September 25, 2010
Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(3)
“You’re mashing those birds in your pocket,” I said.
Lee was lying back on the corn with the quail in the
game pocket under him.
“The hell with the birds. The world is full of birds.”
“And I’d better point out another thing. We’re
wearing out our welcome around here. Fast. Sam
makes whisky, but he’s not running a bar. We’d better
get going.”
“I paid him for the rotgut, didn’t I? Do I have to ask
him where I can drink it?” His face was becoming
redder and I could see the stuff working on him.
Hill Girl — 44
I didn’t say anything.
“Did you ever see such a shape in your life?” he
asked.
“Sam? I guess he’s not my type.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! You and your goddamned stale
jokes. You know who I mean.”
“O.K.,” I said, “I know who you mean.”
“I wonder if she really wants it that bad. Or if she’s
just dumb.”
Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(3)
“You’re mashing those birds in your pocket,” I said.
Lee was lying back on the corn with the quail in the
game pocket under him.
“The hell with the birds. The world is full of birds.”
“And I’d better point out another thing. We’re
wearing out our welcome around here. Fast. Sam
makes whisky, but he’s not running a bar. We’d better
get going.”
“I paid him for the rotgut, didn’t I? Do I have to ask
him where I can drink it?” His face was becoming
redder and I could see the stuff working on him.
Hill Girl — 44
I didn’t say anything.
“Did you ever see such a shape in your life?” he
asked.
“Sam? I guess he’s not my type.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! You and your goddamned stale
jokes. You know who I mean.”
“O.K.,” I said, “I know who you mean.”
“I wonder if she really wants it that bad. Or if she’s
just dumb.”
“Why don’t you ask Sam? If you’ll just talk a little
louder he can hear you.”
“Look,” he said, setting down the jar and staring at
me with disgust. “I’m getting a little sick of hearing
about Sam. The sneaky bastard. Why doesn’t he get on
with his work and quit spying around here?”
It was getting bad. And I knew there wasn’t anything
I could do about it. It wasn’t his getting ugly, or the
fact that he might start trouble with Harley by trying to
pick a fight or cursing him or something, that worried
me. Sam would probably just charge that off to a bad
drunk who couldn’t handle his liquor. At least, I hoped
he would. But the thing that scared me was Lee’s
sitting here getting drunker and drunker with that girl
inflaming his mind. I’d seen drunks with something on
their minds before. Pretty soon, about the time
everything else began to close down for him, there’d be
nothing left but the girl.
It would be easy to reach over and take the stuff
away from him and throw it out the door. They didn’t
call me Mack Truck for nothing. I thought of doing it
and wondered why I didn’t, but deep down inside I
knew why. It was the thought of facing his ridicule
when he sobered up and I had to explain why I’d done
it. It would look so silly and old-womanish then. It’s
funny, I thought, how you’re afraid of a lot of things all
your life, but the thing you always fear most is ridicule.
In a little while we heard Sam going by outside and
then drawing water for the mules.
“Hey, Sam,” Lee called. There was no answer. He
shouted even louder. “Sam! Come in here!”
Hill Girl — 45
He turned and stared intently at me as though trying
to fix me in his mind. He frowned and weaved slightly
from side to side and you could see he was having
trouble bringing me into focus. The stuff was working
on him rapidly. He’d only had about six drinks.
“Jesus, but you’re a homely bastard. Where’d you
ever get a face like that?”
Maybe it would be easier if I got a little edge on
myself, I thought. I reached for the jar and took a
drink.
“You ought to take that face out somewhere and bury
it. You look like a gorilla. Does it hurt?”
“This is what is known as a good, clean, wholesome
face,” I said. “I’m a good, clean, wholesome American
youth.”
“You’re a good, clean, wholesome sonofabitch.
Always worryin’ about something. What’re you worryin’
about now, Grandma?”
“All right,” I said. “I’m always worrying about
something.”
“But right now. What’re you worryin’ about right
now?”
“Nothing.”
“Must be something. You wouldn’t be complete
without that face and something to worry about.”
I didn’t say anything. He kept on staring at me
owlishly, with that scowl of concentration screwing up
his face.
“Why don’t you worry some more about Titsy out
there? Whether she’s goin’ to throw one of ‘em right
out through that dress sometime? Or whether she’s
goin’ to get what she’s looking for?”
I can see why you get in so many fights, I thought. I
can just guess how far you get with that stuff with
somebody who doesn’t love you for what you are when
you’re all there.
‘Did you ever see anything like it?” he asked. Every
time he stopped talking for a minute and then started
in again, it was about the same thing.
Hill Girl — 46
“Why don’t you and Sam take the guns and go off
hunting for a while?”
I didn’t say anything, so he yelled for Sam again.
“Hey, Sam!”
In a minute the door opened and Sam looked in.
There was still that uneasiness in his black eyes.
“Sam, you old devil, where you been?” Lee shouted at
him. “Come on in and have a drink.”
Sam climbed in and squatted down on his heels by
the door. Lee kept saying, “You old devil,” and “You old
bastard,” and holding out the fruit jar. Sam tried to
give me one of those knowing and indulgent smiles out
of the side of his eyes, the look that two sober people
always have between them for a noisy drunk, but it was
pretty weak and strained.
“Sam, old boy, old boy, I want to show you the best
damn shotgun in the United States,” Lee said noisily,
reaching back on the pile of corn to where he’d thrown
the gun. It wasn’t until that moment that I remembered
that he hadn’t unloaded it.
“Yeah, that’s a right nice gun, Lee,” Sam said
politely.
“Right nice! I hope to tell you it’s a right nice gun.
You can’t miss with it. Ask old Plug-Ugly here how
many shots I missed with it today. Go on, ask him.”
“Yeah,” Sam said dutifully. “I shore wisht I could git
me one like it. It’s right smart of a gun.”
“Take it outside and feel the balance of it. Take a
shot at something. It’s loaded. Say, I’ll tell you what.
Look, you old boar, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you go
out and locate a covey and try a couple of shots? Gable
here’ll go with you. I want you to try it out. I’ll just stay
here and catch a couple of winks while you’re gone.”
Sam shook his head regretfully. “I wisht I could, Lee.
But it’s gettin’ close to feedin’ time.”
“Oh, what the hell. It’s not late. Go ahead.”
“No, but I wisht I could. Mebbe some other time.”
Hill Girl — 47
Lee’s slightly glassy eyes fastened on his face with a
hard stare. “What’s the matter, you snoopy bastard?
You afraid to?”
Sam looked at me questioningly and then back to
Lee, as though he couldn’t make it out. Before I could
do anything or say a word, Lee cut loose again.
“Oh, I know what you’re up to. You been snoopin’
around here the last hour, afraid I might get next to
that little bitch. Well, you’re not so goddamned smart,
mister. She’s gettin’ plenty of it from somebody, and
don’t you forget it.”
Sam still had the shotgun in his hands. I was afraid to
make a sudden move and I knew that any move I made
would be too late to do any good anyway. I was
watching his eyes and I saw the hot, crazy urgency
flooding into them and I could feel the skin on the back
of my neck tighten up until it hurt, the way it does
when you have a hard chill and it seems like every hair
is stabbing you. It was just the way it is when you’re
skating over deep water when the ice is thin and you
hear it start to rumble under you and you try to lift
your weight off your feet by sheer will and hold your
breath and pray, “Don’t let it break. Don’t let it break.”
He raised the gun slowly and I could hear the ice
breaking under all of us, but he was just setting it down
in the corner, and he turned his face toward me and
the murder was going out of his eyes and there was
something hurt in them, a naked and shameful pain
that he couldn’t hide.
“Sam,” I said quietly, and put a hand on his arm.
“Come outside a minute.”
He nodded dumbly and we went out the small door,
leaving Lee cursing behind us. Just before I went out I
picked up the gun and took out the two shells and put
them in my pocket and took the ones he had in his coat.
“I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry as hell,” I said as we
slowly walked away from the little building, and I was
conscious of how futile it was to try to apologize for
something like that.
Hill Girl — 48
He was silent for a minute and I was afraid he wasn’t
going to answer. Then he said, “It’s all right, Bob. It
don’t mean nothin’. He’s just drunk.”
There was still that awful hurt in his eyes and his
hands were shaking and I knew he was thinking now of
how near he had been to killing a man.
“I’ll try to get him away from here. But the best idea
is to let him take a few more and he’ll pass out.”
“He oughtn’t to never drink, Bob.”
“I know.”
“He jest can’t handle it.”
“I know.”
“Something awful is goin’ to happen to that boy
someday.” He said it quietly and there was regret in his
voice.
“I know it, Sam.” It was the first time I had ever
admitted knowing it, even to myself. I looked down at
the ground and aimlessly pushed a piece of oak bark
around with the toe of my boot.
“You’ll tell him for me, won’t you, that I ain’t goin’ to
sell him no more?”
“I’ll tell him.”
“He oughtn’t to have no more, ever. An’ I’d rather he
didn’t come back, nohow.”
I didn’t say anything and he stood there for a
moment, a little embarrassed, and then he said
something about feeding and started off. As I stood
there watching him I was thinking that there was a lot
of man in Sam. If there hadn’t been I would have had a
brother over there in the corn crib with his guts blown
all over seventy bushels of corn.
“Oh, Sam!” I called after him. “I know it’s asking a
lot, but would you give us a lift out to the highway,
where the car is? When he passes out, I mean. I can’t
carry him.”
“Well, I’d do it for you, Bob,” he said hesitantly, “but
my car ain’t here. One of the Rucker boys carried
Mama and the two little girls to town in it. He left his
Hill Girl — 49
car here, but it’s jest one of them stripdowns. It’ll only
take two.”
I went back to the corn crib and Lee was still sitting
there where we had left him. He had the dead, vacant
stare of the very drunk.
“Well,” he said. “It’s my handsome brother.” He said
“hansshm,” so I guessed that’s what he meant. He was
back on my beauty again.
“You’ve really played hell this time,” I told him.
“Jeesus, but you’re a homely bastard.”
It’s like being on a merry-go-round, I thought.
“Sam can’t take us out to the car. His car’s not here.
All he’s got is some kid’s stripdown.”
“I’ll say she’s stripped down.”
It wasn’t any use. We were just going to keep on
playing the same records over and over.
“Let’s worry about something.”
“Go to hell,” I said.
I thought about this morning when everything was so
bright and fresh and cold and old Mike was holding
firm close over the birds, and Lee was Lee and
everything was perfect. Oh, hell, I thought.
“Why don’t you have a drink?” I asked. If he’d only go
on and pass out.
“You want to get me drunk so you can get it.”
It’s funny, I thought, how they can fix their minds on
only one thing.
He took another drink, though. When he put down
the jar, which was nearly empty now, it fell over and
the rest of the moonshine ran through a crack in the
floor He lay back on the corn after a while and closed
his eyes
“Horses,” he muttered.
I sat down and took out a cigarette. “What about
horses?”
I don’t know whether he heard me or not. He seemed
to be asleep, but he muttered stupidly now and then
“Sharon liked the horses. Horsh is a noble anim’l.”
Hill Girl — 50
I sat there moodily smoking the cigarette, being very
careful not to start a fire in the corn.
“Poor Sharon. Always hav’n arms twisted. Twists h’r
arms.”
“Who does? The horse?” Certainly a brilliant
conversation, I thought.
“No.”
He didn’t say anything more and I sat there and
watched him for five minutes and he didn’t move. It
was sooner than I had expected. He usually didn’t pass
out so quickly. But then, I thought, it hasn’t been much
over an hour and a half, but he’s drunk nearly a quart
of the stuff.
I went outside and found Sam.
“He’s gone to sleep,” I said. “Passed out.”
He nodded.
“I’m going out to the highway and get the car. I’ll
come back and pick him up. “
“That’s a long ways,” he said thoughtfully.
“Two or three miles.”
He didn’t say anything else, but walked over toward
the corn crib. I went with him, and he opened the door
and looked in at Lee, who was sleeping noisily, with his
mouth open. There was something queer about it, but I
couldn’t quite place it. He hadn’t moved.
“I’ll drive you out to your car, Bob,” Sam offered.
“It’s too fur to walk.”
“That’s fine, Sam,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
He pushed the stripdown out of the garage and
cranked it. I climbed up with him and we started down
the lane. As we went out through the wire gate I saw
Angelina come out of the house with a milk bucket.
The car was just a chassis with an old seat cushion
thrown on top of the gasoline tank. It was an old Ford,
and there weren’t any fenders on it or any hood, just
the bare essentials. I could see what Sam had meant by
not being able to haul a passed-out drunk. It was all we
could do to stay on it ourselves.
Hill Girl — 51
I don’t know why it didn’t hit me sooner. Maybe I just
wasn’t up on my toes mentally, after the experiences of
the afternoon. Anyway, it wasn’t until we had reached
the Buick and Sam had turned around and started back
that this awful suspicion began to creep up on me. He
had passed out too quickly and too easily.
I cursed the cunning of a drunk with only one thing
on his mind. He’d figured that maybe Sam would do
just what he had, drive me out to the car and leave him
alone there on the place with that girl. Then I knew
what it was that had been queer about the way he
looked. He’d been lying there with his head over on one
side, asleep with his mouth open. And it had been the
first time I’d ever seen a drunk sleeping that way
without saliva drooling out the corner of his mouth.
The car was doing fifty by the time I shifted out of
second and I passed Sam in the old stripdown as if he
had a broken axle. I made the sharp, cutback turn off
the highway where Sam’s road came in with a long
screaming slide and a cloud of dust.
As I blasted through the pines up there on the ridge
in that narrow pair of ruts I was praying I wouldn’t
meet anybody. If I did, it would be plain murder. The
road was clear all the way.
Just before I hit Sam’s place I pressed the horn as
hard as I could. As I shot through the gate and slid to a
stop in front of the house I got a quick flash of the girl,
running to the house from the direction of the corn
crib.
I ran past the house without even looking toward her
and headed for the crib. As I rounded the corner of it I
almost kicked over the bucket of milk she’d left there
right in the path. The damned fool, I thought. The
damned, stupid, insane little slut. The door was closed,
but I could hear Lee moving around inside and cursing.
“Come back here! Come back!” he was yelling at the
top of his voice.
I grabbed up the milk and ran toward the house and
burst right into the kitchen. She was there on the other
side of the oilcloth-covered table, leaning against it,
Hill Girl — 52
with her hands gripping the edge, breathing hard and
glaring at me.
“Here, you little fool!” I said. “And for Christ’s sake
pin up that dress or put on another one before Sam
sees you. Quick!”
“You go to hell!” she spat at me. Her eyes were hot
and smoky and her hair was tangled and there was a
long tear right down the front of that tight, sleazy
dress, almost to her belly.
I got back to the corn crib just as I heard the Ford
pulling up in the lane. Lee had the door open and was
weaving around, trying to climb out. I heard Sam
stopping in front of the house and I could tell from the
way he sounded that he was in a hurry too.
I pushed Lee back inside, not being gentle about it,
just shoving him back through the door like a bundle of
old rags.
“Where is she? Where is that juicy little bitch? Tell
her to come back here!” he kept saying.
I could hear Sam coming around the house, walking
fast, and there wasn’t anything else to do or any time
to lose. I hit him. I slugged him hard on the side of the
jaw and he folded up at the base of the pile of corn. I
stretched him out the way he had been when we left.
Sam opened the door and looked in.
