Charles Williams: Hell Hath No Fury

Hell Hath No Fury

by

Charles Williams

1953

1

The first morning when I showed up on the lot he called me into the office and wanted me to go out in the country somewhere and repossess a car.

“I’m tired of fooling with that bird,” he said. “So don’t take any argument. Bring the car in. Miss Harper’ll go with you and drive the other one back.”

I was working on commission, and there wasn’t any percentage in that kind of stuff. I’d just started to tell him to get somebody else to run his errands when I saw the girl come in and changed my mind.

He introduced us. “Miss Harper,” he grunted, shuffling through the papers on his desk. “Madox is the new salesman.”

“How do you do?” I said. She was cool in summer cotton and had very round arms, just slightly tanned, and somehow she made you think of a long-stemmed yellow rose.

She nodded and smiled, but when he told her about going with me to pick up the car I could see she didn’t like it.

“Can’t we wait a little?” she asked doubtfully. “I think I can collect those back payments. I did once before. Let me go out and talk to Mr. Sutton myself.”

He gestured curtly with the cigar. “Forget it, Gloria. We’ve got more to do than chase him all over hell every month to get our money. Bring in the car.”

We took a ‘50 Chewy off the lot and started out. I drove. “You’ll have to tell me where,” I said.

“Straight through town and south on the highway.”

The business district was only one street about three blocks long. There was a cotton gin beyond that, and a railroad station, with the tracks shining in the sun. It was just nine o’clock, but it was a bright, still morning with the smell of pine and hot pavement in the air.

She was very quiet. I turned and looked at her. She was sitting in the corner of the seat staring moodily at the road and the breeze set up by the car riffled gently through her hair. Any way you tried to describe the hair itself would make it sound like a thatched roof instead of the way it really looked. Maybe it was because it was so straight and wasn’t parted anywhere. It was the color of honey or of straw, with sun-burned streaks in it, and flowed down from the top of her head in a short bob with a kind of football helmet effect and on to her forehead with a V-shaped bang or whatever you call it. Her face was the same golden tan as her arms, and while I couldn’t see her eyes very well, I remembered the impression when we were introduced of an almost startling violet splashed into all those shades of honey.

“Cigarette?” I asked.

She took one. “Thank you,” she said. Her manner was friendly enough, but I could see something was bothering her.

“What’s with this repossession deal?” I asked. “He carry his own financing on the cars he sells?”

“Yes. He’s actually in the loan business. He just added the used-car lot the last year or so. Did you see that building right across the street from the lot, the Southland Loan Company? That’s Mr. Harshaw’s.”

“And you work in the loan office—is that it?” I hadn’t seen her around the lot yesterday when I got the job.

She nodded. “I run it for him. Most of the time, that is.”

“I see.”

We were silent for a moment, and then she asked, “Where are you from, Mr. Madox?”

“Me? Oh, I’m from New Orleans.” It would do as well as any.

We hit the highway and went on down it for another ten miles. There were heavy stands of timber along here, and not much farming land. I remembered from driving up yesterday that it shouldn’t be too far now to the long highway bridge over the river. We turned off to the right before we got to it, though, taking a dirt road which led uphill through heavy pine. At the top there were a couple of farms, abandoned now, their yards grown up with weeds and bullnettles and the unpainted buildings staring vacantly at the road. The land began to drop away on the west side of the ridge and then we were in the river bottom, driving under big oaks, and it was a little cooler. Most of the sloughs were dried up now, in midsummer, and when we came out to the river itself it was low, with the sandbars showing, and fairly clear. After we crossed it, I stopped the car and got out and went back to stand on the end of the wooden bridge looking at it.

It was beautiful. The river came around a long bend above and slid over a bar into the big pool under the bridge. Part of the pool was in the shadow of the dense wall of trees along the bank and it looked dark and cool and deep. The only sound anywhere was a mockingbird practicing his scales from a pin oak along the other bank. There was a peace here you could almost feel, like a hand touching you.

I went back to the car. As I got in she glanced at me questioningly. “Why did you stop?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I just wanted to look at it.”

“It’s pretty, isn’t it? And peaceful.”

“Yeah,” I said.

I started the car. We went on across the bottom and up a sandy road through more timber on another hill.

“Who is this guy Sutton?” I asked. “A hermit? The car must have been worn out before he got home with it.”

She came out of her moody silence. “Oh. He’s the watchman at a well they started to drill back in here.”

“Watchman?” I asked. “Are they afraid somebody’ll steal a hole in the ground?”

“No. You see, it’s an oil well, and all the equipment is still over here. Tools, and things like that. They started it over a year ago and then there was some kind of lawsuit which stopped everything. Mr. Sutton lives on the place to look after it.”

“Do you know him? If he’s got a job, why doesn’t he pay off his car notes?”

She was looking down at her hands. “I just know him when I see him. He’s been around here about a year, I guess. He doesn’t come to town much, though.”

For some reason she seemed to be growing more nervous. Once or twice she started to say something and never did quite get it out.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Well, not anything, really,” she said uncomfortably. “I was just thinking it might be better if you let me talk to him. You see, he’s—well, in a way he’s kind of a hard man to deal with, and suspicious of strangers. He knows me, and maybe he’ll listen to me.”

“What does he have to listen to? We just take the car. That’s simple enough.”

“Well, I just thought perhaps—I mean, I might be able to get him to pay and we wouldn’t have to take the car.”

I shrugged. “It’s O.K. with me.” It wasn’t any of my business. I was supposed to be selling cars, not collecting for them.

We went on a mile or so across the second ridge and then came abruptly to the end of the road. Across the clearing a derrick climbed above the dark line of trees behind it and on this side a rough frame shack roofed with tar paper was huddled against the overhanging oaks. The car, a ‘54 Ford, stood in the open near the small front porch. I stopped and we got out. Both the front and rear doors of the shack were open and we could see right through it to the timber beyond, but there was no one around nor any sound of life.

“He must be home,” she said. “The car is here.”

We walked over and stood before the porch. “Mr. Sutton,” she called out tentatively. “Oh, Mr. Sutton.” There was no answer.

I stepped up on the porch and went inside, but there was no one there. It was only one room, untidy—but not dirty—as if a man lived there alone, with a wood cookstove in one corner and an unmade three-quarter bed in the corner diagonally across from it. A kitchen table with dirty dishes still on it stood by the rear door, and clothing—mostly overalls and blue shirts—hung from nails driven into the walls. An armful of magazines lay stacked against the wall and two or three more were scattered on the bed. There was an ash-tray made of the lid of a coffee-can perched on the window ledge, and as my eyes swung past it, they stopped suddenly. About half the butts were smeared with lipstick. She hadn’t said he was married. Well, I thought, maybe he’s not.