“You took a hell of a long time finding it out,” I
grumbled, but glad he was getting some sense at
last I could still hear the girl inside the room cursing
obscenely and shrilly with the monotonous repetition
River Girl — 45
of a phonograph record with the needle stuck. Afraid
she would get him started again, I stepped over and
stuck my head in through the smashed panel.
“Pipe down,” I said. Then I saw her, and began to
feel scared for the first time. She was sitting on the
bed in a sleazy-looking kimono with her blonde hair
rumpled as if she’d just got up, and if she was a day
over sixteen, I was sixty.
River Girl — 46
Six
She saw me. “Who the hell are you?”
“Never mind,” I said. “Just stop that noise.”
“Why, you jerk!”
I heard the boy behind me and turned around. He
was putting on his clothes, stuffing the shirttail
inside his trousers. He had quit crying, but his face
was white and trembling and I could still see that
wild look in his eyes.
“Move down the hall,” I said, trying to get him out
of earshot of the girl. “Then put your shoes on. We’re
going for a ride.”
He looked for an instant as if he wanted to jump
me again, then he thought better of it and walked
down toward the stairway.
“What are you going to do, Jack?” Abbie asked.
“Ain’t you going to lock him up? My God, I don’t
want the crazy ba—”
“Yes,” I said roughly, still thinking about the girl.
“I’m taking him out. Give him a chance to get his
shoes on. I’ll be back here in about ten minutes, and
while I’m gone don’t let that girl out of here! And
don’t let anybody in.”
“All right, but—”
River Girl — 47
“Look,” I said. “Don’t let anybody in! And I mean
anybody. Tell ‘em you’re dead, or the girls have gone
to summer camp or the country club, or anything.
But keep ‘em out.”
I motioned for the big kid to go on ahead of me
and we went out and got in the car. “Where we
going?” he asked. “Jail,” I said, turning the car
around. I could see his face begin to harden up
again. “I reckon I’ll get worked over when you guys
get me in there—for fighting a cop. I’ve heard about
that.”
“You won’t if you keep your big mouth shut,” I
said.
“You mean you ain’t going to tell ‘em?”
“No,” I said. “Just keep clammed up and don’t say
anything to anybody. Especially about that girl.”
“I’ll get her yet,” he said, with that tight sing to his
voice.
“Shut up,” I said. “Look. That’s probably the
stupidest thing in the world, making a statement like
that. If anything ever happens to that girl, you’ll go
to the chair for saying what you just said if anybody
can prove it. What’d she do to you, anyway?”
I shot a quick glance at him. His face was all
screwed up as if he couldn’t make up his mind
whether to fight again or to cry. “She’s a lousy,
chippy little—”
“Never mind what she is. What did she do?”
“Me and her was married about eight months ago.
We run off. Then her old man caught us and had it
un-nulled because she ain’t but fifteen.”
“She’s what!”
“She ain’t but fifteen. I told her I’d wait around till
she was old enough to get married proper and they
couldn’t un-null it on us, but she run off with another
fella, an old guy twenty-five or thirty that didn’t want
to marry her.”
“You’re sure that’s how old she is?” I asked. “Yeah.
Of course. Ain’t I knowed her since she was a little
girl? I always figgered on marrying her.”
River Girl — 48
“All right,” I said, easing through the traffic in the
square. “You just keep your mouth shut and you
won’t get in any trouble.”
I turned him over to Cassieres and called Buford
from the jail. “Lorraine back yet?” I asked when he
answered. “She’s just coming in now. How’d you
make out? Did you get it straightened out?”
“Part of it,” I said. “Can you meet me in front of
the jail? Right now?”
“I’m on my way.” He hung up.
In about two minutes his car pulled up behind
mine. I went back and leaned in the window. “What
is it?” he asked quietly, looking worried. “I’ve got the
guy in there,” I said. “He’s just a kid about nineteen
or twenty and he’s all right, but he’s off his rocker
about the girl. I think I’ve got him shut up so he
won’t do any talking. But here’s the thing. It’s that
girl. She’s fifteen.”
“Sweet Jesus! If Soames ever—”
“I know. And it’s straight too. The kid says he’s
known her all his life. We’ve got to get her out of
there. You got any money on you?”
“A hundred or so. Can you handle it all right?”
