Chapter 7
AFTER SEEING that weed-clipping in the big hay pasture was well started and the soy beans were side-dressed with ammonium nitrate, Bridge Pilgrim returned to his cottage for coffee. Nola, fighting the erstwhile bachelor quarters with strong-armed concentration, had failed to brew a pot at the appointed time. She snatched the dust cloth from her golden hair and made a face as Bridge walked through the front door. "I was so busy I forgot your coffee. I can make it now, or you could drop by at the big house for it."
He looked at her queerly. "I don't go up there unless I have to," he said in his habitually soft voice.
"Why? They seem quite democratic. We seemed welcome enough last night."
He grunted and sank into a big hide-bottomed rocker. "I'd appreciate some coffee in my own kitchen, if you don't mind. If you don't wish to make it, I'll do so myself."
Hurt, she jerked around to face him. "Bridge, I'll gladly make coffee any time you want it Did I say something wrong?"
"No." He hesitated. "You see, Nola-well, it's just that the big house in some ways is a sore subject with me. Democratic as they are, they don't go all the way. Who'd expect them to?"
Without replying, she walked off toward the small kitchen. He followed her in and sat down at the chromium-legged table.
"What about you, Nola? You haven't said a word about any plans for yourself. Since you got here, you've just been taking care of me."
"Is that bad?"
"Well, you're a nurse now. You came here because we two are all that's left of the family and this is your place, with me, for as long as you want to stay. But there's little nursing to be done here. You must have thought of that."
"I did," she said, turning on the gas under the percolator. "Still, a nurse should be able to find work almost anywhere."
"Sure, if she wants to take private duty. I wouldn't be too happy about that. I'd just as soon you had a regular job."
"Me, too. I want general nursing. Something steady and without too much night work." She smiled. "If it hadn't been so hectic last night, I'd have asked Dr. Fontenot about a job. He and his son run a pretty active office, I hear."
"By the way," he asked casually, "how did you get here from the train station the other day?"
She turned her back and reached for two cups. "A cab brought me."
"I had to take care of some cattle, and couldn't leave them," he said evenly. "So I asked Mrs. Flemming to arrange to have you picked up at the station. Is that what she arranged? A cab?"
"It seems so," his sister replied.
"Long ride," he said. "And you bumped your eye on a door?"
"That's what I said."
"I know that's what you said."
She faced him. "All right, what do you want me to say?"
His eyes held hers steadily. "The truth might do, for a starter."
"Bridge, you've always been wonderful to me. Won't you be wonderful once more and not press me?"
Twin lumps of muscle leaped into definition at the angles of his strong jaw. "Why are you afraid to speak up?"
"Because I've seen you in your rages. I remember the Borden boy, the one I had that little trouble with on the front porch when we lived in Neville. You broke one of his arms and three ribs."
He nodded. "And you know what? I'll bet you he never tried to pull a stunt like that again."
She laughed. "I don't suppose he did. But Bridge, this time let it go. Please?"
He balled his big hands into fists. "Answer me one thing. Was force involved?"
She shrugged and looked away. "I'll tell you this much. The black eye was my fault. I struck him and he struck back. He seemed to think he was doing the right thing-and that's all I'm going to say, Bridge."
He thrust his hands into his pockets and stared out of the window. "All right. Pour the coffee."
"And remember, I'm not just your kid sister now," she said, filling the cups with steamy brew. "I'm a big girl now."
"Sure you are." His voice was deep and affectionate. "But one of these days I'm going to find out who gave you that shiner-and he'll wish to hell he hadn't."
Melody lay in her bed, striving might and main to drive from her mind remembrance of the savage joy she had experienced in the embrace of a rapist.
It was this remembrance that had been torturing her ever since the assault, had driven her to hysterics, had impelled her to reject the women who wanted to help her.
