Eve said, “I gathered that.”
“I don’t know what he does around there, I guess he works for Harold. I don’t think Harold uses him too good, neither.”
Eve had never believed herself to be attracted to women in a sexual way. And this girl in her soiled and crumpled state seemed unlikely to appeal to anybody. But perhaps the girl did not believe this possible-she must be so used to appealing to people. At any rate she slid her hand along Eve’s bare thigh, just getting a little way beyond the hem of her shorts. It was a practiced move, drunk as she was. To spread the fingers, to grasp flesh on the first try, would have been too much. A practiced, automatically hopeful move, yet so lacking in any true, strong, squirmy, comradely lust that Eve felt that the hand might easily have fallen short and caressed the car upholstery.
“I’m okay,” the girl said, and her voice, like the hand, struggled to put herself and Eve on a new level of intimacy. “You know what I mean? You understand me. Okay?”
“Of course,” said Eve briskly, and the hand trailed away, its tired whore’s courtesy done with. But it had not failed-not altogether. Blatant and halfhearted as it was, it had been enough to set some old wires twitching.
And the fact that it could be effective in any way at all filled Eve with misgiving, flung a shadow backwards from this moment over all the rowdy and impulsive as well as all the hopeful and serious, the more or less unrepented-of, couplings of her life. Not a real flare-up of shame, a sense of sin-just a dirty shadow. What a joke on her, if she started to hanker now after a purer past and a cleaner slate.
But it could be just that still, and always, she hankered after love. She said, “Where is it you want to go?”
The girl jerked backwards, faced the road. She said, “Where you going? You live around here?” The blurred tone of seductiveness had changed, as no doubt it would change after sex, into a mean-sounding swagger.
“There’s a bus goes through the village,” Eve said. “It stops at the gas station. I’ve seen the sign.”
“Yeah but just one thing,” the girl said. “I got no money. See, I got away from there in such a hurry I never got to collect my money. So what use would it be me getting on a bus without no money?”
The thing to do was not to recognize a threat. Tell her that she could hitchhike, if she had no money. It wasn’t likely that she had a gun in her jeans. She just wanted to sound as if she might have one.
But a knife?
The girl turned for the first time to look into the backseat. “You kids okay back there?” she said.
No answer.
“They’re cute,” she said. “They shy with strangers?”
How stupid of Eve to think about sex, when the reality, the danger, were elsewhere.
Eve’s purse was on the floor of the car in front of the girl’s feet. She didn’t know how much money was in it. Sixty, seventy dollars. Hardly more. If she offered money for a ticket the girl would name an expensive destination. Montreal. Or at least Toronto. If she said, “Just take what’s there,” the girl would see capitulation. She would sense Eve’s fear and might try to push further. What was the best she could do? Steal the car? If she left Eve and the children beside the road, the police would be after her in a hurry. If she left them dead in some thicket, she might get farther. Or if she took them along while she needed them, a knife against Eve’s side or a child’s throat.
Such things happen. But not as regularly as on television or in the movies. Such things don’t often happen.
Eve turned onto the county road, which was fairly busy. Why did that make her feel better? Safety there was an illusion. She could be driving along the highway in the midst of the day’s traffic taking herself and the children to their deaths.
The girl said, “Where’s this road go?”
“It goes out to the main highway.”
“Let’s drive out there.”
“That’s where I am driving,” Eve said.
“Which way’s the highway go?”
“It goes north to Owen Sound or up to Tobermory where you get the boat. Or south to-I don’t know. But it joins another highway, you can get to Sarnia. Or London. Or Detroit or Toronto if you keep going.”
Nothing more was said until they reached the highway. Eve turned onto it and said, “This is it.”
“Which way you heading now?” “I’m heading north,” Eve said. “That the way you live then?” “I’m going to the village. I’m going to stop for gas.” “You got gas,” the girl said. “You got over half a tank.” That was stupid. Eve should have said groceries. Beside her the girl let out a long groan of decision, maybe of relinquishment.
“You know,” she said, “you know. I might as well get out here if I’m going to hitch a ride. I could get a ride here as easy as anyplace.”
Eve pulled over onto the gravel. Relief was turning into something like shame. It was probably true that the girl had run away without collecting any money, that she had nothing. What was it like to be drunk, wasted, with no money, at the side of the road?
“Which way you said we’re going?”
“North,” Eve told her again.
“Which way you said to Sarnia?”
“South. Just cross the road, the cars’ll be headed south. Watch out for the traffic.”
“Sure,” the girl said. Her voice was already distant; she was calculating new chances. She was half out of the car as she said, “See you.” And into the backseat, “See you guys. Be good.”
“Wait,” said Eve. She leaned over and felt in her purse for her wallet, got out a twenty-dollar bill. She got out of the car and came round to where the girl was waiting. “Here,” she said. “This’ll help you.”
“Yeah. Thanks,” the girl said, stuffing the bill in her pocket, her eyes on the road.
“Listen,” said Eve. “If you’re stranded I’ll tell you where my house is. It’s about two miles north of the village and the village is about half a mile north of here. North. This way. My family’s there now, but they should be gone by evening, if that bothers you. It’s got the name Ford on the mailbox. That’s not my name, I don’t know why it’s there. It’s all by itself in the middle of a field. It’s got one ordinary window on one side of the front door and a funny-looking little window on the other. That’s where they put in the bathroom.” “Yeah,” the girl said.
“It’s just that I thought, if you don’t get a ride-” “Okay,” the girl said. “Sure.”
When they had started driving again, Philip said, “Yuck. She smelled like vomit.”
A little farther on he said, “She didn’t even know you should look at the sun to tell directions. She was stupid. Wasn’t she?”
“I guess so,” Eve said.
“Yuck. I never ever saw anybody so stupid.”
As they went through the village he asked if they could stop for ice-cream cones. Eve said no.
“There’s so many people stopping for ice cream it’s hard to find a place to park,” she said. “We’ve got enough ice cream at home.”
“You shouldn’t say ‘home,’ ” said Philip. “It’s just where we’re staying. You should say ‘the house.’ ”
The big hay rolls in a field to the east of the highway were facing ends-on into the sun, so tightly packed they looked like shields or gongs or faces of Aztec metal. Past that was a field of pale soft gold tails or feathers.
“That’s called barley, that gold stuff with the tails on it,” she said to Philip.
He said, “I know.”
“The tails are called beards sometimes.” She began to recite, “ ‘But the reapers, reaping early, in among the bearded barley-’ ” Daisy said, “What does mean ‘pearly’?”
Philip said, “Bar-ley.”
“ ‘Only reapers, reaping early,’ ” Eve said. She tried to remember. “ ‘Save the reapers, reaping early-’ ” “Save” was what sounded best. Save the reapers.
Sophie and Ian had bought corn at a roadside stand. It was for dinner. Plans had changed-they weren’t leaving till morning. And they had bought a bottle of gin and some tonic and limes. Ian made the drinks while Eve and Sophie sat husking the corn. Eve said, “Two dozen. That’s crazy.”