The clothes were almost dry and we came down out of the loft, and instead of going out the door we’d come in, he wanted to get a look at his car, and we went out the small door, past where there were beat-up box stalls, and there was Sally Graham in the blue dress I liked so much, turning slow because a little wind was coming in, and one of her shoes had fallen off near the keg she’d kicked over, her face turned sideways and a funny blue kind of black, and her tongue stuffed out of her mouth, swollen like the toe on a rubber boot.
I guess I just dropped my bag with my swimming suit in it and I ran with the screaming hysterics and I must have gone a mile before I fell down and skinned my knee good. Gubby Garfield came along in the car and I got in and we went to town and told Myron Hattley, the chief of police. I couldn’t stop thinking of her hanging and swinging down there while we were right up over her head, doing it. And I’d never get a chance to tell her, and anyway, it wasn’t Sally any more, just like that thing up on the bank behind me isn’t Garon any more.
Finally I found out from her big sister that the little tart had been getting it from the Granton’s hired man, and when she’d gone down to the city it was to see a doc who told her she was pregnant. They damn near lynched the hired man, but he got out in time.
Maybe if all that hadn’t happened, maybe I’d have got married the next year or so, and settled down like my sisters did. But seeing her swinging there, it made it seem like life is too short a thing to get yourself tied up with some jerk who wants you for the sleeping and the cooking. Anyway, a couple of weeks later, Gubby and I, we started doing it again, but I wouldn’t go back to the Murphy place and he found a shed near where a man was building a big place and ran out of money, and Gubby busted the lock on the shed and fixed it so that it still looked locked. We kept taking stuff in there after dark, and after a while it was fixed up nice. We were even figuring how we could heat the place when it got cold, and I guess probably we overdid it, because Gubby kept saying how his mother kept cramming food down him and complaining about how thin and jumpy he was getting, and finally they sent him to a doctor, and the doctor must have worried the hell out of Gubby somehow, because Gubby told him what we’d been doing and the doc talked to Ma and she laid it on my tail so good she took out pieces of hide. But we sneaked away again and got caught and Cubby’s family sent him to live with his aunt in the city, and word really got around that time. Ma just acted discouraged and I didn’t get laced after we got caught that way.
The damn town was dull and I got out the next year, and got that crumby waitress job in El Paso, telling them I was twenty.
Well, the world is full of cheap guys who think perfume from J. C. Penney is a big deal, and lately I’ve been wondering why I just don’t go ahead and peddle it, but that makes you a whore. And then after all the cheapies, along comes this Darby Garon, and I’ve never seen anybody’s tongue hanging out so far. This was the best one of all, with the twelve hundred bucks’ worth of stuff I’ve got in that Cad. That Darby was a funny guy. Half the time I had to pretend I understood what he was talking about. He was a real beaver, and then all of a sudden he goes flat. Damn it, if this gets out, even if I didn’t have anything to do with it, it means cops, and cops mean checking back on that old record, and it means trouble, and with a character that important, I’ll get a year and a day just for laughs. One year of starch and laundry work will turn me into a glamour-puss for sure.
It’s got to be that Benson. He’s got to get me out of it. And his trouble is bad. It’s got him a little nuts. He jumped off like I was about to burn him. And I wanted it, too. More than any time I can remember. He’s such a cute muscley little character. He knows I can fix him good. He damn near fixed me, too. My throat still hurts.
Why doesn’t he come back? If I have to stand here thinking of that thing behind me, I’m going to start screaming. He’s got to get me out of this. We’ll have to take a chance at the bridge. I won’t drive that Cad across. Not in a million years. I’ll walk and I’ll leave the twelve hundred bucks’ worth of clothes and things.
She jumped violently as he came up beside her. “Give me some warning, will you?”
“Shut up. I gave the keys back to the girl. That ferry is working good now. I rolled the Cad down to where it belongs. We got to do it between ferry trips.”
“Del, I’m scared. I’m scared green.”
“Stay right where you are. I’m going to drag him back a ways, and if anybody moves too close, cough loud. When I’m ready for you, I’ll whistle. Good thing they’re singing. Covers up the noise.”
He moved away up the bank, walking quietly. She stood with her elbows in her palms, shoulders hunched. Dear God, I didn’t mean anything like this to happen. Maybe I’ve been a tramp, but I haven’t really hurt anybody. They all want it, and it doesn’t do any harm, and this one wanted it more than anybody else. And he didn’t care if I went out and bought the clothes. It didn’t make any difference to him. He’d stopped thinking about money or about anything else except doing it, like he’d gone a little crazy or something, and then he started to think of the money, and in his sleep he kept saying Moira, Moira. That must be his wife. And those kind are the worst, maybe, the ones who never take a little cheat, and then get it all wound up inside them, the kind that take money out of banks and run away. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody, even that Moira I’ve never met, and if I can just get out of this, just get clear of it, maybe things will be different. Maybe way back I was wrong, and what I should have is kids and one guy, and it could still be that way because I’ve never been sick and I could have kids.
