.
The bartender was big, about my size, and toughlooking.
His whole aspect said “ex-pug” to anyone who
knew the signs.
“Just leave the bottle out here where I can reach it,
pal,” I said. “I might want more than one.”
“How do I know you can pay for it?” he asked
suspiciously.
“You don’t,” I said. “Just leave it.”
He left the bottle there and put his hands on the bar.
“Smart guy, ain’t you? Well, let me give you a little tip.
Don’t start nothing around here.”
Hill Girl — 129
“Write me a long letter about it sometime,” I said.
“I’d love to hear from you.”
He gave me a hard stare that lasted the length of
time it took me to pour another drink and throw some
change on the bar, and then he walked away, giving me
the business out of the corners of his eyes as he went.
Where do you suppose she is right this minute? She
could be anywhere except home. She’d never go home.
How much money did she have? How could she earn a
living? You know damn well the only way she could
earn her living, and the way she feels after the
treatment she’s been getting, she probably doesn’t
much care how soon she starts. Especially after the
beautiful demonstration you gave her of what to expect
from her fellow beings. You really helped her a lot. You
helped yourself a lot too, didn’t you? Why don’t you go
on back to the hotel and take a shower and have a nice
sleep? You know why not, don’t you? Well, anyway,
you’re not in love with her, are you? Of course not. You
just sit around these swank little tearooms because you
like the decor and you enjoy the company of that cute
bartender. The sonofabitch. You could go on back
downtown and see a movie. You’d enjoy sitting through
one. Sure you would. Or you could go on back to the
farm. That’s going to be fun, living out there alone with
all those beautiful hours of speculation as to where she
is and what she’s doing. And what she must think of
you. Don’t forget that. That’s the nice part. Well,

anyway, you have some nice things to remember about
those twenty-four hours with her. A vanquished honeycolored
head and a beaten voice saying, “All right. All
right.” Sam Harley couldn’t break her spirit in eighteen
years, but you came as near to breaking it in ten
minutes as anyone ever will. You’re an exceptional guy,
all right.
A man wearing a suit with too much padding in the
shoulders came in and sat on the next stool. He was
about my age and looked like some sort of
sharpshooter, a small-time gambler, maybe, or pimp.
“Do you mind if I pour one out of that bottle, Mac?”
he asked.
Hill Girl — 130
“You can pour it in your hair if you want to,” I said.
He poured a drink into a glass the bartender set in
front of him.
“Hiya, Jack, you big devil, how’s tricks?” he greeted
the bartender. They seemed to be old pals. I ignored
their conversation and lit a cigarette. Square Shoulders
poured another drink out of the bottle. Jack stopped in
front of me.
“That’ll be eighty cents,” he said, spreading his big
freckled paws on the bar.
“What’ll be eighty cents?”
“Them two drinks.” He nodded toward Square
Shoulders’ empty glass.
“All right,” I said. “It’ll be eighty cents. So what?”
“Eighty cents on you. Pay up.”
“You know what you can do with your eighty cents,” I
said.
“Now, wait a minute, Blondy,” Square Shoulders
said. “Maybe you just don’t understand what you’re
getting into. Jack here’s a regular guy, but you don’t
want to get wrong with him. Ain’t that right, Jack?”
“You gonna pay?” Jack asked. I could see that the
way I was feeling, a little of Jack was going to go a long
way. His conversation palled on you after the first few
bars.

“Come on now, Blondy,” Square Shoulders said,
putting his hand on my arm. “You asked me to have
them drinks with you, didn’t you?”
“You can buy your own drinks, you goddamned
pimp,” I said. I put my hand in his face and pushed. He
went over backward with the stool on top of him.
Jack was coming around the end of the bar and I got
up off the stool. He looked big, and I knew he probably
had twenty pounds on me. But tending bar doesn’t do
much for you, and he had a roll of fat around his belly.
At least, I hoped it was fat.
I hit him first and this seemed to surprise him a lot.
He’d no doubt been bouncing drunks and barroom
brawlers for so long he’d forgotten what it was like to
Hill Girl — 131
have somebody get under his guard. He came on in,
though, and jabbed me. For a man his size he was fast,
plenty fast.
He hit me a couple of times and I found out
something else about him, the reason he was tending
bar in a joint like this instead of fighting. For all his
size, he couldn’t punch his way out of a cardboard box.
