Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(8)

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

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

When she stopped talking I said, “Is that all?”
“Just about. Except that sometimes when I watched
for the car and saw him coming I would run and hide
and he would look all over the house and barn until he
found me.”
“And he was drunk?”
“Most of the time. Not always. Bob, can’t we sell this
place and go somewhere else? I know you want to live
on a farm, the way you told me in Galveston that time,
but you could buy one somewhere else, away from
him.”
“You don’t have to leave the country just because a
man won’t leave your wife alone,” I said. “Not this
country.”
“Don’t you see that’s the reason I didn’t want to tell
you? Can’t you see it, Bob?”
I started toward the front door and she came after
me and caught me in the hall.
“Don’t go without promising, Bob,” she said. She
couldn’t cry, I guess, the way another girl would. All
Hill Girl — 171
she could do was to look at me in that awful way and
keep asking me over and over. I knew then that I didn’t
have any right to do what I was doing to her.
“All right,” I said. “I won’t.”

I didn’t have any idea where I might find him but
thought I would try the house first. It was possible he
might be there. It was dark when I turned into the
driveway off North Elm.
I didn’t knock this time. The door was unlocked and I
went on in and walked back to the living room and he
was there with a girl I didn’t know. They were sitting
on the sofa drinking highballs.
The girl was blonde and about twenty-five, I guess,
and looked as if she knew her way around. She gave
me a cold stare and said, “Well, of all the nerve!”
“Beat it,” I said.
“Lee, who the hell is this monstrosity?” she said.
“My knuckleheaded brother,” Lee said. “Don’t you
ever knock?” This last was for me. His eyes were bright
and I knew he’d had at least enough to be nasty.
“Well, suit yourself,” I told the girl. She seemed to
want to stay. Lee got up off the sofa and I hit him. He
sat back down and a cut place on his lip began to
bleed. What with the black eye he already had, he
wasn’t going to look like much in a little while. He got
back up and I caught hold of his lapel.
“How drunk are you?” I asked.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway?”
“I’ve got something to say to you and I want it to
soak in. Maybe I’d better sober you up.”
He swung at me and landed on the side of my neck,
and then threw two more that I didn’t even bother to
knock down. I pushed him back and let go his lapel and
hit him over the heart with a right. He started to back
up and hit the sofa with the backs of his legs and lost
his balance and I caught him again, this time by the
arm. I could see he was too drunk to hit a clothingstore
dummy, so I shoved him back into the kitchen.
The girl was screaming by this time.
Hill Girl — 172
He was still trying to hit me and I pushed him hard
and he bounced against the wall and sat down. I found
a dishpan and stuck it under the faucet in the sink and
when it was full I threw it in his face and filled it again.
Whenever he got up I hit him and went on with the
water treatment.
The girl was standing in the doorway, still screaming,
and she got on my nerves. I took a step toward her with
a pan full of water and she went out through the living
room and I heard her going down the front steps
yelling, “Stop him! Stop him!” without ever seeming to
pause for breath.
In about five minutes the kitchen was drowned and
Lee sat hunkered down against the wall, not trying to
get up any more. Water ran out of his suit like a spring
branch out of a moss bank and his hair was plastered
down in his face. I dropped the dishpan on the floor
and went over and squatted down on my heels in front
of him.
“You sober?” I asked.
“I can hear you,” he said.
“It won’t take long. I don’t want Angelina to have any
more trouble with you.”

He began to be afraid then. I mean, really afraid.
There was no doubt now that she’d told me, and maybe
before he hadn’t been sure or the liquor had been
holding him up. Anyway, he began to look the way he
had that night when Sam was after him. He tried to get
up and I pinned him down with a hand on his chest.
“Just stay away from my place from now on. You can
remember that, can’t you?”
“I heard you the first time.”
“O.K.” I stood up and walked to the door and looked
back. He was still scared, but I was glad he didn’t have
a gun.
