One
Eighty-eight.
Eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one, Joy counted, tilting
her head over to one side and putting the brush down
through the shining cascade of her hair. Why? she
thought. My God, why?
From where she was sitting in the stifling kitchen
she could look out the door and across the sunblasted,
sandy yard of the clearing to the encircling
pines. Jesus, she thought, how did I ever get into this
mess? And what am I brushing my hair for? If I was as
bald as the first row in a burlesque house it wouldn’t
make any difference here.
Ninety-two, ninety-three. Oh, that awful ape,
laughing right in my face. I could scream! Or die. Or
kill him.
She was sitting before a small mirror propped up
against a sirup pitcher on the kitchen table. Her hair
was naturally blonde and quite silken and long,
sweeping down lo her shoulders in a sort of golden
torrent, and she spent a great deal of time working on
it and looking at herself in the glass. The mirror was a
pool from which she drank and restored her
confidence, a refuge from a terror that had begun to
take hold of her in recent months. She had been born
thirty years ago in New Iberia, Louisiana, and was a
Big City Girl — 2
soul-searching and self-pitying twenty-eight when the
black depression and the fear were upon her, but the
mirror or an admiring glance could restore her happy
belief in twenty-five as her correct age, because she
had retained a large measure of the striking beauty of
her teens and early twenties.
She had been at the farm for nearly three weeks
now, and the fear had become an even more frequent
visitor in the night. It was panic that had brought her
here in the first place, though the others had no way
of knowing this. For the first time in her life she had
been thoroughly terrified and had lost faith in herself.
In the three years she had been married to Sewell
Neely she had never met any of his family, and she
really thought—she had announced upon her arrival—
she really thought, didn’t they, that in this trying time
they ought to all be together. It was terrible about
poor Sewell, she had said to Cass, who was Sewell’s
father, still trying to drive out of her mind the way
poor Sewell had laughed brutally in her face that last
day when she had visited the jail and told him she
didn’t have any money left. She had been in one of
her twenty-eight-year-old depressions anyway, and
when his heartless laughter had ripped away the last
of her sagging faith in her looks she had gone to
pieces in panic and fled, spending her last six dollars
on a bus ticket to Riverview, where, she had some
vague idea, the Neelys lived. She couldn’t go
anywhere else on six dollars.
Jessie Neely, who had been watching her with rapt
attention, turned and looked out the window. Hot
sunlight struck vertically into the clearing and she
could see Mexico, the big hound, walking across the
yard with his shadow sliding along over the sand
directly under his belly like a black pool of ink. I
guess I ought to see if the butter beans are about
done and put in the corn bread, she thought. They’ll
be up from the field pretty soon and we ought to have
dinner ready.
Jessie got up from the table and went over to the
stove to look into the pot of beans. They were all
right, she thought. She slid the corn bread into the
Big City Girl — 3
oven and straightened up with the simple and
unstudied grace of a child, her face slightly flushed
with the heat and the ill-fitting cotton dress hiked up
above her knees. Her legs were bare, as they always
were, and quite tanned, with a faint tracery of vine
scratches here and there that only contrasted with
and accentuated their smoothness. She saw Joy
looking at her, and smiled. Joy was so pretty, and she
was awful nice to a fifteen-year-old girl who’d never
been any of the places she had.
She began to set the table. Joy looked up at her,
with her head tilted over as she pulled the brush
downward in long strokes.”Do you want me to move,
honey?” she asked.
“No, you go ahead,” Jessie said. “I’ll put the plates
down at this end.”
“I don’t want to get in the way. I wouldn’t be a
bother for anything.” She bent forward to the glass,
turning her head slightly. “Oh, honey, if you’ve got a
minute, there’s a ribbon in my suitcase, a blue one.
Would you be a lamb and see if you can find it for
me?”
“Of course,” Jessie said. She put the plates down
and went into the bedroom and came back in a
minute with the ribbon. She watched Joy admiringly.
Joy worked the ribbon under her hair in back and
tied it in a jaunty little bow just slightly off center on
top of her head. She examined the result in the glass.
There, she thought.
“My, that’s pretty, Joy,” the younger girl said.
She is a lamb, Joy thought idly. Though how she
ever had two such ugly apes for brothers is more’n I’ll
ever know. Imagine that bastard laughing in my face
like I was some old bag. But think of letting it scare
me like that. Why’d I ever let it bother me? I can see
right here I haven’t changed a bit. I look just like I
always did.
