Charles Williams - Hill Girl

When we came to a stop at the mouth of the alley I saw Mary and another girl walking along the other side of the street. She was in fresh white linen and had on white shoes and she was going the other way and hadn’t seen us, walking slowly along with that long-legged grace it was so delightful to watch. She waved at someone across the street I couldn’t see and I slammed into low and rubber burned as we shot out of the alley and swung east.

“You drive like you was crazy,” Angelina said.

When I didn’t say anything, she went on, “Who was that girl?”

“Was there a girl?” I asked. “Where?”

“The one you were looking at. The redheaded girl in white. You must know her, you stared at her hard enough.”

“You mean you don’t know her?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have asked you if I did.”

“You should get acquainted. You’ve been doing enough of her work. That was Mrs. Leland Crane.”

“Oh,” she said and was silent for a minute. Then, “I don’t think she’s so pretty. Do you?”

“Am I supposed to?”

“I don’t give a damn what you do. I just asked you a question.”

“Ask me another one. We’ll make a game out of it. Go on, ask me the capital of Omaha.”

“Oh, go to hell.”

“Don’t we want to be a well-rounded girl? Or do you think just your heels are enough?”

She glared at me and didn’t say anything. I shut up then and we drove for an hour in complete silence. I pushed the car hard and kept my eyes on the road and she sat rigidly on her side of the seat with her hands in her lap and stared straight ahead. I kept expecting her to cry, but she never did, and I began to be conscious of a grudging respect for her. She was taking a lot, for an eighteen-year-old, and she was taking it standing up and fighting back, with no tears and no hysterics. This thing wasn’t any more fun for her than it was for me, and I hadn’t made it any easier for her the way I’d been riding her. I began to be ashamed of the way I had been acting, the way I had been wanting to take a swing at something or somebody and had been taking it out on her because she was here within reach. I’d been blaming her for the whole stinking mess just because I didn’t like her, and if anybody was to be blamed for it, it was Lee, and I knew it.

“I’m sorry about being nasty,” I said after a while.

“What? You mean you’re not nasty all the time?” she asked scornfully.

Now, hold onto yourself, I thought. Don’t let her get your goat again. Maybe she is scared and all this hard-shelled antagonism is a defense. Maybe it’s just what she does instead of crying, the way another girl would.

“Not all the time. There are moments when I’m almost human.”

“Nobody would ever know it from looking at you. You’re too big and ugly to be human.”

“You certainly are a gracious little punk,” I said, beginning to forget some of my noble compassion. “What you need is a good whipping.”

“You lay a hand on me, you big ape, and I’ll kick you where you won’t forget it in a hurry.”

“Well, well, the little expert on male anatomy. Is that what they’re teaching the girls in the tenth grade now?”

“I wonder how anybody like Lee could have a brother like you. I just don’t believe you’re any kin, as homely and as mean as you are.”

What’s the use? I thought. Trying to be civil is a waste of time.

We rolled into Shreveport a little before noon and I parked the car and hunted up a doctor to get the medical certificate. Then we went up and got the license and by that time it was twelve o’clock and the justice of the peace was out to lunch. We came out of the building and stood there on the sidewalk in the hot sun for a moment, undecided where to kill an hour. We started walking slowly along the street, headed for a drugstore for a sandwich and something to drink.

We were passing a big department store, going slowly and aimlessly and looking in the windows. She stopped for a moment in front of a window display of women’s dresses. I stopped and waited for her, lighting a cigarette, and watched the traffic going by in the street. She started ahead again, and looked back over her shoulder at the window full of clothes, and just for a second I saw her eyes without that defensive sullenness in them. They were hungry, and hopeless, and there was heartbreak in the way she looked back and then went slowly on.

She waited dully for me to come on. I looked at the clothes she had on, probably actually seeing them for the first time since she had come out of her room this morning, and all at once acutely aware of the dowdy shapelessness of the cheap dress and the crude way the cracked shoes were repaired.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What were you looking at?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Let’s go.”

There were four dummies in the window dressed in different dresses and one was displaying a brown linen skirt and a little jacket and carrying a price tag of $35.

“Was that it?” I asked.

“Well, I was just looking at it.”

“Do you like it?”

“What difference does it make?”

I took her by the arm and started toward the door. It was dim inside after the glare of the sun and it smelled of new cloth and floor-sweeping compound. A gray-haired saleswoman came toward us smilingly behind one of the glass counters.

“Could I help you?”

“Yes,” I said. “My wife would like to look at that brown linen thing you have in the window.”

“Certainly,” she said, giving Angelina a quick glance, “I believe we have it in just her size.” I could see the sharp feminine appraisal in the gray eyes and the half-concealed envy of that terrific figure. “Right this way. Please.” She started back toward the rear of the store.

Angelina’s face was hot. I guess the only thing she had seen in the clerk’s scrutiny was contempt for the clothes she had on.

“I can’t buy that,” she whispered, embarrassed and angry. “I’ve only got about seven dollars.”

I pulled out five twenties and stuffed them into her handbag and gave it back to her.

“Now you’ve got a hundred and seven. I think you can just about get what you need worst with that. And, for God’s sake, when you come to stockings get some nylons and the best ones they have. It should be a crime for a girl with legs like yours to wear the stockings you’ve got on.”

She flushed again. “I didn’t think you liked anything about me.”

“Well, let’s don’t go into it. Just put me down as a patron of the arts. I love beauty.”

I started for the door. “I’ll be back in about a half or three quarters of an hour. You’d better run along. The clerk’s waiting for you.”

She looked after me with her eyes bewildered and confused and then she tried to smile but it didn’t quite come off and she turned and went rapidly down the aisle.

I suddenly remembered when I was back out in the street again that I was trying to be married without a ring and stopped and bought one. Then I took the bags around to the hotel and registered. It looked strange on the card: Mr. And Mrs. Robert E. Crane. When I got up in the room I gave the bellboy some money and told him to hunt up a bottle and he was back with one in less than five minutes.

I poured a big drink and sat down in an armchair by the window and looked out into the sun-blasted street and thought sourly of what a sap I was. Why did I have to give that surly little brat a hundred dollars? That was more money than I’d spent in the past four months. Sugar daddy from the cotton country, I thought, taking a big drink and shuddering at the fiery taste of it. But all the time I was calling myself a thickheaded idiot I kept seeing again that beaten look there had been in her eyes as she turned away from those things beyond the plate glass.