The Damned (13 page)

WHEN he had seen Linda’s bright hair in the lowering sunlight, bright against the muddy river, Bill Danton, the tall Texan, had felt a stir of pleasure so quick and so warm that it startled him a bit. It matched the pang of regret he had felt watching the ferry pull away, taking her out of his life for keeps.

He remembered Dad saying that the surest way to get to like people was to do them a favor. They might resent you, but you sure got fond of them quick. He wondered if the Quixote job had been what warmed him up toward her. She was a cute little bug, all right, with that hair lighter than her golden shoulders, and that look of hers, grave like a little kid, but yet showing that she was a woman grown. The tan linen dress hung sweetly on her, deftly accenting the taut little hips, commenting briefly on the cone-sharpness of her young breasts. He had sensed that here was that rare and lovely thing, a woman with beauty but also with loyalty, sensitivity, and the funny humor which is at once lusty and pixie. Her laughter would be wry bells, and there would always be a part of her that could never be completely captured, thus taking from any relationship with her that dull curse of possessiveness.

He guessed he had better face up to it and admit, watching the shabby rowboat approach the bank, that she was just too darn close to that picture he had been carting around in his head, of a girl he had never met, of a girl made up of bits and pieces of other girls known wisely and not too well.

He walked down to the bank, pulled the bow of the rowboat up, gave her his hand. She came out of the boat onto the gray cracked bank and told him very calmly that her mother-in-law had died. And suddenly her mouth twisted and her face contorted like the face of a child. He put his arm around her shoulders, walked her away from the line of cars, walked her upstream along the river bank. She took tissue from her purse, and when he began to sense a warning rigidity of her shoulders, he took his arm away quickly. She sniffled at intervals and finally stopped and planted her feet and blew her nose.

“Darn foolishness,” she said in a small voice, smiling weakly.

“Not at all. It can be a hell of a shock.”

“It was, but I don’t think I was crying for her. I never really got to know her. We’ve only been married a few weeks, and she tried to stop us from being married, until she saw she couldn’t win, and then she got very sweet about it. She flew down to Mexico City to travel back with us to Rochester. It was a shock because… well, she was such a strong personality. In her own quiet way.”

They came to a tree that had been brought down in some flood of long ago. The trunk was bleached white by the sun. She sat down on the trunk, her chin resting on her palm, elbow on her knee.

Bill thought of the young husband. Just a kid. This girl had grown up, but he hadn’t quite managed it yet. He sat down on the trunk, handed over a cigarette.

“I’ve got some here, thanks,” she said.

“Talking can help, you know. I listen good.”

“I don’t want to cry on your shoulder, Mr. Danton.”

“Bill. And I heard your husband call you Linda. Is it O.K. if I do?”

“Certainly, Bill. This is a crazy day. As if the world had stopped. I feel as though I were dreaming it. The doctor gave me something to take and the world is all fuzzy. If I start talking, I won’t stop. I can feel it. And I’ll say too much and get a load of remorse later.”

“That truth serum they use, isn’t that just a sedative? Sodium something. Sodium pentothal.”

“How is anybody supposed to know what truth is?”

“Well, I haven’t talked metaphysics since a couple of required courses at A. and M., but maybe I can remember just a little. As I remember it, some people claim that truth, as such, is not a constant. It varies with the individual and with the time and the place. Say like what was true yesterday is a damn lie tomorrow.”

“Maybe I’ve hit a place in my life where I’ve got to change my ideas about truth. That ever happen to you?”

“Sure has, Linda. Had to change everything once when I was a kid. My stepmother is a Mexican lady. When I first went to the States to school, I had the damnedest accent you ever heard. Anybody called me a Mexican, I had to go down fighting. Did a lot of fighting, all right. One day I wondered what in the pure hell I was fighting about. Next boy that called me a Mexican, I told him I was. Made me feel better. Made me feel better than fighting, because when I was fighting it was like I was objecting to the label. World is full of people objecting to labels. Washington is full of people calling each other communists.”

“Your home is happy, isn’t it, Bill? Are you married?”

“No, I live with the folks. What makes you think it’s happy?”

