She turned back from the window, her eyes shining
with tears. “I haven’t got any money left, honey. I
would have gone except for that. I gave all I had left
to poor Sewell, to buy tobacco with, and magazines,
and things he’d need up—up there.” Her chin
quivered and her face threatened to break up into
helpless crying, but she recovered herself bravely and
went on.
“I didn’t want to tell you that because it’s so—so
humiliating being dependent, sort of, even though I
know you don’t mind.”
“Don’t mind! Joy, what a thing to say! You know we
love having you here,” Jessie broke in, outraged.
Joy smiled at her bravely. “I know you do, honey.
That all of you do. And I don’t think that it had
anything to do with Mitch doing—well, you know. I
mean, I don’t think he really intended to take
advantage of the fact that I was kind of dependent on
you. I hope not, don’t you, dear? But what I meant to
say was that I wrote to a friend of mine who lives in
Houston, a girl named Dorothy who is a model in one
of the big stores. We used to work together as
models. Anyway, I wrote to her yesterday and asked
her if she would lend me some money so I could come
down there and look for a job. If the money comes I’ll
go, but that may be several days, because I just
mailed it yesterday.
“Until it comes, if it does, maybe we’d better kind of
stick together, I mean when he’s around. With the
two of us together he won’t be so apt to—well, be
carried away like that. I mean, you’re his sister,
honey, and he has too much respect for you to try
anything like that in front of you. I’m sure he has.
Nearly any man would. Oh, honey, I hate to be such a
big baby, but I’m so scared. It wouldn’t be so much,
by itself, but what with not having any money and
Big City Girl — 72
being sort of dependent, and worrying about Sewell
and wondering where he is . . .”
* * *
Mitch came up from the barn at dusk. Jessie was
putting supper on the table, and as he sat down she
glanced at him distantly and said nothing.
“What’ve we got, Jessie?” he asked. “I’m hungry.”
“Why don’t you look?” she asked coldly, putting a
plate in front of Joy.
Now what’s eating her? Mitch thought, and then
forgot about it while his mind went back to the river.
It had still been rising a little when he knocked off in
the field at sundown.
“Still ain’t no news about Sewell,” Cass said, after
he had hobbled painfully in from the front room.
“Poor Sewell,” Joy said sadly. “It’s so tragic.”
She picked a hell of a time to find out how tragic it
is about poor Sewell, Mitch thought. Where’s she
been the past three years?
”You and Sewell were always very close, weren’t
you, Mitch? I mean, before he went away. You must
think about him a lot.” She smiled wanly at him, and
he saw Jessie look toward him once and then quickly
away.
It must have just come over her all at once, like
something out of the sky, that everything ain’t just
exactly all right with Sewell, he thought. Well, better
late than never, I reckon. But what the hell’s the
matter with Jessie?
When he had finished eating, he went out into the
darkness of the yard to smoke a cigarette, and
suddenly heard the far-off rumble of thunder in the
west. The air was still and oppressively hot, like that
in a tightly closed room with the windows sealed.
God, he thought, not with that river already up like it
is now.
Jessie was starting to wash the dishes. Joy went
over and looked in the water bucket and saw with
inner satisfaction that it was almost empty. “I’ll get
Big City Girl — 73
some more water, Jessie,” she said helpfully. “You’ll
need some more for rinsing.”
Jessie shook her head. “No, you leave it alone, Joy,”
she said. “Mitch will bring some.”
“Oh, I want to help,” Joy said, going toward the
door.
Jessie looked at her anxiously, nodding toward the
yard. But Joy smiled, shook her head deprecatingly,
and went on.
Mitch had his back turned and was looking out over
the bottom as she went down toward the well. She
drew up a bucket and filled the cedar water pail and
started back, walking slowly and watching him
standing there just beyond the light streaming from
the kitchen door.
He saw her. “Here, I’ll take that,” he said gruffly. If
she wanted to do something, why didn’t she help
Jessie with the dishes?
“It’s all right, Mitch,” she said, and then suddenly
set the water down and bent forward, holding a hand
on her back just above the hip.
“What is it?” he asked, stepping quickly to her side.
“I—I think just a catch in my back,” she said faintly,
still bent over as if in pain.”Can you stand up?” he
asked. He took hold o£ her arm.