“I think so. I’ll take her down the highway and put
her on a bus.”
“She’ll just wind up in another cat house
somewhere else. So you know about not buying her a
ticket into some other state, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m not going to buy her a ticket of
any kind if I can help it. I think I know a way to
handle it.”
“So she won’t come back?”
“There’s no way to guarantee that. If I work it
right, though, she probably won’t.”
He took out his wallet and handed me a couple of
fifties and some twenties. “There’s a hundred and
sixty. Jack, I’m glad there’s somebody around that
office can use his head.”
River Girl — 49
“Now’s as good a time to tell you as any other,” I
said. “I’m quitting as soon as this stink blows over. I
don’t like it.”
“No,” he said. “You think it over. I don’t want to
lose you.”
“I’ve already thought it over. But we haven’t got
time to argue about it now. I’ve got to get back down
there.”
“That’s right. I’ll have that kid booked on a vag or
something, and as soon as we get the girl out of
town well tell him to beat it.”
“O.K.”
I went back to my car and drove down to Abbie
Bell’s. The Negro girl came to the door, still looking
scared. “Ain’t nobody heah,” she said, trying to close
it. “Miss Abbie say ain’t nobody comin’ in heah.”
“I know,” I said, pushing past her. Abbie heard me
and came out of the parlor into the hall. She’d got
her hair straightened out and had a drink in her
hand this time instead of the empty bottle.
“Come on in, Jack,” she said, and then to the maid,
“Bring this man a Collins, Kate. And put some gin in
it; he’s not a customer.”
We went into the parlor and I closed the door-
“God, I’m glad you got rid of that big gorilla, Jack,”
she said.
“Never mind. Where’s the girl?”
“Up there in her room still bitching her head off.
Did you ever hear such a foul-mouthed little bag in
all your life?”
“How did she get in here, Abbie?” I asked curtly.
“And how long ago?”
She took a sip of her drink and looked at me with
puzzled innocence. “What do you mean, how did she
get in here, Jack? She just came in through the front
door and said she was a hustler.”
“Do you know how old she is?” I asked.
“How old? Lord, no. Why should I?”
“She’s fifteen.”
River Girl — 50
“No! Is that all? She looks older than that.”
“Yes,” I said sarcastically. “She looks sixteen.” She
lit a cigarette and stared at me with amiable
exasperation. “Well, what am I supposed to do, Jack?
Send her back to get ripe? She—”
“Didn’t you even ask her how old she was?”
“Of course not. Why the hell should I? Look, Jack,
this is a cat house, not a girls’ boarding school.
Jesus, if they’re old enough to give it away, they’re
old enough to sell—”
I cut her off. “How long’s she been here?”
“I don’t know. Three, four days.”
“Well, she goes out. I’m going to take her clear out
of the county and put her on a bus.”
She looked at me and saw I meant it. “Oh, O.K.
She’s a pain in the neck, anyway. Stays plastered
about half the time, and she never makes any money.
She’s so foul-mouthed even the roughnecks can’t
stand her.”
“Well, tell her to get her stuff packed.”
“She hasn’t got any stuff. All she had when she
came in here was the clothes she was wearing, and
that’d better be the way she leaves, too.”
“She had on a kimono a while ago.”
“I gave her that to keep her from running around
here naked. It stays. And, by the way,” she went on,
“who pays for my door?”
“You do, I guess.”
“I’ll see Buford about it and get him to make that
big ape—”
“You’d better stay away from Buford. The way he
feels right now, about that girl being in here, he’d
just as soon shoot you.”
She rattled the ice in her glass and shrugged.
“God, men! What a bunch of muttonheads! Why
don’t they let women write the laws?”
“How did all that fuss start anyway?” I asked.
River Girl — 51
“I don’t know, exactly. He was here all night, and
as near as I can get it from Bernice—the girl he was
with, the one who had his clothes—everything was
all right and peaceful until this morning he opened
the door and started out in the hall for something. I
guess he must have seen this other little bag then—
she must have been going down the hall. She’d been
swacked to the ears all night in her room, and I
guess he hadn’t seen her before. Anyway, Bernice
said he let out a roar like a stuck pig and lit out
down the hall, yelling at every jump.”
