Giant

by Edna Ferber

  Dimodeo had understood English, and spoken it. This girl must, surely. “I am so sorry. Is the baby ill?”

  The girl nodded sadly. “He is ill because I am ill. My milk is not good.”

  “Well for heaven’s sake!” Leslie said. “You just get a formula and feed him that.” The girl said nothing. The child’s wailing pulsed through the hot low room. Leslie went to him. He lay in a basket, very wet; dark mahogany beneath the brown skin, very angry. There was no water tap, no pump, no sink. He smelled badly. She took off his clothes, she found some water in a pitcher, she wiped him with a damp rag, the woman, bare-footed, came shakily across the sagging floor to hand her a diaper. “Go back to bed,” Leslie said, and smiled at her a little ruefully. “I’m not very good at this, but it’s better than having him so wet and—so wet.” She diapered him inexpertly and he never stopped crying, looking up at her with great black swimming eyes. She felt like someone in a Victorian novel. Lady of the manse. How old-fashioned. She ought to have—what was it?—calf’s-foot jelly, revolting stuff it must have been that they were always bringing in napkin-covered baskets for the defenseless poor. The floor of the little wood and adobe hut was broken so that you actually could see the earth over which it stood. Rats must come through those gaps, Leslie thought, looking at the squirming infant. Rats and mice and every sort of awful creeping thing.

  She returned the child to the basket and his screams were shattering. The woman on the bed looked up at her submissively. Leslie felt helpless and somehow foolish.

  “What is your name?”

  “Deluvina.”

  “What does your husband do here—what is his work?” She wished she didn’t sound like a social worker invading someone’s decent privacy.

  “He is Angel Obregon. He is vaquero.” So this splintered shanty was the home of one of those splendid bronze gods on horseback. “He is vaquero. My father too and my father’s father are vaquero here on Reata Ranch.” She said this with enormous pride.

  Leslie longed to ask what his wage was. She told herself this would be disloyal to Jordan. She must ask him.

  There was the sound of a motorcar stopping outside, a horn brayed, quick steps on the broken wooden stairs.

  “Miz Benedict!” called a man’s voice. “Ma’am! Miz Luz says you come along home with me, they’re waiting on you Madama says.”

  At the door stood Jett Rink. “You ain’t supposed to be in there,” he said. “Bick’ll be mad as all hell. And Madama’s fit to be tied.”

  11

  She said nothing, she stood there, she looked at him, he stared at her, she thought, almost insolently. The eyes that were too small, very blue; the curiously damp-looking curls with one lock falling across the forehead. Those pagan goatlike young gods in the Greek pictures—that was it.

  “I am Mrs. Benedict,” she said needlessly and very formally.

  “Well, sure.” He waved a hand toward the car, a new Ford, dust-coated. “We’d better get moseying.”

  She was relieved to have been sent for, she welcomed the sight of the car. He had spoken of her husband as Bick. Coolly she said, “Did Mr. Benedict send you here for me?”

  “No. She did.”

  Leslie stifled the impulse to say, haughtily, And who is she? She looked back at the woman on the bed. The child yelled. In silence she entered the car. Now she looked down at herself. The little blue silk was a mess. A great stain on her lap. The baby. Dust and perspiration. Her hair blown by the hot wind, her white shoes grey-brown. “How did you know I had gone into that place?”

  He spun the wheel expertly, they leaped down the road. “Everybody knows everything anybody does around here, there’s a saying you can’t spit without she knows it.”

  Leslie decided that she must speak to Jordan about this oaf. He turned his head and started at her with a quick bold glance.

  “I watched you from the garage.” He said gradge. “You ain’t aiming to do much walking like that around here, are you?”

  “Why not?”

  “Right around the house it’s all right, maybe, if you want to stir yourself afoot, but I wouldn’t go to walking out on the road and cutting across prairie like you done.”

  “Why not?”

  “Rattlers.”

  “Rattlers!” she repeated somewhat faintly.

  “This time year it’s beginning hot the rattlers start to stir around and come out when the sun is good and hot and they look for something good to eat hopping around. Shoes like yours,” he glanced down at her soiled slippers and her silken ankles, “why they’re liable to take a bite out of you by mistake.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” she said. “You’re trying to scare me.”