“Oh, it’s an air people have. I don’t know. Sort of secure. When I was little we had a happy home. Dad died and it sort of broke up, and I guess ever since I’ve been trying to get married so I could re-create life the way it was. My husband’s home life wasn’t happy. I think I wanted to give him what I had, and what he missed.”

“We get along fine. Big stone hacienda sort of place near Mante. Always somebody singing. Always a laugh. We give each other a bad time, but let somebody else try to, and the Dantons unite.”

“That’s the way it should be.”

He frowned. “Maybe it’s just
too
good. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking today. I get restless, but I never get the gumption to pull out and do anything on my own.”

She looked down at the gray hard mud near her feet He looked at her and saw the tears begin to spill out of her eyes again. “Hey, now!” he said softly.

“I…I can’t seem to help it. We’re alone. I won’t ever see you again. If I can blow off steam, maybe I… can stop getting the weeps every minute.”

“I told you before. I listen good.”

“But this is so personal, damnit.” She took more tissue and wiped her eyes. “How is a person to know anything? I fell in love with my husband. As far as I knew, I was in love for keeps, and it couldn’t hit harder. Oh, a dream world! With violins and roses, yet. And today I find out that inside he’s really sort of a—a little person. I’m trying to talk myself back in love with him, but I can’t seem to.”

“He’s probably upset. Hell, he’s just a kid.”

She gave him a look of surprising fury. “I like kids. I want to have a lot of my own and raise them. I don’t want to bring up somebody else’s.”

“Maybe this thing today will make him grow up.”

“I doubt it. And see where it leaves me, Bill? What do I do now? Go ahead and try to make the best of it, and maybe leave him five years from now after he’s taken all the joy out of life? Or quit right now? I have a lot of respect for marriage. I wanted mine to last forever. You start treating marriage like a… like a car you can trade in when you get tired of it, and it doesn’t have much meaning any more. And I can’t blame John Carter Gerrold for what he is. It’s his mother’s fault. Do you want to hear a good definition of a bore? It’s one of Dad’s.”

“Sure.”

She spread her arms wide, like a fisherman recalling the one that got away. She was holding up her two index fingers. She waggled the one on the left hand. “Now, here is what you think you are, see?” She waggled the index finger of the right hand. “And here is what you actually are. If the two things are way apart like this, you get a bore, somebody who can’t see himself as others see him. The closer together you bring the two hands, the better sort of person you represent. If you actually are what you think you are, with the fingers right together like this, then the chances are that you’re a pretty decent human being. A nice guy. Dad used to say that most of us have just a little divergence, and that if a man didn’t have any, maybe he wouldn’t have any pride.”

“Sounds like your father was a pretty shrewd guy.”

“He was. I keep thinking, though, that I can do the same thing to explain to myself what’s happened. Over here is what I thought John was. And over here is what he actually is. I had fun fooling myself, all right, but now in one day I’ve found out what he actually is and I don’t like it. I don’t want to live with it. Then I wonder if I’m being a perfectionist or something.”

“It’s hard for me to say, looking at it from the outside.”

“I know why he married me. In my own way, I guess I’m just as tough underneath as his mother was. And he needs to have someone strong. He’s got so he depends on strong people. He thinks he’s just a little more acute and sensitive and perceptive than anybody else in the world.”

“Can he make a living?”

“As a sort of pensioner. His uncle will give him a job. A good job. He won’t ever have to worry. I could still go along with the plan. Go back to Rochester with him and buy or build a little house in a very nice section and belong to the Genesee Valley Club and the Rochester Country Club and play a brisk game of backgammon and be that charming young hostess, Mrs. John Carter Gerrold the Second. And now I wonder if in about six months I wouldn’t be ready to spit. It would be fine if I could just… get back in love with him.”

“But you don’t think you can, eh?”

She lit another cigarette. The last of the sun was gone. The lighter flame seemed surprisingly bright against the blue-purple dusk.

“Bill, I’ve always had sort of an instinct about people. And I’ve never been so wrong as with my husband. Right now I wouldn’t want him to—to touch me. It would make me feel creepy. I’m talking too much.”

“Like you said, you won’t see me again.”

