Big City Girl (6 page)

Grass was something you could fight. It was an enemy you could see and touch and could come to grips with when the rain stood back and gave you a chance. It was waiting for you there in the cotton, long-leaved and rank and wet with the dew, sucking the food out of the ground and growing fat while it robbed you of your living. It was an arrogant enemy and hard to kill and there never seemed to be any end to it, but at least it was out in the open waiting for you, and when you slid the steel of the heel sweeps under it and turned it roots up to the burning anger of the sun it died and you had won a little something. There was nothing evasive about it and it was no will-o’-the-wisp you were chasing in the dark. It was rooted in the ground, as in a way you were rooted in it, and it would stand there and fight you for the ground and for survival, and when you brought your violence to it it didn’t change shape on you and fade away like water slipping through your fingers.

You saw Sewell going away, and Jessie’s sadness, and when you tried to fight it there was nothing you could hit. You tried to reason with Cass about the crop and about the dog and it was like chasing smoke with a minnow seine. There was nothing solid about any of it that you could get your hands on. You lay awake when you were dead tired and needed the sleep, lying there on the cot in the darkness thinking of hunting squirrels with Sewell and running the setlines at night along the river’s banks with the pine torch blazing and sputtering and throwing your long-legged shadows against the trees, hunting coons with him to the baying of hounds on frosty, starlit winter nights a long time ago before he began to get in trouble, and all the other things you used to do with him and the way you always had to run to keep up with the endless vitality of him. You thought of him then and you thought of him now, and it was like a sickness eating at you from the inside where you couldn’t get at it.

But with the crop, thank God, it was different. You could still lose because the rain could whip you and the boll weevils could whip you and any one of a half-dozen other things could do it too, but at least you were fighting something you could see and when you hit it you could feel something solid under your hand. It was an elemental problem, with nothing fancy about it. The crop was there, and if you didn’t save it you went hungry. It had rained far too much already and there wasn’t much chance now of that big crop you were always going to make next year, that fifteen bales or more when you would come out at the end of the year with money ahead and Jessie could go back to school and you could buy some of your own equipment again and not go on farming on the halves all your life. That was probably just a dream for another year. What you were fighting for now was survival. You had to pay off the credit to get credit  for another year to go on eating to make another crop.

The cotton on the hillside fields wasn’t going to amount to anything. It still looked bad. The color was all wrong, too pale and with too much yellow in it. If the rain held off and they could get the grass out of it, it would still take four acres of it to make a bale. He could see that as he went up and down the long, curving hillside rows with the cultivator, fighting to save what he could of it and waiting for the bottom ground to dry. The twenty-five acres in the bottom could still make ten or twelve bales if they could get in there to work it in time, but the grass was terrible in it and time was crowding them. It would be another two or three days before the ground would be dry enough to plow down there, and he watched the skies for signs of weather change as he fought the endless rows along the hill.

From sunup to sundown he urged the mules along with the slap of plowlines across their sweaty backs and the stinging lash of curses when they lagged. The halt at noon was a brief impatient moment of lost time while he bolted unnoticed food and went back out into the field before his sweat-drenched clothes had begun to dry. All day yesterday, today, and then tomorrow, and then another day, and the hillside would be plowed and the bottom dry so he could go on with the battle there in the field where the issue would be lost or won. He came in at night sweaty and sun-blackened and tired clear down to the bone, to eat supper by lamplight and pray for the weather to continue clear. Cass was a complaining voice at the head of the table, bemoaning the miseries in his legs that kept him from the field, and full of the mounting tension of the hunt for Sewell. Jessie was a slender, still-face figure standing silently by the stove and waiting for Cass to leave the table before she would come and eat, and Joy was always there across from him, a blonde head under the lamplight and a hint of fragrance in the still, hot air of night, sliding the silken sheet of bitchery across the shackled and half-sleeping maleness in him while he hated her.

The next day was hot and clear, and then the next while he fought his way down the hillside and started out across the bottom, driving the mules and the cultivator ahead of him like a lank and bitter-faced avenging angel in pursuit of devils. Cass sat by the radio through the long hours drawn by the secret and magic ecstasy of hearing his name broadcast over the air, but they had not found Sewell. Neely has disappeared, the radio said, carrying his name into millions of homes along with Truman’s and Stalin’s.

Neely has disappeared into air.

