Charlie Martz and Other Stories: The Unpublished Stories Page 17
“Don’t you have kin?”
“Not here.” The girl shook her head. “And they are very poor.”
“You ought to get married.”
She smiled softly. “That would be nice.”
“Aren’t there any men around?”
“None that I care for.”
“Really?”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“You know,” he said seriously, “it takes a while to build good stock, but it’s worth the hard work cuz you can be rich from it.”
“How long does it take?” she asked.
“Years.”
“Oh—”
“But it’s worth it. The waitin’ is worth it.” Their eyes held and after a moment she lowered hers. She looked at his empty glass, then picked it up and went to the bar. He took the glass from her when she came back, touching her hand. She sat down, pulling her chair closer to his.
“I never met a girl like you before.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean a girl I could talk to like this.”
She smiled. “I’m happy.”
“I feel like I’ve known you a long time.”
“That’s the way it is sometimes with two people.”
“You think it’s fate?”
“God can do whatever he pleases,” the girl said.
“Maybe that’s it,” Chick said. “I feel like I’ve known you ever since I was born.”
“Perhaps,” the girl said, “we met in heaven.”
Chick grinned. “Hangin’ from a tree by our navels.” His face reddened. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right.”
“See, other girls’d get mad, but you understand.”
She touched his hand and said, “Chiquito,” softly.
He felt a sudden tenderness and he wanted to put his arms around her and just hold her. But his eyes lowered and he drank his mescal quickly. As he looked at her again, Ace called to him. He glanced at Ace, then to the girl again. “We got to go.”
“So soon?” She seemed disappointed.
“We got to work for our pay.”
As he rose he saw her lips form an 0 and a soft kissing sound came with it.
He could feel his face flush and he said, hurriedly, “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
All the way back to the line shack Ace sang “The Hog-Eye Man”—three verses and the chorus over and over again, singing loud in the dim stillness of the hills. It was not a pleasing sound, but Chick was glad that he was singing. They wouldn’t have to talk then and he could think about Luz.
That night, for a long time before going to sleep, he thought about her; and the next morning it was the same, seeing her as soon as he opened his eyes, though now her face was not so clear in his mind. He would close his eyes and concentrate hard to make her reappear. He could hear her voice and throughout the morning he went over and over again the parts of their conversation he could remember—
Telling him she was glad he had come. Touching his hand and saying Chiquito in that soft voice of hers—soft and warm and with a faint huskiness.
That’s funny how you can meet a person and know that you and that person were bound to meet. And when you see her it’s like you’re the only two people in the world.
That would be somethin’, wouldn’t it? You and her the only two people in the world.
We could pick out whatever house we wanted . . . even one up in Tucson, and all day we’d sit out in front in the shade, lookin’ around. Then we’d eat. And after that we’d get us a buggy and go for a ride—
No . . . have one other person alive. Some old man. He’d be sittin’ in front of his house and when we go by he’d say, “There goes Chick Williams and his little Mex gal.”
Ride out a ways, then stop the buggy.
He’d put his arms around her. “Honey, that red thing over there’s our sun goin’ down. Sure it’s ours; we’re the only people outside that old man and he’s too old to appreciate it.”
Maybe you could give that old man a job. Somethin’ where he wouldn’t have to move around any.
“Honey, why don’t we just stay right here till the moon comes up?”
She’ll turn her head to nod all right and that’s when you kiss her. Take her face in your hands and kiss her lightly the first one. Maybe two that way. Then put your arms around her and really kiss her good.
Boy!
He looked over at Ace currycombing his horse.
“Ace, why don’t we go to La Noria later on?”
“Suits me,” Ace said, not even looking at him.
Chick relaxed. That was easier than he’d expected.
But in the early afternoon a wagon pulled up loaded with salt chunks wrapped in gunny sacks and they spent the rest of the afternoon dropping the salt licks for the herd scattered all over the meadows. After that they had to eat, wash up, and Ace had to shave before they were ready to leave.
Ace sang “The Hog-Eye Man” most of the way there, but this time he was singing more to himself, not shouting the chorus, and it was just something to pass the time and fill the stillness. He made up his own verses when he was tired of the ones he knew: obscene ones that didn’t rhyme and he sang these over and over again.
Chick felt good. Even with the sharp little knot inside of him. He’d breathe in and out slowly to make it go away, but it stayed where it was halfway between his stomach and his chest, right in the middle. It would’ve been good to tell somebody how he felt, but not Ace, and especially not when he was singing that song.
Coming out of the aspen, approaching the pueblo, the knot was even tighter and taking big gulps of air didn’t relieve it a bit. He thought: What’s there to be so nervous about? You’d think you were goin’ to ask somebody for a job.
“You’re awful quiet,” Ace said.
“How could I say anything with you singin’ that dirty song?”
“You can sing with me on the way home.”
“Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll even drown you right out.”
