Dark Don't Catch Me (17 page)

“We both think a lot of our fathers, Dixon,” she says suddenly after the silence had seemed to sink in and set on them. “That's just one reason we shouldn't expect more. It'd kill them both.”

“Your too?” Dix could bite off his tongue for saying it. “Of course, mine! Dixon, my father is very proud.” “I didn't mean it.”

“Meant it, but didn't mean to say it. Aw, Dixon, it'd be so long; even if we did have a chance outside Paradise, it'd take so long for
us
to get used to it. And maybe we wouldn't. I love my people almost as much as I love you. You're the same way.”

“I never think of
my
people. I never think of that.”

“You don't
have
to,” she says, rising a little, leaning into him, her finger touching his cigarette. “Let me have the last drag on it, darling. No, let's just thank God for what we got now.”

He frowns, watching her take the smoke. “If we only knew who saw us, who told Joh. Oh, Joh won't say anything to anyone but me, but I wonder who saw us, Barbara, that'd give us trouble.”

“I don't know.” She tamps the burnt-down cigarette on the concrete, touching him again lightly on the chest. “You're too skinny, Dixon, you need more fat on you, baby. No, I don't know. We should have thought to come here and not go there. We went there too much; our luck gave out.”

“Joh thinks last night was the first time.”

“My Dad too. Thinks it was Hollis Jordan.” Barbara gives a little high hoot. “Gawd,
him!
Dad sure hates him.”

“Why him?”

“Cause of the woods, sugar. Because he lives up there, I guess. I should have let you drive me on into The Toe, but I was afraid to. You have too often as it is.”

“What would he say if he knew it was me, honey?”

“Dixon, I don't know. He just hates Hollis, though. Don't know why.”

“Nobody likes him much. He didn't fight in the war.”

“He's crazy, I guess.” She runs her finger across Dix Pirkle's lips, slowly, lovingly, gently. “Dixon, they're going to take it away from us some time, but be glad about now, baby. Don't be sad about right now, cause there's nothing we can do for it, baby. Hmm?”

She leans on him, her fingers reaching up to tangle with his hair, while her mouth leans his in a soft, searching way, until his arms pull her into him.

“We got to get out of Paradise, Barbara,” he whispers; her breasts crushing against his chest, the moonlight glistening in jagged shadows across her golden-soft buttocks and his hands pressing them; white on black, stripes in the fight of the night. “We got to!”

“Hush, Dixon …”

“Barbara …”

“Baby, hush now. Don't talk.”

T
HE HIGHWAY
snakes through back-country land, dark in the night as the car careens past deserted cotton fields, dimly lit farm houses, Sinclair stations, gas and pop stands, and the stretch of black pines, lonely-looking shadows sticking out of the earth; while over the radio the interminable sound of hillbilly tunes, peppered with spot announcements for anti-acid pills.

Hollis Jordan reaches over and snaps off the button, drives silently thinking, Of course it was her, couldn't mistake that giggling on the fourth call. Just giggling — not saying anything; drunk, no doubt. Gawd, Ada, what's to become of all of us!

Thinking: Why can't Ada just let it go; it happened too far back to be still bugging her. Thinking that and remembering how for years after she married Colonel it was just, “Hello, Hollis,” and “well, hello, Ada,” whenever they met in Paradise; except for two times. And tonight, giggling at him over the telephone — the third time.

The first time was a while after Dixon Pirkle married Suzie Barr, and Ada appeared outside Hollis's house one afternoon like a ghost, sitting in her car looking at his house until he came down off the porch and walked over to her.

He said, “Why, hello, Ada. What brings you out this way?”

“Dixon got married, you know, Hollis. He's a
doer.”

Then he noticed, as he leaned his arms on the edge of the car's window, that Ada had been drinking; her breath reeked of liquor.

“I'm glad to hear it,” he said.

“You were never a doer, were you, Hollis? Never as long as you lived did anything about anything — did you, Hollis?”

“Ada, Ada, it was a long, long time ago. Now don't you think you better drive on home?”

