The transcontinental bus slowed with much howling protest of brakes, the big wheels churning up dust and pulling a gritty cloud along in the turbulent wake. The bus overshot the desert gas station by a hundred feet before hissing air flung the front doors open with a thump and a full stop was made. Jim Pettenger stepped down into ankle-deep adobe dust. The driver eased the bus into motion again. A swirling cloud of dust and paper and grimy bits of cotton debris stirred up by the bus rolled over Jim, choking him.
Cursing the driver, the countryside, and the fact that he had not dared ride on into the city, Jim ducked his head and waited out the blow. When it had passed he beat some of the dust out of his hat and clothes. It flew in fine, powdery clouds, musty smelling and hot, telling of long months without rain.
Jim stared around him, squinting his eyes to shut out some of the glare of the afternoon desert sun. Before and behind the highway stretched shining and straight, alive with the hurtling beetles of passenger cars and the ponderous thundering of trucks. At the far end of the highway behind him was Claire. And three bitter, strife-ridden years with Claire that had ended with him getting off the bus here in the middle of nowhere.
Strangely, out of those three years the only memory he had of her was that last shocked look of terror, the sound still sharp in his ears of her whining, pleading; the eerily fascinating sight of blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. That and the numb ache in his hands that he had begun to feel only after he had hit her that once. Jim had not seemed to feel in his hands the pounding he had given Pelton. He had struck blindly at Pelton long after the man had quit defending himself. Had kept pounding until the face was a pulp of bruised, battered flesh. And then he had held Pelton up and pounded him some more around the ribs and belly and hadn't stopped until he finally heard Claire's frantic screaming. He had hit her then, just once, but solidly, in a way that brought blood trickling from her mouth.
A hell of a memory to carry away as the only clear picture from three years of marriage. But it was typical. It was the scene they had been building up to all that long time. It was the picture that had pushed him off the bus at this little flag stop miles before the city where police might be watching the terminals.
Claire would undoubtedly have the police after him by now. Whether they would reach across state lines on an assault charge he didn't know. But he had no intention of finding out the hard way. He realized he was lucky that he hadn't killed one or both of them. The police, at any rate, had to be avoided at all costs.
Jim picked up his small bag and started walking. At the gas station, the nominal stop, one man, a young Mexican, was on duty to catch any trade that might pull in. From the crusted, sagging looks of the place Jim guessed the one man might well be one more than was needed.
The Mexican regarded him uncuriously, laconically gave him directions. Si,,this was the town of Conroy. Well, not the whole town. The rest of the town she sat mile and a half down that road. A brown arm pointed, and Jim followed the gesture with his eyes. Far down the road, paved but scarred with heavy use, Jim could see the signs of a town. A round steel tank sat up high on the horizon atop steel tripod legs, the name Conroy blazing in orange letters against the aluminum painted sides. The town water supply. Lower a line of tamarisk trees cut a dusty green line across an open field. Beyond them the roofs of houses, a silo, the bulge of taller buildings and a haze of dust that indicated traffic. Jim tossed his gracias over his shoulder and headed toward the town. His watch told him it was nine-thirty.
Conroy boasted one paved street. The main road through town was blacktopped, all cross streets were unpaved and dusty. One hotel, a bank, a few stores, a movie theatre, three gas stations and half a dozen bars comprised the business assets of the town. The cultural assets, if any, were not obvious. Jim checked his lone bag at a pay locker that stood in front of the hotel. The long walk had made him thirsty so he went into the hotel bar.
The bar was plushier than Jim had expected. Dimly lighted, it sported a long mahogany bar, a huge mirror over the back bar, and big, leatherette upholstered booths. It startled Jim to see the evidence of so much money in the little town.
When his eyes adjusted to the gloom he was startled again. The last item he expected to see there at that time of morning was a good looking woman. That the town sported even one was the third surprise of the morning. This one at the bar lapping up straight whiskey out of a tall glass wasn't just good looking. She was a one woman riot of sex appeal.
Besides being strikingly beautiful in a dark, immaculately groomed way, she seemed to be trying for a prize for unusual clothes. She wore cotton white frontier pants, pink cowboy boots, a crisp white stetson and a pink silk shirt. The shirt was open all the way down the front, with the tails gathered and tied together, leaving a bare midriff. The effect was one of a neckline plunging all the way to her ankles. She rather obviously wore no brassiere under the shirt. From the portions of her anatomy plainly visible when she leaned forward over the bar, she needed none. The uplift was natural and genuine. The sight gave Jim an uplift of his own. It there was one thing his three sterile years with Claire had given him, it was an appreciation of women-other women.
"Beer," Jim told the bartender, and he tried to keep his eyes away from her. It was like trying to keep a compass needle from pointing to a nearby magnet. No matter how he tried he couldn't help looking, and no matter how casually he looked he could see practically everything except the nipples. He felt that if he were sitting next to her there would be no secrets at all.
The bartender nudged Jim. "The lady's talking to you." he said, frowning.
Jim started. He had been concentrating so hard on keeping his eyes away from her, he hadn't noticed that she had spoken to him.
"I said," she repeated, and her voice was throaty and low and exciting in its own right, "that the bar does not seem very crowded."
Jim agreed that it was not. He fought down an impulse to take the hint and go sit beside her. Instead he remained where he was, though he was able to study her more openly now that she sat up straight. It was still bad enough, but the exposure was not quite so blinding. Now that the picture had cooked down it appealed more to the artist than to the man in him.
"Come on over and sit by me," the woman said, almost petulantly. She regarded him openly and frankly, and her blue eyes were laughing at him. To prove she knew what his trouble was, she hitched her shoulders a little and pointed at him with both beams high. Then she laughed with her lips too, and the effect was that of a bomb splintering somewhere inside Jim.
Jim looked at the bartender. The man's placid round face was expressionless, but the eyes said "No" very distinctly. Jim poked out a bill, directed the bartender to give the woman another of the same as she had. He stood before Jim to pour, then carried the glass down to her. When he returned Jim shoved some of the change back for the bartender, and engaged him in small talk. Jim's actions said very, very politely that he was not interested in finding any little friends this A.M.
He talked himself into forgetting about her as well as he could, and thought he was doing well until he noticed a subtle change in the air around him. The bartender's face remained happily immobile, but the dark eyes flicked a tiny bit to one side. Her scent was delicate, barely noticeable, but pleasantly exciting in an evanescent, elusive sort of way. Jim knew without turning his head that she was sitting next to him now.
"Playing hard to get?"
"I'm not playing. I sat too close to a beautiful woman, once, and I got bit."
"For a left-handed compliment that was rather sweet."
Jim sighed. He turned and looked her full in the face. The effect was like having someone hit him a stiff blow over the heart. The years with Claire had been largely frustrating, sharpening rather than satiating his hungers. And now this. Close up she was lovelier than he had imagined. It was strange, he thought. A guy never learns. One look at this and he knew he was ready all over again. She laughed, and he knew his swift, knifing hunger was in his eyes.
"My name is Gloria."
"Paul," Jim lied. "Paul Peterson."
"Traveling through?"
"I thought I might stay."
"That could be delightful."
It could be, Jim agreed silently. It really could be. He swept her with a bold gaze. Jim ordered another beer. His throat was suddenly dry. He pushed most of the change from the dollar back to the bartender, and the sight of the money brought a glimmering of sanity back to him. Without counting he knew that he had perhaps twenty-five dollars in his wallet. That and a little bit of silver.
Twenty-five bucks, he told himself, wouldn't even buy a good taste of a dish like this. And when that was gone he was a bum, with no more available until he got a job of some sort.
Just pull out of it son, he told himself. You're next to broke, have no job, know no one here and are hiding from a very possible search of the law. If you're smart, you'll leave the pretty little toys alone.
The trouble was, Jim knew, he wasn't smart. He itched to reach over and grab one of the pretty toys just to see if they were as smooth and soft as they looked. All the while the bartender with the placid, happy face was saying "no" with his eyes. Jim tried not to ignore the friendly warning, but he was losing ground fast.
When the storm broke Jim knew he should have realized. A peach like Gloria would not be hanging from the tree just waiting to be plucked by the first passerby. Some farmer would surely be standing by with a loaded shotgun to use on poachers. The farmer came in with fire in both eyes.
He wasn't too big a man, but he carried what he had with authority. And he was a farmer. It showed, from the neat forest green of his frontier pants to the saffron cowboy boots and the flamboyant pearl buttoned western shirt; from the precisely spectacular Zuni Indian belt buckle, to the big green Stetson he was farmer. The big kind of farmer that Arizona grows. The cotton and alfalfa and lettuce and cantaloupe farmer. The farmer who has taken barren desert land and turned it into one of the richest agricultural areas in the world. And this farmer was mad because his peach was hanging too far over the fence.
Jim tensed, ready to slip off the stool quickly if he saw he had a fight on his hands. But the farmer paid little attention to him. He went straight to Gloria and cuffed her alongside the head, as a bear might cuff an unruly cub. Gloria blanched, fell half off the stool, but caught herself in time and slipped to the floor still standing. She faced the man with fury and hatred in her eyes, her mouth working silently.
"Son of a bitch, I can't turn my back thirty minutes without you pick up some tramp in the nearest bar!" he growled at her. "And that damn rig you're wearing, it's a wonder you haven't got a dozen swarming around. What are you trying to do-pick up a little extra change on the side?"
"Oh!" Gloria's speechlessness left her long enough to get that one sound out. She swung a roundhouse blow at the man, but he caught both of her arms and twisted until she went down on one knee, pleading with him to let her up.
Jim felt sudden anger flare within him. Whoever the guy was, and whatever reasons he had, he had no right to maul her around like that before strangers. If he had to pound on her, it was a job to do in private. Deliberately Jim cocked a fist and drove it into the man's pink, fat face. The farmer let go of the woman, and staggered back several steps. Jim tried to step forward to follow up, but he couldn't move. The bartender had hold of both of Jim's arms, between elbow and shoulder, and had him pinned back against the bar.
The farmer bellowed once, and Jim thought he was going to charge with head lowered, like an angered bull. But when he saw that Jim was pinned he got hold of himself.
"Mister," the farmer said, "I don't know who you are, and I don't care to. But just let me give you this advice. Get right on back where you came from, or either keep on moving to where you're going. Just don't let me catch you hanging around my wife or my town again." Then with Gloria in tow he stormed out of the bar. The bartender let Jim loose.
"He sounded like he meant it," Jim said.
"It was good advice," the bartender said, his face still happily placid.
Jim considered the advice for a moment. His town, and his wife. Since that was the way it was he would probably be smart to take the advice, much as it rankled him. But the thought of his meager twenty-five dollars told him he was in no position to take it even if he wanted to. He might go as far as the city, twenty miles farther on, but-
"Any chance of getting a job in this town?" Jim asked
"Not now."
"I see. Well, what does a man do for a living in this part of the country, anyway?"
"Well, it depends on how proud a man is."
Jim considered. "I'm not proud," he said.
"If you ain't proud, you pick cotton right now. Hard work, back breaking work, sometimes. But it's honest, if that's what you want."
Jim agreed that was what he wanted. The bartender surveyed him carefully for a time. "Running from something?"
"Maybe."
"The law, maybe?"
"You're getting personal."
"I have to. Look. I like you. Don't ask me why. Maybe because you're the first guy to lay out a tip in six months. Maybe because of the way you handled yourself with Gloria.
I don't know. But a guy, when he's broke, and ain't proud, and running maybe from the law for some little thing-" he eyed Jim's hands which were bruised and still swollen and obviously still stiff from his fight with Pelton. "Well, a guy can sort of disappear around this country for awhile. If he ain't proud, that is."
"I said I wasn't."
The bartender gave Jim an address which he wrote on the back of a bar check. "You can get set up there. You won't like it. It's the worst. But nobody will bother you there if that's what you want, maybe."
"Maybe it's just what I want." He walked toward the curved green glass baffle door. Before he stepped out he turned and waved.
"Thanks, Buddy."
CHAPTER TWO
Jim took the local bus into the city. It was a small, rattly, hot affair that passed through Conroy every second hour. The schedule called for it to arrive on the dot of the even hours, but the bartender advised it could be as much as ten minutes early or twenty minutes late. This time it was twenty minutes late, so that Jim stood out in the morning sun half an hour waiting. His nerves baked along with his skin in the rising heat. The jolting, slow trip into the city did little to improve his temper.
In the city he transferred to still another bus, and rode it to the end of the line, then walked a mile of burning hot, dusty road. His goal was a pillar of dreary smoke and a stench of burning trash. The "Village" skirted the county dump.
Each step of the way Jim asked himself what he was doing there. Hours ago-how long? Only a day ago?-he had been in Los Angeles, trying his best to mind his own business, working at a regular job, hoping and planning for the future. And now he was a tramp, on the road in fact if not in spirit, headed for some dreary place and a mysterious friend of a bartender he had never seen before that morning. Headed for a place where he could supposedly find shelter and honest work if he was not "proud."
Jim stood near the edge of the Village and he knew he would have to be less than not proud. The Village stretched away before him, two or three blocks in area, a scattered, sorry vista of shacks and trash and junk. There were piano box shacks and scrap wood shacks and lean-tos made of old metal signs. Here and there a ragged canvas tent sagged forlornly, dirty and oppressive looking under the baking of a straight overhead sun. In some cases old auto bodies showed signs of slovenly occupation, and other places a cloth canopy of posts cast a dreary patch of shade that was some person's only shelter.
Shanty Town.
Only Shanty Town was too glorious a name for it. It was the dump. A corner of the dump scraped out with some of the junk piled up here and there for people to live in and under and around. Jim felt sick, and he didn't know for sure if it was the heat or the sight before him.
While he stared a dust devil came to life in one of the "streets". It swirled briskly for a moment, gathering powdery dust and leaves and cigarette butts to the heart of its swirling cone. Then, as if discouraged, it dropped them and vanished back to wherever it had come from. Jim knew he ought to do the same. Take the next bus going somewhere, anywhere. Vanish. But where?
After all, that was why he had come here. To vanish for a time from the eyes of the world he knew. This seemed like a good place to do it. No one would ever look for Jim Pettenger in a place like this. Not Jim. Once in there he would be just another derelict, uncared for or about.
"You won't like it," the friendly bartender had said. "It ain't the Ritz." But a guy could disappear there, if he wasn't proud. Jim recalled saying he was not proud. He fought down the temptation to close his eyes as he crossed the invisible boundary between the city and the Village.
"Where can I find the 'Mayor'?" Jim asked an old fellow. The old man sat in the shade of an old car body, fiat down in the dirt with no chair, sprawled like a fat toad. Jim wondered if the stink of soured garbage came from around the old man, or if it was just a part of the whole delightful aroma of the dump around them. The old man spat a stream of tobacco juice, boiling up a little eruption of dust where it hit. "Down thataway a piece. Place with the big beer sign for a door. Cain't miss hit."
"Thanks."
"You new here?" Curiosity managed as near as had anything for a long while to form an expression on the whiskered face.
Jim knew how he must look. A fairly good suit, carrying a bag that was genuine leather and soft looking despite its age, a felt hat in this country where even straw was a burden, though vital, on a hot day. "Just visiting." It sounded inane.
"Oh." The curiosity fled, the face again took on the expressionless attitude of the fat toad.
Jim picked his way carefully along in the direction indicated. There were more people now than when he had first stopped only minutes ago. Several drifted in from the direction he had come. Looking back he could see more, mostly men, climbing down from a covered truck. No one paid much attention to him, except to throw him an occasional curious glance.
Soon enough he found the place. It was a larger shack than most, maybe ten feet square, with most of the chinks between boards carefully covered with flattened tin cans nailed down tight. It had a porch of sorts, fashioned of old bricks laid out in a neat herringbone pattern and mortared with clay. An outside cooking pit, also of brick, stood to one side. The door marked the shack unmistakably as the one he was directed to. The door, once a long, narrow sign, stood up on end now, neatly fastened to the frame with leather hinges. In yellow and blue letters on a red background it said that the local beer was the best yet to come out of the west. It was closed.
Jim knocked somewhat reluctantly. There was no answer, so he knocked again, louder.
"Around here! Around to the side," a voice called out.
Jim followed the sound. He stepped around the corner of the shack. A thin, darkly sunburned man about Jim's height but forty pounds lighter and ten to fifteen years older stood toweling his face briskly and regarding Jim appraisingly. The man's hair was straw colored, and as straight, his eyes almost colorless pale blue, his face thin, somehow delicate looking and lined with the soft sag of once-rich living. A chipped, grey enamel bowl stood on an up-ended apple box before him.
He had been washing in it. Water stained the ground darkly around the box in a splattered pattern.
"Are you-the Mayor?" The question seemed almost unnecessary. Jim knew from the man's demeanor that he would carry such a title.
"I am he," the man said, and his voice somehow carried that memory too, of once-rich living, of better days and nobler circumstances. Jim wondered what the man was doing here as "Mayor" of the shanty town.
"My name is Paul Peterson," Jim said, still careful to avoid his right name. "The bartender at the Gadsden hotel in Conroy sort of sent me. He said I could get quarters here. And a steer to some sort of work."
The Mayor finally finished his toweling. He poured the water from the basin around the roots of some castor bean plants at the side of the shack. Though he didn't answer immediately he wasn't rude. He seemed to be considering. "Well, we aren't accepting any new residents unless they can provide their own shelter. The housing shortage-" the Mayor grimaced-"is acute here in our little village."
"I see," Jim said, staring around. How did one provide their own shelter in a place like this? Scrabble around and pick up pieces of trash to make a shack, he supposed. Or dig a hole and crawl in, he thought ruefully.
"You say Corky sent you?" the Mayor asked.
"If that's his name."
"Hmmm."
Hmmm yourself, Jim thought. So the guy had meant well, but he had misjudged. Jim wondered desperately what to do next. He had to stay somewhere for the night, and time was slipping fast away.
"You running from something, Kid?" The voice was soft, personal, yet impersonal. A certain quality of it alerted Jim and he frowned, wondering again about the Mayor along quite different lines than at first.
"Do I look like a criminal?"
"What does a criminal look like?"
Jim couldn't help laughing. What, indeed?
"From women trouble, perhaps?"
That quality of the voice struck Jim again. He stared openly at the Mayor. His gaze was returned quite impersonally. Jim supposed he must be wrong.
"Yes, women trouble," he heard himse'f saying. He looked at his hands, bruised and puffy, with jagged cuts still unhealed. The Mayor was looking at them too, he knew.
"Maybe we can find room for you, after all."
"You can?" Jim felt momentary hope.
"I call this the Village of the Lion and the Lizard, though for sake of brevity and understanding we shorten it to the Village. You can stay if you wish. We can fit one more into our little manse. That is, if you don't mind sleeping double."
Oh, oh, here it comes, Jim thought, hope vanishing. So he had not been wrong after all.
"You'll have to sleep with The Mall. He's big, crowds the bed, and hogs the covers. Otherwise quite a congenial chap. I sleep alone, by choice and in deference to my lofty position here."
Jim found it difficult to cover his confusion. The Mayor was certainly unpredictable. One moment he was telling Jim he could not stay, the next inviting him into his own personal quarters. One instant he seemed one thing, the next Jim cursed himself for the sin of confusing culture with effeminacy.
"I'm-very grateful," Jim said, sincerely.
"Good. A rare quality in these days and times. Cultivate it, but keep it pruned so that the flowers it grows are choice rather than profuse. And now, your new quarters."
The shack was not much by way of space, with little more than enough room for two very crude beds, a chair and a small table and an assortment of wooden boxes for drawers and cupboards. The beds were nothing but thin, tired old mattresses on crude board platforms. At that Jim realized they probably represented luxury compared to the usual standards of the Village. Crumpled quilts of ancient vintage lay on the mattresses.
"What do you need of covers in this heat?"
"One of the virtues of this climate and this season-and one might say one of the vices-is the radical change in temperature. Temperature varied fifty degrees in the last twenty-four hours. It gets quite cold, let me assure you."
Jim stood assured, but he wished the change would start. The shack was an oven, and he felt the stain under his arm pits spreading in ever widening circles. At long last he put down his bag, took off his suit coat, loosened his tie. He sat on the edge of the low bed and looked around. A sigh escaped him before he could control it.
The Mayor was laughing at him silently, with his eyes. The laughter was not unkind. "You'll get used to it."
"I suppose. By the way, what do I call you? The Mayor?"
"Good heavens! My manners. Allow me to introduce myself. My appellation is nominally Morton Curson. Sometimes called Mort. Better known as the Mayor and the Professor. I prefer to be called Prof. By my friends."
"O. K. Prof it is."
"Good. Excellent. May I suggest that perhaps you would care to orientate yourself in our Village while I finish my toilet? The Mall is out there somewhere, probably at Lula's. You may see him around. Later we plan to go to town. We would be pleased if you would accompany us."
Jim did not care to orientate himself particularly, but since the hint was so gentle he decided to oblige. He left the shack and wandered aimlessly around for a while. The Village was frantic with activity now. Every where he went men and women were washing dirt and grime from weary looking faces, combing their hair before scraps of mirrors, striving to brush, shake or pound some of the yellow-brown dust from their clothes. Saturday afternoon. Many others were apparently getting ready to go to town. Jim could not help but wonder what they did when they got there, but he supposed any change from the Village would be welcome.
A small, black dog yapped at his heels when he passed one sagging shack. He spoke quietly to it, and it wagged its rear end a few times and went back to lie in the shade. A straggly-haired, grimy child grabbed the dog's tail and twisted. It got up slowly and moved away. The child started throwing rocks at a red ant hole. An aged woman leaned out of a window and screamed at the child to stay away from the ants. The child threatened to throw a rock at the woman. Jim knew how he felt. Anything to break the oppressive feeling of dreary futility that shrouded the village.
The Village of the Lion and the Lizard, was it. They say the Lion and the Lizard keep the courts where Jamshyd gloried. Jim sighed again. The Prof was a strange man, all right. Very strange.
The sound of running water attracted Jim's attention. He paused in the middle of a lane between old car bodies and packing crates, listening. Unmistakably, it was splashing, running water. Where the devil, Jim asked himself, could there be running water in this stinking place? Before he could locate the source of the sound it stopped. He decided he must have imagined it, and started on again. The place was laid out roughly in streets and blocks, and he wanted to get an idea of the layout so he could find his way back again should he be out after dark.
Again the gurgling of running water attracted him. This time he knew for certain it was running water. "Well, I'm damned," he muttered. "This I have to see."
The sound was coming from behind a shack of aged, grey, unpainted pine planking. Nearly as big as the Prof's shack, it too stood out among its neighbors. One of the better homes, Jim told himself. He went on behind the shack. A three-sided booth stood there, constructed of three sheets of corrugated iron about seven feet high nailed to a frame of light timbers. On the roof of the shack stood a fifty gallon steel drum. From the bottom of the drum a pipe led out over the open top of the booth and spilled water down inside. Dirty brown water seeped from under the bottom of the booth and spread in widening puddles.
Jim stepped around to look inside the booth, his curiosity getting the better of him. He found the booth was an improvised shower bath. In the bath was a woman, quite good looking in a hard, glossy sort of way. Except for lingering bits of soap suds, she was quite naked.
Jim stared. The moment seemed stretched out, elongated like a piece of taffy pulled thinner and thinner. He stood rooted, unable to move, waiting for her to scream, or to say something. She was rather pretty, Jim thought. Her eyes were wide and brown, startled now, her hair, wet from the shower, shone glossy black. The lithe, young body was slender, mostly white except where sun had tanned arms and neck and legs in an irregular pattern. The breasts, ripe and pendant, were dewy with spots of water and somehow were twice as interesting for that. She was young, not more than eighteen probably, but fully possessed of the voluptuousness of a mature woman.
Finally she screamed. The yell was commanding rather than hysterical, and Jim knew it was directed to some nearby male.
"Sorry," he said, inanely. "Uh-sorry." He turned to leave. The way was blocked by a wall of human flesh. All in one piece. The man confronting him seemed incredibly wide and tall. A tower of muscle and bone. Jim got no impression of the man's face except for an expression of anger. Then he saw the bomb coming.
Jim raised his hands to try to protect himself. He managed to ward off the first blow, and he struck out himself once, a solid drive to the midsection. His fist bounced off solid flesh, throbbing with pain. It was like hitting a board fence with his bare hand.
The big man's second blow landed, glancing along the side of Jim's jaw. Jim reeled backward, his face a sheet of flame. The force of the blow carried him into the corrugated iron with a crash which stunned him for a moment. He slid down in a heap, inches away from the spreading water. He could not have got up if he had wanted to, and would not have wanted to if he could have. When he managed to open his eyes Jim saw that his assailant was paying no more attention now that he was down.
"Sonamubitch," the big man said. "I can't turn my back but what you got guys panting after you."
That, Jim thought, is the second time I have heard that exact sentiment today.
"Shut up," the girl said, "and hand me that towel and my dress." They left soon afterward. It was a little longer before Jim was able to pick himself up. He went back to the shack where he hoped he would be able to stay out of woman trouble for a while.
CHAPTER THREE
The Prof laughed when he saw Jim's bruised and dusty condition. "You seem well orientated."
"Anything I may have missed was driven home to me." Jim explained how he had curiously discovered the outdoor shower bath.
"Ah, yes, one of the little refinements I arranged for the Smyths. Those ladies are a little fastidious, so I designed that crude but rather effective shower. The Mall does most of the work involved with it. To him falls the task of keeping the drum filled with water. No small labor, I may hasten to explain. As for myself, while I aspire toward a modicum of godliness through cleanliness, I do find a bucket of water and a sponge quite adequate."
Jim nodded absently. He was only half listening to the Prof ramble on. The vision of the girl there in the shower kept coming back to his mind. She had been quite shapely and certainly lacking any modesty. Looking back, Jim wondered why it had taken her so long to scream. His mind began to sort out the memory pieces then, and the puzzle made a neat picture when completed. He was quite sure, now that he thought carefully about it, that she had not even screamed until after the big man appeared. That seemingly long moment had actually been several moments while she calmly let him look her over.
"You say it was probably a girl by the name of Smith?"
"Undeniably. Smyth, with a 'y' rather than an 'i'. Besides being the only shower in the Village, the Smyth girls are the only specimens in camp with any desire to wash. A remarkable family. Entirely lacking in certain of the moral virtues, but they do understand the value of a well scrubbed epidermis."
While he talked the Prof was scraping patiently away at his whiskers with a worn old safety razor. His face was still half covered with lather, which he renewed frequently with a bar of bath soap. The mirror he used, while streaked with a long feather of black, was whole and uncracked. Jim guessed the mirror itself must be a rare specimen in the Village.
The bed felt good. Jim kicked off his shoes and stretched out, his hands cradled under his head for a pillow. For a little while he closed his eyes to shut out the sight of the unpainted, stark walls of the shack. It was very quiet in the shack, with only the scrape of the razor and the occasional splashing of water on metal as the Prof rinsed soap from the blade. Jim could hear his own breathing, heavy and harsh. He could feel sweat forming under his eyes and running slowly down his cheeks.
Outside the thin yapping of a dog went on monotonously. It was broken for a moment by deep, baritone laughter, and a high pitched feminine squeal. Jim opened his eyes. Through the open door he could see two colored men, shuffling along, large rolled-up bundles of cloth under their arms. A chocolate girl, statuesque and appealing in a flamingo pink cotton dress walked backwards before them, her flat heels kicking up puffs of ochre dust. She said something Jim could not hear, and the men laughed again in rich, round tones. Then they were out of his sight, and silent, and the yapping dog dominated the thick air again.
Jim closed his eyes again. He was tired, physically and emotionally run down. And worst of all, he felt terribly lonely. Lonely and ill at ease. What was he doing here, actually, he asked himself for the hundredth time. He was not a part of this scene. True, he was in it, but he was not of it, he did not belong to it. An intruder. An observer, or at best a visitor. Hell, he knew damn well why he was there. He was a fugitive. He had no choice.
The heat pressed around him. He stirred fitfully, threw one arm over his eyes to keep out the light. A sigh crept away from him.
"There is some water in that jar, if you would care to sponge off your face. Or we could arrange a bucket bath without too much difficulty if you feel the need," the Prof said.
Jim stirred again, sat up. He wondered if he had dozed. For just a moment there he had felt comfortable. He must have been asleep to feel comfortable in this oven. "Thanks. It might help to wash my face and hands. Change into some lighter clothes." And after that-what? Lounge on the bed and wait for-what? He shook his head to clear away the hot fog. Snap out of it. He had to snap out of this stupid mood. He had brought this on himself, he had to make the best of it.
"Have you decided to join us at our weekly wassail? We're off to town soon to blow the week's wages. Care to join us?"
Jim hesitated. He had little money to "blow" as the Prof so uncharacteristically put it. But then, if he did not, what? An afternoon sitting here by himself? No, thanks. "I would like to, thanks," he said.
At that moment the beer-sign door scraped farther open, and the harsh light from behind framed the bulk of a huge man. He looked like a big wrestler straight off the TV screen. The man stood a good six feet four, and Jim guessed his weight to be anywhere from two-sixty to two-eighty. He looked tremendously strong, though there already was an obvious tendency for the muscles to go to fat. His face and head were almost round, with the effect heightened by a crew cut of the straight, mud-brown hair. The eyes were mild blue, the face freckled heavily.
Jim sat up suddenly, expecting trouble. It was the man who had hit him for breaking in on the girl in the shower.
"Ah, The Mall enters," the Prof said. "Mall, meet our new companion. Kid, meet The Mall." The Prof was carefully knotting a tie before the mirror, and he made the introduction without looking away from it.
"Hi," said The Mall.
"Hi," Jim replied uneasily. "You moving in with us, huh?"
"Yes."
"Swell. Maybe you won't talk like no dictionary, huh?"
"Probably not." Jim began to relax. The Mall obviously recognized him, but he didn't seem mad at all. He seemed quite friendly, in fact. That was a relief. If he was supposed to live with this giant he ought to be on good terms with him.
"You going in town with us?"
"I guess so."
"Good. Maybe you can help keep the Prof here out of trouble." The Mall laughed bellowingly. Jim supposed it was some sort of a private joke. "He gets hot for the dames and there ain't no stopping him."
Jim laughed too. The Mall seemed so delighted with the idea of the Prof getting hot after dames that he couldn't stop laughing for a time. When he did calm, Jim ventured an apology.
"I'm sorry I busted in on-uh-your girl like that. I didn't realize-"
"Fergit it. No harm done. Fergit it."
Jim rubbed his jaw and wished he could forget it. Spiritually it was forgotten and forgiven. But that bruise would be there for a while to come.
"Crise, man, you'll need a brooming if you're going into town with we gents. I gotcha dirty when I knocked you down there, huh?"
Jim felt himself hauled to his feet, and a moment later The Mall was stirring up a great cloud of dust, brushing down Jim's suit with a whisk broom. There was little to do but submit.
At the Smyth shack Mrs. Maude Smyth and Lula and Tillie Smyth were also dressing to go to town. Lula sat by the window, a towel around her shoulders to protect the view from passers-by, drying her hair. Tillie had just come in from the shower, and she stood in the center of the floor, drying herself. Maude sat on the edge of a bed, waiting. Not having worked that morning she was dressed and ready ahead of the girls.
"There's a new man in camp," Lula said. "Black or white, or does it make any difference to you?" Tillie said.
"White." Lula chose to ignore the insinuation. "Not only that, he likes me."
"How do you know?"
"He saw me in the shower, and took plenty of time looking. I could see he liked me."
Maude cackled. Tillie giggled. Caught in the spirit of the laughter, Lula laughed too.
"Any man would look at you in the shower, dope. That doesn't prove he likes you."
"It does so, and they would not. The Prof has seen me in the shower before, and he don't even look."
"I think the Prof must be queer then," Tillie said.
"The Prof is not either queer, is he Mom?" Lula shot the question to her mother.
Maude cackled again. "He says the sight of a naked woman is revolting to him. But I ain't never seen him so queer he wouldn't go to bed with me."
"See?"
Tillie shrugged. She put one bare foot up on a chair and carefully dried between the toes. "Anyway, what has this got to do with the new man?"
Lula found a comb and went to sit by the mirror. She began putting her long black hair up in curls. Maybe she shouldn't tell them any more about the new man. Maybe she should have kept it all to herself anyway. No use inviting competition. She could still remember how he had looked at her there. No mistaking, he had thought she had it. She had been just about to ask him if he wanted to bite the left one, or would he rather just stand there and stare, when The Mall came up from behind. She had to scream to cover up. Then that big ape hit the poor guy so hard he was probably scared clear away. But if he was in camp she would find him again. Next time she would see that The Mall wasn't around.
"You better lay him quick, before some one else gets to him," Maude advised seriously.
"I will. Before Tillie here gets to him."
"Oh! I wouldn't touch any of these shanty town oafs!"
"Get her, Lula. What's good enough for us ain't good enough for her, sure enough."
"I knew it. Just kidding her, but she can't take a joke."
For awhile then the three women were silent. Lula finished putting up her hair. She rummaged around in an old suitcase and found some rayon panties and a bra. She slipped into the panties first. They were sheer. Time and wear had made them sheerer. But they were something. Maybe she and Maude could pick up some new stuff in town today. She almost hated to put on the bra. She would rake a bigger harvest of popping eyeballs if she left it off. But the damn cotton dress hurt her breasts too much without a bra under it. Reluctantly she slipped it on.
Maude was right, of course. She should find the new man and lay him quick, before someone else did. Not that Tillie would. Tillie was too square. But there were plenty of others that would, quick enough.
Lula went to the mirror and studied her face. Even in her present critical mood she decided that she was pretty. Not ravishing. She did not have even enough features for that. Tillie was the one that could be ravishing, if she just wanted to. But of course she never wanted to. It made Lula jealous to look over at Tillie and see the fine, natural beauty going to waste. Now if only she had that firm, short mouth, those grey eyes, the slightly tilted nose, by God she'd know what to do. But-what the hell. She was pretty enough. Plenty pretty enough. All the men she wanted, too, by God.
Across the room Tillie felt Lula's stare. With a flounce she discarded her towel and walked naked across the room. It would make Lula mad, she knew, so she went over to her suitcase and dug after something she knew wasn't there. Though she didn't use her body like Lula did, she knew Lula was secretly jealous of her. It infuriated Lula that, although Tillie was two years younger, her body was just as well developed. Better, in fact, because where Lula's breasts had already begun to droop a little from their own weight, Tillie's stood right up and pointed out straight.
Tillie could feel Lula's eyes still on her. And Maude's too, for that matter. But of course Maude wasn't jealous. She was admiring. Maude always said that Tillie was built just like Maude used to be when she was a girl. Even though she wasn't Maude's own true daughter, Maude always said Tillie was her favorite because she was built just like she used to be when she was a girl. Tillie stood in the middle of the room and stretched, running her hands over her body, up under her breasts. Lula looked away, angered, and Tillie laughed to herself.
But the moment vanished soon enough. When Lula was not looking there was no point in showing off. She certainly wasn't going around selling her body like Lula was. Nor was she about to. One of these days now, she would be getting out of this life, away from this rotten, slovenly way of living in a shanty on the dump, of picking cotton for a bare living and being dependent on Lula's and Maude's money half the time for little favors.