I let him hit me again and then moved in close and
started slugging the roll of fat around his middle. That
was where he lived, all right. I could hear him suck in
wind every time I landed. Square Shoulders got up and
bolted past us toward the door and I stuck out a foot
and he fell into the door on his face. He finally made it
outside with blood running into his mouth. Of course,
while I was doing this, Jack let me have it and knocked
me down. You can’t have any hobbies or side lines
when you’re fighting with a pro, even a poor one.
When the cops got there the place was a mess. They
got us separated and put me into a patrol wagon. My
face was covered with blood but I couldn’t be sure how
much of it was mine and how much Jack’s. He had cut
my face up pretty badly in several places and I had a
very sore left hand.
The next morning in court it was ten dollars and
costs for drunk and disorderly, which was light
considering the total damage to the place, and I
gathered that Jack’s establishment wasn’t too highly
thought of and nobody worried much about what
happened to it. I refused to pay the fine. I don’t know
why. It didn’t make sense, even to me, for the hotel
room would cost me more than the fine by the time I
got out, but I felt bad and didn’t care much anyway.
It must have been around two P.M. When the jailer
came around and unlocked the door and motioned to
me. “You, Big Boy,” he said.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Turnin’ you out. Your fine’s been paid.”
I grunted and went with him. He was crazy, I
supposed, or he had his guests mixed up, because
there wasn’t anybody in Galveston who’d be paying my
Hill Girl — 132
fine. Or anyone who even knew I was in jail, for that
matter. But that was his funeral, not mine.
At the desk they handed back my knife and watch
and an envelope with my money in it. There was about
eighty dollars.
“Some sport,” the sergeant said as he watched me
count it. “You with a roll like that and letting your wife
pay your fine.”
I wondered whose wife was going to be disappointed
when the old man didn’t get home. “Wait till I take
down my hair,” I said, “and we’ll both have a good cry.”
“Beat it, wise guy, before we run you in again, on a
vag.”

I beat it. I was walking down the steps outside when I
saw her. She was diagonally across the street in the
doorway of a cheap restaurant where she could stay
almost hidden and still watch the steps of the police
station. I made no sign that I had noticed her and went
through an elaborate business of lighting the last
cigarette I had while I tried to decide what to do. If I
waved and started toward her she might try to get
away, since it was obvious she didn’t want me to see
her. And I didn’t want to go chasing a girl through the
streets, not with my face and clothes looking the way
they were. I’d be picked up as a sex maniac or escaped
lunatic inside three blocks, if I didn’t have my head
blown off by some outraged citizen before the cops got
me.
Crossing the street slowly and looking straight
ahead, I turned and started up past the café. I didn’t
look toward the place, but I was sure she would move
back inside the doorway. She did. When I suddenly
made a quick turn into the entrance, she was there and
we were face to face.
“Hello, Angelina,” I said. I was conscious of thinking
that as an opening remark that would probably
establish a new all-time high in stupidity, but I couldn’t
think of anything else.
She didn’t say anything. She looked at me just once
and then tried to get past me back onto the sidewalk
Hill Girl — 133
with her eyes averted. I reached out and caught her
arm and she stopped.
“I don’t know what to say, Angelina,” I said. “Will you
walk up the street with me a little way? Maybe I can
think of something.”
“I reckon so,” she said.
We walked slowly along in the hot sun with people
turning to stare at my cut-up face and the blood on my
clothes and I held onto her arm all the way for fear she
would somehow disappear. But I couldn’t put any of the
things I wanted to say into words.
We kept on going on out 20th Street toward the
beach, block after block in silence. Finally she said,
“You’re holding my arm awful tight. It’s beginning to
go to sleep.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and self-consciously released my
grip.
“How did you get to Galveston?” I asked after a
while.
“A man and his wife gave me a ride to Beaumont. I
rode the bus from there.”
“How did you know I was in jail?”
“I happened to be out on the sea wall by the hotel
yesterday morning and saw you drive away from there
in the car going toward town. I was out looking at the
water. Around noon I saw the car again, parked over
that way”— she waved in the direction of 24th—”and
this morning I happened to be going by there again and
it was still there. I asked some men at the taxi place
across the street if they had seen you and they told me
about the police taking you away in a paddy wagon. I
didn’t know what a paddy wagon was, but I figured out
it must mean they had put you in jail, so I went over
there and they said you could get out if I paid your fine.
