Cass was wailing again, beside him. “I got to take
my boy in. I lound him. and I got to take him in!”
“Shut Up,” Mitch said, without anger, without even
hope that the noise would cease.
He and Lambeth worked Sewell onto the legless,
stretched canvas of the cot, and lifted him into the
wagon, being as gentle and careful as they could with
the poisoned arm. He grabbed up the sacks and the
raincoat and threw them across the box of the wagon
to keep off the rain. Then they were going up the hill.
Sewell felt the wagon begin to move, and thought.
It ain’t much longer now. The trail goes left, then
right on a switchback turn, and there’s an oak the
lightning struck, and it runs past the end of the
hillside field, going up. I saw a fox there, with a
chicken in its mouth, one morning going after the
cows. There’s a plum thicket beyond the end of the
rows and a long time later, after the fox, the fat girl
from somewhere, picking cotton, said, “You know
there ain’t no plums in October, you dog,” and
Big City Girl — 164
laughed, and from there you can see the barn, in
winter when the leaves are gone. It’s funny how clear
you can remember all of that. I hardly even thought of
it for seven years. It ain’t much farther, we already
made the second turn, and all I got to do is hold on a
little longer. Then he was whirling through darkness
and the siren was closer now.
Joy and Jessie were watching from the kitchen door
as they made the turn around the barn and came
across the yard. I didn’t want her to see it, Mitch
thought. It ain’t a pretty sight.
Shaw was back. He came leaping off the front porch
as Mitch stopped the team in the front yard and
jumped down from the wheel. “I found the phone,” he
said. “Ambulance should be here in a few minutes
with the sheriff’s men.”
”Don’t touch him,” Mitch said bleakly. “Don’t try to
move him. I’ll be back in a minute.”
He jumped up on the porch as Jessie came through
the door. “You stay inside till I tell you,” he
commanded. She stopped, and he turned away from
her and went into Cass’s room through the window.
Cass had forgotten to turn off the radio, and soft
music issued from its loudspeaker. He stared at it
silently, for some reason wanting to pick up a chair
and smash it, but went on past and began to tear at
the bed.
He rolled up the mattress and a quilt and threw
them through the window onto the porch in front of
the swing. Going back out into the yard, he motioned
to Lambeth and Shaw, and the three of them slid the
stretcher out of the wagon and carried it to the porch.
They slid Sewell carefully off it onto the mattress and
pulled the quilt up to his chin. He had not moved or
opened his eyes.
I know exactly where I’m lying, Sewell thought,
listening for the sound of her voice.
Mitch wanted to quit now, and he had to sit down.
Me went back to the end of the porch near the door
and squatted down, staring silently at the others.
Everything was gone out of him. I’m empty, he
Big City Girl — 165
thought. I’m just hollow, like a log. There ain’t
anything I can do for him now. I can’t even talk to him
in front of all these people. Jessie came out of the
doorway and went up to Sewell. She knelt beside him
for an instant and then got up, going past him quickly
and through the door with her face screwed up tight
but not crying. She went into the bedroom and he
wanted to follow her. I’ll talk to her in a minute, he
thought. In a minute, as soon as I can think.
Cass went past crying, “I found him! I found my
boy!” and bent forward at right angles like a jackknife
to step through the window into his room. Mitch
heard the corrugated washboard of sound from the
radio as the dial spun and thought. He wants to find
out if he really did find Sewell. He won’t believe it till
he hears it.
Shaw was talking eagerly to Lambeth, who was
drying his hands on a towel and unpacking the
camera again. “I phoned it in, when I was out on the
highway to call for the ambulance. So here’s what we
do now. We want a few more pics, maybe three or
four more. One or two of Neely, and then one when
the ambulance gets here. And one of Mrs. Neely
kneeling down beside her husband. Then we’re going
to scram. She’s going with us. I can get the rest of her
story while you drive, and we’ll be in town in time for
me to write the story and beat the deadline with
about thirty seconds to spare. You all set?”
Lambeth nodded. “Where’s Narcissus?”
“She’s packing.”
