The Watchman (26 page)

Stepping back from him now, hands behind her, drawing the old dress taut against the lithe roundness of her woman-childness: and Jason now, hopeful perhaps that her slip into

his name was a movement toward reality, imagined that he could perhaps kindle that ember of sanity into the whole real warmth of his Jill once more, moving against her suddenly now with his arms around her and his mouth, passionless as if he were about to suck snake venom from a rattler's strike, pressing down hard upon her lips, scarcely feeling it when her mouth opened, grimacing, and her white teeth bit together, almost meeting, in the softness of his underlip. And she was out of his grip then, livid, stiff-standing and with the white knuckles of her clenched hands crackling.

Don't — touch — Jill

He felt the well and trickle of blood along his chin but felt no pain on his mouth, watching her face now: seeing the ripple and flow of myriad, swift and instant thoughts sweep through it: the flicker of unnaturally quickened and perceptive judgments, crafty and sweetly secret in their racketing speed like frames on a reel of film and each, to her, slowed and separately seen and considered without that continuum of vision's persistence which let him see her face gradually subside from that rictus of exposed teeth to her now cautiously derisive smile.

Oh, I'm wise to you, Mister, she murmured with a nasal httle laugh and snatching up the crumpled pack of cigarettes, thrust it upward deftly and tossed the tip of one between her lips, keeping her dark eyes on him all the while she snapped the kitchen match alight on the wood of the dresser top and held the flame to catch, sucking in and blowing out blue smoke through a languorous rounding of her lips; staring at him, amused, through the curdling cloud of it. You're not the first one, you know, who's looked at my child that way. You're the fourthi

She shrugged her shoulders with a swift, practical movement and shed the coat, letting it drop round her feet, standing now in her nightdress, arms folded under her breasts, one elbow cradled with the cigarette in her hand raised to her lips.

I can't never figure out smooth-talking studs like you, she said. I mean, a person would hope a man might be just the Uttlest bit subtle about it. Hell! It's just not exactly the most flattering thing for a lady to find out a man's not chasing after her but her daughter. Is it now? Well, I reckon you've not been around like I thought or else you'd know. Tliougb you're not the first: I reckon there's been at least four others come out just as open about it right first-thing. Hardly what

I'd call finesse, I must say. Smooth-operators. Cool studs. Hah! I declare, what's that child of mine got that makes every age and shape and size of man come sniffin' round her like bears round a honey tree. Why, she's only four. And here I am a grown-up woman! Well, I know. You wouldn't know. But I know. Some girl-babies are just purely women-children the moment they come to horning. I was the same way. Just exactly the same. Mama used to say she felt like soldering one of them chastity-belts onto me the moment I was old enough to walk. Oh, I know. It's a look, a certain smell, a certain I-don't-know-what-all. I started going with boys when I was eleven and I never knew it to fail on the very first date. They'd just go crazy wild and try to rape me. And I didn't have no easy reputation nor anything to deserve that neither. I declare, it seemed like when all my girl friends went out on dates they got flowers and all I ever got was a sudden choice between Fight, Feel, or Foot-Race. My little JiJl's the same—just like me. There's not a one of my gentlemen friends that comes to call who don't want to dandle her on his knee before he's even hung up his hat or gives me so much as a look, hello, or go-to-hell. My baby Jill.

She looked away suddenly, her eyes fixed on the pale tints of the picture at her elbow, the tinseled frame like a dusky window looking-in rather disrespectfully upon some clandestine encounter amid the glare and blare of an afternoon of time-lost indiscretion. Jill's lip suddenly trembled and she turned her watchful, suffering gaze quickly back to Jason's • eyes. And now her own were suddenly hot and shamefully brimming with tears.

Mister Himnicutt, I may be nothing more than a lady who's weak and pretty and foolish enough to let gentlemen take advantage of her now and then, she said. But 1 take good care of my little girl! You hear me? By God, I take care of my baby Jill! Is that understood. Mister Cole Blake Hunnicutt or whoever the hell your name is? They talk about me—those fine ladies at the five-and-dime—and most of what they say is damned lies because there's not one of them woman enough to know enough about how a woman could misbehave even to make up good lies about me. Oh, they talk. But there's nary one of them can ever lay it to Jane Nancy Alt that she neglects her baby! You hear me? I'm talking about my Httle baby-doll Jill —the same little, pure name you been hinting about and sneaking into our conversation since you first come in here out of the heat of the sun! There's no

man living who'll ever lay a finger on that little angel while this bitch is around. You don't believe me, do you? Oh, I know. I've had three gentlemen friends since my marriage to Luther and they've all been scissored from the same boltl And I can see it in your eyes: you're not any different.

