Thalia Read online

  2.

  About four-thirty or five that afternoon, Halmea woke me up to tell me she was going off to a fish fry with some colored boy. I said okay, and thought no more about it. She said our supper was in the stove. Then about six-thirty, when I was dressing to go to the rodeo, Hud came home. Granddad was still gone, and I couldn’t leave till he came home. Jesse had taken the colt into town in the pickup, and I would have to use the Lincoln. I was in the downstairs bathroom when I heard a car door slam, and I thought it might be Granddad. But when I opened the bathroom door and heard all the slamming and banging in the kitchen, I knew it must be Hud, and nobody else.

  When I went in he was yanking out the kitchen drawers, and pawing in the breadbox. His shirt was open all the way down his stomach, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week. A bottle of Hiram Walker sat on the kitchen table; it was better than two-thirds empty. Hud looked about the meanest I’d ever seen him, his hair all tangled, and his face tight and wild. It scared me a little, just seeing him.

  “Where’s that nigger?” he said. “I want supper an’ I don’t want no hesitatin’ about it.”

  “She went to a fish fry,” I said. “The supper’s in the stove.”

  “Well, if that ain’t a fragrant pile of shit,” he said. “A fine bunch around here. Payin’ her money to run off to a fish fry when I’m starvin’ to death. I’d like to get ahold a that bitch.” Granny must have heard him all the way to her room, because she came hobbling in. She looked pretty scared herself.

  “There’s plenty here,” she said. “I’ll fix you some. You sit down.”

  “Screw it,” he said. “Sit down yourself. When I come in from a trip I want my meal on the table, not waitin’ to be fixed. If this ain’t a homecomin’.”

  “Where all did you go?” she asked.

  “What’s it to you?” he said, picking up his whiskey bottle. “Wait an’ be surprised like the rest of ’em.”

  He was too wild-acting to fool with, and we both shut up. He was shifting back and forth on his feet, like a bull that had been crowded too close. “Well, get it on the table,” he said. Granny began to jump around like she was twenty-five years old, and I left them and went out on the porch. I wanted to go to town, but I didn’t have a way to leave. I stood on the porch and watched the cars go flashing across the land. I was wishing I had one. Then there were steps in the living room behind me, and Hud came out. “She’s got tea to make yet,” he said, sitting down on the steps. He had his whiskey bottle.

  “Gettin’ dark,” he said. His voice was a little looser, but still mean. “I’ll tell you, I like lots of light. I was over there in the jungle and had to lay out one night by myself, dark as hell and Japs all around me. Ever since then it’s been piss on the dark.”

  “I got a deal goin’,” he said. “It’s gonna knock some people on their asses, an’ you might be one of ’em.”

  “Wouldn’t take much to knock me,” I said.

  “Sure as hell wouldn’t,” he said, grinning, “Get your ass outa here. I can’t think good with you around.”

  I didn’t argue. I decided I’d go see if I could get Lonzo’s Hudson started; he didn’t care for me using it if I could. He must not have tried it himself, because it started right off for me. On the way to Thalia I met Granddad, driving along the highway as slow as the big Lincoln would go. He knew he was getting pretty old to be driving, and he took it pretty easy. When I got back to the ranch myself, eight hours later, I had seen the first night of the rodeo. It was a slow, dragging show, but I had a lot of fun fooling around behind the chutes, talking to Hermy and the other boys. I even found a girl to take to the dance, and we stayed till it was over. When I got home I was pretty well worn out. The house was dark, and my sheets were hot. I went to the bathroom and got a glass of water and sprinkled them down, but the night was sultry hot, and they didn’t stay cool.

  3.

