A Garden of Earthly Delights (18 page)

He washed her and dried her with a thin white towel. It wasn't big enough and got wet right away, so he finished drying her with his shirt. Clara stood with her hair fallen down one side of her head. She felt the man's breath against her face, against her shoulders. When she opened her eyes he was handing her clothes to her.

“You're going back home,” he said.

She nodded meekly and took her things.

“I don't want them to hurt you back there.” Clara turned slightly, shyly, as he spoke. “Do they knock you around much back there?”

“You mean my pa? No.”

He helped her button up the dress. Clara stood obediently. “I'm tired,” she said. “I don't feel right.” He said nothing. When he was finished, Clara turned sharply. “I lost my purse,” she said.

“What?”

“I lost my purse—”

“What purse?”

She looked around. She saw nothing.

“I don't remember any purse,” he said.

They went outside and he drove back to the camp. It was late; Clara could smell that it was late. She wondered if Carleton was back. The dull, sullen ache in her body for this man did not go away but grew heavier at the thought of what might happen to her if Carleton was home.

She opened the door. Insects were swirling around his headlights.

“You want money to buy another purse?” he said.

“No.”

“I thought that's maybe what you wanted.”

Clara had never thought of that. She felt hot and ashamed. After a moment the man said slowly, “Look, if you want to see me before I leave—come early tomorrow. But you better stay away.”

She nodded and ran down the lane.

Her brain was pounding with terror. She had never done anything like this, had never gone so far. She felt driven by the same God that had possessed the minister, making his voice shrill and furious at once, making his legs jerk him about on that platform. God had torn out of that man's mouth sobs and groans of desperation; Clara understood what he must have felt.

She ran along the big low building until she came to their place. Then she stopped. The door was open and the lights were on. “Is she out there?” her father's voice said. Clara paused, outside the circle of light, then came forward. Carleton was sitting inside, on the end of his cot. Clara saw Nancy's face. Roosevelt and Rodwell were hiding behind her. Carleton got to his feet and came to the doorway. He walked so carefully that she knew he was drunk.

“Somebody seen you where you shouldn't of been,” he said. His face was ugly. Clara did not move. She saw his arm draw back even before he knew what he was going to do.

“Bitch just like your mother!” he said.

He began to beat her. Inside, Nancy shrieked for help. Clara tried to break away but could not because he was holding her. Lights came on. Someone yelled out. Carleton was swearing at her, words she had heard all her life but had never understood, and now she understood them all—they were to show hate, to show that someone wanted to kill you. Then Carleton let her go. He stumbled backward and she saw that two men were holding on to him. “They want to get up an' leave, they don't stay home, they run off—the bitches—just like their mother,” Carleton shouted. “They don't stay home but run off ! Bitches don't love nobody— Clara don't give a damn, my Clara—” He began to sob. Someone shook his shoulders to quiet him down.

“You let that girl alone tonight, you hear?” a man said.

“She run off an'— Dirty filthy bitch like all of them—”

“Walpole, are you goin to let her alone?”

They got him inside and on the cot. He fell asleep almost at once, as soon as his head was down. Clara rubbed her face and saw that it was bleeding. She looked at Nancy just once and then quit looking. She knew that Nancy had been in the tavern somewhere, that Nancy was the one who'd seen her, but she did not care. The
blood that ran into her mouth was the only real thing: she could taste that. Roosevelt and Rodwell, her brothers, were nothing to her. Let them look. Let them snicker. Nancy was nothing. Her father, snoring damply on the bed, his face flushed and his shirt unbut-toned to show his sunken chest and his soft, spreading stomach, was real to her now but not for long.

The neighbors went back to bed. Nancy turned off the light. They lay in the dark and listened to Carleton snore, and then everyone went to sleep except Clara. She lay still and thought. It was as if a great cooling breeze had been blowing toward her for years and now it had overtaken her and was going to carry her with it. That was all.

Carleton woke up. Someone was shouting in his face.

“What's wrong with you? Get up!”