And as for that hard-eyed Mitch, always looking at
me like he was looking at something on the other side
of me and I was just standing in his way, I could show
him. If it was worth the trouble.
Big City Girl — 4
* * *
The land fell away here in a series of long hillside
fields going down toward the bottom. The fields were
terraced to protect them from erosion, but it had been
done too late to save much of the topsoil, and it was
poor, very thin ground that was badly washed in
places and worn out from too many years of cotton.
Now, in late June, the cotton was less than knee-high
and of a poor color because there was little to feed it.
There had been too much rain and it was being
strangled by grass.
Down below, where the fields flattened out into the
bottom itself, the ground was black and quite rich and
the cotton had a good healthy color, sweeping out like
a dark green carpet toward the fence and the wall of
trees where the heavy timber of the river bottom
began. Though it could not be seen or distinguished
from the cotton itself from up on the hillside where
the men were working, there was far too much grass
in the bottom field also, and it was badly in need of
cultivation.
The morning had been clear and very hot, with an
oppressive humidity from the rain of night before last,
but now in the stillness of midday an ominous black
ferment of thunderheads had begun to push up over
the horizon in the west, out over the river bottom.
One of the men who was working up on the hillside
stopped his mule at the end of the row and turned to
watch the bank of clouds while he bit off a chew of
tobacco.
He was a colorless, leached-out man like a sand-hill
farm, dressed in a sun-bleached chambray shirt that
was soaked with sweat. His name was Cass Neely,
and fifty years of living had run through him, taking
away more than they had given, and the emptiness
they had left behind was stamped on the slack, rather
pudgy face and the slumped tiredness of his
shoulders. His eyes were a faded blue and there was
about them an odd compounding of hopeless futility
and hangdog friendliness, like those of a dog that has
been kicked but still hopes to be liked.
Big City Girl — 5
At one time he had owned all this land, but in the
fourteen years since the death of his wife he had sold
it off a parcel at a time until nothing remained of his
original property except the house and the few acres
of timbered ground running down toward the bottom,
and now for the past six years he had been engaged
in the grotesque joke of working his own former land
on halves as a share-cropper. The bitter mockery of
this had long since ceased to bother him very much,
however, for he had sufficiently withdrawn year by
year from the harshness of reality until he had come
to live in a dreamy and forever hopeful world of his
own. There was nothing vicious about him, and the
money he had received over all this period of time
from the piecemeal sale of his land and farming
equipment had not been thrown away on liquor or
gambling or any other active vice, but had
disappeared down the bottomless rat holes of
shiftlessness and bad management and a perennially
wistful fondness for secondhand automobiles. And
now the deteriorating carcasses of seven of the
defunct cars squatted about the sandy yard around
the house wherever they had wheezed their last,
giving it the appearance of a junk yard.
He leaned against the plow handles now and waited
for the other man. Mitch Neely was several rows up
the hill, coming in the same direction and making his
mule step along fast. Just like a hawg going to war,
Cass thought. God didn’t make the days long enough
for him and he walks his mule to death, and I reckon
he’d work his own daddy into the grave if I was crazy
enough to try to keep up with him.
When Mitch came out to the end and turned his
mule around, Cass left his plow and walked across the
intervening rows. Mitch watched him with
impatience. He was twenty-three, with a thin, bony
face and deep-set, rather small eyes like chips of flint,
and the face was burned dark by the sun except at the
temples, where he had recently had a close haircut.
There was a tall, very spare angularity about him,
with long thin legs and no great width anywhere, but
he had a kind of whiplike toughness and repressed
Big City Girl — 6
fury of movement that spoke of more power than the
lank frame would indicate.
“It ain’t no use sweeping out these here middles,
Mitch,” Cass said querulously. “The ground’s too wet,
like I been telling you all the morning. We ain’t doing
nothing but just moving that there crap grass from
one place to another. It’ll take root again before we
go to dinner.”
Mitch kicked at a bunch of grass to shake the moist
soil from its roots. “Some of it’ll die if it don’t rain
again tonight,” he said stubbornly. “And we got to do
something. It sure as hell ain’t going to commit
suicide.”
Cass waved toward the west. “Just going to rain
some more. And it ain’t more’n a few hours away.”
Mitch glared in the direction of the thunderheads.
