Red Grass River

of darkened boathouses and then pulled into a weedy half-full parking lot near a three-story building with a small front porch illuminated bright orange by a lamp over the door. The building stood at the edge of a towering pinewoods and was flanked on both sides by areca palms and clusters of bamboo standing in high black silhouette against tall openshuttered windows ablaze with yellow light. The truck’s headlamps cut off and he got out and went past a pump shed at the edge of the lot and through the shadow of a large umbrella tree and up to a lighted screendoor that she guessed opened to a kitchen. She knew what the place was without knowing how she knew. Her fury swelled in her breast. Bad enough another woman—but a whore! Goddamn him!

She parked at the end of the street and reached under the seat and withdrew the .44 revolver he always kept under there. She checked the loads and then tucked the pistol in the deep sidepocket of her overalls and got out of the car and stood there for a moment with fireflies blinking greenly all about her. She wondered what she was going to do. The front door was out of the question. The idea of simply leaving and confronting him later made her want to curse out loud. Whatever she was going to do about this she was going to do it now.

She crossed the parking lot and headed for the screendoor. She went up the low wooden steps and stood in the shadow of the eaves’ wide overhang and looked in through the screen. In a kitchen spacious and bright a young Negro girl was taking a cut-glass bowl out of a cupboard. There was a wide door at the far end of the room, a narrower one near the pantry. Muttering to herself the girl went out through the larger door.

Laura eased the door open against a softly creaking spring and stepped inside. The air held the mingled aromas of bread and perfume, pipe and cigar smoke, sex and whiskey. She paused and glanced nervously from one door to the other, expecting somebody to come in at any moment and demand to know what she was doing here. What could she say? She was suddenly quite conscious of her nakedness under the overalls.

Plinking piano music carried faintly through the wider door—“Frankie and Johnny”—and she felt like both laughing and crying at this tune so perfect to the circumstance. Now the muffled laughter of men and women came through the wider door and she guessed a parlor lay that way. She went to the narrower door and saw a shadowy hall with a stairway at the far end. Her mouth was dry and she felt her heartbeat throbbing in her throat. She touched the pistol for courage and then went down the hall and slowly ascended the stairs and came to a landing and yet another door, this one shut. She turned the knob and the door opened onto a red-carpeted hallway with a half-dozen doors to either side and another closed door at its far end and she knew this was there the whores would be.

Gripping the pistol in the pocket she stepped into the hall. She could think of nothing to do but put her ear to each door in turn. At the first one on her left she heard nothing. She opened it silently to reveal a man and woman lying naked and is spooned fashion, their eyes closed, the man idly fondling one of the woman’s breasts. For a moment she stood and stared, and then eased the door shut. In the next room an unfamiliar male voice was talking about Australia. From the room on the other side of the hall came a low urgent chanting, “Yes-yes-yes,” but she did not know this voice either. The next door to her left was open and she saw there was no one inside. The room after that was also deserted. The following door was closed and silent and she opened it and saw a thin naked brunette with pear-shaped breasts sitting astraddle a man so hairy he seemed of another species. They looked at her and the man grinned through his beard but the girl scowled and said, “The hell you want?” She quickly closed the door and stood there for a long moment with her heart hammering. The man was laughing, the girl cursing that you couldnt get any privacy in this business anymore, just anydamnbody could come walking in on you.

At the last door on the left she heard him. He was saying something about seeing Bobby in a dream. She didnt know if he was talking about his dead brother or the sheriff or somebody else. She didnt care. She took out the .44 and swiftly opened the door, stepped inside and closed it behind her.

The room was dimly illuminated by a small bedside oil lamp turned down low. They were lying naked on the bed, his back to the door, the bedsheets in a tangle at their feet. He looked over his shoulder and saw her and then saw the gun in her hand. His mouth opened but he made no sound.

“Who is it?” the woman said. She sat up with her face to the door and in a quick glance Laura saw that her hair was short and blonde and that she was pretty.

She strode quickly to the bed and put the pistol muzzle against John Ashley’s forehead and forced his head back into the pillow and said, “Give me one good reason I ought not to shoot you here and now, you no-count whore-mongerin son of a bitch.” She cocked the hammer.

His good eye fixed on her. He was trying to affect indifference but she knew him too well to be fooled. He was scared—she could see it in his eye, in the pale tightness of his mouth. She wanted to laugh, she suddenly felt so good, but she kept her aspect deadly serious the better to preserve the mood and her authority.

“I aint got no good reason,” he said.

“I’ll give you a reason,” the blonde said quickly. “He loves you.”

Laura looked at the woman whose stare was strange and unfocused. “Who the hell asked—”

John Ashley grabbed her wrist with one hand and clapped his other hand tightly over the cocked hammer so it could not fall as she squeezed the trigger. She tried to pull the pistol free but he locked both hands tight and yanked her off balance and onto the bed. She punched at him with her free hand and cursed him and he rolled over on top of her and straddled her stomach and she shouted, “Get offa me—get off!” and vainly bucked and writhed and tried to unseat him. He wrested the revolver from her and eased the hammer down and Loretta May’s hands scrabbled over his shoulders and her arms locked around his neck and she said, “Get offa her before you squash her!” With a hard choking tug backward she pulled him off Laura and he went tumbling to the floor. He scrambled away from the bed on all fours and got to his feet and stood with his back against the wall and the gun in his hand as Laura sat up and rubbed her wrist and glared at him like she might come at him yet. Both of them were gasping for breath.

“You damn crazy woman,” John Ashley said.

“You hush, John Ashley,” Loretta May said sharply. “It’s no way to talk to the woman you love.”

“The woman I love was ready to blow my damn brains out, is what she was—”

“Goddamn right I was, you cheatin, lying son of—”

“Hush now, the both you!” Lorreta May said, reaching out and finding Laura’s back and then scooting up beside her. She put her arms around Laura’s shoulders and said, “It’s all right now, honey, it’s all right.”

And then suddenly Laura was crying—crying hard with her face in her hands—and Loretta held her closer and rocked her gently and crooned, “There now, baby, there now, dont you cry. It’s no need to cry, it’s no need. Everything’s better than you know. It is, it is.”

Laura’s unlaced brogans had come off in the struggle, and one of the overall straps had slipped off her shoulder to expose a breast and even as she wept she became aware of the soft warmth of Loretta May’s naked breasts against her arm. She snuffled and wiped at her tears with the back of her hand and turned to look at Loretta May and saw the strange lack of focus in her eyes. And even as the realization came to her she said, “What’s the matter with you? Are you—? I mean—”

“She’s blind, for chrissake,” John Ashley said. “Cant yousee?”

Laura stuck her tongue out at him and then said to Loretta, “Are you really?”

“As a damn bat, honey. Aint you never knowed anybody blind before?”

“Uh-uh. You been blind since always? Since you was borned?”

“No. Just since I was ten.”

“You used to could see till you was ten year old?”

“Used to could.”

“And now you cant see nothin? Nothin at all?”

“Well. Nothin you can put your hand to.”

“But thats…it must be so awful dark all the…you poor…that’s just terrible!” Laura said. And broke out crying again. She pulled Loretta May to her and kissed her on the forehead and hugged her around the shoulders.

Loretta May stroked Laura’s hair and kissed her cheek and they hugged more closely still and Laura caressed Loretta May’s bare back and kissed her perfumed shoulder and then each of her eyes in turn. She looked into her sightless eyes a moment and then kissed her quickly and lightly on the lips.

Loretta May smiled and brushed at Laura’s tears with her fingers and put her fingers to Laura’s mouth and