Chapter 10
“Pretty country, isn’t it, Venida?”
I had given up correcting Walter every time he called me Venida. Sometimes he remembered and called me Lauri, but he said it was too hard to unlearn the name I’d first told him, so he kept calling me mostly Venida or just honey.
“Bet New Jersey doesn’t look anything like this.”
I didn’t know what New Jersey looked like, since all I’d seen of it was a few glimpses out of the window of the Greyhound bus when I’d looked up from my movie magazine, but I’d told Walter that’s where I came from, so I just said, “It sure doesn’t.” That was okay, though, since Walter didn’t know what New Jersey looked like either.
It was pretty country. We’d been driving for hours, up and down hills, over narrow dirt roads just wide enough for the Pontiac to get through between the trees, and on strips of blacktop that looked like ribbon twisting through miles and miles of green mountains.
But the houses weren’t pretty.
I’d see them from a distance, little dots on the sides of hills, like enchanted cottages plunk in the middle of shady forests, and I’d think, Maybe I won’t get a farm after I get into pictures. Maybe I’ll buy a little house in the woods.
And then we’d get close and Walter would inch the car up the dirt hill till he stopped in front of the house and I would see it wasn’t an enchanted cottage at all. It was hardly more than a shack, all sagging and rickety and looking like it might tilt over and fall down the hill.
I went into the first few houses Walter called at, but after about an hour, I stopped going inside with him and just waited in the car.
These people were poor. I never knew there were such poor people in America. I never saw them on television. I couldn’t remember any movies about people like this.
The women wore dresses or skirts that looked like sacks, with plaid shirts over them. Some of them had missing teeth and you could see black spaces when they smiled, but they hardly ever smiled. They were mostly pretty unfriendly. They looked at Walter and me like we were there to rob them or something.
Not that they had anything to rob. What they had mostly was children. All ages, all sizes, all skinny. In an hour of going into those houses, I didn’t see one fat child. I also didn’t see one child wearing shoes, which really shocked me. It was much cooler here than in Indiana, and the floors of the houses were all this rough wood, and you’d think you’d get splinters every time you put your foot down. I realized they weren’t going barefoot because it was a hot summer day and they wanted to, but because they just didn’t own any shoes.
I didn’t see any television sets either, or washing machines or gas stoves or even toys except for some rag dolls. One little boy dressed in dungarees held up by a piece of clothesline for a belt was sitting in the dirt in front of his house dropping pebbles into a rusty old tin can.
I didn’t see one book, one magazine, not even a movie magazine or True Confessions—not anything with printing in it except, once in a while, the Sears, Roebuck catalogue. I couldn’t figure out why they’d even have that, since they probably couldn’t afford to buy anything in it, but I thought maybe the children liked to look at the pictures and pretend they were going to get some of the things for Christmas.
Where were these people going to get $29.95 for a Bible, I wondered? How did Walter expect them even to have the $5 down payment? Their kids didn’t even have shoes, and you could get a pair of perfectly good shoes at Miles or National for $4.98, so it seemed to me that if any of these people had $5 in the house, they had lots better things to do with it than give it to Walter.
Anyway, I started getting really depressed after the first few calls, and listening to Walter trying to convince the women that they needed a gold-stamped Bible more than they needed milk for their babies was getting on my nerves.
It had been interesting yesterday, when it was like watching a Ping-Pong game, following the ball bouncing back and forth over the net, wondering who was going to miss. Like with Mrs. Fitch, just when I thought Walter had missed the ball and wasn’t going to get her to buy the Bible, he said something that made her change her mind, and he won.
But today I found I was rooting for Walter to lose. I didn’t want him to be a good salesman, I didn’t want him to be able to keep hitting the ball back. I wanted him to miss, to come out of every one of those houses with nothing in his pockets but the money he went in with.
So that’s when I started waiting in the car.
About one o’clock we stopped at a house that didn’t look as bad as the others I’d seen. Walter had been doing pretty badly and I was trying not to show how glad I was that he’d sold only one Bible in four hours. So he was really discouraged by this time. But when we pulled up in front of the last house, he perked up a little.
The house didn’t look as rickety as most of the others we had seen, and if the paint wasn’t new, at least it covered the wood, and wasn’t all bumping and peeling.
A man in dungaree overalls came out on the porch with a shotgun in his hand. We’d seen plenty of guns at all the other places we stopped, so I didn’t worry anymore when I saw someone carrying one. It seemed to be as ordinary around here as carrying a rolled-up newspaper was in New York City.
“I’ll bet these people can read,” Walter said, getting out of the car.
“I hope so,” I said tiredly.
That was another thing that really threw me. Half of the people Walter called on couldn’t even read. I mean, not the children, the grownups. Sure, I’d seen movies with real old Negro people who had been slaves before the Civil War, and they had to sign something and they said they couldn’t read or write, so they just made an “X” on the paper, but that was only in the movies.
Walter got out of the car with his briefcase. He walked up the steps to the man with the gun and said something to him. The man propped the gun up next to the front door and they went inside.