“Well, can I stop it?”
“Ain’t nobody can stop it but the Almighty,” Cass
said. “But just the same, ain’t no sense tearing around
the fields like a high-lifed shoat, plowing up grass
that’s just going to take holt again as soon as it
rains.”
“Well, I ain’t going to tell the Almighty how to run
His business,” Mitch said bleakly. “But I’m going to
keep turning this crap grass over till I wear it out, if I
cant kill it no other way.”
He turned back between the plow handles and
slapped the mule with a line. The mule, expecting to
be unhitched, was slow in starting, and Mitch swung
the rein harder this time and cursed. They went off up
the row with long, loose-legged strides.
Ain’t no sense arguing with him, Cass thought. He’s
mule-headed enough to keep right on working if it
was to come a regular gully-washer, and if it floated
him and the mule away he’d still be plowing when
they went down the river. I never seen a man cared
less for the Almighty’s will.
He went slowly back to his own mule and turned
him around, sighing at the foolishness of it. Removing
his hat, he ran a forefinger across his forehead to
Big City Girl — 7
throw off the sweat, and looked at the sun to gauge
the time. It was eleven-thirty, anyway. They ought to
unhitch and start back to the house. Jessie would
have dinner on the table by the time they got there—
that is, if she didn’t get to listening to Joy and forget
about dinner altogether. He sighed again and shook
his head. Sometimes a man just felt like giving up.
He was still standing there when Mitch returned.
Mitch looked at him and then at the sun and whirled
his mule about to unhitch. We might as well quit for
dinner, he thought. He’ll stand there till he takes root
if we don’t.
They uncoupled the trace chains and looped them
over the hames. Cass climbed on the gray mule to
ride back to the house, while Mitch walked ahead,
leading his.
“If it rains this evening and we can’t work, I might
go over to the Jimersons’ and see if they heard any
more about Sewell over the radio,” Cass said, raising
his voice above the rattle of trace chains. He rode
sidewise, with both legs hanging off the same side of
the mule. When Mitch made no reply, he went on,
“It’s kind of sad when a man’s got to go to the
neighbors to hear word about his own kin.”
He’s thinking about the radio again, Mitch thought.
He’s got that damned radio in his mind and nothing’ll
get it out. Next spring he’ll be wanting to know if
maybe Mr. Sam won’t let us get one on credit at the
store. Keeps on raining like this and the crap grass
choking you to death, and there ain’t going to be
enough credit at the store to buy a can of Prince
Albert, but maybe Mr. Sam’ll let us buy a radio.
Maybe Sam’ll buy us all some blue serge pants and
yellow shoes so we can go parading up the road while
the crap grass gets so rank you could hunt bears in it.
Things wasn’t bad enough before, but them longnosed
Jimerson boys got to come over every other day
and tell him how there was some more about Sewell
on the radio. God knows that what they was saying
about Sewell wasn’t nothing you’d think he’d want to
listen to, but maybe he looks at it different. Maybe if
Big City Girl — 8
they call you Mad Dog Neely and go on and on over
the radio and write about you in the papers it’s the
same as if you was some big gun in the gov’ment and
he ought to hear all about it so he can tell everybody
around the courthouse on Saturday evening.
Well, it’s all over now, and you wouldn’t hear no
more about Sewell if you had a dozen radios. Once
they get you in there in the pen, there ain’t no longnosed
bastards writing about you and talking about
you on the radio. Not till maybe thirty years from
now, when they might let you out if you behave
yourself, or till someday they kill you if you don’t.
Big City Girl — 9
Two
It was sweltering in the kitchen, and outside the air
was dead. Out over the bottom they could hear the
rumble of thunder, like wagons rolling across a
bridge. They were at the table, with Cass at the head
and Mitch and Joy seated across from each other.
Jessie was filling their plates from the pot of butter
beans on the stove.
Cass held his knife and fork upright, one in each
hand, and looked at Joy. “Didn’t see none of them
Jimerson boys this morning, I reckon?”
“No,” she said. “They haven’t been around.”
Cass sighed. “Guess there’s nothing new about
Sewell, then. Sure wish we could hear something.”
“He’ll write us when he can, Papa,” Jessie said. “I
know he will.”
Cass dismissed this with a wave of the fork. “Wasn’t
thinking about letters. Mail takes a long time. And he
wouldn’t write, nohow. Now, if we just had a radio,
like the Jimersons . . .”
