Sheba, page 13
She laughed and jerked the car away from the curb. She was feeling the drinks — not drunk, but feeling them. The drinks made everything possible, everything, but the drinks created doubts too. She didn’t know her own mind or her own body and — the liquor didn’t clarify things. She had to find out for herself. Someday, some night, she would. In a wave of frenzy she would learn all that there was to learn and then she would be satisfied.
Take me, she thought; take me and hurt me!
But who?
There was a car in front of the rooming house and she recognized it as the Ford belonging to Fred Call. She parked behind it, feeling something inside of her swell, and shut off the motor and the lights. She placed the keys in her purse and got out of the car, sighing as she realized he had seen her.
12
SHE didn’t know what to say to Fred. She had awakened many nights, almost screaming, remembering what he had done to her. Sometimes she cried, wanting to hate him but somehow unable to hate him. In her dreams she felt his hands, what he had done to her, and frequently in her dreams she cried, dampening the pillow beneath her head.
“What do you want?” she finally asked.
He stood there, leaning against the Ford, his shirt open at the collar.
“You,” he said.
“How did you find me?”
“I called Mr. Wise at his home.”
“You had no right to do that.”
“Well, I did.”
“You’ve been drinking, Fred.”
“Just a few beers.”
“I didn’t think you drank.”
“I didn’t, once. I just started.”
“It’s late,” she said, starting past him. “And I’m tired.”
He caught her arm and turned her around.
“I didn’t come here for myself,” he said. “I came here for your mother.”
“My mother?”
“She’s sick and they’re having the doctor. Luke walked all the way to town to find you but my aunt didn’t know where you had moved and he called me. I did what I could.”
She hadn’t been out to the place in quite a while and although she had sent her mother some money, she hadn’t put a return address on the envelope.
“I see,” she said. “Is it serious?”
“They don’t know. She’s running a temperature. There was a thermometer in the house and it showed a hundred and four.”
“That’s high.”
“High enough.”
He let go of her arm and she rubbed it where he had grabbed her. He was strong, powerful, and she was numb almost down to her fingers.
“I suppose they want me to come out and pay the bill,” she said.
“It isn’t that. Your father can pay it. Or Luke.”
“With what?”
“Money. Luke is working with us and he’s saving a little. I also got your father a job picking brush off the ground. He says he hasn’t had a drink in over a week and I believe him.”
“Well, aren’t you the little reformer.”
He reached for her again and this time he shook her.
“I didn’t come here for that,” he said angrily. “I came here because your mother asked about you and I’m only doing what she asked.” He hesitated. “I wouldn’t have come here on my own.”
“You wouldn’t?” He had stopped shaking her but her head throbbed. “Your conscience bothering you or something?”
His face was white in the shadows.
“You don’t know how much,” he said. “Even the beer doesn’t help. I can get stoned and still remember what I did. It was wrong and I want to apologize.”
“Isn’t it a little late for that?”
“It’s never too late to apologize, not if you mean it. I was crazy that night, out of my head, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I could have killed myself for it.”
“But you didn’t.” She flung the words at him.
“Would it have solved anything if I had? I was sore because I love you and there had been somebody else. I just made up my mind that if somebody else was good enough I was good enough, too. The trouble is you don’t know how a man thinks.”
“I know how men think,” she said.
“You have only a slight idea.”
“They think of one thing. A guy can be a lawyer or a dentist or a tree climber. They all think alike. Don’t tell me I don’t know, Fred. I do. I know so much that it makes me sick.”
He searched his pockets for cigarettes but he didn’t have any.
“You’ve been drinking, too,” he said.
“What if I have?”
“It isn’t like you. You saw so much of it at home I wouldn’t think you would want to.”
“Stop preaching.”
“I’m not preaching. I’m just saying. Neither of us used to drink and that’s the way it should be now. Drinking doesn’t get you anywhere. You just think it does while you’re doing it but afterward everything is the same.”
She turned away from him.
“Thanks for coming,” she said. “I’ll go out and see my mother.”
“How about giving me a lift?”
“You’ve got a car.”
“With a dead battery. I was listening to the radio while I was waiting for you and the thing ran down.”
She laughed. “What you need is a new car.”
“Maybe. I hear you sell them.”
“I do all right.”
“I’ve heard that, too.”
“If you could afford it,” she said, “the Pacer would make a nice little car for you.”
“I’d rather get the big one.”
“That takes twelve hundred dollars down and you couldn’t get more than two-fifty on the Ford.”
