River Girl (17 page)

“You’re not afraid now, are you?” I asked.

“No,” she whispered. “It’s all right now.”

“Everything is just the same.”

“Yes,” she said simply. She was silent for a moment, looking up at me with eyes incredibly large, and very close and still. “I haven’t been in the dark since then. But you can turn the light out now.”

I went across the room and turned it off.

There was no way to tell what time it was because she was asleep with her head on my arm and I couldn’t move it to see the watch. Light was growing, though, beyond the drawn slats of the Venetian blinds, and I could make out objects inside the room. I lay very still for a long time, not wanting to disturb her, and thought about the two of us and the things we would do now that we were free at last. When there was more light I turned again and looked at her. She slept as quietly as a child, lying on her right side with her face against my arm and the hair very dark across the pillow. The strap of the nightgown had slipped off her left shoulder and the breast was exposed, rounded and very smooth, rising gently with her breathing. I smiled, thinking of the confusion in her face when she awoke and discovered it. I didn’t want to disturb her sleep, but still it was somehow lonely being awake without her. Even being this near and seeing and touching her wasn’t the same without the eyes open and looking at me. I leaned my head down and kissed her and she stirred. The eyes came open, and just for an instant I saw in them the awful awareness and the terror that I had feared. Then she saw me and it went away and she smiled. It will gradually disappear with time, I thought. For a while there will be these moments just at waking or just at dropping off to sleep when the mind has no defense at all and she is alone, but they will go away.

“You are very beautiful when you’re asleep,” I said.

“It’s the first time I’ve slept since—”

“Yes,” I said. “I know.”

“You didn’t mind, did you, Jack? I wanted to stay awake, but after a while I just seemed to melt and run together. I guess it was because you were here where I could touch you and I wasn’t afraid any more.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I slept too.”

She looked down at the gown slipping off her breast and quickly pulled it up, the confusion very becoming on her face, and would have drawn up the sheet but it had fallen to the floor.

“You haven’t noticed my gown,” she said reprovingly, to cover her embarrassment.

“I’m afraid not. You’ll have to admit, though, that it has competition.”

She smiled, and then her face sobered and she looked across at me with her eyes full of an almost childlike earnestness. “I—I bought it with some of the money you gave me, Jack. It didn’t cost very much; it was the cheapest one they had. I can do without something else. But it’s just that I wanted one so badly.”

I could feel the tight constriction in my throat. It isn’t even a wedding ring she’s talking about, I thought, just a cheap, lousy nightgown she probably bought in a ten-cent store, bought looking back on being made love to in the leaves under a tree in broad daylight and looking forward to sleeping naked beside a man like a common prostitute. The only shred of respectability or common decency she would even ask me for was this sleazy, peach-colored misfit of a bargain-basement nightgown, and she was even anxious that I wouldn’t think she had wasted too much money in buying that. For some unaccountable reason I was growing angry, and at the same time humiliated and ashamed thinking of this pathetic attempt to clothe herself in at least some scraps of dignity.

“What else did you buy?” I asked.

“Just some—underclothes.”

“And I suppose you got them at the dime store, too? The best they had?”

“Well, not exactly in a dime store, but they didn’t cost very much.” She looked at me uncertainly. “I know we don’t have very much to spend. Remember, you told me.

I had forgotten that. And now that I was suddenly reminded of it I felt even more ashamed and angry. Then I remembered I hadn’t even told her of the three thousand dollars we had.

“Do you know what we’re going to do today?” I asked.

“Get on the bus?”

“No,” I said. “Well take the bus tomorrow night, after we’ve got a little better organized. I think we’re safe enough here, at least for the moment, and we’ve got to get some luggage and I need another suit. Today, though, we’re going to take you shopping. We’re going to buy you some clothes, and I don’t mean cheap junk.” I sat up in bed and looked at her, aware that I was beginning to sound like a wild man and that I probably didn’t make much sense to her. “Do you know what I’m going to do? What I’ve wanted to do for a long time? What I’ve wanted to do every time I thought of you going barefoot like a sharecropper’s child and thought of those misfit abortions of dresses you wore around that house? I’m going to see you dressed in the kind of clothes you should have. We’re going to start at the bottoms of those feet. Let me see your feet. Where are “they?”