Hill Girl — 173
Twenty-three
I drove slowly going home, taking a long time and
doing a lot of thinking, and the thoughts weren’t very
good company. No matter how often I went over it and
added it up again, it always came out the same. I had
been very near to killing my brother, and if it hadn’t
been for Angelina I might have done it. It had come out
all right— this time. I had warned him, and scared him,
and he would leave us alone—for a while, probably, and
when he wasn’t drinking. But it would wear off. And
just suppose that, instead of the way it had happened, I
had come home unexpectedly one of those times he
was out there drunk and she was having to stand him
off. What then? Nobody knows what he would do under
those circumstances, but it’s not a chance you’d like to
take.
And nothing had been settled by this business
tonight, not a thing. Maybe I had made him think while
he was scared and sober, but what about the next time
he got drunk?
Angelina and I sat up late on the back porch talking
about it. Her idea was the same as the advice Mary had
given me weeks ago, advice I hadn’t understood until
last night. Why didn’t we move away from this country?
It was really the only thing to do if the three of us
couldn’t live in the same place without trouble.
Hill Girl — 174
“I know you’re right,” I said. “It adds up, and it’s the
only thing that does. But it isn’t as simple as that. This
farm is really the only home I ever had. Maybe I did
just live out here in the summers when school was out
and in town the other nine months, but this was home.
And I don’t take to the idea of being shoved off it.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “It’s home to me
too now. But we’re both young and if we went
somewhere else we’d soon get to like it. I know we
would.”
In the morning we had to take that bale to the gin.
Jake wanted to go into town to get his account
straightened out at the store and to buy a connecting
rod and some gaskets for his car, which had burned out
a bearing a few days before, so I suggested he take my
car and go ahead, and I’d take the cotton to the gin.
After breakfast, when I had the team hitched,
Angelina came down to the lot and opened the big gate
for me to drive through. She blew a kiss up to me and
said quietly “Will you think about leaving, Bob? Will
you think about it today?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”
I drove out on the road and watched her walk back to
the house. It’s funny, I thought, how just watching her
walk can be like that.
I thought about leaving. It would be hard to take, but
I think I knew all along what the answer would be. It
wasn’t as if I had to leave this kind of country and go
off to a city and be a bookkeeper or a clerk or
something, or even go to a different kind of farming
country where it was dry, like west Texas, for instance,
where farming was a business and you irrigated and
farmed with tractors. No, there was plenty of country
like this in the South.
And wasn’t Angelina the only thing that mattered,
anyway? It sounded silly and somehow mawkish, like
one of those YMCA guys in college, to say, “I want my
wife to be happy,” but when you thought about it, it
was really just another way of saying you wanted to be
happy. You can’t live with a happy woman without
being happy yourself.
Hill Girl — 175
We could go, all right. It might take a long time to
sell the place, but the bank could handle it for us and
maybe Jake would stay on until it was sold. Jake was
the kind of man you could leave something with. I
would miss him, though. And Helen. They were the
kind of people you wanted to have around. And we still
had enough money to buy another place without having
to wait until this one was sold. Or at least enough to
make a good down payment on one.
I thought about Lee. There was something saddening,
even on a day like this, in thinking of him, because I
would always remember the way things were between
us when we were children, the way he had always
taken up for me and stood as a buffer between the
Major and me. But why think about it? It didn’t do any
good and just made things worse and sooner or later I
would get around to that thing last night when I was so
close to killing him. No, the only thing to do was to
leave here and forget about him. Whatever was going
to happen to him was going to happen, and nobody
could do anything about it.
The air was cool in the late afternoon as I drove back
from the gin and I knew there might be frost tonight. I
looked at the sun; in another hour it would be out of
sight and it would be the blue hazy dusk of October by
the time I got home. Angelina would have supper ready
and she would be happy when I told her about leaving.
I thought of the way her eyes looked when she was
happy and knew it was worth it.
One of the mules had to stop momentarily, and I
grinned as I recalled what had been great wit among
the boys I had known when I was living out there on
the farm with my grandfather. “Better turn yore mule
over, mister. He’s leakin’ on that side.”
Somebody came up behind me in a car, going fast,
and as it swung out to pass the wagon I saw it was Lee.