So I paid it.”
I couldn’t look at her, “Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said simply.
“There must have been some reason.”
Hill Girl — 134
“I thought maybe you needed help. Maybe you didn’t
have enough money left to pay it yourself. And I owed it
to you.”
“Yes, you owe me a lot,” I said. “You’re deeply
indebted to me.”
“It cost you a lot of money, buying these clothes for
me, and you were awful nice to me sometimes.”
I knew I couldn’t take much more of it, and I knew
too that she wasn’t doing it intentionally. She really
meant it. I had hurt her terribly, but still that streak of
bitter and uncompromising honesty of hers wouldn’t let
her forget that I had—just for a few moments, anyway
—done something she regarded as nice.
“You didn’t want me to see you there outside the jail,
did you?”_
She waited a long time before she answered. “I don’t
know, Bob. It’s all kind of mixed up. I wanted to see
you again and maybe even be with you, but still I
didn’t. There’s something sort of wonderful about
being with you when you act like you like me, but you
can turn so mean without any warning and you can be
so awful hard. I don’t know why the things you say hurt
so much.”
I stopped there on the corner and took hold of both
her arms and turned her around facing me. We were
standing in front of a billboard on a vacant lot in the
hot sun, with cars going past us in the street, but it
didn’t make any difference. I had to tell her.
“I promised you once I wouldn’t ever be mean to you
again, didn’t I? And I broke it the next day. So I won’t
promise again, but I’ll try to tell you what happened
there by the river. I don’t know how I can tell you,
because I don’t think I know myself. The only thing I
can think of is that it was jealousy. It hit me so
suddenly I didn’t have time to think.”
“Why? I mean, I don’t understand why you would be
jealous.”
“Because of Lee and all that other business. The car.
You know what I mean. I’m not trying to hurt you now,
Angelina; I’m just trying to explain to you.”
Hill Girl — 135
“But why did it make any difference to you? It didn’t
before.”

“That was before. And a long time ago.”
“Not so very. Nothing has been a long time ago with
us. It’s only been three days.” She was looking down,
tracing a design on the pavement with the toe of her
shoe, and I noticed how scuffed and dirty it was. White
shoes weren’t for hitchhiking.
“Just three days. But I didn’t love you then. I do
now.”
She thought it over quietly for a minute before she
answered. “It’s that way with me too, Bob.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. That’s the reason I came down here. I thought I
might see you again. It was just a chance that you
might decide to come on down here instead of going
somewhere else.”
“You don’t hate me for what I said? And did?”
“No. Not now. I think I finally figured it out for
myself and guessed what was the matter. I wouldn’t
have followed you except for that. But you won’t do it
again, will you, Bob? I couldn’t stand it again.”
“No. That’s all finished,” I said.
I kept it from her, all right, this fear I had, but I
couldn’t fool myself any about it. Was there any way of
being sure it wouldn’t happen again? How could there
be?
Hill Girl — 136
Eighteen
The desk clerk regarded me suspiciously when I
registered again with Angelina and wanted to be
moved into a double room. The combination of my
whiskery, cut-up face with its evidence of a two-day
binge and a wife who showed up unexpectedly with no
luggage was obviously a little strong to take straight,
but he managed it and moved us into a room
overlooking the beach.
When the boy had gone I picked her up and walked
over and sat down with her in the armchair by the
window. We were silent for a long time and just sat
there holding onto each other and listening to the
swish of the surf beyond the sea wall.
“You’ll hold me a lot, won’t you?” she asked at last.
“Like this. So I’ll forget about last night and the night
before that.”
“Were they bad?”
“Awful. I kept trying not to think about not seeing
you any more. But you can’t make yourself not think,
can you?”
“No,” I said. “You can’t turn it off.”
“Did you miss me, Bob?”
“Yes.”
“Very bad?”
Hill Girl — 137
“Very bad. And on top of that was the way I’d hurt
you. That was something to live with.”
“Don’t think about it now.”
She leaned back against my arm and ran her fingers
lightly over the bruises and cut places on my face.
“Poor face. Poor old sweet face, it’s all hurt.”