It broke across Mitch’s numb tiredness like a sea of
ice water. He sprang to his feet and started down the
hall. They weren’t going tomorrow. They were going
today, now, in a few minutes. He met Joy in the hall
and she gave him a glance of pure malice as she went
by. Going to have her picture took, he thought with
contempt, lunging at the door of the bedroom.
Jessie was folding her few dresses and an old
sweater and putting them into a cardboard box. She
looked up as he came in and the glance swept on past
him, unseeing.
Big City Girl — 166
He stopped. “Jessie,” he said. His voice sounded
very far away.
She gave no sign she had heard him.
“Jessie,” he said again, coming into the room.
“Jessie! Listen to me. You ain’t going with that—” He
put a hand on her arm and she pulled away with that
stony-faced yet almost imperceptible withdrawal that
can be one of the most devastating things on earth
and compared to which all male violence of blow and
insult is utterly harmless.
I won’t lose my head this time, he thought,
beginning even then to lose it. The wild anger and the
fright were coming up in him and he started to shake
her arm. She offered no resistance whatever, merely
standing there and looking at him without seeing him,
and when he got hold of himself and stopped she
picked up the box and went past him out of the room.
He went out onto the porch and Jessie was holding
the box and watching still-faced while Lambeth
adjusted the camera. I can hold her when they leave,
he thought in the blackness of despair, but she’ll just
run away later on.
”Now, Mrs. Neely,” Shaw was saying.
“All right,” Joy said. She started toward the
mattress where Sewell lay, next to the swing.
Sewell looked so white lying there like that and she
was almost afraid. Her grief was not entirely
simulated. She was really sorry for him now, and it
was so sad to think of how he had been trying so hard
to get back to her when she didn’t know it, and to
have him get bitten by that awful snake when he was
almost here—it was so terrible. She felt a genuine
sorrow as she walked toward him; it was just that she
was still practical enough to remember camera angles
and the way she would look best in the picture at the
same time she was so lull of her grief.
It would be best, since Lambeth was on her left, to
have most of her hair swing down on the right side of
her face as she bent down, with just enough on the
left to frame it. And they wouldn’t want any legs in
this pose of a wife grieving for her husband; she must
Big City Girl — 167
be very demure about the legs, with just enough
showing so it would be possible to see that they were
nice. She halted, and started to kneel beside his
shoulders.
I can hear her, Sewell thought. His mind had been
going away from him on those long, dark journeys
and then swinging back like a pendulum, but it was
very clear now with only the pain to bother him and
he knew it would all be quite sharp and clean when
he opened his eyes. He had his hand on the gun under
the quilt and lay quietly listening to her footsteps as
she came toward him. I won’t have to open my eyes to
know when she’s bending down, he thought. I’ll smell
her; you can always smell her when she’s close.
The others had fallen silent, watching the tableau.
Jessie looked on with a lump in her throat, thinking
how sad it was and how sweet Joy looked in her grief.
Mitch watched with contempt and a cold, hard anger,
sickened as he had been before by the-cheap, selfseeking
heartlessness of it. But still, he thought, why
did Sewell change like that when he found out she
was up here? If that was what Sewell wanted . . .
Joy bent down. She felt she was going to cry, but
remembered to turn her head just a little more to the
left. Tendrils of golden blonde hair brushed Sewell’s
cheek, and he started to open his eyes and bring the
hand with the gun out from under the quilt.
Then it started to go. He fought it but could not
hold it off as the blackness came for him again. The
sound of the rain on the sheet-metal roof was the
running of surf and Joy was leaning over him with her
hair a gleaming cascade of loveliness in the starlight.
Just as they heard the sound of the ambulance
coming down the sandy ruts of the hill, he brought
the hand out from under the quilt, empty, and put it
up to touch her.
“Joy,” he said.
She bent down and kissed him and the flash bulb
went off. The picture was taken, and she turned her
head and smiled at all of them through her tears.
Big City Girl — 168
Twenty-six
It made her feel so wonderful and at the same time so
sort of sad. It was tragic about Sewell because she
knew he was dying, but everybody had seen it and the
touching gesture of his love for her was even snapped
into the picture now where she would always have it.
