I ducked into an all-night cafe and went back to
the telephone. Looking up the number of the hotel, I
dialed and waited.
The fan didn’t work and it was stifling inside the
booth. “State Hotel.” It was a girl’s voice. The
operator was still on duty.
“A Mrs. Crawford, please. Is she registered? This
is United Airlines.”
“Just one moment, please.” She paused. “Yes, sir.
I’m ringing.”
“Thank you,” I said. I waited, feeling the tightness
growing inside my chest as I realized how near I was
to her at last. How long had it been since I had let
her out of the car in Colston?
“Hello.” It was Doris.
River Girl — 172
I wanted to cry out, “Darling, this is Jack!” Instead
I asked smoothly, or as smoothly as I could, “Mrs.
Crawford? This is United Airlines, the reservation
desk.” Would she recognize my voice and not say
anything wrong? “We’re very sorry, but so far we’ve
been unable to confirm your reservation west of Salt
Lake. I think we’ll have it in another hour or two,
however. Shall we call you then, or wait till
morning?”
I heard a barely audible gasp and then she came
through beautifully. “Thank you. Tomorrow morning
will be all right. Just call me at Room Three-twelve
here at the hotel.”
“Thank you,” I said. I hung up.
It was still hot in the street where the neon was
beginning to die. A street-cleaning truck went by,
swishing water into the gutters, and the traffic lights
were flashing amber along the emptying canyon.
Two yellow cabs stood idle at the stand up by the
corner.
“State Hotel,” I said, feeling the rasping of
impatience.
I didn’t have any name. I was nobody. I didn’t
exist. I stood with the pen in my hand, sweating,
poised above the blank white card while the man
behind the desk regarded me with the supercilious
detachment of all hotel clerks. It had never occurred
to me until this moment that if I was no longer Jack
Marshall I must be somebody else, and that
everybody had to have a name.
I had to put down something. He was watching
me. “J. K. Mallard, Nashville, Tenn.,” I scrawled
across the card. He hit the bell.
The boy would never leave. He turned on the light
in the bath. He turned on a floor lamp. He looked
inside a closet. What does he expect to find? I
thought. Ten million boys have looked inside ten
million closets searching for something they’ve
never found. I took two quarters out of my pocket
and tossed them in my hand. “Will there be anything
else, sir?”
River Girl — 173
“No,” I said, waiting.
He went out and I heard his footsteps going away.
Give him two more minutes, I thought, to get out of
the corridor. The way he moves...I put the key in my
pocket and went out and closed the door. My room
was on the fifth floor, but I bypassed the elevators
and walked down the two flights of stairs. I went
along looking at the numbers on the doors, going
softly on the carpet through the quiet, dim,
impersonal tunnel that is the same identical corridor
of a thousand different hotels. I walked past doors
bearing the numbers 340 and 338; I was going the
wrong way. I retraced my steps and started down
the other way. I found 308, then 310. I stopped
before the next door. I knocked softly, twice, and
then once, the sound lost and absorbed in the empty,
noise-proofed tunnel walled in by darkened cubicles
of sleep. “Jack?” The whisper was very faint, barely
reaching me through the door. “Yes,” I said.
I heard the night latch click and the door opened a
minute crack. “Give me just a minute,” she
whispered. I waited. She doesn’t have a robe, I
thought, and not even a nightgown unless she’s
bought one. I pushed open the door, stepped quickly
inside, and latched it. The room was dimly lighted by
a single small bulb in the floor lamp in one corner,
and she sat up in bed with the sheet clutched to her
breast. The dark hair fell down across her shoulder
and she was very beautiful and all at the same time a
little afraid and full of yearning and inarticulate
happiness as I came across the room. It’s the same
with her as it is with me, I thought. We’ve both
dreamed of this minute for all this time, and we
don’t know—there isn’t any way we can know—what
it will be like with us now. Would we ever be alone
again? Had we escaped from Shevlin, or had we tied
him to ourselves forever? I stood looking down at
her, wanting to tell her how beautiful she was and
what I felt, but no words would come. She forgot the
sheet and lifted her arm up to me, letting it slide
unnoticed from her breast and the cheap, peachcolored
nightgown she had bought. I sat down on the
River Girl — 174
side of the bed and gathered her up to me with my
face down against her throat. And then when I
raised my head and looked at her I knew that neither
Shevlin nor anybody, nor anything, could ever reach
us as long as we were together.
