She spread her legs to the limit of the slim skirt. The breeze stroked her hair back and pressed the skirt between her legs. Cecil watched. Perhaps she
was
good at this. Did Elinor and Estelle shoot? Was it part of the land-owning life? She could play this role, a redhead in a chamois skirt, her hair held at the nape in a black ribbon, a rifle at her side.
“Hold it,” Mr. Brady said. He dropped the cobs and put his arms around hers. She didn’t have it right. Whatever had been natural at first was lost now. “The way your doing, you’re gonna throw out your shoulder.” She could smell his sweat and heavy after-shave. His heat surrounded her, his leg firm against her hip. Her heart pounded. “Ease it down this way. That’s a girl.”
Suddenly, beside her on the ground Cecil cried, “Hit that,” and pointed to the sky, then to a flutter of leaves on a tree behind her. She turned, aimed and fired. Something fell like a stone to the earth.
“You little bastard,” Mr. Brady hissed.
He took the rifle, and she dashed to the base of the tree. She stooped down and saw the red cap on the bird’s head. The first real woodpecker she’d ever seen. Why had she fired without knowing what it was? She blinked back tears and stood up. She wanted to go home. She hated this family. Why had Cecil done this to her?
Mr. Brady gathered up both their jackets, and with the rifle at his side, walked up the bank toward her. “Come on, Alice. It’s starting to get chilly.” He held her suit jacket by the nape, and she slid her arms in.
Cecil was nowhere to be seen. With shaking knees she slipped and slid in the high heels as she and Mr. Brady made their way up the rise. Mr. Brady tried to keep a hand under her elbow, but she was still sniffling and turned her head away so he couldn’t see her face. Where was Cecil? She didn’t know whether they were headed for the house or away. She was in no condition to face the women.
“Now just stop right there,” Mr. Brady said softly. They were standing in a little clearing. Alice’s heart thumped. “Someone wants to take your picture,” he said.
What on earth? Alice looked about and finally, in the trees, saw the top of a dark head bending over a box camera, hair as long and dark as an Indian. Mr. Brady stepped away. Alice sniffed and wiped her cheeks. She patted her hair, but without a mirror, it was hopeless, so she just lifted her chin to the side and composed a model’s smile.
“Did you get her?” Mr. Brady said and headed for the person with the camera. Alice shielded her eyes and looked into the deep shade. It was a small white woman with her hair down. The loose hair made her look like a girl, but Alice saw now that the woman’s tan face showed the white squint marks of someone who’d worked in the sun for years.
She wore a dark dress and lace-up lady’s shoes and held Mr. Brady’s coat while he wound the film in the camera. “Come here, Alice,” he said and waved her closer. The small woman turned to leave, but Mr. Brady said to her, “You might as well say hello.” He lifted a branch aside and Alice stepped into the cool shade where the festering smell of the forest floor surrounded the three of them.
“Miss Sarah meet Miss Alice.”
“Pleased to meet ya, Miss Alice,” the woman said, nodding her head with meticulous country manners.
“How do you do,” Alice said and smiled.
“Fine, thank you,” Sarah said, clearly nervous. Mr. Brady put the little roll of film in his pants pocket, and Miss Sarah held up his jacket for him. Alice watched as he slid in his long arms and this woman smoothed her hands along his broad shoulders. He took Alice’s elbow and walked her out again into the sun. She was going to have to think about all this later.
When they came in, Mrs. Brady was in the front hall. “You bring me anything?” she asked her husband.
“Couldn’t hit the side of a barn,” he said, and without a glance at Alice, headed upstairs.
“Cecil’s in the kitchen talking to Estelle,” Mrs. Brady said to Alice. “ You can wait in the living room.” Had Cecil told his mother about the woodpecker?
Alice sat down on the edge of a stuffed chair and looked at her ruined shoes—all Mother’s work on the tureen gone in an afternoon. Her blouse was damp with perspiration. She ran her fingers over her hair, tucked up stray strands and tried to pat the sides into a decent shape. If she had had the money for a bus ticket, she would never get in a car with Cecil Brady again.