It gave back to her the feeling of being wanted and
admired and would drive away for years that terror of
her nights, the agonizing hell of doubt and the fear of
glowing old and ugly that came to taunt her in the
darkness. There was a great uplifting of her spirit,
and she didn’t even hate Mitch any more. Yes, I do,
she thought, looking at him; nothing could rub that
out, but it just doesn’t matter so much now.
She looked at Jessie standing by the door with the
box under her arm. I don’t want to take her with me,
she thought. What business have I got with a kid like
that? I don’t want to be bothered with her; she’d just
be in my way. And I couldn’t just go off and leave her
somewhere—I guess I’m not bitch enough for that, am
I? I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her she can’t go.
Nobody had said anything for a minute. They could
hear the car coming quite plainly now, running down
the sandy road through the pines just above the yard.
It sounded as if there were two cars, and they knew
one of them would be the ambulance.
Big City Girl — 169
Mitch sat on his heels staring bleakly out at the
rain. There ain’t nothing I can do now, he thought.
They’ll be gone in a few minutes. I tried, but it was
too much for me. I can’t stop it now.
Joy started to get up, but Lambeth motioned to her.
“Just one more,” he said. “That’s probably the
ambulance now, and we’ve just time tor one more
before they get here.”
“All right.” Joy assented graciously.
She had been looking at the four people on the
other end of the porch, and now she started to turn
her face back and downward toward Sewell. There
was a slight movement of the edge of the quilt. Mitch
saw it, and Shaw, and even Jessie, before she did, but
there was nothing they could do. It was too late.
She bent down and turned her head, and then she
was looking into the cold eyes and the round, black,
awful end of the gun. Time stopped and all sound
ceased, and there was nothing anywhere except
Sewell slowly raising himself up on the mattress with
his back against the upright post at the edge of the
porch, his face sweating with agony but as pitiless as
death itself.
“Reach your hand in my coat pocket, baby,” he said
softly. “Harve sent you a present.”
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out of it.
Mitch and Shaw started to get up to leap toward
them, but the gun swung and the cold eyes stopped
them where they were. They hung, half crouched and
hardly daring to breathe. Jessie’s face was still with
horror as she stood there by the door. All of them
except Joy could hear the cars coming, very near now
and about to turn into the yard.
“Go on,” he said again. “In my pocket. Harve didn’t
need it no more, so I brought it back to you.”
No. Joy could feel her mouth forming the word, but
there was no word. No! No! No! was a pressure
growing greater and more terrible inside her and
straining outward toward the vacuum of silence
waiting to receive it, trying to escape through that
Big City Girl — 170
invisible barrier in her throat beyond which nothing
would pass.
“Go on, baby. See what your boy friend sent you.
Harve, the one-handed joker.”
It was a nightmare across which she moved without
volition. Her hand was going into the coat pocket.
There was nothing she could do to stop it. It came out
holding the photograph and the four people beyond
her saw it as they waited, frozen and utterly without
motion, while the ambulance and the sheriff’s car
turned into the yard.
Sewell could feel the blackness coming for him
again, and fought it back. All of them were beginning
to swim before his eyes like water going around and
around in a great dark eddy on the surface of a river
as he tried to steady the gun. Mitch turned his head
silently, staring. Men were getting out of the sheriff’s
car, men with guns under their coats. They don’t
know, he thought. They don’t know. They’ll never get
here in time to stop him He came to his feet,
springing up and forward.
She was looking down at the picture in her hand
with that awful feeling of her mouth going wider and
wider without sound. Her eyes shifted and the muzzle
of the gun was a black tunnel toward which she was
walking in the nightmare, a tunnel that grew larger
and then, as she ran into it, suddenly filled with light
—a huge, bursting circle of light without end.
Mitch reached her as she wilted and fell forward
across Sewell like a gold-petaled flower cut down by
the scythe. Sewell was swinging outward into
darkness again toward that dark beach and that brief
period of time in which he had been happy with this
girl now lying dead across his chest in a terrible and
irrevocable wedding of the only two things he had
ever loved: this same beautiful, lost, unhappy girl, and
violence.
Jessie had screamed and then turned to run back
down the hall toward the bedroom. Mitch stood on
the edge of the porch, an island of immobility,
Big City Girl — 171
helpless, numb, and lost, in the swirling river of
motion going across the porch and into the yard.
