This expression brought Ruth Lillian to mind, and he felt just rotten to be lying here with another girl.
'Have you done that uppity Ruth Lillian yet?' she asked, almost as though she had penetrated his thoughts.
'No, of course not! She ain't the sort of girl to do-' He stopped short, hoping he hadn't hurt her feelings. Lordy, my arm is going to rot off!
'Oh, she'd do it. Any girl will do it, if the time and the man is right. Everyone wants to do it, even if uppity people pretend they don't. I've seen you two sitting out on her porch at night, and I know what you're both thinking about behind all your talk. But you're wasting your time, what with her fancy airs and her hair piled up on top of her head, like she was somebody. Boy-o-boy, my brother really hates your guts! He's always saying how he'd like to cut you, and stuff like that? Partly it's because of the jobs you snatched up and the way our ma bad-mouths him and slaps him around for not grabbing them first. But mostly it's because of that Ruth Lillian. He wants her real bad. He always thinks about her whilst he's doing himself out in the woodshed.'
This notion disgusted Matthew. And angered him. 'How do you know that?'
'He told me. He gets so mad about you that sometimes he cries. Just puts his face into his arm and blubs. And sometimes I feel so sorry about the way he hankers so hard for that Ruth Lillian that I do him with my hand, just as a favor. But my regular is old Murphy.'
'The barber?'
'Sure. I sneak out once a week and we do it. He gives me four-bits. He says he's afraid to do the girls at the hotel because they might have the clap, but I think he does me because the girls charge two bucks and he's a cheapskate. Did you know that he's bald as a coot under that wig? Well, he is. It makes me laugh sometimes, when he's pumping away on top, trying to hold his wig on with one hand! Lordy, my ma would pee bob-wire if she knew I was messing with old Murphy, considering that he got caught doing young girls back East. Real young girls. Used to give them penny licorice twists. He was stingy even then, I guess. A bunch of men was going to tie him to a tree and cut off his hose, but he ran away. If you ask me, he picked Twenty-Mile because there's still people wanting to cut it off, and this is the last place anyone would think of looking for him.'
'Gee. Do you do other men in town?'
'Who, for crying out loud? You think I'd want old peg-leg Calder on top of me? A gal could get splinters!'
'Well, what about Mr. Delanny?'
'Naw, he's too sickly to do anybody.'
'Not even his own girls?'
'No, I'm pretty sure not. He seems to like that. Frenchy the best-the niggra with the cut face? — but I'm pretty sure he don't do her. I'd of heard about it if he did. Everybody knows everything about everybody in a little hole like Twenty-Mile.'
An icy thought chilled Matthew's stomach and wilted his penis, which had begun to respond to Kersti's idle handling. Did that mean Ruth Lillian would find out about tonight?
'And you don't think I'd do Reverend Hibbard, do you? Please! I wouldn't want him staring down at me with those sunk-in eyes of his! And just imagine how he'd go staggering down the street afterward, sobbing and bawling about sinning with me! And if my ma heard, she'd flay me alive!'
'Well, what about B. J. Stone and Coots?' Matthew asked. 'They ain't sickly, nor one-legged, nor bald, nor drunkards.'
Kersti convulsed with wheezing laughter that made her squeeze his penis hard enough to hurt. But her movement gave him a chance to slip his arm out. 'Stone and Coots! You're joshing! Don't you know about them?'
'Know what?'
'They don't want women! They do each other!' Kersti went on to say that they were what her mother called Sodomites, and the wrath of God was upon them. That was why they stayed in this godforsaken town, where nobody cared who you were, or what you did… or who you did. 'But you better not hang around them so much, if you don't want people to think you're one of them Sodomites too.'
Matthew couldn't believe that B. J. Stone and Coots… I mean… how?
'… and that's everybody. Except for old man Kane, and he ain't been interested in doing anybody since his wife run off with the marshal and left him with little Miss Stuck-up, with her fancy dresses and her hair piled up on top of her head, like she was somebody.' The flow of talk stopped as her thoughts turned inward. After a while she said softly, 'So you see, there ain't nothing or nobody for me in Twenty-Mile.'
'Well then maybe you shouldn't stay in Twenty-Mile, Kersti.' He was thinking that if she left town, maybe Ruth Lillian wouldn't find out about tonight.
'Oh, don't you think for one minute that I'm staying in this stinking little town! Not on your life! No-sir-ee! I been saving up my two-bit pieces from old Murphy, and one of these days I'm going to up and leave! Get myself a job of work in some big city, and buy nice clothes, and have somebody do up my hair real pretty…. But not on top of my head, like a stuck-up.'
'What are you waiting for?'
'I ain't waiting! Don't say I'm waiting, when I ain't! Any day now, this town's going to look around and see nothing but dust settling where I used to be standing!' She took a breath, and her voice went hollow. '… It's just that…'
'It's just what?'
'Well… I don't know nothing but cooking and serving. What would I do down in the flatland, all alone? How'd I keep myself? I'd sure hate to end up like Mr. Delanny's girls. Done by anybody who wants you. Ugly old men, or men with disease, or just… anybody. I want to get out of here more'n anything in the world, but…'
Matthew felt her shrug, and suddenly he knew that Kersti would never leave Twenty-Mile and take his guilt away with her. In fact, she'd probably…
'Hey! You're getting hard again,' she said with a conspiratorial giggle. 'Let me ride you this time.'
THAT NEXT FRIDAY, MR. Kane was feeling better than he had for weeks. All through supper he entertained them, telling about pranks the kids used to get up to in the New York tenement where he'd grown up, pranks like hiding in dark hallways and scaring old women who believed in ghosts and golems. Matthew laughed until tears stood in his eyes, and Ruth Lillian accused her father of 'telling whoppers,' which he denied categorically, totally, emphatically, and… 'All right, so maybe I polish the truth a little.'
'That's a kind of lying.'
'Small-minded people might call it lying. But I say it's just decorating the truth so as to make it more interesting.'
Matthew knew exactly what he meant.
Mr. Kane joined them out on the porch for a breath of fresh air before bed, and the three of them looked in silence at the stars above the foothills, bright and brittle in the chill mountain air. After a while he sighed and scratched his stomach and said that if they weren't going to have one of their mind-stretching talks about infinity and mirrors and such, he might as well get some sleep, because the miners would be coming tomorrow and they'd have to keep the Mercantile open all night. Ruth Lillian said she'd be up in a few minutes.
Matthew and Ruth Lillian sat in silence on the top step, their backs against opposite porch pillars, his long legs splayed out down the stairs, hers hugged to her chest.
'In just two years,' she said over her knees, 'we will be in the Twentieth Century. The Twentieth Century. Sometimes I try saying those dates out loud: Nineteen ought-five. Nineteen twenty-four. Nineteen ninety-eight. That nineteen just doesn't… doesn't fit in the mouth, somehow. The Twentieth Century! Lord, I don't belong in any Twentieth Century, but I'm being dragged into it, willy-nilly!'
'I don't see what we can do about it. I think a body should save his worrying for things he can do something about.'
'What do you worry about, then?'
'I don't know.' He shrugged. 'Well, God and sin and hell, of course. But I suppose everybody worries about that.'
'Not me.'
'You don't?'
'No. I'm not even sure there is a hell. And even if there is, it can't be for little things like stealing cookies, or sassing your pa, or daydreaming about… you know, about loving and kissing and all. I mean, God just can't be that