  “Might be. But anyway, you’re too ganted to be loping around in the hot of the day, walking.”

  “Ganted ganted! What do you mean!” She had heard this word too often.

  “Ganted. Thin.”

  “Whether I am thin or not is none of your business, boy.”

  “Sure ain’t. But like I always say, the nearer the bone the sweeter the meat.”

  She was deciding whether to be really angry or merely amused at this cheeky lout when they approached the Big House and she saw a dozen cars clustered in the drive. Again she looked down at herself in dismay. The Girls.

  “They mustn’t see me. I look so awful. If I could change before they——”

  He spun the wheel, he swung the car sharply around to the rear of the house. “You come on with me.” They whirled past the kitchen and stopped at a blank wall that seemed part of the foundation. “Out.” She climbed down, feeling like a conspirator and not liking it. Carefully, slowly he looked about him, then he reached high above his head and pressed at two corners the long bar that seemed part of the heavy ornamentation of this Spanish castle. She saw that the block was not wood but painted metal, and now part of the wall opened just enough to make entrance possible, and within she just glimpsed the outline of a spiral stairway and she heard the sound of water dripping ever so faintly.

  He slid within, he held out his hard oil-stained hand.

  “No!” she cried in panic, even while her reasoning mind told her that the whole situation was ridiculous was fantastic. She ran across the paved court, into the kitchen, leaving behind her a row of staring dark servants’ faces, into the vast dining room. From the hall there came the high shrill chatter of many feminine voices and she smelled the ever present coffee and the scent of it sickened her a little now. Someone was playing the piano and with power and authority. Brahms. Well, that was better. It needed tuning. She must remember to have it tuned. Leslie turned and looked about her. There was, surely, a rear stairway hereabouts, somewhere. They mustn’t see her looking like a drowned rat. Jordan Benedict’s new wife.

  From the doorway through which she had been peering came Luz Benedict’s strident voice. “There she is now! Where’re you going to, Leslie? The Girls are here waiting on you.”

  Well, there’s nothing you can do about it now, so face it and don’t be silly. Stained silk, dusty shoes, flushed perspiring face, straggling hair, she advanced toward them smiling, toward the women who had been wondering about her these past weeks, whose topic of conversation and speculation she had almost exclusively been.

  She smiled directly into the cluster of staring women’s faces, she spread her hands in a little appealing gesture.

  “Forgive me. I’m late. And I’m a sight. And I did so want to make a good first impression on all of you.”

  The staring faces relaxed, softened. The Girls moved toward her, she advanced toward them, her hands outstretched.

  “Who was playing the Scherzo?”

  “Adarene. That was Adarene Morey,” the Girls said.

  “Lovely. I’m going to have the piano——”

  But Luz stepped between them and took over with the strict conventionality of the provincial mind.

  “Meet Joella Beezer…Ila Rose Motten…Eula Jakes…Miz Wirt Tanner…Aurie Heldebrand…Fernie Kling�
��Miz Ray Jennings…Vashti Hake…Adarene Morey just married a month and come all the way down from Dallas just to meet you. Girls, this is Bick’s wife—Leslie. That’s a boy’s name hereabouts, but she’s Bick’s legal wife just the same.”

  They clustered round her, their voices were high and shrill in welcome but there was, too, a genuineness about them, an eagerness and warmth. They were expensively and formally dressed in clothes that Leslie would consider city clothes. She wondered if she had expected a feminine version of the men’s canvas and boots. Fringed antelope perhaps, and beadwork. They took her hand very formally, they said, for the most part, Howdy or Pleased to Meet You and she loved it. She behaved as though she were wearing the freshest of toilettes, the least shiny of noses. Of the group, two faces impressed themselves on her mind. There was Adarene Morey the Dallas bride—a plain quiet girl with intelligent understanding eyes and a queer knobby forehead and skimpy mouse-colored hair. It was she who had been playing the piano. Adarene. One of those names that sounded made up.