The sheriff was cursing, monotonously and with a
kind of helpless bitterness. “Not a goddamned one of
the whole dumbheaded bunch of idiots with brains
enough to look to see if he had a gun. You must have
thought he was some Sunday-school kid playing
hookey from school. This girl’d have been alive now if
any one of you’d had sense enough to come in out of
the rain.”
They were putting Joy’s body into the ambulance
and then coming back for Sewell. The young doctor
squatted beside the mattress, and when he looked up
and saw Mitch’s eyes on him he gave an almost
imperceptible shake of the head and looked away.
”You got all the pics you need?” Shaw was asking
Lambeth. “Let’s roll. My God! Did you ever see
anything like it?”
“Shut up,” Lambeth said tonelessly, stowing the
camera in its case. Did I kill her? he thought. Was it
Harve? Did Neely do it, or was he just the weapon,
the instrument, the actual hand on the gun? Was it all
of us. each in his way, or if you went back far enough
could you say she did it herself? When we get started,
I’ll finish that bottle. This is one time I need it.
And then, suddenly, they were all gone. The yard
was empty except for the team, standing dejectedly in
the diminishing drizzle of the rain. Cass had gone
running across the yard and pushed his way into the
front seat of the departing ambulance, oblivious of
restraint and crying out his unvarying and frenzied
lamentation, “I’m his daddy. I found my boy, and I got
to take him in.” When the ambulance shot out of the
yard he was seated beside the driver, staring straight
ahead through the windshield and holding onto the
dripping and grotesque hat. The other car, with the
sheriff and his two deputies, was right behind it, and
in a moment Shaw and Lambeth got into (heir car and
left.
Mitch squatted on his heels, staring out into the
yard. He’ll be dead before they get to town with him,
Big City Girl — 172
he thought. I saw that doctor shake his head, and he
knew that I knew it. He killed her, and that was all he
was holding on for, I reckon, ever since he found out
she was up here. All the good the old man did with his
crying and taking on was to get that girl killed. God
knows, I never had much use for her, but it was an
awful thing to happen.
The picture had been forgotten in all the
excitement, and now he saw it lying upside down on
the edge of the quilt, Reaching out a hand, he turned
it over, looked at it a minute, then turned it back.
This is what killed her, he thought. It ain’t nothing but
just a picture of her without no clothes on, like them
artists’ models, but it killed her. I reckon that deputy
had it on him and Sewell found it. And now I got to
tell Jessie. I’d rather die right here on the porch, I
reckon, than do it. First she lost Sewell, and then
Mexico, and now she figures I ain’t no good, so Joy
was about all the people she had left. She thought Joy
was the only thing there was. It don’t make so much
difference, now that Joy’s dead and she can’t go away
with her, but still I got to tell her.
I’ve always taken care of her ever since I can
remember, and I got to go on doing it until she’s old
enough to get married. And I can’t do it if she’s going
to go on hating me for whatever she thinks I did to
Joy. She’d run away. I just got to do it.
He picked up the picture and put it in his pocket,
then got up and went slowly down the hall. It was
growing darker inside the house now, and he realized
it was almost twilight and he hadn’t been back to the
bottom to see if the levee still held. After a while, he
thought. Maybe that’s gone too.
He went reluctantly into the bedroom and stood
looking down at her. She was lying on the bed with
her face to the wall, making no sound of any kind. He
knew she was not crying.
“Jessie,” he said quietly, standing still beside the
bed and dripping water out of his clothing onto the
floor.
Big City Girl — 173
She said nothing, and gave no indication she had
heard him.
“It ain’t no use to feel so bad about it, Jessie,” he
said. “It couldn’t be helped.”
She still made no answer, lying there with her face
to the wall as if he were not even in the room. He
stood looking at her helplessly, full of pity for her and
not knowing what to do. He pulled the picture out of
his pocket and looked at it, wanting to cry out, “Look,
Jessie, she wasn’t worth anything. She wasn’t worth
feeling bad about,” but he could not, and in a minute
he went out of the room. I can’t do it, he thought. No
matter what she thinks, I can’t do it. He tore the
picture up and threw it into the firebox of the stove,
then went down the trail toward the bottom.