The maid brought in my drink. Abbie went out,
leaving the door open, and in a moment I could hear
her going along the hall on the upper floor. There
was the sound of shrill feminine argument and after
a few minutes she came back.
Picking up her drink from the table where she’d
left it, she sat down, shaking her head. “She’ll be
down in a minute. I’d tell you what she said you
could do, but I can’t repeat it.”
I took a sip of my drink. “And that big kid’s
completely off his nut about her. How do you figure
a thing like that?”
“It’s men, I tell you. They should never let ‘em out
alone.”
In a minute the girl came down the stairs and
stood in the doorway. She had combed her hair,
which was dirty blonde, and had on a blue summer
dress with a wide, dark-blue patent-leather belt and
high-heeled white shoes with no stockings. She
might have been pretty if she hadn’t shaved off all
her eyebrows except a thin line and painted them on
with black grease or something. She had rebuilt her
mouth, too, the upper lip an exaggerated cupid’s
bow that went a third of the way up to her nose. She
looked at me with edged contempt.
“Sit down,” I said. “We’ll be going in about half a
minute.”
“Who says we’ll go anywhere?”
“I do,” I said, lighting a cigarette.
River Girl — 52
“Why, you stupid jerk! You know what you can
do?” She told me what I could do.
Abbie smiled at me. “She’s a dear little thing, isn’t
she?”
I got up. “Come on, kid. Let’s go.”
“And what makes you think I’ll go?”
I shrugged with elaborate indifference. “You either
go where I’m trying to take you or go to jail. And you
won’t care for our matron. She’ll like you, but you
won’t like her,” I said, making it all up. The matron
at the jail was all right.
“Oh.” She hesitated. “And where do you think
you’re going to take me?”
“I’ll tell you all about it on the way. You going?”
“All right,” she said harshly. “It can’t be any worse
than this dump.”
We started out. “Good-by, dear,” Abbie said, still
smiling sweetly. The girl stopped in the doorway and
told her what she could do.
“You are a dear,” Abbie said. The girl told her
some more.
“How about knocking it off before we get out in
the street?” I said. “There might be men present.”
We went on out to the car. I had it all pretty well
thought out by this time. It was about seventy miles
down to Colston, and if I remembered correctly, the
New Orleans bus went through there around one in
the afternoon. It was a little after eleven now. We
could make it. I threw the coat with my wallet in it
into the back seat and got in.
The girl climbed in, crossing her legs with her
dress up over her knees. “How about a cigarette?” I
gave her one and we started out. “God, what a jerk
burg this is,” she said. “Anything would beat this.”
We skirted the back streets to hit the highway
without going through town, and when we got out on
the road I opened it up to about sixty. “Where’s your
home?” I asked.
River Girl — 53
She took a drag on the cigarette and threw it out
the window. “I haven’t got any.”
“You must have come from somewhere.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I’m not trying to take you home.”
“Where are we going?”
“Oh, you’ll like this place,” I said. “It’s just outside
Bayou City, kind of like a farm, you might say. Only
not a real farm. And it’s not a reform school, either. I
mean, when you see it, reform school would be the
last thing you’d ever think of. It’s run by a man and
his wife, by the name of—oh, nuts, I know their name
as well as I know my own. It’s—ah—Look in my coat,
back there, and get my wallet out, will you? I think
there’s a card with the address and their name and
everything.”
“It sounds like a crumby dump to me,” she said,
but in a minute she turned around in the seat and
lifted up the coat, slipping the wallet out. “Here,”
she said. “Look and see if you don’t find a card in
there,” I said. She looked through it. “I don’t see
anything.”
“I must have lost it, then,” I said. “Well, doesn’t
matter. I know how to get there. Just throw the
wallet back in the coat.”
She put it back. “You don’t think I’d go to a joint
like that, do you?”
“Well, if you’d rather go to jail—” She was silent
for a moment. “What do they do down there?” she
asked.
“Oh, it’s a nice place. They work in the vegetable
gardens and milk the cows, things like that—lots of
outdoor exercise. Have movies, too. Once a week,
travelogues and science stuff, you know. The girls
like it. No boys there, of course. It’s for girls only.”
“Jeezus!”