If Daddy Smyth hadn't died she wouldn't be living this kind of life now. None of them would. If he hadn't died they would still be back on the big, comfortable farm in Missouri. If-if-they were here. He had died. But she wouldn't stay forever, the way Maude and Lula seemed bent on doing. Somehow, some way, she would get away from this.
She was pretty. Once a boy had even told her she was beautiful. Of course right after that he had slipped his hand up under her dress. She had hit him a good strong wallop and he had gone away mad and not come back. But still, he had said she was beautiful, and it had set her to studying the mirror to see if it was true. And Lula had always said she would be pretty nice if she would fix herself up. But that way she was afraid she would attract too much attention. So she stayed plain. Later, when she got away from this kind of life, she could fix herself up. If she really was beautiful it wouldn't be too late then to find out. Would it?
Tillie sighed and reached for her clothes. She might as well dress and go into town with Maude and Lula. Anything for a change. Anything to get away from this place for awhile.
A scraping noise behind her startled Tillie. She whirled around. The door suddenly quit its harsh scraping across the dirt floor and crashed open with a jar. The Mall stooped and ducked quickly inside. "Hey, ain't you people ready to go yet? The bus-" His big jaw dropped open and his eyebrows raised in pleasure when he saw Tillie standing there naked.
Tillie shrieked, clutched her dress before her. "Get out of here, you big oaf! Didn't you ever hear of knocking?"
"Aw, horsh, what's chewing you? You think I ain't never seen no naked dames before?"
"Oh! You get out of here!" Tillie forgot her modesty long enough to pound The Mall about the shoulders and face with tiny fists. The Mall backed off, and Tillie slammed the door in his face. Then she hurried to get into panties and bra, slipped the dress over her head.
Glaring toward the far wall Tillie could see a big blue eye peering at her through a chink in the wall. She looked desperately around for something to throw, but nothing came quickly to hand. When she pulled her dress down around her legs the eye went away. Tillie would have thought it funny if she hadn't been so outraged. As it was she couldn't stifle a small giggle. The big jerk was like a little kid.
"Aching foot, are you two ever going to get ready?" Maude complained. "We'll miss that bus and have to wait another two hours."
"I'm hurrying. Tell Tillie, she's the one."
I'm always the one, Tillie thought. Anything is wrong, tell Tillie, tell Tillie. God. "I'm practically ready. All I have to do is wash off my feet and put on my shoes. What about you. You're still combing your hair!"
"Oh, relax. If we miss that crumby Conroy bus, so what? I found we can take the big, air conditioned California-bound bus and they'll let us off at Conroy for near the same price."
Tillie didn't answer. She put on her shoes and went to sit on the edge of the bed with Maude. There, in a pose of exaggerated patience, she sighed slowly and deeply until at last all three of them were ready to go.
CHAPTER FOUR
The main trouble with Conroy was, it stank. It generally always stank of something. In late spring and early summer it stank of the cooked beets smell than hung bitter in the air after the cotton was dusted. In late summer it stank of cantaloupes rotting in the fields. Fall brought the crop-dusting stink again when cotton was defoliated, though this was different than the first and too elusive an odor to name. When the gins were running there was another odor, though it could hardly be called a stink by any but the most ironclad bitcher. Sometimes, if you didn't know, you would swear a mammoth bakery was turning out fresh bread somewhere nearby. The gins. They fooled you that way sometimes.
Conroy had two big gins nearby, running day and night during the height of the season. The big, clumsy looking cotton trailers would be lined up, bursting and dripping with their puffy cargo, waiting their turn. Eventually they would, one by one, take their place under the snozzling vacuum snout that whisked the load off to the innards of the gin. The gin would strip out the seeds, bale the cotton in massive, clumsy jute bound bales. If sometimes the gin managed to smell like a big bakery few persons ever complained.
Except the Prof, that is. Morton Curson, alias the Professor, alias the poet, alias the brain, alias-too many to recall since they all signified the same thing, hated loud smells. Even good smells, if they were strong, he disliked. He called them violent odors, and wrinkled his thin nose, and minced somewhat in their presence and made the people wonder about him.
The Prof preferred delicate odors, such as the scent of fresh cut alfalfa, of recently plowed earth. Elusive smells such as the tiny damp in the air before a rain. He wasn't an earthy man by nature, but he liked these smells because they were delicate.
Of course he liked the crisp, heady odor of good whiskey. The Prof often said he was queer for the smell of good whiskey. The expression may have been an unfortunate one, because of course it made people wonder what else he might be queer for. If asked he might well say he was queer for cold beer on a hot day. It was a favorite expression of his. Anything he liked well he said he was queer for.
The Prof, The Mall and Jim got off the bus at Conroy late in the afternoon. There had been some delay and difficulty in making connections with the various busses. It had been a temptation to stay in the city, but the city was too well policed to suit them. So finally they had taken the bus to Conroy as originally planned.
Main street was a river of human activity. Automobiles filled the road seemingly bumper to bumper, and people swarmed the sidewalks and the stores, spilling over the curbs into the streets and complicating an already serious traffic problem. The sun still hung hot and heavy overhead, unseasonably hot for the time of year, though a perverse wind had blown up a vast pall of dust to haze over the sky.
The Prof stood on the corner, two steps from where the bus had left him, and gestured with a wide, vague circling of his arm. "This is Conroy, my boy. The town of stinks."
"I've seen it," Jim replied uneasily.
"So you have. I forgot."
"Maybe we shounta come here, what with the Kid's trouble, huh?"
The Prof shrugged, frowned deeply to indicate his doubt that it mattered. "Where else to go? We could not stay in the city with any degree of freedom. Here we shall be unnoticed and indeed unnoticeable. Everyone comes here. Everyone who labors as beasts in the field, anyway. We shall be all right so long as we check any stray impulses to frequent the hotel bar.
And with little chance we should be served there, I daresay that will not be any insurmountable difficulty."
"He means it'll be O.K.," The Mall told Jim. "You'll understand him all right, once you get used to him."
"Thanks. I just hope he's right."
"I am always right. And right now I am positively queer for a cold beer. Do I hear a second to the motion?" The Prof cupped a hand to one ear and pantomined listening intently. 'To horse, then, and yon Ivy Tavern!"
The Prof's throat was unusually dry. The long, hot ride from the Village had been parching. And now, as usual, the stink of Conroy was hot in his nostrils. Dust stink this time. Always the damned dust. Dust lay in a gritty film on his teeth, coated his face and hands, glued his eyelids to his eyeballs.
"Stinking place," he muttered.
"I don't smell nothing."
"A pig farm. I distinctly smell a pig farm somewhere nearby."
"Same one you always smell. I keep telling you it's five miles away."
"Nevertheless I distinctly smell it." It was the cross he bore, that of the super-sensitive nose. The slightest odor, wafted across the miles by wind, and it reached him as a nauseating stench.
The Prof stood back and waited while Jim went on ahead and opened the door to the Ivy Tavern. When Jim held open the door the Prof went on in. It was against his principles to open a door if some one else would do it for him.
"Good Lord! The usual monumental collections of bizarre smells!" The Prof wrinkled his nose, looked around him. The Ivy Tavern was dimly lighted, noisy, smoky, smelly, dirty and busy. Somehow it seemed even more of all of these things than usual. There wasn't a single stool available at the bar, and numerous bunches of men and women stood two and three deep. All the booths along the wall flowed over with people. The Prof waited, frowning, until he saw a chance to edge in near the bar. Then he bought three beers and brought them back with him.
"Maybe we could get a seat somewhere else," Jim ventured. "Nah."
"Not likely. Every place will be crowded from now until closing. Saturday afternoon, my boy, and the cotton pickers are out in force. Running their desperate race against time. They have only a few hours, you see, to dispose of their week's wages, and they have to make the best use of them."
Jim said nothing in answer, but the Prof wasn't expecting one anyway. It never ceased to amaze him, somehow, this weekly debauchery, this mad, grimly intense pursuit of-of what? Of spending the last dime, as he had just phrased it? Perhaps, but it must be something more than that. Perhaps it was that after a week of slave labor, of having been cursed, villified, hounded, herded, pushed around, stolen from, cheated, slandered and barred from all society, they were drunk now. Drunk not on the liquor they consumed, but on the gratification of being the master for a change. Now with money in their pockets they were the almighty customer, who was always right. And they wanted to be good and right, fast and furiously right, so long as the money lasted.
The Prof took a long, burning pull at his beer bottle. The beer was hot. He laughed. No matter how right the customer was he couldn't make up for small cooling space that could not accommodate the demand. But, even hot, it was beer, and so good. "Hmmm?" The Mall was saying something.
"I said, what are we gonna do this afternoon?"
"Purely a rhetorical question, I presume. What do we do every Saturday afternoon?"
"Get drunk and go to Sallie Mae's place."
"Exactly. However this time, allow me to suggest a slight variation. Let us have a few beers, get something to eat, take in a movie, and then go to Sallie Mae's place."
"O. K. with me. We can get drunk there just as good. How about you, Kid?"
"Fine."
The Prof saw an opening at the bar when a group of people decided to leave. The departure left two stools empty, and he moved toward them, sat on one. The Mall offered the other to Jim. Jim offered it back again to The Mall and The Mall sat down.
The Prof laughed. "As I say, my boy, he possesses a heart of gold and the direct simplicity of a child." Jim smiled in answer and ordered three more beers.
The second beer went down easier than the first, and it seemed colder. It paved the way for a third round, it being The Mall's turn to buy. While they drank people came and went; there was a fast turnover now. It was still early, with stores open and the luxury available of daylight when no labor was required. Later that evening the really serious drinking would begin. This was just the warm-up.
The Prof studied the people around him for a time. A motley crowd. Tough, hard looking, hollow eyed men. Grey faced, flop breasted, dreary women. Here and there a Mexican woman with a sign of life about her, but ample braceros to keep her occupied. No colored people, of course. These washed out dregs of the white race had their superiority to protect.
"Heed not the rumble of a distant drum," the Prof said to no one in particular. He took another swig of his beer. "Well, boys, let's have one more round of beer before we go out."
They had another round, and then Jim bought a round, and then of course The, Mall had to buy. After that they sort of lost track of whose turn it was and whoever insisted the loudest bought the succeeding rounds. The beer began creeping up on the Prof, sending its long, warm fingers to massage away the ache in the small of his back, to still the burning in his eyes, and to quiet the violence of the smells of sweat and dirty bodies around him. The Prof began to wax poetic, and to recite from the works of his favorite poet.
"And those who stood before the tavern shouted, open, then, the door! You know how little while we have to stay, and once departed may return no more."
"Yeh, you said it," The Mall mumbled happily. "You really said it." Jim smiled and drank his beer and said nothing.
"A great philosopher," the Prof mused.
"Kipling, if I do remember," said the man on the stool to the left of the Prof.
He should never have turned around, and he knew it. There never would have been any trouble if he hadn't turned around. But he had to. The Prof had to turn around and fix the man with a cold stare. Who pulled his chain anyway?
The man was about the Prof's age, though larger, and showing his age more obviously. He wore a battered black Stetson over too long grey hair, Levis and cowboy boots and a shirt in which he had obviously picked cotton all week. He hadn't shaved for an indeterminable time. And he stank. That, more than his ignorance, was his real crime. He stank the sour bread smell of stale beer and of the throat closing, gagging stink of stale sweat.
"It was not Kipling."
"Sure it was."
"No." The Prof turned his back on the man. He raised his eyebrows in silent disapproval. "Shall we be moving on, gentlemen?"
"Nah. Let's have just one more beer before we leave." The Mall shoved out a handful of change. Reluctantly the Prof took the new bottle. "Tell me some more of that stuff, Prof. You know, the one I like-about the red roses."
"Ah yes. I sometimes think that never blows so red the rose as where some buried Ceasar bled-"
"Kipling, if I do remember," said the man in the black hat.
The Prof took a deep, patient breath. "You do not remember," he said, without turning around. "Where was I?"
"About the red roses."
"Oh, yes. I sometimes think-"
"Kipling."
"Well, I'm damned!"
"Maybe we'd better get out of here, Prof," Jim ventured. He had not said much, and now he spoke as if he had little hope of such a miracle coming to pass.
"Soon indeed."
"Kipling."
"No, by God!" The Prof swung on his stool to face the man angrily. "Then who?"
""You wouldn't know if I told you!"
"I'm an old college man."
"I don't care if you're-good lord, don't get so close to me!" The black hat was bobbing unpleasantly close to the Prof, the sour breath all but steaming his eyeballs. The Prof pushed him gently away. That was the Prof's second mistake of the day, and black-hat's last.
Black-hat swung on the Prof without even bothering to get off the stool. The blow caught the Prof on the cheek, and though it did not land very solidly or hard it bounced the Prof backwards. The Prof's head snapped The Mall's chin up, clicking his teeth together in the resulting collision. Shaking his head in anger the Prof drew his arm for a blow of his own, but it was too late.
The massive fist of The Mall struck out like a driving piston and caught black-hat square on the chin. The blow lifted the man off the bar stool and deposited him on his rear on the floor. When he made no move to get up The Mall picked him up, and hit him again. Again he did not get up so The Mall picked him up with his left hand, holding him by the front of the shirt, and hit him with his right. The Mall kept hitting him, swiftly, solidly. The lips cracked, turned red. The nose poured blood. Both eyes closed. The man hung like a limp doll and collapsed in a loose bundle on the floor.
It took less than a minute. Not too many people even noticed it had happened, it was over so quickly.
"Let's get the hell out of here," the Prof commanded. "The place will be bedlam in another ten seconds."
They got the hell out, and didn't even look back until they were a block down the street.
"Whatta we do now, huh?"
"I don't think we'd better try to go to that movie," Jim suggested.
"No, indeed. We will be a bit unpopular around the center of town for a while. And no one could very well miss this ox if they were looking for him."
"Oh, hell."
"Never mind. It was good work." The Prof did appreciate it. He was not one for fist violence, though on occasion he could take a swing.
"This doesn't seem to be our town today," Jim said.
"No. Well, we aren't run out yet. There is still one place to go."
"Sallie Mae's?"
"Indeed. Sallie Mae's. To horse, men, and yonder whore house!"
Sallie Mae couldn't work up quite enough enthusiasm to pretend she was glad to see them. "Lord, man, it's earlyl Why so frantic? Can't you wait?"
The Prof explained that it was a matter of expediency rather than a lack of control, and they were admitted. Sallie Mae ushered them through the kitchen, since they had applied at the back door, and into the barroom. There she served them beer, frostily welcome, and put some music on the record player. Soon enough the girls began drifting in.
The Mall took the first girl to appear and vanished upstairs with her. The Prof, more selective, chose a chunky redhead. He was not in such a hurry to leave the room, however, much preferring the luxury of the cold beer.
Jim would not choose a girl at all.
"Short of funds, my boy?" the Prof queried.
"Yeah. That's it. Pretty short."
"Nonsense. It's on me." Eventually the Prof led his girl up the stairs. Somewhat reluctantly Jim followed, with a blonde. Outside the sun still burned brazen in the afternoon sky.
CHAPTER FIVE
Maude Smyth, Lula and Tillie got off the big transcon bus on the highway just outside of Conroy. Maude was slow getting off. Her muscles were still a little stiff from the week's work. She hadn't been able to make much extra this last week, and had had to pick more cotton than usual. It wasn't good for the old bones, and she told herself that next week would have to be different. This picking cotton was for the birds.
Maude set both her wide feet firmly in the powdery dirt before she let go of the hand rails on the bus door. Then she turned and waved to the driver. He stared at the women a few more seconds, then shook his head, closed the doors and drove away. Maude cackled. She knew he had not minded her being slow to get down because he was taking his own sweet time looking over Lula and Tillie. Particularly Lula. Tillie was really prettier, of course, but Lula was the one who threw it around. It was comforting to an old woman's aching bones to have a good looking daughter who wasn't afraid to throw it around. Not afraid to let a man look at her and not afraid to look back. Tillie was her favorite, even if she was adopted, but it would be Lula who would look after Maude in her old age. There was no question about that.
"Well, we going to stand here in the heat all day? Let's start walking, if we're going to."
Maude waved her fingers in the air. "We ain't going to. Just wait a spell. Somebody'll give us a ride." The words were barely out of her mouth when a farmer in a pick-up truck offered them a ride into Conroy. Maude accepted, pushed Lula into the front seat. She and Tillie climbed into the back of the truck.
Lula had, for all practical purposes, stopped the ride for them. She had earned the comfortable ride into town.
An old tarp lay in the back. Maude folded it up and she and Tillie sat on it. The tarp cushioned some of the bumps. It couldn't do anything about the dust, though. Every car on the road stirred up its own tunnel of dust through which they had to ride. Maude held a handkerchief over her mouth and she was thankful the ride would be a short one.
When they neared town Maude tried sounding out Tillie a bit. "Are you going to help me in town today, girl?"
"Help you with what?" Tillie looked at her askance.
"With the shopping."
"Oh, Mom, you ain't-aren't going to pull that stunt here, are you?"
Maude was offended. "Certainly here. Why not? I ain't never done it here before."
"Well, I won't help, no. I won't even go near you. I don't want to go to jail."
"Nobody's going to jail. I got all the places figured out. And we can't miss."
"No, I won't."
"Well, you needn't ask for none of the things, then."
"I wouldn't have any of them."
"See you remember that tomorrow."
"I will."
Maude sighed. She would remember it, too. Tillie might look on with big eyes, and she might even wish she had some of the things, but she would never let on. And if anyone guessed and offered her some, she would refuse. Tillie wasn't quite bright that way. She had some awful funny ideas.
The old pick-up rattled to a stop. Tillie hopped out and helped Maude climb out, and then they stood in the street waiting.
Lula hadn't gotten out of the cab yet. She was talking earnestly with the farmer, her face happily alive with wide-eyed expression. When finally she opened the door and climbed out, it was slowly and awkwardly. The high step seemed to be too much for her to negotiate and she looked helplessly at the farmer. He shut off the motor, carefully pocketed the keys, and got out. Walking around the back of the truck he came to help her down.
When, with his help, Lula finally managed to step down she flashed a lot of white thigh. As Tillie said later, "she flashed thigh clear up to her neck." Tillie sniffed, Maude clucked approvingly, and the farmer turned beet red. Without a word he walked around the back of the truck, got in and drove off without looking back.
Lula looked after the truck, shrugged. "Christ, you never can tell. First I thought he was going to lay me right there in the front seat!"
"He didn't have an audience then," Tillie said.
Maude raised her eyebrows in surprise. Pretty good observation for the girl. How a man would act with and without an audience were two different things. Well, Tillie understood the ideas better than Lula did, but it was Lula who used the ideas. They'd both learn, given time.
"Audience-smaudience! Who got us the ride?"
"Take your dress clear off and you'd get a dozen rides-in a police car. So what?"
"Just because I ain't afraid to show a little of what I got, don't you go calling me names!"
"Who called you names?"
"You did, you the same as said I was a whore because I got that ride for us."
"Well, ain't you?"
"Oh, knock it off!" Maude commanded. The two girls quieted and Maude continued to glare at them, making sure she had them under control before she went on. "All right. Now we got work to do this afternoon. You two keep fighting and it'll be Dear John. Lula, button those top buttons so you won't attract so much attention for now. Tillie, if you won't help us the least you can do is keep your eyes peeled. If you think we been seen you take on off out the front door and don't look back. That way you can't get in trouble. You won't even be near us. And if we see you scoot out we'll drop the stuff and leave too. We can't miss."
Maude led them to the first store on her list. Cornblat's Mercantile Store, the big red and white sign said. The Best for Less at Cornblat's. Maude chuckled quietly. For less, all right. For a lot less than they thought.
Half a block from the store Maude stopped and briefed the girls one last time. "You, Lula. Get on in there and buy a few things. Be careful and shop smart, just in case, but don't attract a lot of attention. Just get that shopping bag bulging full because we need a lot of things."
"O. K., Mom. Christ, I know by now."
"Well, get it right this time." Maude sent Lula on ahead then. She and Tillie waddled along the block window-shopping, giving Lula plenty of time to make her purchases. Then Tillie went on in and Maude followed shortly afterwards.
Maude knew what she wanted. Slips for herself and Lula. And one for Tillie. She could always slip it into Tillie's suitcase when no one was looking. Save Tillie's pride that way.
The store was crowded, which was the way Maude liked it. Mostly women, too, shopping for clothing for the family with their own picking money and whatever they had managed to blast out of their husbands. There were several women around the slip counter, which was just a long table piled high with merchandise. The one salesgirl at that counter looked harried and already tired, and while Maude watched she threw many obvious glances at the clock. Probably expecting a relief soon. That was good. It would add to the confusion.
Actually it was too easy, and had no thrill to it. Maude selected a slip of the proper size, stepped back as if to examine it, and instead darted swift glances around the store. Believing herself unobserved she quickly thrust the slip into her shopping bag. Minutes later two more slips followed. Her confidence running high she made several more selections, including a pair of red shoes, a jar of skin cream and a card of safety pins. Then, her bag about half full, she looked around for Tillie.
Tillie was not to be seen. Maude cursed under her breath. Had they been seen? Damn it all, she had a good haul of things they needed. It would be a shame to leave them behind.
She scanned the store again. It was difficult to be sure, the floor was crawling with people, there was barely enough room to walk in short, shuffling steps from counter to counter. But she definitely could not see Tillie anywhere.
Maude was about to ditch the shopping bag and fly for the door when she caught sight of Tillie's straw blonde head and trim figure appear from behind a curtained door way. Christ, she had been in the John. Of all the fool times. Well, she wasn't about to ditch this haul without a real alarm.
Slowly Maude worked her way toward the hosiery counter. She had already been there for a few selections, but that also was the meeting place with Lula. The black -haired girl showed up soon after Maude did, jostling Maude as she pawed the stockings, but showing no recognition. Lula set down her shopping bag, a twin of Maude's, the better to examine the merchandise. Maude set hers down beside it. Shortly thereafter Lula picked up Maude's shopping bag and left the store. Maude sighed in contentment. After a decent interval she started out herself. Just outside a heavy male hand settled lightly but firmly on her arm.
"Just a moment please, Ma'am."
Maude whirled. "Get your paws off me!"
The paw remained, Maude put up just the right amount of indignant resistance. But she allowed herself to be led back in the store and into the manager's office without attracting much attention. There she stood in a posture of silent rage while her shopping bag was examined. It contained several purchases, all wrapped or bagged, all with proper sales receipts. The purchases Lula had made for this very eventuality.
Maude listened to the apologies, and finally decided not to sue. She settled for a refund on all her purchases. Certainly she would not trade at a store where she was assaulted and insulted. She stuffed the returned money in her bag, and stalked from the store, empty shopping bag folded under her arm. Inwardly she trembled. This was the first time she had ever come near getting caught, the first time she had ever had to play it through that way. But all in all it had worked very nicely. She had pulled it off in good style.
And it freed her operating capital for a run on another store. By God, she would make the next store pay for the fright this one had given her. They needed a few little extras, anyway.
Maude collected her extras without any trouble. The scheme worked flawlessly. Walk in, load up, switch bags with Lula and walk out. Aside from the little bit of trouble at the first store Maude felt she hadn't even been observed. Of course it wouldn't do to repeat here in Conroy for some time to come. But then with all the stuff they got, it wouldn't be necessary.
Tillie steadfastly refused to join them in their thieving. After the first store she even refused to act as lookout. Instead she left Maude and Lula and went to a movie by herself. Maude and Lula checked their loot at the bus terminal locker and then started on the serious business of the day.
"Where shall we try?" Maude asked Lula, looking up and down the crowded street. "One place looks about like another today. Plenty of men in town."
"I like the Ivy Tavern," Lula said. "There seems to be more money floating around in there."
"Ivy it is, then." Maude set off down the sidewalk, swinging her hips casually. No harm in a little advance publicity. She saw one man turn to look, but didn't kid herself. He was too young. He was looking at Lula.
Maude pushed open the heavy wooden door of the Ivy herself. Lula trailed in behind. They stood by the door for a minute, letting their eyes get used to the gloom, and looking over the field.
The front part of the bar was almost deserted at that minute. Maude was about to sit down, but then she saw plenty of signs of people still holding down stools. One or more glasses of beer stood at each place, mixed with the smaller glasses of highballs and the occasional wine glass or shot glass. There were cigarettes burning dark lines in the already scarred mahogany, opened packs of cigarettes, bits of change, personal effects. A purse sitting there unguarded made Maude's hands itch, but she left it alone. The owner must be somewhere near.
Then she saw where most of the people had gone. They were gathered in a cluster near the back of the bar, silently watching something. In a moment the crowd opened up a lane through the middle. Two men half-led, half-carried another man between them. The man in the middle held a dripping red handkerchief to his nose trying to stop a violent flow of blood. Someone in the crowd picked up a black hat and jammed it on the back of the injured man's head. As he passed Maude could see that his face looked like pounded steak.
The crowd began to drift back to their places. The silence of the place gave way to the talk and clatter again that seemed more natural.
"What happened?" Maude demanded of an old codger who took his seat near the door.
"Beats me. Fight, I guess. All over before anyone knew much about it."
Maude shrugged. Too bad they had missed the excitement. But then it couldn't have been much if nobody even knew what had happened.
"Mind if I shove in here and order me a drink?" Maude asked.
The old codger didn't mind. While Maude waited for the port wine and glass of beer for herself and the highball for Lula, she studied the old boy. He was about Maude's age, maybe older, with a day's growth of grey whiskers, pink skin, and wide, bright blue eyes. Except for the whiskers he looked neat and brightly scrubbed. Maude wondered what it was men hated so much about shaving on Saturday.
The drinks came and Maude turned to hand the highball to Lula. But Lula had gone. Irked, Maude looked about for her. When she spotted her she was less angered. Lula already had a man buying a drink for her. He was tall, stoop-shouldered, painfully thin and pale looking. He was talking earnestly to Lula, who appeared to be listening breathlessly. Now and then a dry cough interrupted the man's speech. Lula did not seem to mind, even though he did not bother to turn his head when he coughed. Maude shrugged and tossed down the highball herself. The wine followed, and then the beer. She ordered more wine and beer, took one in each hand and began ranging slowly up and down the line of drinkers. Somewhere in the crowd she would find a drinking companion.
Maude didn't make contact on the first trip along the line. Everyone seemed occupied with their own friends or their own solitary drinking. She went over to stand by the juke box. It had been silent for nearly a minute, so she put in a quarter, punched the red buttons at random. With a hundred to choose from it took too damn much effort to select five. Better to just hit the damn things and trust to luck.
Luck was good. The first tune was a Hill Billy song without words but with a lot of good mountain bounce. The second was a western tune, Jack of Diamonds. Maude sipped her wine until she managed to remember the tune and words, and then she began to sing along with the record. A few people at the bar turned to look at her, laughed good-naturedly, and went back to their drinking. Maude felt herself caught up in the melancholy of the singer. She pitched her voice to harmonize with the nasal twang of the male singer of the song.
Then another voice joined in. A man's voice. Maude turned to look. It was the old codger she had spoken to. He chimed in on the chorus, let Maude carry the body of the lyrics. Maude downed her wine, got another. She and the old man sang the next three songs to come up, all westerns. Then she went ranging up the line again, looking for a companion. The old man stayed on his seat near the juke box.
Maude couldn't find anyone to play with her. Everyone seemed busy with their own fun. There were plenty of men, and Maude wasn't bashful about letting them know she was available, but there were no takers. She went back to the juke box.
Lula passed slowly by, working her way through the crowd. She had the tall, gaunt man in tow. When she passed close by Maude, Lula winked twice. It was her signal that she had made contact for the night. The man coughed in Maude's face, apparently not even seeing her.
Well, good for Lula. She had found her a man all right, and soon enough too. Lula hadn't even had to buy one drink for herself. And now she was fixed up for the night. Maude just hoped that Lula had got a good look at his wallet before she left with him. Looks could be deceiving. It paid to know what a man had in his pocket.
Maude finally left with the old codger who sang with her at the juke box. He was the best she could do. At that she had practically had to proposition him. Of course he had snapped up the idea quick enough, but he hadn't been too smart. It hadn't really been his idea.
The old gink was the only flaw in on otherwise perfect day. Maude wondered if she was getting too old to reel in the men. This was the first time she had trouble. But it might not be the last time.
She would have to start looking toward her old age.
CHAPTER SIX
Jim was embarrassed to find himself alone with the prostitute. The last thing he wanted just at that moment was a girl-particularly a commercial girl.
"What's the matter, Honey?" The girl asked him. She stood very close, pressing herself against him, rubbing her hand up his leg.
"Nothing." Jim looked toward the door, longing to leave, but not wanting to hurt her feelings.
"You think maybe the other girls got something I haven't got?"
That amused Jim. He laughed, and she looked hurt. "No. I'm really sorry. I'm sure they haven't." After all, about all they could have different would be technique, and he was just not in the mood to explore that.
The girl turned her head haughtily, swishing the long yellow hair around in a little splashing wave of feathery confusion. She walked away, went to a bureau and stood looking down on it. The top was covered with a crocheted lace cloth, elaborate and finely done. The only other items were half a dozen little glass dogs, about the size of small eggs. Arranged in a semi-circle, they created a rainbow-effect in pastel colors from flamingo to azure. The girl hesitated a moment, then opened a drawer and found a pack of cigarettes.
"Have one?"
"Thanks."
She sat one the edge of the bed, smoking, waiting. Not very aggressive for one in her business, Jim thought. He leaned against the far wall, looking at her. He looked quite thoroughly. But he might have been examining a wax dummy for all the emotion it roused in him. She reminded him, somehow, too much of a model, and he had long trained himself not to get emotional about models.
The girl was undeniably pretty. One of the prettiest prostitutes Jim had ever seen. She was very blonde, bleached of course, but well done, and almost frighteningly pale. Her skin seemed almost milkily transparent and it gave the idea of one looking right through it into the depths of her. The eyes, wide, moist, penetrating. Body slim, tall, perfectly proportioned.
Jim exhaled a long streamer of smoke. Neither he nor the girl spoke. In other rooms they could hear the suggestion of sounds, but they were not clear enough to mark any specific activity.
What did one woman have that another did not, anyway, Jim wondered idly. Why did one woman inflame one man's desires and leave the next man disinterested? Why did one woman, such as the Smyth girl, or the sexy dish in the bar interest Jim, and this one not interest him. Jim had no answers to his questions. Unless it was that men were idiots. If a girl was clean, reasonably well groomed, even moderately attractive she had everything other women had.
Except that certain something-sex appeal. This one had plenty of sex, but so far as Jim was concerned, no appeal. Well, what the hell-
Jim got up to leave. There was no use wasting the girl's time. His hand found the door knob. Then he hesitated, turned back. He took a five dollar bill out of his wallet, laid it on the bureau. The girl watched his every move with wide, moist eyes. And then he was out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.
Walking silently down the carpeted hall he heard the heavy, pounding of The Mall's laughter behind a closed door. A woman's shriek. The Mall's laughter again. Downstairs the barroom was empty. From the kitchen he could hear the rattling of dishes and the slosh of water, the sizzle of eggs frying and the low sound of women's voices. Fresh coffee smell and the crisp, salty odor of bacon replaced the previous odor of the room of perfumed lotions and delicate soap scents.
He found the front door, let himself out silently. His shadow was a long, wavery marker east as he hurried along the un-paved street. At irregular intervals the blobbed shadows of chinaberry trees soaked up his own shadow and then disgorged it as he hurried on.
It was probably a dirty trick, running out on the Prof and The Mall that way. But it would be hours before they even missed him. And since they seemed old hands at the games they played, it was certain they would not need him to help them find entertainment.
Around him the residential part of town squatted in a thick, hot silence, and seemed to be breathing slowly while waiting for night and the next round of excitement. The quiet was too much like the lull before the squall for Jim. He decided to get on out of town, go back "home."
He had come reluctantly to town, anyway. And it had cost him plenty of his small hoard of cash. Better to get on back to the Village while he still had a few dollars. The Prof had promised work starting Monday, but the first payday might be a long way off. Better to return to the shack, and just sit awhile, alone, and try to gather in all the stray ends of his thoughts. And rest He was tired, worn with the physical and emotional excitment Even the thought of the hot, hard bed in the squalid little shack appealed to him.
When Jim got to the bus stop he found a girl was waiting there too. She was a blonde, hair sun-bleached to a straw color, eyes grey-green. Jim realized, almost with a feeling of inevitability, that she was pretty. Or at least she would be if she fixed herself up just a little bit. As it was she looked plain at first glance, but a second study revealed that her features were clean and even, well modeled. It would take very little to make her extra attractive.
She looked around and found Jim staring full at her. They both reddened, turned away. Then their glances came together again. This time neither turned away.
"I'm sorry," Jim said. "I was staring. But you look like someone I know," he improvised.
"I have a sister," the girl answered. "Perhaps you know her."
"Maybe I do. What's her name?" There was not a chance in ten thousand he knew her sister, and he felt she knew it as well as he.
"Her name is Lula-Lula Smyth."
"No! I mean-is it really?" he finished lamely. This time he felt red in his own neck and face, burning hot with sudden embarrassment. The long shot had come in. This must be Tillie Smyth, sister of the dark-haired girl in the shower. Tillie laughed, and Jim knew she knew what he was blushing about.
"It's all right. I don't think Lula minded a bit."
The assurance did little for Jim. Nor did it help his composure for her to study him so seriously with those unwavering, grey-green eyes.
They talked a lot on the long ride back to the city. Tillie was a friendly, open-minded girl, and Jim found he could not help but enjoy her company. He could not help feel a disappointment, however, that she was of the "Village." She seemed much too nice to belong to that troop of outcasts. Wondering, he asked her directly.
"How come you live where you do? I mean-well, a girl like you, it seems strange to find you living in the Village."
"It seems strange to find a man like you there, too."
"I'm sorry. It was a rather personal question, wasn't it? I didn't mean it that way."
Her face softened. The hostility that had come to her eyes faded away. She put a slim, tanned hand on his. "I'm sorry, too. I know you didn't."
"I'm there because I had nowhere else to go," Jim ventured, feeling his apology was not strong enough. Feeling that he should offer some explanation of his own. "Morton Curson-probably you call him the Mayor, or Prof-was kind enough to take me in."
"Same here. When we came to the city we didn't have much money. We couldn't find a place to live in town. Rents were so high. It's a resort town, you know. We came to pick cotton because we didn't like it in Texas where we were. We couldn't find a place to live. Even the auto courts-they won't take cotton pickers. They figure cotton pickers lower the place and they can't get decent people to live there. We didn't have that kind of money, anyway. We heard about the Village. It was only half as big then as now. The Prof helped us get fixed up. So there we are."
Jim smiled, hoping his friendliness might erase some little bit of the bitterness in her voice. He took hold of her hand and held it.
"It is a stinking place, isn't it?" she said.
"It could be worse."
"I don't know how."
"It's a place to live."
"If you can call it that. I hate it. Someday I'm going to get out. I'm not going to live all my life in places like that, just because Mom and Lula do!"
"You'll get out of it," Jim assured her. He was surprised at the vehemence in her voice. She really meant it. He could not help one question. "What do you mean by getting out of it, Tillie?"
"I mean clean out! I mean finding a nice fellow some day, getting married. Not a rich man with a lot of money. I don't believe in Cinderella or Santa Claus anymore. I mean just an ordinary guy who loves me, and I love him, and we can live decent and be decent."