Yes, Melody was crushed because, as she was honest enough to admit to herself, she had enjoyed the episode wildly, marvelously. The man had been a beast, had beaten her, but that had been unnecessary. Once he had plumbed her virgin womanhood, physically she had been his completely. Tying her had been equally unnecessary, as far as sex had been concerned. She remembered his biting and his forays of other kinds and broke out in a chill sweat, not because of revulsion but because of guilt. Her tender flesh had responded ecstatically to his brutal liberties.
Was she this kind of woman, a creature so vile that she enjoyed being subjected to sordid attack?
Never in all her young life had Melody been victim of such mental anguish. Compared to it, her physical aches and pains were nothing. She turned her face to the pillow and wept, full of loathing for herself.
Then suddenly she could no longer bear to be alone. She jumped up and donned a robe. Leaving the room, she started for the kitchen. She tottered along, her body one vast ache.
She met her mother in the big hallway just off the dining room.
"Well," said Joyce. "So glad you've recovered enough to move about. I thought you would, though. So I called Barry. He's coming over soon."
"In that case," Melody said flatly, "you can entertain him, for I will not see him. You had your nerve! I suppose he knows all about what happened."
Joyce looked unhappy. "I didn't tell him."
"You'll get around to it I know you. I've known you a long time, but I didn't know I knew you. And what I know makes me sick." She turned and walked back to her room.
She flung herself on the bed. Again the horrors of the night before descended upon her, and again the real horror was not the assault but the way she had responded to it. And as the bestial scenes passed through her mind, something happened. Her body began to throb. It was begging for repetition of the brutal treatment that had been visited upon it. Melody tried to deny it, then to fight it, but could do neither. She was feverishly eager for more of the primitive assault. She could feel the heat of the man's body, feel him lunging.
She sat up and pushed back her hair and pressed fingers to her temples. "I'm going mad," she whimpered. "I'm going stark mad!"
But she did not mean that. What she meant was that she had discovered she was bad, dirty. Nice girls did not have such feelings. Nice girls did not think as she did. She had always considered herself not a prude but decent enough, nice enough. And here she was, thirsting for an encore to the sordid revel of the night before.
Barry Norton had fled the menace of fire and Bridge Pilgrim like any wild animal fleeing for its life. Yet his panic had not been completely blind. He had retained enough reason to snatch up the clothes he had tossed to the flooded grass. But, instead of heading for the woods and the anonymity of the dark, he had sneaked through the bushes to the Jeep he had completely forgotten earlier in the day.
He drove off slowly, trying to preserve quiet until he was out of hearing. He need not have troubled. Any noise the vehicle made was buried beneath layers of crashes from the heavens, splashing rain, the cries of the throng assembled to put out the fire. He drove home fast, his heart gradually calming to a normal beat.
He entered through the front door, which the wind had blown open. Water had sluiced into the foyer, all the way through to the hallway where it formed a puddle inches deep.
Barry sloshed stark naked to his room, dragging his sodden clothes behind him. He dropped them to the floor, and sat down heavily in a chair. He was shaking violently from chill and emotional tension. A wretched groan forced its way between teeth clicking like castanets.
He found a bottle, one of his own, and drank until he choked, then weaved his way to the bathroom and drank a glass of water in an effort to hold the alcohol. He sat on the toilet until sure the drink would stay down, then he tottered to the tub and drew a steaming bath. He sighed with relief when the hot water closed over his chilled, jerking body. He languished, adding hot water until his body was lobster red and sweating. He got out, soothed now, the shakes and jerks gone. He dried himself, donned pajamas, and lit out for the kitchen.
There he found roast pork, cheese, milk and a long loaf of French bread. He sat down to eat a tremendous meal. After he had gorged himself, he sat back and lost himself in the wild whirlwind that was his mind.