Joy had been watching Mitch, who was eating bent
over his plate and seemingly paying no attention to
any of them, but now she brightened and smiled at
Cass.
Big City Girl — 10
“You know, I was thinking the very same thing, just
this morning. I mean, how nice it’d be if we had a
radio. If you had a radio, that is. I’m just a kind of
visitor and I don’t really count. But a radio is so much
fun. I just wouldn’t be without one, ever since that
first one I had. The one they gave me in the beauty
contest. I told you about that, didn’t I? About winning
the beauty contest in New Iberia when I was just
sixteen, and they gave me all those prizes and a radio
was one of them. I sold some of the prizes, but I kept
the radio because it was the cutest thing. Of course, I
was a lot prettier then.” She paused and laughed
deprecatingly. “I’d hate to have to enter one now.”
Mitch did not even look up. For a woman whose
husband is going to the pen for life, she’s sure got a
hell of a lot to worry about, he thought.
Cass was thinking about the radio and was not to be
distracted by trifling side issues like beauty contests.
He said nothing.
Well, she thought. Well! Of all the stupid.
“Joy, you could win any beauty contest in the
world,” Jessie said loyally behind her at the stove.
“Couldn’t she, Papa?”
“Oh, sure,” Cass said vaguely. “Ain’t no doubt about
it.” Come to think of it, she did say she won a radio
that way. Maybe they could enter her in a contest
now and win another one. Didn’t recollect hearing
about any coming up any time soon, though.
“Couldn’t she, Mitch?” Jessie pressed warmly. Joy
was their guest and she was the prettiest thing, and
the way she was all broken up about poor Sewell, the
least they could do was to try to cheer her up.
Mitch glanced up briefly, stone-eyed. “How the hell
do I know?” he asked of no one in particular.
“Mitch!” Jessie said reproachfully.
Mitch shrugged and returned to the butter beans,
vaguely irritated at himself and a little ashamed of
speaking that way to Jessie. He was usually very
considerate of his sister.
Big City Girl — 11
Pig, Joy thought coldly. He’s just a pig. His shirt
sticking to him with sweat and he didn’t even comb
that horrible butter-colored hair and his face looks
like somebody chopped it out of wood with a dull ax.
Well, she wasn’t going to let him worry her. Plenty
of other people were nice. She took a drink of water,
holding her little finger out from the glass the way
she always did when she was drinking coffee, and
smiled becomingly at Cass.
“Are you really thinking about buying a radio?” she
asked.
Cass cleared his throat. He had combed his hair
before he came to the table, carefully pulling as much
of his sandy fringe as possible across his bald spot.
“Well, of course, you understand, Joy, I’m just kindly
turning it over in my mind, you might say. It ain’t
something you’d rush into. Man has to be careful,
tight as money is these days.”
“But you do think you might? I think that’s nice.”
Mitch looked up again. “Any of you got any idea
what you’re going to use for money?” We ain’t got any
more land to diddle off, he thought. That’s all gone for
them goddamned cars.
“Why, you can get one from Sears, Roebuck for fivedollars
down, AC and DC current and batteries and
all,” Cass said defensively.
“You got five dollars?” Mitch asked curtly.
“Well, no, not right now. But it don’t seem like such
an awful lot to ask for. Man don’t ask for much in this
world.”
Mitch turned his stone-chip eyes on Joy. “If you
have, you’d better hang onto it.”
“I thank you very much,” she said coldly. “But I
guess I can handle my affairs without any advice.”
Oh, my God, she thought. How did I ever come to
this? Looking right through me with those hard eyes
of his as if he knew I didn’t have five dollars, or even
one. Just a lousy five dollars. A cheap share-cropper
that never had a nickel in his life looking at me like
that. At me, and my first husband used to be
Big City Girl — 12
connected with racing. I guess that’d put him in his
place, if I told him what it means to be connected
with horse racing.
“And,” she went on, “I had no idea that five dollars
was such a big sum of money.”
Mitch wasn’t listening any more. He was hearing
thunder rolling nearer through the pregnant hush
outside and hating the sound of it, knowing there
would be no more work in the fields this day or the
next. They had not been able to put in three
consecutive days on the cotton during the past two
weeks, and he knew how dangerously near they were
to having a crop go to grass. And that was not the
worst of it. Pests bred in the wetness, and if through
some miracle they could save the cotton from being
strangled in grass, continued rain would bring the
boll weevil and its war of attrition, which would lay
the harvest waste before it was born.