I didn’t say anything. After a while she turned to
me with a smile and said, “You know, big boy, maybe
you’re not such a sticky creep, after all. You have got
a good car, and you’re kind of good-looking, in an
River Girl — 54
ugly sort of way. Why don’t you and me just go on to
Bayou City and go on a little party? I could show you
a good time.”
“Relax, kid. Put it away. I’ve been to parties.”
“God, what a jerk!”
She shut up after that and was silent the rest of
the way to Colston. It was about five minutes of one
when I pulled up and parked across the street from
the bus station.
“Well, what are we going to do here?” she asked
with that same insolence.
“I thought I’d better phone ahead so they could get
a ce—I mean a room ready for you. Probably have a
phone in the bus station over there. You stick here in
the car and I’ll be right back.”
It was Saturday afternoon and cars were jammed
in the streets and hordes of people roamed about. I
took out the car keys and walked across to the bus
station.
“What time does the New Orleans bus go
through?” I asked the girl at the ticket window.
“Due here in about three minutes. And it’s only a
five-minute stop. You want a ticket?”
“No,” I said. “I’m expecting somebody.”
I went back to the car. She looked at me without
interest. “They didn’t have a pay phone. There’s a
drugstore just around the next corner. I’ll try there.”
“Well, don’t drop dead of anything. It would just
kill me.”
“I won’t be gone more than ten minutes,” I said.
“Don’t you try to run off.”
“Now that I’ve thought about it, you can drop
dead.”
I went around the corner to the drugstore and
bought a pack of cigarettes, then went over and
squeezed in at the fountain and ordered a lemon
Coke. When the boy brought it I heard the big air
horn of the bus down the street and knew it was on
time. I drank very slowly and looked at the clock. It
River Girl — 55
was four minutes past one. Then I heard the blasting
roar of its exhaust in low gear, and saw it go past the
corner, headed for New Orleans. I paid for the Coke
and went back to the car.
She was gone. I reached in for the coat, hoping she
had left the wallet. It wasn’t a very good one, but it
was my only one. It was still there. She’d just taken
the money.
I locked the car and went up the street to a beer
joint, taking my own money out of my watch pocket
and putting it back in the limp wallet. It was dim
inside and I found a place at the bar. “A bottle of
Bud,” I said, wondering why I always got these
headaches in the afternoons.
Oh, hell, I thought, she’s probably stolen plenty of
things before. You could see what she was like,
couldn’t you? You didn’t teach her anything; nobody
could. She was born that way.
It’ll be all right now, I thought. At least, until
something else starts to break loose. Suddenly I
wanted to get in the car and just go on driving the
way it was headed, go so far I could never find my
way back. And it wasn’t only Buford and the grand
jury I could feel behind me. What was she doing
now? Was she down on her knees in soapy water
trying to beat all desire out of herself with a
scrubbing brush, or was she looking for another
withered leaf on that scrawny and pitiful vine?
River Girl — 56
Seven
Sunday morning I went to church to hear the
Reverend Soames, and after I was there I wished I’d
stayed away. There was something about him that
made me uneasy, gave me that same feeling an
escaping prisoner must have when he hears, far
behind, the first baying of the hounds as they pick up
his trail. He was a big, impressive man with a
manner about him that kept reminding me of Buford,
and his voice had a quality of persuasiveness and
irresistible power that you could not escape no
matter where your mind would turn. It brought you
back and held you there and made you look at what
it had to show.
He didn’t rant or raise his voice, but he talked
from information. “If the law-enforcement officers of
this community will come to me, I will be glad to tell
them where to find these places that have so far
eluded their vigilance and that apparently only boys
in their teens can find. I will point out the slot
machines and gambling places, and give them the
addresses of the brothels operating openly in this
town, and give them the names of the women
running them.”
The church was packed, and I glanced around at
the people sitting near me. They were completely
River Girl — 57
absorbed, their faces serious. How many of them will
be on that grand jury? I thought. When it ended I
went home. People were standing around in front of
the church in little groups, talking. Maybe it was
only my imagination, but I thought I could feel their
curious, cold glances on my back.
I switched on the light at the side of the bed and
looked at my watch. It was two in the morning. I had
been lying there, smoking one cigarette after
another, for three hours without ever approaching
sleep. At every turn of my mind she stood before me,
still-faced, un-speaking, very beautiful in her
shapeless, terrible clothes. There was no way to get
around her; she blocked every path of thought, every
escape I tried. I could shut my eyes and see her, and
when I opened them she was there looking at me
from the darkness.