And who can I go to for help for her? he thought in that stunned silence. Who can I fetch to heal her, my love, my lost, my Jill? The Sheriff? The prosecutor? Which shall I run fetch to save, to soothe, to raise her from this spell? The doctor whose hands are colleged wise to judge the hanged man hanged?—the burned assassin burned. Peace?—the last and finite arbiter of flesh? Reverend Godd—who preaches vengeance from the ropeless scaffold of his lectern? No. There's no one. And there is nowhere. Yes. I was right. The world should have rooms for talks like these—for such as her and me. But there is only the wind. And there is only the mad and warmthless moon of cold September. For her—if there is any saving thing—that only thing is love. For her—if there is anyone not too late—that one is me.

He reached his fingers out again to touch her chilled and quaking hand and with his other reached up and touched her wet lashes with his finger and brought away the droplet glitter of a tear.

Jill, he whispered. My love, in there. Listen, Jill. Behind all this I can see you. You can't hide, my love. You, in there, Jill. I love you. Does my voice get through? My love, in there, hsten! Jill?

She sighed. It was a heavy slow expiration that left her slightly slackened from a fisted tension. She sighed again, more lightly, looked at him and slowly shook her head.

Well, I guess there's just no reasoning with your kind, Mister, she said quietly. Lord knows I tried. For the Lord knows how I hate the other way. But I just guess the other way's the only way for the likes of studs like you.

She withdrew her hand coldly from his fingers and began to turn, to move away.

Jill. Jill, he whispered, his eyes clenched closed, his arms hanging now at his sides. Jill, I can make you hear me in there. Can't I, Jill? Oh, Jill, let me love you out of there!

Leave go of my thoughts, Mister Hunnicutt, he heard her say. It's just like your nasty hands was clawin' at my nice clean nightgown.

Jill? he whispered.

She spoke in a low voice now, inquisitively, almost loving.

yet he knew she would be bending a little now to the quiet ransacking of her image in the mirror.

You, Pretty Thing, in there! she whispered. Only you know where it's hid, isn't that so? Only you. Pretty Thing. And nary other one knows. Not even Juanita knows.

She started at the name, her pupils dilate, her eyes sidling.

Juanita? she shouted aloud to the shadows behind her. You back from market yet?

No, she sighed to the contrapuntal self of her within the fugue of mirror. She ain't back. That's good. Not back from market yet. That's good. Just you and me, Pretty Thing. And him yonder.

But, Jill, I love you! he whispered.

Well, you see? He won't have it no other way, she sighed. Oh, dear God Almighty rest him and them, as well: our three poor gentlemen friends. Well, you know where it's hid, don't you, Pretty? Then fetch it out and have it done and over with. Lord only knows you hate it when it has to be this way. The sound, the sound—the jarring, awful sound, the blasting, jarring of your hand. And where do their faces go to then? Is maybe there a hell for their bodies and heaven for their faces. No, now. I reckon that's a pure, silly fancy. And what if there was another way. But no—there ain't!

Yet for an instant she broke through, returned; for an anguished flash like that moment when the face of the drowning swimmej rises from the deeps of breaking water glares a last, lost, glorious stare in wonder at the sky before he sinks again: she altered, she returned: some terrible and glorious effort of human spirit; immeasurable, powerful as the birthing gesture of the spasmed, driven womb; valiant, futilely human, humanly futile.

J-A-S-O-N! S-A-V-E M-E!

She wailed it once in that one sane twinkling; hymned it to stars beyond the winds and the rattling rains that swept the ancient slates which roofed the room. But in another instant the face had vanished, the waters closed, the deeps reclaiming their own, and she turned suddenly, glaring slut-tishly about her, startled at the sound of the strange voice.

Jill? she cried. Juanita? Who's that yelling yonder?

And still, stubbornly, stupid with the persistence of love, he thought he might bring her back to him.

Jill? he said, quietly moving toward her where she stood, forlorn and deadly by the dresser.

