Tears Are for Angels (14 page)

    She looked puzzled. "Who?"

    "Harry. Your husband."

    "I told you. I want to buy a pressure cooker."

    She was very close to the counter now and his eyes dropped to the low neckline and she leaned forward. The man in shirt sleeves was still watching and she put her face close to Stewart's.

    "And I was wondering what a girl does around here for excitement."

    She moved away a little then and laughed out loud. Stewart came around the counter and she turned and moved back to the mail window, her hips swaying. He came up behind her.

    "He sent you," he said, his voice low and malevolent. "This is one of his tricks."

    "What tricks?"

    He took her arm and pulled her around to face him and she leaned close to him. He took a quick step back and she saw sweat pop on his brow.

    "Listen," he said. "What's he told you about me?"

    "Nothing," she said. "I can see for myself."

    His face showed his disbelief.

    "He's been giving you lies about me," he said.

    "Look, mister. I don't even know your name."

    "I'm Dick Stewart. You're sure he hasn't said anything about me?"

    "Harry doesn't say much about anything."

    He looked at her for a long time. Then he relaxed.

    "The pressure cookers are over here," he said.

    She followed him to a table near the center of the store.

    "You sure act funny," she said. "Like you were afraid of me."

    "I'm not afraid. I just thought… These are eight-ninety-five."

    She looked at the cookers with little interest.

    "You still haven't told me… Dick."

    "Told you what?"

    "What a girl does around here. For excitement."

    Her voice had risen a little and Stewart glanced hastily at the man at the desk. This time he did not turn around. He sat very straight in his chair, not moving at all.

    "I wouldn't know," he said. "You want the cooker?"

    "I wanted a little one."

    "This is the smallest size there is."

    "Well, I don't know much about cooking."

    His eyes feasted on her breasts.

    "I bet you don't," he said.

    The door of the store slammed. They looked up to see a thin woman entering. Jean hastily moved away, as if she had been caught at something. She touched a hand to her hair.

    "I'll take this," she said. She pointed at a fifty-pound bag of fertilizer. He looked at her in exasperation.

    "Charge it to me," she said.

    The woman was near now and Jean stared at her insolently. The woman's glance was hostile.

    "Be with you in a minute, Mrs. Hartley," Stewart said.

    He wrote a ticket for the fertilizer and stuck the pad in his pocket.

    "I'll carry it out for you."

    "That'll be sweet, Dick."

    He made a noise beneath his breath and hastily bent and heaved the bag to his shoulder.

    He started toward the door and she smiled frostily at Mrs. Hartley and followed. Her hips swayed more than necessary under the tight skirt.

    "Listen," Stewart murmured when they had passed beyond the thin woman. "You keep away from here. I don't want any truck with that husband of yours."

    "I like it here," she said. "I like you."

    He swore and pushed open the door.

    The old Chevrolet was parked just down the street from the store. He jerked open the door and tumbled the fertilizer to the floor.

    The three men still sat beneath the porch roof, apparently not watching, occasionally spitting tobacco juice.

    He straightened up and she swayed close to him. One hip brushed against his leg.

    "Thank you," she whispered, "for everything."

    "You go to hell," he murmured.

    She moved even closer and her breasts now almost touched him. As if drawn by a magnet, his eyes dropped to her neckline. Then, with another low curse, he jerked around and went back to the store.

    "See you tomorrow," she called after him, quite clearly, and laughed.

    One of the men spat again and stood up and silently moved away.

    

    

    "I feel dirty," she said, when she had finished telling it. "That man. Ugh!"

    "You did fine," I said. "That ought to get the ball rolling good. Old Joe Buxton, the bookkeeper, and Lena Hartley, and whoever the three men were. That ought to start things off with a bang."

    "I felt like a prostitute," she said. "All that paint and throwing myself at him like that."

    "It won't be for long."

    "He was scared. He tried to act mean, but I could see how scared he was."

    "He's got reason," I said. "He knows it's no coincidence. Not twice, he knows it wouldn't happen twice, not after that night, anyway. But he won't figure it until it's too late, until we lower the boom on him."

    "You know," she said, "when he looked down my dress like that, I wanted it to be right then. He's from under a rock."

    "If you didn't know what you do, he wouldn't be so bad, would he?"

    "I don't know. He's handsome, all right. And those bedroom eyes and those hands. But I don't think I'd like him even then. That's what I can't understand about Lucy. That's why I know there must have been something we don't know about."

    We didn't say anything for a while, sitting there in the night, on the sand in front of the shack. It was pretty nice, I thought; you have to hand it to women. They make a place a lot nicer. Just to have one around, to know she's nearby, and to see the skirt swirl at her knees, and the smooth skin, and the faint woman smell.

    "What are you thinking about, Jean?"

    "Oh… I was remembering-something Lucy wrote in one of those letters, after she married you."

    "What was that?"

    "She said something about she had been out hunting with you. It wasn't anything much. But I was thinking how she said she had been hunting with you and then all the rest of that part of the letter was about you, how many birds you killed, what a good shot you were. Not a word about herself."

    "I remember," I said.

    "That was like her. To show that she was happy, not because of what she herself was doing, but because of what you were doing. To be happy because you were happy."

    "Yes," I said. "That was like her."

    "I wonder if she's happy now."

    "You keep talking as if she were alive," I said.

    "I know. But I got to thinking…"

    "About last night?"

    "Yes."

    Something savage bit at me.

    "What do you want me to do?" I said. "Get down and pray a little and ask her to forgive us?"

    I felt her whole body tighten up beside me. I wished I could call the words back.

