The Watchman (9 page)

Jill, he said, do we have to stay here? Couldn't we just walk in the streets or go have a soda or something—anything but stay here?

You think I'm queer, don't you? she said. Queer wanting to come here tonight. I didn't think you would feel that way, Jason. I thought somehow you would be able to understand.

I do, he said. I do understand.

It's the only place Cole and I could ever be alone together, she said quietly to her long fingers on the table and her voice had gotten quaky and high the way girls' voices do before they cry.

I don't mind, Jill, he said.

No one ever really understood, she said, near to whispering. People always said the reason Cole and I sat here together in the dark was because of Papa—because it was the one place in town he could be sure that someone would always be able to see us every few minutes so that he could be sure that we didn't do anything wrong. Well, that's just not true, Jason. It's not true at all. Daddy knows me. He trusts me.

Papa knows I wouldn't do anything wrong with a boy. Not even if it was upstairs in one of those rooms where the drummers take their waitresses. And I knew Cole. 1 knew him like myself. And I knew Cole never wanted to do anything like that with me.

She thrust her face up and stilled her quivering lips and her eyes flashed.

No, she said. We spent our evenings here because it was just dark enough and just hght enough to see each other and sometimes when we'd have a quarrel it would be just dark enough not to see anything cruel in each other's faces, anything that it would hurt to remember. And we could look out there in the street—all the town going past in the night. We could look at them and feel sorry because they weren't and couldn't ever be in love. Not the way we were.

She stood up suddenly, the chair scraping back from her thrusting legs, and she stared at the rose nodding into the whatever garden immortality of night beyond the glass.

It wasn't because of anything Papa made me do! she whispered. It was just our place to be together. Papa doesn't make me do anything. He doesn't have to because he happens to trust me. People used to say the only reason Papa used to drive down LaFayette so many times a night in the Sheriff's Ford was so he could slow down in front of the hotel and spy on me and Cole. Isn't it a caution what lies they say! And all of them in this dining room this morning flocking and jamming like a mob to stare at him dead and stuff themselves with food. My God, I went to his coffin eight times this morning just to be sure he was still there. I would look into their faces—the eyes of them above their chewing mouths and I'd get this sick, horrible, delirious fear that they were slicing off bits of him.

She walked slowly to the rose, stood a moment looking down, lifted it gently from the drink, its slashed stem dripping, wiped it carefully with a wisp of handkerchief fetched from the old coat's pocket. She kissed it with her eyes closed, the lashes fallen on her petaled cheeks. Jason shivered and his mouth grew parched suddenly. And it was not at the sight of her breaking the dead stem and fetching the rose up to the dark and dusky coils of her hair; but from the sudden, unreasoning sense that there were three and not just two of them there now. The rose's pale spent blossom new-living in Jill's hair, she smiled suddenly and seemed seized with a fresh mood, almost of quiet exultation.

We used to dance, she said in a new voice, a low, bright voice, and moved to the juke box. Cole would turn it down real low so it wouldn't bother folks out in the lobby and we would dance here in the dark.

She turaed and smiled at Jason, almost teasingly, almost challenging, a coin in her fingers above the metal plunger-slot.

Cole would want me to dance tonight, she said softly. Will you dance with me tonight, Jason?

He was silent that instant too long, his throat gripped tight in the wooden stocks of guilt; he could not speak immediately.

We both loved him, she said, her great dark eyes both merry and glittering with small, fine crystals of rimming tears. We're here tonight to try to deny—to wipe out all the awful, lying show that they made out of him in this room this morning. Aren't we, Jason?

Yes, I guess we are, he said, rising.

She slipped in the dime, pressed the plunger home and waited. The rose in the dixie cup of listless drink: it was not all that poor, fallible Thomas Peace and sons had left that dusk when they had struck the circus tents of death. For now the twilight of the hotel dining room was filled suddenly with the choiring chords of the morning. "Abide with Me." Even Jill, for an instant, drew back her hand as if it had been shocked by electricity. And then she laughed a little, softly, holding out her arms for Jason to come take her in the dance.