Ain’t nothing to do but set and wait for it, he
thought savagely. Nothing you can light or get holt of
to stop it. You set and watch the rain drown it and
turn it yellow and the grass grow up so rank you
could get lost in it, and there ain’t even enough left at
the end of the year to pay off the credit, let alone buy
any mules. Every year is going to be the last one
you’ll have to work on the halves, because this time
you’ll have something left over to start buying back
some tools of your own and some mules, if you can
keep the old man from diddling it all off again on
yellow shoes and another broken-down car, and then
something happens. Too wet, too dry, boll weevils, or
the price goes down, or something.
“I was kind of thinking of that old Mexico dawg,”
Cass was saying. “He ain’t no good to us any more.
Nobody ever goes hunting with him any more, and
besides, he’s getting awful old. He just sets around
and eats his head off, kind of a dead loss, you might
say. Now, I know a man over Pinehill way, fella name
of Calloway, Bruce Calloway—he’s one of old Eldridge
Calloway’s boys, owns the gin over there and raises
hunting,dawgs sort of for a pastime—who’ll give me
Big City Girl — 13
fifteen dollars for him any time I’ll let him go. Told me
so many’s the time.”
“He would? For an old broken-down flea bag like
that?” Joy asked, leaning on her elbows and looking
eagerly at Cass. “Why don’t you take him up on it?”
Cass avoided looking at Mitch. “It’d take some
thought, of course. Man can’t just rush into
something like that. But it ain’t as if he was worth
anything to us. Just eats his head off.”
“But, Papa,” Jessie broke in protestingly. “Mexico
was Sewell’s dog. He thought the world of old
Mexico.”
“Well, now. Baby Doll, you know Sewell ain’t
coming back and Mexico ain’t no good to him up
there. Besides, it’s been five years or more since he’s
even seen the dawg. and I don’t misdoubt but what
he’s forgot about him altogether.”
“But, Papa, he belonged to Sewell!”
“Well, like I say, it’d take some thought,” Cass said
placatingly, still avoiding looking in Mitch’s direction.
“Wouldn’t want to rush into nothing, but I reckon
Sewell wouldn’t begrudge his old daddy a little thing
like that if—”
Mitch shoved back his chair and got up without a
word. Cass stopped in midsentence and the others
were silent as he turned his back on them and stalked
out the door.
The sun was gone now. Lightning shot its jagged
brilliance through the gathering blackness overhead,
and far out over the river bottom he could see the
advancing curtain of rain. It swept on into the fields
below and ran toward him up the hillside. He ran
across the yard toward the shelter of the shed where
he slept.
The old shed had been a smokehouse once and
there still remained about it a greasy smell of fat salt
meat and the thick smoke of winters long past. There
was no floor except the hard-packed earth, but he had
thrown some planks on the ground beside the cot to
stand on when he was undressing for bed. His clothes
Big City Girl — 14
hung from nails driven into the wall, and there was a
box on which to put his can of Prince Albert and
cigarette papers, because he often smoked at night.
He had been living out here since Joy had moved in
with them. She had come down off the hill late one
afternoon, walking along the sandy road in her high
heels and carrying the imitation leather suitcase, and
announced she was Sewell’s wife. There was only one
bedroom in the house, besides the big front room
where Cass slept, and now Joy and Jessie used that.
Before she came Mitch had had the bedroom and
Jessie had slept on a small bed in the front room with
Cass.
He stood in the doorway and watched the onrushing
vanguard of the rain go sweeping across the yard,
sending the chickens scattering for shelter and
drumming on the sheet-metal roof of the house. He
sat down and rolled a cigarette and drew a match
along the taut canvas underside of the cot to light it.
There goes another day shot to hell, he thought, or
maybe two, or God knows how many.