  The other girl had come forward almost timidly—the Girls had, in fact, given her a little push toward Leslie. A very fat girl with an alarmingly red face. She bulged above her clothes, her blue eyes were fixed on Leslie with something like anguish. The young woman grasped Leslie’s hand in a terrible grip, she looked deep into Leslie’s eyes with a look of pain and questioning.

  “And your name—forgive me—I want to be sure I have you all clear in my memory——” Leslie said.

  “I’m Vashti Hake—your nearest neighbor—our place meets Bick’s—yours—yours——”

  So this was the girl—this trembling mound of hurt pride and emotion.

  “I hope we’re going to be friends as well as neighbors.” What a speech, Leslie! that inner voice said. Being mistress of the manor again, are you?

  Above the chatter Luz Benedict’s voice called to her. “Look what the Girls brought you!” She pointed to the great hall table on which stood bowls and platters and baskets. Mystified, Leslie stared at the offerings. A great bowl of chicken salad plastered with bright yellow mayonnaise. A plateau of chocolate cake. A saddle of venison. Jars of preserves. A ham. Homemade wine.

  Dazed, Leslie surveyed these assorted edibles and wondered what she was supposed to do with them. Eat them, but how, when, why? The barbecue. The barbecue of course.

  “How friendly of you! We’ll take them to the picnic, shall we?”

  They appeared shocked at this. “It’s a barbecue. You can’t eat this at a barbecue.”

  Luz Benedict’s voice again. “And time to start, too. Come on.”

  “But Luz, I’ve got to change my clothes. I look simply terrible.”

  “We haven’t got time,” Luz said firmly.

  Serenely Leslie moved toward the stairway. “You girls look so fresh and crisp. I can’t go like this. I’d disgrace you.”

  “We’re going,” said Luz.

  “I went for a walk,” Leslie continued, as though she had not heard. She was ascending the stairs, smiling down on the others as she went.

  “A walk!” they echoed incredulously as everyone else had done. She noted for the first time the feminine regional habit of making two syllables out of a one-syllable word. “A wo-uk!” they drawled.

  “And I visited the school and when I came out I sort of got lost and then I heard a baby crying in one of the cabins and I went in to ask the way and the mother was sick and the baby was so wet and wretched and it was so hot and while I was changing it——” Ruefully she glanced down at herself. “I’ll only be a minute. Does anyone want to come up to keep me company?”

  In one concerted movement they surged up the stairs.

  “Could we see your things? Could we?”

  “Of course. But I didn’t get much. Jordan and I were married in such a hurry.”

  The procession slowed, the heads turned as though moved on a single pivot to stare at Vashti Hake. The red anguished face became a rich purple. Equably Leslie went on, “Maybe my clothes aren’t right for Texas. You’ve all got to tell me the right thing to do and the right thing to wear. Will you?” And she looked at Vashti Hake and she looked at Adarene Morey and she thought, Well, they will, at least. And impartially she smiled at all the rest. She was, in fact, rather fancying herself by now.

  Though they were well dressed, if somewhat too elaborately for a noonday barbecue on the plains, it was obvious that East Coast fashions had not yet penetrated the Southwest. They watched her while she changed from the stained blue silk to a cream silk with a border of two shades of green. The skirt came to her knees, the neckline was known as the bateau, the whole as a sports costume. It was hideous to the point of being deforming but it was high fashion and over it the representatives of Dallas, Fort Worth, Hermoso, Vientecito, Corpus Christi, Kingsville, Houston and Benedict cooed and ohed and ahed. They rummaged clothes closets and held fragile garments up against their own ampler bosoms.

  “Look, Joella! This would be perfect on you with your hair and all. Black chiffon with bead things. What do you call those, Miz Benedict?”

  “They’re paillettes. And I’m called Leslie.”

  “Oh my! Lookit!” Her Virginia riding habit, the breeches of beige Bedford cord, the coat of tweed, the canary waistcoat. The silks. The pink jersey sweater blouse. The pajama negligee of satin and lamé. The blue-green chiffon over chartreuse yellow for evening.

  “They’re all too dressy, aren’t they? For ranch life?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Adarene Morey reassured her. “We all dress like mad, we’ve got nothing else to do.”