"You'll find him." Jim wished he could mean it. Mentally he could not help calculating the odds, the tremendous odds against her achieving even that simple wish. Environment, he felt, was too powerful a force to fight. If she lived long in that environment she would become just like the rest of them, whether she intended it or not.
Which reminded him that he was living there now, too. Did the same apply to him?"
Well, did it?
It could, a voice told him. It could.
When they reached the city he suddenly knew he did not want to go back to the Village just then. Not now that he had just found Tillie. Instead he suggested that they have something to eat. There was still enough money for that, and some over. He was suddenly quite hungry, and he could not remember when he had eaten last. Tillie didn't need much coaxing.
The city was alive with Saturday night visitors come to town. The crowds were different from the ones in Conroy. They seemed less frantically hurried, less boisterous. As if their purpose in life was more a matter of day-to-day living rather than hour-to-hour existence.
Jim and Tillie ate at a big, violently lighted resturant, lingered over coffee and cigarettes and talked. Afterwards they window-shopped the town. Even then it was early, so they went to a movie. Finally, at eleven forty-five they were forced to go back to the Village because the last bus of the night left then. It was substantially after midnight when they arrived.
Even in the dark the place didn't look much better. A thoughtful providence had taken pity on the Village to the extent of providing an easterly wind. It blew away the smoke and most of the odor from the dump. Aside from that the Village was the same dreary, Godforsaken blight on the land.
There were few lights, there being no electricity. Here and there an oil lamp washed yellow light out over the edge of a window, and spilled some of it on the ground. A moon rode high in the cloudless sky, but it was thin and gave only outline to the shapes of the shacks and boxes and tents. Mostly the Village was a place of sounds rather than of sights. Sounds of laughter, of rough talk, the base beat of music on a portable radio somewhere far away but loud. Of shuffling feet as people moved here and there, from one place to another, of dogs baying and yapping. The unmistakable sounds of a dice game somewhere nearby, of someone relieving his bladder at the front door.
Tillie seemed to navigate by sound, rather than by sight. Soon enough she led Jim to her shack. Inside she lighted the oil lamp, then turned it down low. She went to a corner of the room, made some sort of adjustment with her clothes. Jim could not see what she was doing. The light was too dim, and she was only a shadow among many shadows. "Too damn hot," he heard her say.
They made coffee and drank the whole pot, and talked. It was a long while before Jim realized what she had done. Finally the motion caught his eye-the freer, more liquid motion beneath her blouse. She had taken off her brassiere.
He knew instantly, the way they had seemed to sense each other's thoughts all evening, that she knew he had finally noticed.
"Too damn hot," she said again.
Somehow, in the dark, there seemed little point in blushing. "When will you mother and Lula be home?"
"Not tonight. Tomorrow morning sometime, probably. Time for breakfast."
"I suppose I should be going now."
"I reckon so. But please don't. Not yet. You're the first man I've talked to in ages who seems human. How about another pot of coffee?"
Over the second pot Tillie told him some of what the routine would be Monday. They would be up at 4 a.m., out at the street corner by five, in the fields by six. A labor contractor would pick them up in a truck, haul them to the fields and back home again.
The last of the second pot vanished. Jim stretched, stood up. He really had to go. So soon? How about just one more pot of coffee? Lord, no, he couldn't. There had been too many days rolled into one the last twenty-four hours. More than anything else in the world right now he had to get some rest, some sleep. The most beautiful woman in the world could not entice him right now, stripped down naked and begging him to jump on.
"Think you can find your way?" Her hand was a soft pressure on his arm.
"I think so."
"Good night."
"Good night." He could not help thinking she had been disappointed because he had not tried to make her. If he had tried and had succeeded, he felt he would have been disappointed in her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The back of The Mall's head was a bowl of pain. He became slowly more and more conscious of that fact, as sleep finally slipped away from him. Gingerly he turned his head to one side. But that only sloshed the blue-streaked fire that was in his head, so he turned his face straight ceilingward again. He kept his eyes closed and breathed very slowly. Experience had shown that movement only stirred up a hangover. The thing to do was lie still and maybe it would go away.
A strange sound bothered The Mall no end, but he tried to ignore it. It was a small sound, slow and very light, like something brushing across the floor. He tried to think what it could be without opening his eyes to look. But thinking hurt too much. He gave it up.
Dipped in bulsh! Where was he, anyway? Home. He allowed one eyelid to creep open just a slit. Wup! Yes, he was home, all right. The calendar girl with the classy knockers looked down upon him from the ceiling over the bed, as usual. He closed the eye again and tried to remember the calendar girl's knockers better. Somehow it was hard to remember details like that. That was why he had put the picture on the ceiling, so he would see it every morning when he first woke up, and it would help him remember.
The sound continued to bother him. It would stop at intervals, then start again. Whisp-whisp-shisp-
Oh, well. What the hell had happened last night, anyway? He remembered breaking the table in the massage parlor-Man, they had it when they lured him in there. The Prof said the table must have cost a hundred bucks. He should have laid the dame on the table before he broke it. That would be a new experience. He had never did it on a massage table. Then they met that soldier with the two bottles of gin. His buddies had got lost from him trying to find the whore house and he had been carrying the gin. Lessee-they took the soldier back to Sallie Mae's-Damn! They must have hit the gin pretty heavy.
Otherwise how come the fight with the two deputy sheriffs? He hoped he hadn't really hurt them. They were good guys, just trying to do their job.
Dipped in horsh! What was that noise? He opened both eyes, stared at the ceiling and tried not to die. Somehow he lived. He moved his eyeballs. The Kid was up and doing something.
Sweeping!
Gee-zus! Sweeping. The guy must have rocks in his head. The place hadn't never been swept he knew of. It just wasn't did.
"Hey, Kid. Can you hand me a drink of water? I don't think I could live long enough to go after it."
"Sure. Did I wake you up?"
"Nah." He poured the welcome water down his throat. It was like irrigating dry ground, and brought new life. After the long drink he dared to sit up and look around.
The Prof lay stretched out on his bunk, stark naked. He looked more like a brown and white sack of bones than a man. Thin. Man, he was thin. Probably didn't weigh a hundred and thirty. It was a wonder he was able to work as hard as he did. As if sensing that he was being thought about and wanted to answer back, the Prof's mouth flopped open and he began to snore. The Kid swept a pile of dirt out the front door. The Mall began to feel around for his clothes.
Sunday. Nothing to do all day but sack in. Good deal. He needed some rest. Sure didn't get much last night. How the hell did they get home, anyways?
"How did we get home, Kid?"
"Beats the hell out of me. All I know is you and the Prof came rolling in about three, singing the Desert Song at the top of your lungs."
The Mall rubbed his face, and found it helped ease his headache a little. He continued to rub it while he thought that one over. The Desert Song-what the hell was that? He had never heard of it. Probably something the Prof had dug up. But it was gone now. He considered asking the Kid about it. The Kid was a pretty smart boy. Didn't say much, but he seemed to understand the Prof pretty well. All that stuff the Prof spouted didn't seem to go over the Kid's head, the way it did his own.
"Crap. I shouldn't never have did it."
"Done what?"
"Drank that damn gin on top of all that other crap we had. That was what did it. The gin."
"Did what?"
"Made me get hot pants again. It always does that. Damn gin does. If I hadn't of drank the gin I'd never of gone into the massage parlor."
"Was that bad?"
"It wasn't good. But what the hell? I had a lot of fun before I left there." He began to chuckle to himself as he thought about it.
"What happened?" Jim asked.
"Oh, man-we done had it, that's all. Haw!"
"Come on, let me in on the joke."
"Well, we vas walking down the street, see, me and the Prof. That was after we met the soldier with the gin. Oh, I didn't tell you about that, did I? Well, anyway, it wasn't even midnight yet, see, and we was heading toward a joint we knew we could get into the back room after closing time. And we was walking along and I saw this big sign over this house, and it says 'Massage Parlor.' So I says, Hey, Prof, you want a massage? And he says, What ails me no mere massage will cure. And I says, Oh, no? Get a load of that in the picture window!
"Well, this here dame is in the picture window, see, and she ain't got a hell of a lot on. Just a thin robe of some kind, and what with the light behind her you can see right through it. And she stands there in the window and smiles and motions we should come on in.
"So we went on in. This here real classy dame meets us in the hall, and she says what do we want. We want a massage. O.K., so we follow her down the hall and she shows us to separate little rooms. She says we should take off our clothes and lay down on the massage tables, the massoose will be along in a minute. So I lay down and pretty soon I am really ready. I wonder if I will get the one in the window, or is she only advertising.
"Well, pretty soon in comes this hard-faced old bat about fifty, I guess, and nearly as big as me. I ask her what the hell she wants, bargin' in on me naked like that-all I got is a towel, see. And she says she is going to give me a massage, And by God, first thing I know she is pounding hell out of me, slapping me all over. Pretty strong for a dame, too.
"Well, about two minutes of that is enough, so I sit up and push her away and I say, Don't give me none of this crap, Granny, bring me the girl. And she says, What girl? And I say, The girl I was told I could get in here. And she says, Who told you such a thing? I guess I ain't too smart, or something, because it wasn't until then I knew we had been had. But good.
"In the next booth I could hear the Prof grunting and wheezing quite a bit as he got massaged. I yelled at him and pretty soon he came into my room. And then I told the massoose dame, Get me a girl, and get her in here quick! Well, they put up a fuss, so I hadda break up the massage table to show them I wasn't kidding. I broke up a chair, too, and I said in about half a minute I would break some heads. They must've knew I meant it, because pretty soon they brought in this whore from the window. I laid her right there on the floor. The Prof stood outside and kept watch. He kept saying hurry up, they might call the cops. But I knew they wouldn't call no cops. So I took my time."
Jim laughed long and loud at the story, and The Mall was pleased that he had been able to tell it so good. It was a miracle he even remembered it all, they had been so loaded. The damn gin was what done it. Gin always gave him hot pants.
The Prof slept right on through it all, turning over on his side once, and letting up some on the snoring. Gec-zus, how could he sleep with all the racket going on?
"Hey, Kid, you want to go over to Lula's place now for breakfast?"
"Now?" Jim looked puzzled. "It's almost one o'clock."
"That's when we eat breakfast around here on Sunday, j Nobody up before then."
The Mall led the way to the Smyths. Probably they would be up by now. If they weren't, to hell with them, drag them out of the sack. He walked slowly so as not to jar his head, and he kept his eyes squinted almost closed before the afternoon sun. Warm today, too damn warm. After it got so cold at night, how come it got so warm in the day time?
He approached the shack from a round-about way so that the Smyths would not see him pass by the front door. Motioning Jim to walk quietly, he crept up to the wall of the shack. There he fitted his eye to a large knothole in a board and peered into the single room. Maude was still in bed, Tillie was up and dressed, and Lula sat on the edge of the bed. Lula wore nothing except her white skin.
The Mall watched in pleasure as Lula got up from the bed and walked across the room. Man, that dame had what it took! She was something to see running around naked. Lula moved out of his sight. He shifted and tried to get a better view, but he couldn't see her. She had moved somewhere and I now he couldn't see her from the hole.
Hell. The Mall left the knothole and went to the window. With one hand he reached out and quickly batted down the cardboard that covered the square opening in the wall. He ' stuck his head in, caught sight of Lula.
"Boo!" he said.
Maude jumped awake, Tillie whirled, startled, from where she was making coffee at the stove. Lula screamed.
"Oh! You revolting goat!" Lula snatched up a silk stocking, the only article of clothing near, and tried to hold it in front of herself. The Mall bellowed with laughter. He kept on looking. The stocking did not hurt the view any.
Speechless with rage, Lula dropped the stocking. She stared wildly around the room, as if searching for something. Finally her gaze caught the groceries, still in cluttered confusion on the table. Quickly Lula snatched up an egg plant, drew back her arm and hurled the vegetable at The Mall. Her aim was good. The egg plant struck The Mall on the forehead, bounced off and described a wobbly purple arc into the dust. It rolled away under the shower stall.
"I'll be God damned!" The Mall roared. "No dame can't do me that way!" After that he needed no door. He put his head and shoulders through the window, pulled himself up with his hands and dropped agiley to the floor inside the shack. Lula backed away from him, screaming.
"C'mere, you damn bitch!"
"Don't you touch me!"
The Mall stalked slowly toward her, feet wide apart, arms spread open, ready to lunge and grab at her at any instant. Lula backed away, her arms behind her, feeling her way, not daring to take her eyes from The Mall. She had dropped all pretense at modesty now. Trapped, she was a wild, naked animal seeking a way out.
The only way out was the open door.
Watching from the window, Jim could not help but laugh. Maude was awake now, but speechless with surprise, leaning up out of her bed on one elbow, watching with wide-mouthed astonishment. Tillie was obviously enjoying herself in a grim sort of a way. And Jim was enjoying the show, too. He wondered what Lula would do.
Lula did the only thing there was to do. Naked, her long long black hair streaming around her shoulders, she ran out the door. As if better to advertise her passage, she ran screaming. Quickly Jim ran around to the front of the shack. He arrived in time to see Lula disappear in a blur of white around a corner, The Mall in full, lumbering pursuit. Jim ran after them. He did not know just what would happen if The Mall caught Lula, but he thought he had better be there to prevent any violence.
A gaping crowd formed behind them, like trash swept into the wake of a passing automobile. Some of the people laughed, some giggled, but more just gaped speechlessly. They were used to strange happenings, but this was the strangest. One man got a gleam in his eye and started toward his own woman. She ran in the house and slammed the door in his face. He shrugged and went back to gape after where the excitement had passed.
Jim didn't see The Mall catch Lula, but he met him coming back with her. He had thrown her over his shoulder like a sack of meal. Only this sack had long white legs that kicked furiously, and tiny white fists that pummeled the big, solid chest. The Mall grinned at Jim.
"What are you going to do with her?"
"What do you think?"
"Now?"
"Can't think of no better time."
Apparently oblivious of the furious, but now silent struggle Lula was putting up, The Mall strode to his own shack. He carried Lula on in and slammed the tin door behind him. For a moment there was silence, then the door opened suddenly and the Prof stumbled out. He stood on the bricks just outside the door, blinking sleep and bright light from his eyes.
From inside the shack Jim could hear the sounds of a tussle on the bed, and he heard Lula's voice cry out, "It's too early!"
"It ain't never too early," came the answer.
"Indeed," said the Prof, looking at Jim with an expression of wounded dignity on his face, "the animal hungers know no clocks, do they?"
"With him it doesn't seem to be a hunger so much as a tapeworm," Jim observed.
The Prof appeared to ponder that seriously. "An interesting theory," he granted. "Not without merit. I must give it more consideration." He turned and went back into the shack.
Jim watched in amazement, expecting to see the Prof come flying out among bloody bits and broken bones. But soon the Prof sauntered casually out with his soap and towel and wash pan. Wrapped in an old piece of sheeting he had gathered up after the first trip out naked, the Prof looked like a forlorn Ghandi. He also looked very, very old.
"I thought maybe you'd come out of there on your ear," Jim said.
"The Mall and I have known many whores together. We have little in the way of carnal secrets from one another."
Jim supposed they would know many more if the relationship continued as casually as it now was.
Breakfast at the Smyths turned out to be something of a pleasure. After The Mall and Lula finally came trudging back in Tillie cooked breakfast for the gang. It consisted of scrambled eggs, canned scrapple, rye bread toast, fresh fruit and coffee. All, Maude told them proudly, filched from a supermarket in Conroy. While doing a little shopping she had seen to it that Sunday breakfast didn't cost them a penny.
Near the end of the meal a knock came at the door. Outside stood a cringing man in dirt crusted Levis. The man asked for the Prof. The Law was here, he said, and wanted to see the Prof.
At the mention of the word law, Maude and Lula turned white and Tillie began scurrying around hiding various items. The Prof and Jim exchanged anxious glances. The Mall continued to eat an apple, unconcerned. Jim and the Prof got up and went outside together.
Behind the dirty little man who had knocked stood another man, very much uncringing and very much undirty. The man wore matching pearl grey frontier pants and Stetson, glossy cowboy boots and gloves, and western style pink shirt. He was a big man, compared to Jim and the Prof, and exceedingly clean compared to almost anyone. His skin was almost the color of his shirt, and it all but glowed, looking freshly scrubbed. One imagined from looking at him that he hated dirt, that he made a career of hating dirt. And though there was no official sign of it, such as a badge, he looked law from tip to toe.
"Are you Morton Curson?"
"I am."
"They tell me you are the nominal leader of this-" the pink-faced man looked around him with obvious disgust-"this place."
"I am."
"I am the County Health Officer."
Jim nodded to himself. He would be, he thought. He surely would be.
"What can we do for you, sir?" The Prof was all politeness, but Jim felt the dry pain of apprehension in his throat. Pinky here meant trouble for them all, he felt, and it wouldn't be long now in coming.
"I have come to tell you that you will have to vacate this land," Pinky said. "It has been declared a public nuisance. You have forty-eight hours to get out."
"And your authority?" Jim heard the Profs thin, dry voice as from far away. And within Jim something strange was happening. An anger was building up. Not that anger was strange. The strangeness lay in that it was an anger for the people in the Village. They were being ordered out of their homes-such as they were. Where could these people go?
Pinky produced some papers. He said something about a court order. The Prof said he was certain the order was in order, but didn't bother to read it. Pinky left. The Prof and Jim went back into the Smyth shack to tell the others.
Tense, seething with anger now, Jim let the Prof break the news. He was too mad to speak himself. And sitting there, watching the others listen wide-eyed, Jim realized something had happened to him. He realized that he was no longer just Jim Pettenger, observer, guest here among these people. Now he was in actual fact Jim Pettenger, refugee member of the Village. His anger at their plight made it his plight, and now he was one of them. Looking at Tillie he felt he could do worse.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"What are we going to do?" Lula wailed. She stared around at the small circle of people, finally settling her gaze on Jim as if asking him the question separately. "Where can we go?"
Jim managed a rueful smile. Damned if he knew. He was a stranger here himself. Why ask him? So he thought, but Lula's imploring gaze was so pitiful that he could not say so. He tried to comfort her and the others of the group as well as he could.
"Oh, I imagine the Prof here has some angles up his sleeve. He won't let us down, will you, Prof?"
"No," the Prof said. "Of course not." But there was no fire in his voice, no conviction. He stared bleakly across the breakfast table clutter of dirty dishes at Jim. His lined, long and somewhat angular face, usually ageless, looked very old now. Again, under pressure, the strength that was in his face had fled and he seemed like a very old boy looking out from under a mask of age and maturity.
"I imagine the Prof has been considering just such an eventuality," Jim went on. "Probably he has planned just what to do. Haven't you, Prof?"
"Oh, yes. Yes, indeed, I never forget the needs of my little flock. I came not dishonestly by my nom de guerre, as one might call it, of The Mayor. I may seem, now and then, to be indulging in the luxury of idleness, of lack of thought, but not for long is my mind at rest. True there are certain ideas working in my mind at all times concerning the welfare of the people of the Village of the Lizard and the Lion." The Prof went on for several minutes, sounding like a politician the day before election. He repeated himself frequently, recast each subject in different words, most of which went over the heads of the listeners anyway, but he seemed to gain for it. As he talked his voice grew stronger, his words, actually meaningless, sounded more convincing, and after a while he seemed to have rallied. His own confidence appeared to have returned, and with it he gained the confidence of his listeners. Even of Jim.
Soon Maude and the girls began to clean up the breakfast dishes. The Mall stretched out on a bed and was resting quietly, his eyes closed, apparently asleep. The Prof motioned Jim outside and together they took a walk.
They walked away from the village, upwind of the breeze that was bringing back smoke from the burning areas of the dump. The Prof stood under the shade of a tall, straight climbing tamarisk tree. Jim stood in the sunshine. Today the sunshine felt good. It helped bake away some of the ills of yesterday's encounters. He waited quietly for the Prof to say something.
At first the Prof only gestured silently. He moved his arm in a half-hearted sweep toward the Village, just a block away. Jim knew what he meant. It was a command to look, but with the admission there was no need to look.
"A sorry sight, isn't it?" the Prof said.
Jim nodded. Today it looked even worse than it had yesterday. The ordeal of Saturday night had been too much for it. There seemed to be even more trash littering the paths that were streets, even more dust and smoke wallowing in stifling clouds. The people seemed more restless, more forlorn, more weary, more hopeless. It stank more with the wretchedness of having existed another day under conditions that were already worse than unbearable the day before. It sagged in the line of vision, it was an oppressive weight on the senses.
"A public nuisance," the Prof said.
"True enough."
"But home. It is home for two hundred persons. Abominable and wretched as it is, it represents a place to live for persons who have no place to live."
"You can't deny it is a health menace," Jim said.
"I shan't. It is that, and worse. It is not only a menace, it is a cancer, a malignant growth on the society in which it occurs. It is a rotten, festering, evil thing and it should be destroyed."
"Then why do you defend it?"
"Why, indeed? Are you familiar with any of the religions which demand mortification of the flesh?"
"Yes, a little." Jim wondered why the Prof had brought that in, what it had to do with the question of why he defended the place.
"Bring up the subject again some time, Jim. My own reasons for living here are-well, vastly personal. And perhaps my own reasons for living here are my reasons for defending the place. And yet, on the other hand, when a society such as ours destroys such a place as this, such a sore, what becomes of the maggots? What happens to the people, such as they are, who are driven away? They merely go to another such sore place and congest. Perhaps I defend this place because in my own small way I feel it may help to teach that the elimination of such places in themselves is not the answer."
Jim pondered that a while. Finally he said, "You mean that the people should be treated instead of their living quarters. That merely uprooting them from here will not cure the disease."
"Exactly. And so I defend such a place. I lend my meagre weight to keep it going, hoping that sooner or later it will be seen that something more needs to be done than merely striking a match to the shacks. That and my other personal reasons."
"What are you going to do?"
"I shall call a meeting. Immediately. I shall endeavor to rally the people, and see if we cannot, in some way, defy the law. Chances are that unless we are bluffed out, they will never follow up and force us out."
"Why don't you wait until tonight to call the meeting?" Jim suggested. "Give time for the news to get around. Then tonight build a big bonfire, light a few torches. Much more dramatic that way. You know, people like these are impressed with dramatics."
"Aren't we all? Yes, an excellent suggestion, my boy, an excellent idea. With your Machiavellian genius and my knowledge of-certain aspects of the law, we shall spearhead our little revolution!"
Jim laughed. He just hoped the spearhead didn't end up in jail.
Building a bonfire was easier talked about than done. The first problem was finding fuel. The second problem was finding a place to build it. Jim and The Mall scoured the dump, however, and came up with a sizable pile of burnable scraps. One family had taken seriously the threat and departed early in the afternoon, so the space their tent had occupied furnished a place for the fire. Jim and The Mall lit it fairly early in the evening, before it was really dark, because others were leaving in a slow but steady exodus. Then the two men stood by with lighted torches and flanked the Prof while he made a speech.
The Prof exhorted the crowd to stay in the Village. "Do not let mere threats of the law drive you from your homes," he told them. "Just because some fool brought out a scrap of paper telling them to move, it was not reason to panic like a bunch of rabbits at the first shot of the hunting season. Stay, stay where you are, dare them' to move you, there is nothing they can do.
Someone said the cop in the pink shirt looked tough.
From his height atop a packing crate the Prof looked down in great scorn. His almost white hair brushed wildly around his head, and the flaring light of the fire sent shadows to his face making him look majestic. He laughed gratingly.
"He looked tough," the Prof said, lisping a little. "Good heavens, fellows, the man looked tough. Let's run quickly away!"
Roaring laughter surged out from the crowd, washed over the thin, wildly glaring man on the box. He let it rinse over him, then went on. "All right, so he looked tough, and so he had a court order. Do you know what a court order means? Nothing-that's what it means. Nothing. It will take another court order to enforce the first order, and a third to enforce the second. And so on. As long as we hold out, we can go on that way indefinitely. Pretty soon we'll have enough orders to build another fire. Just like I'm going to build a fire with this one!"
The Prof pulled a folded bunch of papers from his pocket, waved them before the crowd for a moment, then poked one end into Jim's lighted torch. The papers flared and the Prof held them until the flames licked at his fingers. Then he dropped the last bits at his feet. Silently the crowd watched the papers burn, curl into ash and blow away.
"Now, so much for the court order," the Prof said quietly. Following the mood of the crowd he spoke softly, confidentially, as if he were talking to a small group of close friends. The silence was such that his words carried without effort so all could hear. "Now, go back to your places. Go to work tomorrow as usual. Don't worry. Nobody can force us out of here. Nobody."
The Prof stepped down. The crowd crumbled at the edges and drifted away. Jim pitched his torch into the embers of the fire. It flared only briefly, then burned slowly away.
"That was a fine speech, Prof," Jim said. "Very stimulating. It was good to be able to watch and listen."
"Do you really think so?" The Prof seemed almost pathetically child-like as he reached out for Jim's approval. Jim couldn't help but notice that the Prof waited for him to say more.
"It showed great qualities of leadership and speaking ability," Jim told the older man, wanting to please as much as the Prof wanted approval.
"You are very kind, my boy. I appreciate it. But-well, I know it can't do' much good. Half the Village-perhaps more than half-will be gone by tomorrow. There is nothing I can do to hold them, actually. Nothing...."
It was still early when they got back to the shack, but the Prof lay down on the bed, saying he was tired. The Mall had gone somewhere, so Jim was left alone. He decided to take a walk, and he took it in a direction that led past the Smyth place. He might have thought that it was chance that led him there. But when Tillie saw him walking by and spoke to him, he knew it had not been chance at all, that he had been hoping to see the girl.
She stood outside the shack, quietly, alone, staring toward the dark mass of mountains eastward. It was quite dark there, with even the last spatters of red gone from the western sunset. A moon hung low in the sky, however, and promised some light as soon as it cleared the fuzzy, nodding old heads of the tamarisks.
"Hello, Jim."
"Hello, Tillie."
A long silence. Jim stood in the middle of the pathway, his hands in his pockets, wondering what to say next. On an inspiration he told her, "I'm going for a walk in the desert, would you like to come along?"
"I'd love to."
It had been almost too easy. For an instant Jim let his eyes comb the lines of her trim figure, and he felt the stirrings of loneliness and the hunger that loneliness brings. Then he pushed those thoughts aside. Probably, he told himself, the reason she had accepted so quickly was because she believed he didn't have such thoughts.
It wasn't a long walk to the desert. Ten minutes of easy strolling took them past the dump and onto a dirt road. Another ten minutes and they were in rough, tumbled desert land. Except for the scatter of city lights always just behind them, they might have been deep in the wilds of Apache country.
"Quiet out here," Jim said.
"Very."
"I hadn't realized."
"It is hard to know."
"Would you like to sit down?"
"It might be better. We could get lost, I suppose, or fall down an old mine shaft, or something."
"Mine shaft?" Jim was surprised. "Are there really mine shafts right around here?"
Tillie laughed lightly. "I don't really know. Perhaps not this close to town. But there could be. This wasn't always close to town."
She was right. It was still desert, for all of being only a short walk from the city line. Jim led her to a place where they could sit. Though there was no need to seek shelter of any kind, Jim kicked loose rocks away from the base of a giant saguaro, and they sat there. Somehow it gave assurance, towering above them, solid, immobile, its crooked arms poking off toward clouds and stars. Jim felt an affection for the big cactus, and wanted to pat its accordion skin, but gave up that notion because of the spines. Better to just blend themselves with its shadow and not have any more physical contact than that.
The desert before them, under them, around them, was a silent study of black on silver. Nothing moved, not even a small wind stirred, and there was no sound. The silence was like being all alone inside one's own mind in a closed room, so that even the slow thumping of the desert could be heard from within the chest. The moon, high now, spilled out a torrent of silver that sifted down through the sky and dusted everything it touched. The saguaro was a black pillar dusted with faint light, and off in the distance other saguaros, sentinel like, were even blacker. A palo verde, its delicate tracery of finely wrought limbs pointing the direction of the prevailing winds, feathered out over an arroyo. Cholla stood in jumbled little clumps of danger to the unwary, of haven to the tiny animals who lived among its thorns. All put together they created a silent spectacle there in the moonlight. And it created, or re-created within Jim a familiar desire. A desire for pencil and paper so he could put down some of his impressions in quick sketches.
He pushed that desire away, back into the depths of his mind. This was not the time or place for such thoughts. Maybe someday, again, but now now. Jim changed the subject for himself.
"What do you suppose a man like the Prof is doing in the Village, anyway, Tillie? Do you know?"
"He says he's a refugee, Jim, whatever he means by that He used to be a lawyer."
Jim thought that one over for a while. A refugee. Weren't they all? He couldn't help wondering if the Prof had not said fugitive, instead of refugee. But then he decided that Tillie had reported exactly right. The idea fitted the Prof somehow.
"I guess we're all refugees from something," he agreed.
Tillie was very close to him. He turned to look at her, and he realized it was really the first time he had really looked at her. Now, in the moonlight, her straw blonde hair was almost pure silver, her wide eyes luminous and warm looking, her mouth a slash of delicate sensuousness. The lips were dark against the pale skin of her face. He realized that she had worn lipstick tonight, and that it was the first time since he had known her that she had done so. Was it for him? If so, he was very pleased.
Jim put out a tentative hand, felt the soft flesh of her arm. It was warm to the touch, though the night had begun to cool. The touch stirred his blood. He moved closer to her, and his hand traveled down the back of her skirt, feeling the satin of her skin through the cotton blouse. She moved toward him as he did so, and in a moment they had crept close together there, lost as a single shadow in the larger shadow of the saguaro.
Jim kissed her then, and he wondered why he had taken so long to get around to it. He kissed her again, and lost himself in the minutes it took to do the job right. Then his hands were moving again, and there was no objection from Tillie.
She wasn't wearing a brassiere, and the blouse turned out to be much like a man's shirt, easy to unbutton. He was all for taking it clear off, but she objected to that. And after all, it wasn't at all necessary under the circumstances. Jim let his hands caress the soft, warm flesh. First she shivered, then she pressed her body close against Jim's, and then she lay back on the ground and looked up at him, waiting. He was just beginning to get serious with her clothes when he heard the shuffling clump of footsteps nearby. Jim swore softly. Tillie sat up quickly and buttoned her blouse.
The footsteps passed by them at about ten yards distance.
Soon they stopped. Jim peered into the dark, trying to see who it might be, but the sounds came from behind the palo verde, from down in the arroyo.
"This here is good a place as any," a man's voice said.
It was The Mall. A feminine voice answered, and while Jim couldn't hear what was said he knew it was Lula with him. There were sounds of threshing about for a minute, of loose rock being kicked aside, then Lula's voice again.
"Christamighty! You want me to lay right down in the cactus?"
"There ain't no cactus there."
"Well, the rocks are just as bad."
"Oh, dipped in bulsh. Flop your ass down there. It'll be a new way of doing it like you're always looking for. And I ain't got all night. I got work to do tomorrow."
"I can imagine what work it is."
Jim did not hear the answer. It came muffled and indistinct. Soon there was another sound, unmistakably that of The Mall at work.
"I guess we'd better get out of here," TUUe whispered.
"I guess." Jim was mad enough to chew cholla balls. But the moment was gone, the magic spell was broken. They might as well go back home. They left as quietly as they could. Jim was sure they were not heard.
When Jim got back to the shack the Prof was lying in bed reading by the light of the kerosene lamp. He was propped up against two pillows, his bony knees sticking up before him to form a rest for the book. Jim glanced at it. It was a paper back edition of Out of My Life and Thought, by Albert Schweitzer.
Jim shook his head in amazement. The Prof was a strange man, a very strange man. Jim went to sleep wondering to himself, a refugee from what?
CHAPTER NINE
"Awake! For morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight-"
Jim woke to the sound of the Prof's voice reciting poetry. He opened his eyes and glared around him. For an instant his memory refused to function and the scene was totally incomprehensible to him. The Prof stood tousle-haired and naked, painfully thin, at the foot of the bed. With his left hand he gestured dramatically toward the open door. His right hand grasped one uncovered foot of The Mall and twisted violently. The Mall came awake suddenly, with a roar of pain.
"Awright, God damn it! I'm awake!"
Jim chuckled. The familiar voice brought order out of the chaos that was his sleep-drugged memory, and he knew then where he was. He was a refugee in the Village of the Lion and the Lizard. And today was Monday, when all refugees get up and went to work.
The door gaped blackly, a hole in the little circle of light pushed out by the lighted kerosene lamp. The stars may well have been put to flight, Jim thought, but there certainly was no sign yet of dawn's left hand in the sky. There was only the creeping gnawing of cold air working at the covers.
Jim closed his eyes for a moment, and dwelled on the luxury of just lying in bed for a few more minutes. An instant later he felt the covers whisked from the bed. At the same time The Mall bellowed again that he was awake, God damn it, he was awake.
Shivering, Jim found his clothes and climbed hurriedly into them. They offered only minimum comfort until he rummaged in his suitcase and came up with a windbreaker jacket. Even with this he was cold, and he hovered near the little lamp as if it could warm him some.
The Prof and The Mall stood around naked, apparently oblivious of the cold. They went outside naked, stood a while at the front door to relieve their bladders. Jim watched fascinated at their unconcern.
"Must be getting cold," The Mall said. "It steams when it hits the ground this morning."
"Settles the dust," the Prof observed.
"Yeh."
Soon splashing noises came from around the side of the shack where the Prof kept his wash bowl. Then the pair stalked back into the shack to dress. The Mall donned only shirt, pants and shoes. The Prof was more fastidious, with underwear and socks added.
"Do we eat any breakfast?" Jim asked. His stomach was beginning to knot around itself from hunger. He realized he had not eaten since the late breakfast at the Smyths the day before.
"Naw, takes too much time. Have to get up half an hour earlier to eat."
"Damn. Don't you starve before lunch time?"
"Naw. Miz Smyth packs us a extra big lunch and we chew on it all morning."
Jim shrugged. He just hoped it was extra big so he would have something left at lunch time.
"I could give you a shot of port wine," the Prof suggested. "It helps sooth the inner man."
"Just makes me hungrier," Jim said, declining.
"To horse then, men, and yon fields of cotton. Higgs carries his habit of punctuality to the extreme of a vice, and he won't wait for us if we're late."
Jim followed the two men out of the hut, glad to be moving. At least, walking and swinging his arms, he could keep warm.
In the street near the corner of the village a bus and an open truck waited. The bus was already mostly filled when they arrived. A faint grey wash of dawn had spilled in from the east by then, outlining dimly the two vehicles. Behind the dirty windows of the old bus Jim could see the bobbing motion of heads, the ragged, forlorn outline of tired old hats, the nervous nickering glow of cigarettes.
They chose to ride in the open truck so they could sit together. The bare plank seat was cold, with the threat of splinters a violent one. When the truck finally ground away to the tune of clashing gears and roaring, popping motor, the wind threatened to freeze Jim stiff and then blow him off the truck. But somehow he survived the ride with no more severe wounds than one splinter and many goose pimples. And so they arrived at the cotton fields just at sunrise.
"Higgs likes to get us out here early, before the sun hits the cotton," the Prof explained. "The bolls are wet from the dew then. Heavier than dry cotton."
"That's good."