Barry Norton was not often defeated by women. But on this night he had been defeated by two. First by the Negress, who had fought him off on the path. Then by Melody, who had avoided being rendered unfit for any man again to enjoy her-even if that rendering would mean maiming her, perhaps killing her. The two humiliations, as he viewed them, had been preceded by another at Melody's hands. She had spurned him the day before, and had gone so far as to refuse to marry him. Soon in his mind the defeats and humiliations in some manner melted into one. Melody bore all the culpability.
Barry cut off the light, backed into a corner and skulked like a beast. For a long time he listened for an enemy to make a sound but no sound came. So they had not traced the rapist to this abode. Good. He slipped quietly into the hallway. Ignoring the puddle of water although his feet were bare, he continued on to the stairs and stopped. He could hear the snores of his mother and a faint babbling from his father, both in their bedrooms above. He had not seen his father in a week but this did not bother him. For his father he had no feeling at all. For his mother, on the other hand, he entertained an active, acid hatred and could remember every time in his life that she had ever balked him.
He laughed. Well, he had certainly got the upper hand by painting that picture... Picture! He held his hands to his eyes and breathed deeply as a storm of form and color burst on his inner vision.
The riotous hues were dazzling, blinding. He opened his eyes to rid himself of the impressions but they were imprinted on his retinas as though he had been staring at brilliant lights. They moved and reassembled, like the images in a kaleidoscope, then boiled over, ran wild. Finally out of this riot emerged the form of his mother, now half cat and half serpent, slender translucent fangs protruding from her slack-lipped mouth.
Barry smiled. He went up the stairs two at a time, climbed the ladder to his attic studio. There he locked the door, took the portrait out of the cabinet. He returned to the door, unlocked it, peered craftily about for a long time. Then he locked the door again, slipped the painting on an easel. With smooth, expert speed he attacked the canvas with brush and pigment, using an old cedar shingle for a palette.
For several hours he worked with great speed but also with patient, painstaking attention to detail. Now his mother was a horror for certain. He had made an even greater and more loathsome nightmare of her. She still wore the dazed look of the sick drunk, still wallowed in the evidence of recent and active illness. But this evidence had been transformed into tiny colorful toads, lizards and snakes. Nor was that all.
Each creature unmistakably was the child of his mother, each having been vomited from that hideous maw. They were not ordinary reptiles. They had all the florid flourishes of a Byzantine fantasy. Each looked poisonous enough to kill by mere touch, let alone bite, but showed diminutive translucent fangs like its horrid mother.
Barry stood back, viewing his work, and chuckled. He picked up the canvas and returned it to its hiding place. He locked the door, hid the key under a floorboard and returned to his bedroom. He lay down and went to sleep instantly. It was as though he had finally purged his soul of all poison and unrest.
He awoke next morning rather early. He went down to breakfast and pleasantly greeted the cook and maid. He ignored, perhaps was not aware of, the fact that the cook was the same Delia Mae Jones with whom he had collided so disastrously the night before. Her sin had been swallowed whole by Melody's and thus wiped out. He sat at the table and ate an enormous breakfast He drank no coffee, however.
Rising from the table, he went out on the front veranda where he stood looking toward the Flemming place. A vast wall of pine and hardwood hid it but he could see it in his mind. He played a game with himself, pretending he had two girls ready and waiting there, dying for his attention. One was Melody, the other that recent arrival, Nola. Gradually the pretense became fact in his mind. He appreciated the dangers attendant to approaching either of them, but illogically that did not mar the illusion. No doubt about it. Two girls. His creatures, only too happy to do what he wished, give him whatever he wanted.
The phone rang. After a brief talk with Joyce, Barry's illusion was reinforced at least as far as Melody was concerned. The girl was anxious to see him about something, Joyce had said.
He got in his Jeep and drove through the woods to his favorite parking place. It was in the thin fringe of trees at the edge of the open meadow that surrounded the Flemming home.
