Spring Fire (4 page)

Mitch whimpered slowly and softly and she could feel him moving around and forcing her back on the blanket and the tears came fast then. She was dizzy and exhausted and she could not pull herself up. Fighting desperately with him, she could not stop his hands from pulling her skirt up. A thin wail escaped from her mouth and she began to heighten it to a loud moaning sound.

"Shut up," he snapped. "Shut up!"

Her moaning increased and some of the lost strength returned so that she kicked him and sent him back away from her. He stood up and glared down. "Mamma tell you not to?" he said angrily. "Mamma tell you sex is dirty?"

She began to cry hard, and sitting there sobbing, she did not listen to his words. For a long time she stayed like that, listening to him take the caps off the bottles, light cigarettes, and mumble dull words to her. She could hear him say that he was sorry and she had better not cry because Jake and Leda would be back, and then she could hear him curse and swallow the beer and whistle the way he whistled.

There were voices in the distance, ringing laughter, and the sound of them coming. She put her coat on and got up while Bud began folding the blanket.

Leda came down the fields ahead of Jake, running happily while he followed. "Mitch and Bud," she shouted, "how goes the mad twosome?"

Mitch said, "Hi, Leda."

Bud reverted to his old mood of sullen silence as he loaded the blankets in the car and gathered the empty bottles together. Jake helped him and Leda jumped in the front seat, yawning and saying sleepily, "Better hurry. We'll be out after hours."

On the way home, after they had come off the dirt road and gone onto the highway, Jake stopped the car. Leda stood beside Mitch while she vomited.

"You'll be O. K.," she promised. "I used to get sick on beer myself. You'll get used to it, honey."

* * *

The next morning, after breakfast, Mitch waited for Marsha Holmes, as she had been told to do. The president's suite consisted of three rooms. There was the bedroom, the study room, and the meeting room, all of them attractively furnished with low couches and triangular lamps and small square tables. Mitch sat in the meeting room, thumbing through the magazines on the table in front of her. She stopped at one tided "The Epsilon." Inside, the columns were devoted to news from chapters of Tri Epsilon throughout the country. Mitch's eye caught the printing, "Gamma Pi Chapter, Cranston University."

Gamma Pi Tri Eps are looking forward to a year bustling with excitement. Last year, you remember, they received many honors. For the second year in a row, glamorous Leda Taylor, a Tri Epsilon junior, was voted campus queen. Good luck this year, Leda, and may you cap all awards again for the name of Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon.

"No one can deny it," a voice said behind Mitch, "Leda is a beautiful girl."

Mitch turned and faced Marsha. "A very beautiful girl," Marsha continued. "Do you like rooming with her, Mitch?"

"Yes, I do. She's been swell to me." "Did you have a good time last night? You went out with Bud Roberts, didn't you? And Leda and Jake?"

"Yes, I did. I'm sorry we were late. It was my fault."

"Your fault, Mitch?"

"Yes, I got sick coming back. We had to stop."

"I see." Marsha thought for a moment, her hands folded demurely, and then she sat down beside Mitch. "Look, Susan, I hate to be the bossy president that starts right in advising pledges, but remember something for me, will you?"

"Certainly, Marsha."

"Leda has many ideas that some of us
—that
I
don't agree with. If there are any that you don't agree with, will you come and talk to
me
about them?"

"Yes, I will. I didn't like my date too well, but I shouldn't have had all that beer. I guess I'm old enough to take care of myself."

"I won't say any more, Mitch. I just want you to know that I'm here to help the pledges. I don't think Leda was wise to have you date Bud Roberts during blind-date week. You see, Kitten, our social chairman, tries very hard to arrange a suitable date for each pledge. Someone your own age
—usually a fraternity pledge who is as new to college as you are."

"Oh," Mitch said. "I didn't understand. Leda said it would be all right so long as Bud was a fraternity man."

"You will go along on a blind date tonight, won't you, Mitch? One of Kitten's. All the other pledges are enjoying it tremendously."

"Yes," Mitch answered, "I will. I'm sorry about last night."

Mitch wandered out of the suite down the stairs to the porch, where some of the girls were playing bridge. She recognized a few of them as pledges, because they wore the pink and blue ribbons too, but she did not know them.

