After considering a moment she went to the kitchen and got a whiskey glass out of the cabinet. Bourbon was her night drink. She picked up the wall phone and dialed the poolhall and Sam the Lion answered.
“Hi, friend,” she said. “How are you?”
“Hi, honey,” Sam said. “I’m winterin’ fairly well. How about you?”
“Oh, I won’t complain,” Lois said. “I wish you’d come and see me sometime. Has your number one customer left for the night?”
“No, he’s here shootin’,” Sam said. “I’ll let you talk to him as soon as he finishes his run. You come and see me, you got a car.”
In a minute or so Abilene took the phone. “Yeah,” he said.
“Hey. Feel like a night off?”
“Depends on the salary,” he replied.
“Well, drill hard,” she said. “You’re better at oil wells anyway.”
She took her bourbon into the den and switched the TV on. A Claudette Colbert movie was just starting. She pulled her bathrobe around her and settled back in Gene’s big leather chair to watch. From time to time she rubbed her calves. When the third commercial came on she went back to the kitchen and refilled her whiskey glass.
Six
AFTER CIVICS CLASS TUESDAY MORNING COACH POPPER stopped Sonny in the hall. There had been an assembly that morning and the coach had on a necktie, an article of dress he seldom wore.
“Like your tie, Coach,” Sonny said jokingly. It was a bright orange necktie and it stuck out from under the coach’s shirt collar in the back.
“Purty, ain’t it,” the coach said distractedly. “Need you to do somethin’ for me. Ruth’s been sick the last couple of days and needs somebody to drive her to Olney to the doctor. She’s afraid they might drug her or something so she wouldn’t be able to drive home. If you’ll drive her down and back I’ll get you out of your afternoon classes.”
Sonny immediately accepted the offer. He was for anything that would get him out of algebra class. The Poppers’ house was only a couple of blocks from school and as soon as he finished lunch he walked over. He looked through the doorpanes before he knocked and saw that Mrs. Popper was ready to go. She was sitting in the living room, her purse in her lap.
“Oh hello, Sonny, what do you want?” she asked, when she came to the door.
“Coach said you needed a driver,” he said. “I thought he told you I was coming.”
Mrs. Popper looked disappointed but she tried hard to hide it. “No, he didn’t mention it,” she said. “I thought he was going to drive me himself. I guess he just couldn’t get off.”
She handed Sonny the keychain and he went and got the car out of their garage. It was a black ’53 Chevy. When Mrs. Popper got in she had a Kleenex in her hand and was daubing at her eyes with it. Sonny felt like he ought to say something to cheer her up, but he couldn’t think of anything. The Chevy didn’t have much pickup but it ran smoothly once they got on the road. The wind was rustling dust in the dry bar ditches beside the highway.
“I’m sorry to be all this trouble,” Mrs. Popper said. “You’re very nice to drive me.”
“It sure beats sittin’ through algebra,” he said.
Mrs. Popper smiled, but neither of them spoke again, all the way to Olney. Sonny watched the road, only glancing at her occasionally; she was looking out the window at the gray pastures. Her hair was brown with just a few traces of gray, and she wore it long, almost shoulder length. There was something about her that was really pretty. She was a little too thin, and her skin was too fair for the country she lived in: wind and sun freckled her on her cheekbones and beneath her eyes. Just before they got to the clinic she opened her purse and got out her lipstick, but she just held it a minute and put it back in her purse without using any.
While she was with the doctor Sonny sat in the waiting room of the clinic, reading magazines. There were lots of copies of Outdoor Life around, with good hunting stories in them. The only trouble was that the people in the waiting room made him so gloomy he could hardly read. A shaky old man sat next to him on the green waiting-room couch. He had had his voicebox taken out and had a little screen where it ought to be; every third breath he wheezed so loud that Sonny couldn’t concentrate on his reading. Then a little boy came over and spat his bubble gum in the pot of a rubber plant next to Sonny. It was a pink, wet hunk of bubble gum and Sonny kept wanting to cover it with dirt. Across the room from him there was a farmer and his wife with an old old lady between them. They were very nervous, and Sonny knew why because he had seen them there several times before: if they had to wait too long the old lady would start going to the bathroom right in her chair. It was very embarrassing, but then something about the waiting room was always embarrassing. When his father had still been getting regular shots Sonny had had to wait there often, and it hadn’t changed a bit.
Finally the wheezing and the bubble gum and the old old lady got on his nerves so much that he went out and waited in the car. The coach was too tight to have a radio put in the car, so there was nothing to do but sit and look out the long empty street toward the west. Someone in a passing car threw out an empty ice-cream carton and the wind skittered it across the street to the far curb.
When Mrs. Popper finally came out she was walking so stiffly that Sonny thought they must have given her the drug after all; then when she got close he saw that she walked that way because she was crying. The wind blew her hair across her face and a few strands stuck to her wet cheek. She tried awkwardly to brush them back. Sonny got out and opened the door for her, wondering what he ought to do. He knew nothing at all about crying women.
He got in and drove back through Olney, thinking surely she would quit, but she didn’t. She was not crying loudly, but she was crying.