“You’re not afraid now, are you?” I asked.
“No,” she whispered. “It’s all right now.”
“Everything is just the same.”
“Yes,” she said simply. She was silent for a
moment, looking up at me with eyes incredibly large,
and very close and still. “I haven’t been in the dark
since then. But you can turn the light out now.”
I went across the room and turned it off.
River Girl — 175
Twenty
There was no way to tell what time it was because
she was asleep with her head on my arm and I
couldn’t move it to see the watch. Light was
growing, though, beyond the drawn slats of the
Venetian blinds, and I could make out objects inside
the room. I lay very still for a long time, not wanting
to disturb her, and thought about the two of us and
the things we would do now that we were free at
last. When there was more light I turned again and
looked at her. She slept as quietly as a child, lying on
her right side with her face against my arm and the
hair very dark across the pillow. The strap of the
nightgown had slipped off her left shoulder and the
breast was exposed, rounded and very smooth, rising
gently with her breathing. I smiled, thinking of the
confusion in her face when she awoke and
discovered it. I didn’t want to disturb her sleep, but
still it was somehow lonely being awake without her.
Even being this near and seeing and touching her
wasn’t the same without the eyes open and looking
at me. I leaned my head down and kissed her and
she stirred. The eyes came open, and just for an
instant I saw in them the awful awareness and the
terror that I had feared. Then she saw me and it
went away and she smiled. It will gradually
disappear with time, I thought. For a while there will
River Girl — 176
be these moments just at waking or just at dropping
off to sleep when the mind has no defense at all and
she is alone, but they will go away.
“You are very beautiful when you’re asleep,” I
said.
“It’s the first time I’ve slept since—”
“Yes,” I said. “I know.”
“You didn’t mind, did you, Jack? I wanted to stay
awake, but after a while I just seemed to melt and
run together. I guess it was because you were here
where I could touch you and I wasn’t afraid any
more.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I slept too.”
She looked down at the gown slipping off her
breast and quickly pulled it up, the confusion very
becoming on her face, and would have drawn up the
sheet but it had fallen to the floor.
“You haven’t noticed my gown,” she said
reprovingly, to cover her embarrassment.
“I’m afraid not. You’ll have to admit, though, that
it has competition.”
She smiled, and then her face sobered and she
looked across at me with her eyes full of an almost
childlike earnestness. “I—I bought it with some of
the money you gave me, Jack. It didn’t cost very
much; it was the cheapest one they had. I can do
without something else. But it’s just that I wanted
one so badly.”
I could feel the tight constriction in my throat. It
isn’t even a wedding ring she’s talking about, I
thought, just a cheap, lousy nightgown she probably
bought in a ten-cent store, bought looking back on
being made love to in the leaves under a tree in
broad daylight and looking forward to sleeping
naked beside a man like a common prostitute. The
only shred of respectability or common decency she
would even ask me for was this sleazy, peachcolored
misfit of a bargain-basement nightgown, and
she was even anxious that I wouldn’t think she had
wasted too much money in buying that. For some
River Girl — 177
unaccountable reason I was growing angry, and at
the same time humiliated and ashamed thinking of
this pathetic attempt to clothe herself in at least
some scraps of dignity.
“What else did you buy?” I asked.
“Just some—underclothes.”
“And I suppose you got them at the dime store,
too? The best they had?”
“Well, not exactly in a dime store, but they didn’t
cost very much.” She looked at me uncertainly. “I
know we don’t have very much to spend. Remember,
you told me.
I had forgotten that. And now that I was suddenly
reminded of it I felt even more ashamed and angry.
Then I remembered I hadn’t even told her of the
three thousand dollars we had.
“Do you know what we’re going to do today?” I
asked.
“Get on the bus?”
“No,” I said. “Well take the bus tomorrow night,
after we’ve got a little better organized. I think we’re
safe enough here, at least for the moment, and we’ve
got to get some luggage and I need another suit.
Today, though, we’re going to take you shopping.
We’re going to buy you some clothes, and I don’t
mean cheap junk.” I sat up in bed and looked at her,
aware that I was beginning to sound like a wild man
and that I probably didn’t make much sense to her.
“Do you know what I’m going to do? What I’ve
wanted to do for a long time? What I’ve wanted to do
every time I thought of you going barefoot like a
sharecropper’s child and thought of those misfit
abortions of dresses you wore around that house?
