Hill girl

by Charles Williams

  “Just leave the bottle out here where I can reach it, pal,” I said. “I might want more than one.”

  “How do I know you can pay for it?” he asked suspiciously.

  “You don’t,” I said. “Just leave it.”

  He left the bottle there and put his hands on the bar. “Smart guy, ain’t you? Well, let me give you a little tip. Don’t start nothing around here.”

  “Write me a long letter about it sometime,” I said. “I’d love to hear from you.”

  He gave me a hard stare that lasted the length of time it took me to pour another drink and throw some change on the bar, and then he walked away, giving me the business out of the corners of his eyes as he went.

  Where do you suppose she is right this minute? She could be anywhere except home. She’d never go home. How much money did she have? How could she earn a living? You know damn well the only way she could earn her living, and the way she feels after the treatment she’s been getting, she probably doesn’t much care how soon she starts. Especially after the beautiful demonstration you gave her of what to expect from her fellow beings. You really helped her a lot. You helped yourself a lot too, didn’t you? Why don’t you go on back to the hotel and take a shower and have a nice sleep? You know why not, don’t you? Well, anyway, you’re not in love with her, are you? Of course not. You just sit around these swank little tearooms because you like the decor and you enjoy the company of that cute bartender. The sonofabitch. You could go on back downtown and see a movie. You’d enjoy sitting through one. Sure you would. Or you could go on back to the farm. That’s going to be fun, living out there alone with all those beautiful hours of speculation as to where she is and what she’s doing. And what she must think of you. Don’t forget that. That’s the nice part. Well, anyway, you have some nice things to remember about those twenty-four hours with her. A vanquished honey-colored head and a beaten voice saying, “All right. All right.” Sam Harley couldn’t break her spirit in eighteen years, but you came as near to breaking it in ten minutes as anyone ever will. You’re an exceptional guy, all right.

  A man wearing a suit with too much padding in the shoulders came in and sat on the next stool. He was about my age and looked like some sort of sharpshooter, a small-time gambler, maybe, or pimp.

  “Do you mind if I pour one out of that bottle, Mac?” he asked.

  “You can pour it in your hair if you want to,” I said.

  He poured a drink into a glass the bartender set in front of him.

  “Hiya, Jack, you big devil, how’s tricks?” he greeted the bartender. They seemed to be old pals. I ignored their conversation and lit a cigarette. Square Shoulders poured another drink out of the bottle. Jack stopped in front of me.

  “That’ll be eighty cents,” he said, spreading his big freckled paws on the bar.

  “What’ll be eighty cents?”

  “Them two drinks.” He nodded toward Square Shoulders’ empty glass.

  “All right,” I said. “It’ll be eighty cents. So what?”

  “Eighty cents on you. Pay up.”

  “You know what you can do with your eighty cents,” I said.

  “Now, wait a minute, Blondy,” Square Shoulders said. “Maybe you just don’t understand what you’re getting into. Jack here’s a regular guy, but you don’t want to get wrong with him. Ain’t that right, Jack?”

  “You gonna pay?” Jack asked. I could see that the way I was feeling, a little of Jack was going to go a long way. His conversation palled on you after the first few bars.

  “Come on now, Blondy,” Square Shoulders said, putting his hand on my arm. “You asked me to have them drinks with you, didn’t you?”

  “You can buy your own drinks, you goddamned pimp,” I said. I put my hand in his face and pushed. He went over backward with the stool on top of him.

  Jack was coming around the end of the bar and I got up off the stool. He looked big, and I knew he probably had twenty pounds on me. But tending bar doesn’t do much for you, and he had a roll of fat around his belly. At least, I hoped it was fat.

  I hit him first and this seemed to surprise him a lot. He’d no doubt been bouncing drunks and barroom brawlers for so long he’d forgotten what it was like to have somebody get under his guard. He came on in, though, and jabbed me. For a man his size he was fast, plenty fast.

  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 reac
hed 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.

  “Just three days. But I didn’t love you then. I do now.”

  She thought it over quietly for a minute before she answered. “It’s that way with me too, Bob.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. That’s the reason I came down here. I thought I might see you again. It was just a chance that you might decide to come on down here instead of going somewhere else.”

  “You don’t hate me for what I said? And did?”

  “No. Not now. I think I finally figured it out for myself and guessed what was the matter. I wouldn’t have followed you except for that. But you won’t do it again, will you, Bob? I couldn’t stand it again.”

  “No. That’s all finished,” I said.