The river was falling now. It had gone down nearly
six inches, and the levee had held. Well, I saved that,
anyway. he thought. But I reckon it don’t make much
difference now. He stood there for a minute, looking
out over the muddy field. Yes, it does too. It always
does. You can’t just give up.
It was growing dark as he went back up the hill,
and the rain had stopped. As he passed the barn he
heard someone moving around inside and talking to
the mules, and suddenly he remembered the team
forgotten in the front yard.
“Who’s that?” he called out.
“It’s just me.” Prentiss Jimerson came out, looking
at him a little uneasily. “I reckon you ain’t still sore at
me, are you, Mitch?”
He stopped. “Sore at you? What for?” It must have
been years since he had even seen Prentiss.
“You know—about Sewell, on the radio. You got
mad at me.”
“Oh,” he said, suddenly remembering. “No. Of
course not. It don’t matter now.”
“I saw the team out there, and thought maybe I’d
unhitch and feed the stock for you. What with the
trouble and all . . .”
Big City Girl — 174
Mitch stood still for a moment in the gathering
darkness. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks, Prentiss. You
had any supper yet?”
“Well, no. I was just on my way home.”
“We’ll see if we can fix something. Did you see
Jessie?”
“Just for a minute.” Prentiss stopped, and then went
on with an awkward and embarrassed tenderness in
his voice, “She’s all tore up about it, Mitch.”
“Yes,” Mitch said. “I know.” They went into the
kitchen. Jessie had the lamps lighted and was starting
to build a fire in the cookstove. She was putting paper
into the firebox and stopped suddenly, reaching into it
for the scraps of the picture. Mitch watched her
holding them in her hand, and when she looked up
and met his gaze he shook his head.
“It ain’t nothing, Jessie,” he said. “Burn it.”
She shook her head slowly and went on fitting the
four pieces loosely together in the palm of her left
hand. Then, abruptly, she changed her mind and
dropped them back into the firebox with an infinite
and defeated weariness and put a match to the paper.
Mitch looked at her, so small and beaten there in
the lamplight, and felt the twisting of pity inside him.
“Don’t take it so hard, Jessie,” he said. “It’ll be all
right.”
Then, for the first time, she spoke. “She never had a
chance! Nobody ever gave her a chance!” she cried
out brokenly. “Sewell didn’t. And you— I hope you
feel the way you ought to, after the things you did to
her!”
“I didn’t, Jessie! I tell you, I didn’t do anything to
her. Maybe she said I did, but you never did ask me!”
“Oh, stop it! When she’s dead now and can’t say
anything—”
Mitch stopped, realizing the futility of it. Even if
Jessie would believe him, it wasn’t a thing he would
want to do.
Big City Girl — 175
They ate supper in silence, both the men watching
Jessie anxiously but leaving her alone. Cass had not
returned.
When Prentiss got up to leave, Mitch asked,
“Where’s Cal?”
Prentiss looked embarrassed. “Why, at home, I
reckon.”
“You tell him I want to see him.”
“All right,” Prentiss said hesitantly. “I’ll tell him.”
Mitch saw the doubt in his face. “I ain’t going to do
anything. I just want to tell him something.”
“All right.”
After Jessie had gone to bed he walked the twelve
miles to town in the dark. Sewell had died on the way
to town, they said at the hospital, but they let him go
in for a minute. Sewell’s face was very white except
for the large brown freckles, and it looked peaceful
and still now with all the violence gone. After a while
he went back out and sat on the courthouse steps all
night smoking cigarettes and waiting for morning to
find out about claiming the body for burial.
Nobody seemed to know what had become of Cass.
Big City Girl — 176
Twenty-seven
On the clay hillside, drying now and baking in the
sun, they lowered the crude box into the ground.
Jessie turned away as the first clods fell with their
hollow sound, and walked silently through the small
scattering of neighbors and the idly curious who had
gathered for the funeral.
Mitch swung around and followed her, still-backed
and austere in his clean, faded overalls, and helped
her climb into the wagon. She said nothing, nor did
he as lie climbed up and took the lines. If she’d just
cry, he thought. If she’d only cry, it would help her.
