The Watchman (3 page)

The hotel dining-room was almost dark. That was why Jill Alt and the boy Cole were there. On nights when she could get away without unpleasantness with her father Jill and Cole Blake spent their dates at the table by the long glass window in the dusky dining-room. In the street outside the cold and pulsing stare of the neon sign painted their faces every two seconds with yellow, appointing those who might pass along the sidewalk to be their chaperon. Jibbons and the two others had left now that the fun was over: the lobby, except for the night clerk, was deserted. Cole sat for a long while silent watching the girl wind and unwind the little handkerchief round her finger.

Maybe it's having a Sheriff for a father, he said. I don't blame you for all of it, Jill.

Cole, Daddy's got nothing to do with how I think about it, she said. Don't you ever give me credit for having a conscience of my own?

Yes, he said. I didn't mean that. You know I do, Jill. I reckon you've got more character and cleanness than any

girl I ever knew. It's just that you tell me you're in love with me and you know I love you and yet you won't hardly let me so much as touch you with my fingers. I get the feeling sometimes you feel like you're afraid of doing anything that he might see.

Cole, that's not true, she said. I do all my own thinking about that. Papa doesn't watch me.

Ever count the number of times he drives past out there real slow? asked the boy. Real slow and keeping his face out of sight so that he can see you and you can't see him?

Cole, he loves me, too, she said. Someday maybe you'll understand Papa worrying so much about me.

Well, sighed the boy, I don't reckon it makes much difference. A person can be in love but there still may not be a thing they can do about it. Here I am talking to you about love and everything and what good is it? I'm only eighteen, living all by myself here in the hotel with no money but that little check Uncle Harry sends me from Romney every month and that job at the glass plant with no future in it. What good's it even talking about love or anything to someone like you, Jill?

It sounds good to me, Cole Blake, she said gently.

What good? he sighed into his fingers. We can't get married. And you won't let me do any more than hold your hand or kiss you good night.

Cole, sometimes it's just like you were two persons, she said suddenly. One of them sweet and kind and we talk about poetry and music and things we like together. And the other Cole is someone that just seems to want to hurt me. I swear, Cole Blake, sometimes when I'm fighting off your hands I get the notion you want me to be like my sister Cristi.

Jill, he said, would it be being like Cristi just to let yourself be human with someone you're in love with?

Be human? she said. Cole, I may not be anything but a stupid nineteen-year-old girl but I certainly know that when a boy says he wants me to be human with him what he means is undressed.

Jill, I've never been with a girl, he said, covering his face with his hands and then throwing them down on the table to stare miserably into his palms. I guess maybe I never wanted to bad enough to care about it till you and me started going together. So we'd be starting off about equal, Jill. I don't know any more about it than you do. All I know is I reckon

I always wanted the first time to be with somebody I was in love with.

Well, she said, I don't know how you can say you're in love with me, Cole. You just as much as ask me to throw away everything my mama was and everything my daddy raised me up to believe in and just go be like my sister Cristi. Living over there above the drugstore on the corner and carrying on every night with that Jason Hunnicutt and the Lord knows who else. Papa won't have her in the house. He gives her money every month so she can live there away from him and me. Cole, you've got to get it clear that I am me and Cristi is Cristi. Just like there is day and night.

But, Jill, isn't there any between? he murmured. Is the world full of nothing but day-white Jills and night-black Cristis? Is that all? Aren't there any moon-and-star girls and sunlight-girls with a lot of Ught in them and the kind of dark that's not really dark? No girls vdth little shadows running over them hke clouds make over meadows? No rainbow, sunset girls with every kind of color and light and dark there is in the world? I love you, Jill. God only knows it. But it always seems like you're afraid. Like you're trying to live up to someone that's standing watch over you with a gun.

Meaning Papa, I suppose, she said.

Well, yes, he said. Yes, I do mean him.

Cole, you have any notion what it's meant to Papa—being mother and father to me and Cristi both through all these years—through all the towns we've lived in all the way between West Virginia and Texas? Both, Cole. He's had to be both to us. And Cristi it just so happens can't Uve up to all he's sacrificed. I'll not say how she lives is one thing or the other. All I do know is I couldn't live with myself if I ever let Papa down.