She clasped her hands now and waited for this horrible day to end. These people were Philistines, interested only in money and social position. Cecil loved to hang around the Drama building and help with the sets and the lighting. He was always telling people his girl was an actress or bragging about her reading poetry on the radio. She thought he valued all this as much as she did. But he didn’t care about theater or poetry. And his sisters seemed to think she’d be a social embarrassment. This was the last family in the world in which she would ever feel comfortable.
“Are you two going back now or staying?” Mrs. Brady asked from the doorway. Alice sat there dumbfounded. How would her own mother have put that question?
“I hope you’re not rushing way.” Or “Supper’s almost ready. It would be such a treat if you’d stay a little longer.”
Behind his mother, Cecil dashed through the front hall with his hat on and a paper bag in his hand. Alice heard the front door slam.
“It seems we’re leaving.” Alice stood up. Elinor came down the stairs and Estelle came out of the kitchen.
“Looks like you ruined your shoes,” Elinor said. “Too bad the hired girl isn’t here today to clean them up.”
“Oh, no, Daddy will do it.” She blushed. Was there no opportunity she’d pass up to embarrass herself? She measured the distance to the front steps and felt Cecil’s family closing in behind her as she walked into the late afternoon shadows. Cecil had started the car. She paused on the porch to make a proper farewell. “It was kind of you to have me, Mrs. Brady. The dinner was delicious.”
“Glad you could come,” Mrs. Brady said, her arms hanging at her sides.
Estelle, delicate and lovely, had come only as far as the threshold and stood framed by the brown doorway. “You’re going to be driving in the dark.”
For over thirty miles neither of them said anything. Alice’s back ached from sitting up so straight. What was there to say? He’d misled her. At least, he’d certainly left out a lot and given her no warning at all about how cold his mother and sisters could be. No one mentioned her gift of the preserves with their water-colored labels. His family acted like she’d come empty handed. Kindness counted for nothing. Courtesy or generosity—all signs of weakness. Mother would be so disappointed.
“The Gamma Phi Betas won’t rush you,” Cecil said finally. “Elinor told me. It’s completely out.”
Her head snapped around. “Cecil! How did this come up? You said you didn’t care if I wasn’t in a sorority. I could never afford one anyway, and it’s humiliating that you even discussed it with your sister.”
“Elinor says, for a future in society, a person should have this valuable connection. She said you have the clothes and manners, but she says you don’t know how to make the best of yourself.”
“In what way is it that I do not make the best of myself?”
“Everything. You never mentioned that you’re on the radio every week. Or that your grandmother went to college. You talked poor from the moment you walked in.”
And you’ve talked big ever since I met you—all your father’s holdings. Saying that would have stopped him, but she didn’t say it aloud. Nor did she say, how can you, who talk with your mouth full at the table, say I do not present myself well? She stared through the dusk at the rolling tree-covered hills. In another hour they’d be back in the flat land.
“Look, Alice!” He sounded truly irritated. “I didn’t want to take you out there. But you insisted. Now you’re giving me the silent treatment.”
The silent treatment was surely a whole lot better than the ugly bickering she’d heard at his folks’ table. She’d be embarrassed to have her family see them. They had made her feel lonely, and she felt lonely now. The sun was going down, and she had so far to go with this angry man.
“God damn it!” Cecil yelled. “You didn’t want this to go well. Every word out of your mouth—”
She raised her hand to hush him. She could not allow them to sink to this—yelling and cussing. Her parents never raised their voices in anger.
“You!” The word spurted out of his mouth. “You pass yourself off as too good for us. An artist who wouldn’t think of socializing with sorority girls.”
“Cecil, I never said that. I’d love to be in a sorority.”
“Estelle says you’re a phony.”
“Estelle?” Alice wanted to get out of the car and walk the last hundred miles home. “How could anyone say that about me. We may not have a lot of land and a big house, but we—?”
“Wouldn’t you like a big house, Alice?” He glanced over at her. “How about a real pearl necklace like Elinor’s. I saw you staring at it. Huh? Be honest. You’re crushed my family has fallen on hard times. You thought you were getting a rich boy. My daddy’s thirty thousand dollars in debt. He’s lost everything but the land and nobody will buy it from him. He’s filed for bankruptcy on the mercantile. I drove out from Chisom last month to bail him out of jail for fighting.”
Her breath. She couldn’t get her breath. Finally she said softly, “You didn’t tell me any of this.”