“Well, Jack, where would they be?”

I slid down along the bed and gathered them up in my hands, turning them inward and pressing the soles together the way I had once before. “We’re going to start right here with the sheerest nylons ever made and the most expensive shoes in town and gradually work up.”

I looked up and she was watching me with an amused tenderness in her eyes. “But Jack, what are we going to use for money?”

I had forgotten it again. Leaping off the bed, I went over to where I had left the coat. Slipping out the envelope, I took it over to her, pulled out the thick sheaf of hundreds and fifties and twenties, and spread them along the sheet in front of her.

She looked at it, dumfounded, and then up at me. “Jack, where on earth did that come from?” I could see the fright and anxiety begin to come back into her face and she went on, “What have you done?”

As rapidly as I could, I told her all that had happened. She listened quietly, not even touching the money, and when I had finished all she said was I’m glad it’s all over. There won’t have to be any more of that, will there? I know it’s too late now to think about the way it could have been, but at least we can try to live the way other people do, can’t we? We can both get jobs and we’ll get by all right. I used to work in an office.”

“Yes,” I said. “Only you won’t have to any more. I can get a job without much trouble. We’ll go to Washington—the state, I mean. I was there when I came back from the Pacific in 1945. It’s beautiful country, and you’ll love it—mountains and rivers and green forests. ...” I happened to think then that perhaps she’d already seen all the green forests she’d ever want to, and went on hurriedly, “And Seattle is a nice city. You’ll love it.”

“It sounds wonderful. But I don’t care where we go, Jack. Just so we’re together, and maybe we’ll be able to live in peace.”

“Yes,” I said. I bent down, placed a hand alongside her cheek, and kissed her. “All that other is finished now. It’s past and gone.”

Her arms went up around my neck, softly at first, and then they tightened and she cried out, “Oh, Jack! I hope it is. I hope so!”

“Of course it is,” I said. “We’re in the clear now. They’ll believe I’m dead, and they’ll never bother to look for you except as part of the hunt for him. There isn’t a chance that anything will go wrong. But we can’t sit here all day moping like a couple of old women. We’ve got to get started shopping.” I stopped a minute, thinking, and then went on. “Look. Here’s what we do. Today and tomorrow well go on just as we are now, not even knowing each other as far as anyone else is concerned. That may be a little overcautious now that everything has turned out so well, but it’s just in case our descriptions are broadcast. Two people answering a general description are a lot more likely to attract attention than one alone. So we don’t want to be seen together around the hotel. I’ll meet you—” I looked at my watch. “I’ll meet you at ten-thirty in the cafeteria up in the next block. We’ll have breakfast together and then start buying your clothes.”

I went back up to my own room, tore the bed apart a little so it would look as if I’d at least been in it, shaved, and went down in the lobby for the morning papers. I worked through them very carefully, starting at the front page and going back to the want ads, and there wasn’t a word about my disappearance or about the grand jury at home. I was just about to throw them aside when I saw her come out of the elevator and head for the street. She had put her hair back up in the roll at the back of her neck, the way she had done it coming down to Colston. I waited until she had been gone a few minutes, and went out the door myself.

The afternoon papers will be out in an hour or two, I thought. They’ll have something in them. I was beginning to burn with impatience, wanting to see how Buford would break the story and how well it went over with the general public.

She was sitting alone at a table in the corner. I took my tray back and sat down across from her. “There’s nothing in the papers yet,” I said.

She nodded. “There hasn’t been time.” I knew she was right. Nobody would think anything about it until I failed to show up for work this morning. Buford, for the benefit of the others, would call the jail to see if I had come in there last night with Shevlin. Then he would call the garage and learn that the car was still out. By that time Lorraine and Hurd, and anybody else who happened to drop into the office, would be buzzing. Buford would call the boat place at the foot of the lake and learn that I hadn’t come back with the boat and that the car was still parked there by the boathouse. The story would begin to spread like fire on a windy day, and the news services would probably have it by ten o’clock. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter of eleven; Buford would probably be leading a search party right now.