“Maybe I better help you with him, Bob,” he said
after a hard look at Lee. Whatever he had been
thinking, he was apparently satisfied by the sight of
him lying there just as he had been. I felt a little weak.
We carried him out and put him in the car and he
never stirred a muscle. I went back and got the guns
and whistled for Mike and then just stalled a minute or
two. I wasn’t afraid Lee would come out of it any time
soon.
I wanted to keep Sam out there for a few minutes so
he wouldn’t get in the house and see that damned girl
before she changed her dress and got that wild look
out of her eyes. We talked there at the car for several
minutes, but I have no idea what we talked about. I
didn’t hear a word.
Hill Girl — 53
I stopped where the road ran close to the little creek
just before we got back on the highway and got a little
water in my hat and washed Lee’s face with. it. He
didn’t come around for five minutes and when he did
he was still limp and white. I helped him out of the car
and he was sick.
I pulled the birds out of the game pocket of his coat
and they were mashed and beginning to smell. There
were nine of them and I threw them out on the ground.
Mike looked at me questioningly and we both looked at
the birds and I felt like hell.
Big thunderheads were piling up in the west when we
got out on the highway and the sun was just going
down behind them. It looked as if it might rain in the
night. Neither of us said anything as I drove home in
the dusk.
Hill Girl — 54
Seven
It was raining the next morning when I looked out, not
a sudden shower with a blue sky behind it, but a slow,
leaden drizzle that could go on for days.
It was very early, and Sunday, and no one else was
up. I went down to the kitchen and drank a cup of
coffee with Rose and then went out to the car. I wanted
to go out to the farm today, and I didn’t want to get
mixed up in any Monday-morning rehash of the game
yesterday. Lee had still been limp and very drunk when
we got home, and if he and Mary were going to have an
argument about it I wanted to stay in the clear.
I ate some breakfast at Gordon’s café and drove out
to the farm. It lies about seven miles from town,
directly across the Black Creek bottom from the Eiler’s
place, where Sam lives.
I pulled up in front of the house and sat there a
minute in the car under the sweet-gum trees, looking at
the place. It sat back from the road about a hundred
yards, with a sandy driveway going back to it, and the
tenant house was across the road on a bare sand hill
with a big china-berry tree in the front yard.
The house seemed in better condition than the old
house in town. My grandfather had always taken great
pride in keeping it up and there had been a renter on
the place for three of the four years since he had died.
Hill Girl — 55
Right now the place looked dead and empty with the
dark windows staring vacantly out into the rain and I
listened moodily to the sound of water dripping into the
barrel at the end of the front porch.
I ran through the rain and up onto the porch,
fumbling for the key. The hallway was dark and I
walked slowly down it toward the dining room at the
rear of the house, hearing my footsteps echo hollowly
and thinking of my grandfather and grandmother and
of the fun I had had there in my childhood.
The room on the left at the front of the hall was the
parlor and there was a fireplace in it, while the room
across from it was the bedroom that had been mine
during the summers I had lived there. The hall went on
back to the dining room, and the kitchen was to the
right of that, while on the left of it was the back
bedroom, which had another fireplace. I went on to the
back bedroom and kindled a fire to take the chill
dampness off the place.
My grandparents had died within a few months of
each other, my grandmother in April and my
grandfather in the following July. He was past seventyeight,
but I had never believed old age had anything to
do with his death. They had lived together for more
than fifty years and after she was gone he died of
loneliness.
He had left me the farm and some eight thousand
dollars that was variously invested in savings bonds,
timber land, and some lots in town. It had become mine
on my twenty-first birthday, just about a year ago. He
had left it all to me, I guess, because we had always
been so close and I had lived there so long, and
because he knew, of course, that the Major had cut me
off entirely when I had left home.
My father had fought with the Engineers during
World War I and had come home a major, and after
that he was always called by his rank. It suited him.
The Major had been a headstrong and violent man as
long as he lived, and I guess the one love in his life had
been as consuming as his other passions. I had always
heard, from the few people who knew him well, but
Hill Girl — 56
never from the Major himself, that he had been utterly
devoted to my mother, who was a frail and gentle girl
as completely opposed to him in temperament as it was
possible to be. She was considerably younger than he,
and when she had died so young—when I was born—it
had hurt him far worse than he would ever admit. It
had added to his legend of callousness and brutality
when he had refused to go into any mourning, but had
only gone back to work more profane and hard-driving
than ever. It was said he had fired two men for loafing
on the job the next day after the funeral, and when they
had talked back he threatened to shoot them both if
they weren’t off his property in five minutes.
He had been a big man with a big voice. He had
always worked hard, and he drank harder, and he was
a difficult man to work for because of his temper. Lee
was the only person I ever knew who could handle him.
No matter what Lee did—and he did plenty—he could
always bring the Major round to his side.
Lee had been expelled from college in his junior year
for a wild week end in Galveston involving a stolen taxi
and a girl from Postoffice Street. Lee always claimed
he hadn’t stolen the taxi, that it was just that the driver
had got even drunker than they were and had
wandered off and left them. Anyway, the police had
picked up Lee and the girl at dawn on Sunday morning
going swimming in the nude out of the cab, which was
seventy-five yards out from the beach in a heavy surf.
They had driven it out until the motor stalled, at low
tide. The Major had paid the damages and got the theft
charges quashed and forgave Lee for it, but he never
tried to send him back to school. Lee was a junior
partner in the firm from then on, a partner whose
duties consisted largely of driving a car as fast as it
would go over rough country roads. Lee knew how to
get along with him, and the Major was always a little
proud of him, I think. He wore good clothes with an air,
knew how to impress people, and knew a lot of good
telephone numbers in a lot of places. The Major was a
man who liked parties.
I don’t know yet why we couldn’t get along together.
I had often wondered, during those years, if he didn’t
Hill Girl — 57
subconsciously hate me because my coming into the
world had killed my mother. She had died three days
afterward, of complications following my birth. I had
never really believed this, though, for he was far too
smart a man to go in for any such crackpot morbidity.
It was more likely that, as Mary had put it once, we
both had too much of the same type of pigheaded
stubbornness to live together. God knows, some of the
whippings he had given me had been terrible to
remember, and some of the provocations I had given
him had been enough to try the patience of a saint.
A lot of things happened that year, the last one I was
at home. Grandmother died in April, Lee came home in
May, kicked out of college, and that same month the
Major and I came to the parting. I graduated from high
school the last of May and began packing to go out to
the farm for the summer, as I had every year, and
knowing that my grandfather would want me more
than ever now that my grandmother was gone.
I will always remember the Major as he was that day.
It isn’t a fair picture, because he wasn’t always that
way, but it is one of those things that are ingrained in
the memory and never come out. I didn’t look any
better than he did that day, either, and I would like to
forget it if I could, but I probably never will.
He met me in the living room as I was going out with
my suitcase. He had been shaving and had come out of
the bathroom in his gray tweed trousers with the
suspenders dangling and shaving soap under one ear.
His face was dark and I could see the nervous
twitching of his right eyelid that always betrayed his
anger.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
“Out to the farm,” I said.
“Take that bag back upstairs and unpack it. You’re
not going to any farm this summer.”
“Why not?”
“Because I say so. No son of mine is going to be a
farm hand all his life. That’s finished.”
“He needs somebody out there.”
Hill Girl — 58
“He doesn’t need you. He’s got plenty of help, and if
he needs any more he can hire ‘em, or I’ll hire ‘em for
him.”
I was eighteen then and bigger than he was and I
could feel our lifelong argument coming to a head. It
was at this point that Lee always pretended to agree
with him and turned on the charm and talked him out
of it, but I never could do it. At about this time I usually
got a whipping or a profane tongue-lashing for my
rebellious attitude and the thing ended with my doing
what I was told, but today I knew it was finished.
“I’m going out to the farm,” I said again.
“God damn you, are you defying me?”
Without answering, I turned and started to go.
“Stop where you are,” he roared, and stalked back to
the bathroom and returned with the razor strap.
“You’ve laid that on me for the last time,” I said.
“We’ll see about that, young man,” he said, and
swung it viciously. It hit me across the shoulders and
hurt, and I caught it and pulled it out of his hand and
threw it far down the hall behind me. He drew back as
though to hit me with his right hand; his left hand had
been amputated during the war.
“Don’t hit me,” I said. “I’ll slug you. You’ll need both
hands if you ever hit me again.” It was something I
would regret saying all the rest of my life, but I had
said it and he stopped.
His voice wasn’t loud now. He sounded as if he would
choke, and I could see his big chest rise as though he
had to fight to breathe.
“Don’t come back. You’re finished here.”
“I’m not coming back,” I said. I picked up the bag
and went on down the hall and out the front door. I saw
him only once after that, for a little while one afternoon
in July, at my grandfather’s funeral, but we didn’t
speak.
I had been home once since then, two years ago, but
it was while he was out of town.
Hill Girl — 59
When the rain slacked a little I went down to the
barn and the mule lot and looked over the buildings
and found them in good repair and then crossed the
road to the tenant house. It hadn’t been used since my
grandfather’s death, for the man who had been farming
the place on the third-and-fourth had lived in the big
house, and it had at one time been used for storing hay,
but it hadn’t deteriorated too badly and could be put
back in good condition with a few minor repairs and a
half-dozen windowpanes that had been broken.
I was anxious to begin getting the place in shape
again. It was mine now, and I intended to build it up to
the way it had been when my grandfather was running
it. I had always admired the way he had lived. I guess if
someone had asked me, I couldn’t have explained why I
wanted to go on being a farmer. There isn’t any money
in it, and there certainly isn’t any prestige, as there is
in being a doctor or a good lawyer or newspaper editor.
But I liked the being outdoors all the time, and the hard
physical activity, and the changing seasons, and the
independence, and the knowledge—when I
remembered my grandfather and the men like him—
that I was in good company.
* * *
I moved out to the farm the second week in November.
I had been pointing toward that ever since I had left
New York after that last humiliating fight, and I was
glad now to get away from the house in town. Lee was
drinking more and more and it was hard to stay there
and see what it was doing to Mary and what it was
going to do to their marriage, to have to see it and still
pretend it wasn’t happening.
They came out to see me often in December,
sometimes bringing me a roast or something else that
Mary or Rose had cooked, for they were convinced I
would starve or poison myself with my own cooking.
And in a way they were right, for that was the one
feature about the arrangement I didn’t like. I hated the
mess I made trying to cook, and I knew that later on,
when the real farming began, I wouldn’t have time
even to try to cook.
Hill Girl — 60
They came out every few days that first month, but
after the first of the year their visits became less
frequent and sometimes Mary would come alone, in a
borrowed car. She never said what Lee was doing, or
why he didn’t come with her, but I always knew. He
wasn’t home. Sometimes he would be gone for a week
at a time. He had made one halfhearted effort to go to
work; he and another man had bought a filling station,
but before they’d been operating a month there had
been a party in the back room one night after closing
and it had burned down. Somebody had left a cigarette
lying around, I guess.
One bright, cold day in January she drove out and,
not finding me near the house, walked on down
through the fields to where I was working in the new
ground, cutting and piling logs and downed limbs and
burning them.
I was swinging the ax lustily in the thin sunlight of
early afternoon. It was cold, only a few degrees above
freezing, but I had my shirt off and sweat was
glistening on my arms and back. I had forgotten about
the soggy and uninspiring cold lunch I had brought
from the house this morning and was wrapped up in
the acute pleasure I always get out of violent exercise,
when I heard an amused voice behind me.
“You look like Thor. And I guess you haven’t got any
brains at all.”
I turned around and Mary was standing by the
burning logs, smiling at me.
“Hello,” I said. “Where’d you come from?”
She had on a big wrap-around coat and she pulled it
closer now, with the collar turned up about her throat,
and shivered.
“From town. It’s a place where intelligent people live,
with heat and comfortable living rooms. It replaced the
Stone Age, but I guess you haven’t heard about it yet.”
I rolled up a short section of log and spread my
jacket on it for her to sit on in front of the fire. She
stretched her long, silk-clad legs out in front of her and
I notice how out of place they looked here and how the
Hill Girl — 61
sharp heels of her slippers poked into the damp
ground.
“For God’s sake, put on your shirt, you idiot,” she
said in exasperation. I slipped into it and squatted
down on my heels near her. She opened the paper bag
she was carrying and brought out a thermos bottle and
some sandwiches and a large piece of cake.
“I brought you some lunch. I wish you’d get married,
so I wouldn’t have to keep on feeding you.”
She sent me a sly glance as I bit into a sandwich. “By
the way, how is Angelina these days?”
It was a little sudden for me, but I think I was
completely deadpan and offhand as I said, “Angelina?
Oh, she’s all right, I guess. Why?”
“I just wondered if you were seeing much of her. She
lives right across the bottom over there, doesn’t she?”
“That’s right,” I said. “The old Eilers’ place.”
I still couldn’t understand what she was driving at. If
she suspected there was something going on between
Lee and the Harley girl, she wouldn’t be so happy
about it.
“Can she cook?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why?”
“Well, you need a girl who can cook.”
“Is that right?”
“Are you really serious about her, Bob? Have you
been holding out on us?”
“No.” I said. “What started all this, anyway?”
“I heard Lee say something about her one time a
couple of weeks ago and the next morning I asked him
who she was. He said she was the oldest Harley girl
and that you were sort of taken with her.”
“Oh,” I said. Well, he wiggled out of it that time, I
thought. “He’s exaggerating, Mary. It’s nothing like
that. I’ve just been—oh—helping her with her
schoolwork.”
“Helping her with her schoolwork? What’s she
studying? Blocking? Or off-tackle plays?”
Hill Girl — 62
She went on back to the car after a while and I
worked hard the rest of the afternoon trying to get a
dead hickory chopped in two so I could roll it into the
fire. But I kept thinking about Lee. He still had that girl
on his mind, especially when he was drinking. Mary
hadn’t said he was drunk when he spilled it, but she
didn’t have to; it was obvious.
Hill Girl — 63
Eight
It was around the middle of January that I first met
Jake. It was around seven of a cold night, with a mist of
fine rain, and I was sitting before the fireplace in the
back bedroom, whittling out a handle for a grubbing
hoe and feeling a little low and alone, when I heard a
car pull up in front of the house. I stopped to listen.
“Hello,” came a shout from the front yard.
I went down the dark hall and looked out. There was
an old Ford touring car huddled under the bare trees.
“Come on in,” I called out
We went back into the warmth and light of the
bedroom and I got a look at him.
“My name’s Hubbard,” he said, grinning. “Jake
Hubbard. Yo’re Mr. Crane, ain’t you?”
I liked the grin. “My name’s Crane,” I said. “But it’s
Bob Crane, not Mister.”
He laughed and I shoved a chair toward him for him
to sit down. He was about my age, maybe a couple of
years older, but smaller, and his movements were fast
and decisive and there was an easy assurance about his
eyes. He had a big chew of tobacco in his right cheek
and now he sat down on the very front edge of the
chair like a bird poised for flight, held his hands out
Hill Girl — 64
toward the fire, and spat a brown stream into the
ashes.
He had on new overalls and an old leather jacket,
patched at the elbows, and a cap of the type that has
ear flaps, and he had the flaps pulled down over his
ears now. There was a pleasant homeliness about his
face, with its oversized bony nose and the stubble of
tough black beard and the long sideburns that came
down almost to the bottoms of his ears.
“I hear you goin’ to farm this here place,” he said.
“That’s right.”
Lee was lying back on the corn with the quail in the
game pocket under him.