He opened his eyes to see a strange woman shouting down at him. She had a round leathery face with exaggerated eyes that could have been anyone's—a man's or a woman's.

“How long are you goin to lay there? Goddamn you! Your darling little daughter is run off and we got to get to work—it's goin on six, what the hell's wrong with you?”

He pushed Nancy away and sat up. His eyes darted around the room.

“We got to get out there before the bus leaves,” Nancy said viciously. “I fed the kids while you laid there snorin—what's wrong with you these days? Can't take a little drinkin no more? It ain't like you worked those two days—what a big joke! Get all the way out there an' the man tells you poor bastards it's all off—”

Carleton got to his feet. He was wearing his clothes from yesterday; his shoes were still on. Inside his stomach a hard knot was forming. He stood with his shoulders hunched and his head bowed, listening and not listening to Nancy, paying close attention to the knot in his stomach. It was familiar but might get out of hand yet. He was getting ready to think about Clara.

“You all right?” Nancy said.

She put one arm around him. He did not move. “You look kinda sick,” she said. Carleton pushed her gently away. He did not want to move fast for fear he would get something into motion he could not stop. “Yeah—like I said about Clara—she ran off,” Nancy said. She had a whining, defensive voice. “You shouldn't of hit her like that, she ain't a bad kid. You know it. I don't blame her for runnin off, I run off myself, I wasn't goin to take none of that crap from nobody—”

Carleton bent over the basin and splashed cold water onto his face. It was strange, but he could feel the water running down the outside of his skin as if it were far away from him, while he himself contemplated it from somewhere deep inside.

“We better get out there. It's goin to be hot today,” Nancy said. His silence made her nervous; she was speaking almost quietly now. “Honey, are you all right?”

The ball in his stomach threatened him for an instant but he fought it down. He didn't want to throw up and have that taste in his mouth. The water on his face made his skin itch and he watched his hand come up to rub it. He watched his fingers scratch at his skin, then he forgot about scratching and stood with one hand up to his face in a pose of abstract thinking. His brain was just now waking up. It told him harshly that he had a lot of thinking to do—he had to get things sorted out. For weeks, months, years he had been letting things accumulate. If he did not get them straight and understand them he would never be able to get free of them and begin a new life.

“Is the baby all right?” he said.

“Sure.” Nancy sounded touched by this.

“How much money do you have?”

“What?”

“How much money?”

“You mean—right now?”

“I gave you three dollars Friday.”

“I—I had to buy food—”

“Here. Take this.” He reached deep in his pocket and took out a soiled ball of material that might have been silk. He unwrapped it
and gave her a few dollars from it; he did not notice how she was staring at him. She might have been waiting for him to hit her, so white and strained was her face. “That should help, then you'll make somethin today. Twelve or fifteen today, you an' the kids.”

“Where are you goin?”

He put the rest of the money back in his pocket. At the mirror he crouched so that he could see his face. The knot in his stomach grew tighter: that did not seem to be his face staring helplessly back out at him. “Christ,” he said. He rubbed his eyes, his mouth. Everything was stale from his drunken sleep. An image came to him of Clara cringing back from his hands—but he shook it away. He knew that he would have a lot to shake out of his mind before he could stop thinking.

“Honey, are you goin after her? Carleton?”

He left the room and stepped into the bright, innocent sunlight, making a face. He might have been walking past a stranger who was pleading with him, pulling at his arm. Nancy said, frightened, “Where the hell will you look? Carleton? I mean—where are you goin? She'll be back! You don't want to make no trouble with people from town—”

Carleton tucked his shirt into his trousers, raising his aching shoulders as high as he could. His two boys were waiting patiently outside. They looked at him. He glanced at them as he might have glanced at two strange boys, one with a lowered, pinkish head and the other with a careful blank face that was poised upon a body about to break into a run at any second. They both had Carleton's look—a long, narrow, thin face—and he had the idea that they would never get much bigger than they were. “You mind Nancy,” he said to them.