The top was down and as it went by he looked up and
recognized me in the wagon. He slid to a stop a
hundred yards or more down the road and backed up
until we were side by side, taking up the full width of
the road. I stopped the team.
Hill Girl — 176
He rested his arms on the wheel and looked up at
me. I could see he was sober, but his eyes were like
holes burned in a blanket and there was something
somber in his face.
“I was just going out to your place,” he said quietly.
“You’ve got a short memory,” I said. He was silent
and I went on, “Hoping to find me at home, no doubt?”
“Yes. I was.”
“Well, it’s nice you found me here. It’ll save you the
trip.”
I could see the hurt in his face for a second.
“I wanted to see both of you.”
“Never mind both of us.”
He looked moodily down the road. “When a guy gets
on your list, he gets on for good, doesn’t he?”
“When he works hard enough at it,” I said.
“Well, I don’t blame you, I guess.”
I lit a cigarette and looked at him. “You wanted to see
me. I’m all ears. Let’s have it.”
“I just wanted to say good-by.”
“You did. Last night. Remember?”
“I’m going away.”
“That right? You be gone long?” I asked.
“For good, I think. I turned the house over to Mary
this morning and the lawyers can straighten out the
rest of the settlement. I won’t be back.”
“Why?”
“After last night? It’d just happen again, with all
three of us here. And somebody’d get hurt eventually.”
“Well, you know how to prevent it.”

He looked at me a long time before he answered and
I could see he didn’t want to say it. I had never seen
him so hopeless or so bitter. “It isn’t that simple. Don’t
you think I know enough by this time to leave her alone
if I could? But I can’t. I just can’t. Just knowing she’s
here . . .”
“You don’t have to pull out,” I said. “We are.”
Hill Girl — 177
He shook his head. “No. It’s the only thing for me to
do. I’ve just about worn it out around here, some of the
things I’ve done. That business last night just put the
finishing touches on it. I didn’t sleep any, thinking
about it. There’s nothing to keep me here any more.”
I didn’t say anything. He looked up at me and then
down at his hands on the wheel, and then took out a
cigarette and lit it.
“Well, so long, Bob,” he said.
“So long.”
“I’m sorry about everything.”
“It was just one of those things.”
“I’m going to stop by and apologize to her and say
good-by.”
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t care. But she won’t want to see you.”
“I know. But I’ll try, anyway. I’ll feel better about it.”
“Suit yourself.”
He shifted into gear, hesitating a little, and looked up
at me.
“Well, I won’t see you again, Bob,” he said, still
waiting.
I didn’t move except to pick up the lines. “So long.”
He let out the clutch and moved slowly ahead and
turned once before he shifted into high and got rolling
fast. I watched him until he was out of sight around the
bend at the top of a long grade ahead and tried not to
think about how it had been between us long ago.
Hill Girl — 178
Twenty-four
We plodded slowly on up the long grade and down on
the other side and crossed the upper reaches of Black
Creek on the concrete highway bridge. The sun was
down now and the air was chill in the bottom.
I thought about our not having to leave here now that
Lee was gone and I was glad about it, but there was
sadness in it too. I wondered where he was going and
what he would do and knew that I’d probably never
know because he didn't write letters. He would be in
touch with the bank and the lawyers over the divorce
and property settlement, but he’d never write to me.
Away from here and in a new place where he wasn’t
known he might change. Away from here ... I was just
kidding myself and knew it, but there was some kind of
happiness in at least trying to believe it.
Next summer maybe we could get away for a week in
Galveston. I remembered again that last night we were
there and thought of the bonfire on the beach and the
roaring of the surf and of the way she had been when I
had kissed her, holding her in my arms there on the
robe by the dying fire.
I was within a mile of the road junction where our
country road turned off the highway and up the hill to
go past the farm when I saw a Ford coming toward me
along the bottom with a roll of red dust boiling up
Hill Girl — 179
behind it. When it was closer I recognized it as mine. I
stopped and Jake climbed over the door and got out.
Helen was with him, dressed for town.
Jake looked from Helen up to me uncertainly. “Me
and the Old Lady thought we’d go to the show.”