  I was sitting up in bed. A wild yell woke me. At first I was groggy, and I thought I had dreamed it, but then I heard it again and I knew it was Hud. It was bright moonlight outside, but I couldn’t tell where the yelling was coming from. I got out of bed and felt around for my clothes. I thought he had been staggering around drunk and got on a rattlesnake. As soon as I found my boots I hurried down to the kitchen and put them on. Then I got the big flashlight out of the pantry, and the twenty-two out of the gun closet. But it was so light in the back yard I really didn’t need the flashlight, and I shoved it in my hip pocket. The dogs were standing by the yard gate, listening and growling. Then I heard Hud’s voice again, loud and rough in the still night. He wasn’t yelling any more he was just talking loud. He was in Halmea’s room. The light was on. I heard his voice again, and I started for the room. I saw the yellow patch of light that fell on her wooden steps. My legs were trembly, and I put a shell in the chamber. I knew what I’d see when I got there, but I didn’t know what I could do. When I was halfway down the trail I saw Jesse step quickly into the light and go inside; he just had on his pants and undershirt. Then I heard Halmea crying and trying to say something, but her voice got mixed with Hud’s, and the sound they made was very loud against the stillness of the pastures.

  I didn’t go to the door, like Jesse had. I went to the window I could see them as plain as day, not two yards from me, Hud and Halmea. They were on the bed, and Hud had wrestled her part way under him. Halmea’s face was turned toward me, she was trying to curl toward the wall; her eyes were shut, and the squeezed out tears wet her cheeks. She was trying to jab at Hud with her elbow, to roll away from him, but he wouldn’t let her. He had made her naked from her feet to her breasts, and he was laying across her brown twisting legs, trying to catch her hand. He had his cheek against her side, but he raised up, and I saw that he was grinning his old wild grin. He kept shoving at Halmea’s white nightgown, trying to shove it over her head, but it was all wadded up around her breasts. I couldn’t see Jesse anywhere, and I raised the twenty-two and pointed it at Hud. Then Hud laughed, his teeth white and strong in his whiskered face. “Now, you bitch,” he said, and I knew I ought to shoot him and I knew I couldn’t. Halmea’s eyes were still shut and her mouth was twisted, but she didn’t try to holler. “Just rest easy,” Hud said. He smothered her arm against his chest and brought his hand over her shoulder and hit her with the heel of it, hard in the face, like he might hit a mare and she grunted with the hurt of it, and gritted her teeth as if she thought he was about to hit her again. Blood came in the corner of her mouth, but she was still trying to roll and kick. “Wild bitch, ain’t you?” Hud said, grinning again. He turned her, then, and jammed his big knee down between her naked legs, and he laughed. The blood was pounding through my head so I could barely think. I wanted to shoot Hud and not be afraid of him any longer, but I couldn’t think to, I just stood there watching. Then Hud slipped his hand up under the wadded white gown and caught and squeezed one of Halmea’s breast, and then mashed it and she groaned when he did. She said, “Oooah,” and I shot the gun. I shot and the bullet tore through the screen above them and thunked into the wall on the other side of the room. I couldn’t shoot to hit him; I guess I thought just any shot would end it. He rolled off Halmea and I saw her brown body twist as she turned toward the wall. Then I cocked the gun and went around to the door, but even before I got there Hud was out and grabbed me, yanked at the screen and shoved me inside, into the yellow light. He was still grinning. “You little fucker,” he said. “Come in where you can watch the show.” I stumbled on the linoleum, and he was behind me, he shoved or backhanded me, I was on the floor, up against the wall, half under the card table, my eyes still open, the gun on the floor at the foot of the bed. Jesse was laying on the linoleum, by the bed, not moving. Hud shook the tangled hair out of his eyes, his hands at his Levi’s buttons; he was looking at Halmea—he didn’t even glance at Jesse or me. Halmea was curled right against the wall; there was a long raw scratch on her naked back. “Turn over here, nig,” Hud said, grinning; he grabbed one of her
ankles. “Here’s half the menfolks on this ranch come to help you,” he said. “The other half’s slower and lazier. I guess they’ll be along in a minute. I’ll stack ’em up two deep ’fore I’m done with you.” I sat against the wall, a ringing like a seashell in my head. I wondered where Granddad was, if he was up. Halmea uncurled and began to kick at Hud with both feet; her eyes were open and her bloody lips squeezed tight together. But Hud leaned over and slapped her on the gut with his open hand and the air whoosed out of her mouth and he grabbed her other ankle and pulled her around him while she tried to get wind. Halmea turned her head toward me, and when she did Hud put both hands on her face and held her down while he shoved and shoved, and I could hear her choking for wind and I could hear Hud’s breath, but not my own and not Jesse’s, and I could see the dark blood from Halmea’s mouth trickling down the sheet toward the part of her that was under Hud. I didn’t move or blink, but then Hud was standing up grinning at me; he was buckling his ruby belt buckle. “Ain’t she a sweet patootie?” he said. He whistled and began to tuck his pants legs into the tops of his red suede boot. Halmea had curled toward the wall, and the blood on the sheets was smeared.

