Charles Williams - Hill Girl

“Do you mind if we wait for him?” I asked.

“No. I guess not, if you want to.”

We pushed through the gate and came up and sat down on the porch, one on each side of the steps, with our backs against the four-by-four posts that supported the roof.

“I wonder if we could have a drink of water?” I asked. For some reason I wanted to get her to talk, if I could. I couldn’t figure her out. And the silence between the three of us was oppressive and all that naked staring was making me uncomfortable. I tried to keep my eyes off her, for I knew the way I was looking at her and it embarrassed me slightly, even though it didn’t seem to bother her at all.

“I guess so,” she said ungraciously. “Wait here and I’ll bring you some.”

When she had disappeared inside the house, moving with an effortless grace, Lee looked across at me.

“Jesus Christ,” he said softly. “Oh, Jesus.”

“Let’s get going,” I said. “You can see Sam some other time.”

He didn’t hear me.

She came back out with a wooden bucket full of water and a long-handled gourd dipper and put it down on the porch between us and then went over and curled up in the porch swing, tugging once carelessly and ineffectually at the skimpy dress. She had on an old pair of house slippers with no stockings, and her legs were long and smooth and tanned, and the too short and too thin dress did nothing to cover them. I looked out across the cow pasture to where Mike was investigating a gopher hole. I didn’t want to sit there and stare at her like the bald-headed row at a burlesque show.

That silence settled down over us again. As I sat there and tried to pretend an interest in the dog I could feel the two of them looking at each other.

I didn’t like it. Not that I cared what they did, for it wasn’t any of my business. But I knew something about those backwoods men like Sam and knew how they regarded outsiders who tried to fool around with their womenfolks. Sam was soft-spoken and a little shy in the presence of strangers, but I remembered that when I was a boy I used to go to court sometimes when my grandfather was on jury duty and listen to the cases, and I had seen men on trial for brutal and ruthless murder and some of them had been soft-spoken and a little shy of bearing.

I was remembering other things, too. Remembering Sam’s telling me one night when we were coon hunting long ago and were sitting around a fire down in the Black Creek bottoms there behind the house that Angelina was going to be a schoolteacher. She was a right smart girl and she made good grades in her books and she was going to amount to something, he had said in that way of his of not wanting to appear boastful before outsiders but with the quiet pride showing through nevertheless. Sam thought a lot of his oldest daughter, and anybody— especially any married man—he caught fooling around with her was going to be in one hell of a bad spot mighty fast. I felt cold down between my shoulder blades as though there were a draft blowing up my back. I wished Sam would come on so we could get the whisky and get out of here.

It was Angelina who broke the silence. “What did you want to see Papa about?”

“We wanted to ask him if it was O.K. To hunt across the place,” I said,

“I know what you want. You’re after whisky.”

I turned quickly and looked at her. I knew Sam had always been careful to keep his moonshining activities away from his family. She said it flatly and distastefully and she had that sulky challenge in her eyes, as though she dared me to deny it.

“What makes you think that?” I asked.

“That’s all you town people would come out here for. That’s all anybody comes here for.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, I know all about it. He thinks I don’t, but I’ve known about it a long time. Moonshiner!” There was a biting scorn in her voice.

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” I asked. “Lots of people make it. And not as good as Sam’s, either.”

“Does your papa make it?”

“No,” I said. “But he drank more of it than Sam has ever made.”

“And I guess that ain’t something a whole lot different, is it?”

“Well, I’ve never given it any thought. Is it?”

“You know damn well it is. How’d you like to live out here on this backwoodsy farm and not ever go to town because your papa was a moonshiner, and you never had any friends because you knew that everybody knew it and talked about you behind your back?”

Oh, hell, I thought. I was beginning to get a little tired of Angelina. She had a body that would make a dead man come back to life, but her conversation got on your nerves. The very idea of anyone who looked like that feeling sorry for herself was ridiculous.

“How old are you?” I asked. Anything to change the subject.

“Eighteen.”

I was sure she was stretching it a little, but I didn’t say anything.

“When are you going to go to Teachers College?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t got enough credits yet. And I haven’t got enough money saved up.”

She began to be a little less sullen then, as though Teachers College interested her. Maybe she does have other hobbies beside waving that chassis in your face and not liking her father, I thought. I just didn’t like her.

After a minute she asked, “Did either one of you-all ever go to Teachers College?”

“No,” I said. “Why?”

She hesitated a little as though undecided whether to go on. She looked down at the floor between us.

“I was just wondering if you knew what kind of clothes the girls wore down there.”

I was conscious of the traditional male helplessness when confronted with this type of question. Before I could think of anything to say she slid out of the swing with a flashing display of long bare legs and was gone inside the door.

She came back almost at once, carrying the mail-order catalogue of some clothing company. She sat down between us on the steps and opened it immediately to the pages she wanted. It was wilted and dog-eared from constant handling.

“Do they look like any of these?” she asked hesitantly.

She was so damned near. I could feel the buttoned-up collar of my wool shirt choking me and I didn’t want to say anything for fear of the way my voice would sound. As she leaned forward over the catalogue stray tendrils of that blonde hair were almost in my face, and to look down at the pictures she was pointing out I had to look past some of the places she was fighting with that dress.

I tried to concentrate on the pictures. They were the usual mannikins of catalogues, standing in that pose they all have with one foot pointing out to the side for some reason, and the dresses and suits they had on looked just like any other dresses and suits to me.

“Well?” she asked. “Which ones do you like? Like college girls wear?”

I muttered something lamely and pretended to study them again. I could hold her off in my mind when she was sullen, and throwing all that stuff around and daring you to look at it, and when she was whining, but when she got up against me like this and dropped the challenge and was just a girl asking for help she got me and hit me hard. Not liking her didn’t help any.

“Here, let me look.” It was Lee on the other side of her, and he slid over slightly. “I can pick out just the thing for you.” His voice was normal and his tone confident and I could see he was regaining control of the situation. This was a girl he could understand.

She switched the catalogue over toward his side and looked up at him hopefully and I slipped off the porch steps and walked out into the yard, taking out a cigarette and lighting it. I noticed how my fingers were shaking. “God damn her anyway,” I swore under my breath. The faint stirring of breeze out in the yard felt good on my face.