Two hundred yards to the back and a little to the southern side was the overseer's cottage. This Barry could reach by following the old road that had served the big house before the paved driveway had been put through. The road was flanked by thick growths of oaks, yaupon bushes and Cherokee rose vines. It was his habit of long standing never to drive up to the house. He would approach by the most oblique possible route and on foot. He was a master of stealth. Usually before anyone knew he was around, he would be standing silently at one or the other end of the veranda, a twisted smile on his lips.
Today he pondered. Should it be blonde or brunette? Melody or Nola? Time meant little to him. He sat down with his back to a tree, sat as still as a carving, his eyes blinking only seldom, and tried to make up his mind. He watched Nola leave the house and go to the cottage after having stayed the night with Melody. He watched as Bridge came in from the fields for his morning coffee and was watching when he left. This acted as a signal. His mind made up, Barry jumped to his feet. Taking a wide detour that kept him concealed by the growth flanking the old road, he approached the cottage. He watched from the concealment of the bushes as Nola hung out clothes. He glutted himself on the sight of her fabulous curves, glad that she was wearing only scanty white shorts and a halter.
Feeling secure within her own home, Nola was careless of open doors. When she went into her bedroom, he was behind her in the hall. When she went into the bathroom to shower, he took up position in the bedroom. When she emerged, dry but still nude, he made his move.
Having served Bridge's coffee, and with him back on the job, Nola Pilgrim dusted furiously for a while. She was trying to make her upsurging blood and a kind of wanton urgency subside. These manifestations of lust had been provoked by Bridge's questions, which had brought back shameful but sultry memories of the interlude in the shack of that strange artist. She hung out her washing, vacuumed the house for the second time then, feeling hot and sweaty, took a stingingly cold shower. Using a rough towel, she burnished her soft skin until it glowed with ruddy health.
The bathroom door had a full-length mirror and she observed herself in it for a time, her skin pebbling with narcissistic appreciation. She was built generously yet without grossness. Her breasts were large and youthfully lithe. Her waist was long and so were her shapely, tapering legs. She flushed furiously as she recalled that when the time had come for them to protect her, those legs had been powerless to clamp together, instead had eagerly parted. The man's furious energy and electric animalism had imparted itself to her, aroused in her a passion that had amounted to insanity. She had returned to a balanced state of mind only after utter satiation. And now desire was plaguing her again. Desire for that marvelous peak of bodily delight a selfish and unscrupulous savage had given her. How evil could a girl get?
She closed her eyes and leaned against the cold mirror. She was trying to banish the man from her thoughts. But she could not. She fell away from the glass, hating herself and her traitorous body, unable to quell the thundering beat of her heart and the rushing roar of aroused blood in her ears. She slipped on a thin robe, walked barefoot into the small bedroom, fell prone and in despair to the bed.
The door to the hall, standing open, hid menace. Nola did not know it. But she heard the slight creak as it moved and Barry stepped from behind it. She stiffened, afraid to turn. She did not turn even when the voice came.
"I told you I'd be back."
She still did not turn or in any way move. She seemed sunk in a state of physical paralysis. It took the touch of his hands, hands skidding up her feverish thighs, to arouse her. And then she did not react as if to a menace. She did not scream for help, did not struggle or try to flee. No. With a choking cry of gladness, she turned. They came together, she as eager as he. And as before, a primordial mating blazed-a mating that could not be confined to such a small place as the bed and soon had them both on the floor, neither being aware of the transition.
It was long and breathtaking, with nothing of love or affection in it. Actually it was less like a mating than a physical beating they both craved madly. Then as it had come, as it had wildly risen, the craving died. Rapture relieved, Nola instantly returned to her normal self. She did a furious twist and bounded to her feet. She swept up the robe, fled from Barry into the bathroom where she slammed and locked the door. Barry, having abandoned the bed, stood looking at the door, his sly half-smile twisting his lips, his eyes vacant blue holes in, his head. He licked his lips.
"Come out," he said hoarsely. "Come out and let's play some more."
