“I go nowhere on that one.” Beside the bike were tall black-laced boots, looking serious and military, but they seemed her size. She sat and slumped to one arm on the bed, pulling from the tiny bottle again.
“What’s that?”
“Happy medicine for nervous bad women.” I saw it was paregoric, the stuff prescribed on ice for nausea. I didn’t know about the opium in it then.
“Your voice.”
“Canadian. Quebec. World citizen. You all sound like the nickras down here. Who taught who to talk? This man I paid out of jail today down over Lexington, he hates the nickras too, but I ask him why does he talk like them then?”
“What was he in for?”
“Throwing things in the night. Fireworks.”
“Disturbing the peace?”
“More keeping. Believes. Depends on what you believe. But dumb to get caught. More of the white trash. Lumpen.”
On the dresser were several long steely pins. I went over and picked one up. They were too long for hairdos. It was extremely sharp on the end.
“Medical,” she said. “Look but don’t touch, if you please. Acupuncture, for relief. Go ahead. The man out of jail didn’t believe in them either.”
I wondered if she was practicing some kind of voodoo surgery. Those signs you see along the road in the country, on the outskirts of town. SISTER GRACE, PALMS. You sometimes feel your blood go darker, and I was feeling it here, more excited than disapproving. This world was fetched in fresh just for me, but I could never tell Horace. I was greedy for all her details. She was European, ageless, a brunette Marlene Dietrich with those long legs.
It was then I saw a Klan robe, a green rounded cross on the left breast, all white otherwise. It had a small ladies’ hood, cut to fashion for her, or so it seemed. The closet door was half open and she didn’t mind my seeing. It all was like stumbling into an alien person’s attic. My people hated the Klan, and I did too, I thought. But there is an undeniable romance, maybe adventure, to hating a whole race of people: it had its sway. Recently in Bay St. Louis, I had left a beautiful girlfriend to go to New Orleans. I did not get much of anywhere with her, but she’d talked affectionately with me. As I was leaving, she said, truly caring for me, I thought, “Oh George, do watch out for the nigguhs in New Orleans. They’re all loose and free over there and they’ll just do anything.” She had seemed lovely in her need to be protected from the dark hordes. I was taken very warmly by this problem, and went off like a knight of the streets, full of romantic charge, with something to prove. I’d been at the closet door overlong. The hanger next over held a great length of dog chain with bracelets at both ends. I supposed she wore this around her waist, like medieval women in the “Prince Valiant” comic strip.
When I turned to her, she could see my face was different, even though her eyes were blurred and she looked ready to sleep.
“I told you thas too bad. You’re decent. I’m not, young boy.”
“But not really—”
“Don’t tell me. I know decent from the other look. I can sort them. You’ve got that decent polish on you. You are decent, and you will just go to sleep with fairy plums in your head, not like me.”
“That’s not a church choir gown. I know that. Still—”
“You have to go. Somebody is coming. You don’t want to see him.”
“The man from jail?What’s he. . It’s late. Why’s he coming?”
“Why to frig me, I’d imagine. Out of here, Tom Sawyer with your neckerchief. Put all those nice muscles to bed.”
She was right that I didn’t want to see the man. I closed the door with my head flaming, confused. But I was not disgusted. I wanted to save her. You could see she was too good for anybody around here. Forces were martialed against her.
I couldn’t go into my room. I put my hand on the knob of the room next to hers. It was unlocked. The room inside was made up, unused. I crept in and waited, dark in my head, forcing myself toward love of her. Even the muscle lines in her face would go away if I loved her right.
I lay on the bed without moving a spring. Then I crept to check for a hole in the wall. There was none. But I edged up the window so as to listen around.
Not five minutes passed before there were steps on the stairs, very slow and dramatic, you knew it in the rickety floor. He went over the carpet and opened her door without saying anything. She knew him all too well. Nothing, not even muffled, came through then. I lay half sick waiting for sounds of protest and struggle, and when they failed to occur, I knew the drug was used to smother her will. Mute things were proceeding as in a film so bad I might have written it myself.
But through the window I heard the clink of, yes, it had to be that dog chain, and then soon with it, at first unaccountable, but there was no mistaking it, the whir of the bicycle being pumped and clanking just a little. This went on a long, severe time. Through the window this was quite clear. I was thinking of creeping out there, but then the man’s voice said short things, low and anxious, while the bicycle kept up. It was moaning, pathetic, but fearful at the same time. At first I thought it was the woman. Only her voice, in a dismayed faint gasp was heard then, and this was unbearable. It seemed as though she was afraid that he would hit her. He moaned shortly again, but not in sex: it sounded like encouragement in another language. The whirring slowed, and I heard his big steps, the knocks going through the carpet in my room. I waited and waited, waiting for bedsprings and weeping, but I never heard them. The silence became deader than quiet, and then Now here it is! the man said very plainly. But there had passed an enormous amount of time. Only my head was racing, flushed, ahead of the seconds.
Then I heard nothing for so long I fell off asleep very deep into the night, close to dawn, I think. I woke when the light came in gray and went back to our room. I stared at the ceiling, and that day at the bricks, a moron’s job, I was worthless. Horace wanted to know what had me all blown. We’d eaten in the hotel dining room, but we were the only ones there. He wanted to know what I was watching for, what was ailing. I kept going back to the hotel all day, telling him I had a bad stomach. I was really letting him down on the work. The old man still sat there, but once, for the first time, he was gone. I couldn’t tell if anybody else was around. So I knocked on her door, worn out and shucking my labor.
She was having a nap and was fresher than last night, no blur to her, and in a homey wrap. She didn’t mind at all I was there. I asked if I could get her anything. She said well indeed I could get her two Coca-Colas with ice. I was so fast at this, down to the dining room, troubling the one harried fat lady — though she was doing nothing else — and back, it had to be a record for service. She’d brushed her hair (I mattered, she cared) and her face was not so tired.
“I have the feeling you could use a friend, miss.” I had rehearsed that all day.
She put her head down, then sat. I was sure she was crying. Her eyes blinked pink at the rims when she lifted up, and I was gone for her, out of my depth. The other Coke wasn’t for me, though. She poured from a new paregoric bottle on the dresser into one glass and added Coke, storing the other one. Then she drank.
“Much better. It gets hard alone. This is a clean drink. All this is very clean. With your Tennessee whiskey it gets sloppy and all ragged. This is dry-cleaned magic. Not so bad.”
“I guess the nerves never leave you.”
“Never. I had a husband and you aren’t like him at all. But it’s the youth, the age we met, nearly the same. You get to me, neighbor. It’s clean, the look. Washed and pure in the blood, that lucky color. I’ve had it.” For the first time, she smiled. Her teeth were not that bad, a maturer gold was all. My dentist could brighten them right up.