Charles Williams: Hell Hath No Fury

I heard a step on the porch and turned. She had come in and was looking at me a little apprehensively. “Do you think we ought to come in like this when he’s not here?” she asked. I kept getting the impression she was scared of him.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe not. Say, is he married?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

She saw the ash-tray then and looked away from me. I watched her as she kept glancing nervously around and it was obvious she didn’t like the idea of our being in here. We went back outside. I walked out to the car and hit the horn-button three or four long blasts. Sound rolled out across the timber and then died away while we listened. There was no answer.

A small shed stood beside the derrick platform, over across the clearing, but from here we could see that the door was locked and he wasn’t anywhere around it. At the side of the shack a trail led down into a wooded ravine, and when she saw me looking down that way she said, “He might be down at the spring where he gets his water. I’ll walk down and see.”

“All right,” I said, starting to go with her.

“It’s all right,” she protested. “I’ll go. Why don’t you just wait by the car?”

I started to say something, and then shut up. For some reason she didn’t want me to go. Maybe she was afraid of me. I’ve got a homely, beat-up face, and I’m pretty big.

“O.K.,” I said. I sat down on the side of the porch and lighted a cigarette. She went down the trail. I could catch only glimpses now and then of the blonde head and the crisp blue of her dress, and then she went out of sight around a turn. I waited, smoking, and wondering what she was nervous about. When I looked again she was halfway up the trail, coming back. I watched her, thinking how it would be, the way you always do, and how pretty she was. She was a little over average height and had a lovely walk, even in the flat sandals, and there was something oddly serious about her face, more so than you’d expect in a girl who couldn’t be over twenty-one. She looked like someone who could get hurt, and it was strange I thought about it that way because it had been a long time since I’d known anyone who was vulnerable to much of anything. Her legs were long and very nice, and she wore rather dark nylons.

I stood up. “We might as well go,” I said. “He may not be back all day.”

“Oh,” she said. “I found him. He was down at the spring.”

I probably stared at her. She hadn’t been out of sight more than two or three minutes. Arid why hadn’t he come back with her?

“Did you get the car keys?” I asked.

She didn’t look at me. “No. He paid me. Both payments. We won’t have to take it.”

I shook my head. “You must be a fast talker,” I said. “I’m glad I don’t owe you any money.”

She turned towards the car. “Oh, he’d been intending to pay it. He just hadn’t been to town. Hadn’t we better go?”

“I guess so,” I said. The whole thing was queer, but if he’d paid her there was no use hanging around.

We had just reached the car and were starting to get in when I looked up and saw the man walking towards us. He had come out of the trees on the road we had come in on, and was carrying a gun which looked like a .22 pump in the crook of his arm. She saw him, too. Her eyes were uneasy and when she glanced quickly sidewise at me, I knew it was Sutton and that she had been lying when she said she’d seen him down at the spring.

2

He was A big man, around six feet and heavy all the way up, and walked with a peculiar short stride which some people might have called mincing but wasn’t. It was the flat-footed shuffle of a bear or a heavyweight fighter, and men who move that way are balanced and hard to push off their feet. He was dressed in bib overalls and a faded blue shirt, and besides the gun he was carrying two fox squirrels by their tails. He appeared to be around thirty-five or thirty-eight, with a stubble of dark beard on an unlined, moon-shaped face, and he had the expression in his eyes of a man enjoying some secret and very dirty joke.

“Hello,” I said.

He came up and stopped, glancing from Gloria Harper to me and back again. “Hello. You boys looking for somebody?”

“Yeah,” I said. “A man named Sutton. Would that be you?”

“You’ve got me, men. What can I do for you?”

Before I could say anything she spoke up hurriedly. “It’s about the car, Mr. Sutton. I—I mean could I talk to you for a minute?”

I waited to see what was going to happen next. She’d already told me he had paid up, which was obviously impossible, so what was she going to do? I could feel her begging me not to say anything.

He turned and looked at her again. “Why, you sure can, honey.” He was affable and cooperative, while the grin he gave her was crawling with that secret joke of his. It was edged with something like contempt and left her standing there naked and hot-faced and without any pride at all.

Her eyes were miserable and they begged “Please,” as she looked towards me and then turned to walk to the shack with him. I leaned against the door of the car and watched them. He sat down on the porch and left her standing and took out a cigarette without offering her one. Just the way he sat there and watched her was a slap in the face, full of calculated insolence and that dirty humor of his. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but he was apparently enjoying it.

In a minute she turned away from him and came back to the car. Her face was still crimson and she avoided looking at me. “We can go now,” she said.

“What about the car?”

“It’s all right. We don’t have to take it.”

“He didn’t pay you anything. What are you going to tell Harshaw?”

“Please,” she said. She was very near to crying.

“O.K.,” I said, and we got in. It was her funeral. She ran the loan office and it was her business and Harshaw’s, not mine. I backed up and turned the car into the road while Sutton watched us from the porch and grinned.

We were almost back to the river before she said anything. “Maybe I’d better tell him,” she said hesitantly. “Mr. Harshaw, I mean.”

“It’s your baby,” I said. “Tell him anything you want.”

“I—I know it must look a little funny, Mr. Madox.”

“Is Sutton a relative of yours?”

“No.”

“Well, a hundred and ten dollars is a lot of money.”

She glanced at me and said nothing. She either had to pay those two car notes herself or juggle the books to make it look as if they’d been paid, and she knew that I knew it. When we came to the bridge over the river I pulled off the road under the trees and stopped. She didn’t say a word, but when I turned to her, she was watching me a little uneasily. I put my arm around her and bent her head back. She didn’t struggle or try to slap me. She didn’t do anything. It was like kissing a passed-out drunk. I let go and she drew away from me as far as she could. She didn’t look at me. I put a hand under her chin and turned it.

“Get with it, kid,” I said. “Sutton sent me.”

I could see the shame and distaste in her eyes. “You must be proud of yourself.”

“We could still go back and repossess the car,” I said.

She didn’t answer.

“Or we could go in and tell Harshaw he wouldn’t let us have it. That ought to be good for a laugh.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“You never get anywhere if you don’t try.”

“Well, would you mind driving on, or shall I get out?”

“You’re a cute kid. How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Why’re you afraid of Sutton?”

She blushed and looked out the window. “I’m not.”