Charles Williams: Hell Hath No Fury

“Well, thanks anyway,” she said. Then she smiled. “You must be the new salesman. Mr.—uh—”

“Madox,” I said. “Harry Madox.”

“Oh, yes. George told me about you. Well, I won’t keep you from your work.” She switched on the ignition and pressed the starter button. The motor didn’t take hold the first time and she kept grinding at it. I’d started away, but turned now and came back.

“What do you suppose is the matter?” she asked petulantly.

“I think it’s flooded. Hold the accelerator all the way to the floor while you crank it.”

“Oh,” she said. “Like this?”

I looked in the car. It was stupid, actually, because anybody would know how to press down on the gas to cut out an automatic choke, but I looked anyway. She had very small feet in white shoes which were mostly heels, and around one ankle, under the nylon, she had one of those gold chains women wore a year or so ago. The seersucker skirt was up over her knees. Well, I thought, she asked me to. What did she expect?

“Yes,” I said. “Like that.”

She jabbed at the starter again and in a moment the motor caught and took off. She smiled. “Well. How did you know that?”

“It’s just one of those things you pick up.”

“Oh. I see. Well, thanks a lot.” She waved a hand and drove off.

In about twenty minutes she was back. I was sitting in the office, and when she tapped the horn I went out. “George hasn’t got back yet?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

“Oh, darn. He never remembers anything.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

She hesitated. “I hate to ask you. I mean, you’re working.”

“I’m not hurting myself. What is it?”

“Well, if you really wouldn’t mind. It’d only take a few minutes.” She gestured towards the rear of the car. “I’ve got a lot of papers and old clothes I want to unload in our storeroom, and I promised to take the key back before noon.”

“Sure,” I said, “where is it?”

“Are you sure it’ll be all right to leave for a few minutes?”

“Yes. Gulick can hold it down.” I looked up the lot. He and the Negro boy were still rooted in the same spot, staring at the old convertible. It’s like a horse trade, I thought; it’ll be hours before either of them makes a move.

I slid in beside her and we started down Main Street. “It’s awful nice of you,” she said. “The stuff is tied up in heavy packages, and I couldn’t carry it by myself.”

“What is it?” I asked. “A junk drive?”

“Uh-uh. It’s our club project. We store the stuff in Mr. Taylor’s old building and every two or three months a junk man comes and buys the paper. We sort out the clothes and send bundles.”

That’s nice, I thought. They send bundles. Well, maybe it keeps them off the streets. We went down a block beyond the bank and turned right into a cross street which was only a couple of blocks long. There wasn’t much here after you got off the main drag. A small chain grocery stood on the corner, and beyond that there was a Negro juke joint covered with Coca-Cola signs. She went on up to the second block and stopped in front of a building on the right. It was a boxlike two-storey frame with glass show-windows in front and vacant lots full of dead brown weeds on both sides. You could still see the lettering “TAYLOR HARDWARE” on the windows, but they were fly-specked and dirty and the place was vacant, and the door was closed with a big padlock. A “FOR RENT” sign leaned against the glass down in one corner. We got out and she fished around in her bag for the key. Standing up, she wasn’t as tall as the Harper girl and had none of her long-legged, easy grace, but she was stacked smoothly and twelve to the dozen against the contoured retaining-wall of her clothes.

She went around and opened the trunk of the car. “I expect it’ll take two trips,” she said.

I glanced in. There were two bundles of old newspapers and magazines tied up with cord, and a lot of loose clothes. I hefted the papers. They weren’t over fifty or seventy-five pounds each, so I gathered them up and asked her to stuff the old clothes under my arms.

She looked up at me with a kittenish smile. “Well, goodness, I expect to carry something myself. I don’t look that puny, do I?”

Let it be, I thought. This is a small town. We went inside. The place was empty except for some old counters and shelves, and our footsteps rang with a hollow sound. There was dust everywhere. “We have to go upstairs,” she said.

The stairs were in the rear. I went up first and I could hear the high heels clicking after me. All the windows were closed, and heat lay like a suffocating blanket across the lifeless air. I could feel sweat breaking out on my face. The whole second floor was a jumble of discarded junk, old pieces of furniture, loose and bundled papers, piles of clothing, cast-off luggage, and even some old feather mattresses piled in a corner. A fire marshal would take one look at it, I thought, and run amok. They’d have a fire here some day that would really turn the town out. It wouldn’t take much. Just some turpentine and rags…

“What?” I asked, suddenly aware that she had come up behind me and said something. I turned. She was throwing the clothing on a pile. Her face was flushed with the heat and there were little beads of perspiration on her upper lip.

“I said you must not know your own strength. You carried those things all the way up here, and then forgot you had them. Why don’t you set them down?”

I was still holding the bundles of papers. “Oh,” I said.

I threw them down. She was still looking at me, but she said nothing. It was intensely still, and hot, and there was an odd feeling of strain in the air.

“Is that all of it?” I asked.

“Yes. That’s all,” she said. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“How do you like our town?”

“All right. What I’ve seen of it.” Why did you have to stand here and talk in this stifling hotbox up under the roof? Her face was expressionless as she watched me.

“Did you ever live in a small town?” she asked.

“Yes. I grew up in one.”

“Oh? Well, you probably know what they’re like, then.”

“Sure.”

“Well, maybe we’d better go,” she said. “It’s awful hot up here, don’t you think?”

“It’s murder.” I nodded for her to go first, and we started weaving our way through the junk, towards the stairs.

“I wondered if I was just imagining it. I usually don’t mind the heat, when I keep my weight down.”

That was the second time she’d thrown it out there, but we understood each other about the small town now.

“Why do you want to keep your weight down?” I asked.

“She looked around at me. “Don’t you think I ought to?”

“It looks perfect to me.”

“Thank you.”

“Not at all. It was a pleasure.”

“I mean for carrying the stuff up, when Mr. Harshaw forgot.”

Well, the hell with you, I thought. You just remember you’re married and I won’t have any trouble with you. “That’s what I meant,” I said. “It was a pleasure.”

We went down the stairs. Just as we hit the lower floor I heard her say, “Oh, darn it. What a mess!” I looked at her, and she held out a hand covered with dirt, staring at it disgustedly. She’d forgotten about the dust and had held on to the railing.

I took out my handkerchief. “Here,” I said. “Let me.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “I think the water’s still turned on in the washroom. I’ll only be a minute.”

She walked on back to the end of the building and disappeared into a room walled off in one corner. I stood there looking around and waiting for her, and then before I knew it I was thinking about that boar’s nest of trash and junk upstairs. The place was a natural firetrap.