Charles Williams - Hill Girl

“Sam will be along in a minute,” I said.

“Is he—I mean, did he—” She couldn’t get it out.

“Everything is all right,” I said. “There wasn’t any trouble.”

I could see the relief go through her in a big swell and there were tears in her eyes.

“Maybe you would like to have a bite with us, Mr. Crane?”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m not very hungry, but I’d sure like a cup of that coffee in a minute. But could I see Angelina for a second first?”

“Why, yes, she’s in her room. It’s the front one, on the right as you come in.”

I knocked on the door. “Who is it?” Angelina called out.

“Bob Crane.”

“What do you want?”

“Never mind. I want to come in. Are you dressed?”

“Yes. But I don’t want to talk to you.”

I went in and closed the door so they wouldn’t hear me in the kitchen. She was sitting on her bed in a white bathrobe and looked at me sullenly.

“Get dressed,” I said. “And start packing your stuff.”

“Why?”

“We’re going to Shreveport this morning. This is our happy wedding day.”

“You think I’m going to marry you?” she spat at me.

“Yes. Now put your clothes on and shut up.”

“Why, I wouldn’t marry you if—if— Get out of here!”

I sat down on a big trunk and lit a cigarette and looked at her. She was pretty, all right, with the blonde hair mussed up and her brown eyes shooting fire at me.

Her room was nicely fixed up, with fluffy white-and-green curtains across the windows and handmade rag rugs on the floor. There were pictures cut from magazines on the walls, and from somewhere she had picked up printed copies of three of Frederic Remington’s pictures. They had been stuck on the wall with frames of brown paper.

I took a drag on the cigarette and threw the ashes on one of the rugs.

“Now get this through your fat head once and for all,” I told her. “You started this thing and now we’re going to finish it in the only way that’s left. I don’t give a God damn what you think or want or anything else. I don’t know what goes on in that so-called mind of yours, but I’d think that you would understand after the shape Sam caught you in last night that your position is pretty thin around here. He may beat you to death or throw you out yet. Not that I give a damn what he does to you, but there are some innocent people that are going to get hurt if Sam isn’t pacified pretty shortly.”

“What have you got to do with it?” she asked, giving me a surly look.

“Never mind. Sam’ll be here in about ten minutes. You’d better be packing when he shows up. I don’t think this thing has sunk into your skull yet; you don’t seem to realize what kind of spot you and Lee are in. Sam catches you out there in the bushes flat on your calloused back and you think he’s going to write a letter to the Times about it? Get wise to yourself. We get married today or Sam is going to kill Lee. And don’t fool yourself that the sheriff or a peace bond or something else is going to stop him.”

“If he thinks it was you, why would he shoot Lee?”

“He doesn’t think it was me. He knows who it was. But I’m not married, and he’d rather have a bridegroom than a corpse.”

She hitched around on the bed until her back was toward me and she was looking out the window. “All right,” she said bitterly. “I’ll do it. But, I wouldn’t live with you if you paid me.”

“Write me about it sometime,” I said. I went out and closed the door.

The children were gone outside but Mrs. Harley was still sitting at the table. She poured me a cup of coffee.

“Mrs. Harley,” I said, “I don’t know exactly how to go about telling you this, but Angelina and I are going to Shreveport this morning to be married.”

“Yes, I kinda guessed that was it.” She flushed and looked away, and I felt uncomfortable.

It took a long time for her to get it out and she started several times only to break down in confusion, but finally she said it.

“I know it wasn’t you. I mean, last night, Sam said—”

I didn’t say anything. There didn’t seem to be any answer to that. There wasn’t any use in lying to her, for she knew the whole thing, and there wasn’t anything to be gained by confirming the fact that her daughter had been lying with a married man.

She started to cry then, with her face buried in the crook of her arm on the table, and I felt worse than ever. There was such a beaten hopelessness about her grief that you knew there wasn’t anything you could do for her.

After a while she stopped and said quietly, “It ain’t all like you think, Mr. Crane. It ain’t all her fault or your brother’s fault. She hasn’t had—Well, Sam has always been so strict with her, and she ain’t never had no fun like other girls. He was so stern with her.”

I heard Sam driving up in front then, and Angelina came out of her room with a small imitation-leather handbag. She was wearing a poorly made cheap dress and lisle stockings and her shoes were half-soled and clumsily repaired. Her clothes were a mess, but they couldn’t completely cover up what she really looked like.

She didn’t even say good-by to her mother and only stared coldly at Sam as we went out the front door. Sam shook my hand with embarrassment and Mrs. Harley tried to say something and then her face broke up and she turned and ran back into the room and I could hear the heavy weight of her fall onto the bed and the muffled crying into the blankets.

Twelve

She sat in silence way over on her side of the seat, staring straight ahead and ignoring me. It wasn’t until we were almost in town that she spoke.

“Where are you going to drop me off?”

“Drop you off?” I asked. “Where’d you get that idea?”

“You’re not really going to go through with it, are you?”

“Of course we are.”

“Why? I didn’t think you liked me.”

I lit a cigarette. “I don’t.”

“Then why, for God’s sake?”

“I thought we went over all of that a while ago.”

‘’But if it was just on account of Lee, he’s had a chance to get away by now. And if Papa’s fool enough to let us go off alone—”

“It was a horse trade and he kept his end of it, and I’m not going to double-cross him. Maybe you don’t know what you’re fooling with, but I do.”

She sniffed. I started to go on and tell her the rest of it and then I thought, Oh, what the hell? Why try to get anything through her thick skull? Why try to explain to her that it didn’t make any difference if Lee did get away this morning? He still had to live in this country and he’d never be able to do it with Sam Harley after him. And neither would I if I crossed him up now. And why try to get it through her head how important it was that Mary didn’t find out about it?

We drove up South Street in silence and I stopped the car in the alley behind the bank and got out.

“I’ve got to cash a check,” I said. “It’ll be a half hour or more before the bank opens. Do you want to buy anything or have some breakfast or something?”

“No,” she said curtly. “I don’t want anything.”

“Suit yourself,” I said.

When the bank opened I went in and wrote a check for three hundred dollars. Julian Creed raised his prim eyebrows at the amount. “What are you doing, Bob? Buying more mules?” he asked in his high-pitched voice.

“You might call it that,” I said.

I went back out in the alley. It was getting hot already, and I took off the flannel coat and pitched it across the shelf behind the seat and got in.

“We’re off,” I said. “How’s the panting bride?”

Her eyes were smoldering. “To hell with you.”