Home from the Hill (20 page)

“You have to speak into the mouthpiece,” she said, smiling.

But, absorbed in his thought, and feeling the twinges of a new emotion, jealous already, he said nothing, either into the phone or aloud, so that at last she said, “Your receiver is off the hook.”

He put it to his ear. “Hello?” he heard. “Tom?”

“Who's Tom?” he demanded.

“Speak into the phone,” she said.

“Who's Tom?”

“Oh, it's John!” she said.

“John who?”

“Into the phone. It must be Martin!” she said. She felt a delicious sense of power. He was jealous.

“Maybe I have the wrong number,” he said. “This
is
Katherine, isn't it?”

“Who is Katherine?” she demanded.

“Into the phone,” he reminded her.

“Who is Katherine?”

“Let's start all over,” he suggested.

“Katherine Lloyd?” she asked. “Katherine Rockwell? Katherine who?” The new thrill of finding that she herself could be jealous was even more delicious.

“Want to start over?” he asked.

“All right,” she said. For it was a joke, of course. She had begun it; he was only giving her tit for tat. But what—perhaps unconscious—had made him choose the name Katherine? She promised herself to come back to this one day.

“Operator? Operator?” he was saying. “Operator, I have a very bad connection here.”

She reached into the carton. The string was not attached to the bottom, only knotted so as not to pass through the hole. She pulled it out. He felt the tug. As she drew the string, smiling vampishly at him, he followed, delighted, until he was within six feet of her. She put the phone to her mouth. He put his to his ear.

“Ting-a-ling-a-ling!” he heard. “Do you hear it ringing, sir?”

He reached into his phone, drew out the string and drew her to him, drawing the string until none was left, until the two cartons touched, kissed. They looked into each other's eyes. Speaking into her phone, her voice a whisper, she said, “Here's your party now, sir,” and then, taking down the phones, his as well as hers, and looking deeply into his eyes, in her own voice she said, “Hello.”

Across the small space separating them, their lips drew near. She closed her eyes. He could feel the soft warmth emanating from her skin, could feel her breath upon his face, could smell her faint perfume. Then with a start he awoke, drew back. The time and the place were wrong. They would regret it.

With a flutter of the lids she opened her eyes. She seemed momentarily lost. Then she became aware of her surroundings. She understood. She was grateful to him. And with her smile she promised that there would be other times, other places.

Meanwhile, something had to be said. “I'm a terrible dancer,” he blurted out. It took only half the load off his mind, because it did only about half justice to his dancing. It seemed the most serious and damaging confession he had ever made. His face was tragic.

She could not help laughing. Her laugh cleared the atmosphere. “Goodness!” she said. “What time is it?”

“It's early,” said Theron.

“First look at your watch, and then say,” she said.

He looked at his watch. “Early,” he said.

“It must be nearly noon,” she said.

“Are you hungry? Let's have a picnic. A picnic in the attic! I'll go down and raid the ice-box.”

“Oh, no. I have to go. No, really—What if you get caught?”

“I won't. Now, what do you especially like?”

“But if you do? No, I simply must—”

“I won't. Now what do you like?”

She hesitated a moment. Then, “Cream cheese and pineapple!” she said. It was a confession; apparently cream cheese and pineapple was an addiction.

“Good. Don't go away.”

“Wait. Wait.”

“Yes?”

“Before you go, I want to ask you something—a question.” She blushed. “I'll call you on the phone about it.”

“Oh, just ask.”

“No. Here.” She picked up the two cartons, handed one to him. “Further apart this time,” she said. “And don't look at me while I ask you.”

“But I like looking at you.”

“Don't you look. Because … because I'm ashamed of asking you this.”

He laughed. He looked away. He put the phone to his ear.

“Promise me you'll tell the truth now,” she said.

“I'll always tell you the truth, Libby,” he said in a serious tone altogether out of key.

“Oh,” she said.

He laughed. “I thought you would want me always to tell you the truth,” he said.

“I do. I do. Only …”

“Only what?”

“Only I want it to be the truth I want to hear. Now don't you laugh! Don't even smile. I know I'm being silly, and so don't let on that you know it!”

“All right, ask your question. I swear to tell the truth, the pleasant truth, and nothing but the pleasant truth.”

“You're not looking away. All right. Now. How many dances did you dance, and with how many different girls?”

“Can I look around now?”

“Yes. Because I'm looking away now. How many?”

“None.”

“You're lying. You swore. Is that the truth?”

“Is it pleasant?”

“Don't tease me. Tell the truth. How many?”

“Suppose I say—three?”

“Who with?” she demanded. “Oh, that's worse than if you had said too many lo count!”

“It was none,” he said. “I didn't have any fun—doesn't it make you happy to know that? Not one. That's the truth, nothing but the truth—and I hope, the pleasant truth.”

She looked around, smiling broadly. “Really?” she said. “
None
?”

“Cross my heart.”

“Not one? At your big dance? What did people say?” She was ecstatic.

“I told them the reason,” he said. The memory of exactly what he had told them, and why, darkened his mind for a moment. But he was too happy now to dwell upon that.

“What?” she asked. “Tell me. What did you say?”

“Turn your head and I'll tell you over the phone.”

“Oh, don't be shy. Just tell me.”

“No. Turn your head.”

She turned her head. Into the phone he said, “I told you I'm not a good dancer.”

He watched her as she waited for more. After a moment she turned about, frowning, pouting. “Is
that
all?” she said.

“No,” he said. “Turn your head.”

She smiled. She turned back.

“No,” he said. “The whole, unpleasant truth is, I can't dance at all. Never danced a step in my life.”

She spun about, lips set, but grinning despite herself, and said, “And yet you asked me!” and then threw the telephone at him as he ducked through the door.