They passed between the first adobes entering the square, reining in the direction of the cantina. “Big night tonight,” Ace said. In the dimness they could see a line of horses standing at the rail. Light showed in the windows of the cantina and they could hear faint sounds of laughter.
“How come?” Chick asked.
“Saturday night, boy.”
“I lost track of the days.”
“That’s what line ridin’ does,” Ace stated. They dismounted and tied up at the end of the rail.
Chick saw her the moment they entered the cantina. She was sitting at a table between two men, looking at one of them and smiling at something he was saying. He watched her as he followed Ace to the bar, but she did not look up.
“Have to stand tonight,” Ace said, his eyes roaming over the crowded room. The oil lamps hanging from the beamed ceiling were up to full brightness and a haze of tobacco smoke hung motionless over the table area. Most of the men were Mexican vaqueros; the others, like the two sitting with Luz, were riders from the American side, from any one of a half dozen spreads located in this southern stretch of the San Rafael valley.
“You want mescal?” asked Ace. He made room for himself at the bar.
“All right with me,” Chick said. He glanced over his shoulder. Still the girl had not seen him.
“You look disappointed,” Ace said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you look disappointed.”
“You’re seein’ things.”
“Not yet I’m not,” Ace said. He picked up both of the drinks the man behind the bar had poured and handed one to Chick. “I know what’s botherin’ you.” Ace grinned. “That little chilipicker over there.”
“You’re crazy,” Chick told him.
Ace’s grin broadened as he looked down the length of the bar. Alicia was standing near the end talking to a vaquero. “I got somethin’ botherin’ me, too,” Ace said, and started toward them.
He can sure be friendly when he wants, Chick thought. He looked at Luz again just as she was rising, picking up the two glasses from the table. A few feet from him she squeezed in next to the bar.
“Luz?”
Her head turned and at first she seemed not to recognize him. “Oh . . . how are you?”
“Fine. How’re you?”
“Good.” She turned back to the bar and said something in Spanish to the bartender who raised a bottle and filled the two glasses. She handed him a coin.
“Luz, I said I’d be back today and I am.”
“What?”
“Don’t you remember, I said—”
“Oh . . . yes.”
“I thought tonight we could go out for a walk instead of stayin’ in this smoky place.” He grinned at her. “Take a look at the moon.”
She was picking up change the bartender had placed on the bar and suddenly she was talking to him again, snapping the words, and her eyes blazed angrily. The bartender handed her another coin.
As she picked up the glasses, Chick said, “I thought we could go for a walk.”
She glanced at him irritably. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Later on, then?” His hand touched her arm.
“Do you want me to spill these!”
“I thought—”
“Listen, find a girl who isn’t busy.”
She turned from him and went to the table. He watched her sit down between the two men and then he walked out of the cantina. He moved slowly, hearing the cantina sounds behind him, as he took his horse from the rail and led it across the square and between the adobes.
You really got a way with women, haven’t you?
He thought of something Ace had said the day before. Something about if you can’t handle the women then don’t fool with them.
You know what he meant now, huh? Now you know it takes more’n a high opinion of yourself.
But it won’t happen again, will it?
Riding back he sang “The Hog-Eye Man” and by the time he reached the line shack the glimpses of her in his mind were less frequent.
Perhaps a little bit of her would always remain in his mind, but for some reason he felt pretty good. Freer.
And at the same time he felt every bit of at least twenty years old.
The Trespassers
1958
CHRIS WAS ON THE back porch, a loden coat thrown over her shoulders, when the sound of rifle fire reached her again. This time there were three moment-spaced reports coming sharply, clearly from beyond the barn and tractor shed, echoing over the orchard and the open pasture, the reports stretching thinly out of the woods that were perhaps five hundred yards from the house.
She was certain now that someone was shooting on their property; someone who had no business being there. Deer season or not, the fence should tell them it was private property.
Unless the hunters were friends of Evan’s.
Waiting, listening, her gaze still fixed on the far slope of the pasture, Chris worked her arms into the coat and fastened the wooden toggles. The hood remained folded away from her dark hair that was parted on the side and held in place by a plain silver clasp. A gray skirt showed below the coat; she wore matching kneesocks and black snow boots that were comfortably well worn.
That could be it, she thought. A neighbor, or someone from Howell. She could picture Evan talking to one of the store clerks in town, to a man he hardly knew, telling him to come around anytime, the woods were always there waiting. That could very well be it. Easy Ev being friendly, inviting everybody in town to tramp all over their property and shoot or scare away whatever game might be there. He would have forgotten about her father coming up in the morning.
Tomorrow would have to be as near perfect as possible. Ideally, Evan and her father would shoot a buck in the morning; in the afternoon they’d relax, mix drinks, and let the talk come naturally. That was the way Chris pictured it. Both of them in a good mood, feeling something in common now with the drinks on the table between them and the buck hanging in the tractor shed. When her father would finally bring the conversation around to his business, Evan would be in a receptive mood and listen without letting his gaze drift out the window to the barn and the orchard standing dark and silent in the November dusk.