“The hell with the birds. The world is full of birds.”
“And I’d better point out another thing. We’re
wearing out our welcome around here. Fast. Sam
makes whisky, but he’s not running a bar. We’d better
get going.”
“I paid him for the rotgut, didn’t I? Do I have to ask
him where I can drink it?” His face was becoming
redder and I could see the stuff working on him.
Hill Girl — 44
I didn’t say anything.
“Did you ever see such a shape in your life?” he
asked.
“Sam? I guess he’s not my type.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! You and your goddamned stale
jokes. You know who I mean.”
“O.K.,” I said, “I know who you mean.”
“I wonder if she really wants it that bad. Or if she’s
just dumb.”
“Why don’t you ask Sam? If you’ll just talk a little
louder he can hear you.”
“Look,” he said, setting down the jar and staring at
me with disgust. “I’m getting a little sick of hearing
about Sam. The sneaky bastard. Why doesn’t he get on
with his work and quit spying around here?”
It was getting bad. And I knew there wasn’t anything
I could do about it. It wasn’t his getting ugly, or the
fact that he might start trouble with Harley by trying to
pick a fight or cursing him or something, that worried
me. Sam would probably just charge that off to a bad
drunk who couldn’t handle his liquor. At least, I hoped
he would. But the thing that scared me was Lee’s
sitting here getting drunker and drunker with that girl
inflaming his mind. I’d seen drunks with something on
their minds before. Pretty soon, about the time
everything else began to close down for him, there’d be
nothing left but the girl.
It would be easy to reach over and take the stuff
away from him and throw it out the door. They didn’t
call me Mack Truck for nothing. I thought of doing it
and wondered why I didn’t, but deep down inside I
knew why. It was the thought of facing his ridicule
when he sobered up and I had to explain why I’d done
it. It would look so silly and old-womanish then. It’s
funny, I thought, how you’re afraid of a lot of things all
your life, but the thing you always fear most is ridicule.
In a little while we heard Sam going by outside and
then drawing water for the mules.
“Hey, Sam,” Lee called. There was no answer. He
shouted even louder. “Sam! Come in here!”
Hill Girl — 45
He turned and stared intently at me as though trying
to fix me in his mind. He frowned and weaved slightly
from side to side and you could see he was having
trouble bringing me into focus. The stuff was working
on him rapidly. He’d only had about six drinks.
“Jesus, but you’re a homely bastard. Where’d you
ever get a face like that?”
Maybe it would be easier if I got a little edge on
myself, I thought. I reached for the jar and took a
drink.
“You ought to take that face out somewhere and bury
it. You look like a gorilla. Does it hurt?”
“This is what is known as a good, clean, wholesome
face,” I said. “I’m a good, clean, wholesome American
youth.”
“You’re a good, clean, wholesome sonofabitch.
Always worryin’ about something. What’re you worryin’
about now, Grandma?”
“All right,” I said. “I’m always worrying about
something.”
“But right now. What’re you worryin’ about right
now?”
“Nothing.”
“Must be something. You wouldn’t be complete
without that face and something to worry about.”
I didn’t say anything. He kept on staring at me
owlishly, with that scowl of concentration screwing up
his face.
“Why don’t you worry some more about Titsy out
there? Whether she’s goin’ to throw one of ‘em right
out through that dress sometime? Or whether she’s
goin’ to get what she’s looking for?”
I can see why you get in so many fights, I thought. I
can just guess how far you get with that stuff with
somebody who doesn’t love you for what you are when
you’re all there.
‘Did you ever see anything like it?” he asked. Every
time he stopped talking for a minute and then started
in again, it was about the same thing.
Hill Girl — 46
“Why don’t you and Sam take the guns and go off
hunting for a while?”
I didn’t say anything, so he yelled for Sam again.
“Hey, Sam!”
In a minute the door opened and Sam looked in.
There was still that uneasiness in his black eyes.
“Sam, you old devil, where you been?” Lee shouted at
him. “Come on in and have a drink.”
Sam climbed in and squatted down on his heels by
the door. Lee kept saying, “You old devil,” and “You old
bastard,” and holding out the fruit jar. Sam tried to
give me one of those knowing and indulgent smiles out
of the side of his eyes, the look that two sober people
always have between them for a noisy drunk, but it was
pretty weak and strained.
“Sam, old boy, old boy, I want to show you the best
damn shotgun in the United States,” Lee said noisily,
reaching back on the pile of corn to where he’d thrown
the gun. It wasn’t until that moment that I remembered
that he hadn’t unloaded it.
“Yeah, that’s a right nice gun, Lee,” Sam said
politely.
“Right nice! I hope to tell you it’s a right nice gun.
You can’t miss with it. Ask old Plug-Ugly here how
many shots I missed with it today. Go on, ask him.”
“Yeah,” Sam said dutifully. “I shore wisht I could git
me one like it. It’s right smart of a gun.”
“Take it outside and feel the balance of it. Take a
shot at something. It’s loaded. Say, I’ll tell you what.
Look, you old boar, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you go
out and locate a covey and try a couple of shots? Gable
here’ll go with you. I want you to try it out. I’ll just stay
here and catch a couple of winks while you’re gone.”
Sam shook his head regretfully. “I wisht I could, Lee.
But it’s gettin’ close to feedin’ time.”
“Oh, what the hell. It’s not late. Go ahead.”
“No, but I wisht I could. Mebbe some other time.”
Hill Girl — 47
Lee’s slightly glassy eyes fastened on his face with a
hard stare. “What’s the matter, you snoopy bastard?
You afraid to?”
Sam looked at me questioningly and then back to
Lee, as though he couldn’t make it out. Before I could
do anything or say a word, Lee cut loose again.
“Oh, I know what you’re up to. You been snoopin’
around here the last hour, afraid I might get next to
that little bitch. Well, you’re not so goddamned smart,
mister. She’s gettin’ plenty of it from somebody, and
don’t you forget it.”
Sam still had the shotgun in his hands. I was afraid to
make a sudden move and I knew that any move I made
would be too late to do any good anyway. I was
watching his eyes and I saw the hot, crazy urgency
flooding into them and I could feel the skin on the back
of my neck tighten up until it hurt, the way it does
when you have a hard chill and it seems like every hair
is stabbing you. It was just the way it is when you’re
skating over deep water when the ice is thin and you
hear it start to rumble under you and you try to lift
your weight off your feet by sheer will and hold your
breath and pray, “Don’t let it break. Don’t let it break.”
He raised the gun slowly and I could hear the ice
breaking under all of us, but he was just setting it down
in the corner, and he turned his face toward me and
the murder was going out of his eyes and there was
something hurt in them, a naked and shameful pain
that he couldn’t hide.
“Sam,” I said quietly, and put a hand on his arm.
“Come outside a minute.”
He nodded dumbly and we went out the small door,
leaving Lee cursing behind us. Just before I went out I
picked up the gun and took out the two shells and put
them in my pocket and took the ones he had in his coat.
“I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry as hell,” I said as we
slowly walked away from the little building, and I was
conscious of how futile it was to try to apologize for
something like that.
Hill Girl — 48
He was silent for a minute and I was afraid he wasn’t
going to answer. Then he said, “It’s all right, Bob. It
don’t mean nothin’. He’s just drunk.”
There was still that awful hurt in his eyes and his
hands were shaking and I knew he was thinking now of
how near he had been to killing a man.
“I’ll try to get him away from here. But the best idea
is to let him take a few more and he’ll pass out.”
“He oughtn’t to never drink, Bob.”
“I know.”
“He jest can’t handle it.”
“I know.”
“Something awful is goin’ to happen to that boy
someday.” He said it quietly and there was regret in his
voice.
“I know it, Sam.” It was the first time I had ever
admitted knowing it, even to myself. I looked down at
the ground and aimlessly pushed a piece of oak bark
around with the toe of my boot.
“You’ll tell him for me, won’t you, that I ain’t goin’ to
sell him no more?”
“I’ll tell him.”
“He oughtn’t to have no more, ever. An’ I’d rather he
didn’t come back, nohow.”
I didn’t say anything and he stood there for a
moment, a little embarrassed, and then he said
something about feeding and started off. As I stood
there watching him I was thinking that there was a lot
of man in Sam. If there hadn’t been I would have had a
brother over there in the corn crib with his guts blown
all over seventy bushels of corn.
“Oh, Sam!” I called after him. “I know it’s asking a
lot, but would you give us a lift out to the highway,
where the car is? When he passes out, I mean. I can’t
carry him.”
“Well, I’d do it for you, Bob,” he said hesitantly, “but
my car ain’t here. One of the Rucker boys carried
Mama and the two little girls to town in it. He left his
Hill Girl — 49
car here, but it’s jest one of them stripdowns. It’ll only
take two.”
I went back to the corn crib and Lee was still sitting
there where we had left him. He had the dead, vacant
stare of the very drunk.
“Well,” he said. “It’s my handsome brother.” He said
“hansshm,” so I guessed that’s what he meant. He was
back on my beauty again.
“You’ve really played hell this time,” I told him.
“Jeesus, but you’re a homely bastard.”
It’s like being on a merry-go-round, I thought.
“Sam can’t take us out to the car. His car’s not here.
All he’s got is some kid’s stripdown.”
“I’ll say she’s stripped down.”
It wasn’t any use. We were just going to keep on
playing the same records over and over.
“Let’s worry about something.”
“Go to hell,” I said.
I thought about this morning when everything was so
bright and fresh and cold and old Mike was holding
firm close over the birds, and Lee was Lee and
everything was perfect. Oh, hell, I thought.
“Why don’t you have a drink?” I asked. If he’d only go
on and pass out.
“You want to get me drunk so you can get it.”
It’s funny, I thought, how they can fix their minds on
only one thing.
He took another drink, though. When he put down
the jar, which was nearly empty now, it fell over and
the rest of the moonshine ran through a crack in the
floor He lay back on the corn after a while and closed
his eyes
“Horses,” he muttered.
I sat down and took out a cigarette. “What about
horses?”
I don’t know whether he heard me or not. He seemed
to be asleep, but he muttered stupidly now and then
“Sharon liked the horses. Horsh is a noble anim’l.”
Hill Girl — 50
I sat there moodily smoking the cigarette, being very
careful not to start a fire in the corn.
“Poor Sharon. Always hav’n arms twisted. Twists h’r
arms.”
“Who does? The horse?” Certainly a brilliant
conversation, I thought.
“No.”
He didn’t say anything more and I sat there and
watched him for five minutes and he didn’t move. It
was sooner than I had expected. He usually didn’t pass
out so quickly. But then, I thought, it hasn’t been much
over an hour and a half, but he’s drunk nearly a quart
of the stuff.
I went outside and found Sam.
“He’s gone to sleep,” I said. “Passed out.”
He nodded.
“I’m going out to the highway and get the car. I’ll
come back and pick him up. “
“That’s a long ways,” he said thoughtfully.
“Two or three miles.”
He didn’t say anything else, but walked over toward
the corn crib. I went with him, and he opened the door
and looked in at Lee, who was sleeping noisily, with his
mouth open. There was something queer about it, but I
couldn’t quite place it. He hadn’t moved.
“I’ll drive you out to your car, Bob,” Sam offered.
“It’s too fur to walk.”
“That’s fine, Sam,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
He pushed the stripdown out of the garage and
cranked it. I climbed up with him and we started down
the lane. As we went out through the wire gate I saw
Angelina come out of the house with a milk bucket.
The car was just a chassis with an old seat cushion
thrown on top of the gasoline tank. It was an old Ford,
and there weren’t any fenders on it or any hood, just
the bare essentials. I could see what Sam had meant by
not being able to haul a passed-out drunk. It was all we
could do to stay on it ourselves.
Hill Girl — 51
I don’t know why it didn’t hit me sooner. Maybe I just
wasn’t up on my toes mentally, after the experiences of
the afternoon. Anyway, it wasn’t until we had reached
the Buick and Sam had turned around and started back
that this awful suspicion began to creep up on me. He
had passed out too quickly and too easily.
I cursed the cunning of a drunk with only one thing
on his mind. He’d figured that maybe Sam would do
just what he had, drive me out to the car and leave him
alone there on the place with that girl. Then I knew
what it was that had been queer about the way he
looked. He’d been lying there with his head over on one
side, asleep with his mouth open. And it had been the
first time I’d ever seen a drunk sleeping that way
without saliva drooling out the corner of his mouth.
The car was doing fifty by the time I shifted out of
second and I passed Sam in the old stripdown as if he
had a broken axle. I made the sharp, cutback turn off
the highway where Sam’s road came in with a long
screaming slide and a cloud of dust.
As I blasted through the pines up there on the ridge
in that narrow pair of ruts I was praying I wouldn’t
meet anybody. If I did, it would be plain murder. The
road was clear all the way.
Just before I hit Sam’s place I pressed the horn as
hard as I could. As I shot through the gate and slid to a
stop in front of the house I got a quick flash of the girl,
running to the house from the direction of the corn
crib.
I ran past the house without even looking toward her
and headed for the crib. As I rounded the corner of it I
almost kicked over the bucket of milk she’d left there
right in the path. The damned fool, I thought. The
damned, stupid, insane little slut. The door was closed,
but I could hear Lee moving around inside and cursing.
“Come back here! Come back!” he was yelling at the
top of his voice.
I grabbed up the milk and ran toward the house and
burst right into the kitchen. She was there on the other
side of the oilcloth-covered table, leaning against it,
Hill Girl — 52
with her hands gripping the edge, breathing hard and
glaring at me.
“Here, you little fool!” I said. “And for Christ’s sake
pin up that dress or put on another one before Sam
sees you. Quick!”
“You go to hell!” she spat at me. Her eyes were hot
and smoky and her hair was tangled and there was a
long tear right down the front of that tight, sleazy
dress, almost to her belly.
I got back to the corn crib just as I heard the Ford
pulling up in the lane. Lee had the door open and was
weaving around, trying to climb out. I heard Sam
stopping in front of the house and I could tell from the
way he sounded that he was in a hurry too.
I pushed Lee back inside, not being gentle about it,
just shoving him back through the door like a bundle of
old rags.
“Where is she? Where is that juicy little bitch? Tell
her to come back here!” he kept saying.
I could hear Sam coming around the house, walking
fast, and there wasn’t anything else to do or any time
to lose. I hit him. I slugged him hard on the side of the
jaw and he folded up at the base of the pile of corn. I
stretched him out the way he had been when we left.
Sam opened the door and looked in.
“Maybe I better help you with him, Bob,” he said
after a hard look at Lee. Whatever he had been
thinking, he was apparently satisfied by the sight of
him lying there just as he had been. I felt a little weak.
We carried him out and put him in the car and he
never stirred a muscle. I went back and got the guns
and whistled for Mike and then just stalled a minute or
two. I wasn’t afraid Lee would come out of it any time
soon.
I wanted to keep Sam out there for a few minutes so
he wouldn’t get in the house and see that damned girl
before she changed her dress and got that wild look
out of her eyes. We talked there at the car for several
minutes, but I have no idea what we talked about. I
didn’t hear a word.
Hill Girl — 53
I stopped where the road ran close to the little creek
just before we got back on the highway and got a little
water in my hat and washed Lee’s face with. it. He
didn’t come around for five minutes and when he did
he was still limp and white. I helped him out of the car
and he was sick.
I pulled the birds out of the game pocket of his coat
and they were mashed and beginning to smell. There
were nine of them and I threw them out on the ground.
