Siesta, p.29
Siesta, page 29
The voice surprised and somewhat disappointed him. It was a woman’s voice; he had thought the pilot would be a man, lean, fair-haired, with maybe a squint. He stopped running, put his hands in his pockets, and walked round the wings; he looked up at her as she lifted the glasses.
“Sorry to land on your golf course,” she said, smiling at him slightly.
“That’s all right, ma’am,” he said; he thought her lips were too red.
“You probably want to shoot me.”
“It don’t matter at all, ma’am.” Then he grinned, “Nobody to see you anyhow. There’s nobody out this morning.”
“Are you playing by yourself?”
He looked down, then up; “Just hitting a few.”
“You look hot.”
“Yes’m,” he smiled. “It’s right hot.” He wiped his face on his rolled-up sleeve.
“You probably wonder why I came down. But—but I’m trying to find the airport.”
“It’s right over there.”
“Where?”
“Right over yonder by the reservoir.”
“Funny I couldn’t find it.”
“You been lookin’ for it ever since last month?” he said, looking at her.
They laughed together.
“I—I landed at one field, but—I thought there was another.”
“No’m, there isn’t but one.”
“Oh, really?”
“Sure.”
“Silly to keep on looking then, I guess.”
They laughed again and he glanced down and scratched his leg.
“Well, thanks,” she said. “I guess I’ll be going.… Want to go up for a ride,—cool off?”
He hesitated. He had come out to practice; he wasn’t getting enough right wrist into his irons and the State was only two weeks off. But she was pretty in a disturbing sort of way; he somehow didn’t want her to leave him now.
“I don’t care,” he said.
“Come on then.”
“How about my clubs and things?”
“I’ve got a car; I’ll bring you back.”
“I hate to bother—”
“Don’t be silly.”
“All right.”
“Climb up front.”
He laughed nervously and reached for the step.
“You don’t remember me, do you, Elbert?”
He flushed a little; he had never seen her before. But it was pleasant to hear her pronounce his name.
“I saw you over at Nora’s one afternoon. I’m Gwendolyn Owens.”
“Oh!” he said, giving her a quick scrutiny. “Mrs. Owens. I didn’t know you with your—your—”
“Mrs. Owens! You make me feel so out of date.… Well, come on, Mr. Meigs.”
He grinned at her, blushing, then hastily climbed aboard.
They rolled up to one end of the long fifteenth and turned round.
“Ready?” she shouted, hardly audible above the motor.
“Let her go!”
The motor doubled its roar and they began to move. The plane lifted its tail with a certain amorousness and a minute later rose into the southwest wind.…
When they pulled up in front of the hangar Elbert picked his way down the steps and hopped to the ground. “That was fine!” he said, beaming.
“Fun, isn’t it?”
She stripped off her cap and shook her hair. Then she stood up and threw one sand-colored leg over the side, feeling about with her white shoe for the step.
Elbert saw the hem of her linen skirt stretch tight above the top of her round garter; he moved a few steps away and glanced at the hangar.
“Don’t let this embarrass you,” she laughed. “There’s no other way out.”
She half turned her back and put over the other leg, looking down for the step; she found it and jumped the rest of the way, leaving Elbert with a bright picture on his retina of a flash of stockings and tan skin. “Sorry!” she said with a laugh, not looking at him.
They turned away from the plane together and she said, “I’ve got Austin’s car. I’ll take you back to your sticks.”
He sat silent most of the way; he felt peculiarly naked somehow with his bare knees and his sleeves rolled up to the shoulder. She was silent too, guiding the car attentively round the short turns of the sand road. Once as they mounted the hill between the fifth fairway and the woods she glanced at him covertly; he was gazing straight ahead, his hands folded in front of him.
When the road entered the shade of the pines she put out her hand and laid it on his knee, turning her face toward him for a second with a tremulous smile. He clasped her hand suddenly in both of his and held it tight.
“Would you—would you mind if—if I kissed you?” he said, gazing at the rim of the steering wheel.
She waited a minute, then stopped the car abruptly, the tremulous smile still on her lips. He leaned over and kissed her inexpertly on a corner of her mouth. She remained passive for a moment, then the smile disappeared and she turned her head to him.
In a minute she drew away from him and got out. He stayed where he was a second, then slid under the wheel and out the door. “I—I think you’re beautiful.”
She looked away through the trees, then said, “I feel pretty much the same way about you.”
“There’s a nice cool spring down in the bottom there—”
“Don’t you think you’d better go back to your golf?”
“I can play golf any old time.”
“You could probably take girls down to the spring any old time too,” she laughed, glancing at him. “Though I don’t believe you realize it.”
“Realize what?”
“You lead the way.”
“This weather makes you thirsty. It’s fine cool water.”
He led off down a steep path, slippery with pine needles. She followed him through the heavy foliage, picking her way among the roots and vines. At the bottom he stopped on the matted leaves and looked back.
She sat down on the grass watching him while he bent over gazing into the spring.
“I don’t know what you can drink out of,” he said.
She crawled over beside him on her hands and knees.
“I know what I can drink out of.”
“What?”
She opened her hands. “The spring!”