"You're picking by weight, my boy. Never forget that one little item. You pick by weight. That means pounds, and there are more ways than one to make pounds add up. Only a fool cheats himself out of such God-given advantages as dew-damp cotton, mud on his sack, the occasional burrs that are bound to get in the sack, and-quite accidental, of course-the occasional rocks that will show up."
"Yeh. Well, I see that. I see how it works for us, but what about Higgs? What does it matter to him whether we pick up a few extra pounds because the cotton is damp? He didn't strike me as the type who worries much about his labor."
"Higgs contracts to pick a stand of cotton for so much a hundred pounds. Probably about three-fifty a hundred. He gives us three dollars for doing the work. He takes fifty cents for keeping us working, and transporting us to and from the fields. Need I say more?"
Jim grinned. Nothing more was necessary. Getting them to work early fattened Higgs pockets, and that, undoubtedly, was the reason for his doing it. Jim had not taken to Higgs. The man was fat and shifty and dirty. He was round-faced and pale-eyed, his face and neck carrying an extra three rows of fat wrinkles, and this morning he looked to be a week gone unshaven. Higgs was a skid-row bum elevated slightly by some odd chance to superiority over the common run of cotton tramps. Higgs had a truck, and a bus, of sorts. That was all he needed to make him a contractor instead of a picker. The difference was slim but the chasm that separated the two classes was enormous. One was in, one was out, and it was accepted because that was the way it was.
Jim got a bag and a number and he watched Higgs write down the name Jim gave him and a number beside it. Jim was told to remember the number, it would be his as long as he worked for Higgs. He had given the name Paul Peterson to Higgs, avoiding his own name. It seemed rather foolish, in a way, to do so. He had realized while lying awake in the night that he had first told the Prof his name was Paul Peterson, and then promptly told Tillie his real name. He knew he was not much good at this business of hiding out. He would have to speak to Tillie and be more careful about his name.
The Prof went with him to where they were to work. He showed Jim how to grasp the cotton boll with thumb and two fingers and twist sharply, pulling it free from the burr. Jim tried it and the Prof watched, then shook his head silently and went on about his own picking.
The first ten minutes convinced Jim of one thing-it was work, hard, back-breaking work. He soon learned that he would have to use both hands if he were to accomplish anything. And he learned to keep his head down and his eyes on the plants. Looking around at other workers, locking down the long, straight rows of spindly, leafless plants, staring at the sandy soil beneath his feet was not going to get it. A lot to picking cotton is seeing the cotton, spotting the next place to pick even as the last boll is dropping into the bag, of keeping the arms moving, piston-like, moving, picking, moving, keeping those fluffy, white balls flowing in a constant stream into the open mouth of the bag.
Long before the sun was high enough to warm the air around him he was thirsty and had to go back to the truck for water. After that he was hungry and had to find Maude to get his lunch from her. Then he had to stop working to eat, though the Prof ate with one hand and picked with the other. The sandwich made him thirsty, and he had to go for water again. When he thought it must be past noon and time to quit for lunch, his watch told him it was only nine-thirty. He didn't know how much cotton he had picked, but he supposed, from the dragging weight of it, that it must be well over a hundred pounds. Doggedly he went back to the picking and tried to catch up with the Prof.
After two eternities, the first of them freezing cold and the second one sweltering hot after the sun came up, Higgs came around to call lunch time. Jim followed him to the weigh-in scales. He bundled up his bag and hung it on the big iron hook-Jim stared increduously at the pointer.
"Thirty pounds!" he cried, almost involuntarily.
Higgs wiped sweat from his three wrinkles of whiskers. He glowered at the scale, as if challenging its reading too, then glowered at Jim. "That's what it says," he growled. The stubby little pencil in his grimy fingers made marks in a black book, the book was returned to a pocket and Higgs took the bag from the scale. He climbed with it to a waiting cotton trailer, emptied the bag into the huge wire box that was the trailer. The empty bag came sailing down to Jim and Higgs climbed down and turned to the next person in line.
"Hurry it up, move along here, damn it, I'm hungry, too."
Jim turned away, discouraged. An entire morning's work to get thirty pounds. Damn! At that rate he had made-let's seeless than a dollar. The bag had cost him a dollar and a half. So far he was four bits in the hole for the morning's work.
"Hi, Kid, how'd you do?" The Mall's heavy hand fell familiarly on Jim's shoulder. Jim turned and saw that both The Mall and the Prof were with him now. He told them how he had done.
"You'll learn," The Mall assured him matter-of-factly. Jim was glad the big man hadn't laughed. Laughter at his effort would be all he needed right now.
"How'd you do?" Jim managed.
"Me? I got a hundred seventy-five," The Mall said. "The Prof got over a hundred. We did pretty good. I hit a mud hole and drug the sack through it. That helps."
Jim laughed in spite of himself. The Mall's honesty, complete and deadpan, carried a certain humor with it. Even so, he didn't see how he had managed to pick so much. He must have worked like a horse.
They took only thirty minutes for lunch, and then they were back in the long rows again. Jim, determined to pick more cotton in the afternoon than he had in the morning if it killed him, stayed as near as he could to The Mall. He felt he could learn something from the big fellow. But all he learned was the advantage of brute strength.
The Mall had endurance, mostly. He capitalized on plunging headlong into his work, of flailing steadily away at the problem without looking away for a minute. In an hour the big man had what he gauged to be fifty pounds.
Then he stopped and looked around.
There were women in the field, as usual. Mostly it was a job for men, but women came, and some even brought their children. Some brought their entire families. Perhaps one child would pick only twenty-five pounds in a day. But if there were four children in the family that meant another three dollars for that day.
But The Mall was not interested in women with children, nor in the children. He was interested only in the girls, sixteen or older. It did not take him long to spot one.
She was no queen. Small and rather thin, she was a half-breed Mexican and Negro. Her skin was a dirty, streaked brown, her hair black and stringy. Buck teeth protruded from under her upper lip so that she could not close her mouth without special effort.
"Dipped in bulsh!" The Mall muttered to himself. "Is that all I can find?" He looked around again. There were other women farther off in the fields, but it was a long way to walk, and there were more people farther on down the way. WelL hell, it was female, wasn't it? He approached her.
She eyed him hostilely. "What you lookin' at cabrone?"
"Looking at you."
"Yen? What you think you see?"
The Mall thought, I think I see a dumb bitch could be making more money on her back than on her feet, ugly as she is. But he said, "I think I see a girl working pretty hard for what cotton she's got."
Some of the hostility faded from the girl's eyes. She regarded him seriously, unspeaking, waiting to see what else he had to say. Her eyes were dark, but lusterless, the whites almost brown rather than white and threaded with visible veins.
"This is tough work for a girl," The Mall said, watching for her reaction. It was the right reaction. She slumped her shoulders a little, as she relaxed. The blue, worn cotton of her dress gaped a little at the neck, and The Mall could see the upper swelling of her high breasts. She had nice titties, and her shape wasn't bad. He wondered if the nipples were pink or brown or black. It was something he had to find out.
"Too hard work, you're right," the girl said. She let her cotton bag slip from her shoulders, then she sat on it. "You got a cigarette."
The Mall shok his head. "I don't smoke."
"Man. You're a square bear. I need a fag like I need air in my lungs."
"I wish I had one." He did, too, it would have been an opening. He considered running to where the Prof was and bumming a couple, but decided it wouldn't be worth it. It might make her think he was too eager.
"Well," the girl said, "I guess it's cotton leaves again." She poked around the stalks until she found a couple of dried leaves that had somehow remained on the plants. These she crumbled to a coarse powder by rubbing them briskly in the palms of her hands. Then she produced a grim little roll of toilet paper from her bosom. With a square of toilet paper she rolled a cigarette, using the leaves for tobacco. She lighted up and inhaled deeply of the smoke.
The Mall watched in amazement. "You that broke?"
"Pretty bad. What you suppose I'm doin' out here?"
"Christ. If I was a dame I wouldn't be going around broke. You wouldn't find me working for money!"
"No? What would you be doing?" She measured him with a sidelong glance of suspicion.
"What the hell do you think?"
"Yeh? I wish I had half the nerve most men think they'd have if they was women."
"It don't take no nerve. All you gotta do is be a little friendly. The guy does the rest."
"Yeh, and you willin' to show me how it's done, is that it?"
"Well-"
"What kind of girl you think I am?"
"Oh, horsh! Well, I got to get back to my cotton picking. Have fun, girl." The Mall stood up, slowly slung the loop of his bag over his shoulder. He did not look at the girl. Either she would or she wouldn't; he'd know in a minute. He started to walk away slowly.
"Wait a minute."
"Yeh?" He turned slowly, cursing silently because his heart was pounding excitedly. Christ, it was only a dame, and an ugly one at that. Nothing to get excited about
"You say all I got to do is be friendly?"
"That's all. I'll show you the rest"
"What's in it for me?"
"The cotton I got in this here bag." He threw the bag down on the ground. There was no question now. It was just a matter of a few more words between them while she made it right with herself.
"How much?"
"There's a good fifty pounds."
"How do you know I ain't lyin'?"
"Come on, God damn it, I ain't got all afternoon. Lay down on the cotton. It makes a good bed."
Silently she obeyed. He stood over her for a moment, looking first down at her, then around the field to see if anyone was near. The nearest pickers were a hundred yards away. At his feet she lay silent, wide-eyed, submissive, her mouth closed tightly now, making her face look extra long and thin.
The Mall knelt over her, pinning her legs together at first with his knees so she couldn't squirm away if she got panicky. He lifted the dress up over her head, let it fall over her face. It wasn't necessary to look at her face that way. The rest of her was all right. If her face only matched her body she would be a dream. But it didn't. He slapped her sharply on the hip, told her to spread her legs. The sound spread out on the hot air like a flat, solid thing. His hand came away wet from her sweaty flesh.
He slapped her again on the other hip, just to hear the sound again. It went skating out over the furrowed ground, and he watched, delighted, as if he could see the noise.
"You ain't bein' very friendly," she whined from under the folds of blue cloth.
"Sure I am. Just playing a little, girl. Come on, God damn it, get a little life into you. I suppose you're a damn virgin!"
"Yes." It was muffled and far away. He hardly heard her answer.
"Christ. I hate virgins. They ain't worth fifty pounds of cotton."
"I'll do the best I can."
"Just do what I tell you." He considered not bothering with it after all. But by that time his animal hungers had been worked to full pitch by his playing, so he, too, did the best he could.
Afterwards he had to take another look to remind himself that they were brown. Not pink, or black. A nice warm, chestnut brown.
That night after they got back, Jim collapsed on the bed. He supposed there must have been a time in his life when he had been this tired before, but he couldn't recall when it might have been. Every muscle in his body ached, and he swore he could feel the aches in The Mall's body, too.
"Don't go to sleep now, my boy," the Prof advised. "You'll feel better tomorrow if you take a walk now. Loosen up. Don't let your muscles set that way."
"Walk!"
"Certainly. I imagine Tillie Smyth would take another walk with you. That is, she might if you sort of sauntered by that way, you know. Sort of let it be known you might walk if you had a bit of company."
Jim grinned. The idea had its good points at that. And those points were the very ones he had not quite investigated thoroughly enough the night before. Maybe this time they wouldn't be interrupted.
They found another saguaro to camp under this time, away from the arroyo and its shielding palo verde. No use taking a chance on a repeat of last night's fiasco.
It was alternately dark and light, with long streamers of clouds drifting across the face of the moon. Jim waited for a time of dark, and then he found the buttons on her shirt and opened them one by one. When he had the shirt pushed back away from the soft flesh, he rested his cheek momentarily against one breast. It was warm and satiny and delightfully comfortable. He let the weight of his head rest on her bosom. And he closed his eyes for just an instant.
"Jim-"
He heard her voice from very far away, and he wondered vaguely what was wrong, and he stirred restlessly, wondering. "Jim, we'd better go now. It's getting cold."
"Hunf?"
"You went to sleep, Darling. Poor dear, you were so tired you went right to sleep."
Jim sat up suddenly, angrily. He looked at his watch. He couldn't make out the time very distinctly, but it seemed to be eleven-thirty. If that was right he had slept for three hours. She had lain there on the rocks and hard ground and cradled him while he slept all that time.
"We'd better get back," he said, gently. He took off his coat and put it around her. The cold was not bitter yet, but it was uncomfortably chill.
He kissed her before he let her go into her shack.
"You know, everyone will think for sure you made love to me out there tonight."
"Do you mind, Tillie? Do you-care if they think that?"
Her eyes were luminous in the moonlight, her blonde hair platinum in the dusting silver from the sky. "I don't know, Jim. When you started to make love to me I was scared-you know? And I was glad, too, and disappointed, and a little thrilled and a little hurt all at once. Is is possible to be all those things at once, Jim?"
"Very possible. Tillie, I-" but he said no more. Instead he kissed her and left. He had almost said, Tillie, I love you. But it was not true. He was fond of her, he liked her, but he did not love her. He would not throw the phrase around idly, therefore. Tillie was too good for that. She was meant for better things.
He stumbled to his own shack, and into bed.
"Did you lay her, Kid?" The Mall mumbled.
"Whether I say yes or no, you'll think I'm lying," Jim said. He turned on his side and barely got the covers around his chin when the Prof's poetry was calling them for the next day's work.
CHAPTER TEN
The next day the kid picked a hundred and thirty pounds and the Prof was proud of him. Nothing wrong with Jim Pettenger, alias Paul Peterson, alias the Kid, that some toughening up in the fields wouldn't cure. He was willing, and he worked hard, and he tried. Those were the qualities that counted. If he kept it up it wouldn't be long before he was making a reasonable day's wages.
Of course it was work, and who could say what were reasonable day's wages for the kind of work that seared the very soul with the acid of fatigue. What was good pay for labor which left a man so bone tired at night that he couldn't even make love to his girl?
And Jim wasn't the only one, the Prof told himself. He looked around the truck at the weary men. Their cheeks were hollow with fatigue, their shoulders sagging with the weight of the day behind, their eyes like holes burned in their heads. Holes that showed deep down into their souls and windowed the despair, the futility with which they regarded their lives, their times.
The Prof watched one man on the trip back home. He was a good-looking man, the Prof couldn't help noticing. He was young, with a certain cleanliness about him, under the natural grime of the day's work. There was also a certain dignity with which he carried his weariness. But his eyes were fiery with inner thought, his expression morbid with the reaction to that thought.
The Prof made up a case history for the man. He had no idea if any of it was true, except for the end part of it. The man had been a carpenter, the Prof told himself, a laboring man, honest and possessed of a simple dignity. He had been married, had one child, loved his wife deeply. For some reason he had lost the wife and child. Something had taken them away, maybe death, maybe life-the man had gone on a long drinking bout, had lost his job, his skill, his reputation. He couldn't get a job carpentering any more. In desperation he took to picking cotton to live.
That part of the case history was fictitious so far as the Prof knew. But the rest was fact. Now the man was about thirty-five years old, was broke, had nothing, lived in a shanty town next to the dump. His immediate future consisted of back-breaking work while the season lasted, uncertainty after that. He was a refugee from his own life.
He and the Prof and two hundred others in the Village.
But of course there were not two hundred left in the Village when they got home. There were about half that. Just as he had expected, about half the people had drifted away. By their very nature they were vulnerable to the law, most of them, and it took only a threat to send them scurrying on their crooked little ways.
The Prof followed The Mall and Jim silently into their hut. Jim flopped on the bed, sighed loudly. The Mall sat down and took off his shoes, rubbed his bare feet. He began to tell about a half-breed he had been laying. The Prof was profoundly disinterested, this time, in the big man's carnal adventures.
It seemed stifling in the hut. The Mall had closed the door, presumably against the encroachment of a cold night, but it was not cold out, it was uncomfortably warm. That shack was close, and dusty, always dusty, and stank, inevitably of the smells of their bodies. The Prof got up and went outside.
"You coming to supper with us, Prof?" The Mall called out.
"No. Later perhaps. I have to see someone. On business."
The Prof walked slowly through the Village. As he walked, he could see the vacancies where individuals and families had pulled out. To most people, he supposed, it would seem only less crowded, but to him it showed a definite emptiness. That Negro family of the old mother and five boys had lived in that bus body. Over to the right was a litter of trash where a tent had stood this very morning. A whole shack was missing over there. Good lord, how could they move the entire shack?
They were leaving. They all would leave, and there could be no stopping them. The problem was not, after all, to stop them, but to provide for the few who showed faith in him. As Jim had said, he must certainly have plans....
Well, no plans, but an idea.
It would be better to move on out, he thought. He could hold a few around him, like the Smyths, and maybe twenty or thirty more. They could hold out, defy the law. But it would accomplish nothing in the end. They would lose in the end.
And it probably would not be wise to call attention to Jim Pettenger. The kid was running from something. Probably the law.
He went to a little grocery store where there was a pay phone. There he put in a call to Conroy. "Person to person to Saul Diamond," he told the operator.
Diamond answered, gruff sounding as ever. "Yeh?"
"Good evening, Saul. How's your cotton coming?"
The far end of the wire crackled with an oath. "Who the hell is this?"
"Never mind who. The important question you should ask is what is this?"
"What the hell is this? I have no time for crackpots!"
"Much better," the Prof conceded. He smiled thinly to himself as he paused, considering just what to say next. He could picture the fuming anger of Saul Diamond at the other end. Diamond was not noted for his good temper, even under the best of circumstances. But Diamond was a realistic man. He would listen carefully when he heard the magic words. The Prof waited just as long as he dared, savoring the situation. Then he said, "Do you need any labor to get your cotton in?"
"What sort of damn fool nonsense is this? Certainly I need labor. Who the hell doesn't need labor right now?"
"I could furnish at least fifty men and women," the Prof said quietly.
"You're insane."
"Perhaps. I have often considered that possibility. However, that, true or false, does not affect the validity of my statement. But I see you are not interested. Well, just thought I'd call and find out. Sorry I-"
"Just a minute." A long pause. "Sorry, I-I am interested. What do I have to do?"
The Prof smiled to himself again. He knew it had hurt Diamond to swallow his pride that way. Pride was something Diamond ate in exceedingly small quantities. But now the game was over. It was time to quit needling and get down to business.
"Can you accommodate that many?"
"I have the usual labor camp facilities. Not much, you understand. Needs some cleaning up, but plenty of room."
"We'll do the cleaning up," the Prof said. "Just be ready for work Monday morning. We'll move in Saturday afternoon."
"I'll send trucks."
"No. We'll get there. I don't even want to see your ugly face before Monday morning." Silence crackled at the Conroy end. The Prof chuckled and hung up. He sat in the booth and soaked in satisfaction for a time. It was not often that a simple cotton picker got a chance to make a big rancher eat humble pie. He considered the idea of his being a simple cotton picker and that tickled him too. He chortled aloud. This, he told himself, calls for a celebration.
The Prof felt almost giddy. Lord, he had not felt this way for a long while. It must be Jim Pettenger's influence. He could go for Jim, if things were different.
But, the Prof reminded himself sternly, things were not different. Things were the same. He was a "simple cotton picker" not by necessity but by choice. If he could entertain such outrageous thoughts then the choice was futile. He was accomplishing nothing.
Well, to horse, men, and on to yon celebration. He bought a gallon of port wine and a pint of gin. On the way back to the village he drank a pint of wine from the jug and poured in the gin. He sloshed it around well. Omar's punch, he called it. To be good, Omar's punch had to be sloshed a lot.
He laughed and thought of other days, of Martinis mixed in a silver shaker, and sipped from crystal. Of white linen and evenings by the fire, of the companionship of male friends of the same caliber and predelictions.
Well, this was a Martini, almost, a gigantic Martini, if you forgot the real recipe and pretended a bit. He took a deep swig from the jug and pronounced that it was good.
The Prof went to the Smyths. Surprisingly, all were there. Jim and Tillie were sitting on a box outside, talking together in low, confidential tones.Maude sat in the dirt, a few feet away, leaning up against the shack, fanning herself with a piece of cardboard. The Mall and Lula were inside on the bed, necking. The Prof raised his eyebrows to find their occupation so tame.
"Why so grim, everybody?," the Prof said, when no one spoke to him.
"Hot," Maude said, as if that explained everything. "Dusty," Jim added. "It stinks," Tillie put in.
"Hmmm. Yes. It is all of those things. But I have here the panacea, or perhaps the elixir, you might say. Two drinks of Omar's punch and you will forget these evils. Ah, yes, you will come with me to another world." Smiling he profferred the jug.
They all had their two drinks, and then they all had two more. And since there was a full gallon left, they all had some more. By the time the bottle was three-quarters empty they had, indeed, forgotten all the evils. Everyone was in a jovial mood.
It was then the Prof got his brilliant idea. "Let's go swimming," he said.
"Swimming!" Jim echoed. "Where in hell do you go swimming in this desert?"
"In the canal. In the irrigation canal."
"By god, let's go!" roared The Mall. "That's the best damn idea I've heard all day!"
It was a trudge of several long blocks to the canal. They went to the southernmost of the lacework of canals and laterals that feed water to the desert community and transform the desert into a vast oasis. After the walk they were even more hot and dusty. There was a little more punch left so they drank it.
The group stood on the bank of the canal staring at the rushing brown water. The moon had not yet risen much above the southern mountains, so the surface of the water was almost black in the night. It went rushing and hissing past, looking forbidding and rather dangerous.
"Do we swim in that?" Jim asked.
"To be sure," the Prof said. "It isn't as bad as it looks. Quite warm, actually. And in a few minutes, when the moon is higher, it will look much more appealing."
"What do we do for suits?" Jim asked.
"Suits! Good lord! Suits! The one you were born with, my boy. That's the best suit of all." The Prof shucked off his shirt, dropped it and his pants in a heap on the canal bank. He kicked off his shoes, and stood for a moment a pale statue in the dark. Then he jumped into the water feet first. The water came about to his waist. It was quite warm. "Come on in, the water's fine!"
Maude cackled gleefully and she slipped out of her clothes. In a moment she tumbled into the water and was carried downstream before she could regain her feet. She struggled back up against the current toward the Prof.
The Mall and Lula raced to see who could get undressed first and into the water. Being less encumbered The Mall won, but just by a splash. He promptly grabbed Lula and held her underwater for a few seconds. She came up spitting and flailing her white arms. "Have you ever done it under water?" he asked her.
"If you mean murder," she hissed, "no, but I'm willing to try!" She pushed him over backwards and leaped toward him, determined to hold his head down.
On the bank Jim and Tillie still remained, hesitant. Jim looked at Tillie, and she looked away, then back again at him.
"Think we should?" Jim said.
"Do you?"
"I asked you."
"Well, it's kind of dark."
"I will if you will."
"Everyone else is."
"Come on, I'll race you in."
"No! Jim-I will, but don't go away from me. I'd be so scared. Someone could drown."
"It doesn't seem to be very deep."
"It's deep enough. The current is so fast. People have drowned in these here canals. Lots of people...."We'll be all right if we stick together."
"That's what I mean, Jim. Don't go away from me."
"That is a promise easy to keep."
"Jim, honey, I'm so nervous, I can't get my brassiere unfastened."
"I'm an artist at that," he said, and unsnapped it for her. They went in, with Tillie clutching his hand tightly. First they inched down the bank, then poked their feet in gently. The water was warm, and the current did not seem to be as swift as it looked. They went on out to the center of the canal where the rest were. Tillie modestly sank down on her knees so that the water came up around her neck. Jim smiled and moved close to her. In the dark water no one could see where his hands were.
The Prof cavorted in the center of the stream. It was refreshing to feel the water coursing around his body. It might not be the cleanest water-the thought came to his mind that the canal was where farmers disposed of dead stock and where cesspool companies emptied their tank trucks-but it was the most water available anywhere near. Nevertheless, the Smyth's shower would catch hell when they all got home.
"Hey, look at me!" The Mall called. "I'm a battleship!"
The Prof looked at The Mall. The big man was floating on his back, drifting rather swiftly with the current. He had sounded rather drunk, and the Prof made a grab for him as he floated past. The grab missed, and the Prof fell face down in the water. By the time he regained his feet he was several feet downstream. Cursing he held on to the crumbly canal bank while he looked around.
"Hey, Prof, how do you steer this son of a bitch?" The Mall's voice came from a little downstream.
"Mall? Where the devil are you?" The Prof glared wildly around. Upstream the rest of the group were still cavorting and splashing. They were about twenty yards away, silver doll figures in the dark. Downstream the dark bulk of The Mall was a churned up place in the water as powerful arms and legs threshed futilely. "Mall?" Stand up on your feet, damn it! You'll be washed under the bridge."
A violent oath skipped back at him. "I can't get control of the battleship. I think the rudder's busted."
"Drunken bastard," the Prof muttered. He paused only long enough to call to Jim for help, then he struck out after The Mall. The big man was a weak swimmer, but the Prof's own thin arms propelled him swiftly down stream. A few strokes and he had a hold on one of the massive arms. His thin fingers slipped away, but he lashed out frantically until he caught hold again.
"Stand up, goddamit! I can't hold your weight against the current if you don't stand up!"
"I can't. The bottom won't stay still."
The Prof struggled to hold on to The Mall and to sink his feet into the bottom at the same time, but he couldn't do it. They raced on downstream with the full speed of the current. Behind them he could hear faint shouts, and he thought he saw a racing shadow along the canal bank, but he couldn't be sure. There was no time to look again. Ahead a bridge hurtled toward them at frightening speed. If they struck the footing of the bridge one or both of them might be knocked unconscious, or at least they would be separated. The Prof knew that once he let go of The Mall it would be the last time he would see him alive. The big man was almost helpless now in the grip of the current and from the effects of the alcohol.
Like the bulk of a locomotive the footing of the bridge raced toward them, and like a locomotive it roared warning to them. The Prof recognized the roar as the boiling tumult of water hurtling over falls. He remembered that at this bridge the water dropped three feet straight down, and then passed through a narrower concrete channel before the canal widened. At the same moment he remembered one other thing, but he had no time to consider it. He dug his fingers into The Mall's arm, took a deep breath, and hung on.
He kicked out with his feet when the concrete footing threatened to slice them down the middle. Wildly he lashed out with his frail legs, striving to force them a little ways from the middle of the stream. A crushing pain struck his foot and rushed up his leg, and he knew he had kicked the concrete. Then they were suddenly past the danger of the footing and were hurtled over the edge of the falls.
They went crashing clear to the bottom, and jarred heavily against the floor, then were picked up like dolls and tumbled like chips in a cataract. The roaring water hurtled itself up the Prof's nostrils, pounded in his ears, pushed at his eyes, strove to tear his hands from their grip on The Mall. He clung on and felt their tumultuous passage along the now narrow channel through violent bruising contact with the concrete sides and bottom.
Suddenly they were shot out into the comparative calm of the main body of the canal. The Prof wrestled The Mall's head up above water.
"Can you hear me?" he demanded.
The Mall waggled his head foolishly, spit water, but said nothing.
"All right. This is it. We're going through a culvert next. Now in the name of God, don't fight it. No, you fool! I said don't fight it. You'll kill us both if you fight it. Our only chance is to go on through as quickly as we can! Here we go...."
The looming mouth of the culvert opened to swallow them. The Prof desperately held his breath, and clamped his hand over the nose and mouth of The Mall to force him to do the same. Darkness swept around them, cold, roaring, hurtling darkness. A lifetime came and went, and the air was all burned from his lungs so that they screamed for a breath. Still they bumped along in the culvert. The Mall was a sodden lump.
Something had a lever in the Prof's mouth and was prying with a tremendous force to throw his mouth open. But his teeth were locked and he could not open his mouth, could not gulp in the coolness that was all around him. He knew he was going to die with the red sparks rocketing from his lungs to his brain and bursting there with festoons of white pain.
And then, just before he felt his mouth would surely open and drag in the caressing damp around him a dim light appeared overhead. They were out of the culvert, their heads were above water, and he was drinking air. Not breathing it, but drinking it in huge gulps. Along the canal bank a shadow suddenly plummeted into the water, and suddenly strong hands were helding him steady against the tug of the current.
"Thank God I caught up with you," Jim said. "Can you help me get him up on the bank?"
The Prof summoned his last strength to help drag the inert lump that was The Mall out of the water and up the steep bank. Then he fell exhausted to the ground. He rolled over on his side so he could watch Jim. And Jim was a machine pumping air in and out of The Mall's lungs. Up-down-up-down Jim moved gracefully and steadily in the motion of artificial respiration.
After a long time The Mall began to gasp and at last he was breathing again.
The Prof could find no words. He was profoundly shocked by the near tragedy, and he sat trembling with fear at the thought of what had nearly happened. It was a terrible thing to almost lose a close friend.
But he knew it was more than that. He knew it was far more than concern for a friend, however close. The Prof sat with his head in his hands, angered but helpless in the face of the feeling and the knowledge. It was the old, old curse still with him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Friday evening the pink-faced health officer visited the village again. This time he carried with him an order to appear before the east precinct Justice of the Peace on misdemeanor contempt charges. He delivered the order with much solemn ceremony, after which he spun silently on a booted heel and stalked away.
The Prof stared at the paper. Then he grinned wryly, shugged and let it flutter to the ground. He wiped his feet on it, still grinning sourly.
They had been eating supper at the Smyth's, but fortunately the meal was almost finished. No one felt much like eating after the officer's visit.
Jim leaned over and picked up the paper from the dirt. He smoothed it out a little and read it, then crumpled it up and threw it in a trash box. He raised his eyebrows to the Prof.
"What do we do now?"
"What now, indeed? It would appear this is war, eh?"
"Come on, Prof," Maude put in impatiently. "Cut out the double talk. Just what does the paper mean?"
"Well, it means, in effect, that we are supposed to appear before the J. P. on charges of contempt of court. The temptation, of course, is to go and assure them that we have nothing but contempt for the court. But, inasmuch as that would accomplish nothing but to spit our own gooses, we must pursue the alternative. In short, we must fall back in planned retreat. We must evacuate."
"He means we gotta get out," The Mall interpreted. It was the first he had spoken for a long while. The Mall was a much subdued man after his near disaster in the canal.
"Get out?" Lula repeated, her eyes flashing panic. Maude and Tillie echoed the words. Jim waited, watching the Prof handle the situation and milk the final bit of drama from it.
"Out," the Prof said. "The Village is through. We're beaten."
"But where do we go?" Lula wailed.
The Prof smiled knowingly. "Just be ready to move. Tomorrow morning we shall carry our meager belongings with us to the fields, transportation courtesy of Mr. Higgs. In the afternoon, after we are paid, we shall move to our new quarters."
"Where?" Jim asked.
"I have it all arranged. All who wish to follow are welcome."
Jim dropped the questioning. The Prof would tell when he was ready to tell where they would go next, and not an instant before. Well, let him handle it his own way. Perhaps the psychology was right at that. The way he was handling it no one knew where they were going so there was suspense. If they knew possibly some might not like it and there would be brooding. Or they would think they could find a better place. This way all would stick together if for no other reason than to find out what the Prof had in mind. Jim conceded that the Prof was a smart man when he wanted to be.
The Prof stood then and announced that he had to extend his invitation to those still remaining in the Village. He left on his errand and Jim stayed and listened to the babble of praise for the Prof from The Mall and the Smyths. Jim knew that if the rest of the Village held the Prof in half the regard this group did, he would have a large following in his move tomorrow.
Saturday afternoon Higgs paid off for the week's work. He was a systematic man, Mr. Higgs was, so he paid off the workers in alphabetical order. That left Jim and the Smyths down toward the end of the line. The Prof and The Mall, whose full name was Mallbert Crenton, were paid off early. They stood and waited, the Prof patiently, The Mall fidgeting.
Higgs called out a name, consulted his book and paid in cash. There were a few arguments, but Higgs made no adjustments. Once Higgs wiped the sweat from his three chins and flicked his fingers dry by snapping them toward a woman who was complaining about something. The hot sweat hit her in one eye. She screeched indignantly.
Jim had not heard what the complaint was. He moved closer, pushing through the circle of people crowding around the fat labor contractor. Several of the men in the crowd muttered threateningly, but no one moved to challenge Higgs. They were all waiting to be paid-those who Lad been paid had left already-and they did not care to antagonize Higgs.
"Plenty of contractors," Higgs was saying. "If'n you don't like hit you can work for somebody else."
"I tell you I know I picked more cotton than this!" The woman waved her few bills at Higgs.
Jim studied her closely, wondering if she had a legitimate complaint of some sort. She was a scrawny, washed out woman of indeterminable age, anywhere from thirty to fifty. A thin cotton print dress hung loosely on her thin, shapeless form. Her hair was stringy and dirty, her eyes sat way back in her head and looked out as from some haunted place. She looked like she had about the physical strength of a dried reed. Still she challenged Higgs.
"I want the rest of my money!" she said. There was a tinge of hysteria in her voice, as if she knew already she was beaten. Jim felt sorry for her.
Higgs sighed, rolled his slightly yellowed eyes skyward as if asking for divine guidance. "Look. This here's your name in the book, ain't it?" He held out his black, tattered notebook for her to see. She nodded. "And those are the figgers. Can you see them? Can you add them? All right. You see anything wrong with the addition?"
"No, but-"
Higgs roughly shook her off. "Then get out of m'whiskers! Hawkins. Glen Hawkins next!" Higgs called. A man stepped out of the crowd in answer. The ring of people surged closer around Higgs, squeezing out the woman who had protested.
She was suddenly on the outside of the ring, and Higgs was inside, protected. She tried to worm back to Higgs again, but the others had had enough of delay, and would not let her penetrate. Hawkins was paid, without argument, and left.
Jim noticed that Hawkins was a big, capable looking man. He could not help wondering if his size had any bearing on Higgs' system of paying. Then he dismissed the thought when four more people of assorted sizes and appearance were paid off without argument. Just an unfortunate incident with the woman, he guessed. Some people would be bound to make trouble that way. Higgs did not have an easy job, nor a particularly enviable one, at that.
The woman was gone when Jim looked around for her again. Jim shrugged. Well, hell, he just didn't like Higgs, that was all, and he was just standing there looking for something about which to dislike him even more. He turned away from watching Higgs, and went over to talk with the Prof and The Mall.
"What about moving, Prof? Have you any more to tell us now?"
"As a mater of fact I have. We are going to work for a big rancher by the name of Diamond. He has some large acreage outside of Conroy."
"Conroy! That's thirty miles from here. How are we supposed to get there?" Jim doubted the Prof's sanity for a moment. They sure as hell could not pile on and off the three or four busses it would involve getting to Conroy from here. The people who were going with the Prof-and there were nearly fifty-had all their personal belongings with them.
"I am cognizant of the transportation difficulties," the Prof said. He smiled blandly at Jim. Jim waited. He knew that the Prof would tell him what he wanted to tell when he wanted to tell it. Nevertheless it angered Jim somewhat, and he clenched his teeth to keep from saying something unpleasant.
" "He means he knows it'll be tough," The Mall told Jim, misinterpreting the silence.
Jim laughed. "O.K. I know when I'm beat."
"And I have taken care of the matter," the Prof continued as if he had never stopped speaking. "I have arranged for Mr.
Higgs and his bus and truck to take us to Diamond's ranch."
"Oh, is Higgs still going to be our contractor?"