Mike looked at me questioningly and we both looked at
the birds and I felt like hell.
Big thunderheads were piling up in the west when we
got out on the highway and the sun was just going
down behind them. It looked as if it might rain in the
night. Neither of us said anything as I drove home in
the dusk.
Hill Girl — 54
Seven
It was raining the next morning when I looked out, not
a sudden shower with a blue sky behind it, but a slow,
leaden drizzle that could go on for days.
It was very early, and Sunday, and no one else was
up. I went down to the kitchen and drank a cup of
coffee with Rose and then went out to the car. I wanted
to go out to the farm today, and I didn’t want to get
mixed up in any Monday-morning rehash of the game
yesterday. Lee had still been limp and very drunk when
we got home, and if he and Mary were going to have an
argument about it I wanted to stay in the clear.
I ate some breakfast at Gordon’s café and drove out
to the farm. It lies about seven miles from town,
directly across the Black Creek bottom from the Eiler’s
place, where Sam lives.
I pulled up in front of the house and sat there a
minute in the car under the sweet-gum trees, looking at
the place. It sat back from the road about a hundred
yards, with a sandy driveway going back to it, and the
tenant house was across the road on a bare sand hill
with a big china-berry tree in the front yard.
The house seemed in better condition than the old
house in town. My grandfather had always taken great
pride in keeping it up and there had been a renter on
the place for three of the four years since he had died.
Hill Girl — 55
Right now the place looked dead and empty with the
dark windows staring vacantly out into the rain and I
listened moodily to the sound of water dripping into the
barrel at the end of the front porch.
I ran through the rain and up onto the porch,
fumbling for the key. The hallway was dark and I
walked slowly down it toward the dining room at the
rear of the house, hearing my footsteps echo hollowly
and thinking of my grandfather and grandmother and
of the fun I had had there in my childhood.
The room on the left at the front of the hall was the
parlor and there was a fireplace in it, while the room
across from it was the bedroom that had been mine
during the summers I had lived there. The hall went on
back to the dining room, and the kitchen was to the
right of that, while on the left of it was the back
bedroom, which had another fireplace. I went on to the
back bedroom and kindled a fire to take the chill
dampness off the place.
My grandparents had died within a few months of
each other, my grandmother in April and my
grandfather in the following July. He was past seventyeight,
but I had never believed old age had anything to
do with his death. They had lived together for more
than fifty years and after she was gone he died of
loneliness.
He had left me the farm and some eight thousand
dollars that was variously invested in savings bonds,
timber land, and some lots in town. It had become mine
on my twenty-first birthday, just about a year ago. He
had left it all to me, I guess, because we had always
been so close and I had lived there so long, and
because he knew, of course, that the Major had cut me
off entirely when I had left home.
My father had fought with the Engineers during
World War I and had come home a major, and after
that he was always called by his rank. It suited him.
The Major had been a headstrong and violent man as
long as he lived, and I guess the one love in his life had
been as consuming as his other passions. I had always
heard, from the few people who knew him well, but
Hill Girl — 56
never from the Major himself, that he had been utterly
devoted to my mother, who was a frail and gentle girl
as completely opposed to him in temperament as it was
possible to be. She was considerably younger than he,
and when she had died so young—when I was born—it
had hurt him far worse than he would ever admit. It
had added to his legend of callousness and brutality
when he had refused to go into any mourning, but had
only gone back to work more profane and hard-driving
than ever. It was said he had fired two men for loafing
on the job the next day after the funeral, and when they
had talked back he threatened to shoot them both if
they weren’t off his property in five minutes.
He had been a big man with a big voice. He had
always worked hard, and he drank harder, and he was
a difficult man to work for because of his temper. Lee
was the only person I ever knew who could handle him.
No matter what Lee did—and he did plenty—he could
always bring the Major round to his side.
Lee had been expelled from college in his junior year
for a wild week end in Galveston involving a stolen taxi
and a girl from Postoffice Street. Lee always claimed
he hadn’t stolen the taxi, that it was just that the driver
had got even drunker than they were and had
wandered off and left them. Anyway, the police had
picked up Lee and the girl at dawn on Sunday morning
going swimming in the nude out of the cab, which was
seventy-five yards out from the beach in a heavy surf.
They had driven it out until the motor stalled, at low
tide. The Major had paid the damages and got the theft
charges quashed and forgave Lee for it, but he never
tried to send him back to school. Lee was a junior
partner in the firm from then on, a partner whose
duties consisted largely of driving a car as fast as it
would go over rough country roads. Lee knew how to
get along with him, and the Major was always a little
proud of him, I think. He wore good clothes with an air,
knew how to impress people, and knew a lot of good
telephone numbers in a lot of places. The Major was a
man who liked parties.
I don’t know yet why we couldn’t get along together.
I had often wondered, during those years, if he didn’t
Hill Girl — 57
subconsciously hate me because my coming into the
world had killed my mother. She had died three days
afterward, of complications following my birth. I had
never really believed this, though, for he was far too
smart a man to go in for any such crackpot morbidity.
It was more likely that, as Mary had put it once, we
both had too much of the same type of pigheaded
stubbornness to live together. God knows, some of the
whippings he had given me had been terrible to
remember, and some of the provocations I had given
him had been enough to try the patience of a saint.
A lot of things happened that year, the last one I was
at home. Grandmother died in April, Lee came home in
May, kicked out of college, and that same month the
Major and I came to the parting. I graduated from high
school the last of May and began packing to go out to
the farm for the summer, as I had every year, and
knowing that my grandfather would want me more
than ever now that my grandmother was gone.
I will always remember the Major as he was that day.
It isn’t a fair picture, because he wasn’t always that
way, but it is one of those things that are ingrained in
the memory and never come out. I didn’t look any
better than he did that day, either, and I would like to
forget it if I could, but I probably never will.
He met me in the living room as I was going out with
my suitcase. He had been shaving and had come out of
the bathroom in his gray tweed trousers with the
suspenders dangling and shaving soap under one ear.
His face was dark and I could see the nervous
twitching of his right eyelid that always betrayed his
anger.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
“Out to the farm,” I said.
“Take that bag back upstairs and unpack it. You’re
not going to any farm this summer.”
“Why not?”
“Because I say so. No son of mine is going to be a
farm hand all his life. That’s finished.”
“He needs somebody out there.”
Hill Girl — 58
“He doesn’t need you. He’s got plenty of help, and if
he needs any more he can hire ‘em, or I’ll hire ‘em for
him.”
I was eighteen then and bigger than he was and I
could feel our lifelong argument coming to a head. It
was at this point that Lee always pretended to agree
with him and turned on the charm and talked him out
of it, but I never could do it. At about this time I usually
got a whipping or a profane tongue-lashing for my
rebellious attitude and the thing ended with my doing
what I was told, but today I knew it was finished.
“I’m going out to the farm,” I said again.
“God damn you, are you defying me?”
Without answering, I turned and started to go.
“Stop where you are,” he roared, and stalked back to
the bathroom and returned with the razor strap.
“You’ve laid that on me for the last time,” I said.
“We’ll see about that, young man,” he said, and
swung it viciously. It hit me across the shoulders and
hurt, and I caught it and pulled it out of his hand and
threw it far down the hall behind me. He drew back as
though to hit me with his right hand; his left hand had
been amputated during the war.
“Don’t hit me,” I said. “I’ll slug you. You’ll need both
hands if you ever hit me again.” It was something I
would regret saying all the rest of my life, but I had
said it and he stopped.
His voice wasn’t loud now. He sounded as if he would
choke, and I could see his big chest rise as though he
had to fight to breathe.
“Don’t come back. You’re finished here.”
“I’m not coming back,” I said. I picked up the bag
and went on down the hall and out the front door. I saw
him only once after that, for a little while one afternoon
in July, at my grandfather’s funeral, but we didn’t
speak.
I had been home once since then, two years ago, but
it was while he was out of town.
Hill Girl — 59
When the rain slacked a little I went down to the
barn and the mule lot and looked over the buildings
and found them in good repair and then crossed the
road to the tenant house. It hadn’t been used since my
grandfather’s death, for the man who had been farming
the place on the third-and-fourth had lived in the big
house, and it had at one time been used for storing hay,
but it hadn’t deteriorated too badly and could be put
back in good condition with a few minor repairs and a
half-dozen windowpanes that had been broken.
I was anxious to begin getting the place in shape
again. It was mine now, and I intended to build it up to
the way it had been when my grandfather was running
it. I had always admired the way he had lived. I guess if
someone had asked me, I couldn’t have explained why I
wanted to go on being a farmer. There isn’t any money
in it, and there certainly isn’t any prestige, as there is
in being a doctor or a good lawyer or newspaper editor.
But I liked the being outdoors all the time, and the hard
physical activity, and the changing seasons, and the
independence, and the knowledge—when I
remembered my grandfather and the men like him—
that I was in good company.
* * *
I moved out to the farm the second week in November.
I had been pointing toward that ever since I had left
New York after that last humiliating fight, and I was
glad now to get away from the house in town. Lee was
drinking more and more and it was hard to stay there
and see what it was doing to Mary and what it was
going to do to their marriage, to have to see it and still
pretend it wasn’t happening.
They came out to see me often in December,
sometimes bringing me a roast or something else that
Mary or Rose had cooked, for they were convinced I
would starve or poison myself with my own cooking.
And in a way they were right, for that was the one
feature about the arrangement I didn’t like. I hated the
mess I made trying to cook, and I knew that later on,
when the real farming began, I wouldn’t have time
even to try to cook.
Hill Girl — 60
They came out every few days that first month, but
after the first of the year their visits became less
frequent and sometimes Mary would come alone, in a
borrowed car. She never said what Lee was doing, or
why he didn’t come with her, but I always knew. He
wasn’t home. Sometimes he would be gone for a week
at a time. He had made one halfhearted effort to go to
work; he and another man had bought a filling station,
but before they’d been operating a month there had
been a party in the back room one night after closing
and it had burned down. Somebody had left a cigarette
lying around, I guess.
One bright, cold day in January she drove out and,
not finding me near the house, walked on down
through the fields to where I was working in the new
ground, cutting and piling logs and downed limbs and
burning them.
I was swinging the ax lustily in the thin sunlight of
early afternoon. It was cold, only a few degrees above
freezing, but I had my shirt off and sweat was
glistening on my arms and back. I had forgotten about
the soggy and uninspiring cold lunch I had brought
from the house this morning and was wrapped up in
the acute pleasure I always get out of violent exercise,
when I heard an amused voice behind me.
“You look like Thor. And I guess you haven’t got any
brains at all.”
I turned around and Mary was standing by the
burning logs, smiling at me.
“Hello,” I said. “Where’d you come from?”
She had on a big wrap-around coat and she pulled it
closer now, with the collar turned up about her throat,
and shivered.
“From town. It’s a place where intelligent people live,
with heat and comfortable living rooms. It replaced the
Stone Age, but I guess you haven’t heard about it yet.”
I rolled up a short section of log and spread my
jacket on it for her to sit on in front of the fire. She
stretched her long, silk-clad legs out in front of her and
I notice how out of place they looked here and how the
Hill Girl — 61
sharp heels of her slippers poked into the damp
ground.
“For God’s sake, put on your shirt, you idiot,” she
said in exasperation. I slipped into it and squatted
down on my heels near her. She opened the paper bag
she was carrying and brought out a thermos bottle and
some sandwiches and a large piece of cake.
“I brought you some lunch. I wish you’d get married,
so I wouldn’t have to keep on feeding you.”
She sent me a sly glance as I bit into a sandwich. “By
the way, how is Angelina these days?”
It was a little sudden for me, but I think I was
completely deadpan and offhand as I said, “Angelina?
Oh, she’s all right, I guess. Why?”
“I just wondered if you were seeing much of her. She
lives right across the bottom over there, doesn’t she?”
“That’s right,” I said. “The old Eilers’ place.”
I still couldn’t understand what she was driving at. If
she suspected there was something going on between
Lee and the Harley girl, she wouldn’t be so happy
about it.
“Can she cook?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why?”
“Well, you need a girl who can cook.”
“Is that right?”
“Are you really serious about her, Bob? Have you
been holding out on us?”
“No.” I said. “What started all this, anyway?”
“I heard Lee say something about her one time a
couple of weeks ago and the next morning I asked him
who she was. He said she was the oldest Harley girl
and that you were sort of taken with her.”
“Oh,” I said. Well, he wiggled out of it that time, I
thought. “He’s exaggerating, Mary. It’s nothing like
that. I’ve just been—oh—helping her with her
schoolwork.”
“Helping her with her schoolwork? What’s she
studying? Blocking? Or off-tackle plays?”
Hill Girl — 62
She went on back to the car after a while and I
worked hard the rest of the afternoon trying to get a
dead hickory chopped in two so I could roll it into the
fire. But I kept thinking about Lee. He still had that girl
on his mind, especially when he was drinking. Mary
hadn’t said he was drunk when he spilled it, but she
didn’t have to; it was obvious.
Hill Girl — 63
Eight
It was around the middle of January that I first met
Jake. It was around seven of a cold night, with a mist of
fine rain, and I was sitting before the fireplace in the
back bedroom, whittling out a handle for a grubbing
hoe and feeling a little low and alone, when I heard a
car pull up in front of the house. I stopped to listen.
“Hello,” came a shout from the front yard.
I went down the dark hall and looked out. There was
an old Ford touring car huddled under the bare trees.
“Come on in,” I called out
We went back into the warmth and light of the
bedroom and I got a look at him.
“My name’s Hubbard,” he said, grinning. “Jake
Hubbard. Yo’re Mr. Crane, ain’t you?”
I liked the grin. “My name’s Crane,” I said. “But it’s
Bob Crane, not Mister.”
He laughed and I shoved a chair toward him for him
to sit down. He was about my age, maybe a couple of
years older, but smaller, and his movements were fast
and decisive and there was an easy assurance about his
eyes. He had a big chew of tobacco in his right cheek
and now he sat down on the very front edge of the
chair like a bird poised for flight, held his hands out
Hill Girl — 64
toward the fire, and spat a brown stream into the
ashes.
He had on new overalls and an old leather jacket,
patched at the elbows, and a cap of the type that has
ear flaps, and he had the flaps pulled down over his
ears now. There was a pleasant homeliness about his
face, with its oversized bony nose and the stubble of
tough black beard and the long sideburns that came
down almost to the bottoms of his ears.
“I hear you goin’ to farm this here place,” he said.
“That’s right.”
Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(2)
When the deputy started to take Lee away, the old
man had shown fight. “Jest say the word, Buck, an’ I’ll
blow this stinkin’ law’s guts all over the Sabine
bottoms. You don’t have to go back to no goddamned
school if’n you don’t want to.”
I grinned now in the darkness. The people who had
loved him! From the flower-like Sharon to that old
Hill Girl — 22
goat. He was wild and undependable, but he knew how
to make people like him.
Hill Girl — 23
Four
The speedometer of the big roadster climbed up to
sixty as we came over the crest of Five Mile Hill. I
watched it as we started down. It went to sixty-five and
then seventy, and then it hovered just under seventyfive.
Hill Girl by Charles Williams 1951(2)
When the deputy started to take Lee away, the old
man had shown fight. “Jest say the word, Buck, an’ I’ll
blow this stinkin’ law’s guts all over the Sabine
bottoms. You don’t have to go back to no goddamned
school if’n you don’t want to.”
I grinned now in the darkness. The people who had
loved him! From the flower-like Sharon to that old
Hill Girl — 22
goat. He was wild and undependable, but he knew how
to make people like him.