I understand all that, Jill, he said. All his sacrificing and all. What I can't understand is why it's only you he watches. If he cares so much about the both of you how come he lets Cristi run the streets not much better than a town-girl. Her living alone up over the drugstore in that furnished room and only seventeen years old. How come he doesn't watch Cristi like he watches you?

Because Cristi is willful and headstrong is why, she said. Lord knows, Cole, he's sacrificed every bit as much for Cristi as he has for me. Maybe more. She died, you know, when Mama was bom. What I mean to say was. Mama died when

Cristi was born. And I don't reckon Papa has ever got over that. Leastways there's never been anyone else for him since Mama died. I was just five then. I don't know what he'd do if it wasn't for me living with him to darn his socks and cook and clean up after him.

And not have any real life of your own, he said.

Cole, don't think I fail to understand perfectly well what you mean by 'having a real life of my own,' she said. You want me to be easy like Cristi is. Do you think he could stand seeing me turn out that way, too? Wouldn't that be a little too much. Cole? Cristi's nearly broken his heart as it is.

But he still doesn't care as much about her as he does you.

He cares! she said.

As much as he cares about what you do, Jill? he said.

No.

Why? he said. That's what I can't understand.

Because it wouldn't make any difference is why. Because Cristi is what she is and has been for so long that nothing he could do could change her, she said.

Doesn't he give a hang about what the town says about her? he said. The Sheriff's seventeen-year-old daughter living like she does.

In the town's eyes it's the cross he has to bear, she said. They think more of him for bearing up under it and doing his job and taking care of me. Everybody in Adena knows that Cristi is just naturally incorrigible.

You mean, he said, there's someone alive in Mound County that the mighty Sheriff has no power over, Jill?

Cole Blake, that's just unspeakably mean of you, she said.

I reckon it is, he said. You get to thinking pretty mean things sometimes when you know you're being watched every minute of every hour you're with someone God and the sun and moon and stars know it's right for you to be with! Jill, listen now. Being my girl. Is that what you want to stop? And do you want me to stop it. Because I can't. That's something only you can stop, Jtll.

No no no, she murmured. Cole, I want to keep on being your girl always. But I want it to keep on being like it is now. I want it to be with the Cole I understand. The one who isn't always trying to make me do things I can't do. And that has nothing to do with Papa either. It's me who wants that, Cole. I'm the one who watches us aU the time—not Papa.

Was it you that ordered me out of Miss Dede's yard that

summer night I first come to take you out? he said. Or wasn't it him?

Cole, you don't understand Papa, she said.

Do you, Jill? he said. Does your sister understand him? Sometimes I think she's the only one who does. Sometimes I want to go up to your sister and say, Christi, what kind of a man is that? Cristi, what kind of a god is that over there on the courthouse steps with the badge and the gun?

Well, why don't you then? she said.

No, Jill, he said. I ask you, Jill. What's there to understand? What kind of god's the father with the badge and gun, Jill?

That's blaspheming, Cole, she said.

Against who, Jill, he sighed. Him or God?

She looked at him silently in the darkness, her pale face framed in her lustrous dark hair which in those shadows seemed to give off a rich and shining ambience almost lighter than her face.

All right then, Cole, she said suddenly. What is it you want me to say?

Just that you love me, he said. And that nothing we could ever do together could ever be evil or bad.

Do you really think that, Cole? she said.

I know that, he said.

And if I said maybe, Cole, to what you're asking, she said, would you buy me that beautiful cultured pearl necklace in the window of Mister Booher's jewelry?

JiJl, what's that mean? he said. What's that got to do with it? You know I—

And if I changed the maybe to yes would you buy me the opal ring in the same window and the pair of white rabbit's fur lounging slippers up in Gant's? she said.

Jill, what's this have to do with what we been talking about? he said.