I’m going to see you dressed in the kind of clothes
you should have. We’re going to start at the bottoms
of those feet. Let me see your feet. Where are
“they?”
“Well, Jack, where would they be?”
I slid down along the bed and gathered them up in
my hands, turning them inward and pressing the
River Girl — 178
soles together the way I had once before. “We’re
going to start right here with the sheerest nylons
ever made and the most expensive shoes in town and
gradually work up.”
I looked up and she was watching me with an
amused tenderness in her eyes. “But Jack, what are
we going to use for money?”
I had forgotten it again. Leaping off the bed, I
went over to where I had left the coat. Slipping out
the envelope, I took it over to her, pulled out the
thick sheaf of hundreds and fifties and twenties, and
spread them along the sheet in front of her.
She looked at it, dumfounded, and then up at me.
“Jack, where on earth did that come from?” I could
see the fright and anxiety begin to come back into
her face and she went on, “What have you done?”
As rapidly as I could, I told her all that had
happened. She listened quietly, not even touching
the money, and when I had finished all she said was
I’m glad it’s all over. There won’t have to be any
more of that, will there? I know it’s too late now to
think about the way it could have been, but at least
we can try to live the way other people do, can’t we?
We can both get jobs and we’ll get by all right. I
used to work in an office.”
“Yes,” I said. “Only you won’t have to any more. I
can get a job without much trouble. We’ll go to
Washington—the state, I mean. I was there when I
came back from the Pacific in 1945. It’s beautiful
country, and you’ll love it—mountains and rivers and
green forests. ...” I happened to think then that
perhaps she’d already seen all the green forests
she’d ever want to, and went on hurriedly, “And
Seattle is a nice city. You’ll love it.”
“It sounds wonderful. But I don’t care where we
go, Jack. Just so we’re together, and maybe we’ll be
able to live in peace.”
“Yes,” I said. I bent down, placed a hand alongside
her cheek, and kissed her. “All that other is finished
now. It’s past and gone.”
River Girl — 179
Her arms went up around my neck, softly at first,
and then they tightened and she cried out, “Oh,
Jack! I hope it is. I hope so!”
“Of course it is,” I said. “We’re in the clear now.
They’ll believe I’m dead, and they’ll never bother to
look for you except as part of the hunt for him. There
isn’t a chance that anything will go wrong. But we
can’t sit here all day moping like a couple of old
women. We’ve got to get started shopping.” I
stopped a minute, thinking, and then went on. “Look.
Here’s what we do. Today and tomorrow well go on
just as we are now, not even knowing each other as
far as anyone else is concerned. That may be a little
overcautious now that everything has turned out so
well, but it’s just in case our descriptions are
broadcast. Two people answering a general
description are a lot more likely to attract attention
than one alone. So we don’t want to be seen
together around the hotel. I’ll meet you—” I looked
at my watch. “I’ll meet you at ten-thirty in the
cafeteria up in the next block. We’ll have breakfast
together and then start buying your clothes.”
I went back up to my own room, tore the bed apart
a little so it would look as if I’d at least been in it,
shaved, and went down in the lobby for the morning
papers. I worked through them very carefully,
starting at the front page and going back to the want
ads, and there wasn’t a word about my
disappearance or about the grand jury at home. I
was just about to throw them aside when I saw her
come out of the elevator and head for the street. She
had put her hair back up in the roll at the back of
her neck, the way she had done it coming down to
Colston. I waited until she had been gone a few
minutes, and went out the door myself.
The afternoon papers will be out in an hour or two,
I thought. They’ll have something in them. I was
beginning to burn with impatience, wanting to see
how Buford would break the story and how well it
went over with the general public.
River Girl — 180
She was sitting alone at a table in the corner. I
took my tray back and sat down across from her.
“There’s nothing in the papers yet,” I said.
She nodded. “There hasn’t been time.” I knew she
was right. Nobody would think anything about it
until I failed to show up for work this morning.
Buford, for the benefit of the others, would call the
jail to see if I had come in there last night with
Shevlin. Then he would call the garage and learn
that the car was still out. By that time Lorraine and
Hurd, and anybody else who happened to drop into
the office, would be buzzing. Buford would call the
boat place at the foot of the lake and learn that I
hadn’t come back with the boat and that the car was
still parked there by the boathouse. The story would
begin to spread like fire on a windy day, and the
news services would probably have it by ten o’clock.