Hill Girl — 23
Four
The speedometer of the big roadster climbed up to
sixty as we came over the crest of Five Mile Hill. I
watched it as we started down. It went to sixty-five and
then seventy, and then it hovered just under seventyfive.
Lee lounged behind the wheel in a big hunting
coat and fished in a pocket for a cigarette, brought out
a lighter, and snapped it, and for a brief instant the
little flame lit up the lean Indian face and the polished
smoothness of the brown head. He grinned at me
around the cigarette and winked and said, “We’ll knock
‘em dead, son,” and went on trying to hum “The
Sweetheart of Sigma Chi.” He couldn’t carry a tune any
more than I could.
It was in the cold half-light of dawn, with a growing
strip of pink in the east, and the Buick seemed the only
thing alive. The countryside was still and ghostly under
a heavy mantle of frost. The side curtains were up on
the car but still I had to shove my hands in my pockets
to keep them warm. When we crossed the little creek
bottom below the Eiler’s place there were patches of
low-lying and filmy mist that hugged the ground and
were torn apart and swirled into the boiling red dust
behind us. We left the loose boards of the old wooden
bridge ringing their complaining clatter on the still air
of the morning, and shot noiselessly up the hill where I
Hill Girl — 24
had met Sam Harley, the car eating up the miles of the
clay and gravel road like a red-tailed projectile.
There had been an argument before we started. I had
wanted to go out to the old Crane farm and hunt over it
so I could have a look at the buildings and the land at
the same time. The farm was mine now and I wanted to
see what kind of shape it was in, but Lee had insisted
that we come this way. I couldn’t understand why, but
had given in to him. I found out later what the
attraction was over here.
Mike sat between us, peering out interestedly
through the windshield at the scenery flashing past. He
would be a surprised dog, I thought, if he ever rode
with anybody else and found out that cars can travel at
thirty and forty miles an hour. He turned and licked
Lee on the face. Lee cuffed him on the head while we
swept around a long curve with that delicately
balanced feeling you have just before the car begins to
skid.
“You old cold-nosed bastard, I’ll throw you out and
make you walk,” he said affectionately.
He stopped the car and turned it around and parked
off the road on top of a long hill five miles beyond. I got
out on the side of the road and old Mike jumped down
and went racing around in ecstatic circles.
“Go get ‘em, Mike,” Lee said, and slapped him
playfully in the ribs.
Mike gave him a look of sheer adoration and cleared
the burrow pit beside the road with one bound and
disappeared down the rows of old cornstalks and pea
vines that lay downhill. We loaded the guns and
followed.
The sun was just coming up over the top of a far-off
ridge to the east and it felt good on my back and strung
the frosty vines with diamonds, and the red-gold shafts
of light broke against the far hill ahead of us in a
spreading extravagance of color among the dogwood
and hickory and red oak. October’s blue haze of smoke
was in the air and the unforgettable smell of it was in
our nostrils, and our breath was steamy in the
absolutely still air.
Hill Girl — 25
“He’s found birds,” Lee said happily. I looked up
ahead and saw Mike had slowed and was coming along
the edge of the field stealthily and his very pose said as
plain as words, “They’re here. And close.” Then he
stiffened in a point.
It was a small covey and they got up from the pea
vines almost at our feet, half a dozen or so small
brown-feathered bombs that ripped the hush of the
morning apart with their explosion. Lee knocked one
down with an effortless swing of his gun, but I was
jumpy and missed with both barrels, missed clean
without drawing a feather, which is the only way to
miss if you have to.
“I used to know a guy once,” Lee said gravely as
Mike brought up his bird and he stowed it in the game
pocket.
“Yeah? You did?”
“Quite a hunter, this guy was. And what he always
did was to shoot at the birds. Or at least in their
general direction.”
“All right, all right.” I grinned. “So I missed one.”
“You missed one?” He grabbed my coat collar and
shook it affectionately. “Why, you big Swede, you
couldn’t hit a Jersey cow in the ass with an ironing
board.”
And that was the way it went most of the morning.
Mike would find the birds, we would kick them out, Lee
would get one and sometimes a clean double, and I
would miss. By noon I had only two birds in the game
pocket of my coat. I couldn’t get the old swing back,
and Lee kidded me unmercifully.
“They went that way, mister,” he would shout
excitedly, pointing after a vanishing covey after I had
missed two shots on the rise.
All hunters have days like that, even exceptional
shots, and I have lots of them, so I didn’t mind. The day
was beautiful and it was all right just to be out with Lee
like this after an absence of two years.
He was in high spirits. “Damn it, Bob,” he said, “I’m
sure glad you’re back. We’ve missed you around here. I
Hill Girl — 26
don’t see why you couldn’t have gone to some school
around home. They’re always just as much in the
market for beef as that place you went. And I always
wished you and the Major could have got together
some way.”
“Well,” I said, “it was just one of those things.”
“I think it got to worrying him the last year. The way
the two of you had split up, I mean. He used to ask me
right often if I’d heard from you.”
“He did?” I tried to work up some interest in it, but it
was pretty thin.
“You missed a lot of fun, Bob.” He stopped and lit a
cigarette and grinned at me in the sunlight. “Don’t go
so fast. We’re not hunting birds for a living.
“But you did miss a lot of fun,” he went on. “You
know how much money he used to give me when I was
going to Rice. And the parties we used to throw the last
few years before he died, when I was working for him.
That last one, in Houston, sweet Jesus! He had a whole
suite of rooms at the Rice Hotel and I don’t know how
much whisky—the real McCoy, too, no moonshine—and
I had all the telephone numbers from the days when I
was going to school down there. And for a man who
was crowding fifty, he was quite a lad with the gals. A
little on the salty side, especially when he’d had a
couple of snorts, and sometimes they didn’t quite know
how to take him, but he was a good sport. You
remember how he used to be sometimes when he’d had
too much, he’d think about when he was in France with
the Engineers, and he’d start talking French to the
girls, and it’s a damn good thing none of ‘em ever
understood anything he was saying. And then he’d sing
the Engineers’ song, you know, the one about ‘Oh, the
Engineers, with hairy ears, they live in caves and
ditches,’ and when he’d come to the third line it was a
little too rough for some of ‘em unless they had a
snootful too, and if they got too snotty about it he’d let
out a roar and say, ‘Lee, take these goddamn campfire
girls back to their sorority house and go down on
Congress Avenue and dig us up some women with
Hill Girl — 27
guts,’ and then I’d have to pacify everybody all over
again.”
“You must have had your hands full,” I said absently.
I was trying to keep an eye on Mike, who was cutting
around the edge of a blackberry patch.
“I’ll say I did. And say, speaking of girls—”
“We were?” I said. “What are girls?”
“Speaking of girls, you sap, I want to take you out to
Sam’s sometime soon so you can see this Angelina.
Until you see that, you haven’t lived, I’m telling you.”
“Lay off,” I said. “Forget this Angelina stuff. You
know what Sam Harley’d do if he caught you fooling
around with one of his girls.”
“What a sucker!” He grinned. “If I ever get a chance
to get into that, d’you think I’m going to do it on the
courthouse lawn and give out invitations to everybody
in the country?”
“For Christ’s sake, Lee,” I said. “Quit talking like
that. You’ll have me believing you mean it before long.”
“O.K.,” he said. “O.K., Grandma. But when you see
her, don’t say I didn’t warn you. There’s a lot of fun
there in one pair of flour-sack pants, for the guy that
can get it.”
“Speaking of sport,” I said, “did you ever hunt any
quail? Now, back where I come from, it’s a lot of fun.
You have a dog, see, and a shotgun; and this dog goes
out and finds the birds—”
“All right, all right. Maybe we had better get going,
or I’ll be whinnying and pawing the ground, just
thinking about her. Let’s go.”
We would hunt over a field and then move the car
down the road to another bit of good cover and go over
that. By noon we were close to the field where I had
met Sam Harley the day before. We started across a
piece of pastureland near the road, headed for a spring
branch below, where we could eat the sandwiches we
had brought. Mike found a big covey of quail in the
blackberries along an old fence row and Lee connected
again. I shot and missed.
Hill Girl — 28
“Now, you take croquet. That’s a nice game I could
recommend,” Lee said as we sat down at the base of a
big oak beside the spring. “I knew a man once. Just like
you in a lot of ways. Had eleven thumbs and three left
feet and he got to be a hell of a player. Maybe All-
American.”
“You certainly know a lot of people,” I said. “Any of
‘em named Joe?”
“Sure. All of ‘em. Joe’s a nice name.”
“Had a kind of green mole on the left side of his face,
just under the eye?”
“No. This guy had an aunt named Irma who used to
dance at Elk stag parties.”
I shook my head. “Must be another guy.”
“You’re nuts. I’m glad you’re home, but you’re nuts.”
I threw a chunk of rotten wood at him and he ducked
and it went into the spring and splashed a little water
on Mike, who looked at us sitting there on the ground
laughing like hyenas. He whined eagerly deep in his
throat and started up out of the ravine, padding
noiselessly on the damp brown leaves where the frost
had melted, and his manner clearly indicated that he’d
had enough of this stalling around and thought we
should get back to the pressing business of hunting
birds.
Lee whistled at him. “Don’t work so hard, Mike,” he
said. “You’ll just get promoted to a better job and then
you’ll have worries.”
He lay back at full length on the steep incline of the
bank, with an arm crooked under the back of his head
to keep it off the wet ground and leaves. The sunlight
of a cloudless autumn day poured through an opening
in the trees above and he stretched lazily in the warm
rays and bit enormously into a sandwich.
“This is the life,” he said.
It was, all right, I agreed silently. And I was happy to
see him enjoying it so much and I tried to pretend to
myself that I didn’t know he would be bored with it
before the day was over. There wasn’t enough
Hill Girl — 29
excitement in hunting quail to keep him interested for
a full day.
After lunch we went on down the road and stopped to
hunt over the field where I had met Sam yesterday.
But, as I had known, he began losing interest in it. He
didn’t kid me any more about the shots I missed and he
took less and less pleasure from even the difficult ones
he completed.
The silence between us lengthened out. I tried to
keep him going by bringing up people we knew and
funny things that had happened, but it was no use. He
was growing moody and irritable.
By two o’clock we were down by the little creek at
the lower end of the big Eilers field and the car was a
long way back, a mile or more. Beyond the creek was a
wooded ridge and I remembered that there were a few
scattered sandy fields and open pastures up on top of it
but that it wasn’t good bird country. I couldn’t
understand why Lee kept turning in that direction.
“There’s no use in crossing the creek,” I said. “Let’s
go back to the car.”
“Oh, come on. There are some fields up there, over
by Sam Harley's house.”
I began to see the light, but I followed him. There
wasn’t anything else to do. He had the car keys. And he
was already crossing the creek on the foot log, and he
stalked across the swampy bottom without looking
back.
“I’ll tell you,” I said, “you and Mike go on along the
ridge here, cutting back toward the highway, and I’ll go
back and pick up the car and meet you.”
“No,” he said shortly. “It’s only a quarter mile on to
Sam’s. Let’s go on over there and get a drink and he’ll
drive us out to the car. I want to pick up a quart.”
I shrugged. “O.K.”
It was easy to see now where the hunting trip was
going.
Hill Girl — 30
Five
We came out of the scrub pine and there in the clearing
with the sun behind it was Sam’s place, quiet and
apparently deserted. It hadn’t changed any in the two
years since I had seen it. The sandy road ran on past it
and turned to the left beyond the barn, going on down
toward the big bottom country behind the place, and
there was a wire gate leading into the close-cropped
cow pasture surrounding the house and farm buildings.
The house was still the same, the unfinished pine
boards silvery gray with age and weather. A large mud
and stone chimney stood solidly against the south wall,
and there was a long “gallery” extending the width of
the house in front.
On beyond the house was the barn and the corn crib
and the cow lot enclosed in stripped pine sapling poles,
a wagon shed and a crazily leaning rough-board shed
where Sam kept his Ford, a big woodpile, and a little
well house covered with gray oak shakes.
There was no sign of life. The door of the shed was
closed and we couldn’t see whether the car was there
or not. We stopped at the front gate and looked around.
“Hello in there! Hey, Sam!” Lee called
experimentally.
“They’re all in town,” I said. “It’s Saturday evening.”
Hill Girl — 31
“Not like Sam.” Lee shook his head. “He doesn’t go
to town much.”
“Well, let’s go,” I said. “No use hanging around
here.”
“I wonder where he keeps the whisky,” Lee said.
“Well, not in the house. That’s a cinch.”
“We might take a look around.”
“Sure,” I said. “The sheriff has been trying to find it
for ten years, so we’ll just walk right into it.”
Lee swore disgustedly and we had turned to go when
I heard the front door open.
Angelina Harley stood there in the doorway, looking
out at us. I don’t know how I knew it was Angelina
unless it was what I saw on Lee’s face when he turned
around. I knew then it wasn’t Sam he had been hoping
to see.
She came out on the porch. “What did you want?”
she asked. There was no friendliness in her eyes or any
word of greeting; just the question.
Her eyes were on Lee and I doubt that she knew I
was there, but I felt compelled to reply. Any answer
from Lee would have been superfluous anyway. She
could see what he wanted. Not that she seemed to
mind.
“We were looking for Sam,” I said. “Is he home?”
So this was Angelina. This was the scrawny little girl
with the thin arms and legs and chapped knees and the
wide, frightened brown eyes I remembered. I felt
myself growing uncomfortable and tried to take my
eyes off her.
It wasn’t that she had grown so much. She wasn’t
big, even now. But it was as if she had received twentyfive
pounds or so in the mail with instructions to put it
on where she thought she needed it most.
She had on an old cotton dress that she had
outgrown in every direction and overwhelmed until it
had completely surrendered its cheap shapelessness
and lay taut across her hips and breasts in obedient
submission, and it was obvious she had on practically
Hill Girl — 32
nothing underneath that dominated and slavish
garment and that she didn’t give a damn.
Her hair was blonde, a little too dark to be called
golden, but you could see it was natural, and it was
long, thrown back over her shoulders, straight and
fine-spun and silky and slightly damp, and it was
obvious she had just washed it and had been drying it
in the sun in the back yard, for she had an old blue
bath towel pinned across her shoulders.
I learned later that her hair was long because Sam
wouldn’t stand for her bobbing it. Sam was pretty
strong for the Scriptures, aside from his whiskymaking,
and there wasn’t anything in there about
women cutting off their hair. I was to learn that and a
lot of other things about this girl before I was very
much older.
Her eyes were slightly almond-shaped and brown,
but they weren’t soft, as brown eyes usually are, but
rather there was in them an almost indefinable
expression of smoldering defiance. They seemed to be
at once sullen and shy. The face was a little too broad
and the full lips too near pouting for beauty, and the
whole thing too lacking in animation for charm, but she
was damned pretty, or she would have been if she’d
had anything in her eyes but that to-hell-with-you stare.
She answered me, still looking at Lee. “No. He’s
hauling up some wood. But he ought to be here pretty
soon.”
Lee wasn’t saying anything. He was just looking at
her, and I’d never seen him act like that around a girl.
Usually he just moved in on them like Stuart’s Cavalry.
There seemed to be something about her that threw
him off his stride. His face was shiny with sweat and he
couldn’t seem to be able to get his mouth closed.
“Do you mind if we wait for him?” I asked.
“No. I guess not, if you want to.”