In another moment she sprang to the door and in a loud whisper called down the steps after him, “On whole wheat!”

Alone in the attic Libby felt more and more the injustice of her father's suspicions. She felt also a kind of complicity in them. The attic became for her a kind of museum of Theron's whole life, and there was nothing there that needed to be hidden from sight. That not everything there belonged personally to him did not detract from this sense. She felt that she had got to know him even better through knowing more about his parents and his feeling for them. These relics of the family's shared occasions by which she was surrounded, gifts given and received, used and preserved, tokens of their love, shamed her for the romantical impetus she had come on, and which depended on a kind of complicity in her father's suspicions, on wishing to believe that Theron was a danger. Now she recounted in her mind the story he had told of his mother's dress. The spontaneity of his emotion, his excitement as the details returned to him, the depth of his love for his mother, and his eagerness to share it all with her, both gladdened and shamed her now. She had seen him vividly as a small boy as he talked, and that image had the effect of sharpening her impression of him as he was now. She looked around her at the examples of his handiwork; somehow they too, in their care for detail and obvious ambition for perfection, gave testimony to the injustice of her father's suspicions.

There came to her then more forcibly than before the thought of the possible implications of her present position, of the last hour. And her father had been suspicious of him! He had more to worry about from his daughter, she thought, blushing slightly. Theron was more respectful of her than she was of herself. She would have kissed him—and would have been sorry that she had—if he had not brought them to their senses.

He did get caught. By Melba. “Git out of that frigidaire, boy,” she said. “I'll let you know when yo dinner's ready.”

“My stomach says it's time now.”

“I guess I was wrong bout you,” she said.

“I'll fix my own lunch and take it up to my room. I have things to do and don't want to be disturbed.”

Rummaging in the refrigerator he said, “Don't we have any cream cheese?”

“Cream cheese? Who roun this house gonna eat that stuff?”

“I like it,” he said.

“Since when do you like it?”

“People can change their tastes,” he said.

He hoped she was not too hungry. For he could not make too many sandwiches or take too big a slice of cake without arousing suspicions, and he could take only one glass of milk.

It was a sudden impulse altogether different from this, however, that prompted him as he passed the dining table to take from the fruit bowl just one apple.

27

Going over the day in his mind that evening, with a blush and a smile he remembered the apple.

His impulse to take the apple had come from recalling not Melba's request for it, but his own words to her, that you need not feel uncertain about any girl you could get to do something like that with you. But in her absence now he wondered just what had her sharing it with him proved. To her, possibly nothing. He began to suspect that he owed today entirely to her father's disapproval of him. It had been only the hopelessness of the affair that had momentarily attracted her. Or if even that was still too egotistic of him, she had come only to make the apology that simple courtesy demanded. At once doubts began to multiply in his mind like germs. It began to seem he had dreamed it all. She would not meet him again; he would not hear from her again. At home now she must be wondering what had induced her to do such a wild thing. She must be shuddering now to think of her folly, of how closely she had escaped proving her father right.

He found himself in the attic, burning his fingers with matches, searching for the apple core. He found it, darkened and softened, wrapped it in his handkerchief, and went down to the kitchen.

“Here,” he said, holding it out to Melba.

She smiled; but she knew better than to make any comment.

He watched her preparations, and his disgusted reason watched him. He did not believe in it, and was conscious of losing all self-respect, but he was powerless to stop himself. She split the core with a knife and with her long yellow nail dug out two of the glossy black little seeds.

“Touch em,” she said, “and give em yo names. Yours and hers.”

He baptized the first
Libby
and the second
Theron
.

She brought out the ash shovel from behind the range and placed the seeds on the blade an inch apart. She lifted the front lid from the firebox, and the red glow rose and hovered in the air. “I gonna hold this spade over the heat,” she pronounced. “Ef the heat make
Theron
move away from
Libby
, it means that's what the real Theron gonna do, gonna be untrue to Libby. Ef
Libby
move away from
Theron
, she gonna be untrue to you.”

“Don't you know any pleasant magic?” he said. “Doesn't anything ever turn out happy?”

“I am but the handmaiden—” she said.

“Of providence. I know,” he said.

She brought the shovel over the opening and carefully lowered it.

“Which is which again?” he said.

“'At's you on the far side.”

“I'm not worried about me,” he said, less to her than to himself. “It's the other one I have to watch.”

“Where'd I hear that before?” she said, more to the two seeds than to him.

She brought the shovel down to rest upon the two sides of the firebox. A glow beginning at her chin spread upward over her face, turning it the color of iron heating up. He bent gradually closer, until he could feel the heat upon his face.

A minute passed. A hiss, so faint that even that close and in that suspenseful silence it was barely distinguishable, began to be heard, and the two seeds began to vibrate. First from the one representing Theron, then from
Libby
, arose the faintest tendril of smoke, then simultaneously they rocked slightly.

Now the fraction of a drop of juice which it contained boiled out and sizzled about the one representing Theron, and, apparently sticky with sugar, cooked it to the blade, stilling its movement. It was not going to work, and Theron was on the verge of calling off the experiment of which he was already sufficiently ashamed, when the other seed split from the heat, the black hull cracked open, revealing the white within. It resembled a burnt kernel of popcorn.

“What does that mean?” he said, and to his surprise, and adding further to his sense of foolishness, his voice emerged a whisper.

“Means the fire was too hot,” she said. “Git two more.”

This time she held the shovel above the stove top. And he never afterwards could be quite sure that she had not jiggled it to make the two seeds roll lovingly together.

28

The hounds had treed him first at midnight; now at half past two they had him again. It was the same coon, the big one: there was no mistaking the frantic yapping of the hounds.