“Well you know now.” He said this last with such a bitter stab she knew it was all ended, her romance with Cecil Brady was over. He was withdrawing the strong arms he’d offered. The car began to slow down. Was he about to dump her beside the road?
“God damn it!” Cecil said. The car bucked up onto the weedy shoulder beside a field of dried corn stalks. Cecil jumped out.
Against the very last purple light along the horizon he stood and wiped his hand down his mouth before folding open the hood of his old Ford. It served him right, this old car breaking down. But this was a bad spot. There wasn’t a house in sight and they must be twenty miles yet from Ada which wasn’t half way home. She pulled to the edge of her seat and watched his fingers checking the clamps on the hoses, tightening the cap on the radiator, and knew he wasn’t working on the problem yet. This was just the fiddling he always did, calming his mind while he thought about the problem. Was the throttle stuck? That wouldn’t be so bad. He could fix that.
He walked back and handed his jacket through the window without looking at her. It was getting dark now. She opened the glove compartment, took out the big flashlight, and quietly got out to come around behind him and shine the light where his hands were working.
“Higher!” he snapped, and she moved the light a fraction of an inch. His fingers were black up to the knuckles. He wasn’t working on the throttle. This was something more serious. A car approached. Maybe they should flag it down for help, but it wasn’t her place to suggest this. In another few hours Mother and Daddy would start to worry. The wind had come up and whipped the hem of her jacket and pressed her skirt against her legs. She should get Cecil’s jacket from the car. He was sweating and could take a chill.
“Steady!” he barked and she switched hands with the flashlight and tried to breath lightly so the beam of the light came down steadily at just the right angle to cast the least shadows.
“Don’t you have any tools in the car?” she asked as sweetly as she could. “Surely a few wrenches under the seat.”
“It wouldn't make any difference. I need a spanner. Couldn’t reach this with a wrench.”
Maybe at a farmhouse down the road he could borrow a spanner. Maybe if he took the battery out he could reach down to whatever it was he needed to turn. Could her slim fingers reach down? Maybe they should find a house and telephone home to ask Daddy to come to get them. Cecil looked up and down the straight road. There wasn’t a headlight coming in either direction. The wind was loud now, rattling the dry corn stalks. Where was the house of the farmer who’d strung this fence?
Cecil dropped his hands to his sides, and she switched off the flashlight. They were in total darkness. There was no moon, no stars, just Cecil’s labored breathing beside her. She shook with the cold and felt a little faint. She’d eaten so little at dinner and then the long walk and the shooting. Cecil didn’t care about her anymore; and the long black corridors between the corn stalks could hide any kind of danger. She felt the darkness choking her.
Cecil was the phony. His family had no money. This car she’d taken for an antique, his hobby, was just old, the only thing he could afford. His father was a gambler whose estate was in ruin. She wanted to scream with disappointment. The wind in the corn stalks sounded like bones rattling, and she wrapped her arms around her waist.
So Cecil was right about her. She did want a big house, one with radiators, a tight roof and a veranda, thank you very much. She wanted piles of silk stockings and heavy bond paper, a car that ran, and crystal that sang when you thumped it. Not having things at the moment didn’t mean you weren’t a materialist. She’d pretended she wanted an artist’s life. But whoever heard of Bohemians in Oklahoma? Who was she kidding?
She wasn’t even the lady she’d thought she was this morning before she felt C.L. Brady’s leg against her hip, and realized she had a taste for recklessness.
And
a man like this, a gambler, a fighter, a big guy, one who clearly had a taste for her. It was in that distorted red moment, his body crouched around her, that she’d wheeled and aimed and killed the woodpecker.
Cecil rested his hands on the open hood. She could barely see them against the old car. Closing the hood had always been the sign of success; his triumphing over whatever difficulty the machine had presented him. His wonderful mechanical ability solved the kinds of problems that so confounded Daddy. But this time he didn’t have the solution, and she knew his hands didn’t want to fold out the cover and fasten it down until he’d licked the problem.
What were they going to do? She knew if he were alone he could sleep in the car until morning, then walk down the road easy as pie to borrow a spanner and fix the car and come home with a good story to tell—the joke on him for cleaning out the car, wanting it to be so neat as a pin, he forgot to put back the tools he always had lying under the seat.