"No, you do not understand the situation, my boy. In this instance we shall be living right on the ranch in, ah, accommodations provided by Mr. Diamond. At no cost to us, of course. And since we will be working directly for the rancher with no contractor, or middleman, so to speak, we will get the full three-fifty per hundred which is the prevailing rate for short staple this season."
"That's a four bit raise," The Mall offered happily.
"A brilliant bit of calculation, my friend."
"Aw, it wasn't much. I just added the three-fifty to the three bucks we get now and subtracted six and came up with fifty cents. That's our raise, fifty cents."
The Prof regarded The Mall with all seriousness while Jim worked to keep from chuckling. "Well, in that event the calculation was more complex, and therefore even more brilliant, than I had imagined. I always knew you were a gentleman; now I find you are also a scholar."
The Mall turned his head to hide the deep color that was creeping up from his neck. Fortunately for Jim he heard Higgs calling his name loudly and angrily.
"Peterson! You want your money? Come and get it."
"Damn right I want it. Broke my back for that money," Jim muttered. He walked swiftly through the crowd, and they opened a path before him and closed it again around him.
"Count it," Higgs said. "Make sure you got the full twenty-one seventy."
"Twenty-one!" Jim counted the money. It was the amount Higgs had named. He thought about it for a minute. Then he began to get mad. "I picked more cotton than this," he said, keeping a careful leash on his anger.
Higgs stared him straight in the eye and sighed mournfully. "This ain't my day. It just ain't."
"I got a whole hundred pounds more coming, and I want it." Jim felt anger beginning to boil in his stomach. He clenched his fists and swallowed hard. When that steaming anger gathered in his stomach and rose up in his throat it meant trouble for someone. Usually for Jim, in the end. That was the way he had felt when he found Pelton with his wife. The way he had felt when the rancher had insulted him in the bar last week. Now he felt that way again, and it took all his control to keep from striking out and pounding his fist into the third roll of fat beneath Higg's chin.
Higgs was being very patient. He was holding out the notebook so Jim could see it. "This is my notebook, ain't it? You seen me write down your tallies each day, ain't you? Add it up."
Jim added it quickly. The total was correct. "You changed something."
"You don't see no changes there, do you?"
"No, but-"
Higgs turned his back on Jim. The remainder of the crowd surged around Higgs' new position, and Jim found himself on the outside. "Smyth I" Higgs called. "Lula Smyth. Come get it, if you want it."
Jim fumed violently, but he could think of nothing to do except start a fight, and he knew that would get him nowhere. He would probably have to fight the rest of the crowd too, anyway, if he delayed the paying off. Everyone was anxious to get their money and get on into town.
Jim started to go back with the Prof and The Mall, but he stayed instead to see how Lula made out. If she complained of being shorted too, there would sure be one hell of a brawl, with Jim right in the middle swinging.
But Lula did not complain. She accepted her small amount without a murmur, and in fact thanked Higgs warmly. Jim stared at her, amazed. Surely she had picked more than twelve dollars worth in a week. But she had no complaint. Higgs handed her the money, dug for a few more pennies to make exact change. A long look passed between Higgs and Lula then, and Jim could not misread the message in her eyes and the self-satisfied smirk on Higg's fat face.
"Well, I'm damned!" Jim murmured.
"That's two of us!" The Mall growled.
Jim whirled, startled. The Mall had walked up behind him, and must have been standing there to see the little play between Higgs and Lula.
"What do you think of it?"
"I think Higgs is a crook and there's something between he and Lula."
Jim hated to agree, but he had to. It was too plain. "We maybe better have a little chat with Mr. Higgs. But we want to be sure first."
"I only know one way to be sure!" He went directly to Lula, with Jim following behind. The big man seized one of Lula's arms in his hand; and squeezed. The flesh turned white, and Lula squealed.
"Let me go!"
"Shut up. I like to hold your arm, don't you know? Only this time maybe I'll break it. What's between you and Higgs?"
"None of your Goddamn business!" Pain pulled Lula's mouth down in a sharp frown, but anger in her eyes burned brightly. "You let me go!"
The Mall stared straight into her glittering eyes, saying nothing, and not moving an inch. Lula spit suddenly, straight into The Mall's face. His expression did not change as he slapped her hard across the side of the jaw with his free hand. She cried out in pain again.
Jim felt uneasy about The Mall hurting Lula. "Let her go," he directed. "Maybe we were wrong."
The Mall did not answer. He did not take his gaze from Lula's face. "There's sumpin' between you and Higgs, ain't there?"
"What makes you think so?"
"I seen the way you looked at him."
"All right, so maybe there is. So what? You ain't got no dog tags on me, mister. Maybe there is, and if there is, there'll go right on being something between us. And between me and any other man I take a liking to, get me?"
"I get too much of you," The Mall said. "You make me sick." He shoved her away. She reeled, then fell in the dust, picked herself up again muttering curses. The Mall turned to Jim. "That enough for you?"
Jim nodded silently. It was enough. He felt a little sick, but it was sympathy for Lula and had nothing to do with his anger at Higgs. "Let's go."
Jim and The Mall started off together, but the Prof appeared suddenly before them. "Just a moment, boys, what's the difficulty, may I ask?"
"Go ahead and ask," The Mall said. He kept plowing on, and the Prof had to walk backwards before him.
"Then what is the difficulty?"
"We're going to beat the hell out of Higgs. He shorted Jim."
"How much?"
"A hundred pounds."
"And that is grounds for beating hell out of the man?"
"It's good enough for us," Jim said. "I wasn't the only one. I saw several others complain, but they couldn't do anything about it. We can."
"I hardly feel that violence is the solution. After all, we still have need of Mr. Higgs."
"To hell with that son of a bitch!"
"Indeed. Nevertheless, I object to violence at this time. It is not worth the three dollars, believe me."
"What's the matter, Prof, you chickenish?"
"You know me better than that. The point is, it will accomplish nothing to go flaring off in anger now. Wait, at least, until you have considered. Then, if you still are angry, then do something about it."
"No, goddam it, we're going to get the son of a bitch now!"
"Over my dead body!"
"If you want it that way-" The Mall brushed the Prof aside with one massive arm. The Prof fell to the ground. He did not get up immediately. Jim stopped to help the old man up, and helped him get dusted off. The wrong people were getting hurt in this thing.
The Mall came back when he saw Jim was no longer with him. "Now what?"
"Take it easy, Mall, you're like a damn bull on a rampage."
"That's the way I feel. And Higgs'll think so, too, when I get aholt of him."
"You are not going to get aholt of him," the Prof insisted quietly. "If you do I shan't take you two in as my roommates at the new camp."
He meant it. That was obvious. Jim knew the Prof meant just what he said. Apparently The Mall knew it too. He paused, then stopped, then turned and came back. Jim waited, wondering what to do or say. There appeared to be nothing to do except watch and see what The Mall decided.
"You," The Mall said slowly to the Prof, "are a dirty, rotten, no good, son of a bitch and a bastard."
"No doubt."
"Someday I'm gonna clobber you, too, you old coot."
"I believe it."
"It's plain blackmail."
"True."
"We're still going to get the bastard-later."
"Your prerogative."
"O. K."
"O. K."
Jim sighed. End of round, end of fight. The Prof had won, hands down. Jim and The Mall exchanged glances. They would go along with the Prof for now. But later, the first time they met up with Mr. Higgs-Jim wondered how Higgs would look with all his teeth knocked out. The speculation was pleasing. He decided definitely it would be an improvement.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tillie almost cried when she saw the labor camp. It was far worse even than the Village had been. Dirtier, if possible, and more squalid. And of course it stank. This time the stench was not from a dump near by, but from the place itself. It stank of the previous tenants, and the garbage and debris left in their wake.
"Is this where we're going to live?" Tillie demanded, still managing to hope against hope.
"I reckon it is," Maude told her. "What'd you expect? The Ritz?"
"No-but-I think we were better off at the Village. At least we had a place to take a bath."
"Aw, the Prof'll fix us up a bath. He says they even have running water here."
"Where?" Tillie challenged.
"Well-" Maude peered around. "Damnfy know. But if the Prof says so, it must be so. Now shut up and follow me."
Tillie picked up her two cardboard suitcases containing all her worldly possessions, and followed sorrowfully after Maude. Lula followed too, but she had The Mall carrying her few things.
The labor camp was two long rows of buildings facing each other wearily across a sunbaked stretch of dirt road. The road itself led nowhere except to a wide, cleared place at one end of the camp where parking space was available for anyone fortunate-or unfortunate-enough to own a car. The space was cluttered with the remains, stripped of all useful parts and rusting away, of relics left behind by less lucky owners.
A few serviceable machines were there now, their owners having come on in ahead of Higgs and the main body of workers.
The rutted road to the camp branched off a road only slightly better which led, Tillie was told, to Saul Diamond's big farm house a mile or so away. Tillie wondered if the house was anything like Daddy Smyth's big house back home. Maybe it was just the same, she told herself, with a big, wide front porch where everyone sat in the evening, and the men smoked, and women talked, and kids ran around-
"Quit dreaming, and help me open the door!" Maude commanded.
Tillie dropped her two bags and ran to open the door for Maude. She had hardly been paying any attention to where they were going. Now she looked around and was shocked.
The house Maude had led them to was an unpainted shack little better than the one they had had in the Village. There was no porch, no steps, just the barren, sagging door and one window with four broken panes. Tillie thought at first she could not open the door because it was locked, but she looked closer and saw there was no lock on it. She tugged again and the door scraped open, pushing a little mound of dirt before it.
Inside it was dark and gloomy, and a strong odor of filth and decay crowded around her. Maude and Lula and The Mall trooped in after her. The Mall dropped the luggage he was carrying and ran out again, mumbling that he had to get settled himself.
"Christ, what a stink!" Lula said. "What the hell is it?"
"I don't know, but I ain't staying here, that I promise," Tillie said. She stood in the middle of the main room, looking around. The shack had two rooms, the main room they were in and a second room to the back. She could see a sink of sorts there, under a cobwebby window and she supposed the other room was the kitchen. There were a few sticks of ratty furniture in the house, a table, some chairs, two bedsteads with rusting springs. A coal oil lamp, coated with dust, squatted forlorn and lonely on the table.
Tillie would not move from where she stood, but Maude went back to the kitchen. "Christamighty! I found what stinks."
"What?" Tillie and Lula looked at each other, wondering.
"Some bastard must of thought it was too far to go to the outhouse, so he just used one corner of the kitchen. Quite a pile. Want to come see it?"
Tillie's stomach turned over once quickly, in one swift flop, and she reached out to a chair back for support. The feel of it made her draw her hand back quickly, and it came away coated with dust. "Let's get out of here. I feel sick."
"My God, we'd have to fight the flies for a place to light," Maude said, coming out of the kitchen.
They went back outside, and even the brassy heat of the afternoon was pleasant after the inside of the house. Maude found another house down the way that was not quite so bad. It was far from good, but after the first sample it was paradise. At least the dirt in it was of a nature that could be dealt with with a broom. In two hours they had the place livable. A pretty sorry sight, all in all, Tillie admitted, but at least livable.
"God," Lula said. "I feel dirty."
"You are. So am I. I miss the shower."
"Tomorrow," Maude said with a note of complete assurance in her voice, "I'll get the Prof and The Mall to rig up a shower for us. Ought to be easy here, with running water right in the kitchen."
"Jim will help, too," Tillie put in. They seemed to have forgotten all about Jim.
"Oh, yes, Jim," Maude conceded. "By the way, you lay him yet, Lula?"
"No."
"No! Why not?"
"Aw-this infant sister of mine goes following him around with calf eyes and I ain't got the heart to."
"He wouldn't even look at you."
"No? You forget something, don't you?"
Tillie blushed angrily. "That. Who wouldn't? You know what I mean, and I do not follow him around with calf eyes, do I, Maude?"
"I don't know what kind of eyes they are, but you sure tag after him enough, I'd say."
"I'm sorry I asked."
Maude cackled. She lay an affectionate hand on Tillie's shoulder. "Don't you mind us none. I reckon we just don't understand such things. You coming to town with us?"
"No!"
"Aw, come on. I won't tease you no more."
"No. Thanks-just the same. I think I'll stay here."
"You better come. Jim'll be going off with the Prof and The Mall."
"I-I don't want to go in. The place needs more cleaning. Think I'll stay here."
After Maude and Lula left, Tillie was lonely. She dabbled half-heartedly at cleaning the house, but there really was little left to do beyond straightening up a few details, and she was tired of working. She went outside.
Tillie didn't know what time it was, but she supposed it must be around four o'clock. Most of the camp was deserted again by now. For awhile it had buzzed with the comings and goings of people moving in, but now it was a ghost town again, almost. It was not really deserted, of course; there were the dogs, and the dirty, naked children and the few women who stayed behind with those children.
She wandered down the street, brooding. What a place. Two long rows of buildings. Two big barracks at one end of the street for the single men, and two dozen or so houses-cabins, shacks, really, unpainted, uncared for, dilapidated, splintering away with time and the hard wear given to them by the migrant workers. A hot, summer wind blowing trash down the street. Garbage, old and fresh, gathering flies and mouldering in the sun. Dirt, and dust, and a pall of Saturday afternoon hanging over the place from the gnarly, splintered old cottonwoods that lined the irrigation ditch to the first straggling edges of the fields of cotton just beyond the camp. Dirt and dust and loneliness and brooding about whether she followed Jim with calf eyes.
She wasn't paying attention to where she was going, so when he spoke she was startled.
"Hello there!"
"Oh!-Jim-I didn't see you there."
"I hope not. I thought you were going to walk right on past."
Tillie could not keep back a small blush. "Guess I was thinking about something."
"About me, I hope."
"What are you doing, writing a letter?" Tillie asked, to change the subject. Jim had a big pap of paper resting on one knee and he held a pencil in his hand.
"This? No-just scratching around a bit."
"Doing what?"
"Well, drawing some."
"I didn't know you could draw! Let me see."
"Didn't seem to be any call to mention it." He showed her what he had.
Tillie was almost shocked at what she saw. She did not know just what she had expected-maybe pictures of flowers, or birds or something. Instead Jim had been doing sketches of the camp. She guessed they were sketches, though she was not just certain what a sketch was. These pictures of Jim's were just a few lines here and there, mostly-and yet they seemed to tell so much. He had caught the sagging futility of the camp somehow, the squalor and the dirt. And he had done it so quickly. It was almost like looking at a skeleton of the place, the way Jim had done it.
"Like them?"
"I don't know. They-frighten me, somehow."
Jim's face was serious as he studied hers. "Do you mind if I take that as quite a compliment? I meant them to be stark. To show of the-well, the unpleasantness of a place like this. If they frighten you, I must have succeeded."
"You did, Jim. It was like looking down inside and seeing all the dirtiness and unpleasantness and all-I don't know how to say it."
"Don't look at them any more. They're just for my notebook anyway, not to look at. There are other, better things to draw to look at."
"Why don't you draw them, then, instead of this place?"
Jim looked at her as if there were really no sensible answer to that question at that. "I don't know. Out in the desert, for instance, is where I would like to go to work. Maybe paint a little."
"Why don't you, then?"
"It would be awfully lonely out there, by myself."
"I'd come with you."
"Would you really? It's a long ways. It would be way after dark before we could get back."
"Couldn't we just sort of stay, Jim? I mean, it's warm, and, that is-"
"Then let's go," Jim said softly.
They took one blanket and a little food. It was necessary to stop in town and buy a pad of water color paper and some cheap paints. Then they took the bus out to the edge of the desert and from there they walked. They found a road that stretched off apparently to nowhere across the hills and valleys of the desert and they walked it for more than an hour. At sunset they found themselves far from any sign of civilization other than the road. They felt confident they would not be bothered. It was utterly lonely, isolated, with the silence of open spaces crisp and clean in the evening air.
Before the sun set Jim made a few splashy pictures. Mostly they were just impressions of the mountains and the desert and the blaze of sunset around them. There was no time for attention to detail, he was trying only to capture the feeling of the land around them. Tillie thought they were wonderful. She had never seen anything like it before.
"Where did you learn to paint, Jim?"
"Oh-years ago, in school, here and there."
"Is that what you did for a living, or is it just for fun?"
"I was a commercial artist before I came here."
"How wonderful. I never knew."
"I haven't advertised it."
"Why not? I think it's wonderful."
"It is part of my past, Tillie, and I would rather forget my past."
"Are you really running away from something, Jim?"
"If you really want to know, yes. I'm running away from my wife."
"Oh. I didn't know you were married." Tillie had a little trouble getting the words out. Married. Somehow it had never been considered. But of course she should have considered it. She should have thought to wonder about such things before she let herself go completely.
"I'm sorry, Tillie. I never mentioned it. It just never seemed to come up. Do you want to go back now?"
Tillie considered seriously if she did want to. She thought about it for a long while. While she thought she was absolutely still, and it seemed as if she could hear the violence of the sunset as it changed from an explosion of orange and gold and red to a soft song of violet and blue and mauve. She could hear the silence ringing in the hills, and the little noises of birds and insects getting ready for the night. It was so peaceful here. She had not felt that peaceful and at ease for a long, long while.
Jim seemed to be a vital part of that peacefulness. "Do you plan to go back, Jim, ever?"
"I do not. Ever."
"Do you want me to stay here with you, Jim?"
"Tillie, I want it more than anything else in the world. But, now that you know what the situation is I hardly feel that I can ask you to. I don't know when I'll ever be free, Tillie, and I don't know that once free I would be interested in taking a chance again. Do you know what I mean?"
Tillie knew exactly what he meant. Once burned, twice wary. But he had been perfectly honest about it. He was perfectly honest now, in telling her he could make no promise for the future. But the future was a tomorrow-over the mountains way out there. Now was right here on the desert, in the quiet, the peace, with Jim.
"Well," she said, "I'm getting pretty hungry, aren't you? You gather up some wood and make a little fire-that's the man's work. I'll cook up a little grub-that's the woman's work." She grinned at him. For a long instant she did not know whether or not he was going to grin back or walk away from her and break her heart. Finally he grinned and began gathering wood.
They sat for a long while before the fire, though the desert night was warm and the fire was not really needed. It was just a little spot of brightness for them, something to keep away the imaginary chill of the rather black night. Above the stars were glittering diamonds on a limitless stretch of velvet, but there was no moon, so that the only light was from the tiny fire.
Jim reached to the edge of the fire and picked up a small piece of charcoal. It was still hot, but he juggled it from hand to hand and blew on it until it was cool. Then he used it to draw with, as he might have used a pencil.
Tillie did not realize that he was drawing her at first. They were sitting opposite each other, with the little fire between them, crackling flames throwing light on their bodies and faces. She had been studying Jim's angular, pale skinned face, and had not noticed that he in turn was studying hers. Then suddenly she realized that he was drawing her, and she became quite self-conscious. She did not consider herself much a proper subject.
"Well, I finished just in time. You tightened up as soon as you knew what I was doing."
"You finished?"
"Just a sketch. Want to see it?"
"Oh-yes!"
The sketch was rough and hasty, and done with a scrap of charcoal he had picked out of the fire, but it had a charm that Tillie fell in love with immediately. It was her head and shoulders, done in heavy, black lines and shadows in vivid contrast against the white of the paper. It was she, and yet it was not. It was Tillie, yet it was-primitive was the word she finally called up. Primitive, she told herself it was, and also clean and vital and alive. She had never seen herself like that before, never imagined herself like that. It was a pleasant experience. The picture was exceptionally flattering.
And then Tillie realized the simple truth of the picture. It was she as Jim saw her. To Jim she was that primitive, yet clean, vital, alive young girl.
She was speechless. Deep inside her a silent voice cried to be heard, but no words came to her lips. The voice cried Jim, Jim, I love you-I love you so. But Tillie said nothing. There was nothing she could say, no words to use unless and until Jim said something first.
He said, "Tillie-come around here and sit next to me."
She did, and he held her very close for a long while. They sat as one, and watched together the little kangaroo rat that came out to stare with beady eyes at the fire. They watched the fire die down to ruby embers, then cool to black ash, leaving the dark again unstained with man made light.
Then they were lying on the blanket together, and Jim's hands were on her body, loving and tender, and her clothes were slipped off, and they were pressed together in the ultimate embrace, and for a long while there was a current of pain and ecstasy surging between them, and what Tillie lost in the way of virginity she gained in the way of loving tenderness. They slept, melted together, and the night was tender upon them.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Prof and The Mall started drinking as soon as they hit town. They were later than usual in getting started, so they had to drink a little harder than usual to make up for lost time. They drank boiler makers-the ruin of many a man.
"Bombs away!" said the Prof. He dropped his shot glass of whiskey into his mug of beer. It built a trail of bubbles on the way down, crashed silently but forcefully on the bottom and sent up a mushrooming cloud of bubbles that broke into foam and fizzed over the top of the mug. He waited for the disturbance to abate, then with a call to bottoms up he drank it down with one breath.
Despite the exercise of his utmost in self-control tears came to his eyes and ran down his cheeks.
The Mall laughed. "Too rough for you, Prof?" He displayed his own empty glass and clear eyes.
"Certainly not. I'm positively queer for boiler makers. It just so happens that boiler makers recall to mind better times and better days and, I must admit, it brought a bit of moisture to my eyes."
"Bulsh."
"As you will." The Prof did not feel it necessary to continue the lie. That last one had been rough. Damn hot beer. And raw whiskey. A powerful combination. He felt comforting warmth spreading rapidly from his stomach, up through his chest and arms, felt his neck and the back of his head begin to tingle with the effects of the alcohol.
As usual he grew philosophical with the first stimulation of the drinks. But this time it was not a mood of happy philosophy as usually it was. This time the Prof was brooding. He was remembering the near tragedy when The Mall had almost drowned in the canal. And he did not like what he was remembering.
He was over the fright now. That had come and gone like a storm cloud before the moon. But, also like the cloud, it had left its precipitation. The results of that precipitation, sitting now like stagnant little ponds in low land, weighed on his mind. He was thinking about the way he felt about The Mall, and he did not like it.
The bartender brought another brace of shots and beer. The Prof watched the silent explosion as the shot hit the bottom of the beer mug. He was ready this time to catch the overflow with his lips so that none was wasted. This time he did not bottoms up, feeling that he had caught up with the lost time, but sipped it slowly instead. As he sipped he reflected.
Long ago-how long ago? Was it just three years ago, or was it really the three lifetimes it seemed?-he had not been as thus. He would not have looked in on such a place as they were in now, let alone sit in it deliberately until he got swacked to the gills. Then it had been a different life. He was practicing successfully before the bar. He was influential, respected, moderately well-to-do. Unmarried, he had lived a quiet, pre-eminently satisfactory life. Everything had been wonderful until he had fallen in love with one of the young law clerks in his firm's offices. The unfortunate part was that the young clerk was a man.
He had fought the idea at first, but it had been an uphill struggle, and a reluctant one, and soon enough he had capitulated. The young man being willing, later having confessed he had believed it to be politically expedient regarding his position with the firm, Morton Curson had ventured into the paths of homosexuality. For a time there had been a sort of delirious happiness. Then had come discovery, disgrace, his exile from the firm and from the city where he had lived. He had gone to another city in the state and had practiced alone. The times had been good enough to him, but he had fallen in with the homosexual element there and soon found he had a preponderance of homosexual clients. Thus studying and observing them at close range he had come to find that he despised most of the people who supplied his livelihood. There had been too many shocking stories, too many lurid, frightful details aired in court where they showed up against the backdrop of hyper-normality for what they really were: degeneracy of the worst sort.
But how, he asked himself, could he so judge these people, when he himself was a practicing member? He could not. So he had to remove himself from among them, and he had to cure himself of this ultimate degradation.
To do so he chose a life of severe hardship. He had given up everything and come to Arizona and allied himself with the lowest element he could find: the cotton pickers living in the shanty town next to the city dump. The refinements of civilization, he told himself, were what had led him astray. The over-refinements, would be a more accurate description. He decided to do without those over-refinements. To subject himself to a harsh, vulgar way of life. To cure the sickness in his soul by subjecting his soul to the opposite of over-refinement: to the lack of any refinement at all.
He was convinced it was a good theory and an effective practice. The only trouble-it was not working. He had acquired a deep affection for The Mall.
The trouble, he decided, was that he was not living the theory hard enough. He would have to go at it with more intensity. He would have to be more like these people he lived among. There would have to be more boozing, more fighting, more whoring, a more slovenly way of life. He would have to violently wash clean the stain on his mind.
The Prof looked around. On the stool next to him sat a rather tough looking citizen. The man was minding his own business, staring moodily into his beer. He was bothering no one in any way and gave the impression that he would continue that way. But he was big, almost as big as The Mall, and he had about him an air of quiet power. The Prof moved his left elbow until it touched the big man's elbow and jostled his drink. The man looked over at the Prof.
"Sorry," the Prof said, in a way to indicate he was not sorry at all. The man grunted and looked at his beer again. The Prof waited until the man was taking a drink, then he jostled his arm so that the beer spilled down his shirt front.
"God damn it, watch out!"
"Who, me?"
"You."
The Prof hated to waste the beer. But he had to do it. "I am not accustomed to being addressed in that manner," he said. And threw the beer in his glass into the man's face.
With a roar of rage the big man swung blindly. He missed. The Prof slipped off his stool and jabbed with all his strength into the man's midsection. It felt like hitting a wooden door. And then it felt like the door hit back. Something hard and heavy crashed against his jaw and he flipped over backwards in a complete somersault.
Then the fight began.
The Mall stepped in while the man was still looking to see whether the Prof would rise. He belted the foe with his specialty, a solid, steaming left jab to the mid-section. The punch traveled only about eighteen inches, but it had all the piston-like power The Mall could put into it. The opponent grunted, took a step backwards and swung a looping right hook of his own directed toward The Mall's adams apple. While the punch was still traveling his muscles were bunching for a followup cross to the head.
If the punches had landed the fight would have been over. But The Mall was as fast as he was big. He took the hook on his deftly turned shoulder, ducked under the cross and pounded at the ribs from close inside. He could feel his punches battering at the huge, tough body before him, and he grinned as he felt the opponent giving ground. Then suddenly a crushing sheet of pain flared out from his groin, burned up through his chest to his neck, brought an animal cry from his lips and hurled him, writhing, to the floor. The opponent had knead him in the groin.
The Mall kept his eyes open despite the agony and he saw the form of the big man flying through the air towards him.
He bit down hard on his lower Up, caused another pain to take his mind momentarily from the fire in his guts. He brought both legs up into the air, caught the flying leap on both feet and pushed the man on over in a headfirst arc. A crash of splintering wood and shattering glass burst over the bedlam of noise in the barroom. The Mall rolled over, turned and looked. His opponent had landed in the juke box and demolished it.
Even so the burly fighter was trying to get up. He shook his head, managed to crawl to his knees, fell flat, tried again. The second time he made it to his feet. Then he grasped a long shard of glass, held it like a dagger, held it low down near his waist like a professional knife fighter, and he advanced on The Mall, his face now a bloody, contorted picture of violence and hate.
The Mall grinned. That did it. When he picked up the glass that made it a free-style, no holds barred, knock down, drag out match of it. Now he could begin to fight.
He let the opponent lunge with the knife. The long, wicked sliver of glass flashed past his belly, missing only by a button's breadth from ripping his guts out. The Mall, now twisted to one side and slightly to the rear of his opponent, lashed out with a vicious, man-killing judo chop. It caught the opponent on the back of the neck. He went down, his face plowing up dirt and splinters on the wooden floor, and he stayed down. But The Mall was not satisfied. The opponent had called the rules when he had tried to knife The Mall. Now he paid for that mistake.
The Mall rolled the man over with his foot. Then he went to work. He jumped on the unconscious man's face with both feet. The nose miraculously remained unbroken, so he stomped on that till it was a bloody, misshapen mass along with the rest of the face. He considered breaking each rib, but settled for one kick where it would hurt most even after the man came to again.
He looked around, suddenly aware for the first time since the start of the fight of the other people in the bar. They were a ring of white, drawn faces, male and female blurred and indistinguishable in the haze of pain that still wavered redly before his eyes. One face detached itself and came towards him. The Mall made ready to defend himself, but it turned out to be the Prof.
"Let's get the hell out of here," the Prof said.
"I don't think nobody'll try to stop us."
"I guess I shouldn't have started that one."
"Glad you did. Give me a workout."
They left, not even thinking to worry about the police. In another bar, on the other end of town, they watched two men pick up two crumby old women. The women were older than Maude, and looked far worse than Maude ever did. Maude at least bathed, but these two looked as though they had never heard of the word. Their hair was straggly and stringy, uncombed and unwashed and make-up was splashed on garishly over grime.
The Prof had remembered seeing them before on occasion and marveling that they could be so repulsive looking. Now he felt they would serve a useful purpose.
"Let's pick up those two women," he suggested.
The Mall looked. "Geezus! What you got against yourself, you want to chase something like that?"
The Prof winced at The Mall's penetrating question. But he did not answer. He had all too much against himself, and was bound to wash it away. "It's female, ain't it?" he said, echoing The Mall's favorite saying.
The Mall grinned, hitched up his belt. "Let's go."
They got rid of the two men simply by ordering them away. For just an instant the men started to protest, but they took one quick look at The Mall and backed away silently. The Prof and The Mall took the hags, unprotesting, by the arm and led them down the street.
"You gonna buy us a drink?" one queried.
"Later. First we go home and go to bed. Then we buy drinks."
"Now, lissen, we ain't that kind of dames!"
"Shut up."
They shut up. There was something in the Profs voice that shut them up. They went home and went to bed. It was all the Prof could do to follow through, but he managed. Then they went to a bar for the promised drinks.
After a few it developed that one of the women could play the piano. There happened to be one in the bar. She played, and the Prof and The Mall sang. Soon they had a crowd singing around the piano.
"Do you know Trail of the Lonesome Pine?" someone asked.
She did. The Prof led off, and The Mall joined in. He wasn't sure of the words, but what he lacked in assurance he made up for in volume.
"There's a long, long trail a winding-"
Maude too was singing. But she was by a juke box and she was alone. She had been there an hour or so, and had looked the crowd over, but had not been able to find anyone she liked. So she sang by herself.
There was one old boy who kept trying to join in with her, but she was not in the mood for just anyone today. Today she had to find the right sort of man. Someone with some cash to spend for a good night of companionship.
Maude shrugged, put another quarter in the juke box. Well, some days you just couldn't make a contact. Maybe she ought to move on to another place. But she liked this place pretty well. The sawdust on the floor gave it such a clean look. And there was a pretty good turnover in the crowd, maybe someone would come in.
The old boy who wanted to sing with her offered her a drink, but she refused. She could Goddamn well buy her own drinks. The old boy bought just one for himself. He paid for the drink, and stuffed his wallet in a coat pocket. Maude saw that. She also saw that the coat hung loosely and that the pocket bulged open with the weight of the wallet.
Maude suddenly got more friendly. She decided she would take that drink after all. The old boy bought, and much to Maude's delight, poked the wallet carelessly back in the coat pocket again.
She was good at that sort of thing, Maude was, no doubt about that. In less than five minutes she had the wallet out of the man's pocket and into her own purse and had sent the man to the far end of the bar on a clever excuse. Then she was out the front door, down the street and around the corner and on her way to the bus station in less time than it took the old boy to figure she had gone to the can.
In the bus station she went into a pay toilet and examined the wallet. It contained sixty-five dollars and an assortment of papers. She kept the money, dumped the wallet otherwise intact into a trash barrel. She waited in the rest room until almost time for the bus to leave for the city, then went out.
A man stopped her near the bus. For an instant her blood froze. She was caught-they had got her. But no, it was just a panhandler begging the price of a drink. He was ragged and dirty, but he seemed to be honest. He said he wanted enough for a glass of wine. Maude gave him five dollars.
Poor devil, she thought, The Poor, Poor devil. Wasn't every one as lucky as she.
The bus took her on into the city. She found a bar there that looked about right. Surely here she would find someone....
In a hotel in the city Lula was in Higgs' room with him, drinking. Higgs had taken her out to dinner and a movie, and now he was trying to work on her with whiskey. Lula smiled inwardly at the thought. Of all the ways not to work on her, liquor was the way. Christ, she could drink Higgs under any table in town along with two more like him. But as long as he thought he could do it that way, let him. It would make him all the more pliable.
Higgs sat next to her on the bed. He put a hairy arm around her, and fumbled with the buttons on her blouse. She slapped his hand away, moved away from him.
"Aw, come on, baby, be reasonable."
"Why should I?"
"Aw, come on."
"Get away, you bother me."
Higgs retreated a little ways toward the foot of the bed. "What'sa matter?"
"Well-" maybe this was the time to get to work. Maybe he was feeling about right now. He seemed pretty hot. He wanted it, all right, as what man didn't, but he was funny, he had to be handled.
"Come on, tell Poppa Higgs."
"Well, Higgy, I didn't do so well last week."
"Whatta you mean? Same as the week before."
"I know. But I need more."
"Well, Christ, whatta you think I am-King Midas? You think I'm pickin' gold, steada cotton?" Higgs poured himself another stiff shot and drank it down. He surveyed Lula from bleary eyes, but even bleary eyed his lust was plain on his face.
Lula saw it and she knew the time was right. "I gotta have more money."
"Christ. I hadda lot of kicks this week, Baby."
"So you got kicks. You ain't scared of them yokels, are you?"
Higgs swelled indignantly. "Certainly not. But-"
"You still use your two book system, don't you?"
"Sure. I write down the real pick so they can see me every day in the one book. Then at night I transfer the numbers to another book looks exactly the same. I take a few pounds from one guy, a few pounds from another. And I add the pounds to your name and give you the difference. You know that. What's the bitch?"
"I need more money, is all. No, goddamn it, keep your paws to yourself!"
"Aw, don't be that way."
"I don't do this for free, Higgy."
"I had too many kicks last week. 'Sides, now that you've left I won't be able to work that no more."
"There are other things, Higgy. Winter is coming. I could use a new winter outfit. Head to toe, shoes to coat."
Higgs studied her carefully, and it was obvious he was considering. Lula let herself smile. It was a smile of triumph, for she knew Higgs would give in. He licked his lips and gave in.
"Anything you say, baby, anything you say-if n you're friendly, that is."
Lula was friendly. She did not protest when he was rough and tore her underclothes stripping her naked. She did not complain when he was clumsy and even near brutal. Not a murmur did she allow herself when he came a second and a third time to her that night. She was very delicate about the way she felt. When boredom overcame her she turned her head so Higgy would not see her yawn.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A month slipped up on Jim and Tillie and slipped on past them and hardly was noticed. Backbreaking work from sunrise to near sunset was the accepted routine. Rancher Saul Diamond had close to 900 acres in cotton, and he wanted it picked. He drove the pickers as hard as he could without driving them away, and as October blended into November the fields began to show the results. Cotton was considerably thinner for the third picking, but all of it was open now, and there were still good wages to be made.
Jim and Tillie had accepted each other as steady fare. Under Tillie's nagging insistence Jim kept on with his painting, and every week-end they hiked deep into the desert and stayed there until late Sunday night.
Everything was quiet. Too quiet, almost. Watching the Prof, Jim could see that he was getting restless with the lack of challenge. There was nothing to keep the older man's mind occupied except work, and that was not enough. It was enough for The Mall, and for Lula and Maude, and Tillie was happy and content to glory in Jim's creativeness. But for the Prof it was dull, and Jim found himself hoping that something would happen, preferably something violent.