She cried out sharply, the sound cutting across the
night, and swayed as if she would fall. He caught her,
and as they were blended into one figure in the edge
of the light for an instant she could see Jessie
standing in the door, drawn by her outcry. She
pushed him back violently with her hands, scooped up
the bucket, and ran toward the door.
Big City Girl — 74
Twelve
Sewell Neely hopped off the freight as it was coming
into the yards at Houston and walked across the acres
of tracks in the dark. It had been almost twenty-four
hours now since he had come up out of the river
bottom onto the highway. He had caught a freight
coming through the bottom shortly after he had
crossed the highway bridge, and had ridden it until
daybreak. Then he had left it and hidden out all
during the day under an abandoned farmhouse.
Sometime after nightfall he had been able to board
another.
He had on a raincoat he had stolen from a helpless
and passed-out drunk in a boxcar. With the coat
buttoned up to hide the ruin of his clothing and his
hand in the pocket to keep the handcuff out of sight,
he could get by as long as he kept moving and no one
got a second look at him. I might be any bum
unloading from a freight, he thought, unless
somebody gets a good look at my face in the light. It’s
probably in every paper in the state.
It was a long walk, keeping to side streets and away
from lighted areas. I hope she’s home, he thought. If
she’s still working the four-to-midnight, she ought to
be. Unless she’s got a date. Probably not, though.
Big City Girl — 75
She’s a funny one. Guys coming in to eat, trying to
date her up all the time, and she brushes them off.
It was upstairs over a motorcycle salesroom in a
rundown neighborhood. There was a drugstore, still
open, on the corner. A prowl car slipped past,
cruising, and he could feel the tingling along his spine
and the tightening of the skin across the back of his
neck like a dog’s hackles rising. I can feel ‘em, he
thought. If I live long enough, I’ll be able to smell ‘em,
like a wolf. If one went by in the dark while I was
asleep I’d wake up and growl.
The sign said, “Hskpg. Rms. & Apts.” There was
a„ dark stairway going up, and the hallway at the top
was dimly lit with two small unshaded bulbs, one at
each end. The first door was marked “Mgr.” and there
was a bell, with a printed cardboard sign, the kind
they sold in dime stores, saying. “Ring for Manager,”
stuck on the plaster above it with Scotch tape. There
was no one in the hall and he walked down the center
of it, going softly like a big cougar on the worn
carpet, smelling the odor of ancient dust and stale
cooking that always clung to places like this.
It’s going to be rough if she’s not at home, he
thought. I can’t stand around here in the hall at one
o’clock in the morning. Or if she’s moved and
somebody else answers the door. Sorry to wake you
up, Jack, but I’m looking for a girl named Dorothy,
and don’t look at my face, you might recognize me. I
think the reason they always catch you in the end is
that they wear you out. They get you tired. They work
in shifts and you work all the time, and when you get
a chance to go to sleep your nerves are still working.
Well, if you want to take a vacation you can always go
and give yourself up. They always got the welcome
sign out for cop-killers. Take a long rest in the back
room with the light in your eyes.
It was the last apartment on the right. There was a
crack of light under the door and he could hear, very
faintly, the sound of music. It sounds like Dorothy, he
thought. She does that. It’s against the rules to play a
radio after ten-thirty, but she always does, turning it
way down and getting up close to it to listen.
Big City Girl — 76
He knocked softly and waited. There was no
answer. He rapped on the door again, a little louder.
There was the sound of someone moving, and a girl’s
voice on the other side of the door said, “Who is it?”
“Lufkin,” he said. He had first met her in Lufkin
when she worked in, a restaurant there and he was
working in a sawmill. It was a long time ago, before
he got in trouble with the law the first time, but she
would know who it was.
The door opened and he stepped inside quickly and
she shut it. Nothing had changed in the apartment. It
was one room, with a window looking out into the
alley, but the shade was pulled now. On the right
there was a door going into the tiny kitchen, and on
the other side there was a bathroom door, closed
now, and the bed was on that side, a cheap iron
bedstead with the enamel flaking off. On the right
side of the room, between the closet and the kitchen
door, there was an old velvet-upholstered sofa with
sagging springs and the nap worn off the cushions. At
the head of the bed, by the window, there was a little
table with a dime-store lamp on it, and the cheap ACDC
radio in its white plastic case, the case broken and
patched with Scotch tape. Late at night after she had
come home from work she would sit on the bed with
her face close to the radio and listen to it, to the
music of the dance bands in big hotels across the
country.
