Soldiers Pay Part 28

"Sure." He looked about, then beckoned to a negro youth reclining miraculously on a steel cable that angled up to a telephone pole. "Here, son."

The negro said Suh? without moving. "Git up dar, boy. Dat white man talkin' to you," said a companion, squatting on his heels against the wall. The lad rose and a coin spun arcing from Gilligan's hand.

"Keep your eye on them bags till I come back, will you?"

"Awright, cap'm." The boy slouched over to the bags and became restfully and easily static beside them, going to sleep immediately, like a horse.

"d.a.m.n 'em, they do what you say, but they make you feel so-so--"

"Immature, don't they?" she suggested.

"That's it. Like you was a kid or something and that they'd look after you even if you don't know exactly what you want."

"You are a funny sort, Joe. And nice. Too nice to waste."

Her profile was sharp, pallid against a doorway darkly opened. "I'm giving you a chance not to waste me."

"Come on, let's walk a bit." She took his arm and moved slowly along the track, conscious that her ankles were being examined. The two threads of steel ran narrowing and curving away beyond trees. If you could see them as far as you can see, farther than you can see. . . .

"Huh?" asked Gilligan, walking moodily beside her.

"Look at the spring, Joe. See, in the trees: summer is almost here, Joe."

"Yes, summer is almost here. Funny, ain't it? I'm always kind of surprised to find that things get on about the same, spite of us. I guess old nature does too much of a wholesale business to ever be surprised at us, let alone worrying if we ain't quite the fellows we think we ought to of been."

Holding his arm, walking a rail: "What kind of fellows do we think we ought to have been, Joe?"

"I don't know what kind of a fel-I mean girl you think you are and I don't know what kind of a fellow I think I am, but I know you and I tried to help nature make a good job out of a poor one without having no luck at it."

Flat leaves cupped each a drop of sunlight and the trees seemed coolly on fire with evening. Here was a wooden footbridge crossing a stream and a footpath mounting a hill. "Let's sit on the rail of the bridge," she suggested, guiding him toward it. Before he could help her she had turned her back to the rail and her straightening arms raised her easily. She hooked her heels over a lower rail and he mounted beside her. "Let's have a cigarette."

She produced a pack from her handbag and he accepted one, sc.r.a.ping a match. "Who has had any luck in this business?" she asked.

"The loot has."

"No, he hasn't. When you are married you are either lucky or unlucky, but when you are dead you aren't either: you aren't anything."

"That's right. He don't have to bother about his luck anymore. . . . The padre's lucky, though."

"How?"

"Well, if you have hard luck and your hard luck pa.s.ses away, ain't you lucky?"

"I don't know. You are too much for me now, Joe."

"And how about that girl? Fellow's got money, I hear, and no particular brains. She's lucky."

"Do you think she's satisfied?" Gilligan gazed at her attentively, not replying. "Think how much fun she could have got out of being so romantically widowed, and so young. I'll bet she's cursing her luck this minute."

He regarded her with admiration. "I always thought I'd like to be a buzzard," he remarked, "but now I think I'd like to be a woman."

"Good gracious, Joe. Why in the world?"

"Now, long as you're being one of them sybils, tell me about this bird Jones. He's lucky."

"How lucky?"

"Well, he gets what he wants, don't he?"

"Not the women he wants."

"Not exactly. Certainly he don't get all the women he wants. He has failed twice to my knowledge. But failure don't seem to worry him. That's what I mean by lucky." Their cigarettes arced together into the stream, hissing. "I guess bra.s.s gets along about as well as anything else with women."

"You mean stupidity."

"No, I don't. Stupidity. That's the reason I can't get the one I want."

She put her hand on his arm. "You aren't stupid, Joe. And you aren't bold, either."

"Yes, I am. Can you imagine me considering anybody else's feelings when they's something I want?"

"I can't imagine you doing anything without considering someone else's feelings. "

Offended, he became impersonal. "*Course you are ent.i.tled to your own opinion. I know I ain't bold like the man in that story. You remember? accosted a woman on the street and her husband was with her and knocked him down. When he got up, brus.h.i.+ng himself off, a man says: *For heaven's sake, friend, do you do that often?' and the bird says: *Sure. Of course I get knocked down occasionally, but you'd be surprised.' I guess he just charged the beating to overhead," he finished with his cld sardonic humour.

She laughed out. Then she said: "Why don't you try that, Joe?"

He looked at her quietly for a time. She met his gaze unwavering and he slipped to his feet facing her, putting his arm around her. "What does that mean, Margaret?"