The makings for violence were present. Jim had learned the first Monday morning that Saul Diamond was the rancher he had met so violently his first hour in Conroy. Also he had seen Gloria boiling down the road in her sky blue convertible. He had even thought that he had seen her around the labor camp itself upon two separate occasions, but he decided later that he must have been mistaken. And apparently Diamond had not recognized Jim, for he had shown no interest and no sign of recognition when he added his name to the roles. Diamond was a hard, tough, quick tempered man, extremely fair, but extremely exacting and demanding. Jim had no doubt that had Diamond recognized him there would have been real trouble.
Trouble, when it did come, was from a source Jim would never have dreamed of.
He had seen it coming and never even recognized it. One Saturday afternoon in town when he was getting supplies he noticed a big poster that proclaimed Pick the Cotton Week, and the date. Jim read it, shrugged and told himself the cotton pickers deserved a week all to themselves just the same as the bluejays and the general store whittlers. So the next week would be Pick the Cotton Week instead of national Preserve the Bluejays Week or national Whittling Week. Good deal. The only thing was there were already more Weeks than weeks and many were already doubled up. But he should worry-he didn't print calendars.
But Pick the Cotton Week, it developed, was more than just a slogan. People might preserve bluejays or whittle right in their own back yards. But there was only one place to pick the cotton. In the cotton fields.
From Monday to Friday the vast acreages of Saul Diamond were swarming with Pick the Cotton Weekers. Housewives came out to pick the cotton. School kids came out, with even a special day off from school for all those desiring to aid in this patriotic endeavor. Executives from local banks and businesses came out long enough to have their pictures taken picking a boll of cotton. And of course the Conroy Gazette ran a front page picture of the Mayor weighing a sack purported to be bulging with cotton he had picked with his own chubby little hands.
It should have been to laugh. But to the men and women who made their living picking cotton not only this week but every week it was not to laugh. There was nothing funny about it. The fields were overrun with people trampling the plants, missing more than they picked, spoiling the quality of the seed cotton by including too many bolls, and generally getting in the way. Most of them did not pick enough cotton to pay for their bags. Indeed, the stores selling cotton bags were about the only ones to profit.
Quite a few high school girls got laid in the process, with the usual percentage fructified and by and by to present the world with little bastards. The Mall, of course, got plenty of strange stuff, so he was not complaining. The Prof even ventured away from his philosophy of pursuing the degrading to patronize one young lass who learned quickly that she could make more on her back than on her feet.
All of these things were minor. The real trouble came from the do-gooders who saw with their own eyes for the first time a real, honest to God cotton camp.
The do-gooders were properly shocked. The echoes of the cotton picking week had barely died away when they began their campaign to reform the camp. They formed committees, made donations, took up collections, gathered used clothing, toys and furniture and decended upon the camp like a swarm of locusts in reverse english.
They cleaned, they burned, they donated money, food, clothes, bedding. They took babies off to clinic, brought a nurse out to consult with mothers. In two days they had the place unrecognizable in that there was no more garbage on the main street, all the children were clothed, their little noses were temporarily wiped, their grimy faces clean for the nonce. Everyone had enough to eat for a week, and clothes that were adequate and clean.
The Prof was in his glory. He met with the committees, helped them plan. He gave them information, urged cooperation among the people of the camp. The Prof smiled, and nodded and bowed, aided and abetted the do-gooders in every possible way he could. It gave him something to do.
Privately he laughed and predicted they would last exactly six days. They fooled him and lasted one week exactly. Then they withdrew convinced that they had cleaned up the cotton camp. A week later the garbage was back in the street, the brats were snotty and dirty again, and the place was unchanged appreciably.
Except for one thing. Gloria Diamond had been contacted by the do-gooders, and the conditions in the camp had been brought to her attention. She honestly had not known, she said. She had never been in the camp, she said. Wasn't that terrible of her? Right on her own land, and she never realized-
Now she realized. Now things were going to be different. The horde of do-gooders passed by. But Gloria remained.
Gloria did not give up the clean-up job. Though she actually accomplished little by herself, she was ubiquitous, flashing here and there, distributing more clothing, more food, making an occasional trip into town. It was not exactly clear just what good she actually did, but she made a great deal of noise about the good she was doing, so everyone supposed it must be so.
Everyone, perhaps, except Jim. He watched her from a distance, trying not to let her see him, and he wondered just what she was up to. There was something, he felt convinced, more than a do-good desire in Gloria Diamond.
One day, despite Jim's precautions, she met with him face to face. He had caught a bad cold. That morning he had gone on out to work as usual, but the fever and weakness had been too much for him. He decided that it would be smarter to go back to the camp and rest. In the end he would miss less work if he took care of himself. He was just coming up the dusty street when she came out of one of the houses.
She recognized him immediately. "Why, Mr. Paul Peterson!" Gloria exclaimed.
Jim stopped dead in his tracks. He nodded politely, but said nothing. Silently he cursed himself for not being more careful. Of all the people in the world he did not want to meet she was near the top of the list.
"Well, don't you know me? In the bar that Saturday morning, remember?"
Jim admitted that he remembered, but he did not offer more.
"Well, you said you might stick around. I see you did." She measured him with an insolent, lingering stare. Jim felt the tingling crawling of skin on the back of his hands and neck. It told him, this dame is on the make.
"What can I do for you, Mrs. Diamond?" Jim was painfully formal.
"Gloria, to you. And you could do me a large favor by taking up where we left off that morning."
"I don't remember where that was." Also he did not plan to. It had been a foolish enough stunt to react to her play back then. Now, under present conditions, it would be plain suicide.
"I'll tell you. You were just about to look down my blouse front and ask me if they were real. And I was about to tell you to grab ahold and find out for yourself."
Jim supposed that under normal conditions he would have run a fast fever over that statement. Since he was already running a fever from the cold he could not even work up a raised eyebrow. "Gloria, I'm too siek even to think of a snappy comeback. Challenge me again sometime, and see what happens." He turned away from her and walked to the little cabin he shared with the Prof and The Mall. Just to be sure he locked the door behind him. But Gloria did not try to break down the door and rape him. He was quite frankly relieved.
Jim was sick the next day too, but the day after that he was back at work again. Probably, he told himself, he should still be in bed. But he went back to work. The season would last possibly only another month, and he had to get in as much work as possible. For the winter stretched ahead, and with it unemployment and uncertainty.
That evening the Prof mentioned Gloria to Jim. The Prof had cooked their evening meal and Jim was washing the dishes. The Mall lay on the bed, dozing.
"Did, ah, you have a visit from the illustrious Mrs. Diamond while you were sick, Jim?"
Jim stopped in the middle of making a swipe at a dish. He stared long and hard at the Prof before answering. "No. Why?" He distrusted the Prof when he opened with a gambit like that
"Just wondered. She has been buzzing about the camp, you know, doing her little bits of social work among we unfortunates. I lust thought that maybe, since you were ill, that she might have brought you some hot broth, or something."
"Something hot, eh, like broth-or something else?"
"We seem to understand each other," the Prof grinned.
Jim considered telling the Prof about the encounter with her. How much did the old buzzard know, he wondered. More, probably, than Jim could possibly tell him.
"As a matter-of-fact there was a chance for me to accept a little charity. But I declined. You know-poor but terribly proud."
The Prof smiled with one corner of his mouth. He went to his bed and rummaged around underneath it, finally came up with two cigars. One he offered to Jim, but Jim declined. "Sometimes I feel like an Optimo," the Prof said.
"Sometimes you look like one."
'Indeed." He took a small knife and carefully cut off the tip of the cigar, lighted it carefully, and puffed on it carefully. Then he spoke carefully. "What do you think of our Mrs. Diamond?"
"I think she is a remarkable woman, a beautiful woman."
"So she is. Perhaps we should all be jealous of Mr. Diamond, eh? Not many men have wives like her."
Jim poured boiling water over the dishes he had washed. A little cloud of steam came up from the sink and fuzzed his vision for a moment. He sat the pan back down on the little two burner kerosene stove they used. All that time he refused to let his mind think. The Prof was trying to pump him, that was rather plain. So, since he knew that, it resolved down to a matter of whether or not he wanted to be pumped. For an easy answer he said, "Not many men could-or would-handle a woman like that. I think Saul Diamond handles her quite well."
"Ever know a woman like that, Jim? Personally, I mean?"
"I was married to one."
"I thought as much. And you couldn't handle her?"
"Wouldn't is the word."
"Then, from your first hand experience with her type, what would you say she wanted here?"
Jim considered that. He knew what she wanted, all right, but the Prof wanted a more philosophical answer than that. "Slumming, I guess. Yes, slumming is the word. She's on the make, in heat twenty-five hours a day. She wants passion, and she thinks she wants it raw, and degraded. And she thinks she can find it among us 'dissolutes' here in camp."
"A remarkably concise diagnosis, my boy. It matches my own exactly, in content, if not in phraseology. And one more rather personal question. Has she approached you on this matter?"
"She has." Jim told him of the brief meeting the first day he had come in sick. He figured he might as well break down and tell the whole deal, since the Prof would angle around here and there until he found out anyway.
"Ah, yes. A delightfully sordid tale. You know, when you first came to us we used to call you the Kid. You looked and acted so young then. And that was only a few weeks ago, after all. I wonder what it is that has changed you so that we have forgotten to employ that title?"
Well, the Prof was philosophical, wasn't he? Jim just shook his head and smiled. He sat down on a wooden box that served as a chair and leaned back against the bare wooden wall of the cabin. "I'll take that cigar, now." He lighted up and blew out rings of blue smoke. "And in answer to your question. When I first came to the Village I was pretty bewildered. I was running away from something and you offered me a place to stop running. But I was living among 'cotton pickers' and that is a derogatory phrase outside. It is even a profane phrase. 'Cotton picking bastard.' 'Dirty cotton picking son of a bitch.' You know what I mean. But you know-I'm not bewildered any more.
"So we pick cotton for a living. What if no one would pick cotton? So we live a rough, maybe even semi-savage existence. Look at the kind of place Diamond furnishes us to live in. Maybe in some cases we are dirty, and slovenly. But you know, you can't be lazy and pick cotton, so we aren't lazy. And we have Ethics, Prof, with a big E. The Ethics may be peculiarly our own, allowing plenty of room for dishonesty and license. But by god there is a certain primitive value to open license that I will take any day over Gloria Diamond's type of license that drapes itself in hypocrisy and feeds upon perversion."
"Well put, my boy, eloquently phrased. And I agree. But I can not help but notice that the conversation turns ever and again back to Gloria Diamond.
"You know, my boy, I am now hurtling toward my fiftieth birthday. For approximately thirty-five years I have been of sexual age, so to speak. It bemuses me that in all of those thirty-five years I have never been propositioned by a beautiful woman. It has come to be a thorn in my side. In the novels one reads the hero cannot but stand on the street corner without garnering a dozen or so propositions from luscious females. Invariably he is insulted, sluffs them off with a few well chosen nasty words. He goes home alone and amuses himself by abusing himself, and catching it in his hands. I have never quite been able to believe in these men of fiction, but now I have met face to face a man who has been propositioned and lived to tell the tale." The Prof chuckled softly. "I'm going out for a walk. Maybe Gloria will be around. Should she ask me I fear I will not have the strength of character to refuse her."
After he had left The Mall stirred on the bed. He sat up, looked around, rubbed his eyes. "Oh, hell," he said. "Jim-I wasn't asleep. I heard what you and the Prof said."
Jim considered for a moment, but could recall nothing that should be alarming to The Mall.
"What you said about Gloria, I mean. You don't seem to like her much, but believe me, if she asks you again you ought to grab ahold of the left one and throw her into the sack. She's a good hot piece, I never had none better."
Jim stared for a long minute, and he could not find words. He thought he must have misunderstood. "You mean you know something about Gloria?"
"Chrisamighty, I know about everything there is to know. I been sacking her two, three times a week."
"When? Where?"
"Here. She meets me here about two o'clock days she wants it. You want to come in my place some time?"
Jim laughed. 'Thanks. Your generosity is overwhelming.
But I'd just as soon make love to an atom bomb. It would be a lot safer. What if Saul Diamond ever caught you?"
"Chrisamighty. I never thought of that!"
"Sorry I mentioned it," Jim said drily. "I hate to spoil your fun."
"No, you ain't spoiled my fun, none. I'll just take her out in the fields somewhere instead. I don't want to get your asses in a sling."
"Very considerate," Jim admitted.
"Yeh. Well, you can have her anytime. Just say the word."
"Thanks, but no thanks. She reminds me too much of my wife." Jim went out to see if he could find the Prof. He suddenly needed some fresh air. If he found the Prof he could tell him he need not expect Gloria around tonight, so don't sit up waiting.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Despite Jim's distaste for Gloria there was something about the woman that intrigued him. There was in her an inherent violence, a self-centered savagery that crackled like silent flames in her every word and gesture. And yet, on the surface she was a polished jewel of civilization. Always she was immaculately coiffed, manicured and dressed. She had about her that expensive air of having been molded of glass and just a moment before polished. Gloria Diamond was a beautiful woman. He conceded that without challenge. But she could be a deadly and dangerous woman if whim ever moved her so.
Jim did a charcoal drawing of her from memory. On an extra large piece of paper he tried to capture in the difficult medium some of his ideas of her. It was a full length portrait of her. The resemblance, while not exact, was remarkable for memory work. In the picture Gloria, in riding habit, stood spread-legged, her hands on hips, riding crop gripped in one hand as though it were a weapon. Her eyes were blazing, an angry frown pulled her mouth down, and she seemed to be challenging the viewer to deny her some violent demand she had just made. In the picture Jim had managed to capture both the feeling of mirroring veneer and deep down violence.
The Prof was all but stunned when he saw the picture. "Good heavens, my boy, I recognized talent in your little landscapes you have been doing on the desert hereabouts. But I saw nothing like you have here! When did she pose for this?"
"She didn't pose."
"Memory work?" Jim admitted it was and the Prof was more amazed. "What do you plan to do with this?"
"Nothing. You can have it."
"Shown to the right person this could buy you some valued patronage. Or are you interested in such?"
Jim shrugged. "Fine art is just an avocation with me. I'm-I was a commercial artist. It paid more bills than fine art. Never seemed to quite have it, I guess, for fine art."
"Well, you have it now, if I am any judge, and I believe I am."
Nothing more was said and Jim promptly forgot about the Prof's remarks. But next evening the Prof brought word that Gloria wanted to see Jim. "She says she'll meet you out on the road and the two of you can drive into the city for a couple of drinks. She wants to talk to you about the picture. I took the liberty of giving it to her."
"I don't care if you took the liberty of striking at match to it. It was just an exercise. Something I wanted to get out of my system." Jim finished washing his face at the sink and then went to stretch out on his bed.
"She'll be out there in about fifteen minutes. Aren't you going to get into your good clothes?"
Jim took off his shoes before he lay down. He stretched, yawned, closed his eyes. "Rough day today, but the picking was good."
"Aren't you going to meet her?"
"You catch on quick."
"Don't be a fool, Jim. She can do a lot for you in a place like this. Under her wing you could really go places."
"I've been there."
"Where?"
"Places. That's the way I met my wife. Going places. I stopped going quickly enough when I had to make enough money to keep her happy. What's for supper, Prof?"
"Fried ham," the Prof said disconsolately. "Fried pineapple. You're a fool."
"I told Tillie we'd go for a walk tonight. I never lie to a lady."
A moment later The Mall came in, his head still soaking wet, a towel draped over his shoulders, a bar of soap in one hand.
Shanty Gnu.
Standing just inside the door he shook his head like a big dog shaking his hide. Water flew in a fine spray making a ring of droplets on the bare wooden floor. "Damn shower works fine. You're next if you want, Jim."
"Right. I do want. I-" he stopped talking to listen. The sound of a powerful motor sounded suddenly near. After a moment he realized it was an automobile coming down the road of the camp. But no one here had such a car. And no one here would drive at such a speed here in camp where so many children played in the street. The sound of the motor roared suddenly louder, then cut off and ended in the protesting howl of braked tires sliding in the dirt road. A car door slammed, and a moment later Gloria Diamond appeared in the open door of the cabin.
"Won't somebody invite me in?"
Both The Mall and the Prof invited her in, the Prof adding flourishes and a little speech of welcome. Jim managed to goad himself into standing up.
"I was to meet Mr. Peterson, but he was a little later than I thought he might be, so I decided to stop by and pick him up."
"Mr. Pete-uh, yeah," The Mall said. "He, uh, just got in."
The Prof coughed delicately behind his hand. "We were just going over to the Smyths for supper, Paul. They're having fried ham and pineapple. We're queer for fried ham and pineapple. You will excuse us, Mrs. Diamond?"
She did and they left as hurriedly as they could, leaving Jim and Gloria alone. He sat down on the bed again, without offering her the one chair they had to sit on. She stood.
"The picture was beautiful. I wanted to thank you for it."
"You're welcome."
"I'd like to have you do a portrait of me, in oils."
"So would the Queen of England. But I'm a very busy man. I pick cotton for a living, you know. Did you ever pick cotton? You have to work damn hard to pick enough to earn what might laughingly be called a living wage. It does not leave much time to dash about painting portraits of the bally toffs."
"Please don't be so bitter, Paul. I know you're not an ordinary cotton picker."
"I take pride in trying to be as ordinary as the people I work with. It is a standard I have found takes living up to, rather than down to. You ought to try it sometime."
"You are really being quite stuffy. If you'd learn to say that speech with less self-righteousness in your voice you might fool someone with it."
"I am about to miss my supper, Mrs. Diamond."
"I'd like to have you go out with me for supper."
"And you would buy, of course."
"Of course."
"Sorry. I'm queer for fried ham and pineapple. I know where I can get it free tonight."
"Paul, I didn't come here to bicker with you. I want you to paint my portrait in oils. You have a wonderful talent, Paul. A vibrant, alive talent, something that does not often pass this way. I am-well, if you must call it that-selfish enough to want some of the product of that talent for myself. I'll pay you more for the picture than you could make picking your stinking old cotton for a year!"
"Two corrections. It does not stink. It has rather a fragrance I have become fond of. It is not my cotton. It is yours. I work for you picking cotton, Mrs. Diamond, not painting pictures."
"Paul, I'll do anything if you'll paint that picture for me."
Jim sighed. "At this point I am supposed to look suggestively at the bed and say: anything?"
"And I say: anything."
"Thanks. I know. I've played those lines out before. You might say this is where I came in four years ago. It's positively eerie. You'll forgive me if we don't go through that part of the script again."
"Does that mean no?"
"It does."
"Please, Paul."
"No. 'N'-'O.' Ever hear the word?"
"I have heard the word, but I never learned the meaning of it."
"That I can believe."
She flounced out, leaving the door open behind her. Jim listened until he heard the roaring power of her convertible carry her away down the road. Then he went to the Smyths, where the Prof had moved their dinner of fried ham and pineapple.
Later he took Tillie for a walk, and it was late when they got back.
The next evening Gloria was back about the same time. She begged Jim to do her portrait in oils. He refused.
"I don't have the paints, Mrs. Diamond, the brushes, canvas, easel, anything."
"I'll buy you all of those things as a retainer."
That caused Jim to think hard before he answered. He could probably go the works on that offer. The best sables, the finest oils, canvas, lots of canvas. But it would be putting his own head in the noose. Accept one favor from Gloria and she would be on his back. He declined. She left in a huff.
The Prof watched her go, and she shook his head. 'That woman means trouble, my boy."
"You can say that again."
"I perhaps should say it again. I mean a different sort of trouble. Manufactured trouble. She wants you, Jim. And she wants that picture, perhaps as a part of wanting you. She'll cause us trouble, you watch and see."
"Don't be an old woman. I can handle Gloria."
"The way you handled your wife?"
Jim flinched. The hurt came up to his face and looked out his eyes.
"I'm sorry, Jim."
"No. You're right. Maybe I ought to give in to her. I don't want to cause any trouble for my friends, just because I'm stubborn."
"Forget I said it. My tongue should be cut out."
"O.K., Prof, we'll skip it for now." But Jim didn't forget it. He brooded about it that night. The next night when Gloria came again he was ready to give in. But she was too fast for him.
"Well, good evening, Mr. Paul Peterson, alias Jim Pettenger.
Or is it the other way around? I never have understood that alias business too well. Which name is the alias, the real one or the trick one?"
Jim sat stunned on the edge of his bed, too shocked even to stand. How had she found out, he asked himself. But then the answer came quickly. It could not have been too hard. Plenty of people around camp knew his real name. Someone could have let it slip unintentionally. He grinned and tried to make the best of it. "Cloak stripped away from me, and me without my dagger!"
"Maybe your wife would like to supply you one-in the throat!"
"What do you know about my wife?" Jim blurted. Immediately he regretted saying it, but almost as immediately he knew it made little difference. Gloria had a self-satisfied air about her that said she knew more than enough.
"How does it feel to have the law on your trail? I've always wondered."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Gloria smiled, and even with its layer of maliciousness the smile was a beautiful thing to see. "You were really quite clever about it. They are looking for you in Washington and Oregon. Haven't even thought of Arizona-yet."
"Is that right?" He had to play these new cards close to the vest until he decided whether she was bluffing or not. He closely studied her pretty face, wondering how much, if any, truth was in what she said. Would the police really be looking for him? Did she really know anything? Or was she just bluffing? Was she just building on what little bit she had been able to find out around here?
"That is right. And chances are they never will think to look in Arizona. Certainly even if they did they would never look in a cotton picking camp for an artist, would they? No-not unless some horrible person suggested it to them."
"You wouldn't."
"Why wouldn't I?" She seemed genuinely surprised, for a moment, at the question, and because of that Jim thought she might be bluffing. She might be. And she might not.
"It would just defeat your own purpose. You would get nothing out of me that way."
"And that is what I want, is it-something out of you?"
"You know it is."
"All right. I do. I want that picture. And if you don't do it for me I'll see that the police do find you out."
"You're bluffing. There are no police looking for me. You're just trying to scare me on the off chance that I may have done something."
"You know yourself whether you have or not, Jim. You don't know for sure whether I'm bluffing."
Silently he admitted defeat on that score. He had beat up Pelton rather badly. They could be looking for him. It was one chance he could not afford to take just to protect his pride. But he could, and he would, challenge the bluff to one extent. He had been about ready to do the picture for her anyway. For the sake of calling part of her bluff he could yield grudgingly.
"All right. I'll do the picture. But I won't do it in oils. It will be charcoal. I'm working in that medium now, and I do not intend to switch over just because of your whim. You will come here to me on Sunday afternoon. You will pose when, as and in the manner I tell you to. Or I won't do the picture."
"Oh, Jim, that's wonderful! I can hardly wait until Sunday!"
After she had left Jim chuckled to himself. Well, maybe he was a damned fool for what he had in mind. But she had yielded just enough here and there to convince him she probably was bluffing. It was enough to take a chance on. At least to take the chance he had in mind.
Sunday afternoon she stood in the doorway with the sun at her back and pouted slightly. "Well, isn't someone going to invite me in?"
Both the Prof and The Mall jumped up and invited her in. Jim remained lounging on the bed, watching her. She was something to watch. Again she was wearing the white frontier pants and the pink shirt that plunged open all the way to the bare mid-riff. The shirt was thin and the sun behind her shone through and out-lined her body. Her body was trim and firm like every other line of her.
Jim had purchased an easel in town on Saturday, and a large piece of mat board and some charcoal and drawing supplies. These stood in one corner of the room where he intended to work. He pointed to a place on the floor where sunlight streaming in the window made a bright white square on the floor. She stood there. He made a motion of turning with his hands, and she turned slowly around. When she was in profile he told her to stop.
"Observe, gentlemen," Jim said seriously to The Mall and the Prof, as if he were speaking to art critics or fellow painters. "Observe how the backlight silhouettes the breasts so that they can be plainly seen through the shirt."
Gloria whirled and glared at Jim. She opened her magenta lips to say something, but she shushed her.
"Ahem. Yes. Well, we had better be going, my boy. Come along, Mall, we must not interfere with our friend's work."
"Sit down," Jim said.
The Prof sat. There was a quality in Jim's voice that sat him. The Mall stood uncertainly for a moment, then sat down too, on a box.
"Mrs. Diamond is going to pose for me, gentlemen. I feel it would be wise if you stayed here to-uh-chaperone. Don't you think so? Then no one could possibly think any wrong, could they?"
Gloria stared at him disdainfully from beneath lowered lids. An amused smile played on her lips, and she waited. The Prof fidgeted and The Mall watched open mouthed, but Jim took his time.
"Is that the outfit you planned to wear for the picture, Mrs. Diamond?"
"Yes."
"I don't think it too suitable. Suppose you take it off."
"What?"
"Take it off. I shall draw you in the nude."
"I never heard of such an insulting suggestion!"
"Perhaps not. But I believe we agreed that the picture would be on my terms. Those are my terms."
For a time everyone was chiseled of granite, and immobile, frozen into statues by the enormity of Jim Pettenger's social crime. No one moved, and it seemed no one breathed.
Then Gloria Diamond moved. First she smiled, insolently, her eyes full on Jim's. Then her fingers moved slowly to the knot in the tails of her pink shirt. She untied it, and let the shirt hang open. Sitting down on the edge of a bed she removed her pink cowboy boots. Standing she removed the white frontier trousers, then the lace panties underneath. Last she took off the shirt and stood naked before them. Still she smiled, and still insolently.
During the time there had been no sound except for heavy breathing from The Mall and the soft smooth whisp of cloth moving over satiny skin. Now The Mall irreverently broke the silence.
"I still say she's got the best pair of knockers I ever seen," he whispered to the Prof. He may as well have shouted. The words carried clear around the room. Jim wondered if they might not even have been heard in Conroy, or even perhaps up at Saul Diamond's big ranch house.
Well, she had called that bluff neatly. He sat still for a moment, looking her over as insolently as he could. But soon enough he lost interest in the sex of the situation, and his view became strictly professional. Moments later his charcoal was moving in broad, sweeping Lines across the creamy surface of the board.
He worked for an hour, then decided the light was too pale to go on. "You'll have to come again, Mrs. Diamond. You may put on your clothes now. No-wait. Mall, you want her?"
"Why, hell yes!"
"Take her."
The Mall had his shirt off before he was half across the room. Gloria screamed one time, but he soon had his huge hand across her mouth. He carried her to a bed.
Jim and the Prof left. They knew The Mall worked best without an audience.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"My god, Tillie, you just don't understand!" Jim tried to keep from shouting in his anger, but it was difficult. Sometimes Tillie could be so-pig headed it was pathetic. "I understand all too well."
"No you don't. Open the door and let me in. I feel like a fool standing out here talking through the door."
"Christ, let him in." Jim heard Lula's voice from behind the door of the Smyth house, but no one moved to open it. He did hear muffled footsteps and when next Tillie spoke her voice sounded as if she were just on the other side of the thin partition. Her voice was crisp with anger, weighted with emotion.
"How do you think I feel, Jim Pettenger? What do you suppose I think of your cavorting around naked with that-that Diamond whore?"
"Well, I would be laughing if it weren't so damn pitiful. What do you think I've been doing with her, anyway?" Tillie's silence indicated to Jim that she did not have too clear a picture of just what she did think, but that one thing was clear enough-it was not good. Jim lost his temper. He pounded on the frail door with both fists, and for an instant he was sure it was going to buckle under the assault. He wished it would. If he could get his hands on Tillie he would pound on her rounded end until the sparks flew. By god he would pound some sense into her. But the door did not break, and he tried the calmer, more rational approach again.
"Listen, damn it. All I did was draw her picture. What the hell's so awful about that?'"
"You drew it naked, that's what."
"Christ. She was nude, yes. Nude is the word, not naked. There's a difference."
"Ha!"
"Well, there is."
"What difference?" The words were hisses of tiger fury now. "She was stark naked, wasn't she?"
"Well-" Jim had to admit she was. The phraseology was unfortunate, but-
Lula's voice came again, trying to arbitrate. "Gosh, Sis, maybe he's like the Prof, and a naked dame don't excite him none."
"Yeah," Jim said. "I mean-no! I mean, not when I'm drawing her picture-uh-oh, hell!"
"He is not like the Prof!" Tillie cried out. "No, I'm not," Jim agreed.
"See?" Tillie said. Then suddenly there was crying, and Jim knew it was Tillie and there was no use talking anymore. Maybe there had not been any use talking at all. He turned away from the house and walked off down the street, bitterly angry and hurt at the same time. Women-
It was Sunday afternoon, and the usual pall of restlessness hung over the camp. Saturday night with its full-fired release was past, and Monday morning and work were not far away. There was a need to rest, but a reluctance to do so. The feeling still lay fresh in the minds of the people that maybe there was still fun to be had in town and they should be getting in on it. But the feeling was mixed with fresh hangovers and a fresh shortage of money, so that there was no concerted, mass drive of everyone moving to town as on Saturday afternoons.
Jim wished mightily that he was out in the desert. The weather had been holding beautifully. The days were warm, but the terrible heat of summer was broken now with the temperate weeks of fall. He was burning precious days not to be out there painting. But it had taken until this afternoon to finish the picture of Gloria, and when he had gone to ask if Tillie would go with him for a walk this evening she had refused even to let him in the house.
He met the Prof standing outside their house, standing in the sun with his shirt off. "Well, how goes it?"
"Terrible," Jim admitted.
"Maybe we ought to go in town and have a few drinks," the Prof suggested.
"That might be a good idea at that. But I really can't work up any great enthusiasm for the effort."
"I know how you feel. Argument with Tillie, eh?"
"Yes. We had a dilly. She seems to think I've been laying Gloria."
"A natural thought for one of primitive emotions and a somewhat less than clear understanding of artistic methods."
"Sure, but the hell of it is that Gloria is just as griped with me because I haven't been!"
"Um. She did seem to indicate that she would not be displeased with an improper advance from you now and then."
"Hell. She came right out and asked me, twice."
"And you refused?"
"I was thinking about what Tillie would do."
"And now Tillie is mad anyway. Love's labor lost, so to speak."
"I don't know what's wrong with Gloria," Jim said.
"I do. And I wish it were wrong with me. Her trouble does have a certain virtue, relatively speaking. But, the important thing, you say she is angry with you?"
"Thoroughly."
"Um. My boy, that could be a dangerous situation."
"How?"
"No fury like a woman scorned, and all that"
"Nuts."
"Perhaps. But I think not. I think, rather, that our friend Gloria is psychopathically obsessed with sex. Her femaleness, her desirableness, her seductiveness are many things to her.
They are her ways of making her life comfortable for herself, of proving herself superior to most women and to all men, of getting everything and anything she wants. When a man comes along who denies to her face, even to the face of her naked body, that she is in complete control of her environment with the mere fact of her sex, she resents it. Worse, she fears that this one man may be right even though she has dozens of other instances to indicate that she is right. She will hate this one man and will cause him trouble if she can."
"Maybe she'll turn me in to my wife or the police. Don't think she hasn't threatened that"
"Perhaps she will. I have been wondering why she has not done so before now, the way you have been treating her."
"No doubt you have an answer for that, too?"
"I have. I believe that to deliberately make trouble for you would be to admit to herself that you are right and she is wrong."
"So? Then why worry?"
"We must concern ourselves with the unconscious, my boy. We must consider that perhaps unconsciously she will make trouble for you without letting herself know, so to speak, that she was doing it"
"Like what?"
"Suppose Saul Diamond sees this picture of her in the nude?"
Jim had not thought of that. Saul Diamond had been the last person on his mind when he had done the picture. Now Saul was suddenly very much on his mind. "Christ. It'll be Dear John if he finds out."
"Exactly."
"Do you suppose she'll show it to him?"
"Not directly. Not with conscious intent. But who knows what pride, or devilment, or the unconscious desire to harm you may cause her to do with the picture?"
"Maybe I ought to move on," Jim said. He was thoroughly discouraged. Nothing was working out right. And it looked as though should he stay here he would just cause trouble for his friends.
"Afraid of Diamond?" the Prof chided. "No, not for myself."
"I know," the Prof said, sympathetically. "But don't worry. I think I can take care of things so we won't have to worry."
"How?"
"In a bizarre manner, to be sure. But it is time we livened up the scene hereabouts anyway. The end of the season is approaching and it has been rather dull. I have a few ideas to change that."
The Prof went into the house and put on his best white shirt, a tie, and his black dress shoes. He splashed water in his face to remove the thin coating of dust it had picked up during his short stay outside, combed his hair. Peering into the mirror he pronounced the results good and stepped outside again. He looked around, was pleased to see no one in sight whom he knew, and started out walking.
It was a long walk up to Saul Diamond's house, but he had plenty of time. There was no hurry. It would be as restful to make the walk as to stay in the house and stare at the four dirty walls, anyway.
The cotton fields were brown and dry around him now. Pretty thin in spots right near the camp. But farther out there was still plenty. Another month or six weeks work for all of them at the least, maybe more.
Along the dirt road he trudged, and the day was incredibly silent around him. From somewhere back off toward the camp a dog barked twice, then stilled. Another answered, more shrill. A car hummed by on the highway, faraway but clear sounding. But except for those small sounds there was quiet. The loudest noise was the scuff of his own feet on the road. As he walked each step threw up a little puff of dust.
He paused once, for the day was warm. At one place the irrigation ditch crossed the road. Here a bridge of sorts spanned the ditch. The bridge was little more than a loose collection of timbers and planks that had once been a bridge. Time and use had loosened the foundations from the earth, and the cross planks from the foundations. But apparently it still supported wheeled traffic, for there was no other way across. The Prof picked his way across, then sat down in the shade of a huge old cottonwood tree that grew on the west bank of the ditch. The temptation was to take off his shoes and dabble his feet s in the muddy water rushing past in the ditch. Reluctantly he decided against that, and forced himself to be up and on his way again.
The baying of a community of hounds greeted his arrival at ' the house. He ignored them and proceeded with regal assurance to the front door. Saul Diamond was home alone and invited him in and poured a drink for him. The Prof accepted gratefully, washed away with cold whiskey some of the film of dust that had collected in his throat.
Saul Diamond was a peculiar man, the Prof reflected. He certainly did not fraternize with his hired help, and indeed paid little attention to them except as he might pay attention also to his cattle. During the week he drove them as hard as he could and dared at work, on Saturday he paid promptly and without haggling, on Sunday he left them strictly alone. Yet here he, one of those hired help, ventured boldly to the front door and as a consequence was invited into the house and made comfortable with the finest whiskey available. Saul Diamond, whatever his peculiarities or failings might be, certainly was no snob.
After he had relaxed comfortably the Prof got around to the purpose of his visit. He explained that he was the nominal leader of the group, its spokesman when a spokesman was required, and as much in control as anyone could be in control of a group of fiercely independent laborers. Then he quietly and matter-of-factly dropped his bombshell.
"A number of the folk are getting restless. You know how it is. They hear stories of this benefit and that benefit at other ranches. This creates a desire for change, naturally. So far I have been able to talk most of them into remaining, but-" The Prof left the rest unsaid.
Diamond said the rest for him. "Great Scott, labor trouble? I thought I was having an unusual run of luck with so little turnover, but-well, what's eating them."