“It’s not hurt.”
“You tell me who did it and I’ll go scratch his eyes
out.”
“Let’s forget about my face and talk about something
nicer. Yours, for instance.”
“No. I will not forget about it. It’s a beautiful face and
I love it. And I want to fix up the cut places.”
I lost interest in my face as a topic of conversation in
a very short while, so I kissed her.
That changed the subject for both of us, all right. I
wondered why kissing her could always cloud up the
issue in a way that whisky never could. The jagged
edges of facts and the sharp corners of realities
became blurred and softened and all the noises muted.
“I love you so,” I said.
“What is it like with you, Bob? Do things seem to sort
of run together? Is it like flying through colored
clouds?”
“Right now it’s like having a high fever and being full
of quinine. Everything’s fuzzy and my ears hum.”
“It doesn’t sound very nice for you. Maybe what you
need is a doctor.”
“All right,” I said. “Call a doctor.”
“No. But I want it to be nicer for you. I want you to
see the colors. Big clouds of colors swinging around
and passing through each other. I don’t think men have
any fun being in love. Don’t you see any colors?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Even with your eyes closed?”
“I didn’t close them. I don’t think I did.”
“Kiss me again, with your eyes closed.”
Hill Girl — 138
I kissed her again and I think I closed my eyes, but it
wasn’t any different. There was the wildness of it and a
paradoxical tenderness and a feeling of suffocation, but
it was just the same.
“Did you see them?”
I shook my head.
“Poor men. They don’t have any fun. No colors.”
“I see the ones that are you. Like your hair. It’s a
beautiful color. It’s just a little lighter than wild honey.”
“That’s nice, but it isn’t the same thing. You don’t
just see these colors. You feel them.”
“I can see your hair and feel it, too. Against my face.”
“I want you to. I’m going to have it bobbed tomorrow
and you’ll like it even better.”
“No, I won’t. It couldn’t be any better. And let’s not
talk about tomorrow. We’re in no condition for longrange
planning.”
“We’re not?”
“No. Planning requires great clarity of thought.”
“I don’t want any what-you-said of thought. I just
want you to kiss me.”
“That’s better,” I said. “More kissing; less planning.”
“You can’t plan when you’re kissing me?”
“Not objectively.”
“Why not?”
“How could I kiss you and do anything objectively?”
“We won’t plan about the hair then? Not now?” she
murmured.
“No.”
“Have you ever felt this way about anybody before,
Bob?”
“No. Not ever.”
“We couldn’t have felt this way about anybody
before, could we?”
I closed my eyes and put my face down against her
throat and prayed I wouldn’t see Lee again, or hear
him. Let’s don’t hear that thing again. Wasn’t once
Hill Girl — 139
enough to hear it? It doesn’t mean anything now
anyway. It was a thousand years ago in another place,
and another girl named Angelina. Not this one.
We didn’t go back out any more that afternoon or
night. We had supper brought up to us and ate with the
cool breeze from the Gulf blowing in through the
window and afterward sat watching the people go by
on the sea wall.
Once, while we were lying quietly in the dark, she
stirred suddenly in my arms and said, “Oh, Bob, the
car!’
“What about the car?”
“We didn’t bring it back. It’s still downtown where
you left it.”
I laughed. “Well, what if it is?”
“Won’t somebody be apt to steal it?”
“That would be fine.”

“Oh.” There was silence for a minute, and then she
said, “You don’t like the car, do you?”
“It’s something like that, I guess. I don’t like for us to
be in it.”
“That was what it was when we had that fight by the
river, wasn’t it? It was the car that suddenly made you
remember things, that made you mad.”
“Let’s don’t talk about it.”
“We won’t, if you say so, but I’d rather talk about it
than to have it coming between us. I’m sorry about it,
but I’m not ashamed.”
“You shouldn’t be. I think I understand it all,
Angelina. Let’s just bury it.”
The next morning I was awake in the early dawn. It
was cooler, with a light breeze blowing off the water
and the low-flying clouds that mean a clear day later
on. The sea wall was deserted and quiet and the low
sound of the surf beyond was peaceful. Angelina was
sleeping quietly beside me, with her cheek on the crook
of her arm and the cloud of hair spreading across the
pillow. I leaned over and kissed her on the throat and
she opened her eyes and smiled.
