Charles Williams - Hill Girl

He hit me a couple of times and I found out something else about him, the reason he was tending bar in a joint like this instead of fighting. For all his size, he couldn’t punch his way out of a cardboard box. I let him hit me again and then moved in close and started slugging the roll of fat around his middle. That was where he lived, all right. I could hear him suck in wind every time I landed. Square Shoulders got up and bolted past us toward the door and I stuck out a foot and he fell into the door on his face. He finally made it outside with blood running into his mouth. Of course, while I was doing this, Jack let me have it and knocked me down. You can’t have any hobbies or side lines when you’re fighting with a pro, even a poor one.

When the cops got there the place was a mess. They got us separated and put me into a patrol wagon. My face was covered with blood but I couldn’t be sure how much of it was mine and how much Jack’s. He had cut my face up pretty badly in several places and I had a very sore left hand.

The next morning in court it was ten dollars and costs for drunk and disorderly, which was light considering the total damage to the place, and I gathered that Jack’s establishment wasn’t too highly thought of and nobody worried much about what happened to it. I refused to pay the fine. I don’t know why. It didn’t make sense, even to me, for the hotel room would cost me more than the fine by the time I got out, but I felt bad and didn’t care much anyway.

It must have been around two P.M. When the jailer came around and unlocked the door and motioned to me. “You, Big Boy,” he said.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Turnin’ you out. Your fine’s been paid.”

I grunted and went with him. He was crazy, I supposed, or he had his guests mixed up, because there wasn’t anybody in Galveston who’d be paying my fine. Or anyone who even knew I was in jail, for that matter. But that was his funeral, not mine.

At the desk they handed back my knife and watch and an envelope with my money in it. There was about eighty dollars.

“Some sport,” the sergeant said as he watched me count it. “You with a roll like that and letting your wife pay your fine.”

I wondered whose wife was going to be disappointed when the old man didn’t get home. “Wait till I take down my hair,” I said, “and we’ll both have a good cry.”

“Beat it, wise guy, before we run you in again, on a vag.”

I beat it. I was walking down the steps outside when I saw her. She was diagonally across the street in the doorway of a cheap restaurant where she could stay almost hidden and still watch the steps of the police station. I made no sign that I had noticed her and went through an elaborate business of lighting the last cigarette I had while I tried to decide what to do. If I waved and started toward her she might try to get away, since it was obvious she didn’t want me to see her. And I didn’t want to go chasing a girl through the streets, not with my face and clothes looking the way they were. I’d be picked up as a sex maniac or escaped lunatic inside three blocks, if I didn’t have my head blown off by some outraged citizen before the cops got me.

Crossing the street slowly and looking straight ahead, I turned and started up past the café. I didn’t look toward the place, but I was sure she would move back inside the doorway. She did. When I suddenly made a quick turn into the entrance, she was there and we were face to face.

“Hello, Angelina,” I said. I was conscious of thinking that as an opening remark that would probably establish a new all-time high in stupidity, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

She didn’t say anything. She looked at me just once and then tried to get past me back onto the sidewalk with her eyes averted. I reached out and caught her arm and she stopped.

“I don’t know what to say, Angelina,” I said. “Will you walk up the street with me a little way? Maybe I can think of something.”

“I reckon so,” she said.

We walked slowly along in the hot sun with people turning to stare at my cut-up face and the blood on my clothes and I held onto her arm all the way for fear she would somehow disappear. But I couldn’t put any of the things I wanted to say into words.

We kept on going on out 20th Street toward the beach, block after block in silence. Finally she said, “You’re holding my arm awful tight. It’s beginning to go to sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and self-consciously released my grip.

“How did you get to Galveston?” I asked after a while.

“A man and his wife gave me a ride to Beaumont. I rode the bus from there.”

“How did you know I was in jail?”

“I happened to be out on the sea wall by the hotel yesterday morning and saw you drive away from there in the car going toward town. I was out looking at the water. Around noon I saw the car again, parked over that way”— she waved in the direction of 24th—”and this morning I happened to be going by there again and it was still there. I asked some men at the taxi place across the street if they had seen you and they told me about the police taking you away in a paddy wagon. I didn’t know what a paddy wagon was, but I figured out it must mean they had put you in jail, so I went over there and they said you could get out if I paid your fine. So I paid it.”

I couldn’t look at her, “Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said simply.

“There must have been some reason.”

“I thought maybe you needed help. Maybe you didn’t have enough money left to pay it yourself. And I owed it to you.”

“Yes, you owe me a lot,” I said. “You’re deeply indebted to me.”

“It cost you a lot of money, buying these clothes for me, and you were awful nice to me sometimes.”

I knew I couldn’t take much more of it, and I knew too that she wasn’t doing it intentionally. She really meant it. I had hurt her terribly, but still that streak of bitter and uncompromising honesty of hers wouldn’t let her forget that I had—just for a few moments, anyway—done something she regarded as nice.

“You didn’t want me to see you there outside the jail, did you?”_

She waited a long time before she answered. “I don’t know, Bob. It’s all kind of mixed up. I wanted to see you again and maybe even be with you, but still I didn’t. There’s something sort of wonderful about being with you when you act like you like me, but you can turn so mean without any warning and you can be so awful hard. I don’t know why the things you say hurt so much.”

I stopped there on the corner and took hold of both her arms and turned her around facing me. We were standing in front of a billboard on a vacant lot in the hot sun, with cars going past us in the street, but it didn’t make any difference. I had to tell her.

“I promised you once I wouldn’t ever be mean to you again, didn’t I? And I broke it the next day. So I won’t promise again, but I’ll try to tell you what happened there by the river. I don’t know how I can tell you, because I don’t think I know myself. The only thing I can think of is that it was jealousy. It hit me so suddenly I didn’t have time to think.”

“Why? I mean, I don’t understand why you would be jealous.”

“Because of Lee and all that other business. The car. You know what I mean. I’m not trying to hurt you now, Angelina; I’m just trying to explain to you.”

“But why did it make any difference to you? It didn’t before.”

“That was before. And a long time ago.”

“Not so very. Nothing has been a long time ago with us. It’s only been three days.” She was looking down, tracing a design on the pavement with the toe of her shoe, and I noticed how scuffed and dirty it was. White shoes weren’t for hitchhiking.