    "I'm sorry," I said. "That was a lousy thing to say."

    I didn't tell her that I barked out the harsh words because she had touched a sore spot. In the daylight, the night before seemed unreal, and all that day I had remembered my feelings then with a sense of betrayal.

    You get a woman in your bed again, I had thought, and right away you forget Lucy, forget the woman you loved and killed, forget the two years you went through a living suicide, forget everything, even the debt you have to pay, and tell yourself it's because you're in love with a cheap bitch you've slept with twice in the three nights you've known her. A fine avenger you are.

    But I hadn't quite convinced myself. I couldn't dismiss it that easily. And her words had pointed up the puzzle in my brain.

    "Listen," she said. "I told you how it was. What you and Lucy had between you meant something to me. More than you could know. It meant that such things-oh, I know it's corny, but such things as love and home and happiness really existed. And now she's dead and I…"

    "All right," I said. "It doesn't have to happen again. Maybe it's best that way. Maybe we ought to just keep our minds on the job."

    She turned her head slowly to look at me. Then she laughed, bitterly.

    "We have got a job to do, haven't we?" she said.

    Have we? I thought. Goddamnit. Have we? I don't know. I don't know anything any more.

    

    

    I could hear her breathing, slowly and evenly, and when I turned my head, I could see the vague shape of her on the bunk. When she moved, I heard the dry mattress crackle.

    I couldn't sleep. I lay there on the floor and tried to straighten it all out in my mind. About Lucy. About Stewart. About the strange, hard, lost woman sleeping a lew feet away from me.

    But it all whirled in my mind like a carrousel, going round and round and round and never getting anywhere. Because under it all, around it all. over it all, the desire and the longing in me for Jean swirled and screamed.

    I got up and stepped across the floor and stood there looking down at her. And then I saw that her eyes were open and that she was looking at me too.

    "I could hear you breathing," I said. My voice cracked on the last word.

    "I could hear you too." The pale white oval of her face seemed to swim toward me.

    "Every time you moved," I said, "I'd have to remember you were there."

    "And every time I turned my head I could see you lying there on the floor." There was an incredulous sort of wonder in her voice.

    "It's no use," I said. "Is it?"

    "No, it's no use."

    "Like you said last night, there isn't anything else for us."

    I bent down and pulled back the thin blanket.

    And then I heard the dry mattress crackle under me, too, and felt her warm hands touch me.

    

    

    It was over a week later, and [can was again spending the afternoon in town. I was sitting at the shelf at the back wall of the cabin, working on the letter. I wanted to be careful with it, to watch out for slips, and this was the sixth one I had composed.

    For our plan, it was a good thing Brax Jordan had put Lucy's typewriter in the trunk two years ago. He had said it was too old to sell and that I could throw it away if I didn't want it. I had been furious, but soon I hail forgotten it. And now it was coming in handy.

    Then I heard the sound of the car, not the rattle of the old Chewy, but a smooth hum, a powerful engine pulling through the sand. I got up quickly, put the typewriter in the trunk, and went to the door.

    I leaned against the jamb and watched the car pull up.

    It was a Buick, a new one. Brax Jordan looked like gnome inside the huge mass of metal. Then he got out and came across the sand.

    "Come in the house," I said.

    He stopped a yard or two away. "Where is she?"

    "You mean Jean?"

    "I mean whatever-her-name-is that didn't have any more sense than to marry you. If what I hear is light"

    I laughed. "Good ol' Brax. Never spares his clients' feelings. You coming in or just standing there?"

    "It'll be too hot inside. Let's get over in the shade."

    We went over and sat down by the spring and I handed him the gourd and he took a long drink of the cool water and handed the gourd back. Then he lit up a long cigar.

    "You off the hooch, Harry?"

    "Yes. And I shave and wash and eat right and sleep right and brush my teeth."

    "Then there's that much to her credit. Who is she?"

    "A writer. She read something about me in an old newspaper and came out to see me."

    "And it was love at first sight?"

    "Something like that."

    He laughed.

    "I bet it was," he said. "Where is she now?"

    "In town."

    A faint shadow crossed his face. I wonder if he's already heard them talking, I thought.

    "They tell me she's a knockout."

    "Not like Lucy. Not that much of a knockout."

    He leaned forward.

    "Listen, Harry. I've got it figured this way. It was like with a child eating candy. The child loves the stuff, he doesn't know why, it pleases him some way, but he can't stop, he isn't able to ask himself if it's good for him, if he ought to eat so much of it. So he goes on eating it if his ma isn't there to paddle his bottom. And then he gets too much of it and throws it up all over himself."

    "I don't get it," I said.

    "It was that way with you. The way you were living. You finally threw it up all over yourself, and right then, there she was, and you married her because that seemed like a way to begin to get out of it."

    "Yes," I said. "Maybe. I don't know."

    He blew the cigar smoke in my face and leaned back again against the tree. His small feet were placed precisely together.

    "That much figures," he said. "Everybody is thinking that. But listen, Harry. Think about this. Why did she marry you?"

    "You think about it. You want to know."

    "You are asking me to believe," he said, "that this girl, this Yankee girl at that, who is completely alien to this country, these people, all this"-his hand waved vaguely around him-"who looks like something out of a Grade B movie, who obviously has known men and money and excitement-you are asking me to believe that such a creature drove in here and out of whatever compulsions women feel took up with and married a man who at that time was not only a drunk and a pauper, but who was also dirty, underfed, hardly human, and damn near crazy, and who could not even offer her a roof that didn't leak or a mattress on which to lay her head."