“I’ve got the money,” he said. “I was saving it for something else but now that reason is gone. If I can’t have what I want I might as well have a new car.”
She knew what he meant. He had been putting money in the bank for a long time because he was thinking of marrying her someday. At the time, his savings had seemed almost fantastic but now, considering the money she made, he hadn’t anything at all. She made that much in a week. And she had several thousand in the bank. There wasn’t any comparison.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll drop you off.”
She got into the demonstrator. He walked around the front and sat down beside her.
“Why can’t I go out there with you?” he asked.
“Because I don’t want you to.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“I don’t trust any man.”
“That’s a fine way to feel.”
“Well, that’s the way I feel.”
“I guess some of it is my fault.”
“It’s all your fault.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why be sorry? You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”
She drove across Mayville, always aware of him sitting beside her; but she was thinking of that no-down-payment gimmick. The more she thought about it the better she liked it. Of course, it wouldn’t be any good for single fellows or girls, only for married people with furniture and mortgages. The kids bought secondhand cars anyway. She had sold only one Blazer to a single man and he was the manager of a shoe store in town. He had tried to date her, had even called her on the phone several times, but now she no longer heard from him.
She finally stopped at Fred’s house and waited for him to get out of the car.
“Things ought to be different between us,” he said, turning toward her.
“They aren’t.”
“You know — the way they used to be. We had some fun, didn’t we?”
“Let’s not go over that again,” she said. “It’s dead so let it lie.”
“Do you want it to be dead?”
“The deader the better.”
She knew she had hurt him but it was the only way she knew to handle him.
“Marry me,” he said suddenly.
She laughed at him. “Marry you?”
“Why not? I make good money. I just got a raise. I pull in a hundred and fifteen a week and that isn’t bad. We could live on it and even save a little.”
She was amused. A hundred and fifteen a week would have been a fortune to her a few weeks before, but now it was peanuts. She could just imagine what marriage would be like. There would be an apartment with some furniture theirs, but most yet to be paid for. They would plan a family for the future, but they would drink a little and get careless and fate would take over. Before the year was finished she would have a child and would have to quit work. Then the debts would begin to pile up. After that it would be more babies and more debts and before she knew it she would be an old woman.
“No,” she said.
“You thought of it before.”
“Maybe I did.”
She was getting nervous. Why didn’t he go? Why didn’t he leave her alone? There were lots of girls who sought marriage, who craved for a man, who would think a hundred and fifteen dollars a week represented the world.
“Why can’t it be the same as it was?” he insisted.
“Because it can’t be.”
“You could keep on working.”
“It isn’t that.”
“Not that you would have to. We could get along on what I make. We could — ”
“Do you know how much I make?” she inquired softly.
“No.”
“Last week over a thousand. And this week it will be more than that.”
Again he searched for a cigarette and again he didn’t find one.
“Is money everything?” he wanted to know.
“It is when there isn’t anything else.”
“And there isn’t for you?”
“There isn’t for me.”
“I blame myself,” he said after a while. “I admit it and it’s a hell of a thing to say. A guy loves a girl and yet he does something like I did. As I told you, I’ve tried to drown it in beer but I can’t. I — ”
“I’m in a hurry,” she said.
“Sheba?”
“What?”
“I love you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. I love you. I know I wasn’t the first with you but how many men can be the first? Not many. A girl is seldom the first with a man so why should it be different the other way around? There’s no reason.”
Impatiently, she raced the motor of the car.
“You’re wasting your breath,” she told him.
“Am I?”
“If you had any sense you would realize that you are. A while ago I had thought of marriage, yes, but that was a while ago. Why should I want it now? I make more than most men make. I have a good job. And I like my work.”
“You don’t know your own mind.”
“I know it enough to know I don’t want to marry you, Fred. I don’t think I ever did. When I met you — well, you know what I was. You’ve seen my home and you’ve seen my people. They are nothing and we had nothing.”
“Everybody is somebody,” Fred said.
“So you think.”
“Luke works every day and your father does the same. What else can you ask from a man?”
She shook her head. “It won’t last.”
“That’s your idea.”
“That’s what I know.”
She raced the motor harder and longer this time, and she hoped he would get out of the car. She was worried about her mother. She wanted to get out to the place.
“Any day, any week it still goes,” Fred said, opening the door. “I’ll be there long after everything else is gone.”
She wanted to laugh at him but she couldn’t. It was nice to have a fellow say something like that. She was wanted and that was important. But she was wanted for what reason, what purpose? She thought she knew. She was wanted because he had been drinking and because she had a body and because she could give to him all that a girl was expected to give a man.