She followed him along the lane, tugging at his arm. “Look, she'll be back. Clara likes you real well—she'll be back—she only took a few things, an' no money—”

She followed him out to the road. Carleton pushed her back, still without looking at her. He walked in a precarious falling motion forward, as if he were listening to something ahead of him. Nancy began to cry. She cried loudly. As he walked toward town he heard
her swearing at him, shrieks of words that flew right by his head and did not hurt him. “I'll kill that baby! That goddamn dirty baby!” she screamed.

He listened to her screaming, then he stopped hearing her. He seemed to pass beyond her screaming and beyond her life with no more effort than he might have walked past a crazy woman on the road.

When he reached town he was soaked with sweat. A dusty clock in a gas station said four-thirty but he knew from the sun that it was around six. The town had not yet gotten out of bed, only a few places were open. He walked along the road until there were some dirt paths and he walked on them, up the incline to the railroad tracks and then down on the other side. There were lots of weeds growing by the tracks and many junked and rusting cars and parts. On the other side of the tracks he saw a restaurant that was open. He went inside and asked about Clara. A few truck drivers were sitting at the counter. They watched him closely, as if there were something in his voice that he himself did not know about. “I did see a girl like that last night,” the waitress said. She had high-piled brown hair and a very young face; as she spoke to Carleton the freckles around her nose seemed to get darker, showing how young she was. She was almost as young as Clara. Carleton waited, listening to her with his shoulders back and straight even though they ached. He did not seem surprised that the first person he should ask would have seen Clara. The girl talked earnestly, about that other, lost girl she'd seen, about her long blond hair and blue dress and even a yellow purse—she was excited to think she could remember so much and looked up at Carleton as if awaiting praise for so much information. “Who was she with? Who was he?” Carleton asked, cutting her off. The girl gave a name Carleton had never heard before, but he knew he would not forget it. “Where does he live?” he said patiently, again cutting her off. She told him. It was necessary for her to come out from behind the counter, pretending to be a little frightened, glancing at the truck drivers as she spoke to Carleton. She went to the door and even outside with him, pointing down the street.

He walked off, not hurrying. He did not even want to hurry; it
wasn't to maintain his pride that he walked slowly. It was just that he knew he had to go a certain distance before he allowed that hard ball in his stomach to take over.

The house was a nice little house on a side street. In the front yard were beds of flowers that confused him—he had not expected flowers. But when the door opened and a middle-aged woman stared up at him, her face drawn and pale and her hair untidy, he was not surprised. “Is your son home?” he said politely. She clutched a robe of some kind around her. It smelled like mothballs. He could sense her thinking of something to say and then forgetting it because she was so upset. He waited while she went to get her son. Standing on the porch, inside the veranda that was so nicely shaded with big round leaves, he did not even bother to glance in the house, through the door she'd left ajar. He had no interest in anything but groping his way to Clara through a number of people, and those people could interest him only faintly. He might have felt excitement at meeting the boy, but he seemed to know that this was too fast, too easy; it would take more time than this.

The woman was gone quite a while. It might have been ten minutes. Then Carleton began to hear footsteps. They were on a stairway, heavy and reluctant. Someone was whispering, then there was silence. A young man emerged out of the dimness of the house and blinked at Carleton. “You know anything about my daughter?” Carleton said. The boy wore baggy yellow pajamas. At first he stammered and swallowed, he knew nothing. Then Carleton asked him again. He made a hissing sound that was a laugh, raised his eyebrows, scratched his head. “There was someone, I guess,” he said slowly. “She was with this guy who comes here once in a while—he don't live here—mixed up with whiskey or somethin—that's what somebody said—I—”

“Where's he stayin?”

“He goes to this one place when he comes in town,” the boy said. He had the waitress's sincere look. He stared right into Carleton's eyes as if the two of them were friends involved in a mutual problem. “Yeah. Yes. Over on the other side of town, a big dirty house where the woman has ten kids—she rents rooms—there's one like her in every town—”

Carleton made a gesture that he hadn't meant to be threatening, but the boy stammered and was silent. “Thanks,” Carleton said.