My God, Jill. We can't dance to that, he said.

Why not? she whispered. I think Cole would like it, Jason. Come on, Jason. It's turned down soft. No one will hear.

Jason, sweating, trying to smile, trying to make his arms go up to take her.

Besides, she said, it happens to be the favorite hymn of someone very special in my life—or should I say very special in your life, Jason. Oh, yes—Cole would love it for that reason, too! "Abide with me—amid the encircling gloom." Can't you see the way he'd throw back his head and laugh, Jason Hunnicutt?

He took her warm fingers in his cold, and made his feet take him to her, against her, feeling her Uttle belly quake with soft, sorrowing laughter against him.

Who? he whispered among her hair. Whose favorite hynm, Jill?

Why, my sister's, Jason, she cried softly. My sister Cristi's favorite hymn! Or didn't she ever bother to tell you that she had a favorite hymn?

And he blurted unsensibly: No. Cristi and I never talk much about religious things.

No, she said, deliciously pleased. No. I reckon not.

She pressed her hair closer into his face and smiled, unseen, among his shadowed cheek, took a deep breath and shaped a teasing question.

Didn't you and my sister have a date tonight, Jason?

We had a date, Jason said. I broke it. She came to the hotel today after the funeral. I told her I couldn't see her tonight.

Jill restrained the little shiver of pleasure that raced pell-mell within her secret flesh.

Did you tell her that you had a date with me?

No. Not exactly, Jill, he lied. I called her tonight. I said you were Cole's girl and I told her how I'd seen you at the cemetery today—the way your face looked. I said I thought maybe it would be easier for her to be alone tonight than it would be for you.

Well, I wouldn't worry about Cristi if I were you, Jason Hunnicutt. She'll manage tonight.

What do you mean—manage what tonight?

Oh, nothing really. Cristi's very resourceful. She never has to be alone if she doesn't want to be.

He said nothing to that and felt the worse for it, as if his silence was a Judas thing, and yet sensed an edge of something sharp in Jill's voice that he did not yet dare press against.

And so, murmured Jill in a sudden change of voice, almost hoarse with grief. And so—the hunt begins.

Yes, he said. The hunt begins. And I for one count myself among the hunters. Because never again so long as I live, Jill, wUl I sleep a dreamless sleep again nor walk Adena's streets feeling clean under the sun until I've watched Cole's murderer strapped in that chair up yonder in the Uttle green room. Until I've seen him die!

She pulled away, almost thrusting him from her, and went slowly to the table to sit down, to cup her cheeks and see the merciful shapelessness of street things in the fog. He followed, contrite, bewildered, and slowly sat across from her again.

What did I say wrong? he asked. What could I have said

that you shouldn't feel a hundred times sharper than me even?

She was silent for the count of five breathings: exhale, inhale, pulse, drum of sorrowing heart, exhale, remembrance and the unremembering horror, inhale, and the gunflash of soundless and imperfect recollection, exhale, love, and pray to God forever more, amen.

Why, Jill?

Because you make it sound the way you said it that the hunt begins somehow here—tonight—with me, she said, furious at her shameless, trembling lip and the well of tears. With me, she said. As if I know who killed Cole. As if I know and won't tell.

I know that's not so, he said honestly.

I don't know, she cried faintly. I swear it. On the memory of her—of my mother that I don't know, Jason. I loved Cole Blake. And the way you said that—the way the hunt begins—saying it as if that was all and the only reason you came to me today—the reason that you asked me to come here tonight. Do you think I could sit here with you at this table if I knew who killed poor Cole?

No, he said. And that wasn't why I wanted you to be with me tonight. You have got to believe that, Jill. I wanted you and me to be together tonight because we were probably the only ones who understood Cole at all. Cristi would understand that—why I'd want to be with you tonight.

Cristi doesn't understand, she whispered, with the faint sibilance of a shpped veil. Cristi understands nothing in the world that isn't below her hips!

She was still a spell, clenching with white knuckles the tiny lace kerchief of her mother's, sweet with its drifting memory of violet cologne.

That was mean of me, she said. That was a dirty thing to say.