I looked at my watch. It was a quarter of eleven;
Buford would probably be leading a search party
right now.
I was eager to get started and couldn’t even taste
what I was eating. “Let’s go, Doris,” I said. “You’ve
got a lot of shopping to do.”
She smiled. “All right. But Jack, I’m afraid you
don’t know much about women’s clothes. Dresses
and skirts have to have alterations, and we don’t
have time for it now. I’ll just try to get something to
travel in, and then buy other things when we get to
Seattle. The clothes will be different there, anyway.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but I knew she was right.
“O.K.,” I said, disappointed. “But all the other things
that don’t need alterations—you’ll get those, won’t
you?”
“Yes,” she said, looking at me gently. “It means a
lot to you, doesn’t it?”
We went out into the swarming, sun-baked street
where heat lay in wait and lunged at you just outside
the air-conditioned doors. The first place was a
luggage shop, where we bought her two matching
bags and asked to have them delivered to the hotel.
Then what she had said about alterations reminded
River Girl — 181
me that I had better get the suit now so they could
have it ready for tomorrow. She waited inside the
men’s store while I bought it and made
arrangements to have it delivered to me at the hotel
no later than two the next afternoon.
“Now, you,” I said, touching her gently on the arm.
“Are you sure you want to go along?”
“Yes,” I said. I began to change my mind, however,
before we’d even got through shoes and handbags. I
was too alone here in this jungle of women, too
conspicuous, like a chained bear at a Junior League
tea. It was worse than foolish; it was stupid. I’d
never blend very well into this background, and too
many people would remember me.
“I hate to leave you for a minute, but I’m going to
have to get out of here,” I said at last. We stood in a
crowded aisle with the stream of women shoppers
eddying and flowing around us. I gave her three
hundred dollars. “I’ll meet you at the hotel.”
“I don’t need this much,” she protested.
“Don’t buy cheap things. Please,” I urged.
She looked up at me. “Why, Jack?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s something I
can’t explain. I just don’t want you to have anything
second-rate or makeshift. You’ve had enough of
that.”
I went back out into the heat and drifted with the
crowds, watching with rising impatience for the
afternoon papers. At the second corner a truck was
unloading them at a stand and I bought one and
ducked into the nearest bar. It was cool inside, and
dim, and I sat down on a stool at the end of the bar,
ordered a bottle of beer and opened the paper.
It was a short item, less than a third of a column,
on an inside page:
OFFICER MISSING
J. B. Marshall, 27, deputy sheriff of Devers
County, was reported this morning to
have been missing since early yesterday
River Girl — 182
in the vicinity of Stowe Lake, where he
had gone to arrest a man believed to be
an escaped convict. According to Wayne
Buford, Devers County sheriff, Marshall
left the boathouse at the south end of the
lake yesterday morning in a rented boat.
I read it through twice to be sure I had missed
nothing, then threw the paper aside. There wasn’t
much; just about what I had expected for the first
break on the story. The general tone of it seemed to
be that, so far, at least, they believed I had just got
lost in the swamp. There’ll be more in the later
editions, I thought.
Impatience and restlessness had got hold of me
again, and I wanted to get back to her, and get on
the bus and start for the Coast. I wasn’t scared now,
I thought; the most dangerous part of it was over.
That had ended when I had got out of the swamp
and down here without being seen by anyone. By
anyone but Dinah, I thought, correcting myself. But
she wouldn’t say anything. I was sure of it now. I
wondered if she were still here in town or if she had
gone home. She might even be shopping right
alongside Doris at this moment, I thought, and was
glad again I had got out of the stores. She was sure I
was meeting somebody down here, and I wondered if
she would suspect anything if any of the news stories
mentioned Shevlin’s having been married. Probably
not, I thought. Why should she?
I couldn’t sit still any longer and went back out
into the street. How much longer would she be?
Time away from her was wasted; why didn’t she
hurry and get back to the hotel? Then the ridiculous
illogic of the struck me; I was the one who had
insisted she go shopping in the first place, and now I
was impatient because she was gone. And as far as
being back at the hotel was concerned, I wasn’t
there either. Was it time to go now? No, I thought.
She wouldn’t be back for an hour or more and I’d go
crazy waiting.