He was surprised, no, shocked, to see Ada there, and to see her that way. The last time he had seen Ada Adams alone had been the night after Thanksgiving, Gawd — eighteen years past, in Athens, when he'd gone there some weeks after old man Adams and young Hooper had come across them up in the wood's clearing. She'd phoned him, asking him to come, and he'd gone, spent a night with her in a motel outside the city, registering as Mr. and Mrs. Marsden. They'd eaten bacon and eggs the next morning in a greasy diner in Watkinsville, and Ada had announced, “I want to marry you, Hollis.
I
want to do it today. Drive to Macon and do it.”

“Ada, I can't do that. Not now. Not just yet.”

“Now or never, Hollis Jordan,” she had said.

“Can't be now, Ada. I got a lot to take care of. You don't know anything about me. I got to — ”

But she had interrupted him. “Dick Pirkle's been chasing after me, Hollis. I could marry him.”

“Ada, if all you want to do is get married — to anyone, so long as you get married — then you best marry Dick Pirkle.”

“I want to marry you.”

“I couldn't take care of you, Ada. You don't know some things.”

“When could we get married, Hollis?” “Ada, I just don't know.”

Eighteen years past they had fought about that; and eighteen years past plus two days, Ada had “showed” him, like she'd said she would; married Colonel, eloped with him; and never said another thing to Hollis Jordan but what people living in the same town say to one another when they just know one another “casually.”

Until that afternoon.

“I never regretted marrying Colonel Pirkle, Hollis,” she said.

“I don't suppose you did. Colonel's a good man.”

“I did it on impulse. I was crazy in those days, wild — didn't know what I wanted. But I've had a happy life with Colonel, and I've had Dix. It's more than you've had, Hollis.”

“Ada, I don't deny it, but I don't see the sense in going into it, or why you want to. You better go on home now, hadn't you?”

“When Colonel went to war, I was proud, Hollis.” “All right, Ada, all right.”

“A lot prouder than that day we were caught up in the woods, you know,” she said, giggling. “Gawd, we shook them up that day, all right. I was a stupid kid. When the war came along and Colonel enlisted, I was proud. You know, Hollis, I often wonder how I'da felt had I married you and the war came along.”

“I'm going back in the house now, Ada. I didn't know you bore me malice after all this time. Don't know why you should, but you better go on home now.”

She'd turned the key in the ignition; gunning the motor. “Turn your back on it, like always, Hollis,” she said. Then she'd started the car going; leaving as suddenly as she'd arrived; zigzagging down the hill toward the crossing….

Jordan often wondered what Ada would have said back when she wanted to marry him, if he had just told her: “Look, Ada, I
am
married, in a sense.” Told her that right out and then added, “She's living back in Juddville, where I come from. We were very much in love, Ada, but something happened — she lost a child in birth, and it changed things. I haven't seen her since.”

He
could
have told her that without telling her any of the rest of it; without telling her how he left Juddville, left the sprawling plantation he'd helped his father run, and come to Paradise, just picking any place that sounded nice. He left Juddville on a summer's morning after a talk with his father there on the lawn outside their home, near the old white post by the driveway, where a storm flag of the Confederate Cruiser,
Shenandoah,
still waved; and his father said, “And I don't care where you go, Hollis, or what you do after today. You'll still get the income your great-grandfather Henry left you; that I can't do anything about, and I'd get it from you if I could — but you'll not live high off the hog on that. You've murdered a baby, and ruined a good woman's life with your prodigal ways. You've broken every tradition the Jordan name ever stood for. There's not much left for me to say except good-by.”

He could have told her too that Kathryn, his wife, had lost their child because he'd kicked her in the belly. But he would have had to tell her a lot of other things to tell her that; filthy, rotten, drunken things he'd done when he was Mitchell Jordan's heir, cock of the walk in Juddville.

What was it Joh Greene had said to Hollis this morning, when Hollis had gone to him to tell him Dix Pirkle was courting trouble, Dix Pirkle needed to be advised. “You know, Hollis, you're a many-faceted human personality, but I think there's something deep inside you protesting evil; protesting and wanting to do something about it,” Joh had said, “and I think one day you'll buy my product without me even giving you a sales pitch.”

“I didn't tell you this just for Dix Pirkle's sake,” Hollis had said. “I don't know why the Christ I did tell you exactly.”

“Some day you're going to use the Son of our Lord's name in a prayer, Hollis Jordan; not just to cuss with. But I'm glad you told me about Dix. I'll have a talk with him.”