I’ve got to stop it, I thought. I can’t go on like this.
I’ll be crazy as that big kid. She’s just a woman who
is being killed by loneliness in that swamp, and what
woman wouldn’t be? What’s different about her? Is
this going on and on until I go back there and see
her again? And would it stop then, or get worse? I
cursed, and got up to go into the bathroom to find
Louise’s sleeping tablets. I took two of them and lay
down again. I tossed and turned for what seemed
like hours. It must have been about three when I
finally got to sleep.
Monday was an endless flat plain of heat, and of
hours that seemed to go on forever. I walked
through stagnant time like a man in a dream, hoping
the day would end and dreading the night that had
to come when I would have nothing to do but lie in
the darkness and fight it again.
Buford had been tickled with the way I had got rid
of that girl. “That was a good job,” he said. “She
won’t be back.”
“You can’t tell,” I said. “A girl like that is capable
of anything. You don’t know what goes on in her
mind.” I didn’t want to talk about it. Everything
River Girl — 58
irritated me. I sat eating lunch in Barone’s cafe
without knowing what I ate and not even caring.
I went to a movie after supper and walked out
before the end of it. I went home because I couldn’t
think of anywhere else to go. I sat there in the empty
house, turning off the radio because I couldn’t stand
the noise, and then turning it on because I couldn’t
stand the silence.
I went out in the hall and looked at the telephone. I
could call him, I thought. Call Buford. Just tell him I
might not be in tomorrow. I wouldn’t have to go up
the lake. I could still show up for work even though
I’d said I might not be there. It wouldn’t mean I was
going, would it? No. It didn’t make any sense. I
wouldn’t call him. Then I had the telephone in my
hand.
“Elks Club,” a voice said. I couldn’t even
remember asking for the number.
“Is Buford there?” Maybe he wouldn’t be. That
would be fine. Then I would have that on my side. If I
didn’t locate him I couldn’t go.
“Just a minute.” There was a long silence. She was
crying when she said he was drunk, I thought, crying
with the dry sound of tearing something inside her
throat. She didn’t want to tell me. “Hello. No, he’s
not here.”
That settled it. That settled it once and for all. I
couldn’t go because I couldn’t find Buford.
I called Barone’s,
I called the Eagles.
I was sweating, and cursing under my breath. I
shook the telephone like a woman with a sick baby
trying to get a doctor late at night. I put it down and
sat there looking at it, feeling my nerves jumping. I
wanted to tear it loose from its wires and throw it
down the hall.
Lorraine! I thought. Maybe I could get her.
I could hear it ringing. She’s not at home either, I
thought, and began to have the crazy idea that all
the rest of the human race had disappeared and I
River Girl — 59
was left here alone to go mad beside a telephone
that didn’t go anywhere or connect with anything.
“Hello,” a girl’s voice said.
“Is this Lorraine?” I asked stupidly.
“Yes. Oh, is that you, Jack? What is it?”
“This is Jack Marshall,” I said, and then realized
she already knew who it was.
“Yes. What is it?”
“I-ah—” What the hell did I want with Lorraine?
Then, suddenly, I had the crazy idea she must think I
was calling her up to ask her for a date because
Louise was out of town. Why would she think a crazy
thing like that? I thought angrily. Had I ever done—
I began to function again. “Oh. I just wondered if
you’d tell Buford in the morning that I might not be
in. I can’t locate him.”
“Why, yes. I’ll tell him.”
“Thanks.”
It wasn’t until I had hung up that I realized I
hadn’t given any reason at all. Well, what of it? I
thought. What difference does it make? If you’re
going twenty miles back in a swamp because you
can’t stay away from another man’s wife, why worry
about a little thing like not making up a lie for your
employer?
I stood there for a minute in the hall and then,
without even thinking about it, as if I had planned it
for a week, I took a flashlight and went out in the
yard, along the wall of the house where the vines
were growing. There were some morning-glories,
and when I found a young, small one I dug it up with
a butcher knife, taking a lot of dirt with it, and
packed it in a small cardboard box. I went back
inside the kitchen with it and poured some water on
the soil, then stood there looking at it with a sort of
stupid and unaccountable happiness like a kid who
suddenly feels good for no reason at all.