“Good night,” she said.
“Shoving me out?”
“I told you I was in a hurry.”
He pushed the door open and got out of the car.
“I love you,” he said simply.
She saw his face in the darkness and for a second she wanted to cry. Why couldn’t it be right for them? Why couldn’t it be as it had been before? But no, she didn’t want that. Before she had been poor and desperate and he had been someone upon whom she could lean. But she no longer needed him. She was a success, a startling success, and she needed no one except herself.
“Good night,” she told him for the second time.
He closed the door and said nothing. For a moment she watched him going up the walk, his shoulders straight and square, and then she pulled away from the curb.
At the corner of South and Main she approached a truck, threw the car into passing gear, and the big demonstrator shot forward like a bullet from the muzzle of a gun. To hell with Fred. To hell with everything. Tomorrow was another day.
She would show Mr. Wise how to sell cars. She would show him how to sell them by the ton. They would use the no-down-payment on the secondhand cars and on the new cars. Mr. Wise had money in the bank; let him use it. In less than two weeks he would be screaming for new cars from the factory and his used car lot would be almost empty. He thought he had seen good business so far? He hadn’t seen anything until now. She would bury him under orders.
Every light in the house was on when she got there and there was a car parked in the lane with an MD on the license plate.
Her father was sitting on the front steps and he had a can of beer beside him.
“I thought you weren’t drinking,” she said.
“I wasn’t but this started it all over again.”
“I can imagine.”
“I came home from work and there she was as hot as a firecracker. I was so damned tired I couldn’t walk into town but Luke did and when he came back he brought a little cheer. You think I’m wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
He lifted the can of beer. “You get a problem and you drink your way out of it.”
“That’s one way, I suppose.”
Hap Irons emptied the can and threw it into the weeds along the porch.
“I’ve been workin’,” he said.
“So I heard.”
“Pickin’ up brush and all that junk. It don’t pay very much but it’s better than nothin’. Let me get a few bucks ahead and Mort and me will get that eel rack workin’ in the river. Eels are bringin’ sixty-five cents a pound.”
“You might be better off sticking to what you’ve got,” she said.
“I figured I could do both. I put up the money and Mort will tend to the rack. What’s unfair about that?”
Before she could reply the doctor came out on the porch. He was a tall man in his late forties, and his hair was already gray.
“She’s got the flu,” he said. “The oldfashioned flu. She’ll be sick for a few days but she’ll come around. I gave her a shot and that ought to fix her up.”
“Fine,” Hap said.
“Could I see her?” Sheba wanted to know.
“You could but I wouldn’t advise it. There’s nothing you can do for her and you’ll only expose yourself.”
Sheba was disappointed. She had wanted to see her mother but, on the other hand, she couldn’t run the risk of becoming ill.
“That’s ten dollars,” the doctor said. “Ten dollars for the call, plus three for mileage. That makes it thirteen, Mr. Irons.”
Hap made no effort to reach into his pocket. “I’ll pay it,” Sheba said.
“There’s another ten due from another time, the time your father thought he had an ulcer in his stomach only it was just the bad wine he’d been drinking.”
Sheba gave the doctor two tens and a five and the doctor fumbled for change. Luke came out on the porch, carrying two cans of beer, and sat down beside his father.
“She ain’t sick much,” Luke said. “Just a cold, that’s all.” He drank some of the beer and wiped the back of one hand across his mouth. “Cripes, you should’ve seen the needle he slammed into her bottom. It was half as long as your arm.”
The doctor said Mrs. Irons should have plenty of juice and bed rest for two or three days.
“I’ll stay home with her,” Hap said, taking a can of beer away from Luke.
“The boss ain’t going to like that,” Luke decided.
“Nuts to the boss. Let him pick up his own brush for a day or so. Maybe he’ll see what a job it is and pay me more.”
Luke snickered. “Or maybe he’ll see how little you do and fire you.”
The doctor said good night and walked out to his car. He had some difficulty turning around but eventually he made it and drove off down the lane.
“That’s the racket,” Luke said. “He pushes a needle into you, hands you some pills and makes as much in five minutes as a lot of people make all day long.”
“I figure it that way with the eels,” Hap said. “You just pull them out by the pound and sell them. A hundred pounds is sixty-five dollars; split two ways, Mort and me, and that’s over thirty each. Is that bad?”
“The doc has got his,” Luke observed. “You haven’t got yours yet.”
Sheba leaned against the railing. She wished that she hadn’t taken those drinks with Gregg. Her throat was dry and there was a dull ache at the base of her neck.