Hollis Jordan squints at the road in front of him, imagining for a moment that far down the road he sees someone, then deciding, no. He resumes his thoughts, recalling the second time he had seen Ada alone — drunk too, just like the first time — just like she must have been tonight calling him that way and giggling without saying anything. Oh, he knew her giggle; no mistaking that. But about tonight, he wondered had Joh broken his promise and gone and told Ada about Dix and the James girl? Had that been the reason why Ada had started up again tonight?

The second time had been as sudden and short-lived as the first time. Happened in the early evening, dusk hour, when Hollis Jordan had been in town on a Saturday buying supplies, and had met Ada at the parking lot, fumbling with her car keys, trying to open her door, smelling again like liquor and smirking up at him when he tried to help her.

“Why, here's Hollis Jordan,” she had said. “Johnny-on-the-spot. That's not like you, Hollis, to be Johnny-on-the-spot.”

“Let me help you with your keys, Ada. Ada, you shouldn't drive home the way you are now.”

“God provides, Hollis, for drunkards. You know that's what
I
am, don't you? Everyone knows that's what I am.”

“I don't know anything but that you hadn't ought to drive, Ada. I'll drive you.”

“And cause scandal again. Naw, Hollis.” And then she said something peculiar to him — how had she put it? She had turned and looked at him, smiling that funny, ironical smile she had, and she had said it in a flat, almost accusing tone, “Hollis, tell me something. Do you — ”

Jordan's musings halt instantly then, and he slams the breaks on, brings the car to a screeching, tire-burning stop, then backs up. Through his rear-view mirror he sees the figure of a boy in the road. He hadn't imagined it, and as he nears the figure, he sees the colored boy standing there, holding a suitcase.

He says, “I damn near run you down, boy. What the hell you doing?”

“I'm hitching to Paradise,” the boy answers, standing by his suitcase, not moving toward the car. “Well, come on then!” “Yes, sir! You going to Paradise?” “Come on!”

The boy lugs the suitcase into the car; into the back seat. Hollis Jordan says, “Leave it back there and sit up here with me.” “Yes, sir.”

“What you doing off the main road anyhow?”

“I thought I was on the highway, sir.”

“Naw, boy, you're on a back road.”

“I started walking on the highway, sir, from Manteo.”

“Well, you got off it. You must have walked about five miles. Where you headed?”

“My uncle's Bryan Post, sir. I guess you might not know him. He's from Paradise, and he was supposed to meet me, but he didn't show.” The boy adds, “My bus was late. Guess he didn't wait.”

“So that's where he was headed, hah?”

“You know him?”

“Sure, boy, I know him. He had a little trouble. He was driving the Hoopers' pickup and he drove it up a tree. Oh, he's all right, boy, don't worry about that. Just likes his corn, I guess. Yeah, I passed the wreck a while back, just beyond Hooper's Place.”

“You kidding me, sir?”

“Kidding you?” Hollis Jordan glances over at the boy. “What the hell'd I tell you something like that for if it weren't true? Hah?”

“I don't know. I just — ” His voice trails off, and he sits there dumbly, rubbing his hands together in his lap.

“Told you you don't have to
worry
about him. He got out okay. Just made a mess of the pickup … You related?”

“Yes, sir. He's my uncle — only I never met him.”

“You from up North?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought you had a Northern accent. Well, you'll be in Paradise in a bit now, boy. I'm not sure just where the Posts live in The Toe, but I'll drop you at the Hoopers'. They work for the Hoopers mostly.”

The boy says nothing to that. Jordan glances at him, sees him rubbing his hands together more frantically.

“You have a nice trip down?” he asks.

“It was all right,” the boy mumbles.

“Those are the lights off in the distance, boy — see, way off there? That's Paradise.”

The boy looks out the car window, off to the left between the black pines and the hills, watching the dark-looking land silently, not saying anything. Jordan scratches a match and touches it to a cigarette he pulls from his wool shirt pocket; then flips the radio on again: “… because Alkalino clears up sour stomach in fractions of a minute, listeners, when due to hyperacidity,” the announcer is saying. Hollis lets his mind sink back again into the deep cushions of memory, recalling now how Ada had put it that day in the parking lot; and wondering whatever had possessed Ada to think of a thing like that after all these years:

“Hollis, tell me something. Do you still have that little birthmark that runs in you-all's family on the male side?”