She made no reply and he lifted her down. She put her arms over his shoulders. "You don't mean anything by it," he told her quietly, touching her mouth with his. His clasp became lax.

"Not like that, Joe."

"Not like what?" he asked stupidly. For answer she drew his face down to hers and kissed him with slow fire. Then they knew that after all they were strangers to each other. He hastened to fill an uncomfortable interval. "Does that mean you will?"

"I can't, Joe," she answered, standing easily in his arms.

"But why not, Margaret? You never give me any reason."

She was silent in profile against sunshot green. "If I didn't like you so much, I wouldn't tell you. But it's your name, Joe, Gilligan. I couldn't marry a man named Gilligan."

He was really hurt. "I'm sorry," he said dully. She laid her cheek against his. On the crest of the hill tree trunks were a barred grate beyond which the fires of evening were dying away. "I could change it," he suggested.

Across the evening came a long sound. "There's your train," he said.

She thrust herself slightly from him, to see his face. "Joe, forgive me. I didn't mean that--"

"That's all right," he interrupted, patting her back with awkward gentleness. "Come on, let's get back."

The locomotive appeared blackly at the curve, plumed with .steam like a sinister squat knight and grew larger without seeming to progress. But it was moving and it roared past the station in its own good time, bearing the puny controller of its destiny like a goggled greasy excrescence in its cab. The train jarred to a stop and an eruption of white-jacketed porters.

She put her arms about him again to the edification of the by-standers. "Joe, I didn't mean that. But don't you see, I have been married twice already, with d.a.m.n little luck either time, and I just haven't the courage to risk it again. But if I could marry anyone, don't you know it would be you? Kiss me, Joe." He complied. "Bless your heart, darling. If I married you you'd be dead in a year, Joe. All the men that marry me die, you know."

"I'll take the risk," he told her.

"But I won't. I'm too young to bury three husbands." People got off, pa.s.sed them, other people got on. And above all like an obbligato the vocal compet.i.tion of cabmen. "Joe, does it really hurt you for me to go?" He looked at her dumbly, "Joe!" she exclaimed, and a party pa.s.sed them. It was Mr. and Mrs. George Farr: they saw Cecily's stricken face as she melted graceful and fragile and weeping into her father's arms. And here was Mr. George Farr morose and thunderous behind her. Ignored.

"What did I tell you?" Mrs. Mahon said, clutching Gilligan's arm.

"You're right," he answered, from his own despair. "It's a sweet honeymoon he's had, poor devil."

The party pa.s.sed on around the station and she looked at Gilligan again. "Joe, come with me."

"To a minister?" he asked with resurgent hope.

"No, just as we are. Then when we get fed up all we need do is wish each other luck and go our ways." He stared at her, shocked. "d.a.m.n your Presbyterian soul, Joe. Now you think I'm a bad woman."

"No I don't, ma'am. But I can't do that. . . ."

"Why not?"

"I dunno: I just can't."

"But what difference does it make?"

"Why, none, if it was just your body I wanted. But I want-I want--"

"What do you want, Joe?"

"h.e.l.l. Come on, let's get aboard."

"You are coming then?"

"You know I ain't. You knew you were safe when you said that."

He picked up her bags. A porter ravished them skilfully from him and he helped her into the car. She sat upon green plush and he removed his hat awkwardly, extending his hand. "Well, good-bye."

Her face pallid and calm beneath her small white and black hat, above her immaculate collar. She ignored his hand.

"Look at me, Joe. Have I ever told you a lie?"

"No," he admitted.

"Then don't you know I am not lying now? I meant what I said. Sit down."

"No, no. I can't do it that way. You know I can't."

"Yes. I can't even seduce you, Joe. I'm sorry. I'd like to make you happy for a short time, if I could. But I guess it isn't in the cards, is it?" She raised her face and he kissed her.

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Joe."

But why not? he thought with cinders under his feet, why not take her this way? I could persuade her in time, perhaps before we reached Atlanta. He turned and sprang back on board the train. He hadn't much time and when he saw that her seat was empty he rushed through the car in a mounting excitement. She was not in the next car either.

Have I forgotten which car she is in? he thought. But no, that was where he had left her, for there was the negro youth, still motionless opposite the window. He hurried back to take another look at her place. Yes, there were her bags. He ran, blundering into other pa.s.sengers, the whole length of the train. She was not there.