Hill Girl — 140
“You need a shave. Your whiskers stabbed me on the
throat.”
“It’s a fine day,” I said. “We’ve got lots to do.”
“Oh, can we plan now?”
I grinned. “At the moment, yes.”
“All right. What do we have to do?”
“First we have to cash a draft. We need some more
money.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I’ve still got about fifteen
dollars of your money. I meant to give it back to you.”
“My money? Haven’t you realized yet what that man
was mumbling about back there in Shreveport the
other day? It’s our money now.”
“All right, smarty, I’ll keep it. But you say we have to
have some more? Why? And how do we get it?”
“We have to have more because I’ve only got about
seventy-five left and we’re going to be here a week.
And we’ve got to buy you some more clothes and a
traveling bag and a bathing suit and”—I gave the sheet
a sharp tug—”a nightgown. Look at you.”
She smiled at me lazily, uncovered to the waist. “Do I
need a nightgown? Why?”
I looked at her and began to feel less like the great
planner. “I’ll be damned if I know now.”
“Go on and tell me why I need one.”
“Well, we could get you one eight feet long and made
out of canvas with a drawstring at each end, so I could
think out our schedule.”
She pulled the sheet over her, clear up over her
head, with only one brown eye looking out. “Now go
ahead. I can see your thinking is too easy to interrupt.
The teenciest little thing upsets you.”
“And after we get all this stuff done, we’ll go
swimming in the surf,” I went on.
“Couldn’t we go this morning? There was a sign on
the pier saying they rented suits.”
Hill Girl — 141
“Put you in one of those gunny sacks? Like hell we
will. It’d be a sacrilege, like dressing Helen of Troy in a
burlap bag.”
“I knew it.” The one brown eye regarded me
impishly.
“You knew what?”
“That when you did want to, you could say nicer
things than anybody.”
“Nuts,” I said. “I’m a great oracle and I speak only
profound truths.”
“Great oracle yourself. You’re just sweet.”
“That’s no way to speak to oracles. I’ll take it up with
the union.”
She bobbed her head out from under the sheet. “Is
there any room in this big schedule of yours where I’m
going to get my hair cut?”
“You don’t seriously mean to cut it off, do you?” I
said.
“Of course, silly. Haven’t I been telling you for the
last two or three days? I’m going to have it cut real
short. I saw a girl on the street the other day and hers
was cut that way and curled up in little curls close to
her head and it was the cutest thing you ever saw, and
mine is naturally wavy so it wouldn’t be hard to make it
stay and that’s the way I want to do it, and I almost
went up to her and asked her where they did it and—”
She was talking faster and faster and started to sit up
in bed, carried away with the project. I put a hand over
her mouth.
“Relax,” I said. “Saying hair to you is like breaking a
fire main.” She bit my hand.
“I can get it cut today, can’t I?”
“I don’t think you ought to cut it off. I think it’s
beautiful the way it is.”
“Yes, but how do you know what it’ll be like cut
short? It’ll be lots prettier.”
“No. It couldn’t be.”
“It’s my hair, Bob Crane, and I’ll do what I damned
please with it.” She hitched away from me on the bed
Hill Girl — 142
with the sheet up to her ears ‘and her eyes angry.
There was that stubborn-mule look in them.
“You’ll like hell do what you please,” I started, and
then caught myself and shut up. After all, it was her
hair, and Sam Harley had been telling her she couldn’t
cut it all these years and trying to browbeat her, and
look where he had wound up in her eyes. You couldn’t
get anywhere by trying to bully her. She didn’t bully
worth a damn. You might get your way if you
overpowered her, but it wouldn’t be worth what you
lost in the process.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We’ll have it done today. I didn’t
mean to get tough about it. It’s just that I think it’s so
lovely the way it is.”
“I’m sorry, too. Oh, Bob, I don’t want to be stubborn
about it, and I won’t do it if you absolutely don’t want
me to. But I know you’ll like it better the other way.
And all my life somebody has been telling me what to
do with it and I didn’t like it when you started to sound
like Papa.”
I grinned. “Well, it’s all set I don’t want to wind up
where Papa did.”