“Would you like for me to take you to the hospital?” he asked. “I don’t have to be back to school by any special time.”
“Oh no,” Mrs. Popper said, straightening up. She shook the tears out of her eyes so hard that two or three drops splattered on the dashboard. “I’m just scared,” she said. “I have to have an operation tomorrow for a tumor in my breast.”
The rest of the way home she sat quietly, but it wasn’t really that she was just sitting, either. It seemed to Sonny that in some way she was pulling at him, trying to get him to say something to her. He would have been glad to say something to her, only he had no idea what to say. Even algebra class would have been better than what she was doing: nobody had ever pulled at him in such a strange way. It made him so nervous that he grew careless and let the car edge off the shoulder of the road. After that he concentrated very hard on his driving.
When they got to her house Sonny drove the car on into the garage. He got out, relieved that it was over, but Mrs. Potter kept sitting in the front seat as if she didn’t know she was home or in her garage or anywhere. She wasn’t crying, just sitting there. After a minute Sonny went around and opened the door for her.
“Oh,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Here’s the car keys,” Sonny said. “I guess I better go back to school.”
“No, not yet,” Ruth said. “If you can stand me for a few more minutes I’d like you to come in and have cookies and a Coke.” She looked at him apologetically, but she didn’t take the car keys.
Sonny knew he couldn’t get out of going in. Somehow or other Mrs. Popper had got in control and he didn’t know anything to do about it. Reluctantly he followed her through the back door and into the kitchen. The yellow kitchen linoleum was old and worn out.
“Just sit at the table,” Mrs. Popper said. There was something wild in her face that made Sonny think of his father—when she smiled at him there was a pressure behind the smile, as if something inside her were trying to break through her skin.
“Would you like milk or a Coke?” she asked. “I’m really sorry I made you come in—you can go right now if you like. For a minute I was just scared to be alone.”
Sonny said he would take a Coke. She got one, a
nd set a plate of thin Nabisco cookies on the table with it. For a minute of two, watching him eat, she seemed to be getting all right, and then to his amazement and disgust she burst out crying again, loudly. She put her head in her arms and sobbed, her body shaking as if she had the heaves. Sonny was sure she must be crazy and he wanted to be away from her. He didn’t even want to swallow the bite he had in his mouth. Mrs. Popper seemed to know what he was thinking; she looked up at him and tried to quit crying.
“You’ll never forgive me, I know,” she said. “You think I’m pitiable, you’re disgusted. Go on away if you want to, you don’t have to stay any longer.”
“Thank you for the Coke,” Sonny said hastily, taking her at her word. “Maybe you’ll get to feeling better after your operation.”
“Oh no, it’s not the operation,” she said, wiping her face with a yellow table napkin. “It’s not the operation at all. The tumor probably won’t be dangerous. It’s just that thinking about it makes me so lonely I can’t stand it.”
“Well, I guess you’ll be glad when basketball season is over,” Sonny said, feeling a little more kindly toward her. “Coach probably doesn’t get to stay home much during football and basketball season.”
Mrs. Popper laid down her napkin and looked at Sonny as if she were seeing him for the first time. She quit crying and became completely calm. “My God,” she said. “You don’t know a thing about it, do you?”
Then she did a thing which he would never forget: she got up, came around the table, put out her hand, and traced her fingers down his jaw almost to his mouth. Her fingers were cool. She put her hand on his head for a minute, felt his hair against her palm and between her fingers, and then quickly reached down for one of his hands and pressed it against her cheek and throat. She held his hand there for a moment and then laid it back on the table as carefully as if it were a piece of china.
“I know I mustn’t be that way,” she said, and again it looked as if something were pushing at the inside of her skin. Sonny felt very confused, but no longer particularly scared or particularly anxious to get away. From the way she touched him and looked at him he knew she had thought about kissing him when she put her hand on his face. He didn’t know what would have happened, because he had no idea how it would feel to kiss someone older than himself, someone who was married. But when he looked at Mrs. Popper’s mouth he wished that she had gone ahead, or that he had done something. He was sure it would have been nice to kiss her, much nicer than it had been to kiss Charlene.
But Mrs. Popper went back to her own chair and looked at the splotch on the tablecloth her tears had made.
“Here I am wanting to tell you I’m sorry again,” she said, smiling a little. “I know I’ve given you a bad afternoon. For ten seconds there I was ready to try and seduce you, I don’t know what it means myself. I’ve never seduced anyone and I’ve never been seduced, but I’ve always liked the word. I thought if I was ever going to find out what it meant it had better be now.”
She sighed. “I don’t guess you can imagine being seduced by the wife of your coach. I’m not so terribly pretty and I don’t think you even like me. It probably wouldn’t be best for you to be seduced by a forty-year-old woman you don’t even like. Do you have a girl friend?”
“I did have,” Sonny said. “We broke up last Saturday night.”
“Why did you break up?” she asked. “Do you mind talking? I wish I wasn’t so avid. You don’t really have to answer my questions if you don’t want to.”
“I was going with Charlene Duggs,” Sonny said. Something had changed; he felt more comfortable with Mrs. Popper than he had all afternoon. “Charlene thought I got fresh with her, but I never did, really. I guess the reason we broke up was because we didn’t like one another much to begin with.”