The Prof sloshed the whiskey around in his glass, examined it closely for color, tasted it and pronounced it good. For answer to Diamond's question he shrugged, waved one hand in a vague gesture. "I just thought I'd let you know. I feel rather responsible, you know, having brought them here in the first place."
"Well, what is it they want?"
"They probably wouldn't know if you asked them," the Prof said. "A ranch up the way has a commissary where they can buy their food on credit against their pay. Another one is offering a bonus for clean cotton. Someone else provides transportation into town and back on Saturdays. Little things, nothing big, but they all add up. They think this place or that place offers better conditions, better picking, this or that."
Saul Diamond poured more whiskey into his visitor's glass, more into his own. He sighed briefly and explosively. Christ, it was getting so a man just about had to pick the cotton himself these days and put it in the bag and hand it over to his pickers and then pay them double price for it. Damn. And he had been doing so well, too, there had been so little trouble for so many weeks. He should have known it was going too well to last.
He had to get that cotton in. He had to get it in. The crop was mortgaged heavily this year because of reverses last year. But it had been flowing steadily to the gin. If only it could keep on that way for a little while longer. A month, six weeks maybe at the most, and his worries would be over. The price had held, the labor had been good, if only it could hold steady for a little while longer. God, with Gloria about spending him dry it had to hold steady. Just a little while longer now. Just a few weeks and everything would be all right. Six more weeks the way everything had been going and he would be out of debt and would have made a nice return for the year. A sigh exploded from him again.
"What can I do to keep them happy? Just tell me what it is, within reason, and I'll see if I can do it"
"Well, I have a few ideas."
"What are they?"
"Oh, nothing you have to do, you understand."
Saul Diamond did not understand. He wished the man would quit beating around the bush and speak what he had on his mind. Then, if it was in reason, he would try to do it.
"Well, the folk are a little restless, is all. All we need is a little something to keep them in camp, to keep them from wandering."
"Such as?"
"Well, if you had no objection to their organizing a little gaming among themselves. A card game or two, maybe some craps."
Diamond's brow furrowed in surprise. "Gambling?"
"Yes."
"Is that all? I supposed there was plenty enough of that."
"Not just the way I have in mind."
"Well, hell, if that's all it takes, I don't care if you open up a goddam gambling parlor. No skin off my ass. Hell, I thought you had something serious on your mind."
"It is serious," the Prof said. "Far more serious than you may think. But I feel quite certain that your permission in this matter will sway the tide of opinion. I don't think you'll have any trouble, now."
After the Prof left, Saul Diamond stood on the porch and watched the thin figure trudge down the road. He had offered the Prof a ride back, but the Prof had said he would rather walk. Diamond shook his head. He wondered how much he had been manipulated in the recent conversation. There was more to what had been said than appeared on the surface.
Well, the man unquestionably did have a lot of influence with the pickers. Undoubtedly he had plenty enough influence to start labor trouble if there was really none present. If the old bird wanted to take a little cut of the workers earnings for himself, and wanted permission to organize gambling to do it, it was really no skin off his ass. Maybe it was plain, out and out blackmail, but curiously enough it was not Saul Diamond who was asked to pay-for a change. Let him do it, if he wanted to. Anything to keep the force working for another few weeks. Then he would be in the clear.
Back in camp the Prof sought out Maude Smyth. "How would you like to set up a crib? Got any girls who'll work for you?"
"Hell yes, I got Lula, and I can get more, but what's the rub? Who do we pay off? I don't get it."
"There is nothing to get, Maude, except busy. I got permission from Mr. Diamond and he says if we want to run a few whores on the side it's O.K. with him."
Maude's eyes lighted up in anticipation. "Great! What kind of cut does he take?"
"He takes none. All you can earn you may keep for yourself. Courtesy of Mr. Diamond. Just don't forget who the benefactor is. Saul Diamond himself says it's all right."
"Say, that's right swell of him, ain't it?"
The Prof agreed it was.
Maude set up her business, and soon had a thriving little place going, with four girls working full time. The Prof set up a pair of card tables and a dice blanket in another house and sat in nights to see that the house pulled from every pot. Something for Mr. Diamond, boys, the Prof always explained when be took his cut. Diamond, of course, never saw a cent of the money. The Prof spent it instead on food and clothing and medical care for the truly unfortunates of the camp, of which there were a sufficient number to absorb all the profit from the games.
To Jim the Prof explained the purpose of his plot. "We now have, my boy, the perfect weapon. Should Mr. Saul Diamond find out about the picture and threaten or cause trouble, we can threaten or cause right back again."
Jim considered, then nodded. "It seems rather spectacular a way to go about it, but I guess it would work."
"It will work, don't worry. And if you think this is spectacular, you should have seen me in my better days in court!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Saul Diamond paid off personally on Saturday afternoon, and he paid in cash. Each picker signed his or her name or made their mark on his book as paid a specific amount for that week. In the case of children the parents signed for them. It was a simple method, and effective. No one was asked to sign until he was satisfied he was being fairly paid, and once they had signed Diamond listened to no complaints. Not that there had been any complaints recently. There had not been a bit of trouble.
Since that little talk with the Curson fellow two weeks ago cotton had been moving to the gin at a fabulous rate. Whatever sort of an arrangement Curson had made it must have been a dilly, because the pickers really worked. They had picked record amounts of cotton in the past fourteen days.
Diamond sat at a card table in one of the houses in camp. He sat with his back to the wall and with his six-gun strapped around his waist, there being no virtue in inviting trouble, and he doled the cash out of a green metal strong box. Frequently he knew he was being robbed for petty amounts. He knew from experience that the tallies opposite certain of the names included a lot of mud, a certain amount of stones, a few pounds of wet cotton. Occasionally some of the bolder ones would protest the weight total, claiming an error in his count of anywhere from twenty-five to a hundred pounds. He paid without protest, and regarded it merely as sort of a bonus. The saving to be made by challenging such petty larceny would be negligible, and with labor relations as good as they were he could well afford to be bountiful.
He whistled while he counted out the money, laughed a lot, and joked with the men and women as they filed by his table to take their pay. Life was good. The picking was going on at a fine rate, the cotton price was holding well. And, miracle of miracles, Gloria had calmed down somewhat. She was not home as much as she used to be, be that seemed to be for the good. He had little time for her now, anyway, and if she had some interest away from home it appeared to be so much for the better.
Tillie Smyth came for her pay. He checked her tally briefly, counted out the money. She was a pretty little thing. Not like most of the women working for him. Tillie picked a small but steady amount each week, kept her pick clean, never complained or tried to rob him. She regarded him very seriously from her deep, grey-green eyes as she accepted the money, thanked him and went on. That was another unusual thing about her. She was the only woman who ever so much as said thank you when he gave her the money. Not that many of the men did, either, and he certainly did not expect it. But it did make the job that much more pleasant when one of them acted like a human being for a change.
Lula Smyth followed Tillie. Now there was a dish. Too bad she wasn't a whore instead of a cotton picker, Diamond thought irreverently, and wondered why he had thought it. There was something about her, he guessed, something about the way she walked, or something about the way she spoke that made him think that. Yes, it was too bad at that. If she was he would buy a piece and-Sure, like hell he would. It took all he could do to keep up with Gloria, let alone buying strange stuff on the side.
He watched her walk away, moving her hips in that swinging, suggestive way-A man standing before his table spoke a name, and Diamond cleared his throat and pulled his mind back to business.
Maude added her week's pay to a growing and rather neat pile of money she kept tucked away in an old oatmeal box. Very nice, she told herself, very nice. Since she had opened the crib she was making time. A few more weeks of that and she would have a neat little stake for the winter and the next move, wherever that might be. But of course she could not help wishing it were bigger. Now if she had that green box of money Saul Diamond toted around with him on Saturday-damn, that would really do it. With a pile like that she could set up a real house for herself and Lula. She could be the Madame, and she wouldn't have to work none at all, just keep the girls in line. Damn, what she could not do with a pile like that.
The door opened and closed suddenly behind her, and Maude jumped, startled, and tried to hide the oatmeal box in the folds of her skirt.
"Christ, it's just me," Lula said. "What you guarding there, anyway, Fort Knox?"
"Nearest thing to it we're likely to see, 'less we get some big breaks," Maude agreed. She put the box away in its hiding place. It was all right for Lula to know where it was, a lot of the money in it was Lula's anyway.
"Nearest thing I've seen to Fort Knox," Lula said, "is that box Diamond brings around on Saturdays."
Maude looked up sharply from her task of arranging the groceries around the oatmeal box. Was Lula possibly thinking the same thing she had been thinking? But Lula was undressing. She stood in the middle of the floor and threw her clothes at the bed. Most of them hit, but the panties fell on the floor. Lula left them there. She took a towel and soap and walked naked out the back door to the shower.
Thoughtfully Maude picked up the dirty clothes and stuffed them in the laundry bag. She busied herself with other little tasks around the house, trying to keep from thinking further. But her mind kept right on racing around in the tight little circle it had started in. With enough money she could set herself up as a Madame of a real house. Saul Diamond carried enough cash each Saturday to make that possible. With enough money--Saul Diamond-money.
"No, by God, too dangerous," she said aloud. "Too dangerous, and no job for an old woman."
"What's that, Mom?" Tillie said.
Maude jumped violently. "Damn it, girl, I never heard you come in!"
"I see you didn't. Talking to yourself like that I could of carried away the whole house, if there was anything here worth carrying."
"What'd I say?" Maude demanded. She wondered how much of her thoughts she had spoken out loud, how much Tillie had heard.
"You said it was too dangerous. What is?"
"Oh, well, that's all right. I mean, uh, it's too dangerous for you to go galwanting around on the desert with Jim Pettenger."
"Why?"
"Huh? Oh-snakes, and things."
"Pooh." Tillie sat on the edge of her bed and began to undress. She carefully put her dirty clothes in the laundry bag. From outside they both could hear the sounds of Lula splashing in the shower, so she did not hurry with undressing. Even so she finished before Lula finished with the shower, so she lay back on the bed naked.
"You and Jim make up yet?"
"I guess we will this weekend if he comes around. I've been mad at him long enough. And anyway, the Prof explained how I was wrong thinking about Jim the way I did."
"Good thing. Another week and Jim'd been at my crib looking for Lula."
"Jim ain't that kind."
"They're all that kind."
"Not Jim."
Lula came in from the shower then and put an end to that useless argument. Maude was glad when Tillie went out. It gave her a chance to talk to Lula about the thing that had been bothering her the last few minutes. Lula listened, and then said just what Maude had.
"Too dangerous."
"I know. But it's too bad, ain't it? All that money, and us needing it so bad. It wouldn't be like taking it from poor people."
"No, Saul Diamond sure ain't poor people," Lula admitted. "Too bad he's married to that goddam minx he has. I'd make something out of him, if I had a chance. You should of seen the way he looked at me today."
"They all do."
"They ain't all got the money Diamond has."
"I'll bet he's got it stacked in every corner."
"Probably ain't got a worry in the world except where to spend it all."
"I still think we ought to help him out on that a little."
"Too dangerous."
"No job for a woman."
The two women looked solemnly at each other for a time. Then slowly Lula began to dress. Maude listened to the sounds from the shower. Tillie was taking her time, but that suited Maude just fine. She still had something on her mind. Something that she almost was afraid to say. But, hell, she could say it in front of Lula. Lula would understand. It was Tillie she didn't want to hear it. She screwed up her courage and said it.
"How about The Mall?"
"To hell with him," Lula said. "He's been buying from that Mexican wench instead of me."
"No, that ain't what I mean. About Diamond, and his money box. How about The Mall?"
Lula stared blankly at her mother for a time. Then slowly the idea began to form in her mind. Sure, how about him? Why not? "I get what you mean," she said.
"You think he'd do it?"
"When I get through with him, he'd do anything!" Lula's confidence was supreme. At least it was along that line. There was one question. "Do you think we could trust him?"
"Well, he ain't lost nothing with Diamond."
"That ain't enough."
"Sure you could trust him. Didn't you just say you could get him to do anything. I think you could, for sure."
"I know. That I know. But he's a strange duck. He ain't dumb, exactly, but he's strange as hell. I don't know for sure if we could trust him."
"Sure we could!" Maude's eyes gleamed in anticipation.
Lula felt herself swayed by her mother's confidence. It would be a good deal if they could swing it, all right. With that much money they could-God, her mind staggered under the thoughts of what they could do with that much money. She wondered briefly how much money it really was, but there was no way of guessing. Enough to pay off fifty or sixty people, and some of them made as high as eighty or ninety dollars. Let's see, say there was fifty dollars for everybody in camp, keep it low just for thinking about. Let's see-no, hell, she could not figure that high in her head. Anyway, it was a lot. It was plenty. Damn plenty.
He would do it, all right. The son of a bitch would do it, by God he had damn better do it. Sure he would. Hell yes.
Tillie came in then, carefully wrapped in her towel. Inside she dried her slender body and began to dress. "Anybody going to town?" she asked .
"No," Lula answered. "I got to see The Mall. The bastard has been playing games with another dame. I got to have a few words with him." In her mind Lula rehearsed just what those words would be.
The Mall was a very unhappy man. Just when it seemed that everything was beginning to go good then trouble had to go and start. Female trouble. Women seemed to cause him most of his trouble in life, somehow. Sometimes he wondered how it would be if there were no women. Then there would be just the friendships with men like the Prof and Jim and there would be no trouble. But of course with no women-no, that would not be so good either. But he did seem to get more than his share of trouble with women.
He might still be home working on the farm where he belonged if it had not been for female trouble. If that damn Louise had not kept yapping about being knocked up until her old man got wind of it. If she had not fingered him for the deal when the old man wanted to know who. Hell, it could have been any of a dozen guys who done it. But of course Louise wasn't going to say that, and make it all the worse. Not Louise. No, she said he did it. And so her old man got the old fashioned horsewhip out of the barn and came around looking for The Mall.
Gotta give his Pop credit. Pop took the whip away from Louise's old man and said if anybody was gonna horsewhip his son he'd do it his self. The trouble was, he meant it. He would have done a better job than Louise's old man.
So The Mall had hit the road, and he hadn't stopped until he had put seven states between him and home. That was-when? Almost a year ago. He had not been back and chances were he could never go back. Not if Louise really was knocked up. Of course by now she may have fingered somebody else for the deal. But there was no way of knowing. He couldn't dare write anyone back there. Just keep away. Something like that was bound to happen sooner or later anyway. He and the old man didn't get along so good.
But now it was Lula. Now she was giving him trouble. She wanted to get him to help her rob Saul Diamond's payroll.
He had laughed, at first, not really taking her serious. But she was serious, all right. She had tried all sorts of things to get him to say yes. Everything up to saying she wouldn't lay no more if he did not help her. He had just laughed at that. There was plenty of dames. He wouldn't go without just because she got huffy.
Then she had guessed somehow that he had been laying Gloria Diamond. That had made her plenty mad at first. Then she had to get real cagey and threaten to tell Saul Diamond he was sacking his wife if he didn't help her rob the payroll.
That was rough. That really put him in a bad spot.
He had had to say he would do it.
Now, on his way to meet Gloria, he pondered the situation. Slowly he trudged down the dirt road toward the highway. He kicked at stones and sticks in the road as he went along, playing a game that they were footballs and he was kicking off to the opposing team. Sometimes he got off a really good kick. When one traveled a good distance through the air he pretended then it was a war rocket aimed at enemy fortification. The cloud of dust it raised when it hit ground again made a fine imitation explosion.
He drew back suddenly from one stick he was about to kick. It looked for a minute like a snake. He had to be careful. Sometimes the snakes crawled out on the road and laid still and they looked just like a stick. But this turned out to be just a stick, so he went ahead and kicked it. It went skittering off down the dust, throwing up a brown trail above it.
The stick reminded him of one snake he had seen. It had been on a Saturday morning, and Mr. Diamond was coming along the road and he saw it at the same time The Mall did. It was a rattlesnake. Mr. Diamond drew his six-gun and shot the snake. He shot it not once, or twice, but six times. The snake had thrashed and writhed a lot, but each one of those six shots hit the snake. There was not much left of the thing.
The thought of that shooting gave The Mall the jitters. Mr. Diamond always carried that six-gun when he carried the payroll. Nobody would have a chance if he got that gun into action. Anybody trying to rob him would likely end up the same way as the rattlesnake.
He was still pondering that when Gloria's big blue convertible swamped him with dust, stopped alongside. He got in silently. Gloria hit the gas pedal hard and the car spun up another big cloud of brown dust behind it. She did not even stop to look when she drove off the dirt road onto the highway. Just roared on out into traffic and was lucky nothing happened.
She must be in a hell of a hurry for it today, he thought. He said, "Where we going today?"
"Same place, cave man. You have any better ideas?"
"No." He had none. She had taken to picking him up recently in the car, down the road a piece from camp where no one would see them, and driving out to the desert. She took a whole lot of back roads she knew into the desert and then finally drove off the back roads and up a dry wash. Where she parked the car it was completely hidden from view from the road. There was lots of clean brown sand there, and shade from palo verdes. It was a hell of a good place. They spread a blanket out on the sand and it was almost as good as being home in bed. Better in some ways, because they didn't have to worry about getting caught.
The Mall sat slumped in the seat, far over on his side, leaning his head a little over the side so the breeze blew cool on him. They drove in silence until they were deep into the desert.
"You're noisier than hell today," Gloria said.
"I got things on my mind."
"Tell Gloria."
T can't."
"Why not?"
"Well-they just ain't the kind of things I can tell you." 'Try it."
The Mall considered. Maybe she had something, at that. Maybe he could tell her-if he told it right.
By then they were at the wash, and she had turned off the road. The car lurched, spun wheels, then caught hold and spurted on again. The Mall looked out at the sand. Christ. This was the part that worried him. What if they got stuck in the sand. Or broke an axle or something in the sand? Christ. How would she ever explain that? But she had not got stuck yet, and, as she said, she could not leave the car on the road. That would invite real trouble.
Gloria was out of the car and naked almost before The Mall got the blanket spread out. She all but ripped his shirt off helping him get undressed. Damn, she was eager today. She wrestled him considerably, and rolled him clear off the blanket twice. But finally he was able to subdue her the way she wanted to be subdued.
Afterwards, when he had got his breath back, he confessed to her the plot to rob her husband. He told it to her straight, and left it to her uncertain mercy just what to do about it. In a way he knew it was like putting his head in a tiger's mouth. But even that thought was more pleasant than facing Diamond's six-gun.
Gloria was strangely silent for a while after he finished telling her the plot. She stared straight up into the blank blue of afternoon sky for a long time without saying a word. Then suddenly she sat up, leaned over and kissed him. For a time he forgot about Saul Diamond and the robbery. He reached up and grabbed a soft, sweet tit in each hand and pulled her down on top of him. It was a while later before she finally spoke.
"About the robbery," she said. "I think it's a hell of a good idea."
"Huh?"
"Certainly. But listen. You two morons can't work this thing out properly. Now I'll think this thing out, and you just do what I tell you and it will work like a dream."
"You mean"-The Mall was too stunned to really believe what he had heard. She was kidding him.
"Why not? I'm all for it. But just play it cool, cave man, and remember-I'll work out the plan. All you have to do is the actual work itself. O. K.?"
The Mall heard himself saying O. K. There was not much else he could say. Christ. The tiger had bit down hard when he got his head in her mouth. But not exactly the way he had feared.
He was not sure just which way was worse.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Gloria devoted a lot of thought to the scheme of her caveman to rob her husband. And the more she thought about it the more she felt it could not fail to work out-her way.
First she stole a gun from her husband. She went to his special locked rack in the back of the huge closet in his den where he kept his heavy guns. There he kept his big guns he fondly called his "elephant" guns, and a pair of ten gauge shotguns and a brutish looking sawed-off twelve gauge. She had never understood why he kept those guns. He seldom got them out, except to clean them periodically, and never used them that she knew of. Maybe they were something out of his forgotten past or his hoped for future. Anyway, they were there, and it was only a matter of filching his keys for a short time and removing the gun she wanted.
At first she was tempted to take one of the elephant guns, because it was so sleek and spoke silently to her of power and killing efficiency. But she discarded that idea. It was heavy, very heavy, and awkward for her to handle. The caveman might not know how to use it properly, either. Saul had often said it was a gun strictly for professionals. Finally she chose the sawed-off shotgun. It was short, not too heavy, tremendously deadly looking. There was not much to operating it, either. And somewhere she seemed to remember reading that anything in the blast of a sawed-off shotgun would be sure to be thoroughly minced.
Gloria met her caveman at the usual place the next day. She drove swiftly out to their desert parking place. But this time she did not lay the blanket out. This time there was a more vital excitement surging in her veins.
"Now listen to this," Gloria told The Mall. "Saul goes to the bank after the money every Saturday morning at nine o'clock. He gets back again about ten thirty, comes to the house and puts it in the safe. Then he leaves the house again about a quarter to twelve so he will be at the camp and ready to pay off at twelve sharp."
"Yeh." The Mall fidgeted, obviously uneasy.
"What is the matter with you? Are you listening to what I'm saying?"
"Sure I am, Gloria. But-"
"But what?"
"I keep thinking about the way he shoots with that six-gun."
Gloria suppressed a smile. Good, she thought, keep right on thinking about it. Don't forget it for a second. She said, "Quit worrying. He'll never so much as reach for the gun. That is what I brought this for!" She produced the shotgun.
The desert sun glinted on the lightly oiled barrel, sent shards of light splintering off the gleaming metal into the brassy heat of the day. It felt like something coolly alive in her hands. The Mall shied away from it.
"Now what?"
"God damn. Certainly it might go off. If you pull the trigger it will. Come here." Gloria got out of the car, beckoned for The Mall to follow. Reluctantly he did. "Now, take this thing, put it to your shoulder-no, stupid, like this-that's right. Now point the damn thing at that cholla and pull the trigger."
The gun roared, the spine-tangled cholla cactus was lost momentarily in a tremendous eruption of dirt, sand and rock. When the dust settled only a gaping hole remained where the cholla had been.
Gloria grinned triumphantly. "See that? That is what would happen to Saul if you pulled the trigger. The important thing is, he knows that. And knowing that he will never reach for his gun. He will just quietly hand over the money. It is that simple."
The caveman was hard to convince, but she did it. Proper use of the blanket helped. By the end of the session, with aid of artful holding and withholding, he was more than convinced. He was eager.
Gloria continued with outlining her plan. "Now, the best place to try the robbery is neither at home nor in the camp, but between our house and the camp. Maybe you've never been up that far toward the house, but just about half way there is a big irrigation ditch that runs right straight across the road. There is a bridge, but what a bridge! I've been after the son of a bitch to fix it for three years, but he never has. He will have to slow the car down almost to a stop to cross the bridge. You getting all of this?
"All right. That is the place to do it. You will be there, hiding behind a big cottonwood, with the shotgun cocked and ready. Remember that-cocked and ready. Now here is where you need a confederate. You can use the woman who put you up to the idea in the first place. She gets down under the bridge, jumps in the water and gets thoroughly wet. Just when Saul slows the car down for the bridge she pops up, soaking wet, screaming that her baby has fallen into the canal."
Caveman's eyes began to light up as he began to understand the beauty of the plan. Gloria let that part soak in, gave him plenty of time to think it over. Then when he obviously was ready, she fed him the clincher.
"From there it is a cinch. You step out from behind the tree with your shotgun, relieve him of his gun belt and the payroll. He won't dare make a move with your gun on him. Then you tie him up, take the money and the car and blow on out of there. Ditch the car real quick, take a bus for parts unknown. Hide Saul under the bridge, see, where no one will find him. Several hours later I get 'worried' and I find him there. But by then you are long gone."
"Yeh-that sounds like a snap. How much money is there, anyhow?"
"Usually close to three thousand dollars."
"Wow! What Lula and me couldn't do with that! But-" as if suspecting he may have said the wrong thing that time he suddenly changed his attitude. "Wait a minute. What's in the deal for you? How come you're helping me rob your own husband."
Gloria almost sighed in relief to hear him ask that. It indicated that maybe he was not quite as dumb as he acted. And it would take a little bit of brain work to carry the thing through. She had her answer ready. "Two reasons. I'm mad at Saul. He has been pretty cocky recently, and needs to be taken down a few pegs. This will do it. Besides that is the only way I know to properly repay you for all you have been able to do for me-in a way Saul never has and never will."
That tickled caveman so much that they had to make use of the blanket again. Later they lay together in silence in the lace like shade of the palo verde. Each had their own thoughts.
Caveman was still a little hesitant, and very nervous. But Gloria considered that good, very good. The shotgun had a very light trigger pull. It did not take much to make it speak in its voice of absolue authority. With the caveman as tense and keyed up as he was the chances were excellent he would shoot Saul if he had the slightest incentive. With the sawed-off it was almost a cinch for a kill if he did shoot. Then she would cash in on some sizable insurance policies, sell the ranch and move over to the coast. Get the hell away from this God damn heat. And have plenty of money to live decently. And no husband on her tail twenty-four hours a day. Freedom, complete freedom and plenty of money.
By God, it ought to work out that way, it really ought to. Just to be certain she would personally eliminate as much as possible of the element of chance involved in caveman's pulling of that trigger. She would arrange things so he would have to shoot.
Gloria dozed a few minutes in the comfortable warmth. Her dreams were pleasant.
That night at camp it was Jim's turn to fix supper. He stood over the little kerosene stove and turned the hash brown potatoes. The Prof lay on his bed reading out of town papers. The Mall was out somewhere. He had left the fields early and vanished on one of his mysterious errands. But maybe he would be back in time for supper.
Jim turned down the flame on the little two burner stove. He hated that damn stove. It was dangerous, he felt. Somehow he couldn't get accustomed to cooking on such a rig. But the Prof insisted it was all right so long as you were careful, and they certainly had never had any real trouble with it. So he must be right.
Outside it was just getting dark. Sunset was just fading away. Jim wished mightily that he was out on the desert. This was the perfect time, just before dark. The colors then were un-matchable with anything he had ever seen before. If he only had a car he could run out there every evening after work. But a car would be too big and easy a target for some smart detective to find if ever one started looking in this area. He would have to satisfy himself with week-end hiking trips for the time being.
The thought of the car and the detective turned Jim's mind inward to his personal problems. He wondered if he would ever get his life straightened out. If ever it would be possible to make a reasonable settlement with his wife and get himself untangled from her. Maybe he ought to go back and face the music. No, he had thought of that before, but it would solve nothing except to get himself into trouble. He knew Claire too well. She would be purely vindictive if he came back, with but one aim-to see him as deep in hell as she could manage to put him. The only way was to stay away from her, completely out of her sight. And hope that would also be out of her mind. The Prof had said it was possible for her to divorce him whether he went back or not. Something about advertising for a certain period of time, and a decree by default, and all of that. Maybe she would do that, in time. It would certainly be to her advantage. He had left her with the car, the house, the bank account and what savings bonds they had all in her possession. He had taken only a few of his clothes and the money he had in his pocket. Besides that she had a sizable amount of money her father had left her in trust. No need to worry about her, she would be doing all right. He should do all his worrying about himself.
At least he had got Tillie straightened out on the deal with Gloria's picture. With the help of the Prof, that is, he had. Probably he never would have been able to explain it to her by himself. But the Prof had managed to make her see reason.
The potatoes began to burn and Jim hastily turned the flame down even lower. He realized he had been looking out the window instead of paying attention to the cooking. Tillie had occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else. He knew his feeling for Tillie had grown stronger and stronger over the weeks. Was it love? He hesitated to call it that because of the connotation of permanence that went with the word. Nothing frightened him quite so much right now as thoughts of a permanent entanglement.
That was the whole damn trouble, he told himself, with getting mixed up with women. A man had to do it. He had to have a woman now and then to keep his life and his emotions balanced. There was no substitute for a woman's love and affection, absolutely none. But to get that love and affection it was necessary to form a quasi-permanent relationship. Then, if the results were pleasant enough to keep on with it, even with full intentions of keeping it temporary, a man inevitably got trapped. He began to think, well this is pretty nice. Maybe I ought to really make it permanent, instead of just pretending to. This woman is pretty decent, maybe with her things would work out the way a man-woman relationship should work out. And then he had had it. That was the beginning of the end. Pretty soon he was saying "I love you" and pretty soon he was believing it, and pretty soon he had himself all neatly tied up. The joke was that he did it all himself.
On the bed the Prof stirred restlessly, rattled the papers considerably in turning from page to page. Jim knew it was his way of wishing aloud that supper was ready without saying anything about it. Well, they would not wait for The Mall, be might as well dish it up and they could go ahead and eat.
"Hmm. Soybeans were ahead most of day before yesterday on the Chicago Board of Trade," the Prof said. "Japan has been buying heavily."
"Hash browns are holding well, too," Jim answered. "Slightly burned, but in good supply. Epecially if The Mall doesn't show up for his share."
"He'll show. I do believe he would leave off in the middle of slipping it to some woman to eat. Food seems to be his main reason for living."
"Food, women and liquor, in that order, was the way he once explained it to me," Jim said. "But he has never been this late before. I wonder where he is?"
"You don't really know? Good heavens, my boy. He has been keeping Gloria Diamond off your neck by keeping himself on hers. A favor to you, and perhaps to the entire camp, of inestimable value. We should work up some sort of a plaque and present it to him in recognition of his yeoman efforts. Something with crossed prophylactics on a background of a waving blanket might be appropriate."
"Finely chased in gold."
"Indeed. With his name in bronze letters and wooden rod ' of appropriate length upon which to carve notches for each new conquest. A sort of a flexible memorial to his achievements."
"Maybe we ought to take up a collection among the women he has thrilled," Jim suggested. "With a promise to have their names inscribed on the back in return for a suitably large donation."
"Indeed a brilliant idea," the Prof considered. "And not only that, but-"
The door opened quietly and the Prof stopped talking. The Mall slipped in and went directly to his bed. Jim would have paid no attention, other than to be glad he had made it back in time for dinner, had not The Mall been so quiet. But The Mall was not a quiet man. When he slipped in and closed the door so quietly, and went directly to his bed without speaking to either of them Jim turned and stared.
The Mall carried with him a bundle wrapped in newspaper. It was a strange looking package, thin and narrow and about the length of a broom handle. It was considerably wider at one end than at the other. For just an instant Jim thought it might be a gun. But it was much too short to be a rifle or shotgun. And what would The Mall be doing with a gun all wrapped up in newspaper anyway?
Jim looked over at the Prof. The Prof was apparently studying the financial pages of his newspaper, but Jim could see he was actually looking over the top of the page at The Mall. The Prof's lined face was wrinkled in a look of puzzlement. He looked up and caught Jim's glance, furrowed one eyebrow momentarily, then shrugged as if to say, oh, well, none of our business. Jim turned his back and began to dish up the dinner.
The Mall came over to Jim then, suddenly hearty and full of talk. He pounded Jim on the back, asked jovially what he was burning for supper. He snatched the Prof's newspaper from him, noted aloud that carloadings had declined, proclaimed in mock seriousness that he was wiped out, and sat heavily in a chair at the stable.
Jim had never seen The Mall acting so nervous.
They ate without much talk between them for the first half of the meal. Jim and the Prof both tried to get conversation going, but everything they said fell flat. The Mall shoveled away food with his usual dispose-all action, then finally, toward the end of the meal, began to talk. For a time he made nervous small talk about the weather, about picking, about last Saturday night in town. Then he came out and said it.
"Well, gosh men, it's been great. But I guess this is the end of it."
Jim felt a strange little shock of regret edge through him like a tiny shock of electricity. Was that what was chewing The Mall? Jim knew what he meant, all right. He was accustomed to The Mall's ways. He knew The Mall was getting ready to say he was leaving soon.
The Prof knew it too, probably, but he pretended not to know. He said, "The end of what?" His voice sounded thin and pinched, as if he had had trouble getting the words past a tight place in his throat.
"Well, I gotta be moving on. I, uh-goddam it, fellows, I didn't wanta say it this way, you know. I had something I wanted to say. But somehow it won't come out right."
"You mean-you're thinking about leaving us?" The Prof t still refused to believe what he was hearing.
"Well, yeh."
"Why? The season still has a month or more to go. What is the all fired big rush to talk about leaving?"
"I'm leaving Saturday after pay time."
It was out then, and there was no pretending to misunderstand. Jim said nothing. He watched The Mall, and he watched the Prof. From the stricken look on the Prof's face he learned ' something he had not even thought about before.
"Are you in trouble, boy?" the Prof asked. "If you are in trouble this is no time to play coy. You know you can tell us if you're in trouble, and if we can help you we will."
"No."
"No, hell. Is it Gloria Diamond? Has that bitch been giving you fits of some sort? Come on, out with it, it won't help to keep it all bottled up inside. Tell us what the trouble is."
"Aw, there ain't no trouble, I tell you. Goddam. I'm just restless, that's all. Time to be moving on."
"There is trouble," the Prof insisted stubbornly. "Goddam it, quit needling me, will you? I tell you there ain't no trouble! Can't you just take my word for it?" The Mall pushed his chair violently backwards, stood up, towered over the table, massive in his anger.
The Prof set his mouth in a grim fine and tried to stare down The Mall. Jim lowered his eyes and said nothing. He wished there were some way he could make himself invisible, some way to crawl out of the way. This was between the Prof and The Mall, and he had no part in it and no place being near it. But there was no way, so he sat still and waited.
In a minute the heavy steps of The Mall clumped to the door. The door creaked quickly open, slammed violently shut, and The Mall was gone. Jim looked up at the Prof. The pale, almost colorless blue eyes were staring at Jim and around him and through him all at the same time. He seemed to be seeing something far to the other side of Jim.
"Something is wrong with him," Jim said after a time to break the awful silence.
"Terribly wrong," the Prof admitted. "Something is frightfully wrong. I've never seen him in such a state."
"He must be in trouble."
"He must. Terrible trouble. I can't help having the feeling it means trouble for us all, Jim. Big trouble. Big trouble ahead."
Jim reflected that the Prof always saw trouble ahead. But this time he was afraid that the Prof was right.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Saturday morning came in with a dust storm. Gloria had no idea what time it actually started, but by the time she got up at nine wind and dust were already doing their work of sifting in under doors and window sills. Outside the pall of dust obscured vision to within a few yards. The line of olive trees bordering the front lawn were mere ghost shapes nodding in the wind. The road was gone, blended with the dust of which it was both a part and a contributor.
Gloria parted the drapes at the picture window and stared out. God, how she hated the eternal dust. Dust in her eyes, dust in her hair, dust in her clothes, on the floor, under the doors, in the food. Well, it wouldn't be too much longer now, before she would shake this off her heels.
"Are you not feeling well, Gloria?" Saul Diamond called from the dining room. He was at the table having a cup of coffee. Saul had eaten his breakfast long ago, at five with the housekeeper, to be exact. But whenever he could he came back to the house shortly after nine to have coffee with Gloria when she ate her breakfast.
Gloria turned from the window, walked back to the dining room with a carefully cultivated look of pain on her face. "No worse than usual. Just my sinus."
"The dust," Saul said sympathetically.
"The goddamn dust, yes. When it blows like this it drives me insane." Actually she had no sinus trouble. But most of her friends did, and it was fashionable to complain of it. Also she had complained so long and so bitterly before in her efforts to get Saul to sell the ranch that she dared not let down now. It was an act she had begun once and now felt she had to maintain.