It was only about seven-thirty when we came out of
the hotel, so we walked along the sea wall a long way
before we went downtown, with Angelina excitedly
asking questions about the shrimp boats offshore and
whether any big ships tied up at the swimming pier and
laughing at herself when I explained that the water was
only about four feet deep under it. She insisted we go
down on the beach and look for shells. After a while we
came back and caught a streetcar and had breakfast at
a restaurant near the interurban. She wouldn’t eat
anything except some sliced bananas and kept telling
me how we looked in the mirror that was on the wall
across from our table.
We hunted up a beauty shop and I left her there
while I went off to see about the bank draft. When we
parted in front of the place, she said, “What on earth
are you looking at, Bob?”

Hill Girl — 143
“Your hair,” I said. “I’m seeing it for the last time and
I want to remember what it looked like if this new
business is a flop.”
She laughed. “You’ll be back in about an hour, won’t
you? I don’t like you to be away from me.”
“Yes,” I said. “But you’ll probably be in there two
hours or longer. You may have to wait, because I think
you’re supposed to have an appointment.”
I looked up an old friend of the Major’s who was in a
cotton firm and he went down to his bank with me and
helped me cash a draft. I bought a traveling bag for
Angelina and had her initials put on it and told the shop
to deliver it to the hotel and then went to a florist’s
shop and ordered some flowers. When I had finished
this I walked down Market to 24th and the car was still
there across from the bar. One of the taxi drivers in
front of the cab stand next door grinned at me as I
went by and said, “Say, ain’t you the guy that tangled
with Jack the other day?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“He’s been telling it big about what he’ll do if you
ever show up down here again. Says the reason you
haven’t picked up your car is because you’re afraid to
come back.”
I went on to the car. His eagerness to see a free fight
was a little disgusting. In front of the place I hesitated
and wondered if I should go in, but then I remembered
I was supposed to meet Angelina in about a half hour
and went across the street and got in the car and drove
off, feeling proud of myself as a married man with
responsibilities. I wondered at it a little. Before, the
prospect of another fight with Big-mouthed Jack would
have had an irresistible allure.
I parked across the street from the beauty shop and
waited. After a while she came out of the shop and
stood looking up and down the street. I felt warm and
happy watching her and waited a minute before I hit
the horn and waved at her. The close-cropped hair was
a shock, as I had known it would be, but now with the
sun on it and striking fire in the curls I could see that it
was going to be easy to live with and that by the time
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she got ready to change it again I would be just as
outraged as I had been this time. I got out and went
across the street and she waited for me eagerly.
“Well?” she asked.
“You’re right,” I said. “I was talking through my hat
all the time. It’s lovely.”
“Feel,” she said. I put my hand on the side of her
head, very gently so as not to muss anything, and felt
the brush of the ringlets against my palm.
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” I said.
She grinned at me. “No. You have too much trouble
working out your schedules back there. Let’s stay
downtown until we get finished.”
We went around to one of the department stores and
picked out a blue bathing suit and a woolly beach robe
of canary yellow and some sandals and a bathing cap. I
bought some bathing trunks for myself while she ran
ecstatically through their stock shopping for more
clothes. We filled the car with bundles and went back
to the hotel. The flowers were there in the room when
we came in. She put her arms up around my neck and
pulled down hard, with that way she had, like a
drowning swimmer, and with her lips against my ear
she whispered fiercely, “Hold me tight like this, Bob.
Don’t ever let me go.”
Hill Girl — 145
Nineteen
Those six days were wonderful.
We would go swimming in the surf in the early
morning, sometimes before sunrise, and lie on the sand
afterward and talk and come in at nine or later,
ravenous for breakfast. She never seemed to tire of
battling the surf or of marveling at the existence of it.
It was a source of continual surprise to her that the
Gulf was never calm, and she would never call it the
Gulf, but always the ocean.
Most of the girls who came down to the beach were
content to wade out a little way and then come back
and drape themselves attractively around on the sand,
but Angelina wanted more of it than that. The water
fascinated her and she seemed to derive some strange
exhilaration from fighting with the rollers, and the
higher they came, the better she liked it. And the
strange part of it was that she couldn’t even swim at
first. I took her to the pool up the sea wall every
afternoon and gave her lessons and she learned fast.