We pushed through the gate and came up and sat
down on the porch, one on each side of the steps, with
our backs against the four-by-four posts that supported
the roof.
Hill Girl — 33
“I wonder if we could have a drink of water?” I asked.
For some reason I wanted to get her to talk, if I could. I
couldn’t figure her out. And the silence between the
three of us was oppressive and all that naked staring
was making me uncomfortable. I tried to keep my eyes
off her, for I knew the way I was looking at her and it
embarrassed me slightly, even though it didn’t seem to
bother her at all.
“I guess so,” she said ungraciously. “Wait here and
I’ll bring you some.”
When she had disappeared inside the house, moving
with an effortless grace, Lee looked across at me.
“Jesus Christ,” he said softly. “Oh, Jesus.”
“Let’s get going,” I said. “You can see Sam some
other time.”
He didn’t hear me.
She came back out with a wooden bucket full of
water and a long-handled gourd dipper and put it down
on the porch between us and then went over and
curled up in the porch swing, tugging once carelessly
and ineffectually at the skimpy dress. She had on an
old pair of house slippers with no stockings, and her
legs were long and smooth and tanned, and the too
short and too thin dress did nothing to cover them. I
looked out across the cow pasture to where Mike was
investigating a gopher hole. I didn’t want to sit there
and stare at her like the bald-headed row at a
burlesque show.
That silence settled down over us again. As I sat
there and tried to pretend an interest in the dog I could
feel the two of them looking at each other.
I didn’t like it. Not that I cared what they did, for it
wasn’t any of my business. But I knew something about
those backwoods men like Sam and knew how they
regarded outsiders who tried to fool around with their
womenfolks. Sam was soft-spoken and a little shy in the
presence of strangers, but I remembered that when I
was a boy I used to go to court sometimes when my
grandfather was on jury duty and listen to the cases,
and I had seen men on trial for brutal and ruthless
Hill Girl — 34
murder and some of them had been soft-spoken and a
little shy of bearing.
I was remembering other things, too. Remembering
Sam’s telling me one night when we were coon hunting
long ago and were sitting around a fire down in the
Black Creek bottoms there behind the house that
Angelina was going to be a schoolteacher. She was a
right smart girl and she made good grades in her books
and she was going to amount to something, he had said
in that way of his of not wanting to appear boastful
before outsiders but with the quiet pride showing
through nevertheless. Sam thought a lot of his oldest
daughter, and anybody— especially any married man—
he caught fooling around with her was going to be in
one hell of a bad spot mighty fast. I felt cold down
between my shoulder blades as though there were a
draft blowing up my back. I wished Sam would come on
so we could get the whisky and get out of here.
It was Angelina who broke the silence. “What did you
want to see Papa about?”
“We wanted to ask him if it was O.K. To hunt across
the place,” I said,
“I know what you want. You’re after whisky.”
I turned quickly and looked at her. I knew Sam had
always been careful to keep his moonshining activities
away from his family. She said it flatly and distastefully
and she had that sulky challenge in her eyes, as though
she dared me to deny it.
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“That’s all you town people would come out here for.
That’s all anybody comes here for.”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, I know all about it. He thinks I don’t, but I’ve
known about it a long time. Moonshiner!” There was a
biting scorn in her voice.
“Well, what’s wrong with that?” I asked. “Lots of
people make it. And not as good as Sam’s, either.”
“Does your papa make it?”
“No,” I said. “But he drank more of it than Sam has
ever made.”
Hill Girl — 35
“And I guess that ain’t something a whole lot
different, is it?”
“Well, I’ve never given it any thought. Is it?”
“You know damn well it is. How’d you like to live out
here on this backwoodsy farm and not ever go to town
because your papa was a moonshiner, and you never
had any friends because you knew that everybody knew
it and talked about you behind your back?”
Oh, hell, I thought. I was beginning to get a little
tired of Angelina. She had a body that would make a
dead man come back to life, but her conversation got
on your nerves. The very idea of anyone who looked
like that feeling sorry for herself was ridiculous.
“How old are you?” I asked. Anything to change the
subject.
“Eighteen.”
I was sure she was stretching it a little, but I didn’t
say anything.
“When are you going to go to Teachers College?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t got enough credits yet. And I
haven’t got enough money saved up.”
She began to be a little less sullen then, as though
Teachers College interested her. Maybe she does have
other hobbies beside waving that chassis in your face
and not liking her father, I thought. I just didn’t like
her.
After a minute she asked, “Did either one of you-all
ever go to Teachers College?”
“No,” I said. “Why?”
She hesitated a little as though undecided whether to
go on. She looked down at the floor between us.
“I was just wondering if you knew what kind of
clothes the girls wore down there.”
I was conscious of the traditional male helplessness
when confronted with this type of question. Before I
could think of anything to say she slid out of the swing
with a flashing display of long bare legs and was gone
inside the door.
Hill Girl — 36
She came back almost at once, carrying the mailorder
catalogue of some clothing company. She sat
down between us on the steps and opened it
immediately to the pages she wanted. It was wilted and
dog-eared from constant handling.
“Do they look like any of these?” she asked
hesitantly.
She was so damned near. I could feel the buttoned-up
collar of my wool shirt choking me and I didn’t want to
say anything for fear of the way my voice would sound.
As she leaned forward over the catalogue stray tendrils
of that blonde hair were almost in my face, and to look
down at the pictures she was pointing out I had to look
past some of the places she was fighting with that
dress.
I tried to concentrate on the pictures. They were the
usual mannikins of catalogues, standing in that pose
they all have with one foot pointing out to the side for
some reason, and the dresses and suits they had on
looked just like any other dresses and suits to me.
“Well?” she asked. “Which ones do you like? Like
college girls wear?”
I muttered something lamely and pretended to study
them again. I could hold her off in my mind when she
was sullen, and throwing all that stuff around and
daring you to look at it, and when she was whining, but
when she got up against me like this and dropped the
challenge and was just a girl asking for help she got me
and hit me hard. Not liking her didn’t help any.
“Here, let me look.” It was Lee on the other side of
her, and he slid over slightly. “I can pick out just the
thing for you.” His voice was normal and his tone
confident and I could see he was regaining control of
the situation. This was a girl he could understand.
She switched the catalogue over toward his side and
looked up at him hopefully and I slipped off the porch
steps and walked out into the yard, taking out a
cigarette and lighting it. I noticed how my fingers were
shaking. “God damn her anyway,” I swore under my
breath. The faint stirring of breeze out in the yard felt
good on my face.
Hill Girl — 37
I could hear Lee’s voice going on behind me,
gathering momentum and confidence with every word.
He was getting back into gear again.
“Now you take this one,” he was saying, and it was
the world’s greatest authority on girls’ clothes
speaking. “This isn’t your type. The lines are all wrong.
It’s too conservative. You want something with more
dash and snap to it.”
What a line of crap, I thought. You and your
goddamned dash and snap. What do you know about
women’s clothes?
But it didn’t scare me so much now. He sounded
more like the Lee I knew. He was working on her, all
right, but he seemed to have regained some measure of
sanity. He didn’t remind me so much of a stallion
getting ready to kick his stall apart. He’d try to make
her sometime, but maybe he’d have sense enough not
to get himself killed. Unless he got drunk. And then I
felt the cold wind again.
When they had the clothes question settled to their
satisfaction, they moved up into the porch swing and
went on talking. I went back and sat down on the steps.
There wasn’t anywhere else to go and I could see Lee
wasn’t going to leave.
“Your name is Lee Crane, isn’t it?” she asked, with a
sidewise glance at him.
“Yes.” He nodded. “I know yours, all right. But how'd
you know me?”
“Oh, I’ve seen you come out here a lot of times to see
Papa. And a girl I know told me your name one time
when I saw you in town. You were in a big car.”
“I wish I’d seen you. I would have taken you for a
drive.”
“I wish you had too,” she said. “Who is he?”
She meant me. A gracious little bag, I thought sourly.
I wondered why she didn’t point and say, “What is
that?”
“My kid brother, Bob,” Lee said, and I saw a flicker of
amusement in his eyes as he looked at me.
“Your brother? Why, he don’t look anything like you.”
Hill Girl — 38
The way she said it left little doubt as to what she
meant. How could such a homely character be a
brother of the gorgeous Lee Crane? And I liked being
discussed in the third person that way. I could see that
Angelina and I were going to be great buddies.
“Do you go to many dances?” Lee asked.
“No.”
“Why not? It’s a lot of fun.”
“I never go anywhere. He won’t let me!” she said
hotly.
Lee was tenderly sympathetic. “That’s a darn shame.
A lovely young girl like you should go to lots of parties.
Don’t you think it’s a shame, Bob?”
“Yes,” I said. “What a shame!”
She gave me a dirty look.
“I suppose you think it’s fun being shut up all the
time on this damn stinkin’ farm?”
“I didn’t say so,” I said. “But there could be worse
places.”
“That’s what you think.”
“O.K.,” I said. “That’s what I think.”
“I suppose you think a girl oughtn’t to have any fun?”
“What the hell do I care?” I said.
“Aw, lay off, Bob,” Lee put in protestingly. “Never
mind him, Angelina. He’s all right when you get to
know him.”
“Well, I don’t want to get to know him. He hasn’t got
any more sense than a mule. And he looks like one.”
I got off the porch and walked out into the yard
again. I don’t know why she got on my nerves so much.
I looked down the road and saw Sam coming up from
the bottom with his load of wood. I was glad to see him
and called back to Lee and pointed.
Sam drew up alongside the big woodpile in back of
the house and Angelina gathered up her catalogue and
went inside.
“Hello, Sam,” I said.
Hill Girl — 39
“Howdy, Bob,” he answered quietly. “Been doin’ a
little bird huntin’?” I saw him shoot a fast look across
the yard to where Lee was, coming from the front of
the house.
We offered to pitch off the wood while he went and
got us the quart. He never would let anybody go with
him when he went to the place where he kept it
cached.
While we were up on the loaded wagon heaving the
big fireplace logs off onto the pile, Angelina came out
of the house and headed for the well with her water
bucket. She passed us without a word but I guess she
could feel Lee’s eyes on her, for as she went by she
gave him that long slow look out of the side of her eyes.
“She ought to be against the law,” Lee said slowly
and shakily as she disappeared inside the house. He
was getting that look again.
“She is,” I said. “A little law about contributing to the
delinquency of minors.”
“She’s eighteen. You heard her say it. She’s no
minor.”
I shrugged. “Sam would kill you.”
“It’d be worth it.”
“Like hell it’d be worth it. There isn’t any of it worth
that much.”
“Not if you stop to think about it, no. But how’re you
going to stop and think when you see her?”
I didn’t say anything.
And don't try to give me any of that crap that she
doesn't affect you the same way. I saw you get up from
there and sidle away. You couldn’t take it either.”
“O.K., I said “O.K. So she does it to me too. But you
can stay dead a long time.”
“What the hell, don’t be such a sap. I’ll bet she’s not
any virgin. The way she waves it around, somebody’s
gettin’ to it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know. But who’s going to explain
that to Sam? If you get caught, I mean, or she gets
knocked up. I guess you would? Or maybe you think
Hill Girl — 40
she will she’ll just say, ‘Why, Papa, he’s just one of the
crowd. I haven’t got any enemies.’ Like hell she will.”
“Oh, shut up, will you? You preach too much.”
Hill Girl — 41
Six
By the time we had the wood thrown off, Sam was back
from his cache. He stopped behind the corn crib, where
we could see him but he couldn’t be seen from the
house, and motioned to us.
“I didn’t want to tote it across to you there in the
open,” he said when we got there, and he nodded
toward the house, where Angelina was. I thought of the
contemptuous way she had said, “Moonshiner!” and
felt a little sorry for him. He wasn’t fooling that girl
any.
“One of you boys can tote it out in your game
pocket.”
“Sure,” Lee said. He paid Sam for it. “But let’s go
inside here and have a snort. How about it, Sam?”
Sam hesitated slightly, and then he nodded. We
climbed through the small door into the crib and closed
it after us again. I wondered what all the secrecy was
about. What was Angelina supposed to think we were
doing down here? Playing a three-handed game of
bridge?
The crib was built of split logs with the flat sides
inside and it was cool and dim and dusty in there, with
a narrow shaft of sunlight slanting in here and there
from the west side between the logs. The unhusked
corn was piled high toward the back in a steep slope
Hill Girl — 42
and there was a little cleared space by the door. We
hunkered down there with our backs against the
sloping wall of corn and Lee twisted loose the fruit-jar
lid. He held it out to Sam.
“Go ahead,” Sam said politely.
“The first today,” Lee said and took a big swallow,
holding the wide-mouthed jar with both hands. He
made a shuddering face and expelled his breath in a
long “Whoooof!”
I took a drink, not wanting it and disliking the breathcatching
and slightly gagging smell of it in the wide
mouth of the jar, but obliged to abide by the rules
governing these rites. If three men have a bottle, all
three must drink. It was good, as moonshine goes, but I
just couldn’t see the necessity for it at this time of day,
out in the country like this on a hunting trip.
Sam tilted it back and took a long drink without
changing expression. He might have been drinking
water. Lee hurriedly gulped another and passed the jar
to me again.
“You get many birds?” Sam asked.
“About a dozen,” Lee said. “Old Big-and-Ugly here
was blowin’ holes in the air and I had to get ‘em for
him.”
Sam nodded and smiled a little self-consciously at
me. “Well, ev’body has an off day now an’ then.”
“Have another jolt,” Lee said
“Well, I don’t know,” Sam said slowly. Then he picked
up the ax. “Jest one. Then I got to unhitch the mules.”
“Through hauling wood for the day?” Lee asked in
surprise. It was only about three-thirty.
“Well, I had thought I might get in another load, but I
guess not. Might put me kinda late with the chores.
Reckon I’ll unhitch.”
I reckon you will too, I thought. Unhitch and stick
around. You’re not going back down there in the
bottom and leave two potential drunks wallowing
around in your corn crib with a quart of moonshine and
that girl wandering around loose. You might as well go
off and leave an untended bonfire in a gasoline
Hill Girl — 43
refinery. I’ll bet you’ll be a happy man the day she’s
married and some other poor bastard can watch her.
I could feel the two drinks warming me and I was
conscious of the old illusion that about two drinks
always give you of seeing everything more clearly. And
the thing I saw more clearly than anything else was
that I’d better start working on Lee to get him out of
here before he got too much. You never could tell what
it was going to do to him.
“We’d better get started back,” I said. “It’s a long
way out to the car.”
“Plenty of time. Keep your shirt on,” he replied with a
vague irritation.
Sam got up and let himself out to attend to the team.
He gave us a disturbed look as he left. He didn’t like it
a bit. It was plain on his face in spite of the way he
tried to cover it up. And I could see his reasons. If
you’re making and selling booze in a dry county,
there’s no surer way of getting yourself in jail than by
letting your customers drink it on the premises and get
a load on to advertise where they got it. And Sam had a
lot of strict, old-fashioned family virtues. He didn’t
think his home was any place for people to get drunk,
but he didn’t like to say anything. After all, Lee was a
good customer. And, too, the code of hospitality
ingrained in men like Sam would never permit him to
ask anyone to leave his place. Backwoods people just
weren’t like that. They might rip your belly open if
anything unpleasant started, but they couldn’t ask you
to leave.
man had shown fight. “Jest say the word, Buck, an’ I’ll
blow this stinkin’ law’s guts all over the Sabine
bottoms. You don’t have to go back to no goddamned
school if’n you don’t want to.”