From where he was sitting he could see past the
corner of the house to where three of the old
automobile hulks squatted dejectedly in the rain on
their naked rims and on old tires flat for years. In the
nearest one, the 1928 Chevrolet sedan, three
chickens roosted contentedly on the back of the front
seat wiping their beaks on the upholstery and
enjoying this shelter from the downpour. And now we
got to have a radio, he thought. I thought he’d sold
everything we had left to sell, but I forgot about the
dawg. After he gets rid of Mexico I don’t know what
the hell he’ll do when there’s something he just has to
have, unless he’s got to the point he can start
thinking about selling the house or Jessie. I reckon
when a man’s guts start running out of him it’s like
water running out of a broken dam, and the more
runs out, the bigger the hole gets, till everything’s
gone. It’s getting to where you don’t even want to go
to town any more, what with people looking at you
and probably wondering behind your back how the
Big City Girl — 15
Neelys are getting along share-cropping on their own
land. It ain’t no wonder Sewell went to the bad.
And now we got this Joy, going around half naked
and shaking her can in front of them Jimerson boys,
and somebody’s going to get hurt over that. If she
wants to start chasing around like a bitch in heat the
minute they get Sewell put away, that’s her business,
but she ain’t going to do it around here in this house,
in front of Jessie.
He threw the cigarette out the door in disgust and
got up, too restless to face the prospect of sitting
there all afternoon watching it rain. He took off his
shoes and rolled up the legs of his overalls and took
the old army raincoat off the nail. Clapping the floppy
straw hat on his head, he stalked out into the rain and
turned down the trail going toward the bottom.
The river might be rising with all this rain. There
wasn’t too much danger of it, the way the rain had
been spaced out, but it couldn’t keep on forever
without the river’s starting to come up. Once before,
about seven years ago, the river had almost got their
bottom cotton, the whole twenty-five acres of it. The
levee he and Sewell had built across the upper end of
the field had been the only thing that had saved it. He
thought about it now, and the picture of that
afternoon and night was still vivid in his memory. It
had been just a few months before Sewell had fought
with Cass and left home.
He padded down the trail on big, calloused bare
feet, rain sluicing onto the old hat and making it flop
down in front until he could barely see from under it.
The trail skirted the fields all the way down the
hillside and then cut out through the trees just above
the bottom fields, headed for the river. The river
swung in close to the field here, coming in a wide
bend from the west across the two-mile expanse of
timbered bottom and then turning south again a
hundred yards or so out from the edge of the cotton
and the fence.
The low place that had threatened the fields that
year of the high water was a continuation of the
Big City Girl — 16
river’s eastward bend, probably part of an old channel
long since filled in. It came on in and under the upper
fence, a swale perhaps a hundred yards wide at the
upper end of the field. When the river got up enough
for that old channel to start carrying water, it poured
right out across the whole bottom field. This
happened during the winter floods every two or three
years, or had until they had put the dike across the
upper end of it, but of course during the winter there
was no crop for it to damage.
He went on out and looked at the river. It was
somewhat high and roily, with occasional small bits of
drift going by, but it was far from high enough to be
dangerous.
Driven by a goading restlessness that would not let
him be still, he turned and walked down the river,
past places he and Sewell had fished together a long
time ago before Sewell had gone, remembering some
of the big catfish they had taken on their setlines, and
the holes where they had caught them. He stopped
for several minutes beside the deep hole and the piled
log jam where Sewell had stripped one night and
gone into the river to free a line fouled below the
surface, remembering the guttering light of the pine
torch and Sewell following the line down through the
black water and the suspense and waiting and then
his head coming out and then an arm and then the
terrifying big writhing body of the cottonmouth
lashing the surface to free itself of the. hook and
Sewell holding the line, laughing, and throwing it up
on the bank. He thought of it now, hating the waste
and saddened by it. Where did a man miss the turn?
What poisoned the stream somewhere along its
course from youthful recklessness to hot-blooded
violence to cold and paid-for violence and professional
brutality?
He left the river and walked out to the lower end of
the field and went up through it like some lank,
soggy-hatted, furiously ambulatory scarecrow,
completely oblivious of the rain, looking at the cotton
and full of black and helpless anger at the grass in it.
He hated grass in a crop. It stank of shiftlessness.
Big City Girl — 17
Three
The dike was between two and three feet high and
ran across the low ground for a hundred yards or
more just inside the upper fence, and whenever he
saw it he thought of Sewell and the night they had put
it there. He came up along it now with the rain
pelting the old coat, remembering the four mules
abreast, wet and shining in the night with the lantern
light on them, and his driving them, and Sewell filling
and dumping the big fresno as another man would
handle a garden spade, and all the while Cass
puttering around futilely, going out to the river to
poke meaningless sticks in the bank to mark its rise
and whining endlessly about the Almighty’s will.
