Chapter 2
It was cold on the station platform. A chill wind blew bitter along the gleaming tracks and fluttered the clothing of the two, dim, girlish figures huddled in the shadows.
"Gee!" Mavis Preed complained, "I'm frozen. Wish I had a cigarette."
"Have a sweet."
"Sweet be damned! Honestly, Sandra. I want a smoke or a drink. Or both. What time's that train?"
"Another few minutes."
They withdrew further into the shadows as a group of people, three men and a young women, approached.
"That Charlie," they heard the girl say, "What a nerve! Came straight out with it, he did-knocked on my door at two in the morning and stands there grinning like a goddam ape. Then he says: 'You've been waggling your ass at me long enough, Delia, honey. I aim to lay you, sweet stuff, right now ... ' With that he starts taking my clothes off, right there in the hall. 'Sam's home, you fool!' I tell him, but he goes right on stripping mo. 'Shit to Sam!' he tells me. Honestly, Jeff, if I hadn't had the presence of mind to clobber him with a handy vase the bum would have stripped me stark naked."
The group moved away, laughing, Sandra Mathis moved closer to Mavis. The past few days had been hell for them both. Eddie Mathis, flat on his back in the Cooper Hospital, recovered sufficiently to do some talking, and what he said, most of it prompted by bitterness and spite, was seized on by the newspapers and blown up, distorted and exaggerated out of all proportion, with special emphasis on the lesbian angle. The papers really got their teeth into that. Within twenty-four hours the whole revolting story was plastered all over the front pages of three dailies, with pictures.
Sandra's mother, pasty-faced and puffy-eyed, more from a king-size hangover than from grief or loss of sleep, took one look at the headlines and promptly hocked everything of value, packed a bag, and caught the next train out of Auburn Township without even bothering to say goodbye to her hysterical laughter. Mavis' puritan aunt almost shrivelled up when the police called to question Mavis. Later, when she saw the papers, she got so steamed up over the sordid account she suffered a stroke. A few hours later she was laid out cold and stiff in the undertaker's parlor.
Mavis was never over-fond of her aunt, but having the old lady die on top of everything else affected her and gave her a feeling of guilt that preyed on her mind worse than actual grief.
Most people believed him, and sympathized with him. His own step-daughter with that brazen Preed girl ... Always knew she was deep, that Mavis. But that sort of girl. Eddie Mathis grinned, gloating with satisfaction, when he saw the newspapers, especially the local rag.
"That's fixed their hash," he muttered. "That'll teach them. Maybe I should have let 'em think Sandra done it-I reckon the other one would have taken it all right if that simpering bitch hadn't swung at me. Yeah, she seemed to like it even. The little cow! I always figured her for the quiet, hands-off type. Wait till I get outa here...."
His head hurt and he stopped grinning. But he'd sown the seeds and the poison was spreading. Inside the space of a few short hours everybody in Auburn Township who wasn't deaf, blind, and dumb knew about Eddie Mathis (poor man) catching his stepdaughter (who'd have thought it?) with a lesbian (that Preed girl-always said she was no good). By the time word got around Mavis was worse than no good. She was a vicious degenerate, a potential murderess who ought to be locked up.
Wherever the girls went, whatever they did, they could not escape the sneers, the pointing fingers and obscene gestures. The police were inclined to believe their story, and no legal action was taken against them. But it wasn't on account of Eddie Mathis' injuries the girls were judged, and condemned, by the small community. The night that Mavis' aunt died Mavis decided she'd had enough. Sandra was close to the breaking point. They left town under the cover of darkness, taking with them only the barest essentials. That's how they came to be waiting for the last train to New York while the greater majority of Auburn Township folk was sleeping.
The girls had only a few dollars between them above their train fares. Their plans were vague, they had nowhere to go, no knowledge of New York. But finally the train pulled into the gloomy depot and they clambered aboard, their relief was almost overpowering in its intensity, exhausting, leaving their bodies limp and their minds throbbing with tension as the shuddering metal monster nosed once more into the night.