  “Now let that be a lesson to you,” Hud said. He was calm and loose-looking. He was talking to Halmea, but he held out one hand to me, as if he wanted to help me up. “You keep gallivantin’ aroun’ without tellin’ me, I’ll sure as hell do it agin. Cause now on, I’m the boss. Not Homer Bannon, not fantan there, not Ma. Me. Mister Scott. The boss.” He turned and went out the door without looking back. Before I could move, Halmea jumped off the bed, her face wilder than Hud’s had been.

  “Where dat gun?” she said. She grabbed it off the floor and went to the steps and shot three times into the darkness. She quit, and I heard Hud laughing. She shot twice more and clicked the gun two or three times before she knew it was empty; then she dropped it on the steps and went back to the bed. We heard the rough roar of Hud’s mufflers, the last time I ever heard them.

  Halmea was wiping the blood off her mouth with the sheet, and I began to get up. She squatted down and bent over Jesse, rolled him on his back. When she did he put out a hand like he wanted to be helped up, but his eyes were still shut. I saw a big reddening spot on his jaw. Halmea sat down and propped his head on her leg.

  “Honey, if you okay, wet me a rag,” she said, not looking up. I found one hanging over the lavatory, and dampened it for her. When she rubbed Jesse’s face he began to blink a little, but he wasn’t conscious.

  “He got hit bad,” she said. “Just as he come in de do’.”

  I wet the rag again, and finally we got Jesse to open his eyes. He didn’t say a word; he sat against the edge of the bed and put one hand up to shade himself from the yellow light. Halmea went to the lavatory to wash the blood out of her mouth. When she came back we helped Jesse stand up.

  “Can’t clear my head,” he whispered. I let him lean on me. “I need to lie down awhile, I think I’d be all right,” he said. Halmea took one arm and I took another and we managed to ease him down the steps. He seemed a little steadier then, and she went back. He held onto me and I helped him across the dark chicken yard to the bunkhouse. “I’m gonna lose my beer,” he said. “Can’t get my head back on right.” When I got him to his cot he began to pull off his undershirt. “Much oblige,” he said. “Oh me.” He lay back and I turned off the lights and went out into the cool. My own head was throbbing and my neck was stiff, but I felt clear.

  Halmea hadn’t turned the light out in her cabin, so I went back to see what I could do. She was laying on the bed where Hud had just had her, her face in the crook of one arm. She snuffled something when I spoke at the door, and I went in. She didn’t look around, and I didn’t know anything to say. I sat down on the edge of the bed and waited. I could see the wetness glisten on her wrists and hands. In a minute she felt me on the bed and looked up, her eyes red and puffed.

  “Ise sho down,” she said.

  “It’s over,” I said, patting her lightly on the shoulder. I saw three or four cut places on her shoulder and side, where Hud had scratched her in the scuffle. Blood was sticking to her cotton nightgown.

  “Oh, it oveh,” she said. “Lot a good dat do.”

  “He was just so drunk,” I said.

  “Shit,” she said, and she sat up suddenly, her lip turned down so I could see the gash on its underside. “Don’t gimme dat drunk talk. Mistah Hud wasn’t drunk. An’ drunk don’t mean he can come in an’ do dat to somebody.”

  Her face was beginning to puff where he had hit her, and it occurred to me that she might be hurt really bad. I went and got the washrag for her—it was all the medicine in the cabin—but she was too mad and stirred up to use it.