She has changed her mind and got off, looking for me, he thought, in an agony of futile endeavour. He slammed open a vestibule and leaped to the ground as the train began to move. Careless of how he must look to the station loungers he leaped toward the waiting room. It was empty, a hurried glance up and down the platform did not discover her and he turned despairing to the moving train.

She must be on it! he thought furiously, cursing himself because he had not stayed on it until she reappeared. For now the train was moving too swiftly and all the vestibules were closed. Then the last car slid smoothly past and he saw her standing on the rear platform where she had gone in order to see him again and where he had not thought of looking for her.

"Margaret!" he cried after the arrogant steel thing, running vainly down the track after it, seeing it smoothly distancing him. "Margaret?" he cried again, stretching his arms to her, to the vocal support of the loungers.

"Whup up a little, mister," a voice advised. "Ten to one on the train," a sporting one offered. There were no takers.

He stopped at last, actually weeping with anger and despair, watching her figure, in its dark straight dress and white collar and cuffs, become smaller and smaller with the diminis.h.i.+ng train that left behind a derisive whistle blast and a trailing fading vapour like an insult; moving along twin threads of steel out of his sight and his life.

. . . . At last he left the track at right angles and climbed a wire fence into woods where spring becoming languorous with summer turned sweetly nightward, though summer had not quite come.

VI.

Deep in a thicket from which the evening was slowly dissolving a thrush sang four liquid notes. Like the shape of her mouth, he thought, feeling the heat of his pain become cool with the cooling of sunset. The small stream murmured busily like a faint incantation and repeated alder shoots leaned over it Narcissus-like. The thrush disturbed, flashed a modest streak of brown deeper into the woods, and sang again. Mosquitoes spun about him, unresisted: he seemed to get ease from their sharp irritation. Something else to think about.

I could have made up to her. I would make up to her for everything that ever hurt her, so that when she remembered things that once hurt her she'd say: Was this I? If I could just have told her! Only I couldn't seem to think of what to say. Me, that talks all the time, being stuck for words. . . . Aimlessly he followed the stream. Soon it ran among violet shadows, among willows and he heard a louder water. Parting the willows he came upon an old mill-race and a small lake calmly repeating the calm sky and the opposite dark trees. He saw fish gleaming dully upon the earth, and the b.u.t.tocks of a man.

"Lost something?" he asked, watching ripples spread from the man's submerged arm. The other heaved himself to his hands and knees, looking up over his shoulder.

"Dropped my terbaccer," he replied, in an unemphatic drawl. "Don't happen to have none on you, do you?"

"Got a cigarette, if that'll do you any good." Gilligan offered his pack and the other, squatting back on his heels, took one.

"Much obliged. Feller likes a little smoke once in a while, don't he?"

"Fellow likes a lot of little things in this world, once in a while."

The other guffawed, not comprehending, but suspecting a reference to s.e.x. "Well, I ain't got any o' that, but I got the next thing to it." He rose, lean as a hound, and from beneath a willow clump he extracted a gallon jug. With awkward formality he tendered it. "Allers take a mite with me when I go fis.h.i.+ng," he explained. "Seems to make the fish bite more 'n the muskeeters less."

Gilligan took the jug awkwardly. What in h.e.l.l did you do with it? "Here, lemme show you," his host said, relieving him of it. Crooking his first finger through the handle the man raised the jug with a round backhanded sweep to his horizontal upper arm, craning his neck until his mouth met the mouth of the vessel. Gilligan could see his pumping adarn's apple against the pale sky. He lowered the jug and drew the back of his hand across his mouth. "That's how she's done," he said, handing the thing to Gilligan.

Gilligan tried it with inferior success, feeling the stuff chill upon his chin, sopping the front of his waistcoat. But in his throat it was like fire: it seemed to explode pleasantly as soon as it touched his stomach. He lowered the vessel, coughing.

"Good G.o.d, what is it?"

The other laughed hoa.r.s.ely, slapping his thighs. "Never drunk no corn before, hain't you? But how does she feel inside? Better'n out, don't she?"

Gilligan admitted that she did. He could feel all his nerves like electric filaments in a bulb: he was conscious of nothing else. Then it became a warmth and an exhilaration. He raised the jug again and did better.

I'll go to Atlanta tomorrow and find her, catch her before she takes a train out of there, he promised himself. I will find her: she cannot escape me forever. The other drank again and Gilligan lit a cigarette. He too knew a sense of freedom, of being master of his destiny. I'll go to Atlanta tomorrow, find her, make her marry me, he repeated. Why did I let her go?"