What the hell am I doing this for? I thought. Am I
losing my mind?
River Girl — 60
* * *
The sun was coming up now. I could see shafts of
yellow light filtering through the dense canopy of
timber like those in the pictures of the interiors of
dim cathedrals. I sat very quietly in the boat, drawn
far back under the overhanging trees where the
slough came out and joined the main body of the
lake. From where I was hidden I could not see up the
lake at all, only a short section across and down,
toward the south, but there was no reason for
looking—I would hear the motor long before he came
into sight.
I looked at my watch. He must have left up there
over an hour ago, at least, which meant he should be
down here in less than an hour. With his motor he
could make it in that much time; it would take me at
least three or a little over. I lit a cigarette and
smoking it in fierce, quick puffs, impatient at the
slow dragging of time. A water moccasin swam
across the flat mirror of the slough, an undulating
dark head at the apex of a spreading, V-shaped
ripple on the water. It came up past the boat,
paused, looking at me for an instant with the cold,
unwinking, incurious eyes like little chips of stone,
then submerged, dropping from sight without effort
into water the color of tea.
Maybe he wouldn’t come. Maybe she had been
telling me the truth when she said he had no certain
days for going to the store. I looked at the watch
again; less than five minutes had passed. Why hadn’t
I brought at least a semblance of fishing tackle with
me? What would I look like if I met someone up here,
a man going up the lake in a boat for no reason at
all, not fishing because he had nothing to fish with?
Suppose I met him, or he saw me? There was
nothing in the boat except that ridiculous cardboard
box of moistened earth, shoved as far back out of
sight as possible under the seat in the bow. I’m
crazy, I thought. I’m insane. No man in his right
mind would be doing this.
River Girl — 61
A half hour passed while I smoked cigarettes chain
fashion and listened for the motor. Then I heard it,
or thought I did, and held my breath to listen. Yes,
there it was, still far up the lake. I waited while the
sound grew in volume, and pulled farther back under
the overhanging limbs into the shelter of the leaves.
The boat came past the entrance of the slough, and
then for a moment I could see him, less than fifty
yards away, sitting up straight in the stern with the
big floppy straw hat set exactly level on his head and
looking neither left nor right as he went on down the
channel. My boat rocked gently in his spreading
wake and then he was gone, the sound of his motor
dying away in the distance down the lake. I pushed
out from under the trees and started up.
It was after ten and the sun was brassy on the
water when I went past the place where I had
camped. As I came around the bend I wondered if I
would see her swimming in the long stretch of the
lake above, but there was no sign of her, the water
flat, unbroken, and shining like a mirror in the sun. I
throttled the motor down and turned into the
entrance of the slough, feeling my heart beating and
conscious of the tightness in my chest. Without even
thinking of it, I went on past the boat landing,
around a swing of the slough, and pulled up at the
bank under the low overhang of a tree. Even before
you will admit to yourself that you are a criminal, I
thought, you begin to act like one without conscious
thought. I tied the boat up and stepped ashore with
the cardboard box cradled in my arm.
Pushing through the timber and underbrush
because the trail was below me, to my left, I came
out into the clearing, seeing the brown, dry grass
and the weathered ruin of the house squatting in the
sun. I was out of breath and had a feeling I had run
for miles. Would she be swimming? Or would she be
at the house? What would she be doing?
I went on across the clearing in the hot sun like a
man walking across an endless plain in a nightmare
he cannot stop. Why, it hasn’t changed at all, I
thought. It looks exactly as it did before, and then
River Girl — 62
the realization came that it hadn’t been years since I
was here last. I had been four days.
I stopped in front of the porch, not seeing the old
hound this time, or any sign of life. A grasshopper
sang in the still, bright heat, and out at the edge of
the timber a crow cursed me with raucous insolence
and flew away. I stepped up on the porch. “Hello,” I
said. “Doris, where are you?”
There was the soft sound of bare feet from the rear
of the house and I stepped to the door. She had
come into the front room, apparently starting to the
door to see who it was, but when she saw me she
stopped. She had on a different dress this time, of
another color at least, but an identical shapeless
sack of cheap cotton too large for her, and she was
still barefoot.