She was always very quiet, and now she stood back
from him without saying anything. There was
something about her that always made him think of
an Indian, perhaps the quietness and the tall, straight
way she stood. She was almost five feet nine and very
slender, but she never slouched the way some tall
girls did. Her hair was black and very straight, like an
Indian’s, and she wore it in a long turned-under bob
down on her shoulders. She had very dark brown eyes
that looked black at night. He had slept with her a lot
of times, mostly when he was hiding out from the
police, and always afterward, for a little while, he
would remember the funny way she had of lying very
close to him, her face near his on the pillow and her
Big City Girl — 77
eyes wide open, watching him and not saying
anything. Her eyes would be very big then, and still,
while she lay there just touching him somewhere and
looking at him. She was a funny one, all right.
“Hello, Dorothy,” he said. He put his left arm across
her shoulders and moved to kiss her, but she drew
back slightly.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Ain’t you glad to
see me?”
“Let me have your coat,” she said. “I’ll hang it up.
He took it off and the handcuff swung, the polished
steel shining in the light. She looked at it once, and
then quickly away. She took the coat and went into
the bathroom with it to let it drip in the tub.
He sat down on the sofa. There was a package of
cigarettes on the little coffee table in front of it, and
he picked it up, the handcuff dragging across the
wood. “Does it bother you?’” he asked.
She sat down on the bed across from him, with her
hands in her lap.
“Don’t pay no attention to it,” he said indifferently,
lighting the cigarette. “He was dead anyway, and a
hand more or less one way or the other didn’t make
no difference to him.”
“I just don’t want to look at it,” she said, her face
white. “Do you have to talk about it? What are you
going to do now, with the whole state looking for
you?”
“Stay here, till some of the heat cools down and I
get shut of this thing and get some new clothes. Then
I’ll try to get out of the state.” It ain’t going to be
easy, he thought.
She saw the long jagged tear in his coat sleeve and
the pink-stained tatters of the shirt showing through.
“You’ve been hurt.”
“Just cut it on some glass,” he said indifferently.
“No use to do anything about it now.”
“But it might get infected,” she said anxiously. “We
ought to fix it up.”
Big City Girl — 78
“I never get infected.”
“Have you had anything to eat?” she asked.
“Not since yesterday. Day before yesterday now.”
“There’s some ham in the icebox. I’ll fix you
something.” She started to get up.
He looked at her. “It can wait. We can have
breakfast in the morning. We better go to bed. It’s
late.”
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“Yes.” He grinned. “But not that hungry.”
“I’d better fix you something.”
He saw she was determined, and got up and
followed her into the kitchen. There was a sink, a
small icebox and a two-burner gas stove. He sat down
at the table while she got the sliced ham out of the
box and made two sandwiches and put them on a
plate in front of him. She poured a glass of milk and
sat down across from him.
“Who lives in there now?” he asked, nodding his
head toward the next apartment. They had to be
careful about making too much noise talking.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s vacant. There was a
girl there, by herself. I think she was a hustler,
because she brought a lot of different men in. About a
week ago she brought in some drunk and made a lot
of noise and the manager called the police and they
took her away.”
After he had finished the sandwiches and milk they
went back in the other room. He sat down on the sofa
and she went back to the bed and sat there, watching
him while he smoked another cigarette. Her eyes still
avoided the handcuff.
She was even more silent than usual. The other
times she would talk more, and smile now and then,
and when she looked at him her eyes would be soft
and happy, but now they were dead.
She had taken off her dress and stockings when she
came home from work, and had on a blue cotton
kimono or dressing gown or something of the sort
Big City Girl — 79
that came open at the knees when she crossed her
legs. She had nice legs, long and very smooth, and he
looked at them, remembering the long time he had
been in jail. She saw the glance and pulled the
kimono together across them, looking, away from him
and blushing.
“The first thing I’ll need in the morning is a hack
saw,” he said. “And a little vise. I can work on this
handcuff during the day while they’re tuning up them
damn motorcycles down there. Nobody’ll hear the
sawing.” He wasn’t thinking about the handcuff now,
though. He was thinking about being in bed with her,
remembering the smooth, warm feel of her in the
dark and all the eager, responsive passion.
