Deep Summer (13 page)

She was too tired even to cry. Vaguely, in disconnected pictures, she saw the manor at Silverwood and the long dinners of spiced meats and European wines and herself facing Caleb across the table, and she remembered the gardens of Ardeith and the fields of tobacco and indigo as she had seen them through the windows of the room where her baby was born, and her tiny little baby lying in the crook of her arm. But they seemed hazy, like some remembered pleasure of childhood, too remote to cause anything but a nostalgic pain. How misunderstanding those people had been, turning that period into the sneering triumph of a wanton instead of an interlude granted by a happy-tempered God. But she couldn’t think vehemently enough now even to hate them, or to tell one sensation from another; she felt like nothing but a huddle of misery and aching bones. But she was too tired even to feel like that long. It was only a few minutes before she went to sleep.

When she awoke it was nearly dark. She drew a long breath and turned over on her back. For awhile she lay where she was, her eyes following a crack in the plaster wall, while she wondered what was going to become of her. She could get back to New Orleans eventually, no doubt, but when she got there what? Aunt Juanita might let her serve in the tavern again, and heaven knew it was a better place than this, or again Aunt Juanita might not; the chances were she’d say Dolores was a bad ungrateful girl for running away. Or she might try selling fruit on the docks, but anybody with half a head on his shoulders could foretell where you ended if you started hawking things on the docks, unless you were an ugly old hag sailors bought from out of pity. She could always jump in the river, if she went down below the wharfs where there weren’t any well-meaning folks to fish her out. And she might as well be dead as have a baby she wasn’t allowed even to look at, or try to go on living among this cruel human race that hadn’t let her have any peace since the day she was born.

Oh, she did want to be decent, Dolores told herself bitterly, but everything she tried to do was wrong and got her into trouble, and whether it was her own fault or other people’s she was too fuddled with unhappiness to decide. And in the meantime it was beginning to be night, and she couldn’t stay in this hole without a candle. She got up shivering, thinking it must be going to rain soon. There was some water left in the bucket so she took another drink and washed herself as well as she could. She had no soap, and she had to use a chemise out of her box for a towel, but cold water on her face and arms was refreshing. When she had washed her face she took off her stockings and sat with her feet in the water, for they were aching with so much walking on the road last night and on that sun-baked wharf this morning. At last, when she put on fresh stockings and another pair of shoes, and dressed and combed her hair as well as she could without a mirror, she felt almost well. Not having a glass was annoying until she remembered sardonically that it was safer here not to look attractive. She wrapped her discarded clothes around the pieces of silver she had taken from Ardeith, made sure her bag of money was safely tied under her petticoats with only a few necessary coins in the purse, re-corded the box and went out, locking the door behind her.

The taproom was full of men now, eating and drinking. A few of them were getting rowdy already. One soldier with a Cuban accent pulled her by the arm and tried to make her sit on the bench by him; Dolores laughed stupidly and pretended she didn’t speak Spanish and didn’t know what he wanted. She made her way to the counter and told the waiting-woman she wanted candles. Now that she had slept she felt well enough to chaffer about the price, and got three for what the woman wanted her to pay for one. Some kind of row was going on by the door. The words were English. Dolores turned around and looked, leaning back with her arms stretched along the counter, and reflecting that it was fortunate she had been asleep all afternoon, for it was a good thing not to need much sleep tonight; she’d have to be alert if those tipsy fools found out there was a woman alone in a room behind the bar.

The pock-faced bartender was throwing out a man who couldn’t pay for what he had ordered.

“Hey you, listen,” the man exclaimed. “Is it my fault I ain’t had a job of work all day? Them folks don’t want nothing but nigger slaves on the docks.”

“I said for you to get out,” the bartender repeated loudly. “Ain’t I been trusting you three days for all you done et?”

“I said I’d pay for it soon’s I got a piece of work to do! Look here, I ain’t had a bite since this morning. How can I get work to pay you if I don’t get nothing in my belly?”

Two or three customers, amused by the argument, had come closer to listen. They were apparently hoping for a fight, and it did look as if there might be one. The man from outside would have the advantage, for he was muscular and healthy-looking, and Dolores thought a blow on the jaw might be good for the bartender, but she didn’t want to get caught in a general fracas. She wheeled around and faced the waiting-woman, who was looking on with her under lip stuck out contemptuously.