I grinned now in the darkness. The people who had
loved him! From the flower-like Sharon to that old
Hill Girl — 22
goat. He was wild and undependable, but he knew how
to make people like him.
Hill Girl — 23
Four
The speedometer of the big roadster climbed up to
sixty as we came over the crest of Five Mile Hill. I
watched it as we started down. It went to sixty-five and
then seventy, and then it hovered just under seventyfive.
Lee lounged behind the wheel in a big hunting
coat and fished in a pocket for a cigarette, brought out
a lighter, and snapped it, and for a brief instant the
little flame lit up the lean Indian face and the polished
smoothness of the brown head. He grinned at me
around the cigarette and winked and said, “We’ll knock
‘em dead, son,” and went on trying to hum “The
Sweetheart of Sigma Chi.” He couldn’t carry a tune any
more than I could.
It was in the cold half-light of dawn, with a growing
strip of pink in the east, and the Buick seemed the only
thing alive. The countryside was still and ghostly under
a heavy mantle of frost. The side curtains were up on
the car but still I had to shove my hands in my pockets
to keep them warm. When we crossed the little creek
bottom below the Eiler’s place there were patches of
low-lying and filmy mist that hugged the ground and
were torn apart and swirled into the boiling red dust
behind us. We left the loose boards of the old wooden
bridge ringing their complaining clatter on the still air
of the morning, and shot noiselessly up the hill where I
Hill Girl — 24
had met Sam Harley, the car eating up the miles of the
clay and gravel road like a red-tailed projectile.
There had been an argument before we started. I had
wanted to go out to the old Crane farm and hunt over it
so I could have a look at the buildings and the land at
the same time. The farm was mine now and I wanted to
see what kind of shape it was in, but Lee had insisted
that we come this way. I couldn’t understand why, but
had given in to him. I found out later what the
attraction was over here.
Mike sat between us, peering out interestedly
through the windshield at the scenery flashing past. He
would be a surprised dog, I thought, if he ever rode
with anybody else and found out that cars can travel at
thirty and forty miles an hour. He turned and licked
Lee on the face. Lee cuffed him on the head while we
swept around a long curve with that delicately
balanced feeling you have just before the car begins to
skid.
“You old cold-nosed bastard, I’ll throw you out and
make you walk,” he said affectionately.
He stopped the car and turned it around and parked
off the road on top of a long hill five miles beyond. I got
out on the side of the road and old Mike jumped down
and went racing around in ecstatic circles.
“Go get ‘em, Mike,” Lee said, and slapped him
playfully in the ribs.
Mike gave him a look of sheer adoration and cleared
the burrow pit beside the road with one bound and
disappeared down the rows of old cornstalks and pea
vines that lay downhill. We loaded the guns and
followed.
The sun was just coming up over the top of a far-off
ridge to the east and it felt good on my back and strung
the frosty vines with diamonds, and the red-gold shafts
of light broke against the far hill ahead of us in a
spreading extravagance of color among the dogwood
and hickory and red oak. October’s blue haze of smoke
was in the air and the unforgettable smell of it was in
our nostrils, and our breath was steamy in the
absolutely still air.
Hill Girl — 25
“He’s found birds,” Lee said happily. I looked up
ahead and saw Mike had slowed and was coming along
the edge of the field stealthily and his very pose said as
plain as words, “They’re here. And close.” Then he
stiffened in a point.
It was a small covey and they got up from the pea
vines almost at our feet, half a dozen or so small
brown-feathered bombs that ripped the hush of the
morning apart with their explosion. Lee knocked one
down with an effortless swing of his gun, but I was
jumpy and missed with both barrels, missed clean
without drawing a feather, which is the only way to
miss if you have to.
“I used to know a guy once,” Lee said gravely as
Mike brought up his bird and he stowed it in the game
pocket.
“Yeah? You did?”
“Quite a hunter, this guy was. And what he always
did was to shoot at the birds. Or at least in their
general direction.”
“All right, all right.” I grinned. “So I missed one.”
“You missed one?” He grabbed my coat collar and
shook it affectionately. “Why, you big Swede, you
couldn’t hit a Jersey cow in the ass with an ironing
board.”
And that was the way it went most of the morning.
Mike would find the birds, we would kick them out, Lee
would get one and sometimes a clean double, and I
would miss. By noon I had only two birds in the game
pocket of my coat. I couldn’t get the old swing back,
and Lee kidded me unmercifully.
“They went that way, mister,” he would shout
excitedly, pointing after a vanishing covey after I had
missed two shots on the rise.
All hunters have days like that, even exceptional
shots, and I have lots of them, so I didn’t mind. The day
was beautiful and it was all right just to be out with Lee
like this after an absence of two years.
He was in high spirits. “Damn it, Bob,” he said, “I’m
sure glad you’re back. We’ve missed you around here. I
Hill Girl — 26
don’t see why you couldn’t have gone to some school
around home. They’re always just as much in the
market for beef as that place you went. And I always
wished you and the Major could have got together
some way.”
“Well,” I said, “it was just one of those things.”
“I think it got to worrying him the last year. The way
the two of you had split up, I mean. He used to ask me
right often if I’d heard from you.”
“He did?” I tried to work up some interest in it, but it
was pretty thin.
“You missed a lot of fun, Bob.” He stopped and lit a
cigarette and grinned at me in the sunlight. “Don’t go
so fast. We’re not hunting birds for a living.
“But you did miss a lot of fun,” he went on. “You
know how much money he used to give me when I was
going to Rice. And the parties we used to throw the last
few years before he died, when I was working for him.
That last one, in Houston, sweet Jesus! He had a whole
suite of rooms at the Rice Hotel and I don’t know how
much whisky—the real McCoy, too, no moonshine—and
I had all the telephone numbers from the days when I
was going to school down there. And for a man who
was crowding fifty, he was quite a lad with the gals. A
little on the salty side, especially when he’d had a
couple of snorts, and sometimes they didn’t quite know
how to take him, but he was a good sport. You
remember how he used to be sometimes when he’d had
too much, he’d think about when he was in France with
the Engineers, and he’d start talking French to the
girls, and it’s a damn good thing none of ‘em ever
understood anything he was saying. And then he’d sing
the Engineers’ song, you know, the one about ‘Oh, the
Engineers, with hairy ears, they live in caves and
ditches,’ and when he’d come to the third line it was a
little too rough for some of ‘em unless they had a
snootful too, and if they got too snotty about it he’d let
out a roar and say, ‘Lee, take these goddamn campfire
girls back to their sorority house and go down on
Congress Avenue and dig us up some women with
Hill Girl — 27
guts,’ and then I’d have to pacify everybody all over
again.”
“You must have had your hands full,” I said absently.
I was trying to keep an eye on Mike, who was cutting
around the edge of a blackberry patch.
“I’ll say I did. And say, speaking of girls—”
“We were?” I said. “What are girls?”
“Speaking of girls, you sap, I want to take you out to
Sam’s sometime soon so you can see this Angelina.
Until you see that, you haven’t lived, I’m telling you.”
“Lay off,” I said. “Forget this Angelina stuff. You
know what Sam Harley’d do if he caught you fooling
around with one of his girls.”
“What a sucker!” He grinned. “If I ever get a chance
to get into that, d’you think I’m going to do it on the
courthouse lawn and give out invitations to everybody
in the country?”
“For Christ’s sake, Lee,” I said. “Quit talking like
that. You’ll have me believing you mean it before long.”
“O.K.,” he said. “O.K., Grandma. But when you see
her, don’t say I didn’t warn you. There’s a lot of fun
there in one pair of flour-sack pants, for the guy that
can get it.”
“Speaking of sport,” I said, “did you ever hunt any
quail? Now, back where I come from, it’s a lot of fun.
You have a dog, see, and a shotgun; and this dog goes
out and finds the birds—”
“All right, all right. Maybe we had better get going,
or I’ll be whinnying and pawing the ground, just
thinking about her. Let’s go.”
We would hunt over a field and then move the car
down the road to another bit of good cover and go over
that. By noon we were close to the field where I had
met Sam Harley the day before. We started across a
piece of pastureland near the road, headed for a spring
branch below, where we could eat the sandwiches we
had brought. Mike found a big covey of quail in the
blackberries along an old fence row and Lee connected
again. I shot and missed.
Hill Girl — 28
“Now, you take croquet. That’s a nice game I could
recommend,” Lee said as we sat down at the base of a
big oak beside the spring. “I knew a man once. Just like
you in a lot of ways. Had eleven thumbs and three left
feet and he got to be a hell of a player. Maybe All-
American.”
“You certainly know a lot of people,” I said. “Any of
‘em named Joe?”
“Sure. All of ‘em. Joe’s a nice name.”
“Had a kind of green mole on the left side of his face,
just under the eye?”
“No. This guy had an aunt named Irma who used to
dance at Elk stag parties.”
I shook my head. “Must be another guy.”
“You’re nuts. I’m glad you’re home, but you’re nuts.”
I threw a chunk of rotten wood at him and he ducked
and it went into the spring and splashed a little water
on Mike, who looked at us sitting there on the ground
laughing like hyenas. He whined eagerly deep in his
throat and started up out of the ravine, padding
noiselessly on the damp brown leaves where the frost
had melted, and his manner clearly indicated that he’d
had enough of this stalling around and thought we
should get back to the pressing business of hunting
birds.
Lee whistled at him. “Don’t work so hard, Mike,” he
said. “You’ll just get promoted to a better job and then
you’ll have worries.”
He lay back at full length on the steep incline of the
bank, with an arm crooked under the back of his head
to keep it off the wet ground and leaves. The sunlight
of a cloudless autumn day poured through an opening
in the trees above and he stretched lazily in the warm
rays and bit enormously into a sandwich.
“This is the life,” he said.
It was, all right, I agreed silently. And I was happy to
see him enjoying it so much and I tried to pretend to
myself that I didn’t know he would be bored with it
before the day was over. There wasn’t enough
Hill Girl — 29
excitement in hunting quail to keep him interested for
a full day.
After lunch we went on down the road and stopped to
hunt over the field where I had met Sam yesterday.
But, as I had known, he began losing interest in it. He
didn’t kid me any more about the shots I missed and he
took less and less pleasure from even the difficult ones
he completed.
The silence between us lengthened out. I tried to
keep him going by bringing up people we knew and
funny things that had happened, but it was no use. He
was growing moody and irritable.
By two o’clock we were down by the little creek at
the lower end of the big Eilers field and the car was a
long way back, a mile or more. Beyond the creek was a
wooded ridge and I remembered that there were a few
scattered sandy fields and open pastures up on top of it
but that it wasn’t good bird country. I couldn’t
understand why Lee kept turning in that direction.
“There’s no use in crossing the creek,” I said. “Let’s
go back to the car.”
“Oh, come on. There are some fields up there, over
by Sam Harley's house.”
I began to see the light, but I followed him. There
wasn’t anything else to do. He had the car keys. And he
was already crossing the creek on the foot log, and he
stalked across the swampy bottom without looking
back.
“I’ll tell you,” I said, “you and Mike go on along the
ridge here, cutting back toward the highway, and I’ll go
back and pick up the car and meet you.”
“No,” he said shortly. “It’s only a quarter mile on to
Sam’s. Let’s go on over there and get a drink and he’ll
drive us out to the car. I want to pick up a quart.”
I shrugged. “O.K.”
It was easy to see now where the hunting trip was
going.
Hill Girl — 30
Five
We came out of the scrub pine and there in the clearing
with the sun behind it was Sam’s place, quiet and
apparently deserted. It hadn’t changed any in the two
years since I had seen it. The sandy road ran on past it
and turned to the left beyond the barn, going on down
toward the big bottom country behind the place, and
there was a wire gate leading into the close-cropped
cow pasture surrounding the house and farm buildings.
The house was still the same, the unfinished pine
boards silvery gray with age and weather. A large mud
and stone chimney stood solidly against the south wall,
and there was a long “gallery” extending the width of
the house in front.
On beyond the house was the barn and the corn crib
and the cow lot enclosed in stripped pine sapling poles,
a wagon shed and a crazily leaning rough-board shed
where Sam kept his Ford, a big woodpile, and a little
well house covered with gray oak shakes.
There was no sign of life. The door of the shed was
closed and we couldn’t see whether the car was there
or not. We stopped at the front gate and looked around.
“Hello in there! Hey, Sam!” Lee called
experimentally.
“They’re all in town,” I said. “It’s Saturday evening.”
Hill Girl — 31
“Not like Sam.” Lee shook his head. “He doesn’t go
to town much.”
“Well, let’s go,” I said. “No use hanging around
here.”
“I wonder where he keeps the whisky,” Lee said.
“Well, not in the house. That’s a cinch.”
“We might take a look around.”
“Sure,” I said. “The sheriff has been trying to find it
for ten years, so we’ll just walk right into it.”
Lee swore disgustedly and we had turned to go when
I heard the front door open.
Angelina Harley stood there in the doorway, looking
out at us. I don’t know how I knew it was Angelina
unless it was what I saw on Lee’s face when he turned
around. I knew then it wasn’t Sam he had been hoping
to see.
She came out on the porch. “What did you want?”
she asked. There was no friendliness in her eyes or any
word of greeting; just the question.
Her eyes were on Lee and I doubt that she knew I
was there, but I felt compelled to reply. Any answer
from Lee would have been superfluous anyway. She
could see what he wanted. Not that she seemed to
mind.
“We were looking for Sam,” I said. “Is he home?”
So this was Angelina. This was the scrawny little girl
with the thin arms and legs and chapped knees and the
wide, frightened brown eyes I remembered. I felt
myself growing uncomfortable and tried to take my
eyes off her.
It wasn’t that she had grown so much. She wasn’t
big, even now. But it was as if she had received twentyfive
pounds or so in the mail with instructions to put it
on where she thought she needed it most.
She had on an old cotton dress that she had
outgrown in every direction and overwhelmed until it
had completely surrendered its cheap shapelessness
and lay taut across her hips and breasts in obedient
submission, and it was obvious she had on practically
Hill Girl — 32
nothing underneath that dominated and slavish
garment and that she didn’t give a damn.
Her hair was blonde, a little too dark to be called
golden, but you could see it was natural, and it was
long, thrown back over her shoulders, straight and
fine-spun and silky and slightly damp, and it was
obvious she had just washed it and had been drying it
in the sun in the back yard, for she had an old blue
bath towel pinned across her shoulders.
I learned later that her hair was long because Sam
wouldn’t stand for her bobbing it. Sam was pretty
strong for the Scriptures, aside from his whiskymaking,
and there wasn’t anything in there about
women cutting off their hair. I was to learn that and a
lot of other things about this girl before I was very
much older.
Her eyes were slightly almond-shaped and brown,
but they weren’t soft, as brown eyes usually are, but
rather there was in them an almost indefinable
expression of smoldering defiance. They seemed to be
at once sullen and shy. The face was a little too broad
and the full lips too near pouting for beauty, and the
whole thing too lacking in animation for charm, but she
was damned pretty, or she would have been if she’d
had anything in her eyes but that to-hell-with-you stare.
She answered me, still looking at Lee. “No. He’s
hauling up some wood. But he ought to be here pretty
soon.”
Lee wasn’t saying anything. He was just looking at
her, and I’d never seen him act like that around a girl.
Usually he just moved in on them like Stuart’s Cavalry.
There seemed to be something about her that threw
him off his stride. His face was shiny with sweat and he
couldn’t seem to be able to get his mouth closed.