“Doris,” I said. “I—” The words quit on me and I
stood there foolishly with the clumsy box in my arms.
She said nothing at all. Still standing unmoving in
the center of the room with her arms down at her
sides, she stared at me with the fixed intensity of
someone in a trance.
“I brought you another vine, Doris,” I said
idiotically, not knowing what to do with it now that it
was here. “You see, it’s very green and fresh. I think
it’ll live.” When she still made no move, I shifted it
awkwardly to my hands and set it on the dresser.
She spoke then, though her voice was still little
more than a whisper. “Why?”
“Well, I—I mean, the other one was dying.”
“No,” she said in the same strained and tightened
voice. “Why did you come back?”
I stepped toward her and still she did not move.
She watched me with that tortured intensity of the
eyes, like someone suffering pain or grief and trying
not to show it. The dark hair, uncombed but still
lovely in its disarray, framed and intensified the
paleness of her cheek, and her face, tipped slightly
up to look at me, was blank, tightly held, as devoid of
emotion as the hot, choking, and explosive silence
about us in the room was devoid of sound.
River Girl — 63
“I came back,” I said quietly, “because I had to. It
wasn’t because I didn’t try. There wasn’t any way I
could stay away from you. You don’t have to tell me
what I’m doing, I know what I’m doing.”
I reached out and took her by the arms and then
began to go wild. I had my arms around her and was
kissing her. She held onto me like someone
drowning, and I could feel the trembling of her arms
about my neck.
Her face was against my shoulder and her voice
was muffled, but through the wildness of it I could
hear her say, “Not here. Please, not here,” the voice
breaking as if she were crying.
River Girl — 64
Eight
We lay on old leaves in mottled shade, very close
together, touching but not talking, the lake a sheet
of stainless steel seen here and there through
openings in the trees and time arrested and held
motionless across the dead center of noon. Her head
was on my arm, her face turned toward mine with
her eyes closed, and I brought up a hand and ran it
spread-fingered through the dark disorder of her
hair.
There had been little talk between us, no need for
talk, or thought of it. There were still the thousand
things about her I wanted to know, but they seemed
far away, things I could ask her later, after we had
been pulled out of the spent and languid backwater
and caught up again in the running current of time.
Lying there, I thought about it and tried to
remember if it had been real or only a dream, that
fantastic and unbelievable thing of two people
supposedly or at least otherwise sane, walking
without a word or a sign, wooden-faced, not even
holding hands or whispering, straight out of the
house and across the clearing in silence and while
sunlight without any cajoling or pleading on the one
part or that age-old simulation of reluctance on the
other, without any necessity for communication, as if
River Girl — 65
the whole thing had been planned and discussed for
months and rehearsed like a big wedding. And when
we had reached this place she had stopped and
turned. That was all.
I thought of a fire burning for a long time inside a
house with all the doors and windows closed,
consuming the interior but still contained, until at
last the roof caved in and it burst out with
uncontrollable fury. Why? Was it just the loneliness?
There had been no reproach afterward, no silent
accusation in the eyes or any mention of my coming
back after she had told me to stay away. She had
cried once, but only for a minute, with her face
muffled against my arm, and then it had gone away,
unmentioned and unexplained.
She opened her eyes. They were very near, and
looked enormous and deeply blue and quiet while
she studied me as if she had never seen me before.
Reaching up a hand, she ran soft fingertips across
my face. “I’m sorry I hit you. The other night.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I knew then I could come
back. It wasn’t me you were trying to stop.”
“You knew that all the time, didn’t you?”
“Yes. You were fighting yourself so hard you might
as well have been carrying a sign.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “I thought then it would
matter. But it doesn’t. I guess it’s like pain when you
have it long enough—before you reach the point you
can’t stand it any longer you go crazy, or die, and it’s
all changed. I’m either crazy or dead.”
“No,” I said. “Just beautiful.”
“You like my hair-do, don’t you?” It was a joke, but
she didn’t laugh. There were just those enormous
eyes, very close, watching me.
“Yes. The first time I saw it I thought that whoever
chopped it up like that should be horsewhipped. But
now I like it.”
“I guess there are some things you can’t stop,” she
said quietly, more to herself than to me.