She lay down, laughing, and put her face down in the basin. When she lifted her head she laughed at him through the smear of water and brushed it out of her eyes with her fingers.
“I’ve got a handkerchief but I’m afraid it isn’t very clean,” he said.
“I don’t want a handkerchief.”
He leaned over the pool and drank in the same way.
Then he sat back on the leaves apart from her. “Nice place, don’t you think?”
“I’ve never been to a more beautiful place.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“Do you bring all your little girls here?”
“You’re the only girl I’ve ever brought here in my life.”
“You’re a sweet boy!”
“Can I kiss you again?”
“Does anybody else ever come here?”
“No. Nobody comes here.”
“I’m going to take off my socks.”
She peeled off her stockings before his rapturous eyes and stuffed them into her shoes. When she looked at him he was leaning on one stiff arm pulling off blades of grass.
Then he said to her tensely, gazing at her shoulder, “I reckon I ought to tell you—now—the only reason I brought you down here was because I wanted to—to—I reckon I wanted to take advantage of you. You better get out now while—before it’s too late—”
She put back her head and laughed whole-heartedly into the pines. Then, even before she had finished laughing, she pulled herself toward him over the grass; then she fell in his lap and worked her arms about his waist.
“Don’t look so scared,” she said with a short laugh.
3. He Knows Everybody
Friday, August 21
Judge Fulwood was on the bench of the Superior Court of the Congaree Valley Circuit and his claim that he knew every dog from Tennessee to the Gulf of Mexico was in spirit essentially true; he knew every fish pond in a hundred miles and every camelia bush in two states. He was the only male member of the Sand Hills Garden Club and when that organization built a brick wall round its headquarters on Telfair Street and held a meeting to go into the question of how they could get their hands on a pair of wrought-iron gates to hang in the entrance, it wasn’t surprising that they should have decided to appeal to him.
“We’ve just got to have some nice gates, judge,” they said.
“I ain’ got any gates,” said the judge.
“You must know some round here.”
“How much you willing to pay?”
“How much! Goodness! Don’t be silly, judge.”
“But, God-amussy, sister—”
“We can’t pay anything, judge.”
He twisted up a corner of his mouth, combing out his right eyebrow with his fingernails.…
He knew of a pair of gates out on the road to Due West before it crossed the river out of his bailiwick. He had often admired them. Before 1925 he had often driven through them on summer evenings to sit awhile with Jim Marbury and his wife; he knew all about the gates. They had been made over in Charleston and brought to Alabama by Jim Marbury’s father. When hard times overtook Jim Marbury and the place was offered for sale the gates were quite an item. It was on the market for nearly three years and people in Georgetown thought there was nobody in that section with money enough to buy it. Then one day the real estate agent received an offer of two-thirds and Jim Marbury, needing the money, sold.
The purchaser turned out to be Mr. Speck Hayes and he paid cash. Up to then Mr. Speck Hayes had been noted chiefly for the quality of his locally distilled whiskeys and his Bacardi; his Scotch was also considered first class by the few who could afford it, and for his most discriminating clientele he carried on hand two or three bottles of sixty-year-old Courvoisier Brandy. He had not, up to then, been taken seriously as a property owner and tax payer. Judge Fulwood numbered him among his exhaustive acquaintance, having even met him officially in his own court room (the jury acquitted Mr. Hayes, responding unanimously to his lawyer’s plea that it was on the face of it absurd to think the defendant would manufacture whiskey for sale when, as everybody in Davis County knew, he had a hard enough time getting enough for his own consumption), but after the gates changed hands he had confined his admiration of them to the outside.
A few mornings after his fellow members of the garden club had appealed to him, he got in his Ford coupé and drove out the Due West road. He stopped at the gates and examined the hinges: they were simple affairs, pinions working in sockets that were cemented into the brick pillars. He returned to his car and continued on round the circular drive to the house.
There was a negro boy standing on a ten-gallon keg clipping the top of a privet hedge.
“Is Mr. Hayes here?” said the judge, cutting off his motor.
“I think he in the house, sir.”
“Ask him if I could see him for a minute.”
The boy disappeared round the back of the house and Judge Fulwood got out of the car and strolled to the edge of a cotton field. He was casting an appraising eye over the level expanse when Mr. Speck Hayes sauntered round a corner.
“Why, hello, judge.”
“Hello, Speck.”
The judge advanced toward him, one forearm behind his back, and they shook hands.
“Won’t you come inside, judge, out of the sun?”
“No, thank you, Speck. I was just driving by. Your cotton looks good.”
“Yes, sir, it’s done pretty well,—what there is of it. I just put in ten acres this year.”
“Had any boll weevils?
“Few down near the creek, judge. I’ve been spraying.”
“Spraying helps.”
“Oh, yes, spraying helps.”
“You’ll have to pick it over again soon.”
“Yes, sir. I’m planning to go over it again first thing next week.”
“How much you going to get?”
“I reckon I’ll get about seven bales, seven heavy bales.”
“Good land.”
“Yes, sir. And I put a ton and a half of 7-5-5 on it.”
“Fertilizer pays.”
“Yes, sir, it pays.”