She glanced toward him quickly. “No, I won’t.”

Her words were flat and they seemed to open a small trap door in the bottom of his soul. A world where he wouldn’t see her again, ever, suddenly seemed to be a sour place. He told himself he was going too fast. You didn’t fall in love in an afternoon. Or fall out of love. That was for the movies.

And he suddenly thought of a way he could say it to her, a way that wouldn’t be rude. He spoke at once. “Now look, you’re wondering if you can really fall out of love with your husband, just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“I guess that’s the question.”

“Well, let’s get hypothetical, then. Could this happen? That I could see you and talk to you a little bit and then see you coming back across the river and get a feeling in my stomach just like Christmas Eve when I was a kid? Could it be possible for me to think of no place on earth I want to be more than just here sitting and talking to you? Is it possible that right now, the way you sit there, your hair so light in the darkness makes my heart keep turning right over, and keeps drying my mouth up? And makes me feel that you’re wasted on a kid like that, and I want you for myself?”

She stood up quickly, facing him, her hands tight on her purse. “No, Bill. That couldn’t happen.”

He stood up too, stood a step from her, looking down into her eyes. “It can be the truest thing you ever heard of,” he said.

“I didn’t want you to say that.”

“I didn’t know I was going to say it until you said that you’d never see me again, and I knew I had to say it quick. You think you’re all mixed up. How about me?”

“Bill, this is…”

He put his hands on her shoulders, leaned slowly toward her lips. She offered them, and there was just enough light for him to see her eyes close as he kissed her. She broke the kiss by spinning away from him. With her back to him, she laughed. It was a very ugly laugh.

“I must be breaking some kind of record. I’ve had this dress off once today. I don’t want you thinking I’m ready to take it off again. It wrinkles so easily.”

He stared at her rigid back. “Honey, you’re trying to hurt me, and you’re just hurting yourself.”

“I’ve got a new question. How cheap can a girl get?”

“Don’t talk that way. It isn’t right for you to say a thing like that.”

“How do you know I don’t always talk this way?”

“Because I know you, Linda. I know you well, as if I’d been with you for years. Now tell me we won’t ever see each other again.”

“We won’t, my friend. I promise you that.”

He took a deep breath. “Maybe we ought to be wandering back to the others.”

She turned, smiled. “Thanks, Bill.” They walked slowly back. Floodlights came on on the far side of the river. She said, “I’ve got to get the car keys back from the Mooney girl.”

“No hurry about that. She isn’t going anywhere.” He opened the door of the pickup, spread a blanket on the running board for her. He sat on his heels near her. It puzzled him a bit. He hadn’t meant to say as much as he did. Once the words started coming, it was as though he couldn’t stop them. Not fair to give her another mess to deal with. Let her get one out of the way first. Pepe’d said that kid husband had slugged her one, up in the store. No matter how upset the kid was, there was no excuse for that. Her lips were still a bit swollen. Guess she was using psychology, with that crack about the dress. Trying to scare the guy off.

He remembered when they had walked downstream, a few hours ago. Had a blanket with them. Looked happy enough. Well, newlyweds were maybe expected to do that sort of thing. It made his neck feel hot to think of the two of them on that blanket. Kid husband didn’t know what he had. Made him feel jealous, too. Crazy jealous. Wanted to bash somebody.

He said, “I should have kept it to myself.”

“It doesn’t matter. In a week you won’t remember what I look like.”

“I won’t ever forget what you look like.”

“Please.”

“I just wanted to set you straight on that, Linda.”

“I’ve probably got the instincts of a tramp. So skip it.”

“You need thinking time. That’s what you need. There’s a hotel in Matamoros that isn’t too bad. You could hole up there and Pepe and I could make a fast trip to Houston. Your tourist card doesn’t run out for quite a while, does it?”

“No, but—”

“And then Pepe and I, we could run you down to Mante. Easy day’s drive from Matamoros and the pickup doesn’t run too bad. The folks would be glad to have you, and there’s plenty of room.”

“No, I—”

“Let me finish. I promise not to get in your hair. I won’t pop off like I did back there on that log. If you get a hankering to go on back to him, why, then you can go right ahead, with no harm done.”