Hill girl

by Charles Williams

  She answered me, still looking at Lee. “No. He’s hauling up some wood. But he ought to be here pretty soon.”

  Lee wasn’t saying anything. He was just looking at her, and I’d never seen him act like that around a girl. Usually he just moved in on them like Stuart’s Cavalry. There seemed to be something about her that threw him off his stride. His face was shiny with sweat and he couldn’t seem to be able to get his mouth closed.

  “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 yar
d, 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.

  I could hear Lee’s voice going on behind me, gathering momentum and confidence with every word. He was getting back into gear again.

  “Now you take this one,” he was saying, and it was the world’s greatest authority on girls’ clothes speaking. “This isn’t your type. The lines are all wrong. It’s too conservative. You want something with more dash and snap to it.”

  What a line of crap, I thought. You and your goddamned dash and snap. What do you know about women’s clothes?

  But it didn’t scare me so much now. He sounded more like the Lee I knew. He was working on her, all right, but he seemed to have regained some measure of sanity. He didn’t remind me so much of a stallion getting ready to kick his stall apart. He’d try to make her sometime, but maybe he’d have sense enough not to get himself killed. Unless he got drunk. And then I felt the cold wind again.

  When they had the clothes question settled to their satisfaction, they moved up into the porch swing and went on talking. I went back and sat down on the steps. There wasn’t anywhere else to go and I could see Lee wasn’t going to leave.

  “Your name is Lee Crane, isn’t it?” she asked, with a sidewise glance at him.

  “Yes.” He nodded. “I know yours, all right. But how'd you know me?”

  “Oh, I’ve seen you come out here a lot of times to see Papa. And a girl I know told me your name one time when I saw you in town. You were in a big car.”

  “I wish I’d seen you. I would have taken you for a drive.”

  “I wish you had too,” she said. “Who is he?”

  She meant me. A gracious little bag, I thought sourly. I wondered why she didn’t point and say, “What is that?”

  “My kid brother, Bob,” Lee said, and I saw a flicker of amusement in his eyes as he looked at me.

  “Your brother? Why, he don’t look anything like you.”

  The way she said it left little doubt as to what she meant. How could such a homely character be a brother of the gorgeous Lee Crane? And I liked being discussed in the third person that way. I could see that Angelina and I were going to be great buddies.

  “Do you go to many dances?” Lee asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not? It’s a lot of fun.”

  “I never go anywhere. He won’t let me!” she said hotly.

  Lee was tenderly sympathetic. “That’s a darn shame. A lovely young girl like you should go to lots of parties. Don’t you think it’s a shame, Bob?”

  “Yes,” I said. “What a shame!”

  She gave me a dirty look.

  “I suppose you think it’s fun being shut up all the time on this damn stinkin’ farm?”

  “I didn’t say so,” I said. “But there could be worse places.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “O.K.,” I said. “That’s what I think.”

  “I suppose you think a girl oughtn’t to have any fun?”

  “What the hell do I care?” I said.

  “Aw, lay off, Bob,” Lee put in protestingly. “Never mind him, Angelina. He’s all right when you get to know him.”

  “Well, I don’t want to get to know him. He hasn’t got any more sense than a mule. And he looks like one.”

  I got off the porch and walked out into the yard again. I don’t know why she got on my nerves so much.

  I looked down the road and saw Sam coming up from the bottom with his load of wood. I was glad to see him and called back to Lee and pointed.

  Sam drew up alongside the big woodpile in back of the house and Angelina gathered up her catalogue and went inside.

  “Hello, Sam,” I said.

  “Howdy, Bob,” he answered quietly. “Been doin’ a little bird huntin’?” I saw him shoot a fast look across the yard to where Lee was, coming from the front of the house.

  We offered to pitch off the wood while he went and got us the quart. He never would let anybody go with him when he went to the place where he kept it cached.

  While we were up on the loaded wagon heaving the big fireplace logs off onto the pile, Angelina came out of the house and headed for the well with her water bucket. She passed us without a word but I guess she could feel Lee’s eyes on her, for as she went by she gave him that long slow look out of the side of her eyes.

  “She ought to be against the law,” Lee said slowly and shakily as she disappeared inside the house. He was getting that look again.

  “She is,” I said. “A little law about contributing to the delinquency of minors.”

  “She’s eighteen. You heard her say it. She’s no minor.”

  I shrugged. “Sam would kill you.”

  “It’d be worth it.”

  “Like hell it’d be worth it. There isn’t any of it worth that much.”

