Miss Reba turned to Boon. 'You get out of here. Take a walk for a couple of hours. Or go over to Birdie Watts's if you want. Only, for Christ's sake dont get drunk. What the hell do you think Corrie eats and pays her rent with while you're down there in that Missippi swamp stealing automobiles and kidnapping children? air?'
'I aint going nowhere,' Boon said. 'God damn it,' he said to Ned, 'go get that horse.'
'I dont need to entertain him,' Miss Corrie said. 'I can use the telephone.' It was not smug nor coy: it was just serene. She was much too big a girl, there was much too much of her, for smugness or coyness. But she was exactly right for serenity.
'You sure?' Miss Reba said. 'Yes,' Miss Corrie said. 'Then get at it,' Miss Reba said.
'Come here,' Boon said. Miss Corrie stopped. 'Come here, I said,' Boon said. She approached then, just outside Boon's reach; I noticed suddenly that she wasn't looking at Boon at all: she was looking at me. Which was perhaps why Boon, still sitting, was able to reach suddenly and catch her arm before she could evade him, drawing her toward him, she struggling belatedly, as a girl that big would have to, still watching me.
'Turn loose,' she said. 'I've got to telephone.'
'Sure, sure,' Boon said, 'plenty of time for that,' drawing her on; until, with that counterfeit composure, that desperate willing to look at once forceful and harmless, with which you toss the apple in your hand (or any other piece of momentary distraction) toward the bull you suddenly find is also on your side of the fence, she leaned briskly down and kissed him, pecked him quickly on the top of the head, already drawing back. But again too late, his hand dropping and already gripping one cheek of her bottom, in sight of us all, she straining back and looking at me again with something dark and beseeching in her eyes—shame, grief, I dont know what—while the blood rushed slowly into her big girl's face that was not really plain at all except at first. But only a moment; she was still going to be a lady. She even struggled like a lady. But she was simply too big, too strong for even anyone as big and strong as Boon to hold with just one hand, with no more grip than that; she was free.
'Aint you ashamed of yourself,' she said.
'Cant you save that long enough for her to make one telephone call even?' Miss Reba said to Boon. 'If you're going to run fevers over her purity, why the hell dont you set her up in a place of her own where she can keep pure and still eat?' Then to Miss Corrie: 'Go on and telephone. It's already nine oclock.'
Already late for all we had to do. The place had begun to wake up—'jumping,' as you say nowadays. But decorously: no uproar either musical or simply convivial; Mr Binford's ghost still reigned, still adumbrated his callipy-gian grottoes since only two of the ladies actually knew he was gone and the customers had not missed him yet; we had heard the bell and Minnie's voice faintly at the front door and the footsteps of the descending nymphs themselves had penetrated from the stairs; and even as Miss Corrie stood with the knob in her hand, the chink of glasses interspersed in orderly frequence the bass rumble of the entertained and the shriller pipes of their entertainers beyond the door she opened and went through and then closed again. Then Minnie came back too; it seems that the unoccupied ladies would take turn-about as receptionists during the emergency.
You see how indeed the child is father to the man, and mother to the woman also. Back there in Jefferson I had thought that the reason corruption, Non-virtue, had met so puny a foeman in me as to be not even worthy of the name, was because of my tenderness and youth's concomitant innocence. But that victory at least required the three hours between the moment I learned of Grandfather sep's death and that one when the train began to r and I realised that Boon would be in unchallenged rx. sion of the key to Grandfather's automobile for at four days. While here were Miss Reba and Miss Co. foemen you would say already toughened, even if wisened by constant daily experience to any wile or ass—., Non-virtue (or Virtue) might invent against them, already! sacked and pillaged: who thirty minutes before didn't even' know that Ned existed, let alone the horse. Not to mentioj the complete stranger whom Miss Corrie had just left the room tranquilly confident to conquer with no other weapon than the telephone.
She had been gone nearly two minutes now. Minnie had taken the lamp and gone back to the back porch; I noticed that Ned was not in the room either. 'Minnie,' Miss Reba said toward the back door, 'was any of that chicken—'
'Yessum,' Minnie said. 'I already fixed him a plate. He setting down to it now.' Ned said something. We couldn't hear it. But we could hear Minnie: 'If all you got to depend on for appetite is me, you gonter starve twice between here and morning.' We couldn't hear Ned. Now Miss Corrie had been gone almost four minutes. Boon stood up, quick.
'God damn it—' he said.
'Are you even jealous of a telephone?' Miss Reba said. 'What the hell can he do to her through that damn gutta-percha earpiece?' But we could hear Minnie: a quick sharp flat sound, then her feet. She came in. She was breathing a little quick, but not much. 'What's wrong?' Miss Reba said.
'Aint nothing wrong,' Minnie said. 'He like most of them. He got plenty of appetite but he cant seem to locate where it is.'
'Give him a bottle of beer. Unless you're afraid to go back out there.'
'I aint afraid,' Minnie said. 'He just nature-minded. Maybe a little extra. I'm used to it. A heap of them are that way: so nature-minded dont nobody get no rest until they goes to sleep.'
'I bet you are,' Boon said. 'It's that tooth. That's the hell of women: you wont let well enough alone.'
'What do you mean?' Miss Reba said.
'You know damn well what I mean,' Boon said. 'You dont never quit. You aint never satisfied. You dont never have no mercy on a damn man. Look at her: aint satisfied until she has saved and scraped to put a gold tooth, a
'—or spending five minutes talking into a wooden box just to dttve ctazy aaotriet poor ignorant covintry bastard that aint done nothing in the world but steal an automobile and now a horse. I never knew anybody that needed to get married as bad as you do.'
'He sure do,' Minnie said from the door. 'That would cure him. I tried it twice and I sho learned my lesson—' Miss Corrie came in.
'All right,' she said: serene, no more plain than a big porcelain lamp with the wick burning inside is plain. 'He's coming too. He's going to help us. He—'
'Not me,' Boon said. 'The son of a bitch aint going to help me.'