“You remember how the motorcycles used to wake
us” up in the mornings?” he went on. “When we slept
late and how we would lie there in bed not having to
worry about anybody hearing us because they made
so much noise?”
She made no reply to that. In a minute she asked,
“Where do you get hack saws?”
“In hardware stores. But you can get little ones at
the dime store, in the tool department. They break,
but you can get spare blades. They ain’t as good as
the regular ones, but it’ll be safer that way. Nobody’ll
see you carrying it in.”
“And you want a little vise, too?”
“Yes. You may have to get that in a hardware store.
Just a small one. The cheapest one they have. One you
can clamp onto a table.”
“All right. I’ll get them in the morning.”
“We’d better go to bed now,” he said. To hell with
all this stalling around, he thought. All that can wait
till tomorrow.
She got up. “You can sleep here on the bed,” she
said, as if she had been waiting for and dreading this
moment. “I’ll take the sofa.”
He ground out the cigarette in the ash tray and
stared at her. “What the hell, sleep on the couch?” he
Big City Girl — 80
demanded. “Since when? We’ll sleep in the bed. Both
of us.”
“No,” she said.
“What do you mean, no? What’s the matter with
you?”
She stood and stared back at him as if he were a
long way off. “Nothing.”
“Well, where do you get this couch stuff?”
“Do you have to ask so many questions? Can’t you
be reasonable about it?”
“Well, of all the silly damn— Oh, it’s that? Just my
rotten luck. Of all the times to get here. But, Christ,
why didn’t you just say so?”
“No. That’s not it.”
“Well, for God’s sake, what is it?” She had a perfect
out, he thought, but she wouldn’t lie about anything.
She’s a funny duck, all right. “Have you caught
something?
”No,” she said coldly.
“Well, what’s the trouble?”
“I just don’t want to do it.” Her eyes were
miserable, but she looked straight at him.
He went around the table and moved to put his arm
around her. She backed away from him, the way she
had before.
“Come on now, baby.”
“No,” she said. “I mean it, Sewell. No.”
He began to grow angry. “If there’s anything on
earth crazier than a damned woman— I ought to clout
you one.”
“I suppose you could beat me up. But it would make
a lot of noise.”
“Oh, don’t be a damn fool. I’m not going to beat you
up.” He sat down on the sofa again. “Pitch me one of
those pillows. I’ll sleep here if you’re going to be that
pigheaded about it.”
“You’re so big. You ought to take the bed.”
“To hell with the bed.’”
Big City Girl — 81
He punched the pillow angrily and stuffed it under
his head. His legs stuck out over the armrest on the
other end of the sofa.
She got her nightgown out of the closet and went
into the bathroom with it. She kept her face turned
away, but her shoulders were shaking and he knew
she was crying. In a little while she came out, with
the kimono on over the nightgown. She turned the
light out and he heard her take off the kimono and get
into bed.
Big City Girl — 82
Thirteen
Above the rasp, rasp, rasp of the hack saw he looked
at her. It was afternoon and she was sitting on the
bed dressed to go to work at three-thirty. She would
not look at the handcuff clamped in the vise on the
table.
“So you ain’t seen anything of her at all?” he asked,
sighting at the groove he had sawed. It was slow work
and he had already broken a dozen blades.
“No.” Dorothy shook her head.
“Any letter from her?” he asked with elaborate
casualness. If anybody’s heard from the bitch and
knows where she is, he thought, it’d be Dorothy.
She shook her head again. He comes and lives with
me, hiding out, when the police are after him, she
thought, but all he wants to do is get back to that
blonde slut who’s left him three times already when
he was in trouble. And I was the one who introduced
him to her when we were working together in the
restaurant in Beaumont. I wish I had died first. It
would have been better for him, too. God knows he
could get into enough trouble by himself, but she sure
didn’t help matters any, after him for money all the
time.
It was all right that other time when he was here,
and at least I had that, and the other times before I
Big City Girl — 83
introduced him to her, but now there isn’t anything. I
wish I could be like I was before, and go with him,
because he does want to so much, but if you can’t,
you just can’t. Every time I see that handcuff I feel
sick in my stomach. If he put that hand on me the way
he used to I couldn’t help myself and I’d throw up. If
only there could have been just once more. Just once
more, knowing it was the last, so you could remember
every little thing for all the rest of the time.