"It's past noon. Bridge will be here any minute," she shrilled. "You'd better go!"
The mention of Bridge's name had made Barry pale a little. "I'll be back," he said, and left the bedroom. He cat-footed through the living room to the kitchen and out the back door. From there to the old sunken woods road was but a few yards, and just beyond were the woods.
From a window, Nola watched him go. Then she suddenly went weak. She sat down on the bathtub rim with a thump. Her nerves were still tingling with the delights Barry had found it unnecessary to force upon her, for she had welcomed them-but now reaction was in command. As she regained strength she became more and more ashamed, more angry with herself. She shook with a complex emotion that was part humiliation, part panic and part resentment against her traitorous body. As reality moved in on her, it drew harsh and sordid pictures that stabbed her eyes like ice-picks until a merciful curtain of tears blotted the spectacle. She dragged herself to her feet, bathed furiously, went to her closet for white slacks and a blue jersey shirt.
In the kitchen, steaks had been put out to defrost earlier. She rushed to get them on the grille. She was salting them when she heard the chugging of Bridge's Jeep. She did not try to meet his eyes as he walked in. She kept working on the steaks, wiping them with a cut garlic pod and sprinkling Tabasco over their richly red surfaces.
Bridge raised his eyebrows. When the Negro housekeeper had been tending him, his food had always been ready and waiting.
"Chow in a jif," Nola said. "Just the potatoes to fry and a salad to make. Shall I heat the coffee?"
"I could use a swallow. What did you do this morning?"
She could feel his eyes on her back but she dared not face him. "Oh-cleaned up, mostly. Put out a wash. Dusted, got hot and took a shower."
He chuckled and she breathed easier. "Full morning, huh?"
"It's not nearly as much work as a nurse's morning at a hospital. I find this kind of a vacation."
"At least there's no tension here."
She made no answer to that.
He pulled up a chair and accepted the coffee she poured. Lighting a cigarette, he said, "Tonight we start introducing you around. You need to know people."
She cut a quick, inquisitive eye at him. His ruggedly handsome face was without guile and his greenish-gray eyes were bland. "Why?" she wanted to know.
"Because it isn't healthy for a girl not to have friends, that's why. And you ought to cultivate Missy Blumendahl. She's the social arbiter of this neck of the woods, and a grand old lady. If she likes you, she'll go to the limit for you. And spending time with her is an education-"
"She's nosy."
"She sure is. Her nosiness has uncovered injustices, ferreted out inequities, disclosed scoundrels and... "
"Such language," she interrupted. "Your dictionary is showing."
"You're not the only one who's had some education," Bridge said. "Point is, sure she's nosy. But the whole damn county loves her for it."
"Okay. I'll try to love her, too. But she does seem rather a character."
"That she is. I want her to invite you to one of those gigantic socials she throws. What doesn't happen at them never will. Everyone thinks she's Miss Social Empress of all time and flocks around to kiss her feet, eat her prime beef and drink her Bradsher's whiskey. She stands around, simpers and preens, curses them under her breath and plays the empress part for them right up to the hilt. I've accused her of putting on the affairs just to stick people on pins and watch them wriggle."
"Does she deny it?"
"No. All she does is grin and blow me down with some ear-busting remark or a laugh like a bugle blast. Usually she's the noisiest one woman you ever heard. But at one of her parties she's so proper it makes me laugh."
"And what about you, Bridge?" asked Nola. "Are you cultivating friends, too? It isn't natural for a man to live alone, you know."
He turned pink. "I have you, sis."
"That's even less natural. Aren't there any girls around here that you find attractive?"
"There's one," he said, turning pinker.
"Have you got to first base yet?"
"I haven't even had a turn at bat."
"Why not? You weren't shy with the girls back home. I don't get it."
"Who's nosy now?" demanded Bridge. "Aren't those steaks done yet?"
"Sure they are. Nice and rare-" She served up the sibling meat and they fell to with a will.