  Luz’s voice rasped her dissent. “You don’t see me worrying where I’m going to wear chiffon and paillettes and fancy riding pants. I got plenty to do.”

  The Girls laughed tolerantly at that as at a family joke. “Oh, you, Luz. Everybody in Texas knows you’d rather work cattle than make love.”

  Leslie adjusted the cloche hat of green grosgrain ribbon, she gathered up the fresh white gloves. From her new white buckskin shoes to her brushed and shining hair she was immaculate again and eager for the day ahead. She faced the Girls, smiling and friendly. “It was dear of you to wait while I changed.”

  She had changed more than she knew, in their eyes. Downstairs, seeing her for the first time, they had thought, Well, he’d have gone a heap better to take Vashti Hake, fat and all, instead of going way up to Virginia to bring him home a ganted cockeyed wife.

  They were off now in a haze of dust, a clatter of talk, a procession of cars down the long road, then across the prairie itself, into draws, down rutted lanes, through sandy loam, the mesquite branches switching and clawing the cars as they lurched past.

  The talk was of people Leslie did not know, of events and customs and ways of which she was ignorant. She listened and smiled and nodded. I like the plain one with the knobby forehead, she thought, and the fat one with the touching look in her eyes. Jordan. I’ll see him at the barbecue, I can’t wait to see him I’ve scarcely seen him at all since yesterday, it’s ridiculous.

  “I love picnics,” she said aloud. “We used to have them at home in Virginia, the very first warm spring day.” She thought of the great hampers covered with white starched cloths; the delicate chicken, the salad of lobster, the bottles of wine, the fruit, Caroline’s delectable cakes and perhaps a very special cheese that some epicurean patient had sent Doctor Lynnton from Baltimore or New York.

  Sociably she turned to the girl seated next here. Eula, they called her. “Do you live near here?”

  “Eighty miles?” said Eula, and her voice took the rising inflection, as though asking a question rather than answering it.

  “And you came all that distance? What’s the name of your town?”

  “Forraje?” Eula ventured again with the rising inflection, tentatively, as though she would be the first to retract the name if her hearer did not approve.

  Leslie began to speculate about the high shrill feminine voices, about the tentativeness, about the vag
ue air of insecurity that touched these women. It was very hot, but she was having a fine time, it was all new and strange, she felt light and free and very very hungry after that early coffee and the emotional hours since then. Quietly, she listened to the talk. Horses, children, clothes, cooking, barbecues, bridge, coffee parties. Well, what’s wrong with that, she demanded of herself.

  Miraculously, as though divining her thoughts, Adarene Morey said, very low, beneath the crackle of high voices, “That’s the way it is. You’ll never hear a word of talk about books or music or sculpture or painting in Texas.”

  “But why?”

  Adarene shrugged, helplessly. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s the climate. Or the distances. Or the money. Or something. They never speak of these things. They have a kind of contempt for them.”

  “Then what about you?”

  “Oh, I’m considered odd. But it’s all right because the Moreys are old Texas cotton.”

  “What you two buzzing about, looking so sneaky!” bawled Ila Rose Motten.

  They were stopping before another gate. There had been gates and gates and gates. There were miles of fence—hundreds of miles of fence it seemed to Leslie. They were forever stopping and someone was forever clambering out of the car, opening a gate, closing it after the procession of cars had passed, climbing in again.

  “Let me do it,” Leslie volunteered finally. “I’ll have to learn sometime.” But she was clumsy at it, there was a trick about it, the women laughed good-naturedly and Leslie joined them. “Well, you can’t say I’m not trying to learn to be a Texan.” Luz was in one of the other cars. Leslie wondered if it was that which made her feel gayer, younger, more free. There was a high-humored air about the whole jaunt as they bumped their way over the dusty roads, across what seemed to be endless prairie. And now a long low cluster of buildings squatted against the horizon.

  “There we are,” said Adarene Morey, and turned to smile at Leslie. “That’s headquarters bunkhouse, in case you don’t know. I guess you aren’t really acquainted yet, are you? Reata’s so big, even for Texas.”