River Girl — 183
I was passing a jeweler’s and suddenly realized
she didn’t have a watch. That was one thing I could
get for her myself. The clerk sized up my clothes and
began bringing out the $37.50 and $49.95 stock. I
waved them away impatiently, feeling angry again,
and would have walked out and gone to another
store but my eye was caught by an exquisite
timepiece in yellow gold with a matching strap of
golden cord, very beautiful in its simplicity, and
costing $275. “Wrap it as a gift,” I said, and waited,
restless in the heat.
There was a later edition of the paper on the street
and I bought it, but there was only a different
headline on the Korean war. The story was still in its
original location on the inside page, unchanged, with
nothing new. No mention had been made of the
grand jury at all. It’ll be out later tonight, I thought,
and then I’ll know how they’re taking it. I won’t quit
worrying until I know what they’re going to believe.
But I’m not worrying, I reminded myself. It’s all right
now.
I went into another bar and sat down at a table in
the air-conditioned cool dimness in the rear. I
ordered a bottle of beer, but when it came it had no
taste and I let it die in the glass, forgotten. Taking
the jeweler’s box out of my pocket, I thought of
looking at the watch again, but decided not to open
it because it was gift-wrapped so well. She doesn’t
really want this, I thought. She doesn’t want the
clothes I insisted that she buy—at least, not so many
of them—and she doesn’t care whether they’re
expensive or not. All she wants is peace, and maybe
she wants me. I hope she wants me, but maybe she
never will in the way that I have to have her. She
needs me because she is afraid now when she’s
alone, and because she is first and last a man’s
woman who needs a man and who could see no point
in life without one, and because she likes me and
maybe she loves me, but I don’t think it’s the
obsession it has become with me.
No, I thought angrily, I’ve got no right to think that
about her. How do I know how deeply she feels? Is
River Girl — 184
she some flirtatious idiot with everything on the
surface where it shows? And do you expect her to
dredge up all her feelings right now when she’s
trying so hard to bury some of them? Things are still
terribly mixed up for her, and she’s scared, and what
she’s gone through would have driven some women
out of their minds.
But, on the other hand, I thought, staring straight
ahead across the dimness of the bar and seeing
nothing but a still-faced girl with tortured eyes and
that beautiful, dark, and mutilated hair—on the other
hand, hadn’t it been only the loneliness that had
driven her to me in the first place? Hadn’t it been
just the loneliness and neglect and the sordid way
she’d had to live for almost a year, seeing him come
apart that way in drunkenness and suspicion?
Minutely, step by step, I went back over every one of
our pitifully few hours together, looking for
something and not even knowing what it was. I saw
her again down on her knees scouring the floor with
that agonized fury as if it were herself under the
harsh scrubbing brush instead of the already
whitened planks. Neglect? That was part of it. What
was it she had cried out once, almost in selfreproach?
“I can’t help the way I am, can I, Jack? Is
it my fault I’m that way?” But it wasn’t only that, I
thought. It had to be more than that with her. She
would have gone on punishing herself until she wore
the floor out with the brush before she’d have
surrendered to what she would have considered the
cheapness of that alone. It had just been little of this
and a little of that, all adding up until it whipped her.
No, I thought savagely. No, that wasn’t it. I must
have been more to her than just a means of escape.
But I don’t know. How could I know? How could I
ever be sure?
I’ve got to stop this, I thought. Is this the kind of
thing I’m going to go through when I’m away from
her? Do I have to go on tormenting myself this way?
I tried to drink the beer, but it was flat and warm by
now and completely tasteless. I lighted another
cigarette, forgetting I already had one burning on
River Girl — 185
the tray. Suddenly, sitting still was unbearable
again, and I threw fifty cents on the table and went
out without waiting for my change. Sunlight blasted
into the street and the glare hurt my eyes after the
dimness of the bar, and heat boiled up from the
sidewalk in suffocating waves. She’ll be back by
now, I thought. She must be back.
She wasn’t. I stood outside the door and knocked
again, and then a third time in an empty hot eternity
of silence before I would admit to myself she wasn’t
there. I was cut off, alone, with nowhere to go and
nothing to do but sit down in the lobby through the
hell of another hour of waiting.
I heard the elevator door and turned around. She
had just stepped out of it and was coming toward me
down the corridor with her arms stacked high with
bundles.
River Girl — 186
Twenty-one
I took them from her while she unlocked the door.
We went inside and she closed it and turned to me to
take them. “Let me show you, Jack. Let’s open them
now, darling.”