She stood up. “I’ve got to go to work,” she said
dully. “You won’t go out anywhere, will you?”
He looked up from his sawing. “What the hell, you
think I’m crazy?”
“I’ll be back around midnight. The restaurant’s not
very far from here.” She moved toward the door.
“All right,” he said indifferently.
Rasp, rasp, rasp, the hack saw sang, lost under the
muffled thunderings of motorcycles being tuned.
When there was silence from below, he stopped and
waited, smoking a cigarette and thinking.
“Look at this, Mad Dog,” Harve had said, holding
the picture up between the bars. “This babe is
stacked, huh? Of course, you’ve probably seen better,
being a big shot and getting around the way you do,
but us old country boys up here in the sticks always
appreciate anything that comes our way, especially
when it’s nice and obliging like this. Thought you
might have seen her, maybe. She comes from your
part of the country, down on the coast.”
Well, Harve was a good man with his little jokes, he
thought, looking at the empty half of the handcuff, but
he sure didn’t show much judgment there at the end,
putting me in that car with only one hand shackled.
Maybe he’s lonesome now and waiting for her. And
maybe I can help him out before they get me. If I can
find her.
Late in the afternoon he had the handcuff off. He
rolled it in an old newspaper and threw it under the
bed. Dorothy could get rid of it some way after he was
gone. Picking up the razor she had bought for him, he
went into the bathroom and shaved. After that, he
Big City Girl — 84
took a bath and put on the new clothes she had
bought. The trousers of the brown suit were too large
around the waist, but he pulled them in with the belt.
Now I’m all dressed up, he thought, and got
nowhere to go. I don’t dare take a chance on going
out of here for another three or four days. In the
meantime, there’s nothing to do but listen to the radio
and look at the papers to see if any of ‘em mention
where my loving wife is.
When Dorothy came home about twelve-fifteen, he
was asleep on the bed. She lay down on the couch,
without disturbing him.
In the morning he had another idea. “Go out to a
pay phone somewhere,” he said. He handed her the
telephone number written out on a piece of paper.
“Get long-distance and put in a call to our apartment.
If you get her, ask her how she is and the usual stuff,
but don’t say anything about me at all. The phone
may be tapped.”
“All right,” she said lifelessly.
She came back in about fifteen minutes and shook
her head at his questioning glance. “There’s some
other people living in the apartment now.”
Then she hasn’t been home at all, he thought. If
she’d gone back she could probably have kept the
apartment, by laying the landlord or selling her
pictures. There ought to be a big demand for her
pictures, he thought coldly.
“What are you going to do now?” Dorothy asked
him the morning of the third day.
“Try to get out of the state, if I can make it. That is,
if I can’t locate her.”
“When?”
“In another day or so. Why? You in a hurry for me to
leave?” he asked suspiciously.
“No,” she said. “You can stay as long as you want.”
“I’ll pay you back for what you’ve spent,” he said
angrily, “if the money’s bothering you.”
“I don’t care anything about the money.”
Big City Girl — 85
“You don’t care about anything, do you? I never
thought I’d see the time I could be here three days
and never even get to touch you.”
“I didn’t either,” she said, looking at the floor.
“What’s the matter with you, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Nothing seems to make any
difference.”
It was hot in the apartment during the day, almost
unbearably hot with the door and the windows closed.
Restlessness had begun to ride him with its raking
spurs almost from the time he had the handcuff off,
and he would pace the floor of the small room in
stocking feet, going on for hours. The thought of Joy
began to be an obsession. When Dorothy brought in
the morning paper on her way home from work he
would snatch it away and read the news stories of the
man hunt, looking for some mention of her. Then he
would make her go out at noon and bring in the
afternoon papers as soon as they were on the street. I
can’t hang around here forever, he thought. I’ll go
nuts. I’ve got to try to get out of the state, maybe to
Florida or somewhere, and if I don’t find out pretty
soon where she is I’ll have to go anyway.