"What you need is a good long vacation," Saul suggested. "Tell you what, as soon as the cotton is in we'll run over to California for a few weeks. I can leave the ranch with Jennings for awhile. We'll just sit on the beach and soak up the sun and sea air for a while."
"Don't be an ass, Saul. By then it will be winter and the beach season over. Summer was the time for that, damn it. Why bring it up now?"
"Oh, yes. I keep forgetting. California weather isn't like Arizona's. Winter isn't their season, is it?"
Gloria threw him a long dirty look, but he was examining his pink grapefruit and did not see it. He knew goddamn well winter was not California's season. At least not for the beach. It was one of his dirty digs, was all. He never missed a chance to get in a dirty dig whenever he could about California.
Christ, he was usually gone to the bank by now. What was holding him up, anyway? The dust. She answered her own question. The dust was holding him back. He was waiting, hoping it would settle down a little before he had to go out. That was all she needed, to have the whole plan fold up because a dust storm threw Saul off schedule.
Saul discarded his grapefruit half-eaten, drank down the rest of his coffee. He left the table, clumped off into his den. Gloria had a moment of fear. What if he looked at his guns for some reason and noticed that the shotgun was gone? What in the world could she tell him? She wanted to run up to her room and hide until he was gone out of the house. But the sound of his booted footsteps came clumping toward her again. He had got a cigar and was lighting it up. He went to the picture window, stood peering out. Smoke from his cigar puffed between his lips, billowed against the glass panes and folded back to envelope him.
Why didn't he leave? Gloria shouted silently in her mind.
He turned, smiled at her affectionately, came over and patted her on the seat. "Well, I guess the dust is blowing itself on north out of the way. I'd better be getting on to the bank.
When the pickers want their pay they want it, and on time."
Gloria stifled her sigh of relief until he was out of the house. Well, so far so good. He was about half an hour later getting started. But maybe he would cut short his diddling around in town. All he did was stand around and talk to other men as they came into the bank. She had gone with him a few times in the past on Saturday morning, but it had always meant an hour or so standing around in the bank-or slipping over to the hotel for a couple of quick ones.
She recalled that that was how she had met Jim Pettenger. Saul had been gassing in the bank and she had gone on over to the hotel. And then Jim had come in and about lost his eyeballs on the floor looking at her. What had ever happened to him, she wondered, to make him change so. That day she could have all but laid him right there on the floor of the lounge. But since then-thoughts of what had happened since then made her angry, so she tried to think of something more pleasant. She thought of her picture Jim had drawn of her.
The picture beckoned. She went upstairs to her room and got it out of its hiding place. It was well hidden, too, in a place where Saul would never look, and where he would never find it if be did look. If Saul ever found that picture-wow! Of course, someday-she toyed with the thought very delicately-if there was a someday, she might, she just might let him find it. It might be worth the fireworks to teach him a lesson, to wake him up a bit. And of course it would be a dilly of a way to fix up Jim Pettenger if ever she got mad at him.
Gloria stripped down naked. She stood before the mirror and surveyed first herself and then the picture, comparing. The picture was a beautiful piece of work. It brought out all her natural beauty and put it right there on paper. The picture would never change. It would always show that beauty. Someday, true enough, her own beauty would fade with age. Of course that day was a long way off. But it was bound to come, while the picture would never change. Jim had sprayed it with some sort of plastic so it would not smear. One of these days she would have it framed, and she would keep it always.
It was too bad she could not have figured some way to bring Jim in on the robbery. Then she would have gained a real hold over him. But then, once Saul was out of the way she would be able to buy Mr. Pettenger easily enough. He made with a lot of high sounding talk, but she knew the type too well. She had seen too many of them and bought enough of them for small enough sums and favors. There would be no trouble with Jim once Saul was taken care of.
Gloria dressed leisurely, careful to choose clothes that were not too spectacular. There would be a small bit of acting to perform soon and for this time, at least, she wanted Jennings to look at her face and see she looked worried about something. It was important that Jennings remember later that she looked worried about something.
Outside the dust had cleared considerably, though the wind still blew strong. It was one of those goddamn days when the wind blew off and on, off and on. For awhile there would be a gale howling, then it would settle into a dead calm and you would about think it was through blowing and then up came the wind again and about blew you off your feet. It made her nervous, a day like this. She tried to remember whether it made Saul nervous, but could not. She hoped it did.
She got in her car and drove as far as the bridge. There she parked and got out, checked things over. Yes, she had remembered right, there was plenty of room under the bridge for a woman to hide. Plenty of room. In fact, Jennings had almost laid her under that bridge once, but he had been so damn scared of Saul that he was worthless and she had made him quit his damn fumbling and she had gone and got it somewhere else. She had almost forgotten about that. The memory made her laugh. Poor Jennings. The damn fool.
And there was plenty of cover behind the cottonwood tree for a man to conceal himself. The bridge was a fright, of course, she cussed that damn thing every time she had to cross it. Someday she would deliberately run her car off the bridge and into the ditch and complain the bridge made her do it If there was a someday-
She sat down on a grassy spot near the base of the cotton-wood. The air was clearing fast, with the sun beginning to shine brightly now. But still the wind blew stiffly. It must really be hell, she thought, on the ones who really did have sinus. She thought about this and that and whiled away half an hour. Then she got back into her car and drove off up the road toward the house. She boiled into the drive pulling a huge cloud of dust behind her, slammed on the brakes soon after she hit the gravel drive and slid to a spectacular stop.
Luck was sitting on the seat next to her. Jennings was just coming out of the garage with a saw he had got there. Gloria leaped out of the car. She ran toward Jennings, fully conscious of his eyes upon her. Knowing she was attracting attention to the wrong places with her jiggling she slowed down to an agitated walk.
"Has Mr. Diamond come back from town yet, Jennings?"
"No Ma'am, he hain't."
"Damn!" She twisted her hands and looked at Jennings with obvious indecision on her face.
"Anything I can do for you, Ma'am?"
"You can stop calling me Ma'am," Gloria said, forcing her voice carefully so that it sounded strained.
"Yes'm, Mrs. Diamond. Is something worrying you."
Gloria stared at the tall, thin, slow-moving Jennings. God, he had finally caught on that something was worrying her. She was wondering if she was going to have to write it out for him. What a character for Saul to put so much trust in. But Saul said he was a good farmer, and that was all that mattered to Saul.
"It is something I have to discuss with Mr. Diamond, Jennings."
"Yes'm."
"Tell him to come right to the house and see me as soon as he comes, will you, Jennings? It is very important."
"Yes'm. He likely will anyhows, what with totin' the money, and all. But if I see him I'll tell him. I'll tell him you was mighty anxious."
"Please do so, Jennings. It is very urgent." She brushed on past him then, hoping she had played it right. Jennings stood and watched her, and she could feel his eyes upon her until she went in the house and slammed the door. There was no telling what went on behind those blank blue eyes of his. To her he seemed nothing but a stupid oaf, but Saul had made him foreman of the ranch and put a lot of trust and confidence in the man. He must have something that did not show.
When Saul came home she was pacing the living room, breathless and worried. She had washed off her makeup so that she looked pale, and she had pulled her hair around in a tight knot to look more severe. Everything rested on the success of her act, and she wanted to look just right for it.
"What's the matter, dear? Jennings said you looked worried."
She ran to his arms, moved up close to him and held on tight as if she were suddenly afraid of losing him. "Saul, something terrible is happening."
"What?" Saul held her at arms length, studied her face. His wide mouth dropped into a frown, and his brows furrowed into stormy warning of suspicion and anger.
"Saul, they're going to rob you. They're going to steal the payroll!"
"What? Who? Where did you get that idea? Who said so?" Saul fired sudden questions at her. Surprised, she almost stammered. She had known he would be mad, but she certainly had not thought he would flare up at her like that. She took refuge in tears, and did not stop crying until she had regained her composure.
"I was down at the camp. That Burton baby is so sickly, you know, and I thought maybe it ought to be taken into the clinic. You know how she is. Too proud to ask for help, or too ignorant, I don't know which. So I thought I had better go down and check, and-"
"All right, get on with it. What about the robbery?"
"Well, I was walking along the side of this house, and I heard these men talking."
"Where? Who? What did they say?"
"I'm trying to tell you."
"All right, honey. I'm sorry. Just nervous, mad. Go on." Gloria suppressed a smile. Good. He was nervous and mad already. She had counted on that. He was reacting perfectly. "I heard these men talking behind the house. One of them said something about Diamond, and something about a lot of money. Well, naturally I stopped and listened. And I heard them say they were going to rob you when you came in with the payroll. They were planning it."
"Who were they?" Diamond demanded. "How should I know?" Gloria said, hurt drawing a threat of new tears on her face. "I certainly didn't step around to the back of the house and take their pictures, I can guarantee that. I just got the hell out of there as fast as I could. I came back here and waited for you so I could tell you. And you stand there and bark at me like that. All right, go ahead and be your own stupid self. And I hope they succeed!"
Saul melted. Suddenly he was contrite. "I'm sorry, Gloria, I really I am. You were a very, very brave girl. Now just tell me whatever you can remember about what you heard."
"There were three of them, I think," she said slowly, as if trying to remember. "They said they would jump you just as you started to set up the pay table. One would hit you with a piece of pipe. What the others were going to do I don't know. I thought I heard them coming around toward my side of the house and I ran."
"Well, I'm damned," Diamond said, as if he could hardly believe it. "Well, I'm damned. I thought things were going too smooth. I thought trouble would have to break out soon somewhere. So this is it."
"It's terrible," Gloria agreed. She watched the anger building up inside him, saw the red creep up his neck and face, and she was pleased.
"Well, I'll boil the salt out of their little plot. I'll take Jennings and Mangunson along with me. I don't think they'll mess with three armed men."
Gloria felt her stomach sink away down toward her heels. She had not thought of that. Desperately she said, "Is that too smart, Saul?"
"Smart? Certainly it is smart. What else can I do?"
"Why don't you play it cool? Take Jennings and Mangunson, sure, and a couple of others, too. But send them ahead. Give them all pistols they can keep under their shirts and send them on ahead to watch. Not many of the pickers know them by sight. Station them as sort of plain clothes cops there. Then when and if trouble starts they will be right there to jump on it. That way you can catch them-send them off to jail where they belong."
"By God, that is smart!" Saul snapped his fingers and his face lighted up with pleasure. "I always told the boys I had the smartest girl in Arizona for my wife." He kissed her. Gloria felt a small wave of regret that he so seldom kissed her like that.
"I'm glad you think so, Saul."
"By God, yes. You know, I just haven't spent as much time with you as I should, have I? No, by God, I haven't. But from now on things are going to be different. We'll take a vacation in Acapulco after the cotton is in. We'll go places, and see things-together."
"That is wonderful, Saul."
"Damn right. Things are going to be different from here on out. But right now I got a job to do. A big one. I'll go get the men together and send them on ahead." He told her exactly how he was going to work it, and as he talked the anger came back to him. Pacing up and down, nervously working his hands, he out-lined, considered, rejected, finally decided exactly. He went and was gone for a time.
Gloria was glad to get a chance to breath deeply. Everything was working fine, right according to plan.
By the time Saul finally strapped on his six-gun and took the money box on out to his car he was a mass of seething nerves. Gloria could just about see the raw edges grating together in his mind. Chances, she told herself, were just a little better than perfect that he would draw on The Mall and The Mall would shoot and kill him. If by some fluke Saul should win that duel then it would be too bad, but The Mall would be dead and there would be nothing to incriminate her.
She watched him drive away. With just a little luck, she told herself, she would never again see him alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jim did not work that Saturday morning. Cotton was getting pretty thin with the third picking and it didn't seem worthwhile to spend the few hours Saturday morning working. Instead he planned to go into town for supplies for spending the weekend on the desert. Then when Tillie got off work and they both got paid he would be all ready to go. They would be able to hike to their usual campsite long before dark. The prospect of having two or three hours of daylight to paint by offered far more incentive than the small amount of money he missed earning.
He had checked what supplies he had left over from the last trip, and was making a list of what he would have to get in town when the Prof came storming in. One look told Jim that the Prof was upset and highly agitated about something.
"Eh, what's up, Doc?" Jim said in his best Bugs Bunny accent. He had thought the Prof was out working with The Mall.
"Lord, I thought I would never get rid of The Mall," the Prof said in answer. "There is something peculiar going on, my boy, and I thought I had better get back here and try to find out what it is."
"What do you mean?"
"The Mall-he's been acting positively weird. I've never seen him like that before. Yet he keeps insisting there is nothing, no trouble, that he is just restless. He is not the restless type. He does not get restless unless there is some huge pressure forcing him to be restless."
"What do you suppose it is?"
"I don't know, but I just had a premonition that the package he brought in last night may have had something to do with it. I thought I had better come back and find out."
The Prof went to The Mall's bed and poked carefully at the mattress. He grunted and reached underneath, between mattress and springs, careful not to tear the bed clothes off. In a moment he brought out the package. He unwrapped it.
Jim felt shocked surprise numb his mind when he saw what was in the package. "Where did he get that?"
"I can't imagine." The Pof broke the gun, peered at it, nodded grimly. He pulled the shell out of the chamber and examined it. "Buckshot. Good Lord, a sawed-off twelve gauge loaded with buckshot and ready to go. What in the name of the seven devils can he want with this?"
"Where he got it worries me almost as much as what he wants with it," Jim said. "Do you suppose he stole it?"
"He must have. But where-and why?"
Neither man had an answer for that. They stared at each other in grim silence. On the little kerosene stove a percolating pot of coffee bubbled and bubbled, forgotten except for the tiny sounds it made against the backdrop of the dead silence.
The Prof had laid the shotgun shell on the table. He still held the gun, breech open and barrel pointing toward the floor. Jim picked up the shell and dropped it into his pants pocket. He had a feeling that the gun and shell should be separated, though it was possible and even probable that The Mall had more to go with it.
"You know, speaking of acting strangely, Prof, have you noticed that Lula has been acting peculiar lately, too?"
"No-I haven't seen too much of her."
"I would not have, except that of course I've been seeing Tillie. I noticed it, and Tillie said Lula has been moody and snappier than ever, awfully hard to five with. She said Lula must be awful nervous about something."
"By God, do you suppose she and The Mall have cooked up something between them? I mean, something to do with this gun, perhaps, and-and God knows what else?"
"If it was just The Mall alone, I would say no. But with Lula in the picture and acting the same way-she has a lot of influence over him, you know, though he would be the last to admit it."
"My boy, I will take this sample size cannon here and dispose of it where, I guarantee, it will never be found again. May I suggest that you run over to the Smyths and see if you can find Lula? She won't be working this morning, she has not since her mother opened the, ah, new enterprise. See if you can learn anything from her. Beat it out of her if necessary. We've got to find out what is going on so we can know how to deal with The Mall. I know he is headed for some serious trouble of some sort, and we've got to stop him."
Jim trotted quickly to the Smyth house up the line. He pounded anxiously at the door, not knowing exactly what to expect or what he would say. The last thing he expected happened. Tillie opened the door.
"Tillie! I thought you would be out working."
"Come on in, Jim. No, I didn't work this morning. I know how important it is for you to get out to the desert early, so I stayed home to get ready to go. I wanted to be all ready as soon as you were."
"That's swell. You can go into town with me later to get supplies, if you would like to."
"Later? It's quarter past eleven now."
"I know. We should have been gone long ago. But something came up. Is Lula around?"
"No. I don't know what's got into her. She took off from here about half an hour ago, wearing her raggedy old clothes and no makeup. You'd hardly recognize her if you didn't know her real well."
"Old clothes?"
"Yes-and so nervous you'd think she was about to hold up a bank. Why-what's the matter, Jim? Is something wrong?"
"By God, that's right. This is payday, isn't it!"
"It sure better be." Tillie smiled.
But Jim hardly noticed. Of course, how could they have been so blind? It was payday, and Saul Diamond carried around a lot of money on payday. It was bound to happen that someone would get ideas about taking it away from him. But that it should have been The Mall! He could not have thought it up by himself. It just was not like him. Surely Lula must be the brains behind the deal, and somehow she had talked or coerced him into going along with her on it. Wherever she was now she must be getting ready to do her part in the act.
No wonder The Mall had been so nervous!
Jim raced back to their house. He had to find the Prof. Probably the whole idea was scotched, now that they had found the shotgun. But there could be other guns. They had to find out. The Mall had to be stopped.
The Mall trudged down the road toward camp. Christ, he had thought he would never get rid of the Prof. He turned down the main street of the camp and wind whipped suddenly in his face. Damn, but it was blowing. He had not really noticed how hard it was blowing until he faced straight into it. Hell of a day for something like this. The wind made him nervous, anyway, and he was nervous enough already.
He had stopped at Maude's crib joint and scrounged half a pint of whiskey off of her. This he had drank down. He needed it to keep his courage up. Cold sober he knew he would never be able to face Diamond's gun, not even if he had a cannon to shoot back with.
How had he got into such a mess, anyway?
At the house the slight step up at the door fooled him, and he stumbled. He swore, lurched and hit both sides of the door going in. Damn, all this on half a pint. It couldn't be the whiskey alone. Must be the nervousness.
He went directly to his bed, fumbled under the mattress looking for the gun. He could not find it. "Son of a bitch, I know I put it right there. Now what the hell?"
The Mall turned away from his bed, glared around the room. What the hell had happened to the Goddam gun? It was only then that he noticed Jim was in the house, too. Jim sat at the table, drinking a cup of coffee. Behind Jim, on the stove, the coffee pot sat on the edge of one burner, just being kept warm by a small blue flame. The Mall wished mightily that he had a cup of it. But he was late now. He had to get the gun and get the hell out of there. If he fouled up and got there late it would be all over.
He turned back to his bed without saying anything to Jim. The mattress he took hold of and lifted bodily from the bed, dumping it on the floor in a heap along with the bed clothes. Only the bare springs were to be seen. No gun.
"God damn it, Jim, I left a package under my mattress here. Do you know where it is?"
"Gosh, no, Mall, I sure don't. What kind of package?"
Something in Jim's voice caused The Mall to turn slowly and peer suspiciously. "Where's the Prof?"
"I don't know. He went out. Said he'd be back pretty soon."
The Mall sat down. He would wait. But no, he couldn't wait. Anyway, Jim knew more than he was saying. Something funny was going on here.
"I think you or the Prof took it!" The Mall said suddenly.
"Took what?"
"My package!"
"Good heavens, what was in it, Mall, that we would want?"
That stopped him for a time. Yeh. What the hell would they do with a sawed-off shotgun? They wouldn't take it. Wouldn't have any use for it. That is-a thought moved slowly through his brain-that is, they would have no use for it except to keep it away from him. And they would not even do that unless they had guessed, somehow, what he wanted it for. Then they might take it.
The Mall faced Jim squarely. He pointed a big finger accusingly. "You stole my gun!"
Jim recoiled, confused. "Well, I-"
"Where is it? I want it."
"I haven't got it," Jim said. "I don't know where it is."
"You took it."
"Maybe I did. But it was for your own good, you big stupe. What the hell ever got into you, anyhow? Are you crazy or something?"
Right at the moment The Mall was near enough crazy-with fear. He thought of his part in the robbery. How important it was that he be there, and be there on time. He had to be ready to step out from behind that tree when Saul Diamond got out of the car. Had to have that gun cocked and ready so there could be no trouble from Diamond. God damn, Gloria would be fit to be tied if anything went wrong with the deal. She might even be mad enough to tell Diamond that The Mall had been laying her. You couldn't tell what a dame like that might do. She might just be crazy mad enough to tell him that. And then Diamond would come after him with that deadly six shooter, and he wouldn't even have the shotgun to defend himself with. "I want my gun."
"I don't know where it is," Jim said. "The Prof hid it somewhere. But I do know what you wanted with it. You were going to hold up Saul Diamond, weren't you?"
"Sure I am."
"Were. You were. Now you're not. And when you sober up you'll be damn glad we stopped you. It was a crazy, damn fool thing to think about doing, Mall."
"I gotta have that gun, Jim."
"Well, you can't get it, so relax."
The Mall thought of one thing only. He thought of Gloria being angry with him and telling Diamond. The vision of Diamond's cool shooting came to his mind. A great anger swept into his mind, putting out all reason and all sanity. The Mall curled his fingers into fists and lashed out at Jim with all the furious strength he could summon.
The blow caught Jim along the side of his jaw, and it lifted him clear out of his chair. He straightened up, froze for an instant in a grotestque pose of pain and shock, then fell backwards. His body crashed into the table the small stove sat on. Jim, table and stove went to the floor together. A splash of yellow fire spilled out of the stove, and raced across the floor, washed up against the far wall and splashed back again like a wave splashing against a cliff. The Mall watched in horror. Kerosene from the stove was suddenly burning everywhere.
The Mall watched, horrified and stricken motionless as the flames also washed over Jim's limp body lying on the floor.
Yellow fire climbed up Jim's shirt and arm, reached hungrily for his face. The Mall stood frozen, unable to move a muscle.
Lula Smyth cursed the wind that blew across the flat land around her, that blew through her and plastered her wet clothes to her cold body. Of all the damn times for a windstorm. It was the first really chilly afternoon they had had all fall, and of course it had to come today. She shivered, and grumbled angrily to herself.
She had got there early and had promptly soaked herself in the canal water. Now she realized that that had not been too smart. That part of it could have waited a few minutes. But she was so anxious to do her part right that she had gone right ahead. Now she was suffering for it because of the cold.
Where the hell was The Mall? She stared down the road toward the camp. He should have been here by now. Lula did not have her watch with her so she did not know the time exactly, but she was sure it was getting close to the time for Diamond to come by. If The Mall wasn't in place before then the whole plan was out the window.
A cold, son of a bitching day. She looked herself over, wondered if she looked the part she was to play. Hell yes, cold, wet, muddy, she looked exactly like she had been floundering in the muddy water of the big irrigation ditch. When she hollered Diamond would surely try to help her. That part of the plan was pretty smart. It was almost too smart for The Mall to have thought up, but he swore he had no help in hatching it out, so maybe he did do it alone. Surprised hell out of her, though. It was the first time he had used his head for something besides a battering ram.
Where the hell was the bastard? If he did not show up pretty quick-Lula looked along the road in both directions. No Mall in sight, but-son of a bitch! Here came Diamond in his car. God damn, was he early, or had The Mall fouled up the detail. She made a quick guess at the time and decided Diamond was right on schedule. Swearing and muttering to herself Lula hid under the bridge.
Diamond's car roared down the road pretty fast, but he slowed before he came to the bridge. At the bridge itself the car almost stopped. Lula heard gears clank as Diamond shifted down, felt the vibration of the earth as the car eased over the bridge, rattling planking of the bridge. Boards creaked, raised and settled above her head, the car all but came to a dead stop. Damn, it would have been easy-like snatching candy from a babe. The car passed on over the bridge, the motor sound changed as gears moved up again, and moments later the car roared on away. Then there was only the sound of the wind rustling the leaves and branches of the cottonwood.
Lula climbed out from under the bridge after she was certain Diamond was on out of sight. She stood in the road and swore mightily after the rapidly vanishing cloud of dust that marked his passing. When she got her hands on The Mall she would kill him.
As Saul Diamond approached the bridge across the irrigation ditch a startling thought occurred to him. He smiled grimly and drew his pistol, placed it across his lap, ready for instant use. Gloria had understood that the robbery was to take place in the camp itself. But if the desperadoes were really smart, here at the bridge was where they would make their bid. Here was the ideal place. When he slowed down to a crawl to cross the bridge would be the perfect time for them to try it.
Saul looked around, rolled down his window. One might step boldly out from behind that cottonwood tree with a rifle or shotgun. Saul almost wished one would. His right hand curled around the butt of his pistol. He was ready to give them a bellyfull. Or, if they were really smart, they would try to get him out of the car by some ruse. In which case he would come out all right-with pistol cocked and ready.
But nothing happened. He was almost disappointed, and he slowed deliberately almost to a full stop on the bridge to give anyone hiding nearby ample opportunity to make their play. His shooting eye had not got a proper workout in a long while, and he would just as soon shoot a couple of crooks as look at them. But nothing happened. He drove on, figuring they were not as smart, after all, as he had been ready to give them credit for. The try would be in camp, then, and he was fully prepared for that.
Saul saw the smoke rising long before he reached the camp. The smoke billowed upward in boiling black splendor, was caught by the high winds and whipped out of shape and dissipated into a vast pall of gloom that spread over acres of land. He goosed the car and hurled it ahead, slid around the turn leading to camp and braked to a halt.
He could see at an instant there was nothing he could do. The entire camp was in flames. Spread by the wind flames were licking at every building in the place and at the dry grass around it. The place was a vast furnace of flame and smoke. People ran in and out of this place and that carrying their pitiful belongings. Some even had tried to form a bucket brigade, but it was a lost battle before it was begun.
Saul sat stunned in his car, watching. He did not dare leave the money unguarded. Anyway, there was nothing he could do, absolutely nothing. Nor that anyone else could do except save what little property they could carry away.
His only hope was that the death rate would not be too appallingly high.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Saul and Gloria Diamond and two women from neighboring ranches served breakfast for the camp Sunday morning soup kitchen style. There were urns of steaming coffee for the adults and milk for the children, plenty of fried eggs and sausage and bread. Nothing spectacular, but substantial and filling. Everyone filed by the tables and received their food on paper plates and in waxed paper cups.
As soon as breakfast was over Saul Diamond's foreman, Jennings, began organizing crews among those who wanted to work. Two loads of lumber had been hauled in, and already temporary buildings were going up to house those who would remain to finish the picking.
There were those who wondered how many years those "temporary" buildings would house future bands of migrant workers before "permanent" installations were made. But they said nothing. It was a matter of small importance to them. Many of this band were planning to go to other ranches anyway, where they had heard wages were high and picking good.
The ashes had cooled down, and here and there forlorn little bands of people poked around looking to see if there was anything to salvage. Maude and Lula were kicking around disconsolately in the charred remains of their house. Under her arm Maude carried an old rolled oats box, the one thing she had saved from the fire.
"Christ, at least you got that," Lula said. "That was good thinking."
"I shoulda got more. I just grabbed this and run. All I could think about was get the hell out of there."
"That was smart." Lula kicked at a blackened bed spring. Beneath it was a charred pile of cloth-all that remained of the new winter outfit Higgs had bought for her. She didn't even bother to examine the pile. It was obvious that there was nothing there except ashes. "How much money have we got?"
"About eight hundred dollars."
"That's a lot. A good lot."
"Damn right it is. I figure we can go on over to Los Angeles and set you up in a room there. Soon as the word gets around we'll be making good money again."
"Damn right we will. That's a big town. We ought to be able to do all right there."
"We will," Maude agreed. It would not be long before they would be living the good life. Then maybe when Tillie saw how well Lula was doing she would come on over and hustle, too. From there it would be just a short step for Maude to realize her ambition-to be the Madame of her own house.
Such thoughts were the farthest from Tillie's mind at the moment. She was thoroughly stunned by the disaster. Everything was gone-her clothes, except what she had on her back, what little savings she had had in a little wooden box, everything. She had been lucky enough to get out with her life. The fire had come up so fast. She had been lying down, resting while waiting for Jim to come back, and she must have dozed, because suddenly Maude was shaking her and yelling at her and one entire wall of the house was in flames. They had gone out the window on the other side, and in just minutes the flames had raced through the house and jumped to the next one. And then on to the next one, till the whole camp was writhing under the wind-whipped fires.
But that was over now. She had to make a move. She had been told she could stay in the camp until the end of the season if she wanted to. There would be work for all for a few more weeks. But she felt that now was the time to get out. If ever she was to break away from such places as this now was the time to do it. She would go into the city and get a job of some sort. As a servant in someone's house. Maybe she could get a job as a waitress at one of the dime store lunch counters. Something, anything to get away from here and live a decent life.
Her mother came along then to speak to her. "Hello, Mom, you know what you're going to do yet?"
"Yes, Lula and me are going over to Los Angeles. I'd like to have you come with us if you want to."
"What will you do there?"
"I'm setting Lula up in a room. Pretty soon we'll be rolling in loot. You better come along and join us. You could get even more than Lula, you know, once you learned a little bit."
Tillie had to refuse that one. She wanted to explain that she was just not like her mother and sister, that she couldn't live that way. But she could find no way to say it so that it would not sound bad, so that she would seem to think she was better than they were. So she just smiled and said no.
Maude seemed to understand. She did not press the matter. Instead she produced a packet of bills from her oatmeal box and gave it to Tillie. Then she turned and left without waiting for thanks.
The Mall was embarrassed by the attention he was getting. He and the Prof stood in the center of a crowd of people, and the Prof was making one of his speeches. Generally The Mall liked to listen to the Prof's speeches, but this one was about him, and it embarrassed him to hear the Prof spouting off so many good things about him.
After accidentally starting the fire, The Mall had been the hero of the day. First he had beat most of the flames away from Jim's body with his bare hands. Then he had picked up the unconscious man and had carried him outside and rolled him in the dust, completely smothering what fire remained. Thanks to his quick action Jim suffered only minor burns. Little more than a close singe, as Jim himself put it.
When he had taken care of Jim, The Mall had rushed about the camp sounding the alarm, getting people out of the houses, helping them save what he could of their meager belongings. Everybody said it was because of his quick action that nobody had been killed in the fire. He figured they were giving him too much credit. Everybody in camp at the time did a whole lot He certainly had not done it all by himself.
But here the Prof was making a big speech and getting ready to give him a scroll, or some damn thing the Prof had cooked up. It was a big long piece of paper the Prof had got somewhere, all rolled up on a tube. The Prof's speech was written on it, and at the bottom of the speech just about everyone in camp had signed or made their mark.
"And so," the Prof said, winding up, "it is with the greatest pleasure that I present to Malbert Crenton, more affectionately known among us as 'The Mall', this scroll in token of our appreciation and esteem. It is small enough a thing we are able to do in presenting this scroll in return for what he did for all of us. Everyone here will long remember how time and again he risked his own life and limb in order that we might live and salvage some portion of our worldy goods from the demon of fire which swept our happy camp. This, then, is to serve him as a constant reminder over the years of the affection we hold for him in our hearts.
"Mall, step up and receive your scroll."
The Mall took it. He was the nearest to crying he had been since he was a kid and his dog died. Gosh, nobody blamed him for the fire at all, though he had told him it was all his fault. They all thought he was a hero of some kind instead. There was no doubt about it-this was the greatest moment of his life.
He took the scroll and then he had to go away by himself for a few minutes. Just at the moment he did not trust himself to talk to anybody. When he could talk again he went to the Prof.
"What now, Prof? Do we move on to another camp, or what? Somebody was telling me that it shouldn't be too long before the lettuce will be needing work. I hear a strong man can make real good wages in the lettuce."
The Prof wished he could evade that question, but there was no way. The break had to be made, it may as well be now. "No, my friend, I am giving up the pursuit of agriculture."
"Giving it upl What are you going to do?"
"I am going to Los Angeles and take up a position on Skid Row."
"I don't getcha."
"I am going to become a bum. Perhaps a panhandler."
T don't get it, but I'll go with you."
"No. That would not be wise. In fact it would defeat my entire purpose. Your place is here, my friend, or elsewhere where the crops may be in full bloom. You have the strength and the temperament to make a success of the life of the migrant farm laborer. While I-well, this phase of my experiment has not worked out, that is all. My devotion to brute force, to animal power has been my undoing."
"I don't getcha at all."
"Fine. That way we will be able to part the best of friends. Something that might not be possible if you understood fully what I am saying. This is the parting, and it can be no other way. We have had our good hours, our good days and weeks together. Let us cherish them and hope that one day our paths may cross again."
"Well, if that's the way you want it, Prof, I guess you know what you're doing."
"That is the way it has to be, Mall. Now, goodbye."
"Goodbye Prof." They shook hands and the Prof turned away. He sought out Jim Pettenger then and explained to him where he was going and why. To Jim he explained in more detail. Jim being no one's fool. Jim knew what the score was all right.
"It won't work, Prof. That's not the answer."
"What then, is the answer?"
"I don't know. But that isn't it. When I first came here I thought that sheer weight of environment could shape and influence the people in that environment. But I see now I was wrong. None of these people have changed any because of this summer and fall of living this way. Those who are inclined to live this way will continue to do so. Those who desire to change will change. The character of the individual will dictate his future, not his chance circumstances."
The Prof considered that seriously. Jim might well be correct. But-that left little hope for himself unless his theory that living in the crucible, so to speak, might help alter his character itself should prove valid. At any rate, there was only one way to find out. That was to try it and see. He would continue to test the theory further. If it did prove invalid, then there must be other ways. If Jim was correct, then 'perhaps an analysis of his character to determine the possibility of growth away from the ultimate degradation-well, it gave him something to think about. He made his goodbyes and went on his way.
Jim watched him go with regret. The Prof had been an interesting man and a good friend. He considered some advice the Prof had given him just the day before the fire. "Set yourself up on a street corner somewhere, my boy, and sell those little desert landscapes you have been doing," the Prof had urged him. "I feel certain there could be a good market for them among the winter visitors and local folk alike. While the proceeds would certainly not make your fortune, certainly they should enable you to spend more time with your painting." Jim had thought about it, and considered it good advice. He could have sold a number of the pictures right in camp, but he had always given them away to anyone who had sincerely admired them. He felt the people here worked too hard for their money to have to pay him for his pictures. He was happy to be able to liven up their drab lives some little bit.
Jim suddenly felt alone. People of the camp were drifting away, either into the work crews that would rebuild, temporarily of course, the labor camp, or were heading toward the highway and the bus for town. He looked around and saw no one he knew. Well, he had better see if he could find Tillie.
A small figure trudging down the road caught his eye. He recognized the walk at once. Tillie! He had to sprint to catch up with her. She had got a good long start before he noticed her.
"Tillie! Where are you going?"
"Jim-Oh, I-into town, I guess. Time I was finding a job and a place to live."
"Were you going without saying anything to me?"
"I-You didn't come around looking for me, or anything, and I thought maybe you didn't want to see me." Her eyes glistened with a tiny bit of moisture.
Jim realized he had been so busy helping get camp relief organized that he had not been near her. He had learned early that she had not been hurt and in the general melee he had not taken time to seek her out personally. "May I come along with you?"
"If you want."
"I do want. But more, I want you to come with me."
She stopped walking then, turned to look more squarely at him. "What does that mean?"
"It means that I'm in love with you. Tillie, and I don't want you to go away from me. Listen. I've saved most of the money I made this season. I think it's enough to buy a secondhand car of some sort. And to rent a shack out near the edge of the desert. I'm going to live out there and paint, Tillie, and see if I can sell some of the paintings for enough to live out there and paint some more.
"Tillie, I can't marry you now, but I want to someday, when I am free to. Will you come and live with me now, out there? It will be a rough, primitive sort of life for a while. Maybe for a long time. But it'll be better than anything we have known here. Will you come with me?"
Her answer was simple, and given without hesitation. "Yes, Jim, I will."
At the highway the bus came heading toward town. Most of Jim's and Tillie's friends got on it. They waved goodbye. Jim and Tillie stood alone waiting for the bus in the opposite direction. They would ride it to a little place called Polvo Rojo ... red dust, and appropriately named. It was a jumping off place to nowhere.
For Jim and Tillie it was a point of departure to the future.
