“What car?” the woman said. “Go on and eat. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“I’m not hungry. I haven’t eaten today. I’m not hungry at all.”
“Go and eat your supper,” she said.
“I’ll wait and eat when you do.”
“Go on and eat your supper. I’ve got to get done here some time tonight.”
8
Temple entered the dining-room from the kitchen, her face fixed in a cringing, placative expression; she was quite blind when she entered, holding her coat about her, her hat thrust upward and back at that dissolute angle. After a moment she saw Tommy. She went straight toward him, as if she had been looking for him all the while. Something intervened: a hard forearm; she attempted to evade it, looking at Tommy.
“Here,” Gowan said across the table, his chair rasping back, “you come around here.”
“Outside, brother,” the one who had stopped her said, whom she recognised then as the one who had laughed so often; “you’re drunk. Come here, kid.” His hard forearm came across her middle. She thrust against it, grinning rigidly at Tommy. “Move down, Tommy,” the man said. “Aint you got no manners, you mat-faced bastard?” Tommy guffawed, scraping his chair along the floor. The man drew her toward him by the wrist. Across the table Gowan stood up, propping himself on the table. She began to resist, grinning at Tommy, picking at the man’s fingers.
“Quit that, Van,” Goodwin said.
“Right on my lap here,” Van said.
“Let her go,” Goodwin said.
“Who’ll make me?” Van said. “Who’s big enough?”
“Let her go,” Goodwin said. Then she was free. She began to back slowly away. Behind her the woman, entering with a dish, stepped aside. Still smiling her aching, rigid grimace Temple backed from the room. In the hall she whirled and ran. She ran right off the porch, into the weeds, and sped on. She ran to the road and down it for fifty yards in the darkness, then without a break she whirled and ran back to the house and sprang onto the porch and crouched against the door just as someone came up the hall. It was Tommy.
“Oh, hyer you are,” he said. He thrust something awkwardly at her. “Hyer,” he said.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“Little bite of victuals. I bet you aint et since mawnin.”
“No. Not then, even,” she whispered.
“You eat a little mite and you’ll feel better,” he said, poking the plate at her. “You set down hyer and eat a little bite wher wont nobody bother you. Durn them fellers.”
Temple leaned around the door, past his dim shape, her face wan as a small ghost in the refracted light from the dining-room. “Mrs—Mrs.……” she whispered.
“She’s in the kitchen. Want me to go back there with you?” In the dining-room a chair scraped. Between blinks Tommy saw Temple in the path, her body slender and motionless for a moment as though waiting for some laggard part to catch up. Then she was gone like a shadow around the corner of the house. He stood in the door, the plate of food in his hand. Then he turned his head and looked down the hall just in time to see her flit across the darkness toward the kitchen. “Durn them fellers.”
He was standing there when the others returned to the porch.
“He’s got a plate of grub,” Van said. “He’s trying to get his with a plate full of ham.”
“Git my whut?” Tommy said.
“Look here,” Gowan said.
Van struck the plate from Tommy’s hand. He turned to Gowan. “Dont you like it?”
“No,” Gowan said, “I dont.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Van said.
“Van,” Goodwin said.
“Do you think you’re big enough to not like it?” Van said.
“I am,” Goodwin said.
When Van went back to the kitchen Tommy followed him. He stopped at the door and heard Van in the kitchen.
“Come for a walk, little bit,” Van said.
“Get out of here, Van,” the woman said.
“Come for a little walk,” Van said. “I’m a good guy. Ruby’ll tell you.”
“Get out of here, now,” the woman said. “Do you want me to call Lee?” Van stood against the light, in a khaki shirt and breeches, a cigarette behind his ear against the smooth sweep of his blond hair. Beyond him Temple stood behind the chair in which the woman sat at the table, her mouth open a little, her eyes quite black.
When Tommy went back to the porch with the jug he said to Goodwin: “Why dont them fellers quit pesterin that gal?”
“Who’s pestering her?”
“Van is. She’s skeered. Whyn’t they leave her be?”
“It’s none of your business. You keep out of it. You hear?”
“Them fellers ought to quit pesterin her,” Tommy said. He squatted against the wall. They were drinking, passing the jug back and forth, talking. With the top of his mind he listened to them, to Van’s gross and stupid tales of city life, with rapt interest, guffawing now and then, drinking in his turn. Van and Gowan were doing the talking, and Tommy listened to them. “Them two’s fixin to have hit out with one another,” he whispered to Goodwin in a chair beside him. “Hyear em?” They were talking quite loud; Goodwin moved swiftly and lightly from his chair, his feet striking the floor with light thuds; Tommy saw Van standing and Gowan holding himself erect by the back of his chair.
“I never meant—” Van said.
“Dont say it, then,” Goodwin said.
Gowan said something. That durn feller, Tommy thought. Cant even talk no more.
“Shut up, you,” Goodwin said.
“Think talk bout my—” Gowan said. He moved, swayed against the chair. It fell over. Gowan blundered into the wall.
“By God, I’ll—” Van said.
“—ginia gentleman; I dont give a—” Gowan said. Goodwin flung him aside with a backhanded blow of his arm, and grasped Van. Gowan fell against the wall.
“When I say sit down, I mean it,” Goodwin said.
After that they were quiet for a while. Goodwin returned to his chair. They began to talk again, passing the jug, and Tommy listened. But soon he began to think about Temple again. He would feel his feet scouring on the floor and his whole body writhing in an acute discomfort. “They ought to let that gal alone,” he whispered to Goodwin. “They ought to quit pesterin her.”
“It’s none of your business,” Goodwin said. “Let every damned one of them.……”
“They ought to quit pesterin her.”
Popeye came out the door. He lit a cigarette. Tommy watched his face flare out between his hands, his cheeks sucking; he followed with his eyes the small comet of the match into the weeds. Him too, he said. Two of em; his body writhing slowly. Pore little crittur. I be dawg ef I aint a mind to go down to the barn and stay there, I be dawg ef I aint. He rose, his feet making no sound on the porch. He stepped down into the path and went around the house. There was a light in the window there. Dont nobody never use in there, he said, stopping, then he said, That’s where she’ll be stayin, and he went to the window and looked in. The sash was down. Across a missing pane a sheet of rusted tin was nailed.
Temple was sitting on the bed, her legs tucked under her, erect, her hands lying in her lap, her hat tilted on the back of her head. She looked quite small, her very attitude an outrage to muscle and tissue of more than seventeen and more compatible with eight or ten, her elbows close to her sides, her face turned toward the door against which a chair was wedged. There was nothing in the room save the bed, with its faded patchwork quilt, and the chair. The walls had been plastered once, but the plaster had cracked and fallen in places, exposing the lathing and molded shreds of cloth. On the wall hung a raincoat and a khaki-covered canteen.
Temple’s head began to move. It turned slowly, as if she were following the passage of someone beyond the wall. It turned on to an excruciating degree, though no other muscle moved, like one of those papier-mâché Easter toys filled with candy, and became motionless in that reverted position. Then it turned back, slowly, as though pacing invisible feet beyond the wall, back to the chair against the door and became motionless there for a moment. Then she faced forward and Tommy watched her take a tiny watch from the top of her stocking and look at it. With the watch in her hand she lifted her head and looked directly at him, her eyes calm and empty as two holes. After a while she looked down at the watch again and returned it to her stocking.