I was eager to get started and couldn’t even taste what I was eating. “Let’s go, Doris,” I said. “You’ve got a lot of shopping to do.”

She smiled. “All right. But Jack, I’m afraid you don’t know much about women’s clothes. Dresses and skirts have to have alterations, and we don’t have time for it now. I’ll just try to get something to travel in, and then buy other things when we get to Seattle. The clothes will be different there, anyway.”

I hadn’t thought of that, but I knew she was right. “O.K.,” I said, disappointed. “But all the other things that don’t need alterations—you’ll get those, won’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, looking at me gently. “It means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”

We went out into the swarming, sun-baked street where heat lay in wait and lunged at you just outside the air-conditioned doors. The first place was a luggage shop, where we bought her two matching bags and asked to have them delivered to the hotel. Then what she had said about alterations reminded me that I had better get the suit now so they could have it ready for tomorrow. She waited inside the men’s store while I bought it and made arrangements to have it delivered to me at the hotel no later than two the next afternoon.

“Now, you,” I said, touching her gently on the arm.

“Are you sure you want to go along?”

“Yes,” I said. I began to change my mind, however, before we’d even got through shoes and handbags. I was too alone here in this jungle of women, too conspicuous, like a chained bear at a Junior League tea. It was worse than foolish; it was stupid. I’d never blend very well into this background, and too many people would remember me.

“I hate to leave you for a minute, but I’m going to have to get out of here,” I said at last. We stood in a crowded aisle with the stream of women shoppers eddying and flowing around us. I gave her three hundred dollars. “I’ll meet you at the hotel.”

“I don’t need this much,” she protested.

“Don’t buy cheap things. Please,” I urged.

She looked up at me. “Why, Jack?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s something I can’t explain. I just don’t want you to have anything second-rate or makeshift. You’ve had enough of that.”

I went back out into the heat and drifted with the crowds, watching with rising impatience for the afternoon papers. At the second corner a truck was unloading them at a stand and I bought one and ducked into the nearest bar. It was cool inside, and dim, and I sat down on a stool at the end of the bar, ordered a bottle of beer and opened the paper.

It was a short item, less than a third of a column, on an inside page:

I read it through twice to be sure I had missed nothing, then threw the paper aside. There wasn’t much; just about what I had expected for the first break on the story. The general tone of it seemed to be that, so far, at least, they believed I had just got lost in the swamp. There’ll be more in the later editions, I thought.

Impatience and restlessness had got hold of me again, and I wanted to get back to her, and get on the bus and start for the Coast. I wasn’t scared now, I thought; the most dangerous part of it was over. That had ended when I had got out of the swamp and down here without being seen by anyone. By anyone but Dinah, I thought, correcting myself. But she wouldn’t say anything. I was sure of it now. I wondered if she were still here in town or if she had gone home. She might even be shopping right alongside Doris at this moment, I thought, and was glad again I had got out of the stores. She was sure I was meeting somebody down here, and I wondered if she would suspect anything if any of the news stories mentioned Shevlin’s having been married. Probably not, I thought. Why should she?

I couldn’t sit still any longer and went back out into the street. How much longer would she be? Time away from her was wasted; why didn’t she hurry and get back to the hotel? Then the ridiculous illogic of the struck me; I was the one who had insisted she go shopping in the first place, and now I was impatient because she was gone. And as far as being back at the hotel was concerned, I wasn’t there either. Was it time to go now? No, I thought. She wouldn’t be back for an hour or more and I’d go crazy waiting.

I was passing a jeweler’s and suddenly realized she didn’t have a watch. That was one thing I could get for her myself. The clerk sized up my clothes and began bringing out the $37.50 and $49.95 stock. I waved them away impatiently, feeling angry again, and would have walked out and gone to another store but my eye was caught by an exquisite timepiece in yellow gold with a matching strap of golden cord, very beautiful in its simplicity, and costing $275. “Wrap it as a gift,” I said, and waited, restless in the heat.