The fifth day was torment. He could no longer sit
still at all and there were moments when he felt that
within a matter of hours he would go berserk and run
out into the street to shoot it out with the first
policeman he saw. Then he would get hold of himself
and force himself to calm clown, knowing that when
he did leave the apartment it was going to take all the
cunning and cold self-control he possessed to get
clear. He rarely spoke to Dorothy now. When she left
at three-thirty to go to work he merely stopped his
pacing for a moment to growl.
As Dorothy went out the doorway at the foot of the
stairs she glanced at the mailboxes through habit,
then stopped. There was a letter in hers. She opened
the box and took it out, glancing at it curiously. She
very seldom received any mail, and thought it might
be only an advertising circular until she saw the
handwriting.
Big City Girl — 86
She opened it. It was from Joy.
Dear Dorothy:
I hope you will forgive me for not writing to
you for so long, but there has been so much
trouble, as you have probably read about. I
am staying with Sewell’s family on their
farm up here and they have been so nice to
me during this trying time. Mr. Neely is a
charming old gentleman, you would love
him, and Sewell’s brother Mitchell is the
handsomest thing, you wouldn’t believe it,
really. There is a young sister, too, who is
the most adorable thing.
I would like to stay here longer, but I really
ought to go back to work. So, Dorothy, I
wonder, if you could spare it, would you
lend me twenty dollars ($20.00) for bus
fare and expenses so I could come down
there and look for a job. The Neelys would
just insist on giving it to me if I told them I
was short of money, but they have done so
much for me already I hate to ask them.
I wouldn’t ask anybody but you, for you
have always been my best friend. Dorothy,
I will pay you back out of my first pay
check, of course. Hoping to hear from you
soon,
Your loving friend,
Joy
Dorothy slid it back inside the envelope and started
to go back up the stairs. I might as well show it to
him, she thought wearily. He’s so anxious to find her.
Let him go on back to her once more.
Then she stopped, halfway up. If he goes there to
see her, she thought, they’ll kill him. They’re bound to
be watching all that country for him. I’ll wait till I
come home from work tonight and that’ll give me
time to think about it.
Big City Girl — 87
When she came home at twelve-thirty the
apartment was empty. There was no farewell or note
of any kind, but Sewell was gone.
She stood silently for a moment in the middle of the
room, feeling the unbearable loneliness coming back.
Then she changed into her kimono and sat down on
the bed, just staring at her hands in her lap. He would
never be back again, but it didn’t seem to matter.
Nothing seemed to matter at all any more. She didn’t
even want to cry. After a while she turned on the
radio and set the volume low. Moving up to the head
of the bed, she put her face up close to the loudspeaker
and listened to the dance band coming from
the Edgewater Beach in Chicago.
Big City Girl — 88
Fourteen
When he had cleared the outskirts of the city, headed
east, he looked at the gasoline gauge. It was low,
below a quarter full, and he began looking for a
station. It was after midnight now but there would
still be plenty of them open along the highway. If I
was going to steal a car, he thought, why couldn’t I
have stolen one with a full tank? It was a good car,
though, a late-model Lincoln with lots of power.
He passed two or three Stations, large, brilliantly
lighted, watching for a smaller one. In them big
stations, he thought, even when you stay in the car
you got light coming at you from all directions. One
Lincoln looks like any other Lincoln, at least till they
get it on the pickup list, but my face has been in too
many papers.
He hit the open country, and then there was a small
town, asleep now except for the flashing caution light
across the highway, an all-night café and a constable
making his rounds, and on the far end of the darkly
huddled cluster of buildings he saw what he wanted.
It was a small station, set back slightly from the
street, with only one light over the driveway.
The door of the station was open and a youth in
grease-stained white sat at a desk looking at the
Big City Girl — 89
pictures in Life. Sewell stopped under the light in the
driveway and the young man came out, smiling.
“Yessir,” he said eagerly. “Fill her up?” He had
friendly gray eyes and big shoulders, and the arms
below the rolled-up white sleeves were tanned and
heavy, rope-muscled. Football player, Sewell thought.
“Think it’ll take about twelve or fifteen,” he said,
bending his head down and pretending to be looking
for something in the glove compartment.
“Regular or ethyl?”
“Ethyl,” he said over his shoulder.
The young man went around to the back of the car
and took the hose off the hook. Then, suddenly, he
was back at the window.
“The keys to the gas tank?” he asked pleasantly.