I understand about you and Cristi, he said. I know the differences between the two of you. I think I knew them every time I used to see Cole's face when he said your name.

He loved me, she said. Oh, yes, he did love me, Jason.

Jason, in darkness, flushed warm and stared at the faint, pale shapes of his hands.

Yes, he loved you. I don't reckon even your daddy loved you like Cole Blake loved you.

She raised the shadowed, heart-shaped flower of her face slowly and looked at him.

Why do you mention my daddy? she said levelly.

I don't know, he stumbled. 1 just said that I didn't think even he loved you as much as Cole did. Is that wrong, Jill?

But you meant something else by it, she said.

Nothing else, he said.

Jason, I am a very wary person, she said. I feel and sense things that people mean underneath the things they say. And when you said that—the way you said that—I could feel that you were hinting at something.

Jill, no. Hinting at what? I only said Cole loved you more than your daddy. I meant just that.

As if, she went on quietly, you were hinting the same awful thing that I've heard some others hinting out there in the town today. That somehow Daddy was to blame because Cole got killed.

She began to cry, her face naked to the light from the drifting street, making no motion to cover her anguish with her hands. He sat helplessly before the unapproachable, unanswerable feminine condition, waiting till she stopped, blew her nose softly and began to speak again.

The hunt begins, she murmured. And you among the hunters. Very well. So I come here to you tonight expecting one thing and discovering something quite different, Jason.

Jill, I swear before God I never meant that, he said.

No. You listen, Jason Hunnicutt. You the hunter among the rest of the hunters after us all. And isn't that what it all really means? Aren't they that? Hunters after us all? Couldn't any one of us be someone they could name and frame and nail to the courthouse cross and call it done and clean and all-avenged? As if by doing that they had raised Cole back from that earth you stepped across today to get to me, Jason?

Don't say these things, Jill, he said.

No, listen to me, please. You make of this table and this room and these chairs—this place that meant all that you know it meant to Cole and me—you make it into a chamber of judgment. So let me tell you.

Jill, will you let me say something?

No. Because I must tell you. I was there—we had gone there—Cole was there. And we had gone there for nothing that needed hiding or sneaking up there to do like whatever other couples go there for. Because it was the place we'd first gone—the first time I had ever been with Cole. On the mound. Feeling all that wonder and mystery of ancientness

beneath our feet—the secret princesses and princes sleeping in the mound below us. And the town below us. Adena all hidden in its white fogs. Adena with whatever meanness might be happening down there. A pure place—up there high above everything—and the fog of the town below us like the way clouds look in movies from airplanes. Pretending almost anything might be down there beneath that whiteness—oceans or China or a different time thousands of years ago. And then—and then—

She shuddered and covered her face and waited for the blood in her throat to take its tightening fingers from her speech.

—and then someone coming up from the fog—up the path that winds round the mound—coming suddenly out of the fog. Shouting something. I can't see the face—not even when I close my eyes—some face by moon. I can't remember. And then the shouts. Are you listening quite carefully, Jason, because I am telling it to you Uke it was. And I think if I ever have to tell it to anyone else ever again it will kill me! Shouting! And the moon. And I saw Cole's face and heard the—the jarring flat crack of something like someone hitting a flat board on a wood floor—slapping it hard and fast—and j-jarring—and Cole's face began to—to go away in pieces and there was nothing to do. He was on his knees— and the flat slapping sound never seemed to end—and his face was all gone and nothing there but a broken redness in the moon. Oh, my God! And I was holding him in my arms then and moaning and rocking him to and fro and trying with my other hand to put his face all back but there was nothing there. It was all gone. And what was left was only broken.

She was not shaking now, almost in full possession of herself again, so that he watched her and wondered in pity and another emotion that he would come to gently learn in the weeks of the autumn yet unspent, unspoiled, seeing her strength and valor and some profoundly moving sensibility of loyalty and love, sweet as the vestiges of that autumn unspent, unspoiled. He wanted to take her in his arms. Not for love as he had grown to learn it with the other girl but as he might have put his arms around Cole Blake in a moment of total and unstuck grief.