“No,” I said. I threw them on the dresser, but there
were too many and some of them fell off onto the
floor. “No. Later on. They’re not important.”
She looked at me wonderingly. “But I thought you
wanted—”
“Yes. I did. I still do. But they can wait.” I was
conscious of thinking I must not make much sense to
her. Or to myself, for that matter, I thought. She was
still regarding me with faint surprise as I reached
out and caught her, quite clumsily, and in too big a
hurry and almost roughly. Her arms went up about
my neck and then she gasped slightly and said,
“Jack, you’re hurting me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I raised my head a little and
looked at her, seeing the face slightly flushed from
the heat and the eyes very large and dark, almost
violet now in the dimness of the room. “I couldn’t
help it. I can’t help it. Don’t you see how it is?” I
went on, wildly now, and knowing I must sound like
a madman to her. “I love you so much I get jumpy
being away from you and I can’t keep my hands off
River Girl — 187
you when I’m here. God knows, I don’t want to hurt
you. Can’t you see how it is? Don’t you see?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I know. It’s exactly the
same with me.”
“Is it that bad with you too?”
“Yes. But I don’t think it’s bad.”
“No. Not bad. It’s only bad when we’re apart. It’s
awful then. I didn’t know a man could come unstuck
like this. Do you suppose I’m crazy?”
“If you are,” she whispered, “I love you for it.”
I raised a jittery hand and started fumbling with
the pins with which she had fastened up her hair in
that roll behind her neck. In my awkwardness and
shaky-fingered impatience, however, I wasn’t
making any progress and was only messing it up.
“Wait, Jack,” she said gently, and quickly slipped
them out. The hair tumbled down and she shook her
head, freeing it. It was a dark shadow across her
face and throat and I ran my fingers through it. “Is
that better now?” she whispered.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. This is how I wanted it.”
I put my face down against her throat and could
feel the beating of her heart. The traffic sound down
below us grew far away and faint, like distant surf,
and I could hear nothing now except the caught,
breathless, and then suddenly desperate whispering
in my ear, “I love you, Jack. I love you so.”
We were strangely clumsy, as if we’d never made
love before, caught up in a dark and ecstatic
wildness full of frenzied caress and inexpert
fumbling like the very young. It had never been quite
like this the other times, and when it had flown away
and left us I lay quite still and wondered at it,
watching the lovely face so peaceful now in repose
with the eyes closed and the lashes very dark against
her cheek. Like a child, I thought, or an angel, and
wondered why angels never seemed to have dark
hair in pictures.
In a little while she opened her eyes and we lay
looking at each other for a long time without saying
River Girl — 188
anything. She brought up a hand and gently ran a
fingertip along my face, just touching it. I wondered
if she knew or even remembered that she was
completely nude, or whether it would suddenly come
to her and she would be overcome with
embarrassment and confusion as she had this
morning. She knew, though, for in a moment she
looked down at the swelling, dark-centered breasts
and then back up at me with a faint wonder in her
eyes.
“I guess I have no shame,” she said.
“It’s a ridiculous word to use,” I said. “Why should
you?”
“It’s funny, isn’t it? I keep telling myself I should,
but there isn’t any. Not at all. I couldn’t get up this
way though. Could I?”
“No,” I said. “You’re trapped.”
She smiled very faintly. “Unless you went to
sleep.”
“I don’t feel sleepy in the least,” I said. “Or maybe
you would be a gentleman.”
“I feel even less like a gentleman than I do sleepy,”
I said. “I’m rotten all the way through.”
“Don’t you want me to put on the clothes I bought?
You were very concerned about them this morning.”
“I don’t know,” I said. I moved a little and put my
face against hers, our foreheads touching, knowing
it was a silly thing because I couldn’t see even her
eyes then, they were so near. “I think I don’t know
what I want. I want you here the way you are, but
still I want to see you dressed up and very smart. I
want to stand off and look at you and at the same
time I want to be so near that there’d be no way of
knowing whether there were two of us or only one. I
want to talk to you, and still I want to be quiet, just
watching you. I want to tell you all about it, how
beautiful you are and how much I love you, and still I
know there isn’t any way I can really say it and that
you shouldn’t try to talk about it too much when it’s
like this, because talking takes a little bit of it away,
River Girl — 189
and all the words have been worn out anyway by
people who maybe only thought they felt it. I want
too many different things and I want them all at
once. There’s a lot of it I don’t understand, and
maybe I never will. I can see why I want to make
love to you the way we did; I can see why touching
you or looking at you or being around you should be
exciting in that way; but there’s no way to
understand why I get angry just thinking about the
way you had to live and the way you dressed and at
your being barefoot, or why I feel the way I do about
your feet and just want to sit there and hold them in
my hands. Do I make any sense to you? Could
anybody make any sense out of it?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “It makes sense. Weren’t
you ever in love before, Jack?”