It’s little things, Sewell thought. Always little
things. You can’t think of ‘em all. Lots of people
forget to give ‘em the key, sure, but it just takes a
little thing like that to start one of ‘em thinking. What
kind of dope is it that don’t even know his own car’s
got a lock on the gas tank?
“Oh, yeah,” he said casually, still looking down at
the road map he had taken out of the glove
compartment. He slipped the ignition key out of the
lock and passed the leather key container out the
window. But suppose it’s not in there? he thought.
When the attendant went back around to the rear he
shot a hand into the glove compartment again. There
it was, a key tied to a small plastic tag.
The attendant was back at the window, handing in
the leather key case and smiling apologetically.
“None of them seem to fit.”
“Yeah, here it is,” Sewell said, passing the other key
out with his left hand. “It was in the glove
compartment. Wife uses the car,” he grumbled. “You
never know where the hell anything is.”
The gasoline pump stopped ringing and he took out
the wallet Dorothy had given him and held a fivedollar
bill out the window. The youth gave him the
key and went inside for the change. The cash register
Big City Girl — 90
clanged and he waited impatiently. The car was
directly under the single light in the driveway and
inside it he was in partial shadow, but the longer this
took the more chance there was that the fellow would
get a good look at his face. He took the change with
his left hand and stowed it in his pocket. The
attendant reached for a rag hanging on the pump.
“Never mind the windshield,” Sewell said.
“Lot of bugs spattered on it,” the other urged
hesitantly, reaching for the water hose.
“The hell with—” he began, and then stopped.
Never attract attention. Never start ‘em thinking.
They don’t see you unless you start ‘em thinking.
“O.K.,” he said. “Thanks.”
He folded the road map, keeping his face down. He
glanced up only once, swiftly. The youth was leaning
over the fender, working on the windshield, looking at
the bugs on the glass. Or was he looking in? Go on,
kid, he thought. Get nosy. Get yourself killed.
I’m just jumpy, he thought. The kid ain’t seen
anything. If he’d recognized me it would be on his
face.
The youth finished with the windshield and stepped
back. He started the motor and slid out of the station,
and as he started to swing back on the street he
glanced once at the rear-view mirror. He could see
the white figure standing under the light, looking
after him. Reading the license number? he thought.
Maybe I ought to go back and blast him. No. No.
Probably just wishing he had a Lincoln himself. It’s
this forever wondering that gets you after a while.
The highway straightened out and he eased the
accelerator in slowly and smoothly, feeling the power.
Fifty, sixty, sixty-five . . . Louisiana in another couple
of hours, he thought. The only thing, though, is
having to get out before I found her.
Back in the station the young man sat down at the
desk again with the copy of Life, looking at the pretty
girls. All those big brown freckles, he thought. I never
did get a good look at his face because he was always
Big City Girl — 91
fooling with that map, but those big splotches on the
backs of his hands . . .
He got up and went to the phone on the wall and
lifted the receiver off the hook.
“Give me the sheriff’s office,” he said.
* * *
Mitch awoke in the night, feeling the charged and
swollen darkness and the heat. There had been no
sound, and as he lay there the stillness was something
he could almost hear. There was no accustomed
rustle of leaves in the post oaks or sighing of breeze
among the pines around the house. The door was only
an oblong of lighter blackness than the walls around
him, and on beyond he could see no stars above the
black line of the trees. In a moment there was a
nervous flicker of lightning, far off, because there was
no thunder.
He sat up and rolled a cigarette and lit it, the match
blinding, brilliant for an instant, and then the night
rushed back and swallowed him. It’s like waiting for
something, he thought. Like waiting. But for what?
For rain? It’s been threatening ever since dark and
ain’t rained yet. Maybe it won’t. But it’s too still; it’s a
weather-breeder. He thought of two men moving
slowly around each other inside the ringed and silent
faces at any gathering when there was about to be a
fight, the two of them circling and poised, each
waiting for the other to make a move. Why the hell do
I keep thinking of that, he thought? I ain’t been in a
fight, or about to be in any that I know of.
He wondered what time it was, knowing he would
not be able to go back to sleep. He was as taut and
tightly wound as the night. When he had finished the
cigarette he threw it out the door and put on his
clothes and went toward the back porch of the house.