I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. I was going to have to do something about getting Walter out of Kentucky and on the way to California before I went crazy. I couldn’t take much more of this. The thought of two days of it before we started west was unbearable. If I couldn’t convince Walter to get going, I’d ask him to lend me the money to take a bus. Even if I got to Hollywood with nothing but my hatbox, at least it would be Hollywood, and not Buford, Kentucky.
I heard a dog bark and opened my eyes. A tall, blond man was coming around the side of the house toward the car. He was wearing bib dungarees, like the other man, with no shirt, and, of course, carrying a shotgun. Then this big gray dog charged toward the car, barking.
We’d seen a lot of dogs that morning too, and they all barked at us, but I was still nervous every time one rushed toward me. I slid over to the middle of the seat, because this one looked big enough to stand up and stick his head inside the window.
“Hush, Duke!”
The man in overalls came right up to the car and I saw he wasn’t a man at all, just a boy, but really tall. His blond hair was long and kept falling over his eyes.
The dog sat down next to the car and panted, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. He didn’t look particularly mean or dangerous, just big, but I stayed in the middle of the front seat, just in case.
“Ain’t seen you before,” the boy said, bending down to look in at me.
“I’ve never been here before,” I said nervously. “I’m just waiting for my—father. He’s inside.”
“Don’t get many visitors.”
“Well, he’s not a visitor exactly. He’s a salesman.”
“Don’t get many of them either. Whyn’t you come on out of that car and stretch your legs?”
I looked at the dog. He was still sitting there, panting and watching me, like he was waiting for me to make a move.
“Oh, don’t worry none about Duke,” the boy said. He picked up a stick and threw it toward the side of the house. “Fetch, Duke!”
Duke went tearing off in the direction of
the stick and the boy opened the car door and made a motion for me to come out.
Just as I slid out, Duke came running back and dropped the stick at our feet. I backed against the car, wishing I was still inside, and the boy laughed.
“He won’t hurt you. Look, you throw the stick for him.” He picked it up and handed it to me. I threw it as far as I could, which wasn’t very far, and Duke bounded off again after it.
When Duke came back with the stick, the boy told him to lie down, and he did, and began chewing on the stick. I relaxed a little when I saw that Duke would just as soon chew the stick as me, and took a good look at the boy in the overalls.
He was really cute, even though he was so tall I practically had to strain my neck to look up at him. He was good-looking enough to be in the movies—sort of a cross between Burt Lancaster and Tab Hunter—ralthough of course I didn’t know whether he had any talent or not. He was sort of cradling the gun in his arms like a baby and staring at me.
“Name’s Jim,” he said finally. “What’s yours?”
“Lauri. Lauri Meredith.”
“Pretty name.”
“Thanks.”
“Where you from?”
“Uh—Indiana.” I figured I’d better say the same place that Walter was from, and then I realized I’d made a mistake saying my last name was Meredith when Walter’s was Murchison, but it was too late to do anything about that.
I was feeling sort of flustered with this boy towering over me, staring at me like he’d never seen a girl before in his life.
Suddenly I wondered what it would feel like if he kissed me.
I don’t know why that thought popped into my head like that, except maybe because no boy had ever kissed me. I was so embarrassed, like he might have read my mind or something, that I felt my face turning all hot and red. I never have thoughts like that about real people. I mean, people I know. Well, there is one person—but I can’t talk about that. I’ve imagined James Dean kissing me, of course, and Harry Belafonte and other movie stars. I’ve watched hundreds of love scenes, and always wished there was some real boy who would kiss me and make me want to kiss him back.
Then I began thinking that if he did try and kiss me, he’d either have to practically bend himself in half to reach my lips or pick me up in his arms so I could reach his lips, and I knew my face was getting redder and redder.
I turned away and looked off toward the road. I felt a light tug on my pony tail and heard him mutter, “Pretty hair.”
My legs suddenly felt weak, like I had to sit down, but I told myself that was because of all the sitting I’d been doing in the car, and the best thing would be to move around a little.
So I walked away from the car, toward the road, forcing myself to walk real casual, not like I was trying to get away from him or anything, just like I was exercising my legs to get the tiredness out of them.
I couldn’t decide whether I wanted him to follow me, or to turn around and go back behind the house again, but I could hear his footsteps right behind me so it didn’t matter which I wanted.
I didn’t know what was happening to me, but it scared me. And it made my legs so weak that I knew walking wasn’t going to help and I wasn’t even sure I could walk steadily anymore. The only thing I knew was that I had this exact same feeling when James Dean kissed Julie Harris in East of Eden, and I sat there in the dark with my heart aching and wishing it was me instead of Julie Harris.
I leaned against the trunk of a big tree and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to look at him, I didn’t want to see him looking at me, I just wanted this feeling to go away so I could be normal again, with all my wits about me, and concentrate on the really important things I had to worry about, like getting Walter to start for California.
But the feeling didn’t go away, and neither did he. Without even opening my eyes I knew he was right under the tree with me. I could feel the closeness of him, hear his breath, feel the movement of the air, and I knew he was raising his arms.