But it could be a dirty trick on the guy because you get used to thinking about different ones, and I could go right back to the same old thing.
Sally died and Darby died, and there was the time I saw that wreck. Riding back from Dallas with the big Polack. I can’t remember his name, but on his arm he had a woman tattooed with a snake going around and around her and he could make the muscle in his arm move so that she moved so you had to laugh. And that car full of kids went by us doing maybe ninety, and I could see it clear, the way when they cut in the wheels on one side lifted real slow and they seemed to keep going on forever with those wheels up in the air and then the wheels came down quick and hard and the car went quick across the road and hit that bank and went up in the air as high as a roof and we had the brakes on but we went by and I could look across and see that one girl, hanging in the sky with her arms and legs kicking like in the comedy cartoons where the little animals run back onto the cliffs when they find out they’re in mid-air.
I kept yelling to the big Polack to keep on going and I didn’t want to see it. But no, he had to back up and pile out of the car and I wasn’t going to look, but I had to. Funny how you have to look right at something awful when you don’t want to. I went over and the car was like you’d taken it in your fist. Five of them and three already dead and the big Polack grunting and trying to stop the girl from bleeding but there wasn’t enough left of her arm to tie anything on it and she died too. And like a miracle that one boy walking around with his clothes torn. Just walking and looked way off toward the horizon like he was expecting something, like waiting at an airport. The trucks stopped and when I saw the truck driver being sick, I was sick too, and when the Rangers came we said we came along after it happened, because you see a thing like that happen and tell them and you have to appear in court. When they tried to put the boy in the ambulance, they had to sit on him and tie him up. It took three big men and he wasn’t a big boy.
Funny how I never liked the Polack after that, and pretty soon he got sick of asking, and I never went up to Dallas with him again.
Seeing dead ones makes you think of being dead and how you will look and what people will say about you. I don’t ever want to die. I want to keep living until they find something you can take so you won’t die.
She heard the soft whistle. She turned obediently and went up the bank. She couldn’t see Benson. He whistled again a
nd she followed the sound. He’d dragged the body back about fifty feet from the tree. The starlight seemed brighter back beyond the roadside line of trees. Darby Garon was on his side, his knees pulled up.
“Once I get him on my shoulders I can carry him. You got to help me get him up there.”
“I won’t touch him.”
“You got to or I won’t help you. I’ll tell you what to do.”
He lifted the body into a semi-upright position, stooped and dug his shoulder into the stomach, and said, “Now, I want him to fall forward across my shoulders. Don’t let him slip off.”
She tried to help. She pushed her palms straight out in front of her. She recoiled from the touch and the body slipped and fell. Benson cursed her.
He tried again. This time she managed to support the body as he grunted up to his feet. The body lay face down across his shoulders. Benson had one arm locked around a leg, the two wrists held in the other hand.
There was strain in his voice as he said, “Now walk slow in front of me and let me know if anything’s in the way.”
She could hear the singing. “The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” Benson stumbled and cursed. He said. “Keep off to the right. Aim for that ridge of rocks over there.”
The very faint light in the western sky outlined the ridge. She rubbed the palms of her hands down her thighs. She had touched a body with those hands.
Benson walked heavily, not speaking. Once he grunted, “Off to the right more so we come around behind it.”
“There’s a big stone here, Del.”
They circled the ridge. Her eyes were used to the night and she saw a sheltered sandy place. “Is this all right?” she asked, turning to look at him. He lifted his head a bit and look around. He turned around and took a couple of cautious backward steps, then straightened, releasing the body. It fell from his shoulders onto the sand, landing flat on its back. Benson ground at the small of his back with his fists. He knelt, pulled off the shoes and socks, pulled off the shorts, ripped the shirt off. He emptied the pockets of the shorts into his own. She heard the jangle of the car keys. She wanted to turn away from the body. It lay pale in the starlight, with blackness around the belly.
Benson balled up the clothes and set them aside. He knelt beside the body and the sudden flare of the lighter flame startled her. Black turned to brown-red.
“A bullet in the gut!” Benson said, wonderingly. He snapped out the light. Her night vision was gone. She stood in an impenetrable blackness.
“Honey pie, you wouldn’t have shot your old daddy, would you?”
“No!” she cried. “No!”
“Wait a minute! The angle would be right. What do you know! That shot that Texas ducked. Went right up the slope of the road and into this guy. I don’t get it. Hell, he could have rolled down the bank or something, or yelled to get attention. It didn’t kill him when it hit him. So he just sat there and died.”
“Del! Then we can say how it happened! We can tell people!”
“Don’t be more of a damn fool than you can help. You think that big shot is going to step up and say one of his men fired the shot? You think you’re going to get any backing from the people around here? You better treat it just as if you’d shot him, honey. Let’s get away from him.”
