couldn’t you? You didn’t teach her anything; nobody could. She was born that way.
It’ll be all right now, I thought. At least, until something else starts to break loose. Suddenly I wanted to get in the car and just go on driving the way it was headed, go so far I could never find my way back. And it wasn’t only Buford and the grand jury I could feel behind me. What was she doing now? Was she down on her knees in soapy water trying to beat all desire out of herself with a scrubbing brush, or was she looking for another withered leaf on that scrawny and pitiful vine?
Seven
Sunday morning I went to church to hear the Reverend Soames, and after I was there I wished I’d stayed away. There was something about him that made me uneasy, gave me that same feeling an escaping prisoner must have when he hears, far behind, the first baying of the hounds as they pick up his trail. He was a big, impressive man with a manner about him that kept reminding me of Buford, and his voice had a quality of persuasiveness and irresistible power that you could not escape no matter where your mind would turn. It brought you back and held you there and made you look at what it had to show.
He didn’t rant or raise his voice, but he talked from information. “If the law-enforcement officers of this community will come to me, I will be glad to tell them where to find these places that have so far eluded their vigilance and that apparently only boys in their teens can find. I will point out the slot machines and gambling places, and give them the addresses of the brothels operating openly in this town, and give them the names of the women running them.”
The church was packed, and I glanced around at the people sitting near me. They were completely absorbed, their faces serious. How many of them will be on that grand jury? I thought. When it ended I went home. People were standing around in front of the church in little groups, talking. Maybe it was only my imagination, but I thought I could feel their curious, cold glances on my back.
I switched on the light at the side of the bed and looked at my watch. It was two in the morning. I had been lying there, smoking one cigarette after another, for three hours without ever approaching sleep. At every turn of my mind she stood before me, still-faced, un-speaking, very beautiful in her shapeless, terrible clothes. There was no way to get around her; she blocked every path of thought, every escape I tried. I could shut my eyes and see her, and when I opened them she was there looking at me from the darkness.
I’ve got to stop it, I thought. I can’t go on like this. I’ll be crazy as that big kid. She’s just a woman who is being killed by loneliness in that swamp, and what woman wouldn’t be? What’s different about her? Is this going on and on until I go back there and see her again? And would it stop then, or get worse? I cursed, and got up to go into the bathroom to find Louise’s sleeping tablets. I took two of them and lay down again. I tossed and turned for what seemed like hours. It must have been about three when I finally got to sleep.
Monday was an endless flat plain of heat, and of hours that seemed to go on forever. I walked through stagnant time like a man in a dream, hoping the day would end and dreading the night that had to come when I would have nothing to do but lie in the darkness and fight it again.
Buford had been tickled with the way I had got rid of that girl. “That was a good job,” he said. “She won’t be back.”
“You can’t tell,” I said. “A girl like that is capable of anything. You don’t know what goes on in her mind.” I didn’t want to talk about it. Everything irritated me. I sat eating lunch in Barone’s cafe without knowing what I ate and not even caring.
I went to a movie after supper and walked out before the end of it. I went home because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. I sat there in the empty house, turning off the radio because