"… and so I told him," a short girl with jewel-studded rims on her large-framed glasses was saying, "that as far as I was concerned, he was the blindest date I'd' ever had."

"Robin!" Marybell Van Casey looked horrified. "He was an Omega Phi. They're a big fraternity, sweetie, and Tri Ep can't afford to run around insulting their pledges. You be careful."

"Well, I don't care. I hate those big oafs that maul you around as though you were a punching bag. I just won't take it."

There was a tense silence. Marybell looked across the table significantly at Kitten Clark. Robin was due for a conference with the social chairman.

* * *

Mitch sat next to Robin Maurer at the pledge meeting that afternoon. Jane Bell was the pledge director. She had an extensive background in directing and leading and counseling. In grammar school she had been the monitor in the cloakroom, and later, a junior counselor at a summer camp for girls. She was a Texan and an Army brat, and her speech was peppered with such phrases as "team spirit," "pulling together," "giving it all we've got," and "sticking in there." Whenever a date gave Jane trouble toward the end of an evening, Jane always looked him squarely in the eye and said, "Now, look
— don't get out of line, son!"

"I guess that's all. How about you girls? Any questions?"

A girl in a plaid dress raised her hand. "Is it true," asked, "that we can only date fraternity men?"

Jane cleared her throat and looked treacherously serious. "That question always comes up among new pledges. Well, girls, all I can say is that you have joined a sorority because you have found that you're in with a gang you can be mighty proud of. Most men join fraternities for the same reason. They want to pick a bunch that they know have high standards and high ideals. Now, to my way of thinking, it's only logical to want to date that kind of guy."

"But," the girl persisted, "may we date an independent if we find that his standards are high and
—" She stopped and wrung her hands and blurted out finally, "My boy friend is an independent. He can't af-afford a fraternity."

Jane said, "I'll talk to you after the meeting. We'll have a chat about it, O.K.?"

"Wait a minute," Robin said, getting up and resting her hand on the large oak table before her. "I think this is pretty silly. You mean to tell me we have to ask
you
before we can date an independent?"

There was a stir among the gathering and Jane Bell rapped for order. "You can go out with independents if you want
—on weekdays. Week ends, we'd prefer you to be with fraternity men."

"What a laugh!" Robin exclaimed. "You're serious!"

Anger swept through the Texan's whole body and settled in her eyes, black as night. "That's a demerit for you, Robin Maurer," she thundered, "and it'll be wise for you to learn how to talk to an active member of Tri Epsilon."

Robin turned and walked from the room after she said, "Hooray for the team spirit we've all got! Three big cheers for our team spirit!"

It was difficult for Jane to continue. She uttered a few remarks about hours on week ends, and special permission for out-of-town week ends. Then she assigned the pledge lesson (learn the first three songs in the songbook, and the names of the official alumnae officers) and dismissed the group.

* * *

"Here you are," Leda said, pulling Mitch aside as she came from the Pledge Room. "I've been looking for you. How about my fixing you up tonight with a date? Not Bud Roberts, spare your soul, but someone else."

They walked toward the stairs while Mitch explained that Marsha had advised her to take a blind date.

"Marsha!" Leda cried. "She's from hunger, honey. No kidding. You can do what you want as long as he's a fraternity boy. Never mind Kitten's blind dates. Look, I'm sorry Roberts was such a mess. I never should have left you, kid. Tonight it'll be different."

"I think I'd better do what Marsha asked. All the other pledges are. You know
—I don't want to be an exception."

Leda put her arm around Mitch. "I understand, honey," she said. "I shouldn't have suggested it Let's go upstairs and catch thirty winks before dinner."

Robin Maurer was waiting outside Marsha's door on the second floor when Mitch and Leda passed by.

"I'm going in for my fifty lashes," she said to Mitch. "Care to join me?"

Mitch grinned. She liked Robin. She admired the way Robin spoke up and said what she thought What Mitch thought too.

"That kid's a little too cocky," Leda commented. "She'd better tone down if she wants to keep those ribbons."

"What happens when you get a demerit?"

