There would always be three or four of them there when the band played Home, Sweet Home, lounging near the exit, their faces cold, bellicose, a little drawn with sleeplessness, watching the couples emerge in a wan aftermath of motion and noise. Three of them watched Temple and Gowan Stevens come out, into the chill presage of spring dawn. Her face was quite pale, dusted over with recent powder, her hair in spent red curls. Her eyes, all pupil now, rested upon them for a blank moment. Then she lifted her hand in a wan gesture, whether at them or not, none could have said. They did not respond, no flicker in their cold eyes. They watched Gowan slip his arm into hers, and the fleet revelation of flank and thigh as she got into his car. It was a long, low roadster, with a jacklight.
“Who’s that son bitch?” one said.
“My father’s a judge,” the second said in a bitter, lilting falsetto.
“Hell. Let’s go to town.”
They went on. Once they yelled at a car, but it did not stop. On the bridge across the railroad cutting they stopped and drank from a bottle. The last made to fling it over the railing. The second caught his arm.
“Let me have it,” he said. He broke the bottle carefully and spread the fragments across the road. They watched him.
“You’re not good enough to go to a college dance,” the first said. “You poor bastard.”
“My father’s a judge,” the other said, propping the jagged shards upright in the road.
“Here comes a car,” the third said.
It had three headlights. They leaned against the railing, slanting their hats against the light, and watched Temple and Gowan pass. Temple’s head was low and close. The car moved slowly.
“You poor bastard,” the first said.
“Am I?” the second said. He took something from his pocket and flipped it out, whipping the sheer, faintly scented web across their faces. “Am I?”
“That’s what you say.”
“Doc got that step-in in Memphis,” the third said. “Off a damn whore.”
“You’re a lying bastard,” Doc said.
They watched the fan of light, the diminishing ruby taillamp, come to a stop at the Coop. The lights went off. After a while the car door slammed. The lights came on; the car moved away. It approached again. They leaned against the rail in a row, their hats slanted against the glare. The broken glass glinted in random sparks. The car drew up and stopped opposite them.
“You gentlemen going to town?” Gowan said, opening the door. They leaned against the rail, then the first said “Much obliged” gruffly and they got in, the two others in the rumble seat, the first beside Gowan.
“Pull over this way,” he said. “Somebody broke a bottle there.”
“Thanks,” Gowan said. The car moved on. “You gentlemen going to Starkville tomorrow to the game?”
The ones in the rumble said nothing.
“I dont know,” the first said. “I dont reckon so.”
“I’m a stranger here,” Gowan said. “I ran out of liquor tonight, and I’ve got a date early in the morning. Can you gentlemen tell me where I could get a quart?”
“It’s mighty late,” the first said. He turned to the others. “You know anybody he can find this time of night, Doc?”
“Luke might,” the third said.
“Where does he live?” Gowan said.
“Go on,” the first said. “I’ll show you.” They crossed the square and drove out of town about a half mile.
“This is the road to Taylor, isn’t it?” Gowan said.
“Yes,” the first said.
“I’ve got to drive down there early in the morning,” Gowan said. “Got to get there before the special does. You gentlemen not going to the game, you say.”
“I reckon not,” the first said. “Stop here.” A steep slope rose, crested by stunted blackjacks. “You wait here,” the first said. Gowan switched off the lights. They could hear the other scrambling up the slope.
“Does Luke have good liquor?” Gowan said.
“Pretty good. Good as any, I reckon,” the third said.
“If you dont like it, you dont have to drink it,” Doc said. Gowan turned fatly and looked at him.
“It’s as good as that you had tonight,” the third said.
“You didn’t have to drink that, neither,” Doc said.
“They cant seem to make good liquor down here like they do up at school,” Gowan said.
“Where you from?” the third said.
“Virgin——oh, Jefferson. I went to school at Virginia. Teach you how to drink, there.”
The other two said nothing. The first returned, preceded by a minute shaling of earth down the slope. He had a fruit jar. Gowan lifted it against the sky. It was pale, innocent looking. He removed the cap and extended it.
“Drink.”
The first took it and extended it to them in the rumble.
“Drink.”
The third drank, but Doc refused. Gowan drank.
“Good God,” he said, “how do you fellows drink this stuff?”
“We dont drink rotgut at Virginia,” Doc said. Gowan turned in the seat and looked at him.
“Shut up, Doc,” the third said. “Dont mind him,” he said. “He’s had a bellyache all night.”
“Son bitch,” Doc said.
“Did you call me that?” Gowan said.
“ ’Course he didn’t,” the third said. “Doc’s all right. Come on, Doc. Take a drink.”
“I dont give a damn,” Doc said. “Hand it here.”
They returned to town. “The Shack’ll be open,” the first said. “At the depot.”
It was a confectionery-lunchroom. It was empty save for a man in a soiled apron. They went to the rear and entered an alcove with a table and four chairs. The man brought four glasses and coca-colas. “Can I have some sugar and water and a lemon, Cap?” Gowan said. The man brought them. The others watched Gowan make a whiskey sour. “They taught me to drink it this way,” he said. They watched him drink. “Hasn’t got much kick, to me,” he said, filling his glass from the jar. He drank that.
“You sure do drink it,” the third said.
“I learned in a good school.” There was a high window. Beyond it the sky was paler, fresher. “Have another, gentlemen,” he said, filling his glass again. The others helped themselves moderately. “Up at school they consider it better to go down than to hedge,” he said. They watched him drink that one. They saw his nostrils bead suddenly with sweat.
“That’s all for him, too,” Doc said.
“Who says so?” Gowan said. He poured an inch into the glass. “If we just had some decent liquor. I know a man in my county named Goodwin that makes——”
“That’s what they call a drink up at school,” Doc said.
Gowan looked at him. “Do you think so? Watch this.” He poured into the glass. They watched the liquor rise.
“Look out, fellow,” the third said. Gowan filled the glass level full and lifted it and emptied it steadily. He remembered setting the glass down carefully, then he became aware simultaneously of open air, of a chill gray freshness and an engine panting on a siding at the head of a dark string of cars, and that he was trying to tell someone that he had learned to drink like a gentleman. He was still trying to tell them, in a cramped dark place smelling of ammonia and creosote, vomiting into a receptacle, trying to tell them that he must be at Taylor at six-thirty, when the special arrived. The paroxysm passed; he felt extreme lassitude, weakness, a desire to lie down which was forcibly restrained, and in the flare of a match he leaned against the wall, his eyes focussing slowly upon a name written there in pencil. He shut one eye, propped against the wall, swaying and drooling, and read the name. Then he looked at them, wagging his head.