  “Should I take you to town?” I said. “Do you need a doctor?”

  “Hush,” she said. She stood up, looking so beaten and raw and tired that I didn’t know what to do. “I’m gonna wash dem cuts,” she said, not noticing the clean rag I had just wet for her. She got another one, but she couldn’t reach the cut on her back. I took the rag from her and daubed it clean, while she held her nightgown up.

  “I bettah get my suitcase,” she said. “I leavin’ in de mornin’.”

  “But you don’t need to go,” I said. “The law can take care of Hud.”

  She frowned at me, still raw and angry. “Hush about de law,” she said. “No law gonna hear about dis, you see dey don’t. Tell de law, dey have it my fault befo’ you turn aroun’. I seen dat kinda law befo’.”

  “But don’t run off,” I said. “He’ll leave you alone.”

  She snorted. “You see him leave me alone,” she said. “He leave me alone good aftah he done wit’ me.” Then she softened up and began to cry. “Heah, I helpless,” she said. “Dat gets me. He come in heah aftah me an’ do what he did. Nobody stop him dis time, nobody gonna stop him next time. I seen him come in de do’. Dere I is, I knowed it too. He done told me he’d be dere, plenty times. I thought, dat’s just Mistah Hud, he ain’t gonna come. But he do come, an’ dere you is. Next time he come to dis girl, he gonna have a long trail to follow, I know dat.”

  “Halmea,” I said. “Halmea, don’t you go off and leave us. We need you around here. I sure do. I want you to stay.”

  But she looked farther from me than she ever had. “You get along okay,” she said, and it wasn’t me, her old honey, she was saying it to. “You see,” she said. So I left her and picked up the gun and the flashlight and took them back where they belonged.

  I went up to my room and undressed and got in bed, but I didn’t even think about going to sleep. My head had started aching, and I felt a little sick at my stomach. I kept seeing Halmea stretched on her bed naked, and Hud wrestling her under him. I knew he didn’t do it because he was drunk. He did it because he wanted to get her down and job it in her. I knew he wanted to get Halmea; he’d told me so plenty of times. I remembered how she was crying that night he got home from Temple; how he had caught her in the kitchen and pinched her teats. What bothered me was I had wanted to do pretty much the same thing to Halmea. I didn’t want to do it mean, like Hud did everything, but I wanted to do it to her. I was shaking, lying there in bed. And Hud would always do the thing he wanted to do, whether it hurt anybody or not; Hud just did what he intended to do. Watching him screw Halmea, I should have killed him, but didn’t. I stood back and I waited. Wanted to watch. I was shaking more, lying there. I did like Halmea so much; she was one of the best people there ever was, and I could see her so many different ways when she was the Halmea I liked. But now I could only see her naked, pinned there on the bed, like a heifer Hud had thrown down to work over or to splay; I could see her haunch and her breasts and Hud grabbing at her ankles. It made me feel sorry for her and yet want to watch at the same time; and I got more miserable, turning over and over trying to get comfortable. Finally I shoved open the screen and vomited down the side of the house. I was thinking how I wanted to do good things for Halmea and never do a mean thing t
o her, but I couldn’t get over wanting to wallow her. I thought of her that day she brought the lemonade and set it by my bed when I felt sick; and I remembered the streak of flour had been white on her forehead. I wanted to thank her for that and do something nice for her on account of it. But even thinking about the lemonade, what I remembered most, more than the tall sweaty glass or the icy juice or her cool fingers on my forehead, was the dark tight tops of her breasts as she stooped over. Thinking of all that made me want to cry, and I turned over again and wished I could find a way to get peace. I wished I could get together with Halmea somewhere way off from the ranch, where we could just talk. If we could, I might think of a way to let her know all the different things I thought about her that night; maybe she would have known what was silly about them, and what was right and good. Anyway, we could have talked. Finally, my head eased a little ,and I quit tossing and turning and worrying so much. The moon was still high up in the west, shedding its faint white light over Granddad’s pastures, and I lay with my face to the window watching the night till I fell to asleep.