Joy’s family had come from Louisiana to claim her
body. Sewell’s funeral was done now, and Cass had
not come. Maybe he didn’t know, Mitch thought.
Wherever he is, maybe he didn’t hear about it.
He gathered up the lines and prepared to shake the
sad-eared and drowsing mules awake when Cal
Jimerson walked over from the gathering.
“Maybe Jessie’d like to ride back with us in the car,
Mitch,” he said. “It’s a long ride in the wagon.”
Mitch turned to her. “You want to, Jessie?”
She shook her head. “I’ll be all right,” she said. “But
thanks, Cal. It was nice of you.”
Big City Girl — 177
“Thanks for offering,” Mitch said. He continued to
look down at Cal with his eyes stern, but said nothing.
The other’s face began to redden under the
scrutiny, “I hear you wanted to see me about
something,” he said lamely, with a touch of defiance
in his voice.
“That’s right,” Mitch said. “This ain’t the place for
it, but I’ll tell you anyway.”
“All right,” Cal said uncomfortably. “Let’s have it.”
“Don’t you ever come on my place again when
you’re drunk. You boys are always welcome, but I
ain’t going to have any prowling around when you’re
tanked up coming home from a dance. The next time
you pull somebody out of a window it might be me.”
Cal shifted his feet with embarrassment and his
face grew darker. “I reckon I just had a little too
much. It happens to people.”
“Well, it’s past and done. I ain’t going to write no
book about it. I just wanted it understood, then we’ll
drop it.”
Cal looked up. “O.K., Mitch,” he said. “It was too
bad about Sewell.”
“Yes,” Mitch said. “But that’s past and done too.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll see you.” Mitch gathered up the lines.
The mules leaned forward and the wheels turned,
cutting the drying clay. Jessie sat very quietly beside
him as they swung past the little church and started
out toward the road.
“Mitch.”
He turned. “What is it, Jessie?” She’s growing up
fast, he thought. She looks like a woman now, with
her hair combed like that and wearing her Sunday
dress.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. And then the
dam broke and all of it let go in her at once. He put
the lines down in the wagon bed under his foot and
held her while she cried. The mules swung out on the
road and started toward home without guidance,
Big City Girl — 178
forgotten while he supported the small, shaking body
with his arm until all the storm had passed.
She straightened up after a while and he held out
the clean bandanna. “Here, Jessie,” he said gruffly,
feeling the constriction in his throat and all the old
inarticulate and thorn-protected love for her he would
never be able to express in words. I reckon she
knows, though, he thought.
“I—I guess I believed it, Mitch,” she said hesitantly,
“I don’t know why.”
“It’s all right, Jessie. It don’t make no difference
now.”
She was silent for a moment. “Why do you suppose
she did it? Why, Mitch?”
“I don’t know. But she’s dead now. Let’s don’t talk
about it.”
Her shoulders shook just once more, while she
twisted the handkerchief helplessly in her hands and
cried out the ending of the whole chapter of Joy, “But
she was nice, Mitch! I know better than you do. She
tried awful hard. But she never did have a chance!”
Mitch said nothing. Maybe she’s right, he thought. I
guess I don’t know nothing about ‘em. I was worried
about Jessie going off with her, but I reckon actually
it wouldn’t have made no difference. Jessie was more
growed up when she was twelve, I reckon, than Joy
was when she died.
The Jimersons went past, waving, and then the car
stopped up ahead. Prentiss got out and they went on.
When the wagon came up to where he was waiting
beside the road, Mitch stopped the team and looked
down at him. The youth was wearing his Sunday suit
for the funeral, and now he looked up with the brown
eyes slightly abashed as usual.
“You mind if I ride back with you, Mitch? I’d kind of
like to ride in the wagon.”
Mitch looked at him gravely. I reckon she is
growing up, he thought.
“Sure,” he said. “Go on around and climb in. I
reckon we can make room, can’t we, Jessie?”