"Oh, you get some horrible duty like taking Nessy to a movie on a Sunday afternoon. Sometimes to church too." Leda sighed. "Nessy is a peach, really, but who wants to cart her around?"

When they reached the room, Leda flopped down and kicked off her loafers. "Say, honey," she said, "is everything going O. K. with you? I mean, I don't want you to be a stranger around here too much longer."

"I don't feel like one," Mitch said. "Sometimes I just don't catch on right away."

"You don't say much, that's why I wondered. When you want to unload, just open up, Mitch. That's what I'm here for."

Mitch kicked her shoes off and stretched out on the bed. "I used to talk a lot in boarding school. College is different. The girls are more grown up, and I'm not used to talking about dates and boys and stuff."

"You'll get used to it… Your mother is dead, isn't she, Mitch?"

"Yes. When I was real young."

Watching the girl lie there, Leda had an odd feeling, like that of a protector who must guard an object carefully, less to keep it from harm than to keep it as a possession. The word "mother" floated around there somewhere and Leda could not catch it and stop it like that, so it rested with her momentarily. In that moment her breasts felt hard and bothersome. Mother, she thought and seeing Jan off there again, she felt the sharp edge of hatred gnawing into her boredom, inside where she was thinking now for that very slow minute.

* * *

Downstairs in the president's suite, Marsha talked to Robin.

"… because if everyone had her own way, Robin, we wouldn't be a unified group. There have to be rules."

"But rules like that are crazy. I never heard of dating only boys who belong to fraternities. Gee, next week when classes start, I'll meet a lot of independents. It's worse than racial prejudice."

"Robin, tell me something. Why do you want to join a sorority?"

"My mother wants me to. She never had the money when she was in college. I guess she always wanted to make up for it by having me belong."

Marsha walked toward the window and watched the trees in the yard near the side of the house. "If you don't believe in all that a sorority does," she said, "one way to fight is to fight from the inside
—where the rules and regulations are being made. Sometimes it takes a while. But there are good things about living here like this, and you can't fight effectively if you don't keep those good points in mind."

Robin looked up at her and smiled. "Maybe you're right," she said. "I'm a pretty clumsy rebel."

As she left the suite and passed the phone in the hall, it rang shrilly and she lifted the arm from the cradle. It was for Kitten Clark, and reaching up for the buzzer on the left of the booth, she found the name and pushed the tiny button. A voice called down, "Got it on three. Hang up on two, please." Robin walked past a room where some pledges were gathered, learning the words to the Tri Ep song. "Tri Epsilon is a friendly house where every girl's a queen," they sang in close, harmonic tones, raising their voices slightly for the next line: "And all the frat men love her."

"... and this," Kitten Clark said, "is Susan Mitchell."

Mitch stepped forward there in the front hall of the Tri Ep house and shook hands with Dirk Henry. He was a plump, short person, and walking along beside him, Mitch felt like a large wire-drawn giraffe. When they reached the front steps, he said, "Clive's car is down the street. We're going to the house."

"What fraternity are you in?" Mitch asked. "Kitten never even told me what house you were from."

He opened the jacket to his coat and displayed a plain oval-shaped silver pin, fixed to the pocket of his shirt. "Recognize it?"

Mitch stammered. "I'm afraid I'm not too good at spotting them yet."

"Sigma Delta," he said proudly. "It's just the pledge pin. That's why you didn't recognize it. Here's the car."

Bud Roberts was president of Sig Delt. Would he be at the party? The thought lost its force when Dirk opened the door, and Mitch saw Robin Maurer seated in front with Clive.

"Hi, Mitch," she cried. "Want you to meet Clive McKenzie, my unlucky blind date for the evening."

They drove for a few blocks until they reached a palatial two-story brick house. Oak trees towered self-consciously over the entrance and cast shadows on the Greek letters
ΣΔ
, outlined in sparkling white lights.

As they piled out of the car and went up the walk, there was a sweet aroma of roses and honeysuckle.

"Smells marvelous," Mitch said.

"It's Henry, our houseboy. He has a passion for flowers. Keeps the yard in damn fine shape, Henry does." Dirk's tone sounded forced and pontifical, and Mitch glanced sideways at him to see if there were any trace of a smile, but he was dead serious.