  “Not if you stop to think about it, no. But how’re you going to stop and think when you see her?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  And don't try to give me any of that crap that she doesn't affect you the same way. I saw you get up from there and sidle away. You couldn’t take it either.”

  “O.K., I said “O.K. So she does it to me too. But you can stay dead a long time.”

  “What the hell, don’t be such a sap. I’ll bet she’s not any virgin. The way she waves it around, somebody’s gettin’ to it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know. But who’s going to explain that to Sam? If you get caught, I mean, or she gets knocked up. I guess you would? Or maybe you think she will she’ll just say, ‘Why, Papa, he’s just one of the crowd. I haven’t got any enemies.’ Like hell she will.”

  “Oh, shut up, will you? You preach too much.”

  Six

  By the time we had the wood thrown off, Sam was back from his cache. He stopped behind the corn crib, where we could see him but he couldn’t be seen from the house, and motioned to us.

  “I didn’t want to tote it across to you there in the open,” he said when we got there, and he nodded toward the house, where Angelina was. I thought of the contemptuous way she had said, “Moonshiner!” and felt a little sorry for him. He wasn’t fooling that girl any.

  “One of you boys can tote it out in your game pocket.”

  “Sure,” Lee said. He paid Sam for it. “But let’s go inside here and have a snort. How about it, Sam?”

  Sam hesitated slightly, and then he nodded. We climbed through the small door into the crib and closed it after us again. I wondered what all the secrecy was about. What was Angelina supposed to think we were doing down here? Playing a three-handed game of bridge?

  The crib was built of split logs with the flat sides inside and it was cool and dim and dusty in there, with a narrow shaft of sunlight slanting in here and there from the west side between the logs. The unhusked corn was piled high toward the back in a steep slope and there was a little cleared space by the door. We hunkered down there with our backs against the sloping wall of corn and Lee twisted loose the fruit-jar lid. He held it out to Sam.

  “Go ahead,” Sam said politely.

  “The first today,” Lee said and took a big swallow, holding the wide-mouthed jar with both hands. He made a shuddering face and expelled his breath in a long “Whoooof!”

  I took a drink, not wanting it and disliking the breath-catching and slightly gagging smell of it in the wide mouth of the jar, but obliged to abide by the rules governing these rites. If three men have a bottle, all three must drink. It was good, as moonshine goes, but I just couldn’t see the necessity for it at this time of day, out in the country like this on a hunting trip.

  Sam tilted it back and took a long drink without changing expression. He might have been drinking water. Lee hurriedly gulped another and passed the jar to me again.

  “You get many birds?” Sam asked.

  “About a dozen,” Lee said. “Old Big-and-Ugly here was
blowin’ holes in the air and I had to get ‘em for him.”

  Sam nodded and smiled a little self-consciously at me. “Well, ev’body has an off day now an’ then.”

  “Have another jolt,” Lee said

  “Well, I don’t know,” Sam said slowly. Then he picked up the ax. “Jest one. Then I got to unhitch the mules.”

  “Through hauling wood for the day?” Lee asked in surprise. It was only about three-thirty.

  “Well, I had thought I might get in another load, but I guess not. Might put me kinda late with the chores. Reckon I’ll unhitch.”

  I reckon you will too, I thought. Unhitch and stick around. You’re not going back down there in the bottom and leave two potential drunks wallowing around in your corn crib with a quart of moonshine and that girl wandering around loose. You might as well go off and leave an untended bonfire in a gasoline refinery. I’ll bet you’ll be a happy man the day she’s married and some other poor bastard can watch her.

  I could feel the two drinks warming me and I was conscious of the old illusion that about two drinks always give you of seeing everything more clearly. And the thing I saw more clearly than anything else was that I’d better start working on Lee to get him out of here before he got too much. You never could tell what it was going to do to him.

  “We’d better get started back,” I said. “It’s a long way out to the car.”

  “Plenty of time. Keep your shirt on,” he replied with a vague irritation.

  Sam got up and let himself out to attend to the team. He gave us a disturbed look as he left. He didn’t like it a bit. It was plain on his face in spite of the way he tried to cover it up. And I could see his reasons. If you’re making and selling booze in a dry county, there’s no surer way of getting yourself in jail than by letting your customers drink it on the premises and get a load on to advertise where they got it. And Sam had a lot of strict, old-fashioned family virtues. He didn’t think his home was any place for people to get drunk, but he didn’t like to say anything. After all, Lee was a good customer. And, too, the code of hospitality ingrained in men like Sam would never permit him to ask anyone to leave his place. Backwoods people just weren’t like that. They might rip your belly open if anything unpleasant started, but they couldn’t ask you to leave.