Richard Ford - A Piece of My Heart

Two men outside the bank regarded him casually and he raised a hand, and one of them waved and smiled and went back to talking.

He started watching the other side of the block, where there was a Pure station, the Red Ball storefront, and a cotton broker. The street was almost deserted. A Negro man was stopped looking at the sky and a pregnant white girl walked inside the Red Ball pushing a stroller.

And then he saw Beuna, past the corner, standing outside a lawn mower store, one foot on the curb and one square in the mouth of the gutter, looking like a white peony blossom.

Beuna was got up in a white gauze dress with a sateen boat top that looped down on top of her breasts. The dress then belled out to make a gauze skirt with lacy flounces down to her knees. She had on a pair of red shoes and a wide red belt that almost matched, and that was cinched so he wondered if she could breathe or had simply been standing at the curb all morning with her breath inside her trying not to turn blue. The dress had tiny straps holding it up, and she was carrying a big white patent purse. Her hair was down on her shoulders and bunched under, and she was smiling a big rougy smile as if she thought somebody was standing ready to take her picture.

He let the truck creep across the intersection, checking the mirror and aiming straight down the gutter to where she had her foot. He popped the door as he got clear of the cross street, and she had to get back to miss being smacked.

She sweetened her big airport smile so he could see her teeth were frowzed with lipstick.

“How am I?” She spread her legs so he could see through the gauze and make out everything.

“Like a har-lot,” he said, feeling angry.

She licked her lips. “Don’t I look like a kid?”

“You look like a whore,” he said. He took another look at the mirror.

“Don’t I look like a young girl, Robard?”

“Goddamn it, get your ass in or I’m leaving you for them hard dicks to pick over.” He flashed at the mirror, expecting to see four or five men charging up the street.

Her head declined and she quit swinging her purse, and he could see a weal of flesh appear under her chin. She got in the truck and closed the door. “What was it you said I looked like?”

He could smell a sweet gardenia perfume over everything. “A harlot.” He nudged the truck off from the curb, catching a glimpse of the spectators in front of the bank. They seemed not to be paying attention to anything but a blue and white state police car passing along the street.

“What’s a harlot?” she said.

“A slut,” he snapped, watching the police car intently while he slipped through the next crossing.

“Oh,” she said, and slumped her purse in her lap and poked her hands through the strap. “I thought I’d look like I looked when you and me knew one another at Willard’s.”

“What come of Willard?” he said. He turned off Main in the direction of the bluff. The trooper cruised by toward Memphis. The street changed back to low-porch bungalows with old Chevies in the yard and motors hung up on chain pulleys.

“Him and her went,” she said, nibbling a fleck of lipstick and spreading it over another tooth. “He took empyzema or some such and went to Tucson.” She looked dissatisfied. “I don’t write ’em nothin. I just write you.” She pushed her lower lip out and made a face.

He started looking for a drop box on the street. He turned back to the street he had come in on, then up toward the hill. At the first corner, he aimed the truck across, slid in under the spout, and dropped the card in the slot.

“What the hell was that about?” she said.

“Jackie.”

“Saying what about?”

“I was coming.”

“Huh,” she snorted.

He pulled back onto the road.

“You and me’s going to Memphis, Tennessee, tonight, buster,” she said. “I got me some plans that’ll keep you out of circulation tonight.” She looked cagey.

“We’ll see,” he said.

“What do you mean, ‘We’ll see’?” she said. “I’m going to be in the Peabody Ho-tel tonight looking out the window at the Union Planters Bank, or by God I ain’t going to be no place at all.” She glared, hiked her skirt, and crossed her legs.

The truck went a ways along a slip fault in the bluff, and the cotton fields began to be visible, opening away to the river toward the south. From the distance it was impossible to tell the fields were flooded and gummed, and everything looked dark and tilled, ready for planting.

“I got to pick up some stuff,” he said.

She faced front, her cheeks pale as if in looking out at the river bottom she had seen something that made her unhappy.

The road made a turn over the bluff into West Helena. An old man on a ladder was changing the letters on the Razorback marquee and had put the word BLOW into place, hunting in a cardboard box for the members of some other word. The bottom line said OPEN SAT MAT.

One or two people were on the street, hurrying to and from the Skelley station. The sky made it seem like the aftermath of some public alarm.

“I hate it up here,” she said, looping her purse around her wrist and glowering out the window. He was silent. “They’s a Kold Freez up here,” she said. “Pull in, I want me one.”

He drove past the motel where the cars had been the night before, everything all gone, and the light in the soda machine was off, and the motel looked as if it had been shut up.

“That there’s the gambling joint,” she said, staring disinterestedly at the motel. “Niggers cut one another up there and pay off the sheriff.”

The Kold Freez was off on the left, in the middle of a rectangular lot that let the cars drive all the way around.

“Gimme a quarter,” she said, throwing open the door.

He fished out a quarter and she sauntered up to the window. A sign above the window said DOGS BOATS • SLUSHES. One of the girls inside shoved up the screen slide and stuck her head in the opening to see out. Beuna spoke, and the girl stood up and stared at him through both wide panes of glass, then turned around and filled a paper cup from a big silver machine and delivered it to the window-way, where Beuna was leaning, staring up the road and fanning herself with her hand. The girl stood and looked at him again, brushing back a strand of strawberry hair out of her eyes, then disappearing behind the machinery into the private rooms of the building.

Beuna shoveled down in her seat with her knees on the dashboard, drinking something out of the cup with a striped straw. “Wasn’t no change,” she said.

He drove to the motel, backed into the last cabin, and cut off the motor.

“Is this the dump you’re stayin in?” Beuna said, surveying the lot over the window sill, having another sip on her straw.

“Come on in for a minute.”

“My ass, too.” She threw the cup of ice out the window.

“I don’t want nobody to see us,” he said.

“This here’s a goddamned cathouse,” she said loudly, and shot out her lip. “Brashears don’t give a shit if you take a goddamn sheep in here. He knows. You paid for a double.”

“I ain’t paid it,” he said softly, and looked up at the office.

A truck of Negroes passed, headed for Marvell, men all standing against the side slats peering out like convicts. One of them yelled at the truckdriver and waved his hat, and he could hear the rest of them laughing, and the driver honked the horn and some of the others took up whooping.

Beuna looked through the side window, her head turned so her chin looked like part of her breasts. He grabbed her arm suddenly and pulled her over and kissed her on the mouth, but she kept her arms unbent and her neck stiff, and when he looked at her she was staring at him, a smile trying to figure on her lips. He ran his tongue behind his teeth. “What the hell’s got the matter with you?” he said. He took another grip on her arm until he could see white radiating away from his fingers.