Big City Girl — 179
* * *
Cass had not come home. He had run across the yard
that tragic afternoon and pushed his way into the
departing ambulance and then had disappeared. The
funeral had come and gone without the man who had
cried out so, piteously in his grief, and now, two days
after the funeral, he still had not returned. When
Mitch had gone to claim Sewell’s body for burial, he
had asked, but no one seemed to know anything
about him. Yes, they said, he had come in to town in
the ambulance, but as to where he was now, they
couldn’t say. Each time, the question had met with a
puzzled glance and a quick changing of the subject,
as if the person asked had not understood or did not
want to say.
Mitch and Jessie sat on the front porch in the early
evening resting after supper and watching the
shadows thicken into dusk among the pines. Mitch
had been cutting wood all day, waiting for the fields
to dry out enough for plowing. The river was back to
normal now, but it would be several days before he
could do any work in the bottom.
“Where do you suppose he is, Mitch?” Jessie asked.
Mitch threw the cigarette into the yard. “I don’t
know, Jessie,” he began, then stopped, listening.
There was an automobile coming down off the hill,
and the sound of it was different from that of the
Jimerson car.
Without a word between them, they both began to
know then. They watched with growing horror as it
came into the yard and stopped and Cass got out,
grinning at them with a sort of lost and foolish
happiness. It was an old Buick, a four-door sedan with
one crumpled and ironed-out fender, but polished all
over until it gleamed and by far the largest and most
impressive of all the secondhand cars he had ever
brought home.
“Ain’t she a beauty, Mitch?” he asked with childlike
pride. “Got good rubber, too, the man said. Right new
tires all around.” He kicked one of them and looked at
Mitch and Jessie happily.
Big City Girl — 180
Jessie was staring at him as if she were going to be
ill. Mitch touched her arm. “Wait,” he said. “Don’t say
nothing.”
It ain’t that simple this time, he thought. It ain’t like
all the land he sold to buy them other seven cars, or
when he sold Mexico to buy the radio. It looks almost
the same, them five days it would take him to get it
squared around in his mind till it would be all right
and the only thing to do, but it probably wasn’t that.
It probably took him the five days to collect the
money. God knows where he had to go to get it.
Cass went back around to the driver’s side and blew
the horn. “Listen to that, Mitch. Got a nice sound,
ain’t it? And you ought to hear her growl when she
gets in the sand. Got more power’n a truck.”
We could leave, Mitch thought. I could take Jessie
and we could go somewhere else, and I reckon we
could get along, but what would become of him? No,
we couldn’t ever leave him; he’s living in another
world, but he’s got to get his meals in this one. I
guess we wouldn’t want to, anyhow. This is home,
what there’s left of it, and all you can do is hang tight
and keep on trying.
Cass took a last loving look at the car and came up
on the porch with his vacant and happy grin. Jessie
drew aside as he passed.
“Why don’t you take a ride in her, Mitch? You and
Jessie. Take a little spin up the road and try her out.”
He stopped then, the childish pride of possession
slowly fading from his face as he gazed at the window
of his room. Somewhere he had lost the monstrous
and insane hat, and he looked like a forlorn and
blankly staring doll in the gathering dusk.
“I got to listen to the news,” he said. “Ain’t heard
nothing in some time.” He walked to the window,
bent over like a folding rule, and stepped through it
into his room.
“Mitch, how could he?” Jessie asked in whispered
anguish. “How could he?”
Big City Girl — 181
Mitch was silent for a minute. “I don’t think he
really did, Jessie,” he said. “I think he won it on the
radio.”
It was just a prize they gave away in that game he
was listening to, he thought. At least, that’s as near as
I can figure it. God knows, it might have been better
the other way, if he had deliberately sold Sewell for
the reward the way he sold all the land and Mexico. I
don’t think, the way it is, he even knows that Sewell’s
dead. Not all the time, anyway.
He looked across the yard, seeing all the times in
years ahead when he would hear the shout, and turn,
waiting patiently in the endless furrow through cotton
yet unborn while the same lost figure stumbled down
the hill through the ever deepening and unvarying
furrow of its own with the frozen arm outstretched
and pointing toward the river. “It’s Sewell! It’s
Sewell, Mitch! Just come over the radio!”
Well, he thought, it ain’t no use to run. If running
did you any good, he wouldn’t be there himself.
Big City Girl — 182
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