I just wanted you to hear the kind of answer Cristi would give a boy if he asked her to do the thing you're asking me, she said. Oh, Cole, can't you understand I couldn't be lik« that. I couldn't stand it! I couldn't stand to look myself in a mirror, I couldn't stand Papa's eyes when I brought him his breakfast in the morning.

It's always him, he said. Then it's really true. It's always him.

Cole, he's only watching after me, she said, her voice almost breaking. Only looking out for me. There's nobody

ever looked out for me like Papa. I guess when Cristi was born and Mama died there just wasn't anybody left in the world that Papa could take care of but me. And Cristi. And when Cristi turned out like she did there wasn't anyone but rae. Cole, you don't know what kind of girl I'd have grown up to be if it wasn't for him.

I know, Jill, he said. I know what you were born to be— what you grew up to be.

No, she said. You don't know me, Cole. I don't really know myself. If it wasn't for Papa keeping a close watch on me I might be something wilder even than Cristi. I might be someone you couldn't love, Cole.

There's nothing you could be I couldn't love, he said.

Yes, she said. Oh, yes, there is, Cole. Sometimes I dream it and I wake up from the dream with an awful shout and Papa lights the light and I have to sit up shaking for an hour with night terrors before I feel safe getting back Into bed again. Yes, Cole, I could be something far different than the girl I am if it wasn't for Papa. And I know what he wants me to be and I know what I want myself to be.

What is it you want yourself to be? he said.

Someone clean and decent and beautiful like Mama. Cole, you remember your mother, she said. Beautiful and always, always young. The last of the Ladies, as Papa always says. Well, that's how I remember my mama, too. And I just can't let myself be something cheap that Papa wouldn't love. My hair is dark like hers was—Mama's, I mean. Papa says I'm her living image. He says I'm the shining picture of her. Cole, I can't spoil that picture.

I've got a picture, too, Jill, he said bitterly. The Sheriff of Mound County, West Virginia. At night when you're safe in bed you can hear his strong, slow boot-strides along the brick sidewalks out in the fog. You feel safer now—hearing that sound—picturing that firm mouth, those watchful, glittering eyes. And especially that big Colt he's got slung on his hip. He—

Cole, you're killing something, she moaned. Please stop it.

And now you're going to tell me you never want to sit with me here at our table again and you're getting ready to walk out of here, I reckon, and I'm going to follow you, he said. And if I lose you in the fog I'll call you on the phone tomorrow. And if you tell me you never want to see me again—here at our table—not anywhere—it won't make any difference. Because I love you sweeter and harder than I

love my own life. And I guess if you made me take back everything I said tonight then I'd do that. And mean it. And say I'd made it all up for contrariness sake. Because there is nothing inside me that I feel as hard as the thing I feel about you, JUl. And the only thing you could never make me take back is telling you I love you.

Cole, let's go for a walk, she said gently. You don't want to walk with me, Jill, he said. You just want to get me out of your sight.

No, Cole, she said. Let's walk. I don't like our table tonight. The shadows here in our room tonight aren't kind hke they've always been. And that red light from the window—it scares me tonight. Cole. It comes and goes on my hands and when it's there it looks like blood.

It's only a light, Jill, he said. No blood. It's only electricity. Cole, take me for a walk, she said, feeling for her purse under the chair. It's beautiful in the fog these autumn nights. We'll climb the Mound and look down at the fog and forget there's even a town underneath it. You're not sore at me? No, she said.

As long as I Uve, he said, taking her hand. Do you know that, Jill? As long as I live I'm going to love you this much. But she was standing up now, not listening to him, smoothing her hands down over the fabric of the strange frock that covered her slender body.

Cole? she said. Do you like me in this dress? You've never even seen me in it before. Am I pretty in this dress, Cole? Tell me.

Beautiful, he said.

Lord knows, it's old and out of style, she said. But he's kept it always as fresh and new as if it was just off the racks up at Gant's. Cole, would you believe this dress is twenty years old? Would you believe it? And not a worn-out seam, not a moth hole. He's kept it that way—lovely and new, Cole. All these years.

You look beautiful in it, he said, and took her hand and they moved through the lobby and out the front door into the fog, into the still town night.