She turned heads whenever she appeared on the
beach and shed the yellow robe, and she knew it, all
right, but just lounging around on the sand was always
secondary with her to the thrill of the waves. When she
did finally tire of it we would go up on the sand and
sprawl and I would always lie down near her and
Hill Girl — 146
smoke a cigarette and watch her while she took off the
white bathing cap and shook out the curls.
She would grin at me. “Why do you always lie where
you can see me, and look at me like that?”
“Now, that’s a brilliant question,” I said. “You
wouldn’t have any idea at all how you look in that suit,
would you?”
“Do you like it?”
“Just when you’re in it. Or should I say, when you’re
partly in it. I can’t look at you without running a
temperature of a hundred and four. That’s sex at its
very worst, isn’t it? And still it all seems good and
right. Maybe the symptoms are all wrong and we are
pure and our love is platonic.”
“What’s platonic?” she asked, and I told her.
She laughed. “Well, I guess it hasn’t been very
platonic so far, but we could begin now, couldn’t we?”
“Right now,” I said. “We’ll begin this morning.”
“It sounds like fun. I always wanted to sit on a
pedestal. I’ve read about it in books. How long do you
think we ought to try it?”
“At least as long as we’re out here on the beach. We
want to give it a fair trial.”
We were silent for a long time and finally she threw a
handful of sand on my shoulder and said, “What are
you thinking about? You’re so solemn.”
“Angelina. Your name. It’s so musical and has a sort
of rippling sound to it. Why did they name you that? Is
it after the river?”
“Yes,” she said. “I was born in the Angelina River
bottoms, when Papa was renting a farm there. Do you
think it’s silly?”
“I think it’s beautiful. I’m glad you were born there.
Suppose you had been born up north. On the Penobscot
or the Schuylkill.”
“Would you have loved me?”
“I would have loved you if you’d been born on the
north fork of the Yangtze Kiang.”
Hill Girl — 147
One night when we were lying in darkness in the
room, late, after the noises out on the sea wall had died
away and there was only the eternal sound of the Gulf
and I thought she was asleep, she suddenly threw her
arms about my neck and pressed her face against my
neck. “Bob,” she whispered, “let’s don’t ever go back.
Can’t we always stay here?”

“It has been wonderful, hasn’t it?” I agreed.
“Oh, it isn’t just that, Bob. I was so miserable back
there, and all this has been so—so—I don’t know how
to say it, but I always kind of choke up when I think
about it, and about you, and I’m afraid to go back. Is
there any way we could stay?”
“No,” I said. “I have to go back to work.”
“But you don’t have to work there, do you? You could
work here or somewhere else, couldn’t you?”
“No. Remember, the farm’s there and we have to live
on it.”
“But you don’t have to live on a farm. You could do a
lot of things. Think of what you learned in college.”
I grinned in the darkness, thinking about what I’d
learned in college. Opening up holes in the line or
knowing how to counter a left hook wasn’t exactly
valuable in later life, particularly when you weren’t
good enough for the pros in either one.
“I’m sorry, Angelina,” I said. “But I like living on the
farm, and I’m going to show you how to like it too. It’ll
be different from what you’ve known of it.”
She sighed. “I know that, Bob. Anywhere I lived with
you would be fun and I want you to be happy, and I
won’t say any more about it. Only sometimes I get
scared when I think about going back.”
We went dancing nearly every night. She had never
danced in her life and I’m no gazelle on the floor, but I
taught her to follow in a short time, and with the
natural grace of all her movements and a good sense of
rhythm she was soon ready for more accomplished
dancers than I, not that she ever got a chance at them.
One of the few bad moments I had during the six
days occurred while we were dancing. The band was
Hill Girl — 148
playin “Stardust” and we were swaying close together
when she looked up at me and said, “You know, Bob, I
was just thinking of how many things you’ve taught me.
How to swim, and how to dance, and of course you
showed me how to be happier than anybody else in the
world. It seems like you taught me everything.”
Every thing but one, I thought, and Lee had to teach
her that. I missed a step and almost tripped, and then
recovered and went on. I don’t think she noticed.
There was one speck of comfort in it, though, I
thought. I noticed that the thing never did get me
completely down to the point where I blew up, the way
it had that morning by the river. I wondered if I was
beginning to get control of it, or whether the ugly
shock of it was beginning to wear off with repetition.