It was her father’s idea that Evan come to work for him. It was his problem, too—to convince a twenty-four-year-old easygoing ex–basketball star, one year out of Michigan State and only six months married, that he would be happier and make considerably more money as a manufacturer’s rep than he could as a seventy-two-acre farmer with six cows and a sizable mortgage.
It wasn’t a recent idea. Her father had talked to Evan about it before, but seldom with any hope of success. Evan would turn him down politely, mildly, saying that he’d just always wanted to farm and feeling the way he did about it, at least he ought to try it.
But tomorrow’s session could be different. Now, for the first time, Chris would side with her father; not arguing it with Evan, but letting him know, gently, that her father’s idea was at least reasonable. Evan could be an asset to any sales organization. He was calm, not likely to panic under pressure; he made friends easily, looked exceptionally presentable with a suit on, and still had a name in Detroit as a Michigan State basketball star. But—
There was a tricky part to it. Chris realized it first in a personal way, feeling that the quality she loved most about Evan was the very thing that sometimes made her angry. Her father translated it into practical terms. The quality that marked Evan as a good potential salesman, his easygoing friendliness, could also be his biggest liability. “Right now,” her father had said, “he doesn’t know where to draw the line. You’re too friendly, too patient, and people take advantage of you.” But with direction, guided by her father’s experience, Evan’s friendliness could be developed into a valuable asset instead of a rug people were likely to walk over anytime they felt like it.
Sure, keep the farm. Her father was for that. Ideal for weekend hunting; fine for during the summer. But why break a full-time pick on a project that couldn’t gross more than four thousand its best year? What was the assurance Evan could handle it on his own and make it pay even that much?
This uncertainty raised doubts in Chris’s mind. The doubts banded together into a conviction that her father was right and that tomorrow was the day Evan would give in. If for no other reason, she decided now, than for her sake.
Evan’s pickup came past the corner of the house, rolled slowly over the gravel drive to stop in front of the garage. He waved getting out. Chris raised a red-mittened hand. She watched him reach over the side panel and lift out a box of groceries. He smiled coming toward the porch, then frowned, gritting his teeth and hurrying, as if the box was too heavy for him. Chris pushed the door open and stepped aside.
“Did you hear the shooting?”
“It’s hunting season.” He paused to kiss her on the cheek before going in.
“This shooting was on our land,” Chris said when he appeared in the doorway again.
“I wondered,” Evan said. “There’s an old yellow convertible parked on the road in from the highway.” He was already moving down the steps. “I almost went in the ditch getting around it.”
“Evan—”
“I’ll be right back.” He went to the pickup, this time lifted out a case of beer and came back holding it close to his chest. “I hope your dad’ll settle for beer.”
“He’s been known to.” Chris watched him anxiously but waited until Evan was putting the case down on the porch. “Then you don’t know who’s in our woods.”
He straightened, moving the case against the wall with his foot. “How do you know they’re in ours?”
“I w
as standing right here. You could tell.”
“Well, there aren’t any signs posted. I mean you can’t really blame them.”
“Evan, they had to climb a fence to get in.”
He had turned and now his gaze hung on the horizon of the pasture slope, as if picturing the trees that were thick down beyond it. His hand came out of his coat pocket with a tobacco plug and he bit off a corner of it, still staring at the slope that was bare except for snow patches and dark tree-stump dots.
Waiting now, wondering what he was thinking, she watched the slow movement of his jaw as he worked the tobacco into his cheek. He looked more like a professional athlete than a farmer, a Major League baseball player, though he had taken up plug tobacco because it was a farmer thing to do. Chris was sure of that. At least he handled it well, as if he’d been chewing tobacco all of his life.
Right now, though, the thoughtful, slow movement of his jaw was exasperating.
“Evan, don’t you think you should tell them to leave?”
“Why?”
“Why? Because they’re trespassing on your land! And if they haven’t killed a deer already, they’ve probably scared them all away.”
“So why bother?” He pulled work gloves out of his pockets.
“And if there are no deer there,” Chris said, spacing the words, “where will you take Dad tomorrow?”
Evan seemed to smile. “You know all rich girls, even ex-ones, call their fathers Dad. They say, ‘Dad did something.’ Like he was the only one the world with that name. They never say, ‘My dad.’ You ever notice that?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“I just happened to think of that.”
“All right, my father is looking forward to hunting with you tomorrow. But if someone’s in the woods today, there won’t be anything to hunt tomorrow. Now does that make sense?”
“You always worry about little piddlin’ things.”
“Evan, are you going to tell them to leave or shall I?”
“They might even be gone already.”
“Are you going to find out?”
“I don’t see why we should. What if it’s somebody who drove all the way up from Detroit to hunt. He works in a plant, looks forward to it all year. Then we go out and ruin his day.”