Sewell was a big man and there was power in him,
not awkward or slow-moving or muscle-bound power,
but smooth and relaxed and then suddenly explosive,
like that of a big cat in its prime. And now, from what
they said on the radio, he had the cold deadliness that
went with it and was just as dangerous as one.
Mad Dog they called him, illogically, and he knew
that was wrong. A rabid dog with its foaming mouth
and helpless frenzy was a far different thing from a
jungle cat.
Well, he thought, it’s all done now and there ain’t
no help for it. The only thing that’s any good about it,
Big City Girl — 18
now is that the trial is over and they’ll quit making a
circus out of it.
He went up through the cotton, going toward the
house. We can still save it, he thought, if the damned
rain’ll quit in the next day or so. The ground ain’t
sour; and it’s growing all right and the color is good
even if the grass is choking it. But it can’t wait
forever. He stalked through the back yard, across the
hard-packed sand, hearing the rain’s tattoo on the
metal roof. Mexico looked at him from under the back
porch and thumped his tail once against the ground.
The Jimerson’s Model A Ford was parked at the side
of the house.
When he came around the corner, they were all
there on the front porch, talking. Or rather, Joy was
talking. Jessie was listening and working on
something in the porch swing with a pair of scissors
and a needle, and the two Jimerson boys were
watching.
“—with your back perfectly straight, like this, and
your head up, and don’t slouch. They make you do
this for hours, with the book on your head, and then
after you’ve learned that they teach you what to do
with your arms and hands. But the main thing is
walking. You’ll see my toes are pointed and straight
ahead, and notice my legs.”
She had on what she called her sun suit, and this
admonition was entirely unnecessary as far as the
Jimerson boys were concerned. They had been
noticing them. Then she turned her head and saw
Mitch standing there in the rain like a bleak and
hatchet-faced scarecrow under the floppy hat, and the
book started to fall.
Jessie looked up from whatever she was doing in
the swing and said, “Mitch, for heaven’s sake, get in
out of the rain.”
The two Jimerson boys had been sitting on the edge
of the “porch, one on each side of the steps, watching
Joy walk up and down with the book on her head, and
now they turned.
Big City Girl — 19
“Howdy, Mitch,” Prentiss said. He was the younger
one, about twenty, somewhat plump, with a round
moon face and rather shy brown eyes and unruly
black hair that came down over his forehead. Cal was
two or three years older, and his. eyes were black and
there was no shyness in them.
“Howdy,” Cal said. He looked at Mitch with casual
insolence and then back to Joy, who was picking up
the book.
“Mitch, Joy is showing us how to be a model like she
used to be,” Jessie explained, breaking a piece of
thread, with her teeth.
“ls that a fact?” Mitch said; looking bleakly at Joy
and then at the Jimersons. “Mebbe you boys are
figuring on entering a beauty contest?”
“Hadn’t thought none of it,” Cal said easily. “Why?”
“You seemed to be kind of interested.”
“Is that right?” Cal asked, and Prentiss looked at
both of them a little uneasily.
Jessie had begun to feel the strange tension in the
air and wondered what was wrong. Joy stood with the
book in her hand, unnoticed for the moment and
furious that Mitch had interrupted. She had been so
happy, showing them how a model walked and feeling
herself the center of attraction. Of course, she hadn’t
really ever been a model or actually attended a school
of modeling, but she had intended to for a long time
after winning the beauty contest and had read about
it and practiced a lot in her room, which was the
same thing.
“Mitch! Get in out of that rain,” Jessie ordered
again. She stamped a foot on the floor.
“I won’t rust,” Mitch said.
“Well, come and look at the sun suit I’m making,”
she said, holding it up.
“The what?”
“Sun suit,” she went on eagerly. “Like Joy’s. Only
mine’s just made out of an old pair of overalls. See, I
cut off the legs.”
Big City Girl — 20
Mitch looked at Joy’s scant garment and her long
bare legs and then looked away.
“All right,” he said shortly. We’ll straighten that out
later, he thought. We’ll see about that. But not in
front of these nosy bastards with their eyes stuck out
on limbs.
“I’m glad to see you boys are so interested in being
models,” he said thinly. “There ought to be a big
future in it for you. But ain’t you afraid you’ll miss
something on the radio?”
“No, I reckon not,” Cal said. “Why?”