I wondered for a moment if that business was the
thing she had said she was afraid of, the thing that
made her scared to go back. But no, I knew she wasn’t
in love with Lee. And as far as anything Lee would do
or say—well, after all, he was my brother and we’d
have nothing to fear from him.
The only way I could ever account, afterward, for this
blindness was just that I didn’t understand how much
Lee had changed and was changing.
I didn’t think of Lee and Mary very often those six
days. It was too difficult to think of anyone else at all.
Once or twice I found myself wondering what was
happening back home and if there was a chance that
Sam Harley had scared Lee enough to make him stop
and think. I hoped so. I was afraid for him if he ever
lost Mary, and I know that he could lose her. It had
always been Lee for her ever since we were children,
but she had a lot of pride, and someday he might hand
her more than that pride would let her take.
On the last evening we drove far down the island to a
long, deserted stretch of beach, and there, just after
sunset, we parked the car and gathered driftwood for a
fire. When the fire was burning fiercely and throwing
sparks into the deepening twilight we changed into our
suits, one on each side of the car, and ran down to the
water. There was a strong breeze blowing up from the
Hill Girl — 149
south and the surf was running high, breaking far out
on the first bar with a booming thunder that filled and
overrode everything in this world we had to ourselves.
We went far out and felt the force of it and the salt
taste of it in our mouths and I kept close to her always,
trying to see the white bathing cap against the seething
white of the breakers in the darkness and feeling her
come pounding back against me in the pushing force of
the sea, the warm smoothness of her body against me
for an instant and then sliding past in the confusion of
darkness and water, something silken that had brushed
against me and was gone. I would plunge after her and
catch her in the backwash and we would stand braced
against the pull of the outgoing current, laughing, and I
would kiss her, tasting the salt on her mouth, and then
another toppling sea would loom over us and break and
send us sprawling into the churning white.
We went back up the beach to the fire, which had
burned down to a bed of red coals. The big log I had
put across the middle of it was burned in two and I
piled the ends on the embers and the wind fanned them
into flame. We got out the rolls and wieners and the
long-handled wire fork I had bought at the five-and-tencent
store, and roasted the wieners over the coals.
Afterward we lay back on the yellow robe and watched
the wind searching among the embers and sending the
sparks flying out across the empty dunes. The beach
was dark for miles and we were the only people on a
black, wild continent. She had the bathing cap off and
the glow of the dying fire highlighted the curls and
warmed the smooth lines of her body.
“I wonder if we’ll ever come back to Galveston again,
Bob,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “We can come back.”
“I don’t know whether I want to or not,” she said
slowly. “Maybe we oughtn’t. Somehow it couldn’t ever
be like this again, because nothing could be, and it
would be better if we could always remember it like
this.”
I didn’t say anything and we turned from looking at
the fire, and it was the way it had been that morning at
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the river when we couldn’t get enough of seeing each
other, only this time there was no Lee or the thought of
Lee, and after a long time I kissed her and there was a
wildness in her like that of the sea running out there in
the darkness, a wildness and a fierce urgency that was
like nothing I had ever known before. The booming of
the surf was a sound we would both hear as long as we
lived.
We left at noon the next day and as I drove the car
across the causeway she was quiet. She looked back
once and when she caught my glance on her she smiled
a little but didn’t say anything.
Hill Girl — 151

Twenty
It was about ten P.M. When we arrived back in town.
Our reception was anything but heartening. When we
rolled up to the stop line going into the square, Grady
Butler, one of the sheriff's deputies, flagged me. He
came over and put his foot on the running board.
“Bob,” he said, “I wish you and that wild-haired
brother of yours would get together about this car.”
“What’s the trouble?” I asked.
“Trouble? Why, he comes in the office in the
courthouse about three days ago and reports his car
stolen. We get the license number and everything and
put out pickup notices on it, and then I find out from
somebody else that it’s not stolen at all and that you’ve
got it. So I jump him about it and he says he don’t
remember it, he must have been drunk.”
“Was he?” I asked.
“Drunk? Sure he was. He was drunk both times. I
wish you birds would get together. There’s enough
headaches in this business without guys like Lee Crane
makin’ it worse.”
“O.K.,” I said. “I’m taking the car back to him now
and I’ll see if I can’t straighten him out. You haven’t
seen him around the last hour or so, have you?”
“No, thank God.”
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“What’s wrong?”