“Fine,” I said. I wondered why he was so hesitant
about it. He didn’t have to ask me where he could go,
and he was always welcome to use the car.
“If'n you’d rather, I could take the team on in an’ you
could drive the car on home.” He didn’t look up.
“No,” I said. “You’d be late for the show by the time
you got the mules home.”
“I jest thought mebbe you might be in a hurry to git
home for supper.”
“It’ll wait,” I said. He continued to look down at his
Sunday shoes, which were getting dusty in the powdery
red surface of the road. “Did you see Lee?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. He turned and glanced toward Helen.
I couldn’t see her face under the top of the car.
“He’s leaving,” I said. What the hell does Jake care
what he does? I thought. But I had to say something
because the silence was becoming awkward.
“I know.” He nodded. “I seen him a minute or two
jest before we drove off.” He stopped.
I waited. He wanted to say something else but gave it
up and turned back toward the car.
As he started to climb in over the door he paused
once more and this time he looked squarely up at me.
“You sure you wouldn’t like for me to take the team
in, Bob? I’d be glad to do it.”
I got the look in his eyes then and they were worried.
I swung a leg over the side of the cotton frames and
climbed down. There was no use asking him about it.
He wouldn’t talk, but he wanted me to go home.
Helen got out of the car. “I think I’ll ride along with
Jake, if you don’t mind, Bob,” she said. “It’s a pretty
night for a hay ride with your best beau.” She tried to
laugh at the joke but it didn’t quite come off.
Hill Girl — 180
“When you get in with the team I’ll unharness,” I
said. “You can still make the second show.” Nobody
said anything. We weren’t thinking about the show any
more.
I backed the car up fast and swung it around and
started up the road. The dusk was thickening now and I
switched on the lights. When I made the turn off the
road and started up the hill I had to go into low and the
lights brightened up with the engine speed. Whatever
it was that was scaring Jake hadn’t happened yet
because he would have told me. It was just something
that might happen. At the top of the hill I let the Ford
back into high again and pulled the gas lever all the
way down.
When I swung around the last turn I breathed again.
There was a light in the kitchen, and somehow there
isn’t anything more peaceful and reassuring than light
streaming from the window of a farmhouse kitchen. It
was dark now and as I made the turn off the road my
lights flicked across Lee’s roadster parked in front of
the house and for some reason I could not fathom I
reached down and cut both lights and motor and let the
Ford roll to a stop.
All sound and motion died with the car and I was
alone in the night with only my heartbeat in my ears. I
turned and went around the side of the house rather
than through it. I don’t know why. Maybe I was afraid
of the dark part of it and wanted to go back to where
the light was.

As I stepped up on the back porch I could hear
someone talking. It was Lee. I couldn’t make out the
words, but he was talking quietly and slowly and didn’t
sound as if he were drunk. The tightness across my
chest relaxed a little. I opened the door and went in.
The lamp that was burning was the one with the dark
shade and it made a cone of light across the table with
the rest of the room in partial shadow. Lee was on one
side of the table with his arms resting on it and
Angelina sat across from him, deathly quiet and moving
only her eyes.
Hill Girl — 181
There was a bottle of whisky in front of him and a
glass half empty just beyond his left hand, but he
wasn’t very drunk. At least, not as drunk as I have seen
him. Except for the eyes as he half turned toward me I
would have said he was sober. The eyes were blazing.
“Sit down, Bob,” he said. “There by the door.”
“Thank you,” I said. “If you’re leaving, don’t let me
keep you.”
I was still blinking in the light and then suddenly the
cold began to run down across my shoulder blades and
into the small of my back. His hands were lying flat
down before him on the table in the edge of the shadow
beneath the lamp and under the right one was the flat
ugly slab of a .45 automatic. It was mine, and I knew it
was loaded.
I sat down—slowly, the way a man would carrying an
armful of eggs. There was a delicate balance about the
whole thing there under the yellow cone of light and it
gave you the feeling the slightest movement one way or
the other might tip into chaos. There was something
about it that caught you by the throat, even though he
wasn’t wild drunk and cursing or waving the gun. Any
of those things would have scared me, because you
never know about a drunk with a gun, but they
wouldn’t have scared me the way this did.
