To revert, then, to Jess Tyler, the Big Sandy, and the mine: The river empties into the Ohio not far from Huntington, W. Va., and a few miles from its mouth divides into two forks: the Levisa, which flows through eastern Kentucky, and the Tug, which, with the Big Sandy itself, forms the boundary between Kentucky and West Virginia. To the towns I have given fictitious names, but they are really fictitious, a blend of characteristics, in so far as their characteristics are deemed of interest, from both sides of the river. Yes, I have actually mined coal, and distilled liquor, as well as seen a girl in a pink dress, and seen her take it off. I am 54 years old, weight 220 pounds, and look like the chief dispatcher of a long-distance hauling concern. I am a registered Democrat. I drink.
JAMES M. CAIN
Los Angeles, Calif.
August 6, 1946
Chapter 1
She was sitting on the stoop when I came in from the fields, her suitcase beside her and one foot on the other knee, where she was shaking a shoe out that seemed to have sand in it. When she saw me she laughed, and I felt my face get hot, that she had caught me looking at her, and I hightailed it to the barn as fast as I could go. While I milked I watched, and saw her get up and walk all around, looking at my trees and my corn and my cabin, then go over to the creek and look at that and pitch a stone in. She was nineteen or twenty, kind of a medium size, with light hair, blue eyes, and a pretty shape. Her clothes were better than most mountain girls have, even if they were dusty, like she had walked up from the state road, where the bus ran. But if she was lost and asking her way, why didn’t she say something and get it over with? And if she wasn’t, why was she carrying a suitcase? When I was through milking, it was nearly dark, and I picked up my pails, came out of the barn, and walked over. “How do you do, miss?”
“Oh, hello.”
“Is there something you want?”
“How can I tell till I know what you’ve got?”
She laughed, and I felt my face hot again, because from how she sounded and how she looked, she could have meant a whole lot more than she said. “Miss, I think there’s a mistake. I think you’re looking for somebody else’s place, not mine.”
“I’m looking for you.”
“You never seen me before, so how do you know?”
“Maybe I saw your picture.”
“Maybe you know my name?”
“Sure I know it. You’re Jess Tyler.”
“... I asked you once, what do you want?”
“I told you once, how can I tell? ... If you invited me in now, and told me to look around a little bit, why then I might pick something out.”
“I don’t like people making fun.”
“Maybe I’m not.”
She went to the pump, picked up the cup, and came back to where I had set down the milk. “I see one thing I want, right away.”
“That milk’s fresh, it’s not cold.”
“I like it warm, with foam on it.”
She dipped up a cup, tasted it, then opened her mouth and poured it in. She gulped fast, but not fast enough, and a little ran out. “If somebody stuck their tongue out, they could stop that trickle on my chin.”
I wiped with the back of my hand, and her eyes got a funny look in them, like I was pretty slow.
“Will you kindly tell your business?”
“Can’t you take a hint? For one thing, it’s supper time, and I kind of feel like I could put away a little food.”
“I never sent anybody away hungry.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Who from?”
“Don’t you know?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Look who’s raring up.”
My cabin is log, but it’s better than most, because it’s always been in my family, and we’re not trash like a lot of them around here. Some of the furniture goes back a hundred years, as you can tell from the dates carved on the chairs, but the plaster, whitewash, and underpinning I did myself, and some of the stuff I got when the coal camp broke up and people left things behind, specially the super, that give me four rag rugs. While I was cooking supper she went all over the front room and looked at everything in it, the pictures, settles by the fireplace, andirons, chairs, and knitted table covers, then got on her knees and felt the floor, because it’s pine and gets scoured with sand every week, so it’s white as snow and soft as silk. Then she did the same for the back room. Coming into the lean-to, where I was at the stove, she stopped and sniffed what I was cooking, and from the way her nose turned up I had her figured out, or thought I had. “Anyway, you’re a Morgan.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You favor them. They all look alike.”
“The way you say it, it’s nothing to be proud of.”
“I wasn’t saying any special way.”
“Still, I guess no man likes his wife’s family.”
“He might, if he liked his wife.”
“Didn’t you like Belle?”
“Once, I loved her.”