In the long, bright afternoon Joy lay on her bed and tried to sleep. Jessie was ironing clothes in the kitchen and she could hear the rattle of irons on the cookstove and on beyond, in the front room, the droning voice of the radio where Cass waited for the news. It was hot in the room and she had taken off her dress and slip and lay there in the brief and fragmentary covering of her under-things with the door out into the kitchen partly open to catch any passing current of air. I hope Cass don’t take a notion to go out in the kitchen, she thought. Oh, to hell with him. I’m not going to lie here and roast in a lot of clothes just because he might be snooping around. Let him look if he wants to. What the hell do I care?

She put an arm up across her face to shut out the light and the barren harshness of the room, but took it away in a minute because it was too hot to touch herself. There was no ceiling, and as she lay on her back with her bare arms and legs stretched out to keep from touching herself she could see the dusty rafters and the hot underside of the corrugated sheet-metal roofing fastened down to the lath with long nails that came through and splintered the wood. The walls were unpapered, constructed of rough one-by-twelves running vertically from floor to roof with battens nailed over the cracks on the outside. One of the battens had been torn off, and as the sun moved down in the west a lengthening shaft of golden light came through the exposed crack and across the room. In the two hours she had been watching it she had seen it crawl across the old ironbound trunk against the wall and then onto the bed, and now it stretched across her thigh like a thin gold band. Her imitation-leather Gladstone bag lay open atop the trunk, and as she turned her head wearily in the heat she could see the shaft of light probing into the piled and disordered jumble of sleazy underthings and shoddy dresses with powder spilled over them, the bottle of cheap perfume, and her last pair of unsnagged nylons, and she wanted to scream.

She could feel the scream welling up from somewhere deep inside her like some bloating, nauseous pressure that had to escape somehow, and she put a hand across her mouth to hold it in. Oh, Christ, why can’t I die and get it over with? Do I have to lie here in this goddamned heat and look at what I’ve got left to show for twenty-eight years? A paper suitcase full of cheap clothes a whore wouldn’t be found dead in, and a cheap marriage to a cheap gangster, and before that a cheaper one to a cheap tout selling tip sheets to a bunch of cheap suckers at racetracks, and before that . . . But, Jesus Christ, what’s the use in going any further back than that—to all the cheap, greasy hash houses and all the cheap bastards. Cheap! Cheap! Cheap! She put her hands up alongside her face to keep it from flying apart with the pounding repetition of the word through her brain.

Imagine trying to kid myself I’m only twenty-five and I that I look just the same as ever. That’s a laugh. That’s a hot one, all right! That’s good. Jesus, but that’s rich! With the lousy cold-blooded ape laughing right in my face in a stinking county jail like I was some slut asking him for a dollar. Twenty-eight years old and stranded without a nickel in a God-forsaken hole like this with everything I own in a paper suitcase, and beginning to droop like a share-cropper’s wife who’s had eleven brats and I’m trying to kid myself I’ve still got it and can go on from here. I couldn’t get a job in a Congress Avenue burlesque show taking off my clothes for a bunch of bald- headed stew bums. Lying about my first husband connected with racing and the dances at the Roosevelt Hotel when the nearest ever got to the Roosevelt was tending bar in a broken-down beer joint while my precious husband bet the rent money on his own stupid tips out at the Fairgrounds. The glamorous Joyce Gavin Broussard Neely! I’m a cheap, lousy bitch who never had anything but looks, and now they’re gone and I’ve got a paper suitcase full of trashy clothes to show for it. For all twenty-eight years of it. Oh, God, if that ain’t a scream!

She began to cry. Why do I go on trying to kid myself, looking in a mirror? I look like an old bag, and I know it. No woman ever knew whether she was beautiful or not by looking in a mirror. They don’t tell you anything. Men tell you, not mirrors. And when they laugh in your face . . . Oh, Jesus, I wish I could die.

Her shoulders shook with the crying and she turned wretchedly on her side and gave way to the storm of self-pity. In a moment, however, she became aware there, was someone else in the room and looked up through the tears to see Jessie standing inside the door and watching her with anxiety.

“Joy, what is it?” Jessie asked. “Are you all right?”

Joy choked down the sobs and drew a hand across her eyes. She nodded dumbly. Jessie went over to the suitcase and found a handkerchief and took it to her, feeling shy and self-conscious because of her nakedness and looking only at her face. Joy reached for it and dabbed forlornly at her eyes.

“What is it, Joy?” Jessie asked again. “Can I help?” She stood very straight beside the bed, like a grave-eyed and worried child being introduced for the first time to the sickbed and the ills of adults.

“I—I got to thinking about Sewell,” Joy said. Well, in a way I
was
, she thought defensively. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess, honey.”

“Poor Joy,” Jessie said, her own eyes beginning to grow misty. “I’m sorry, Joy.”

