Big city girl

look at the picture and say, “What was he going anywhere to see an old frump like that for?” Well. I’m not an old frump, and he was coming to see me. He was. I just know he was. Wasn’t that sweet? All that worrying and stewing I’ve done about nothing, afraid I was losing my looks and getting old, when there wasn’t anything to it at all.

She looked up then and saw Jessie standing in the door. The girl’s childlike face, framed in the aureole of her tousled and rain-dampened hair, was burdened with an overpowering sadness, and the large blue eyes had no spark of their usual spirit and life.

“Oh, there you are, honey,” Joy said, babbling, paying no attention to the other’s heart-wrenching quiet. “Will you help me for a minute? Hold the mirror lot me, will you? And see if you can find my lipstick.”

Jessie came on into the room and took the mirror, her eyes still sad and now a little self-conscious as well, faintly embarrassed as always by the older woman’s near nakedness. “What is it, Joy?” she asked dully.

“Reporters,” Joy rattled on, full of excitement, pulling the comb through her hair in long sweeps back over her shoulders. “From some paper. They’re going to take my picture, and write about us in the paper. Maybe they’ll take yours too. I don’t know what paper it is; I forgot to ask them. Maybe it’s a Houston one. Say, you know what?” She paused in mid-stroke to look up with bubbling inspiration. “If they’re from Houston, maybe they’ll give us a ride. We can go back with them.”

In spite of herself, Jessie began to feel some of Joy’s excitement. “Do you think they’d let us?” she asked.

“Of course, honey. Certainly they would,” Joy rambled on, by now fully convinced that Shaw and Lambeth were from Houston. The whole thing was an actuality, no longer even faintly conjectural. She possessed a great deal of Cass’s happy facility in the art of making facts agree with her and for making up her own if necessary.

“We’ll get a ride with them, and when we get to Houston we can stay with this friend of mine down there, the one named Dorothy, you remember, the one who’s a model, only maybe she isn’t modeling now, I don’t know. I haven’t heard from her for a long time. Maybe she isn’t working as a model right at the moment, but that part doesn’t matter. Anyway, we’ll stay with her, she’d love to have us—she’d just love it, we’re such great friends. We’ll stay with her until we get jobs, and then we’ll get our own apartment.”

Jessie had caught onto her excitement for a moment and then had slid back, with the misery returning to her eyes. She tried desperately to listen, to follow every word, and to go along with Joy in appreciation of this enchanting vista, but her mind kept turning back to the brooding theme of her own unhappy thoughts.

“Joy,” she asked now, suddenly, with a quiet and still-laced intensity, “do you think he had time to ask forgiveness?”

What on earth is she mumbling about? Joy thought. Christ, here I’ve been rattling on miles an hour and I thought she was listening. “Who had time to ask what?” she asked absently. “Baby, do you know where my lipstick is? I can’t find my purse.”

“It’s in your suitcase somewhere, I think,” Jessie said.

Let’s see, Joy was thinking. I’ll wear my nylons. I’ve only got one pair without runs, but this is important and if I’m careful they’ll be all right. I’ll have to have them on, it seems to me they always want to get your legs in the picture. I’ll wear that dress with the bows, it’s the only one that’s halfway decent. No. No, I can’t do that, damnit. It’s ruined, it’s all full of sand and it’s wrinkled. The last lousy, stinking thing I had that was fit to be found dead in, and now it’s ruined. That’s the one I had on when that stupid, ugly, mean-faced bastard pushed me. Well, he’s going to pay for that, all right. I’ll wear my white slippers with the French heels and the ankle straps; I think they’re clean. They’ll look nice in a picture, really smart.

Springing up, she ran over to the suitcase and began throwing dresses around again in a sort of despairing frenzy. “Jessie, Jessie, what can I put on? Help me, honey.”

Jessie followed her quietly. “Why not that white summer dress you had on this morning, Joy?”

“It’ll have to do, I guess.” She snatched it up frantically. Oh, why aren’t there any hangers around this awful dump? she thought. It’s all wrinkled. Well, it’s the only one. Hurriedly, she slipped into it, rummaged through the rat-nest confusion of the suitcase until she found her purse, and made up her face. Then there was another explosive upheaval among the powder-sifted brassieres, pants, dresses, handkerchiefs, and stockings while she matched the two remaining unsnagged nylons. She slowed down and put them on, very carefully, and slipped into the white shoes.

At last she was ready. She took one last look in the mirror and shook back her hair. Jessie followed her onto the porch, alternately caught up into the excitement of it and then slipping back into her own gray and lonely sadness.

Joy forgot to introduce the two strange men, and she stood quietly back out of the way. The man with the camera was fussing with its knobs and funny dials and taking light bulbs out of a leather bag. She wondered where he was going to plug them in, and thought with embarrassment of his finding out at the last minute that there wasn’t any electricity.

Maybe God would have forgiven him, Jessie thought, if he’d had time to ask. Maybe he did. Maybe the last thing he did on earth was to pray for forgiveness of his sins. It seemed so important, and she couldn’t understand why Joy didn’t wonder about it too. It must be more important than having your picture taken.

She wished she could ask Mitch about it. She had always consulted him about things like that, but now she couldn’t because she didn’t ever want to speak to him again. It was lonely, though, not having Mitch to ask about things.

Twenty-three

Mitch came up the trail past the barn walking fast in the rain, and went into the old smokehouse. He dried his hands on a shirt hanging on the wall and found the cigarette papers. I’ll roll two or three while I’m here, he thought, and put ‘em in a Prince Albert can with some dry matches. It’ll be easier that way than trying to toll ‘em in the rain.

Trying to force himself to be calm, he sat down on the box and set to work with tobacco and papers. His fingers were still too wet and the paper stuck to them and tore. Cursing, he got up and dried them again, and started over. Water ran out of his rain-soaked hair and spilled across the cigarette. He threw it away and tried again, holding it out and away from him. His fingers were shaking badly and he spilled more than half the tobacco, but he finally got one rolled and kept on until he had three more. Placing them in a can with some matches, he got up, ready to run back down the trail.

He ought to have more over him to keep off the rain than that old raincoat, he thought. Cotton sacks. I’ll take a couple of cotton sacks. I got to have something when— Sick revulsion ran through him and left him weak and shaking, and he put the picture out of his mind. Just to put over him to keep off the rain while he smokes a cigarette, he thought, and ran to the barn. Snatching up two long canvas sacks, he rolled them into a tight bundle. He was ready to go.

He came out the door and then stopped, thinking suddenly of Jessie. I got to talk to her, he thought. I can spare a minute, just one minute, if I can get her away from that yellow-headed slut long enough to get a word in. Wheeling, he ran through the rain toward the house. There was no one in the kitchen and he stopped and looked around, spilling water onto the floor from his saturated clothing. He seemed to be running forever through some horrible dream, trying to catch up with something ahead or eternally fleeing from some disaster behind. He stared at the empty kitchen, aware that it caused him no surprise at all. There was a feeling in him that if everyone in the house had suddenly evaporated like gasoline on a hot day or blown away like smoke there would no longer have been anything strange in it.

Then above the monotonous sound of the rain he could hear the radio in Cass’s room, the soft, insidious, forever-flowing river of its exhortation and admonition as unstoppable as time and unavoidable as death, but knew he could accept this as no evidence the house was still inhabited. It just goes on forever like that river down in the bottom, he thought, and it ain’t no wonder the old man can’t make up his mind which one of ‘em Sewell is drowned