“Tough luck, kid,” he said. “Nice going almost; too bad your uncle telegraphed it for you,” and threw the stick into the corner and stepped around me toward the door, which was the first time I reckon that any of us realised that whoever it was he had locked out was still banging on it, and shot the bolt back and opened it then stepped back himself as Linda came in, blazing; yes, that’s exactly the word for it: blazing: and without even looking at Uncle Gavin or me, whirled onto her tiptoes and slapped Matt twice, first with her left hand and then her right, panting and crying at the same time:
“You fool! You ox! You clumsy ignorant ox!
You clumsy ignorant stupid son of a bitch!” Which was the first time I ever heard a sixteen-year-old girl say that. No: the first time I ever heard any woman say that, standing there facing Matt and crying hard now, like she was too mad to even know what to do next, whether to slap him again or curse him again, until Uncle Gavin came around the desk and touched her and said,
“Stop it. Stop it now,” and she turned and grabbed him, her face against his shirt where he had bled onto it, still crying hard, saying,
“Mister Gavin, Mister Gavin, Mister Gavin.”
“Open the door, Chick,” Uncle Gavin said. I opened it. “Get out of here, boy,” Uncle Gavin said to Matt. “Go on.” Then Matt was gone. I started to close the door. “You too,” Uncle Gavin said.
“Sir?” I said.
“You get out too,” Uncle Gavin said, still holding Linda where she was shaking and crying against him, his nose bleeding onto her too now.
THIRTEEN
Gavin Stevens
GO ON,” I said. “You get out too.” So he did, and I stood there holding her. Or rather, she was gripping me, quite hard, shuddering and gasping, crying quite hard now, burrowing her face into my shirt so that I could feel my shirt front getting wet. Which was what Ratliff would have called tit for tat, since what Victorians would have called the claret from my nose had already stained the shoulder of her dress.
So I could free one hand long enough to reach around and over her other shoulder to the handkerchief in my breast pocket and do a little emergency work with it until I could separate us long enough to reach the cold water tap.
“Stop it,” I said. “Stop it now.” But she only cried the harder, clutching me, saying,
“Mister Gavin. Mister Gavin. Oh, Mister Gavin.”
“Linda,” I said. “Can you hear me?” She didn’t answer, just clutching me; I could feel her nodding her head against my chest. “Do you want to marry me?” I said.
“Yes!” she said. “Yes! All right! All right!”
This time I got one hand under her chin and lifted her face by force until she would have to look at me. Ratliff had told me that McCarron’s eyes were gray, probably the same hard gray as Hub Hampton’s. Hers were not gray at all. They were darkest hyacinth, what I have always imagined that Homer’s hyacinthine sea must have had to look like.
“Listen to me,” I said. “Do you want to get married?” Yes, they dont need minds at all, except for conversation, social intercourse. And I have known some who had charm and tact without minds even then. Because when they deal with men, with human beings, all they need is the instinct, the intuition before it became battered and dulled, the infinite capacity for devotion untroubled and unconfused by cold moralities and colder facts.
“You mean I dont have to?” she said.
“Of course not,” I said. “Never if you like.”
“I dont want to marry anybody!” she said, cried; she was clinging to me again, her face buried again in the damp mixture of blood and tears which seemed now to compose the front of my shirt and tie. “Not anybody!” she said. “You’re all I have, all I can trust. I love you! I love you!”
FOURTEEN
Charles Mallison
WHEN HE GOT home, his face was clean. But his nose and his lip still showed, and there wasn’t anything he could have done about his shirt and tie. Except he could have bought new ones, since on Saturday the stores were still open. But he didn’t. Maybe even that wouldn’t have made any difference with Mother; maybe that’s one of the other things you have to accept in being a twin. And yes sir, if dentists’ drills could talk, that’s exactly what Mother would have sounded like after she got done laughing and crying both and saying Damn you, Gavin, damn you damn you, and Uncle Gavin had gone up stairs to put on a clean shirt and tie for supper.
“Forming her mind,” Mother said.
It was like he could stand just anything except getting knocked down or getting his nose bloodied. Like if Mr de Spain hadn’t knocked him down in the alley behind that Christmas dance, he could have got over Mrs Snopes without having to form Linda’s mind. And like if Matt Levitt hadn’t come into the office that afternoon and bloodied his nose again, he could have stopped there with Linda’s mind without having to do any more to it.
So he didn’t stop because he couldn’t. But at least he got rid of Matt Levitt. That was in the spring, it was her last year in high school; she would graduate in May and any school afternoon I could see her walking along the street from school with a few books under her arm.
But if any of them was poetry now I didn’t know it, because when she came to Christian’s drugstore now she wouldn’t even look toward the door, just walking on past with her face straight in front and her head up a little like the pointer just a step or two from freezing on the game; walking on like she saw people, saw Jefferson, saw the Square all right because at the moment, at any moment she had to walk on and among and through something and it might as well be Jefferson and Jefferson people and the Jefferson Square as anything else, but that was all.
Because Uncle Gavin wasn’t there somewhere around like an accident any more now. But then, if Uncle Gavin wasn’t sitting on the opposite side of that marble-topped table in Christian’s watching her eating something out of a tall glass that cost every bit of fifteen or twenty cents, Matt Levitt wasn’t there either.
Him and his cut-down racer both because the racer was empty now except for Matt himself after the garage closed on week days, creeping along the streets and across the Square in low gear, parallelling but a little behind where she would be walking to the picture show now with another girl or maybe two or three of them, her head still high and not once looking at him while the racer crept along at her elbow almost, the cutout going chuckle-chuckle-chuckle, right up to the picture show and the two or three or four girls had gone into it.
Then the racer would dash off at full speed around the block, to come rushing back with the cut-out as loud as he could make it, up the alley beside the picture show and then across in front of it and around the block and up the alley again, this time with Otis Harker, who had succeeded Grover Cleveland Winbush as night marshal after Grover Cleveland retired after what Ratliff called his eye trouble, waiting at the corner yelling at Matt at the same time he was jumping far enough back not to be run over.
And on Sunday through the Square, the cut-out going full blast and Mr Buck Connors, the day marshal now, hollering after him. And now he — Matt — had a girl with him, a country girl he had found somewhere, the racer rushing and roaring through the back streets into the last one, to rush slow and loud past Linda’s house, as if the sole single symbol of frustrated love or anyway desire or maybe just frustration possible in Jefferson was an automobile cut-out; the sole single manifestation which love or anyway desire was capable of assuming in Jefferson, was rushing slow past the specific house with the cut-out wide open, so that he or she would have to know who was passing no matter how hard they worked at not looking out the window.
Though by that time Mr Connors had sent for the sheriff himself. He — Mr Connors — said his first idea was to wake up Otis Harker to come back to town and help him but when Otis heard that what Mr Connors wanted was to stop that racer, Otis wouldn’t even get out of bed.
Later, afterward, somebody asked Matt if he would have run over Mr Hampton too and Matt said — he was crying then, he was so mad— “Hit him? Hub Hampton? have all them god-damn guts splashed over my paint job?” Though by then