Joy began to cry again and Jessie sat down on the side of the bed with her back toward the foot because she was still embarrassed about the other’s almost nude body. She shyly placed a hand on her head and Joy moved convulsively toward her and threw an arm across her lap while she shook with sobs and pressed her face into the bed.

“Oh, Jessie, I’m so alone,” she wailed. “I haven’t got anybody and I’m not pretty any more and I’m such a mess.”

Jessie stroked her head soothingly. “Joy! That’s no way to talk. You know it’s not so. You’ve got us. And I don’t know anybody as pretty as you are.”

“You don’t have to say that, honey,” Joy said miserably. “It’s sweet of you to try to cheer me up, but you don’t have to say things like that.”

“But I mean it, Joy.”

Maybe she does, at that, Joy thought. She’s a funny kid. She wouldn’t lie to a bear that was going to eat her.

“You’ve got to quit worrying so much about Sewell,” Jessie went on. “I know how it tears you up, but it can’t help things to worry about it. Now, you just wait here a minute.”

Maybe fixing herself up would take her mind off things, she thought. She went out in the kitchen and returned in a moment with a basin of water and a washcloth. “Now, Joy, you sponge your face off and I’ll get your purse for you. And while you’re fixing up I’m going to iron a dress for you. Not pretty! The idea!”

Joy sat up and began washing away the tear streaks. Jessie set the basin down carefully beside her on the bed and went over to the suitcase again for her purse.

“Which dress would you like pressed?” she asked.

“They’re all a mess,” Joy said dully. “They’re terrible.”

“They’re not, either. You have the prettiest things. How about this print one you haven’t worn?”

Joy nodded listlessly. “All right.”

She went on sponging her face. The water was cool and it made her face feel better, and without too much interest at first she bathed her eyes to take away the redness and puffiness of crying. Jessie came back in a minute with a towel and she rubbed her face dry and began combing her hair. This improved her spirits, as it always did, for she loved the feel of running the comb through it and shaking it back until the ends just touched her shoulders. But it was the honest admiration in Jessie’s eyes that did the most for her.

Jessie came in carrying the dress she had ironed. She smiled and held it out at arm’s length, admiring it. “Are you ready for it, Joy? Can I get you a slip?”

”It’s too hot to wear a slip, honey,” Joy said. She wiggled up through the dress, mussing her hair a little. It was a short-sleeved dress with big bows on the shoulders. “Do you want to tie the bows?”

“Do you think I could do it right?” Jessie asked eagerly.

“Of course you can, baby. It’s just a bowknot.” She sat still on the bed while Jessie tied them, making the bows large and fluffy. Then she started combing her hair again.

“Would you be an angel, honey, and bring me the mirror? The one on the back porch.”

Jessie brought the mirror and held it for her while she finished with her hair and made up her face. She studied her reflection appraisingly. Her hair looked nice, coming down in a long golden sweep across the tops of the blue bows riding so jauntily on her shoulders, and her eyes showed very little aftereffect of the crying.

“You look so wonderful,”-Jessie said. It made her feel good to be doing something for Joy and it helped to take her mind off the awful thing Sewell had done.

“Do you really think so, honey?” Joy asked. She tilted her head back a little and narrowed her eyes. What am I afraid of? she thought. I can see I haven’t changed any. But the minute I put the mirror away I start getting scared again. Look at the moon-eyed way the kid watches me. She thinks I look wonderful and says so, but somehow it’s not the same as a man saying it. Why does it always have to be a man? But they’d still turn and look at me. I know they would. I get scared too easy, that’s all, just because I’m broke and down on my luck. And just because that stupid, cold-blooded gorilla laughed at me, and that dumb, stuck-up Mitch pretends he don’t even see me. You’d think there wasn’t any other men. What about Harve? And that photographer? Oh, I could show that Mitch, all right. But, for God’s sake, why do I care? What do I want him following me around for? I wouldn’t have him on a bet. God, you’d think he was Gable, the way I stew about it. The lousy share-cropper, what do I want him looking at me for? If I was one of those women that just has to have one in bed with her all the time it’d be different and I could understand it maybe, but I’m not like that. I don’t care anything about that, one way or the other. They muss you up so, especially the wild ones like that damn Sewell.

I know what’s the matter with that Mitch. He’s just afraid of me, that’s all. Trying to pretend like I’m an old bag that nobody’d want, and he’s just afraid of me. I could twist him around my finger any time I wanted to. And I’ll do it, too.

“My, but you look pretty,” Jessie was saying. “Don’t you feel better now?”

Joy smiled. “Honey, I feel like a new woman.”