  I kept it from her, all right, this fear I had, but I couldn’t fool myself any about it. Was there any way of being sure it wouldn’t happen again? How could there be?

  Eighteen

  The desk clerk regarded me suspiciously when I registered again with Angelina and wanted to be moved into a double room. The combination of my whiskery, cut-up face with its evidence of a two-day binge and a wife who showed up unexpectedly with no luggage was obviously a little strong to take straight, but he managed it and moved us into a room overlooking the beach.

  When the boy had gone I picked her up and walked over and sat down with her in the armchair by the window. We were silent for a long time and just sat there holding onto each other and listening to the swish of the surf beyond the sea wall.

  “You’ll hold me a lot, won’t you?” she asked at last. “Like this. So I’ll forget about last night and the night before that.”

  “Were they bad?”

  “Awful. I kept trying not to think about not seeing you any more. But you can’t make yourself not think, can you?”

  “No,” I said. “You can’t turn it off.”

  “Did you miss me, Bob?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very bad?”

  “Very bad. And on top of that was the way I’d hurt you. That was something to live with.”

  “Don’t think about it now.”

  She leaned back against my arm and ran her fingers lightly over the bruises and cut places on my face. “Poor face. Poor old sweet face, it’s all hurt.”

  “It’s not hurt.”

  “You tell me who did it and I’ll go scratch his eyes out.”

  “Let’s forget about my face and talk about something nicer. Yours, for instance.”

  “No. I will not forget about it. It’s a beautiful face and I love it. And I want to fix up the cut places.”

  I lost interest in my face as a topic of conversation in a very short while, so I kissed her.

  That changed the subject for both of us, all right. I wondered why kissing her could always cloud up the issue in a way that whisky never could. The jagged edges of facts and the sharp corners of realities became blurred and softened and all the noises muted.

  “I love you so,” I said.

  “What is it like with you, Bob? Do things seem to sort of run together? Is it like flying through colored clouds?”

  “Right now it’s like having a high fever and being full of quinine. Everything’s fuzzy and my ears hum.”

  “It doesn’t sound very nice for you. Maybe what you need is a doctor.”

  “All right,” I said. “Call a doctor.”

  “No. But I want it to be nicer for you. I want you to see the colors. Big clouds of colors swinging around and passing through each other. I don’t think men have any fun being in love. Don’t you see any colors?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Even with your eyes closed?”

  “I didn’t close them. I don’t think I did.”

  “Kiss me again, with your eyes closed.”

  I kissed her again and I think I closed my eyes, but it wasn’t any different. There was the wildness of it and a paradoxical tenderness and a feeling of suffocation, but it was just the same.

  “Did you see them?”

&n
bsp; I shook my head.

  “Poor men. They don’t have any fun. No colors.”

  “I see the ones that are you. Like your hair. It’s a beautiful color. It’s just a little lighter than wild honey.”

  “That’s nice, but it isn’t the same thing. You don’t just see these colors. You feel them.”

  “I can see your hair and feel it, too. Against my face.”

  “I want you to. I’m going to have it bobbed tomorrow and you’ll like it even better.”

  “No, I won’t. It couldn’t be any better. And let’s not talk about tomorrow. We’re in no condition for long-range planning.”

  “We’re not?”

  “No. Planning requires great clarity of thought.”

  “I don’t want any what-you-said of thought. I just want you to kiss me.”

  “That’s better,” I said. “More kissing; less planning.”

  “You can’t plan when you’re kissing me?”

  “Not objectively.”

  “Why not?”

  “How could I kiss you and do anything objectively?”

  “We won’t plan about the hair then? Not now?” she murmured.

  “No.”

  “Have you ever felt this way about anybody before, Bob?”

  “No. Not ever.”

  “We couldn’t have felt this way about anybody before, could we?”

  I closed my eyes and put my face down against her throat and prayed I wouldn’t see Lee again, or hear him. Let’s don’t hear that thing again. Wasn’t once enough to hear it? It doesn’t mean anything now anyway. It was a thousand years ago in another place, and another girl named Angelina. Not this one.

  We didn’t go back out any more that afternoon or night. We had supper brought up to us and ate with the cool breeze from the Gulf blowing in through the window and afterward sat watching the people go by on the sea wall.

  Once, while we were lying quietly in the dark, she stirred suddenly in my arms and said, “Oh, Bob, the car!’

  “What about the car?”

  “We didn’t bring it back. It’s still downtown where you left it.”

  I laughed. “Well, what if it is?”