As he passed the spot where Joy had put down the
water bucket and cried out he thought about it. What
the hell did she do a crazy thing like that for? he
thought. When I tried to help her she shoved me off
Big City Girl — 92
like I was trying to rape her. Well, who knows why
women do anything? And especially that one.
He lifted the lantern off its nail by the door and lit
it, and started down the trail past the barn, going
toward the bottom, thinking of the river and worried
about it. He had lived here above the river all his life
and loved it as an old friend, but he knew its moods
and its strength and the things it could do when it had
the mind. Twice he had seen it rise without rain, and
it was a frightening thing to watch, like seeing a dead
body mysteriously come to life and move.
The trail dropped down toward the level floor of the
bottom where the lantern threw long pendulumswinging
shadows of his legs against the towering
columns of the oaks, and then suddenly there was the
sinuous weaving of deadliness ahead of him in the
trail, almost under his feet. It was a big rattler,
diamond-marked, cold, and silken-flowing, moving up
the trail toward higher ground. He caught up a dead
limb and smashed it across the head, killing it, and
threw the body off the trail. It was a had sign. There
were few rattlers in the bottom, and when you saw
one coming up out of the low ground like that it
meant high water coming.
He hit water before he got out to the river’s bank.
When he came to the old wagon road coming
downriver and going out to the ford there was muddy
water in a low spot in it. He was barefoot, so he
stepped in and waded across. It was only a little over
his ankles, but it meant the river was spilling up
against the tops of its banks in places.
He came out to the ford and stood holding the
lantern above his head. As far out as he could see in
its feeble circle of light the brown flood slipped past,
silent, swollen, bearing on its surface the telltale
flotsam of drift, twigs, limbs, and small logs. A big
bridge timber came by, slowly turning end for end on
the dark and turgid bosom of the current. It’s just like
it was that last time, he thought, the year Sewell went
away. No rain here at first and it just kept coming up
all the time, getting higher and higher every hour,
going past quiet like that, like a river of oil, and then
Big City Girl — 93
when it started to rain it came right out of its banks
and over the bottom.
Another foot and it’s going to be pushing on that
levee we built across the head of the field. And I ain’t
got my fresno this time to build it up any higher. That
road camp we borrowed it from is gone now.
I still got a shovel, though, he thought, silently
watching.
Big City Girl — 94
Fifteen
He slowed to go through a small town, and suddenly a
police car shot out of a side street behind him with
the rising snarl of the siren ripping into the night and
drawing ice along his back. He hit the accelerator and
the speedometer needle began its dizzy swing, thirtyfive,
fifty, seventy, eighty-five, and still climbing. The
highway ran straight out beyond the town and he let
it roll, kicking the headlights up on high beam and
watching for curves coming up. Then there was a long
easy swing to the left and he rode hard on the
throttle, hearing the scream of the tires go up higher
and higher.
I should have shot the nosy bastard, he thought
with cold ferocity. He was looking at me through the
windshield all the time. They wouldn’t have this car
on the pickup list this soon, and I wasn’t speeding, so
it’s only one thing. That nosy punk kid called the
cops. And that means there won’t be just one of ‘em.
There’ll be a road block somewhere up ahead.
At this speed he could not take his eyes off the road
to look back, but he could tell he was slowly pulling
away. The siren was dropping behind and the
reflection of the headlights was less glaring in his
mirror. Going to have to shake ‘em fast, though, he
Big City Girl — 95
thought. They’re just chasing me into a road block,
and God knows how much time I got before I hit it.
The police car began to drop out of sight behind
him for minutes at a time. In another ten miles it was
only a faint flashing light seen occasionally far back
down the road, and he slowed abruptly, looking for a
turnoff. His luck was good and he spotted a gravel
road going off to the left inside a mile. He swung into
it and cut the lights, waiting.
The police car shot past with the siren screaming
and he whirled back onto the road headed the other
way, gunning the motor in second to pick up speed.
That’ll take care of ‘em for a few minutes, he thought.
But not for long. They’ll know it before I can get very
far and they’ll get on the phone, or on the radio if
they got one, and both ends of this road’ll be plugged.
I can’t go south, there’s just the Gulf down there. I
got to ditch this car and get another one. The
description and license number’ll be all over the state
in fifteen minutes.
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