“Do you mind if we wait for him?” I asked.
“No. I guess not, if you want to.”
We pushed through the gate and came up and sat
down on the porch, one on each side of the steps, with
our backs against the four-by-four posts that supported
the roof.
Hill Girl — 33
“I wonder if we could have a drink of water?” I asked.
For some reason I wanted to get her to talk, if I could. I
couldn’t figure her out. And the silence between the
three of us was oppressive and all that naked staring
was making me uncomfortable. I tried to keep my eyes
off her, for I knew the way I was looking at her and it
embarrassed me slightly, even though it didn’t seem to
bother her at all.
“I guess so,” she said ungraciously. “Wait here and
I’ll bring you some.”
When she had disappeared inside the house, moving
with an effortless grace, Lee looked across at me.
“Jesus Christ,” he said softly. “Oh, Jesus.”
“Let’s get going,” I said. “You can see Sam some
other time.”
He didn’t hear me.
She came back out with a wooden bucket full of
water and a long-handled gourd dipper and put it down
on the porch between us and then went over and
curled up in the porch swing, tugging once carelessly
and ineffectually at the skimpy dress. She had on an
old pair of house slippers with no stockings, and her
legs were long and smooth and tanned, and the too
short and too thin dress did nothing to cover them. I
looked out across the cow pasture to where Mike was
investigating a gopher hole. I didn’t want to sit there
and stare at her like the bald-headed row at a
burlesque show.
That silence settled down over us again. As I sat
there and tried to pretend an interest in the dog I could
feel the two of them looking at each other.
I didn’t like it. Not that I cared what they did, for it
wasn’t any of my business. But I knew something about
those backwoods men like Sam and knew how they
regarded outsiders who tried to fool around with their
womenfolks. Sam was soft-spoken and a little shy in the
presence of strangers, but I remembered that when I
was a boy I used to go to court sometimes when my
grandfather was on jury duty and listen to the cases,
and I had seen men on trial for brutal and ruthless
Hill Girl — 34
murder and some of them had been soft-spoken and a
little shy of bearing.
I was remembering other things, too. Remembering
Sam’s telling me one night when we were coon hunting
long ago and were sitting around a fire down in the
Black Creek bottoms there behind the house that
Angelina was going to be a schoolteacher. She was a
right smart girl and she made good grades in her books
and she was going to amount to something, he had said
in that way of his of not wanting to appear boastful
before outsiders but with the quiet pride showing
through nevertheless. Sam thought a lot of his oldest
daughter, and anybody— especially any married man—
he caught fooling around with her was going to be in
one hell of a bad spot mighty fast. I felt cold down
between my shoulder blades as though there were a
draft blowing up my back. I wished Sam would come on
so we could get the whisky and get out of here.
It was Angelina who broke the silence. “What did you
want to see Papa about?”
“We wanted to ask him if it was O.K. To hunt across
the place,” I said,
“I know what you want. You’re after whisky.”
I turned quickly and looked at her. I knew Sam had
always been careful to keep his moonshining activities
away from his family. She said it flatly and distastefully
and she had that sulky challenge in her eyes, as though
she dared me to deny it.
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“That’s all you town people would come out here for.
That’s all anybody comes here for.”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, I know all about it. He thinks I don’t, but I’ve
known about it a long time. Moonshiner!” There was a
biting scorn in her voice.
“Well, what’s wrong with that?” I asked. “Lots of
people make it. And not as good as Sam’s, either.”
“Does your papa make it?”
“No,” I said. “But he drank more of it than Sam has
ever made.”
Hill Girl — 35
“And I guess that ain’t something a whole lot
different, is it?”
“Well, I’ve never given it any thought. Is it?”
“You know damn well it is. How’d you like to live out
here on this backwoodsy farm and not ever go to town
because your papa was a moonshiner, and you never
had any friends because you knew that everybody knew
it and talked about you behind your back?”
Oh, hell, I thought. I was beginning to get a little
tired of Angelina. She had a body that would make a
dead man come back to life, but her conversation got
on your nerves. The very idea of anyone who looked
like that feeling sorry for herself was ridiculous.
“How old are you?” I asked. Anything to change the
subject.
“Eighteen.”
I was sure she was stretching it a little, but I didn’t
say anything.
“When are you going to go to Teachers College?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t got enough credits yet. And I
haven’t got enough money saved up.”
She began to be a little less sullen then, as though
Teachers College interested her. Maybe she does have
other hobbies beside waving that chassis in your face
and not liking her father, I thought. I just didn’t like
her.
After a minute she asked, “Did either one of you-all
ever go to Teachers College?”
“No,” I said. “Why?”
She hesitated a little as though undecided whether to
go on. She looked down at the floor between us.
“I was just wondering if you knew what kind of
clothes the girls wore down there.”
I was conscious of the traditional male helplessness
when confronted with this type of question. Before I
could think of anything to say she slid out of the swing
with a flashing display of long bare legs and was gone
inside the door.
Hill Girl — 36
She came back almost at once, carrying the mailorder
catalogue of some clothing company. She sat
down between us on the steps and opened it
immediately to the pages she wanted. It was wilted and
dog-eared from constant handling.
“Do they look like any of these?” she asked
hesitantly.
She was so damned near. I could feel the buttoned-up
collar of my wool shirt choking me and I didn’t want to
say anything for fear of the way my voice would sound.
As she leaned forward over the catalogue stray tendrils
of that blonde hair were almost in my face, and to look
down at the pictures she was pointing out I had to look
past some of the places she was fighting with that
dress.
I tried to concentrate on the pictures. They were the
usual mannikins of catalogues, standing in that pose
they all have with one foot pointing out to the side for
some reason, and the dresses and suits they had on
looked just like any other dresses and suits to me.
“Well?” she asked. “Which ones do you like? Like
college girls wear?”
I muttered something lamely and pretended to study
them again. I could hold her off in my mind when she
was sullen, and throwing all that stuff around and
daring you to look at it, and when she was whining, but
when she got up against me like this and dropped the
challenge and was just a girl asking for help she got me
and hit me hard. Not liking her didn’t help any.
“Here, let me look.” It was Lee on the other side of
her, and he slid over slightly. “I can pick out just the
thing for you.” His voice was normal and his tone
confident and I could see he was regaining control of
the situation. This was a girl he could understand.
She switched the catalogue over toward his side and
looked up at him hopefully and I slipped off the porch
steps and walked out into the yard, taking out a
cigarette and lighting it. I noticed how my fingers were
shaking. “God damn her anyway,” I swore under my
breath. The faint stirring of breeze out in the yard felt
good on my face.
Hill Girl — 37
I could hear Lee’s voice going on behind me,
gathering momentum and confidence with every word.
He was getting back into gear again.
“Now you take this one,” he was saying, and it was
the world’s greatest authority on girls’ clothes
speaking. “This isn’t your type. The lines are all wrong.
It’s too conservative. You want something with more
dash and snap to it.”
What a line of crap, I thought. You and your
goddamned dash and snap. What do you know about
women’s clothes?
But it didn’t scare me so much now. He sounded
more like the Lee I knew. He was working on her, all
right, but he seemed to have regained some measure of
sanity. He didn’t remind me so much of a stallion
getting ready to kick his stall apart. He’d try to make
her sometime, but maybe he’d have sense enough not
to get himself killed. Unless he got drunk. And then I
felt the cold wind again.
When they had the clothes question settled to their
satisfaction, they moved up into the porch swing and
went on talking. I went back and sat down on the steps.
There wasn’t anywhere else to go and I could see Lee
wasn’t going to leave.
“Your name is Lee Crane, isn’t it?” she asked, with a
sidewise glance at him.
“Yes.” He nodded. “I know yours, all right. But how'd
you know me?”
“Oh, I’ve seen you come out here a lot of times to see
Papa. And a girl I know told me your name one time
when I saw you in town. You were in a big car.”
“I wish I’d seen you. I would have taken you for a
drive.”
“I wish you had too,” she said. “Who is he?”
She meant me. A gracious little bag, I thought sourly.
I wondered why she didn’t point and say, “What is
that?”
“My kid brother, Bob,” Lee said, and I saw a flicker of
amusement in his eyes as he looked at me.
“Your brother? Why, he don’t look anything like you.”
Hill Girl — 38
The way she said it left little doubt as to what she
meant. How could such a homely character be a
brother of the gorgeous Lee Crane? And I liked being
discussed in the third person that way. I could see that
Angelina and I were going to be great buddies.
“Do you go to many dances?” Lee asked.
“No.”
“Why not? It’s a lot of fun.”
“I never go anywhere. He won’t let me!” she said
hotly.
Lee was tenderly sympathetic. “That’s a darn shame.
A lovely young girl like you should go to lots of parties.
Don’t you think it’s a shame, Bob?”
“Yes,” I said. “What a shame!”
She gave me a dirty look.
“I suppose you think it’s fun being shut up all the
time on this damn stinkin’ farm?”
“I didn’t say so,” I said. “But there could be worse
places.”
“That’s what you think.”
“O.K.,” I said. “That’s what I think.”
“I suppose you think a girl oughtn’t to have any fun?”
“What the hell do I care?” I said.
“Aw, lay off, Bob,” Lee put in protestingly. “Never
mind him, Angelina. He’s all right when you get to
know him.”
“Well, I don’t want to get to know him. He hasn’t got
any more sense than a mule. And he looks like one.”
I got off the porch and walked out into the yard
again. I don’t know why she got on my nerves so much.
I looked down the road and saw Sam coming up from
the bottom with his load of wood. I was glad to see him
and called back to Lee and pointed.
Sam drew up alongside the big woodpile in back of
the house and Angelina gathered up her catalogue and
went inside.
“Hello, Sam,” I said.
Hill Girl — 39
“Howdy, Bob,” he answered quietly. “Been doin’ a
little bird huntin’?” I saw him shoot a fast look across
the yard to where Lee was, coming from the front of
the house.
We offered to pitch off the wood while he went and
got us the quart. He never would let anybody go with
him when he went to the place where he kept it
cached.
While we were up on the loaded wagon heaving the
big fireplace logs off onto the pile, Angelina came out
of the house and headed for the well with her water
bucket. She passed us without a word but I guess she
could feel Lee’s eyes on her, for as she went by she
gave him that long slow look out of the side of her eyes.
“She ought to be against the law,” Lee said slowly
and shakily as she disappeared inside the house. He
was getting that look again.
“She is,” I said. “A little law about contributing to the
delinquency of minors.”
“She’s eighteen. You heard her say it. She’s no
minor.”
I shrugged. “Sam would kill you.”
“It’d be worth it.”
“Like hell it’d be worth it. There isn’t any of it worth
that much.”
“Not if you stop to think about it, no. But how’re you
going to stop and think when you see her?”
I didn’t say anything.
And don't try to give me any of that crap that she
doesn't affect you the same way. I saw you get up from
there and sidle away. You couldn’t take it either.”
“O.K., I said “O.K. So she does it to me too. But you
can stay dead a long time.”
“What the hell, don’t be such a sap. I’ll bet she’s not
any virgin. The way she waves it around, somebody’s
gettin’ to it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know. But who’s going to explain
that to Sam? If you get caught, I mean, or she gets
knocked up. I guess you would? Or maybe you think
Hill Girl — 40
she will she’ll just say, ‘Why, Papa, he’s just one of the
crowd. I haven’t got any enemies.’ Like hell she will.”
“Oh, shut up, will you? You preach too much.”
Hill Girl — 41
Six
By the time we had the wood thrown off, Sam was back
from his cache. He stopped behind the corn crib, where
we could see him but he couldn’t be seen from the
house, and motioned to us.
“I didn’t want to tote it across to you there in the
open,” he said when we got there, and he nodded
toward the house, where Angelina was. I thought of the
contemptuous way she had said, “Moonshiner!” and
felt a little sorry for him. He wasn’t fooling that girl
any.
“One of you boys can tote it out in your game
pocket.”
“Sure,” Lee said. He paid Sam for it. “But let’s go
inside here and have a snort. How about it, Sam?”
Sam hesitated slightly, and then he nodded. We
climbed through the small door into the crib and closed
it after us again. I wondered what all the secrecy was
about. What was Angelina supposed to think we were
doing down here? Playing a three-handed game of
bridge?
The crib was built of split logs with the flat sides
inside and it was cool and dim and dusty in there, with
a narrow shaft of sunlight slanting in here and there
from the west side between the logs. The unhusked
corn was piled high toward the back in a steep slope
Hill Girl — 42
and there was a little cleared space by the door. We
hunkered down there with our backs against the
sloping wall of corn and Lee twisted loose the fruit-jar
lid. He held it out to Sam.
“Go ahead,” Sam said politely.
“The first today,” Lee said and took a big swallow,
holding the wide-mouthed jar with both hands. He
made a shuddering face and expelled his breath in a
long “Whoooof!”
I took a drink, not wanting it and disliking the breathcatching
and slightly gagging smell of it in the wide
mouth of the jar, but obliged to abide by the rules
governing these rites. If three men have a bottle, all
three must drink. It was good, as moonshine goes, but I
just couldn’t see the necessity for it at this time of day,
out in the country like this on a hunting trip.
Sam tilted it back and took a long drink without
changing expression. He might have been drinking
water. Lee hurriedly gulped another and passed the jar
to me again.
“You get many birds?” Sam asked.
“About a dozen,” Lee said. “Old Big-and-Ugly here
was blowin’ holes in the air and I had to get ‘em for
him.”
Sam nodded and smiled a little self-consciously at
me. “Well, ev’body has an off day now an’ then.”
“Have another jolt,” Lee said
“Well, I don’t know,” Sam said slowly. Then he picked
up the ax. “Jest one. Then I got to unhitch the mules.”
“Through hauling wood for the day?” Lee asked in
surprise. It was only about three-thirty.
“Well, I had thought I might get in another load, but I
guess not. Might put me kinda late with the chores.
Reckon I’ll unhitch.”
I reckon you will too, I thought. Unhitch and stick
around. You’re not going back down there in the
bottom and leave two potential drunks wallowing
around in your corn crib with a quart of moonshine and
that girl wandering around loose. You might as well go
off and leave an untended bonfire in a gasoline
Hill Girl — 43
refinery. I’ll bet you’ll be a happy man the day she’s
married and some other poor bastard can watch her.
I could feel the two drinks warming me and I was
conscious of the old illusion that about two drinks
always give you of seeing everything more clearly. And
the thing I saw more clearly than anything else was
that I’d better start working on Lee to get him out of
here before he got too much. You never could tell what
it was going to do to him.
“We’d better get started back,” I said. “It’s a long
way out to the car.”
“Plenty of time. Keep your shirt on,” he replied with a
vague irritation.
Sam got up and let himself out to attend to the team.
He gave us a disturbed look as he left. He didn’t like it
a bit. It was plain on his face in spite of the way he
tried to cover it up. And I could see his reasons. If
you’re making and selling booze in a dry county,
there’s no surer way of getting yourself in jail than by
letting your customers drink it on the premises and get
a load on to advertise where they got it. And Sam had a
lot of strict, old-fashioned family virtues. He didn’t
think his home was any place for people to get drunk,
but he didn’t like to say anything. After all, Lee was a
good customer. And, too, the code of hospitality
ingrained in men like Sam would never permit him to
ask anyone to leave his place. Backwoods people just
weren’t like that. They might rip your belly open if
anything unpleasant started, but they couldn’t ask you
to leave.
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