Charles Williams - Hill Girl

“Of course I love you and hot biscuits. Now you take one that’s cooked right on top of that hot head of yours—”

“I’m sorry,” she broke in. “I’m ashamed of myself. But the idea of anybody else coming in my house and cooking for you makes my blood boil.”

I laughed. “I know, you little wildcat. Your blood has the lowest boiling point of any fluid known to science.”

After I had shaved and dressed I went out on the front porch and saw Helen and Jake come out of the house and start across the road. They saw the Buick parked under the sweet-gum trees and must have noticed the smoke coming out of the kitchen stovepipe, for they turned around after a brief conference and went back inside. I was puzzled by this until they came out again in a few minutes and came on up to the front yard and I saw that Helen had changed into another dress and had put on stockings.

They were glad to see me and we went on back to the dining room, where Angelina had breakfast on the table. She and Jake knew each other, of course, from Jake’s foxhunting trips with Sam, but she and Helen hadn’t met before.

Breakfast came off successfully. Jake and I did most of the talking at first, but gradually Angelina and Helen got over their polite sparring around and became a little warmer. It would be hard for anyone to resist Helen for long, with her simple and greathearted friendliness, and after Angelina had established her beachhead with several references to “my kitchen” and what she was going to do with the house and had decided that Helen was a very plain girl, pleasant-looking but homely and therefore nice, everything went along all right.

There, was some embarrassment about the cooking arrangements, Jake and Helen insisting after breakfast that they didn’t feel they should impose on us now that I was married. I had to return Lee’s car, so I said I’d pick up a stove for their house while I was in town.

I went in alone. Angelina said she wanted to unpack the bags and clean up the house, and I didn’t much want her to go anyway until I found out what was happening or had happened. It was a little before nine when I stopped under the big oaks in front of the house.

My Ford was parked in the driveway, with one fender knocked off. It hadn’t been there last night. I went up on the porch and knocked, but no one came to the door. I knocked again and then tried the door. It wasn’t locked and I went in and walked down the dark hallway to the living room, hearing my footsteps echo in the silence.

There were cigarette butts and ashes on the rug in the living room and one of the pillows on the sofa was half burned up and feathers were all over everything. There was a fruit jar sitting on the hearth in front of the fireplace.

I knew then I wouldn’t find Mary there, so I went in all the bedrooms looking for Lee. In their room the bed looked as if somebody had been sleeping in it with his shoes on, and there was a girl’s coat over a chair, a coat I knew didn’t belong to Mary.

I found him in the kitchen. He was sitting in a chair, asleep, with his head and shoulders slumped over the table. Near his arms there was a half-eaten sardine sandwich that a fly was buzzing around, and a cigarette butt that had burned a long charred furrow in the top of the table before it had gone out.

I sat down across the table from him and shook him gently by the shoulder. “Wake up, Lee,” I said. “It’s Bob.” It took several shakes to stir him, and when he finally did come to he sat up shakily, pushing himself slowly up with his arms, and stared at me without saying anything. His eyes were shot with red and there were dark circles under them.

“Hello,” I said.

He looked at me stupidly for a minute. “You sonofabitch,” he said.

I got up and went back into the living room and got the fruit jar. There was about an inch of whisky in the bottom of it and I poured it into a water glass and gave it to him. His hands were trembling badly but he got it up to his mouth and swallowed it and then coughed and retched. He shook his head, but when he looked up at me again I could see the stuff working on him. His eyes began to come alive a little.

“Well,” he said, “if it isn’t Handsome himself. So you finally came back?”

“Yes. I’m back.” I sat down again, across the table, and lit two cigarettes and handed one to him.

“Where’d you leave her?” he demanded. He leaned across the table and took hold of my arm and I could feel him shaking.

“Leave who?”

“You know who I mean. Where’d you leave her? Jesus Christ, I’ve almost gone nuts the past ten days, thinking about you off in a hotel room somewhere with that.”

“Take it easy,” I said, but he began talking louder. He looked like a madman.

“Hell, haven’t you been with her? What’ve you been doing all this time? If you’ve been with her this long, what’s holding you up? I don’t see how you’d be able to walk.”

I picked up the half-eaten sandwich off the table and shoved it into his mouth, all the way in, to the last quarter inch of it, and held my hand over his face. He choked and tried to pull back and hit at my arm, but I grabbed him by the collar with the other hand and held him still. The glass bounced off the table and broke on the floor.

“Chew on that,” I said. “That’ll give you something to do with your goddamned mouth. And keep it shut.”

My hands were shaking as badly as his had been now and I could feel the fluttering in my stomach and the dry stickiness in my mouth from my breath going through it. Take it easy. Take it easy. He’s drunk and doesn’t know what he’s doing. And how does he know what’s happened since that morning you left? How could he know?

His eyes were fixed on my face, and it must have been tough to look at, for I could see the fear in them. I let go and he spat out the bread and took a deep breath and tried to push back from the table and get up, all at the same time, and he fell over backward with the chair under him. When he untangled himself he stood up and stared at me with his mouth open.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked, still trying to get his breath back. “You’re absolutely nuts.”

“Pick up your chair, Lee,” I said. “And sit down.” I had hold of myself now. “Let’s just forget the whole thing and start over. I came to town to tell you and Mary that Angelina and I were back from our trip and to ask you to come out and see us.”

“You mean you brought her back with you? She’s out there? You must be nuts.”

“You still hungry? There’s some more of that sandwich,” I said.

He sat down and stopped talking.

“Where’s Mary?” I asked.

“How the hell do I know where she is? At her grandmother’s, I guess.”

“She’s left you?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“When?”

“About two days after you left. She found out about that Angelina business somehow. I guess I spilled it when I was drunk. She was suspicious anyway, because she couldn’t quite swallow that story about you bein’ mixed up in it. I guess she always thought you were some kind of a fair-haired boy or something. Anyway, she found out the whole thing and said she was going to leave me. I’d been drinking and was still half nutty over this Angelina deal, so I told her I didn’t care, to go ahead.”

“Didn’t you even go over there afterward and try to smooth things over?”

His face was surly and he looked away. “It wouldn’t have done any good. Not after what happened. The second night her grandmother must have promoted her into coming back over to have a talk about it, because she did come back and she got here at the wrong time. I had called up an old girl I used to run around with at Rice, who was here visiting in town, and she was here when Mary came in. This babe had on one of Mary’s nightgowns and was drunker than a preacher’s bastard son, and in our bed, and you think I ought to go over and smooth things out, do you? Not that I give a damn. We were washed up anyway.”