“I guess not. Anyway, not like this.”
“But you were married.”
“I know. But it wasn’t anything. Even at first.” It
was odd I thought now. It seemed to have been years
since I’d even thought of Louise.
“Yes,” she said musingly. “I think you’re right. I
don’t think you ever have been before. I know it’s a
funny thing to say, but you seem to be so completely
amazed by it, like a little boy.”
“Now you’re talking as if you were a thousand
years older than I am.”
“I think I probably am,” she said gently.
“Have you ever been in love before?’ I asked,
suddenly and furiously jealous.
“You want me to tell the truth, don’t you, Jack?”
“Of course,” I said, not wanting her to at all.
“It was a boy who was killed on Guadalcanal in
1942. I was nineteen then, and pregnant. When his
parents received the telegram I tried to kill myself
with sleeping pills. They didn’t work, but when I
went to the abortionist, he almost did it for me.”
“My God!” I said. “No.”
River Girl — 190
“It had been too long. I don’t know why it didn’t
kill me as well as the baby. Maybe it was because I
didn’t really care.”
“But,” I cried out angrily, “Why, Doris? Why?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t just because we weren’t
married. I wouldn’t have minded that very much
then, and wouldn’t at all now. But it was the
injustice of it. I hated everything. I wanted to die and
I wanted to kill a baby who couldn’t have been
responsible for a war that did things like that. And
maybe a little of it was because of my father. He was
such a sweet old thing, and the disgrace would have
ruined him. He’d have lost his church. Oh, I don’t
know. After all, I was very young, Jack. We wanted to
be married in San Diego before he left, but I looked
so young they wouldn’t give us a license without my
father’s consent, and by the time I got the letter
from him it was too late. He already had been
shipped out.”
“How did you get to San Diego in the first place?” I
asked.
“I ran away and followed him. After he went
overseas I came home. Daddy didn’t say anything. It
was after I got back that I realized I was pregnant.
Of course, I was very happy about it then, married or
not. But when his parents got the telegram—”
“My God,” I said. “What an awful thing!”
“It was a long time ago, Jack. I mean, it’s all over
now.”
I saw a little then of what she had meant when she
had said she was older than I was. “And it was some
time after that when you met him?” I wondered if
either of us would ever be able to say his name.
“Yes,” she said. “About a year.”
We were quiet for a long time. Even though I
didn’t want to think about it I kept trying to imagine
what their life had been like. After a while I turned
and looked at her and asked, “Did he hack up your
hair like that? Was he drunk?”
River Girl — 191
“No,” she said. “I did it myself. I tried to cut it by
looking in a mirror. I made a mess of it, but it didn’t
matter. It was too long, and all I wanted to do was
hack it off so it wouldn’t be so hot, and so I could get
it inside the cap when I went swimming.”
She certainly lived a wonderful life up there, I
thought bitterly. But I’ll make it up to her now.
“Where did he get the money for all that whisky?”
I asked. “He didn’t make that much from the fish he
sold.”
“No. He didn’t buy it. I think the man who rented
boats down at the store was a bootlegger or made
whisky or something. He used to give it to Roger for
repairing boats and motors and things like that. He
was handy with tools. But do we have to talk about
it, Jack?”
“No,” I said. “It’s all over now.”
It was dark outside now. The floor lamp in the
corner was turned on, and as I sat on the side of the
bed, smoking, I could see the litter of opened parcels
and the wrapping paper scattered about the floor.
She had been in the bathroom for a long time, while
I listened to her splashing in the tub, then she had
come out, wearing the new robe she had bought, and
opened all the other packages. Gathering up some of
the things, she had gone back promising to put them
on so I could see how they looked. As I sat there
now, waiting for her, I suddenly remembered the
watch that was still in the pocket of my coat. I’d
forgotten to give it to her. When she comes out, I
thought.
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