“Why, there might be something about Sewell and
you’d miss it. Ain’t people depending on you to spread
the news as fast as it comes in?”
Cal got to his feet. “Look,” he began.
Prentiss stood up hurriedly and moved between
them. ”We better be going, Cal,” he said anxiously.
“We got to get to town and back before feeding time.
We better get started.” Cal scowled at Mitch, and
shrugged.
They went around the corner and got in the car.
Mitch followed them and stood there in the rain
outside the window. Cal rolled it down.
“You know where your old man is right now?” he
asked. “He’s up at our house listening to the radio.
He likes to hear about it.”
“You boys are crowding your luck around here,”
Mitch said. They drove off and he walked back around
to the porch.
Jessie’s eyes snapped at him indignantly. “What did
you talk that way to the Jimersons for, Mitch? You
hurt their feelings.”
Joy sat in a chair next to the door going back into
the house. She stared at him frigidly and went on
sulking.
“Now, what’s that you’re making?” he asked Jessie.
“It’s a sun suit. Like Joy’s.”
“Well, when you get out in the kitchen you can
throw it in the stove and burn it.”
Big City Girl — 21
“I will not! I never heard of such a thing!” She
clasped it to her, outraged. “Joy’s got one. Why can’t
I?”
“Burn it,” Mitch said. “I don’t care what Joy’s got.”
“Well, I don’t see why I can’t wear one if she does.”
Mitch turned to leave, then he paused and looked at
Joy.
“Joy is married, and her husband is in the pen,” he
said. “Mebbe she wears it because she’s in
mourning.”
* * *
At supper Cass said, “Wasn’t no news about Sewell. I
told Jud and Cora, though, that we prob’ly wouldn’t
have to depend on their radio much longer, now that
Joy’s going to win one in the beauty show.”
It only takes one day for something to grow into a
fact now, Mitch thought. He does it in one day.
* * *
It was shortly after nine p.m. when the Chevrolet
sedan with the three men in it pulled up at the
gasoline pump in front of a country store. It was
raining again, and the man called George, who was
driving, stopped under the roof that extended out
over the driveway between the front of the store and
the pump, The wide double doors of the store were
open and they could see the piled and disordered
jumble of merchandise on the counters and shelves
and hear music coming from a juke box somewhere in
the rear. The interior of the store was lighted by big
unshaded bulbs hanging from the naked rafters, and
moths fluttered around the hot lamps in a senseless
and suicidal dance that sent shadows jumping along
the walls. Light spilled out into the driveway and they
could see rain falling through the darkness just
beyond the edge of the roof.
A boy with long, slicked-down hair came out of the
store and looked at them questioningly.
Big City Girl — 22
“Put in ten gallons,” George said. He was heavyfaced
and very smoothly shaven, with a snap-brim hat
that bent sharply down in front. When he took the hat
off he was always very careful to put it down on the
edge of a chair or table so the brim could hang over.
“Yessir,” the boy said. “It’s wet, ain’t it?”
“You hear that, Harve?” George asked, turning
around to the back seat, “He says it’s wet.”
Harve wore the white hat that is the badge of the
southern law officer. He had a long-jawed, bony face
with eyes the color of brown swamp water and two
gold teeth that showed only when he grinned. He
looked at the boy, who was trying to put on an air of
worldliness.
“You know, maybe we better agree with him,
George,” he said. “He looks like a tough bastard.”
“What would happen if we didn’t think it was wet?”
George asked. “We’re strangers around here and
don’t want to get in trouble.”
“Well, heck,” the boy said, still trying to look
offhand and smart. “It’s just something you say, like
it’s a fine morning.”
“You see, George,” Harve said. “I told you he was
tough. He’s trying to make suckers out of us. He’s got
us to say it’s a wet night and now he tells us it’s a fine
morning.”
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” George said. “If
he tells you lube oil is sorghum sirup, just pretend
like you believe him. I’ve seen guys like him before.
All they want to do is start something so they can beat
you up.”
When the boy leaned over to put the cap back on
the gasoline tank he looked in the rear seat and saw
the handcuff connecting Harve to Sewell Neely and
his eyes grew big. Harve saw the glance and winked
at George.
“You see what happens to tough guys?” he asked
the boy. “I killed an old lady because she kept beating
up me and my pappy, and now they’re taking me to
the pen.”
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