I kept it out of my voice as well as I could.
“All right,” I said. “This is all very dramatic. But do
you suppose I could have some supper now, or do we
go on rehearsing the high-school play?”
He ignored me. There wasn’t the slightest indication
he had heard me or that he even remembered I had
come in. He just went on talking. And he was talking to
Angelina, or to himself. It was hard to tell which.
“Your hair is different now that you’ve cut it. But it’s
beautiful that way and it still shines the same under
lamplight. I wonder why I never did write a popular
song about it and call it ‘The Beautiful Bitch with the
Lamplight Hair” and maybe be famous all over the
country and have a banana split named after me when
I’m dead, instead of saving strands of it like a highschool
girl or a man that’s sick. Maybe the next thing
Hill Girl — 182
I’d be saving your discarded clothes, and they have a
name for people like that but I can’t think of what it is
and I don’t want to think of it and you don’t know and
there isn’t any way you can know how much I don’t
want to think of it and how much time I spend just not
thinking of it.”
Angelina’s eyes were fixed intently on his face except
for the once she glanced swiftly sidewise at me,
begging me to be careful. I sat perfectly still, hating it,
and hating the quiet the same way I had the night Sam
had been here in this same room. It’s always easier to
take when there’s more noise. A moth fluttered stupidly
about the rim of the lamp chimney with frenzied gray
wings and when it fell inside and was scorched Lee
looked in through the glass at it for a long minute with
grave speculation and then laughed as if at some joke
that only he knew. The laugh wasn’t something you’d
want to hear often. I could feel a drop of sweat run
down my temple and into the corner of my eye and
blinked at the salty sting of it.
He picked up the glass as if weighing it and took a
drink. It wasn’t much of a drink, compared to the way
he usually did it.
“Just exactly right,” he said. “I should have been a
chemist instead of whatever, it is I am, and if we know
any long words that are what I am we won’t say them
tonight. I should have been a chemist because I’ve got
it mixed just right. Or maybe a carburetor. I’m a
carburetor that went funny over a bitch with lamplight
hair. . . . It’s mixed just right because if I mixed in
three more drinks I’d cry and if I didn’t mix in any
more at all for a half hour I’d be sober and that
wouldn’t be good because we all know what the big
word for me is when I’m sober. You know what I’m like
when I’m sober, don’t you, Angelina, darling? I run
from Sam and hide under the porch and get my nice
new white linen suit all dirty. Not nice dirty. Dirty dirty.
And things were simple then because I was just like
anybody else who took it where he could find it and
some of it was good and some of it was better and
there wasn’t anything complicated about it like not
being able to go away or stay away or sleeping nights
Hill Girl — 183
because you could always stay away, at least afterward
and for a little while.”
Angelina’s face was quiet but I could see her eyes
begin to fill. She tried not to blink them. There had
been fear and horrified fascination in them, but now
there was pity, and all the time she knew as well as I
did what he was going to do.
I tried to shift cautiously a little farther out in my
chair to get closer to him. He looked at me out of the
corners of his eyes.
“Don’t move,” he said. I knew who was first on his
list and who would still be first even if I tried to jump
him, so I didn’t move.
“Things were simple then but they’re not any more
and I can’t go away. I went away this afternoon as far
as I could but it was only five miles and then I couldn’t
go any farther. Then I saw how easy it would be if you
went with me. Just the two of us. And it’ll be easy, just
like having your picture taken. Raise your eyes up and
look at me and don’t look down there and cry. I’m sorry
you don’t like whisky because you should always have
one for the road and besides it makes everything easy.
Just put your hand out here to me across the table and
let me hold it. Here . . .”
She tried to draw back and she wanted to look over
at me for help but was afraid to because I might jump
for him. He had the gun up in his right hand now and
there was no way he could miss if the thing went off,
not from that distance. He caught her hand in his left,
drew it gently across the table toward him, folded the
fingers over into a little fist, and closed his own fingers
over it. I could feel a great scream coming up inside me
and fought with everything I had to hold it in.