“Give me a plate of supper,” said Dolores. “Hurry up.”

“What you want?” The query was reluctant; the argument really did look on the verge of a fight, and the woman was loth to return to business.

“Whatever you got. And beer.”

The woman stuck under her nose a plate on which was a pile of rice and another pile of river-shrimp with some greasy sort of gravy poured over both, and a piece of bread. Dolores picked up the plate in one hand and the beer-mug in the other and made her way toward the door.

“Here, mister,” she said. Here’s your supper. Don’t jiggle my arm, you—” this to another man in the group looking on—“do you want to make me spill it?”

The stranger was looking down at her, a slow grin spreading on his face. “What you mean, lady?”

“I mean it’s your supper.” She jerked her head toward the bartender. “You can quit growling. It’s paid for. This here gentleman is a friend of mine.”

The bartender raised his voice. “Say, Lucy, this woman pay for supper?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“All right. I wouldn’t pay him no mind if I was you, lady. He ain’t got a penny.”

Dolores set the plate on the end of the nearest table and pulled at the man’s sleeve.

“You better eat it, mister.”

He was eying the food hungrily. But as he sat down he hesitated, glancing up at her. “Say, ma’am, do I know you?”

“No. But you go on and eat. Be my company.”

He tasted the beer, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and reached up to catch her wrist as she started off.

“Ain’t you gonta stay?”

“Take your hands off me, can’t you?” said Dolores.

He obeyed. “Sorry, ma’am. I just thought—”

“Well, you made a mistake.”

He dug his spoon into the rice and looked up to smile at her again. It wasn’t a leering smile, but a pleasant grateful curiosity. She felt herself smiling back at him.

“I just meant you’re right nice, ma’am, bringing supper to a fellow you ain’t never laid eyes on before, and I sure am thankful. It’s hungry work tramping them docks, specially when you can’t find nothing to do. Just sit down a spell. I ain’t meaning no harm.”

Dolores sat down on the bench opposite, resting her chin on her hands. He was eating so fast that for a few moments he didn’t say anything else. She watched him. He had a big arched nose and a cleft chin, and a broad mouth with beautiful teeth. His hair was brown, bleached on top by the sun. His shirt had once been blue, but the color had faded out except at the seams, and it was torn in two places at the shoulder. She had noticed another tear in his stocking just below the knee. Evidently he didn’t have any woman to attend to him.

He looked up from his plate. His eyes were blue, under thick eyebrows sun-bleached so light that they looked almost white on his tanned face.

“How’d you happen to get me supper, lady?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she murmured. “I reckon you looked kind of lonesome.”

“You had your supper?”

She shook her head. It was the first time she had remembered that she had eaten nothing all day but a banana and a bunch of grapes.

“You better have some.”

“I don’t want any. That’s yours.”

“You better have some. Look here.” He dipped the bread into the beer and passed it across. “You just eat that. It’s good when you ain’t got no appetite.”

She took it, and began to eat. It did taste good.

“Like it?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Them candles you got stuck in your bosom is gonta melt if you don’t take ’em out,” he said.

Dolores laughed and laid the candles on the table. “I was forget about them.”

“What makes you talk so funny?” he inquired.

“I don’t be English.”

“Creole?”

“Yes. Spanish. New Orleans.”

“Been up here long?”

“Not so very.”

“What’s your name?”

“Dolores.” She stopped. Sheramy she dared not say; Bondio caught behind her tongue.

“I’m named Thad Upjohn.” He hesitated, then asked, “What you doing here, Miss Dolores?”

“I just dropped in.”

This did not seem to satisfy him. “Your husband here too?” he asked.

Dolores bit her lip. “I haven’t got a husband.”

“Then how come you wear a wedding ring?”

“Why don’t you use your mouth for eating?” she snapped.

Thad Upjohn dropped his eyes. “Excuse me, ma’am. I didn’t go to start no argument.”

Dolores put her forehead down on her hands and pushed her fingers through her hair. “Oh, I don’t be cross on purpose. But I’ve got such a misery in the heart it makes me mean.”

