“That was wrong for me to be hearing her. She’s real. You don’t deserve her. Shut the door.”
I read a bit of my chemistry and went to bed in Fleece’s room, a brown room with varnished pine, black knotholes in it, thinking of the queer blotches around me. I woke up with my cheek hurting. A thick book was lying on the sheets. Fleece had hit me with it.
“Open the eyes. Don’t be mad, now. That’s The Brothers Karamazov you’re looking at. I could’ve stacked all the books I had to leave behind in this house on your chest, and you’d be crushed to death. So, see, you’re alive, and don’t be mad. I want to talk about my girlfriend, Bet”
“I’ve seen Bet at least once a day all semester and I’ve never seen you with her. I don’t believe in this; I think she barely knows your name. Don’t ever hit me in my sleep like that.”
“She’s from Rolling Fork. A Delta woman. She is six feet, one inch. Her father is taller, her mother is even taller, and she is little Bet to them. She has a brother who is taller than all of them who played basketball at Mississippi State. Her daddy was a Marine in the Pacific in World War Two. He lived through the same battle my father died in. I really do have to make a choice. She has several strikes against her. Don’t laugh, but she sings hymns, spontaneously, with all her heart. Our first date was up to the Hilltop Theater. We were walking to the movie under that arch of oak trees, neither one of us could think of anything to say, and she breaks into ‘Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me….’ At the moment I was taking mark of the white insides of her toes where her suntan hadn’t covered. She had sandals on. I can see her feet by the lightning of the spring storm that’s breaking over us. Her dress was blowing between her legs. I let go of her hand when she started ‘Amazing Grace.’ I went over to the side of the road and looked at the weeds; I almost threw up. I’d taken in some lab fumes that afternoon. My body was throwing out an alarm. I told her I was dizzy, I hadn’t eaten supper. ‘No supper!’ I’m quoting her. She stroked the back of my head. How can I tell her it’s the hymn that really made me sick? But it was good, really. She said she hadn’t even made the concert choir, but screw you people over in Fine Arts. It was good. For the first time in five years I felt like I was a sinner, when she sang. We went on up to the movie, and I took hold of her hand about midway through. She liked that.. I’ll tell you, to sweat hands together in the Hilltop …”
I appeared at Patsy’s apartment on time. She met me, clutching together a purple robe that looked like a piece of rented costumery for a male actor in college Shakespeare, and she did tell me she’d been in two campus plays, showed the photograph taken under a proscenium which revealed her as an inscrutable female extra in Elizabethan wraps. We had such common interests, she said. The lights of reason were truly up; there were extra lamps. On her wall was a fishnet holding all her flute music and other things meaningful to her — menus and stolen wine glasses and her diary. She pulled the robe apart and sailed it away, and leaving no moment for examination, she was nude, hurling herself on the bed.
What a feast of sight I’ll make, I thought. I peeled off. I went over to the old dresser with the tall three-way mirror and picked up the pistol she kept, a ten-dollar.22 revolver for protection against rapists. What a laugh. I had pity for her. I glanced over at the wire screen of her window. He breaks through there, a raw pink craver, and the dyed-blond horrorstruck princess of the roaches shoots blue holes in his stomach. Then claws out his eyes if the bullets didn’t stop him. Saving herself for me. I pitied him too, maybe more than her.
I’d done some push-ups every other week, and knew there were some muscles apparent on me. I turn, blinded to her by the effect of my own body. Look what you are getting for free, Patsy.
“Lord! Wow! You’re so ugly! Men are so ugly, at last I see! Doesn’t it hurt to be like that? Don’t you dare turn away, though. Get on the bed. My lord, it looks like you’ve been wounded! Something they rammed through you from behind … I have to help that swollen thing, don’t I? Yeah, ah, yeaaaahasssss! Aw, is this right? Is this it? Aw, Be ugly in me, be ugly … Don’t you quit!”
I was fed up with her calling me ugly. I quit and dressed. The window screen seemed the right place to go out. She began sobbing; she drew up the yellow sheet around her. It was all very well to me that I’d quit at the time she started needing me. I didn’t like that loud screech calling me ugly, ugly, ugly.
She sobbed, unfulfilled, teats abob. As I was leaving I caught sight of her kicking off the sheets in some sort of fit. Then, the first time, I saw her nude and whole. I’d never seen the whole body of a female from this range. The lights of the room seemed to jump up even brighter. A magical flare-burst is what it was, over Patsy. I saw her lovely waste of breasts, even though they were small, and her navel, a pink whirlpool of flesh, her pale brown cup of hairs, her thighs and her toes all together. Her hair was glistening wet and thick. My word, I wanted another chance at that, but I was one leg out of the window already. I fell out, on the nasty stems of a hedge. Oh, let me back, but I was too much a fool to climb back up.
My mouth hurt. She had sucked my tongue when we kissed. And I had that stupid wilt of pain below. But I clambered back to my car, as if the ham muscles of one leg had been cut. My face was hot as the rash. And behind me, in the yard, I could feel something yet to pull into the car, like a kinked tail, as if my ass had unraveled off me and was caught in the hedge under her window.
9 / The Theft of Her Letters
Fleece could not drive a car. When he went out alone at night, he called a taxi. Sometimes the taxi would back out of the driveway and head west — toward Hedermansever — and sometimes east — toward Jackson, about which he was mysterious. Bet was at Hedermansever, I knew. But what was in Jackson?
“I’m going diving,” he said about one trip. I thought he might be swimming at the YMCA to build up his body. This was possible. He took ho swim trunks or towel with him, and at the Y, you swam in the raw. I was trapped in one weekend and found that out. It was in Shreveport, the night before the solo contest. Old Mr. Medford — who “was going to accompany me on piano — and I thought a swim in the heated pool might be nice before supper. We went out and bought us some swimsuits. Then we went down to the pool and everybody was in naked. This put me off. Old Medford didn’t know what to do, and I felt for him. For him it had taken guts to even get in the swimsuit. I told him it looked damned odd to me. We forgot the swim and went out to supper.
But this had nothing to do with Fleece. He meant dive in the sense of tavern. What Fleece was doing was going out to meet and talk with the people, I guess for the first time in his life. I found this out later. The fact was, Fleece told me sometime during college, that he wanted to be a doctor for about ten years, then he wanted to run for governor of the state of Mississippi. It seems his ambition increased after he met Bet Henderson. However, Fleece was no drinker. Three beers almost took him away. His drinking partners, angered by the line of debate he took, would often spit at him and strike him.
It was nice to sleep late every morning of the weekend in Fleece’s house, to have your coffee at noon. I think I was made for that. I’d been up an hour one morning when Fleece came into the kitchen. His hands were locked in front of him. He told me it was time to visit the king cat’s house. We had to steal Catherine’s letters, had to, soon. Somewhere in the house there must be something from her.