They walked back toward the glow of lights. He stopped by a big rock. He dropped the bundle of clothes. “Wait here a minute.”
She waited. He wasn’t gone long. “What did you do?” she asked.
“Wrist watch.” He grabbed the edge of the big rock. She heard the crackle of muscles and the rock shifted. He dropped to his knees, and, digging the way a dog does, scooped out a hole. He jammed the clothes into the hole, covered it over, shifted the rock back, dusted his hands, gave a satisfied grunt.
With each thing he did she found she was becoming more dependent on him. He was using his head, making the decisions. They reached the top of the bank. Gar motors were starting up again. The ferry, lanterns burning aboard, slid toward shore.
“They’ll find him,” she said. “They’ll find him.”
“Sure they will, honey. Something will find him tonight, and some other things will find him in the morning, and the ants will finish the job.”
“Don’t,” she said faintly.
“You got to ride your luck, ride all the luck you can get. Here’s what we do. We take the Cad to San Antone. Maybe somebody knows the two of you and saw you together. So we check you out of your apartment and we keep the Cad one more day. We’ll leave it in a lot somewhere and tear up the ticket. Maybe in Corpus Christi. We buy a heap and head east. Once we both get clear, we can talk about where and when we split up.”
“But first we got to get across the bridge into Brownsville,” she said dully.
He drove the hard heel of his hand against the side of her head. She nearly fell. “What was that for?” she demanded angrily. “That hurt!”
“The next time you talk like the roof was falling in, you get it again.”
“And nobody pushes me around, Benson.”
He hit her again, harder than before. He said, “O.K., make a stink. Go complain to people. Go ahead.”
She cursed him. He hitched up his pants and took a quick step toward her, and she could see, in the car lights, the faint gleam of his grin, the narrowness of his eyes. She backed away quickly. “No, don’t! Don’t do it again!”
“Say you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry, Del.”
“From now on you do everything I tell you to do, and you do it exactly the way I want it done.” He reached out and his hand closed on her breast.
“Don’t Del. My God!”
“We got to keep straight.”
“Let go of me. You’ll give me a cancer. You’re crazy or something. Ow!”
“We get it understood right now.”
She started to cry, helplessly, hopelessly. He released her. She backed away, leaned against a tree. He had turned away from her with sudden indifference. She continued to weep, silently. In a matter of a few moments, he had broken into a secret, independent part of her, and taken away something that had been hers. That hard core of independence. Men had tried to tie her to them with gifts, with persuasion, with protestations of love. Pain had worked where other methods had failed. Pain and humiliation. She felt as though she had become property, had become owned by this cocky little heavy-shouldered man with the face that looked as though you couldn’t hurt it with a hammer. She knew that she would go with him, and that he would hurt her again, out of irritation, or anger, or indifference, or just to amuse himself. And she would take it, and stay around for more. She wept for herself, and for the lost years.
He’s quick and he’s as strong as a little bull, and somehow he’s got me. There’s something crazy in him, something all twisted, and it must be the same with me or I’d walk out right now when there’s time. Walk out, or else ride with him to the bridge and say to the American customs, “This man here is wanted for murder in Mexico.” Let them take him, and even tell them he shot Darby. God, how that hurt! It’s going to hurt for days. I can tell by the way it feels now. Pain so I wanted to faint, and yet with it all screwed up somehow in my mind so that even while he was doing it, it made me start to want him the way it happened over there on the other side of the road in that field. It’s like I don’t own myself any more. Like he put a brand on me.
It’s like with Big Mary, and that little twerp guy of hers that used to come up and beat on her and she took it. She cursed him every minute, but he didn’t show up for a week and she’d start fretting about him, and she gave him every dime she could get together.
I don’t want to be like that, but he’s the same kind as Big Mary’s guy. I can see that now. Someplace inside him he hates women. He uses them and hates them, maybe because he has to use them.
What’s happened to me? This noon we were driving along the road, and I was thinking about all the things I bought, going over them all in my mind. And because a stinking
little ferry keeps getting stuck in the mud, Darby is dead. He didn’t call for help because he wanted to die. I know that. He waited for it. Darby’s dead and I’m with this crazy little guy and I’ll never be free of him again, never as long as I live. I want him, and I want him now. Here. And that’s filthy, with Darby back there where we took him. That singing is driving me nuts. We’ve got to get across the river. We’ve got to run, run. I’ll do what he says. He knows what he’s doing. He’s been in trouble before. God, what is happening to me?
Chapter Thirteen
JOHN CARTER GERROLD, stunned by the death of his mother, walked with long strides down the road, walked back toward the river. Without glasses, his eyes saw all the night lights haloed by astigmatic mist. He felt drained, exhausted.
If they hadn’t finally brought the man around, that man who used to live in Kerrville, he never would have understood what they were trying to tell him.
The Damned Page 14