“Sure, sure,” he said to her gently. “It don’t matter. I’m sorry you feel bad.”

She did not answer or look up. After awhile he said to her,

“Look here, Miss Dolores. I ain’t got nothing to buy it for you, but you’ll feel better if you eat a little something.”

“You reckon?”

“I sure do. You look mighty peaked.”

Dolores reached down into her dress and took out her purse. “All right. You get it. But not that mess of shrimp.”

He came back with some bread and cheese and a mug of beer. “Now you eat this here, ma’am. You’ll feel better.”

She bit into it. “Don’t you want some more beer for yourself?”

“I don’t like letting you buy it, Miss Dolores.”

“I wish you would. I mean—well, as long as you stay here by me nobody pesters me.”

He crossed his arms around his empty plate. “I can sit around without no beer, lady.”

“Lord, but you’re decent,” she said in a tired little voice. “You’re the first man I’ve met today that hasn’t treated me like trash.”

Thad Upjohn shrugged. “Well, you was right nice to me. It made me feel better.”

“Did you feel as bad as that?” she asked.

“I felt kind of bad. It ain’t so easy getting along these times.”

“I didn’t think,” said Dolores, “that men had such trouble getting along.”

“They do when there ain’t no work for ’em, like now.”

“Why ain’t there no work?”

“Well, it’s hard to say. Some says it’s the war, and not so many boats needing to be loaded as there used to be. Then all the folks with work to be done is buying niggers. There was plenty work when I first came down, but they buys so many niggers these days it ain’t so easy for a white man to find it.”

Dolores frowned thoughtfully at her bread and cheese. Food really was making her feel better. Perhaps she’d been hungry without knowing it.

“But if you’re English,” she ventured, “how come your king didn’t give you some land? Or wasn’t you come down before the rebellion?”

“Oh yes, I been down hereabouts quite a spell,” said Thad Upjohn. “But the king wasn’t giving away no land except to them as had been in that French and Indian War, and I wasn’t in it. I wasn’t but a shaver then—about seventeen, and I didn’t see no call for me to go fighting Indians up in Virginia or Pennsylvania or wherever they was fighting.”

“Where you come from?” she asked with interest.

“Georgia.”

“That on the ocean?”

“Well, yes ma’am, part of it. Only I ain’t never seen the ocean. I come from the back country.”

“I see,” said Dolores, though she didn’t, having never before heard of a geographical item called Georgia. But it was relieving to talk about somebody else’s troubles. It helped her forget her own. And this Mr. Thad Upjohn, though so different from the fine gentlemen she had met on the bluff, was nice. He was friendly without being a pest, and he gave no evidence of the puzzled gentleness that had humiliated her so at Ardeith. To him she was just a girl who for some reason or other was having a misery in the heart and he wasn’t either prying or soothing. He was just letting her alone, and Dolores realized with wordless gratitude that this was the sum total of all she was asking right now of the human race. He wasn’t very clean or very good-looking, though he might look better if he combed his hair and got a shave and if he had a woman to mend his clothes.

A girl standing on the other end of the long table was singing a dirty song, swishing her skirts and shaking her hips while a group of half-tipsy soldiers stamped their feet to keep time. She was singing in Creole French. Thad Upjohn glanced at her now and then, and back at Dolores.

“You talk French?” she asked him, hoping he didn’t.

“Lord no, Miss Dolores, I don’t talk nothing but what I’m talking. Do you?”

“Some.”

“Is it French that fancy female’s bawling over yonder?”

She nodded.

“Say,” he said with admiration, “you’re educated, ain’t you?”

“Not so much. It’s easy to pick up different ways of talking in New Orleans.”

“I bet you can read good, and all like that.”

“I can read Spanish all right. Not French or English. Can’t you read?”

His wide mouth spread in a grin. “No ma’am. I wish I could.”

“I wish you’d get yourself some more beer,” said Dolores.

“Say, Miss Dolores, it ain’t right for me to be making away with your money.”

“Oh, go on, do. I said you was be my company at supper.”

He laughed, and went off for another mug of beer. Dolores was glad of it. She had eaten all her bread and cheese, but she liked to keep on sitting there talking. A patter on the windows told her the rain had started outside.