Oh, my, Mister Hunnicutt Blake, you are a most persistent

sort, she laughed loftily. I declare, a body almost has to admire that. Nothin' will do till you have what you want. That's so now, ain't it? My, my, what a sorry shame. Kindly keep a respectful distance from me. Mister. Oh, I know. You'll make a mockery of it—you'll put on a fine show of wanting me—you'll just naturally love me to pieces, won't you now? But don't never think I don't know why. Don't think poor dumb little old me will fall for that kind of cotton-candy sweet-talk. Because you think I'm easy you must think I'm dumb along with it and maybe that's the way all your other ladies are but this one's different. Well, now I know. Sure I know. You've had your eye on her from the first and it never mattered about me. How old you reckon I am, Mister Whoever Hunnicole? Four years old, would you say? Wrong, you damned fool. I'm twenty-nine and I'm fed-up. By God, yes, I'm fed-up because from the time I dragged free from my mother's breast it was always someone just using me as a sort of a ladder on yonder bed to crawl across to get to someone else they wanted more and in the first place and all along and it's still that way and I'm fed to hell up with it! You hear me, Mister? My goddamned Papa loved Mama better than me! And now my goddamned Mister loves my child better than me! By God, someday I want to look my face in the mirror and know I'm the be-all and end-all of some man's loving and no longer to be nothing more than a kind of soft, silly stepladder laid across the mattress.

Jill, he thought and so he said it: Jill, he said. Let me fetch Doc Snedeker. He'll bring you something to make you sleep.

Sure, buddy! she raved. Sleep. And whilst I sleep you'll come with your hot, spoiling hands a-feeling for my child —my Jill-baby. Jesus, Mister, did you think I wouldn't know? Well, where now?—yes, I know. It's here in the drawer because I hid it in the candy box because Luther won't let me keep them and ever' time I take one of his he takes it from me with nary consideration that a lady might need something with which to defend herself and her child whilst he's away. Tzchak. He knows. Tzchak understands that part of it, at least. But even when Tzchak give it to me to defend my child he said. Keep it hid. Don't let him know where it's hid at nor the box of bullets neither. Because Tzchak has more sense than my own poor dumb-headed Mister about the kind of so-called gentlemen—oh, yes, my fine stud gentlemen friends—Tzchak knows and he knows it's hid right here so a

lady can defend her baby against such child-violating sons of bitches.

Everything slowed that he witnessed, it seemed, had imparted its agonizing slow-motion to his movements as well. So that he was too late. She was into the drawer in a flash and had the barrel of the gun leveled at his chest and the rattling box of cartridges in her hand and even as he watched the blue muzzle lifted slowly toward his eyes, the long steel of the barrel swiftly foreshortening. And she was crying, her face impassive and cold as the china face of a Victorian doll and yet all her eyes suddenly become the drizzled windows facing onto a territory within which some vast and titanic violence battled against its selves. Yet, save for her eyes, the rest of her seemed steadied to such a calm of unshaken, just-minded purpose as to seem almost indifferent and when she fired the first time and the bullet creased his temple above the left ear it was not so much the stun of that winging blow that shook him as it was, amid the common sensibilities of a natural terror, his absolute and irreconcilable astonishment at this vast, natural quiet about her body's efficient, unruffled resolution while, above the bones of her fine cheeks, all was a windowed riot. He would remember little of it in the years to come: mercifully, in one sense, tragically in the other by which he would, on certain nights of winds and rains to come, treasure any torn and cracked snapshot remembrance of her, however terrible: the little dog barking a bright, unnatural quacking alarm and Jason running down the zigzag black-and-yellow abstraction of the stairwell while behind him, her naked feet calmly finding the steps as she came to each, Jill in her nightdress followed quietly, except for her wetted eyes, with the police thirty-eight booming and jolting slightly in her slender hand while in the late-arriving good-sense of terror now he fled, leaping off the stone stoop to the bricks and crashing into the fragrant, rainswept jungle of Dede's rose of Sharons and hollyhocks and jasmine, crouching to hide in the dark, straining his eyes to find her, listening as she stopped and knelt on the bricks by the cistern and hearing the chink of the spent cartridges as she plucked them out methodically and with that calm, unruffled efficiency swiftly reloaded the chambers and then moved on, as if instinctively flushing him out, moving with a prim grace among the stalks of flowers and stepping with dainty unhur-riedness beneath the wind-and-rain lashing boughs forever in his wake, firing calmly as she came. Each drop of rain that