“I shouldn’t be sad about it, if I were you,” Ruth said. “I know Charlene and I don’t think she’s nearly nice enough for you. Even I would be better for you than she would.”
She put her fingers to her temples and smoothed back her hair. “Besides, she must be a dumb creature, not to appreciate you. I can’t even imagine how it would be to be young and have someone like you get fresh with me.”
Sonny decided she really was a little crazy, but he liked her anyway. He even wanted to compliment her in some way, say something that would make her feel nice.
“I already like you better than I ever liked her,” he said, wondering if it was a wrong thing to say.
Mrs. Popper’s face lightened—she looked glad that he had said it. They were silent for a moment and Sonny finished his cookies and Coke. There was no longer a reason for him to stay, but he kept sitting, hoping that Mrs. Popper might want to come around the table again.
She knew that was why he was staying, too, and she did stand up, but not to come to him. She went to the sink and looked out the back window a moment before she spoke. She was not crying, but her face was sad. “Maybe you better go on to basketball practice,” she said. He stood up and she walked with him to the front door.
“I see you feel you’ve missed a chance,” Ruth said, when they were at the door. She looked at him frankly. “You see, I’m very confused, even if I look like I’m not. That’s why you must go. I’ve got on a great many brakes right now—what I was thinking about a while ago is nothing I’ve ever done except with Herman, and for a long time I haven’t even believed a man could want me that way. I don’t know if I believe it now, even though I see you do. But then I think it isn’t really me you want, it’s only that . . . sex. Not that there’s anything wrong with you wanting that, it’s perfectly natural. . . .” She was talking faster and faster, but suddenly she stopped.
“You must really think I’m crazy,” she said. “I am crazy I guess.”
“Why’s that?” Sonny asked.
“What?” Ruth said, caught by surprise.
“I mean why do you feel crazy? I guess I shouldn’t be askin’.”
“Of course you should,” she said. “I was just surprised you had the nerve. The reason I’m so crazy is because nobody cares anything about me. I don’t guess there’s anybody I care much about, either. It’s my own fault, though—I haven’t had the guts to try and do anything about it. It took more guts for me to put my hand on your face than I ever thought I had, and even then I didn’t have enough to go on.”
She shut the screen door and they stood for a moment looking through the screen at one another. Sonny hated to leave; in some funny way he had come to like Mrs. Popper and he knew that the minute he left she would go in the house and cry again.
“Maybe I never will know what seduce means,” she said quietly. “Thank you for putting up with me. You don’t need to tell Herman about the operation. I’ll tell him when he gets home.”
Sonny was trying to think of something appropriate to say that would let her know that he really liked her, but he couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound corny. Ruth noticed, and to spare him further embarrassment she shut the living-room door. When she heard his footsteps on the sidewalk she began to cry.
Basketball practice was so far along that Sonny didn’t bother to suit out, but he did check in with the coach. Joe Bob and one of the freshmen had done something wrong and the coach was sitting on his bridge chair watching them run punishment laps.
“Come on, run ’em,” the coach yelled. “Be men. I don’t want no sissies on this team. Quit flapping your hands, Joe Bob, you look like a goddamn goose.”
Sonny slipped his shoes off and took some free-throw practice with the rest of the team. He expected the coach to ask about Mrs. Popper, but he just sat on the bridge chair, chewing tobacco and occasionally scratching his balls. When he did ask, after practice, it was not exactly about Mrs. Popper—he wanted to know if the doctor had given her any prescription.
“I don’t think so,” Sonny said. “We didn’t get any filled.”
“Good,” the coach said. “Damn doctors. Every time she goes over there they prescribe her ten doll
ars’ worth of pills and they don’t do a fuckin’ bit of good. I tell her to take aspirin, that’s all I ever take. If she’s got a sore place she can rub a little analgesic balm on it—that’s the best thing for soreness there is.”
He didn’t say so, but analgesic was also free. The school bought it by the case and the coach took what he needed.
“She wasn’t feeling too good when I left her,” Sonny said, thinking the coach might be worried enough to hurry on home. Instead, the news seemed merely to disgust him.
“Hell, women like to be sick,” he said. He was on his way to the showers, but he stopped long enough to grab a cake of soap from a passing freshman. “Ruth had rather be sick than do anything. I could have bought a new deer rifle with what she’s spent on pills just this last year, and I wish I had, by God. A good gun beats a woman any day.”
Seven
“I GUESS SHE JUST COULDN’T GET OUT OF IT,” SONNY SAID, chalking his cue. It was Saturday night and Duane had just found out that Jacy wasn’t going to be at the picture show that evening: she was going to a country club dance with Lester Marlow.
“She wasn’t sheddin’ no tears over the telephone,” Duane said bitterly. “She may be getting to like country club dances, that’s what worries me.”
He was in such a terrible mood that the pool game wasn’t much fun. Jerry Framingham, a friend of theirs who drove a cattle truck, was shooting with them; he had to truck a load of yearlings to Fort Worth that night and asked them to ride along with him, since neither of them had dates.
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