“Oh, by the way, Speck.”
“Yes, sir, judge.”
“The ladies down at the garden club asked me the other day to try to locate a pair of gates for them. They’ve built themselves a kind of wall around their place and now they want a pair of gates.”
“A pair of gates, judge?”
“Yes, they seem to kind of want a pair of gates. I searched in my memory, but I couldn’t think of anybody with a pair of gates, and then—”
Mr. Speck Hayes lifted his eyes to the top button of the judge’s black alpaca coat.
“And then I remembered you. I thought maybe you might like to donate those gates down there to the garden club.”
“Them gates down there, judge?”
“Yes; old Jim Marbury’s gates.”
“Those the best gates in the county, judge.”
“I know it, Speck.”
Mr. Hayes let his eyes run off over his cotton field. “You think I ought to—”
“You know best, Speck.”
Mr. Hayes looked down his drive for a long minute, then heaved a sigh:
“They’re yours, judge.…”
Judge Fulwood was halfway back to Georgetown when he overtook an old high-topped open car with pink dust covering its dingy rear. He swung out to the left, and as he passed it, raised his hand in salutation.
“Howdy do,” he said, glancing over at the upper foot or two of a double-barreled shotgun propped up in the front seat beside the driver. Old man Ben Gray from up round Due West. A regular Bulloch County farmer; couldn’t raise a damn thing but cotton, but could raise a bale of cotton to an acre. Looked like he had something on his mind.
4. Black Maria
Friday, August 21
As a rule Miss Judith Pavinovsky got back to the office from dinner a little after three; she usually walked up the shady side of Cotton Row, crossed over diagonally in front of The Georgetown Chemical Company, skirted the arm-chairs under the trees, and entered the sky-blue outer office calmly, even serenely, with that almost palpable peace-of-mind popularly considered the exclusive property of ladies of impeccably Christian morals. She usually then proceeded with her exhaustive search of the morning paper or carried on with a piece of embroidery, while Tucker crossed his ankles, leaning against the wall phone, and called the soda fountain in the Cotton States Building.
“Send two with lemon to Telfair & Company.”
“Tell ’em to make ’em nice and strong.”
“They know by the tone of my voice I mean strong.”
If Mr. Telfair came back in the afternoon she might take down two or three letters.
On this particular Friday, though, everything was different. It was after four when she got back and she hung her hat and pocketbook askew on the hook. Then she sat down and bit at the side of her fingernail, her eyes wandering about between the little clock on Mr. Telfair’s desk and the front door. It looked as if Mr. Telfair weren’t coming back.
At four-thirty she got up suddenly, sat down at Mr. Telfair’s desk and called his house.
He had left about fifteen minutes before.
“This is the office. Do you know where he is?”
“No, ma’am, I declare I don’t.”
“Has he gone to play golf, you think?”
“He never said, ma’am.”
As she hung up Mr. Telfair walked in the door. He stopped a minute in the entrance to glance at his thermometer.
“It’s right warm today, Miss Judy; right warm.” He laid his hat on the top of his desk and sat down, taking a box of Havana cigars out of a drawer as if he had been thinking about them. He picked the band off one of them and, getting no reply from Miss Judy, glanced at her. “What’s the matter, what’s the matter?”
“I want to talk to you, Mr. Telfair.”
“What’s the matter?”
She seriously drew up a chair. “I want to ask your advice, Mr. Telfair.”
Mr. Telfair’s eyes brightened. “You mean about Jebby?”
“No, this is about my brother, Sergey.… I don’t know quite where to begin.… You remember him.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Telfair, pausing as he was about to srike a match on the side of a drawer.
“Well, they’re trying to—to—they’re trying to—”
“To what? Who is?”
“They’re trying to involve Sergey in this—this Mattie Small thing.”
Mr. Telfair looked at her in some surprise and noncommittally struck the match. “Who is?”
“The News. They tried to get him yesterday but Sergey wouldn’t go to the phone. He sent word he wasn’t feeling well; and he wasn’t. I don’t know what’s the matter with him. He seems depressed. I’m a little worried about him.… But anyway, today this McFarlane, he’s the man the paper company sent down here last year, he came in as we were eating dinner. Sergey was nice to him; he’s used to newspapers, you know. Well, in a few minutes (I heard them from the other room) the man started talking about that colored girl again. He had been down there once before. He asked Sergey if he would care to endorse the paper’s stand, or something. Sergey told him politely as he had told him before, he didn’t know anything about it, hadn’t thought anything about it, and positively would not consent to be quoted in connection with something like that. Then the man mentioned Sergey’s fountain pen.”
“Fountain pen?”
“Sergey was walking on the canal and lost his fountain pen. It was six weeks ago. More than that. He advertised for it in the News. And now this other thing comes up and McFarlane remembers it. He lost it, you see, out near that woman’s house—”
“Oh.”
“There’s no connection in the world, Mr. Telfair—”
“They ought to have better sense than to print it anyhow.”
“But there’s absolutely no connection—”
“That don’t matter, Miss Judy. It’s been done before. Sherman’s army’s responsible for nine-tenths of it. What hasn’t been done before is putting it all in the newspaper.”