“Lee!” I said, still trying not to scream like a woman.
“Put down that gun!” I wondered if I were saying it
over and over like a phonograph. Maybe I had been
saying it for hours.
He looked at me as if I were a stranger speaking a
foreign language. Whatever world he was in, I wasn’t
in it and he didn’t know me.
Hill Girl — 184
“Lee!” I tried again, still yelling, and it got the same
deadpan lack of interest. I fought to get my voice down
to the same conversational level as his. “Listen, Lee.”
“Yes?”

I had to get through to him some way. I had to make
him listen. He was loaded and ready to go and if there
was to be any stopping him it was going to be now.
“Listen, Lee.” I leaned forward as far as I could without
giving the appearance I was going to jump him.
“Listen and get this.” Afterward I remembered that
some part of my mind was off by itself very objectively
thinking what a damn fool thing that must sound like,
saying, “Listen,” over and over. “I want you to
understand. You’re drunk but you can understand me
and know what I mean if you try. You can shoot that
gun only once before I’ll be on you and I’ll have it. You
know that. I’ll break your arm but I’ll have the gun.
You’ll have one shot. Just one.” I knew I was saying the
thing over and over like a parrot because I could hear
my voice somewhere a long way off, coming through
the roaring in my ears, and I wondered if I were yelling
again or keeping it down so he could understand it or
would listen.
“Maybe you haven’t figured out yet what I mean by
just one shot with it before I take it away from you. It
means that if you shoot her you won’t have time to turn
it on yourself the way you think you’re going to. And if
you want to try it on me first you’ll be taking a long
chance too, because you’re drunk and can’t aim
straight enough to get me cold the first time, and there
won’t be any second.” He wasn’t very drunk and I
wasn’t at all sure he couldn’t hit me in any spot he
pleased with one shot, but I hoped he was just drunk
enough to believe me.
“But if you shoot her, I’ve already told you I’ll have
the gun before you can shoot again. So get this and do
your best to get a good picture of what I mean. When I
get it we’re going to sit here.”
I watched his eyes to see if it were getting through to
him. If it did there was a chance, but if it didn’t we
Hill Girl — 185
were all done, and I tried not to look at her because I
was afraid I couldn’t take it.
“We’ll sit here for an hour or two hours or whatever
it takes until you’re cold sober and shaking and scared.
And then I’ll shoot you. Sober.”
I stopped. It seemed all time must have stopped too
but I could hear the ticking of the clock in the living
room. I tried to stop counting. Slowly Lee’s hand
opened and I saw Angelina slide hers out of his grasp
and pull her arms in toward her on the table.
“Get up, Angel,” I said. “Go into the bedroom and
close the door.”
She wasn’t crying now but she was white as chalk
and was holding her face together like something made
of glass that was already broken and would come apart
any minute. She got up very slowly and started around
the end of the table. I watched Lee. He still had the gun
in his hand and his eyes followed her until she turned
at the corner of the table and started across the room
toward the door behind him and then he turned his
head away, straight forward, and let it slump down.
She went into the bedroom and closed the door and I
could feel her there on the other side in the darkness
holding onto herself and waiting and trying not to cry
out, still standing because I hadn’t heard her fall.
Lee looked up at me. Neither of us had moved. A
strand of hair had fallen down across his forehead and
it looked like a pen slash in India ink against the dead
white of his face. My knees were weak and I could feel
the muscles twitching in them.
“Bob,” he said. Only that—”Bob.” He said it as if he
were going to add something else, but he never did. He
raised the gun until it was just under his right temple
and fired. Just at the end, in that last thousandth of a
second, he jerked it a little as he pulled the trigger and
it went higher man he had aimed but it wasn’t high
enough to make any difference.
I heard her fall then but I didn’t go in to her until
after I had gone over to where Lee was slumped
forward over the table. His right arm was hanging
Hill Girl — 186
down and I put it up on the table and stood there
crying.
THE END
Hill Girl — 187