I opened my eyes. He wasn’t holding the gun anymore. He had his hands on either side of the tree trunk just level with my head. His body was only inches from mine, but he wasn’t moving it any closer, he was just standing there, surrounding me with himself, with his hands, trapping me against the tree.
Only I wasn’t really trapped. I could have ducked out from under his arms without any trouble at all. He wasn’t smothering me or grabbing me like Mr. O’Connor had, and I wasn’t frightened of him, like I had been of Mr. O’Connor. I was frightened of myself, of what I was feeling, of knowing that I didn’t want to duck out from under his arms.
I looked into his eyes. He was frowning, his eyebrows all scrunched like he was trying to figure something out. Then, suddenly, his arms went around the tree trunk and his body was pressing against mine. My hands were pinned to my sides, my cheek pressed against his chest.
My heart began to hammer so hard I thought I was going to faint. I twisted my head, gasping for breath, and felt the bark of the tree trunk scraping right through my clothes. I shut my eyes tightly, waiting for him to kiss me, sure he would now, and wanting it more than I’d wanted anything in my life.
Then, crazily, I thought of my other favorite scene in East of Eden. James Dean and Julie Harris are under this big willow tree, and you can’t see anything but their legs because of the willow leaves hiding them, but you can imagine what’s happening. And all the while I was waiting for Jim to kiss me, I was picturing this scene and feeling like he was James Dean and I was Julie Harris, and it was happening just like it did in the movie.
It was like one part of me could stand back and watch this scene while the other part of me was living it and growing dizzy with the feelings churning around in my body.
“JIM!”
“God-damn.” Suddenly the weight of his body was off me. I opened my eyes, dazed and confused. He was already walking away, back toward the car, where Walter and the other man were standing. I leaned there against the tree for a moment, too shaken to move, not sure that I’d be able to walk even if I tried.
He didn’t even turn around to look at me. It was like it never happened, except that my heart was still pounding and I could almost feel ridges in my back where he’d pressed me against the tree.
I took a few deep breaths and slowly started walking toward the car. I don’t even think my eyes were focusing very well, I was so shook up. Not only because of what Jim did, but because of what he didn’t do.
When I got back to the car, Walter was scowling at me, and the other man, Jim’s father, I guess, was apologizing to Walter.
“I know somebody’s goin’ to make good use of that Bible,” he said angrily. “Maybe it’s a good thing you happened by today, Mr. Murchison. Though I’m real sorry about the way my boy acted.”
“To err is human,” Walter said, “to forgive, divine.” But he didn’t sound very forgiving.
“Well, that’s real Christian of you, Mr. Murchison. It’d been my daughter and somebody else’s boy, don’t know if I’d be that forgiving.”
Jim just stood there, his back to all of us, looking off toward the woods. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t even going to turn around and say good-bye to me.
“You get on in the house,” the man said. “I want to talk to you.”
He never turned around. He just walked up the steps to the house with Duke at his heels, and went inside, slamming the door behind him.
I felt sick.
I grabbed at the handle of the car door. I slid into the front seat and stared straight ahead, waiting for Walter to finish talking to Jim’s father. I didn’t hear anything they said. All I could think of was Jim’s body pressing against mine, how we’d been like James Dean and Julie Harris, and the way he’d turned his back on me and walked off like I never even existed.
Walter got into the car, slamming the door shut. He punched the starter and twisted the wheel to turn around.
He didn’t say a word till we were back on the blacktop road
.
And then he said plenty.
Chapter 11
“That was a pretty sight, Venida. You and that hillbilly trash humping up against the tree like that.” Walter was crouched over the steering wheel, driving so fast that we dipped down hills like we were on a roller coaster.
“Never laid eyes on him in your life and you’re letting him paw you like some kind of—”
“I didn’t let him, Walter.” I didn’t care whether he believed me or not. “He just did it.”
“He just did it,” Walter mimicked me. “He just did it. He attacked you, is that it?”
“I guess so.” I looked out the window as trees and houses whizzed past in a blur. All I wanted was to be left alone. The shower of angry words confused me. I couldn’t think, yet I had to think, to try and figure out what had happened and why.
I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand any of it, not the way Jim had made me feel, not the way he ignored me afterward, and not the way I was feeling now: numb, empty, like something had shriveled up inside me.
“How come you didn’t scream?”
“What?”
“When he attacked you, how come you didn’t scream for help?”
“It happened so fast,” I said. “You were there already.”
That was the truth. What would have happened if he hadn’t been there? If he and Jim’s father hadn’t come out of the house just when they did? I leaned my head against the window. No matter what I tried to imagine happening, it didn’t include Jim leaving me under the tree like he’d throw away an empty Coke bottle.
“You didn’t encourage him? You must have encouraged him, Venida. Must have given him some idea—”
“I didn’t do anything!” I yelled. I twisted around in the seat to look at him. “All I did was get out of the car to stretch my legs. And stop calling me Venida. It’s not my name, and I hate it. I hate the way it sounds when you say it! And you have no right to talk to me like this. You’re not my father, even though you’re pretending to be. What do you care what I do? What do you care what happens to me? Why should you? Nobody else does!”
To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie Page 9
