“Are you lonesome, Jane?” Ruth asked her.
The girl stood up. She had never worked for anybody before and she didn't know how she should act. I didn't know how she should act myself.
“A little bit,” she said.
“For god's sake, what do people do around here for entertainment?” I asked.
“That one's easy,” said Ruth. “Look at the size of the families they raise.”
“They must do something else.”
The girl said that there were movies in a town about fifteen miles away.
“Do you know anything about that car?” I said. “Can it be trusted to go fifteen miles?”
Jane said she thought so.
“Get your things,” I said to Ruth. “We're going to go to the movies and have a big night.”
“You too, Jane,” Ruth said.
I went out and backed the car out of the barn. Ruth came out and got into the car.
“I might as well take my letters,” I said.
I took the letters from the desk, and I went upstairs to get stamps. The door to the bedroom Ruth and I had taken was open, and the girl was in the room. She hadn't heard me. I thought at first that she was stealing something, and I felt uncomfortable. But she was just standing there looking at something. In a minute I realized that she was looking at the pictures of Ruth, and I watched her. She didn't do anything. All she did was look at them, studying each one a long time before she put it down and took up another one.
I went back downstairs and out to the car with my letters. Ruth looked at me.
“What's keeping Jane?” she said.
I leaned on the horn, and the girl hurried out of the house. She started to get into the back seat, but Ruth held open the front door.
“It's going to be chilly,” Ruth said. “We have a blanket up here.”
The girl was very quiet, and she kept looking at Ruth while she edged in beside her. I felt like throwing her out of the car. Then I felt like throwing them both out of the car. I was sore about something, but I couldn't put my finger on just what made me feel that way.
With the blanket on her lap Ruth got her hand into my pants almost before the car was on the road. I wondered what her other hand was doing, but it wasn't running under the girl's dress the way I half expected it to be doing. I saw it moving under the blanket when she hitched her own dress up. And that was the way we drove to the movies.
The first thing I saw in the town, and the only thing about it that I really liked, was the state liquor store. There were a lot of things in there that I wanted, but I was afraid about leaving much in the car. I finally bought two bottles of Scotch whiskey and a quart of apple brandy, and I put those under the seat of the car. I mailed my letters and then we picked out one of the two movies in the town and went in.
I had seen the picture before, but it's a pretty good picture and I didn't mind seeing it over. Jane liked it a lot. She happened to be sitting between Ruth and me, and once during the comedy she grabbed my hand as though she had forgotten who she was with. When the picture was over I asked her how she liked it. She looked at me as though she didn't quite understand what I had said. The idea of people not liking a movie had never occurred to her, I suppose.
Some of the people who had been to the movie house were going into a little restaurant across the street when they came out, and I thought we had better follow their example because I wanted to get this done right. We went in and had sandwiches and coffee.
“This makes five times I've been in here,” Jane said.
That was all she said. “That's fine,” I said.
I thought that the girl would fall asleep on the way home but she didn't. She sat up very straight and looked at the road in the yellow light of the headlights.
When we got to the house and I had put the car away I turned on the radio to see if I could get some jazz. The radio was not very good and I could get the station that it was supposed to be on so faintly that it couldn't be appreciated, so I turned on the local country station. Jane went into her room and Ruth came into the room carrying a tray with three drinks on it.
“I don't know how to treat the girl,” she said. “I never had a girl working for me.”
Ruth mixed pretty good drinks. I tasted mine. She had used the brandy.
“You can ask her,” I said. “She might not take it, I suppose.”
Jane came back then, and she said thank you and took the drink and sat down.
“That's liquor, you know,” Ruth said.
“It tastes good,” Jane said.
She might have been drinking lemonade. When she saw that we still had most of our drinks she held her hand around the glass to hide it and pretended that she still had some.
“I'll have another,” I said.
I went to the kitchen with Ruth.
“Shall we get her tight?” Ruth said. “You could jazz her if we got her tight. She's really pretty, and she'd be prettier if you got those awful clothes off her.”
“Balls. We have to live with her.”
Ruth pushed her ass against me.
“I'd rather you laid me anyway,” she said.
She made the third drink with little brandy, but I took the bottle and put some more into the glass.
“If you're going to give her a drink, give her a real drink. But I think two are all she can take.”
I must have put more brandy in that drink than I thought. The girl drank that one slower, and she started tapping her hand on the chair with the music. She had no more sense of rhythm than most women, and she was off the beat most of the time.
“Could I have another?” she asked when the drink was gone. “I'd like another.”
Did she want another, Ruth asked. Ruth told her that it was pretty strong stuff.
“I'd like another.”
“It might do things to you.”
“For Christ's sake, give her a drink,” I said. “And shall I get your knitting?”
“I'll give her a goddamned drink!”
“Is she mad, or something?” Jane said.
“No,” I said. “She talks that way late at night sometimes.”
The drink Ruth brought back for the girl was strong; I could see that just by looking at it, because it was dark. Ruth gave it to her and we both watched her drink it. I was waiting for the girl to fall out of the chair.
“I guess I'll go to bed now.” Jane stood up, but she sat down again. “My leg has gone to sleep.”
“Which one?” I said.
She stretched her legs out in front of her and looked at them. She moved her feet; just her feet. She hit her feet on the floor.
“Both of them,” she said.
Ruth sat on the edge of my chair.
“Go after her,” she said to me. “Now's your chance if you're going to jazz her.”
“I think I want to lie down,” the girl said.
She managed to get to the couch and fall onto it. She lay on her stomach with one leg off the couch. Her dress was pulled up on that side. Her stocking was rolled above her knee and her thigh was bare almost to her hip.
“Try it,” said Ruth, “and if she fights too much you can give her another drink. She'd pass out with another one. Why don't you go on and fuck her, Bill?”
“For Christ's sake, be quiet,” I said.
The girl started to slip from the couch and then pulled herself back onto it. Ruth crossed her legs and pulled her own dress up on her thighs.
“How can you sit there when she's lying there that way? She's too far gone to mind,” Ruth said. “Pull her dress up and make her wiggle! I dare you to fuck her!”
“I must be drunk,” Jane said.