"Oh my God! What'll we do?"
"I don't – I'll say you came to check the generator. Yes, it's been acting strangely. I'll say you must have forgotten your hat."
"What was the goddam generator doing in the dining room?"
"Don't be stupid! You fixed the generator and came into the house for your money. You forgot and left your hat on the table."
"All right," he said. "It'll have to do."
He wanted out of there bad. He could see nothing but trouble coming from the Culvers; coming like Jort Camp on a bender. As a rule he played honest with girls, but this one he was going to have to skip. He'd decided against telling Iris that they were through. It was too risky. He had other problems. He was running out of money fast. That meant he'd have to get back to the Money Plane. Well, this time he wasn't going to play around. He'd arrange to get all the money; arrange to meet Dorry somewhere handy, and they'd clear out.
"Shad, you can't go yet. It's safe now. He's gone away. He thinks I'm napping."
Shad scowled. "We ain't got us the time now. Besides, I'm all hop-toady inside after him sniffing around."
"But we were going to talk about the money from that airplane."
They were just words at first. In his eagerness to get free of the woman and her house, which had suddenly become as dangerous as a cocked shotgun, he let the words slip into the back of his brain -but he snatched them out fast and looked at them again.
"What?"
"The eighty thousand dollars. Everyone says you found it." He stared at her, tasting his lips, her lipstick.
"What are you saying?"
She was impatient with him. "The whole village is talking about the money you found. It's true, isn't it?"
He started shaking his head before he could find the words to deny it. "No-no, I don't know what they're talking about. I didn't find no Money Plane."
In his mind was a morass of desperation, filled with skull-crushing deadfalls of self-reproach at his own stupidity. That was why everyone was acting so peculiar, why they were tagging around after him, watching every move he made. I shouldn't have left home, he thought. Shouldn't have gone to pass out all those tens.
"You're lying, Shad," she said quietly.
He shook his head again.
"You did find that money. And you promised that if you ever did you'd bring it here to me. Why are you treating me like this?"
"You crazy as the rest of 'em! I tell you I didn't find nothing!"
"Don't lie to me, Shad. You said you wanted to tell me about it when you first came. You said you wanted to talk to me. You meant the money, didn't you? What else could you mean?"
He clutched at it. "I was trying to tell you that we was through. That's the something I had to say."
She gave a cry like an animal being hurt. "Shad! You don't mean that! You can't mean it."
He stuck to it doggedly, nodding his head.
"Yes, I do. I – I found me another girl – a younger girl."
He'd wanted to hurt- he knew her vanity was the only thing that would get the Money Plane from her mind -and he couldn't have done a better job if he'd gone to the pasture and brought in a handful of dung to throw in her face.
"Younger-" she said it as though it was the one valid word out of all the thousands, making something solid and tangible of it. "Younger than I."
"Well, my God," he cried. "I'm only twenty! And you- you-"
Fury blazed up like cornstalk on a hot day.
"You filthy little hillbilly! You contemptible little moron!" She stood up, looking wildly about the room for a weapon, anything. She saw her nail file on the dressing table and started for it.
Shad didn't know what she was going for, but he had an idea. He sprinted for the door, the outside door, and wrestled with the key. It opened and he stepped onto the porch. "I'm sorry, Iris," he called back. "I'm -"
Something smashed against the half-closed door. He ducked and slammed it shut. Then he ran for the woods. He could still smell the sweet stench of the shattered perfume bottle tagging after him.
10
It was twilight when the bus let Mr. Ferris out at the forks. The sun was already below the cabbage palms and now they looked stark, stooped like tired people caught in the suspension of their weary thoughts. Mr. Ferris, holding a small travelling bag, stepped carefully down into the dust and paused a moment, looking up and away with the look of a man who has returned to a remembered place.
A woman was coming from a shanty down in a grove of shaggy trees, coming with the brisk, bright determination of a duty that was almost a pleasure. Mr. Ferris remembered her, a Mrs. Ty Waldridge, and he recalled that she had an idiosyncrasy. She took a daily newspaper. Each day at sunset she came up to her gate near the fork and was handed her paper by the bus driver. The thing that Mr. Ferris had found so charming was that neither Mrs. Waldridge or her husband knew how to read. The newspaper was a red herring. Mrs. Waldridge liked to see who got on and off the bus, liked the moments of gossip with the driver and any of the female passengers she happened to know.
The bus was an ancient three-ton affair with a roaring old monster for an engine. The only time the passengers could communicate verbally was during the stops. When the bus was in motion you had to settle for face and hand signals- unless you wanted to strain your lungs shouting.
One man, sitting on the right, had the dress and mannerisms that marked him for a northerner. He looked out the window and up at the cabbage palms. His expression was cryptic. He and Mr. Ferris had become friendly on the way from the airport. He was travelling to Three Creek to visit relatives for the first time. He looked down at Mr. Ferris standing below him and smiled wryly. "So this is what you thought you'd missed?" he wondered.
Mr. Ferris' dry features moved almost imperceptibly, coming to a slow, considered smile. He turned his head right-shoulder, then left-shoulder and nodded. "It takes some getting used to. But you see what I mean about the primitive?"
"Oh yes, yes, that's plain enough."
Both men smiled, understanding each other, as separate as two European adventurers set down in the center of Inner Mongolia. And the man in the bus emphasized their agreement by canting his eyes meaningfully toward his travelling companions, all of them natives of the district.
"I'm going to miss your company, Mr. Ferris, I can assure you."
Mr. Ferris' laugh was soundless but obvious. "Get to know them," he suggested. "It's worth while. They'll make you feel right at home. Just don't bring up the Civil War."
The man in the bus grinned. "Never heard of it."
Mrs. Waldridge came through her gate and stopped short at the edge of the road, blinking at Mr. Ferris.
"Why -" she began. "Why, it's Mr. Ferris! Well, lan'sake, it is Mr. Ferris!"
Mr. Ferris turned, smiling his slow smile and lifted his grey Borsalino hat to her, hearing the man in the bus murmur, "Well, I'll be damned!"
"Mrs. – Waldridge, isn't it?" Mr. Ferris said. "So good to see you again. How have you been? And your husband?" He turned smoothly and held his hand out to the emerging driver. "I'll take the newspaper, thank you. Here you are, Mrs. Waldridge."
The poor fat lady was flustered, at a loss for words. Some of the women in the bus were acquaintances of hers. They gawked at her, saying nothing. Mrs. Waldridge started to take the paper in her left hand, became confused and also started to reach for it with her right, suffered a hand collision in mid-air, and stood for a brief embarrassed moment simply waving both hands helplessly saying, "Why -why, Mr. Ferris – why -"
Mr. Ferris said, "Quite all right." Then, as the worn-out engine burst into a clattering roar, he stepped clear of the road – taking Mrs. Waidridge's meaty elbow and assisting her as though she were made of Dresden – and turned back to wave at the man in the bus.