“There’s no way we could have stopped it.”
River Girl — 66
“It’s like it was sometimes when I was out there
swimming in the lake at night. There’d be just the
black top of the water with the stars reflected on it,
and I’d wonder why I couldn’t swim down until I
drowned, just stay under, as if the water was a black
sheet over me. You can’t, though. If you can swim
you can’t drown yourself. When I began to hurt I
always come up.”
I could feel the anger begin to flame up inside me.
“What did he do to you? Is he mean when he’s
drunk?”
“No,” she said hesitantly. “Only once. We had a
fight But I don’t like to talk about it.”
“I’ve got to know,” I said. “Can’t you see I have to
know?”
“It was the loneliness. I was beginning to go crazy
with it, I guess,”
“It was more than that, I said.
“No. It was mostly that. We were all right until we
came up here.”
“What did you come up here for, anyway? Neither
of you belong in this swamp.”
“We know that now, but it’s not easy to get out.”
“But why? I mean, in the first place.”
“Running,” she said woodenly. “It was a place to
hide.”
Somehow, I had known that. “Him?” I asked. “Or
both of you?”
“Just him. It’s something that happened before I
met him.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. He never did tell me. But, as I said,
it was all right before we came up here. Between us,
I mean. The moving around was bad, all right, and
we never had much because he was always changing
jobs, but he was good to me and I guess we were still
in love with each other. But this place was too much
for us. I guess it was more my fault than his, but I
couldn’t stand it. We got on each other’s nerves and
River Girl — 67
began to fight, and then he started drinking like
that. He won’t leave here because this is the first
place we’ve ever found where he didn’t sooner or
later see somebody who might recognize him so we
had to move again. And it’s getting harder for him to
get any kind of job. He looks older than he really is,
and of course he can’t ever give any references or
say where he worked before.”
“But,” I said wonderingly, “why didn’t you leave?”
She looked at me. “How?” she asked simply.
“Good God, you mean he won’t let you?”
“In a way.”
“But,” I protested, “how could he keep you from
it?”
“I said in a way. He won’t take me down to the
highway, or let me have any money. Where could I
go?”
“But why?” I asked. “Why does he want to keep
you here if there’s nothing between you any more
except fighting?”
She was silent for a moment. “I’m not sure,” she
said at last. “I think I know, but I don’t like to talk
about it”
“You have to tell me,” I said.
“As I said, I’m not sure. But I think he suspects I’ll
turn him in. I guess it must be the law he’s running
from and it has preyed on his mind so long he
suspects everybody. Maybe you crack up after just
so much of that Anyway, I think that’s what he
believes—that if he let me get away from here I’d
report him to the police because we’ve fought so
much. Especially after he found I was trying to run
away. I quit asking him after a while because it
always caused trouble between us, and I began to
steal from him.”
“Steal?” I said. “How could you steal from you
husband?”
“Stealing is what I mean,” she said. “You could call
it anything you liked, but I prefer to call it that.
When he was drunk, or asleep, I would take money
River Girl — 68
out of his clothes. Not very much, because he never
had much, but just a dime now and a quarter the
next time so he wouldn’t miss it. One day he found it,
where I had it hidden, in a baking-powder can, and
knew I was planning to leave someday when he was
down the lake. He led me down to the edge of the
water and made me watch while he threw the coins
out in the lake, one at a time, and then made me
throw some, and when I refused at first—” She broke
off. “Are you enjoying this?”
I felt sick. “I can stop that,” I said. “I’ll take the—
I’ll take him in.”
“No,” she said. “Can’t you see that’s exactly what
he’s accusing me of? Not in words, of course, but in
his mind. I can’t do that. All I want to do is leave.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Four months. Maybe five. You lose track of time.”
Yes, I thought, I guess you would.
I sat up and got two cigarettes out of my pocket
and lit them, passing one down to her. She lay back
with her head on the leaves, smoking the cigarette
and looking up at me. The shapeless old sack of a
dress was pulled down demurely across her knees,
giving her an odd aspect of completely defenseless
innocence, like a little girl. The bare legs below the
hem of the dress extended down past my side,
smooth and faintly tanned, and I turned around a
little so I could see the feet. Suddenly, for no reason
at all, I slid down there and gathered them up in my
lap.
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