"How could I when I didn’t have any! Goddamn rubbers’re gettin’ as scarce as tires these days. It’s a wonder Roosevelt hasn’t got the Boy Scouts out collectin’ used ones like they collect everything else!" Harley dropped to the sofa and raked a hand through his hair, muttering, "Pregnant… Christ."
Lula braced a stiff arm on the back of an overstuffed chair, drumming paradiddles with her hot-pink nails.
"Oughta be here about next May."
"You seen a doctor already?"
"Yup. Went to Calhoun today."
Harley jumped to his feet and paced. "Dammit, Lula, why didn’t you tell me you could’ve got pregnant that night! This is your fault, not mine!"
Lula came to life like a kicked cobra. "My fault! Why you cheap, sniveling penny-pincher, don’t you blame this on me! You’ve always been a great one to hump first and ask second. And I know why! ’Cause all you think of is money-money-money! Up there at the mill haulin’ it in hand over fist puttin’ up government contracts at time and a half overtime, and too cheap to go to the drugstore and spend a quarter! Well, don’t you point fingers at me, Harley Overmire! All you’da had to do that night was take ten seconds to put one on, but no, you had to leap on me like some tomcat sniffin’ pussy!"
"Now you just wait a minute, Lula. I come in here and you were sprawled out like a tomato sandwich waitin’ for salt and pepper and you expect me to back off and think! You could’ve shut your legs for just a minute, you know!"
"Me, me, always me!" Lula yowled. "You been layin’ me for six years and how many times you ever thought about it before? Huh? Answer me that, Harley! I’m always the one got to think about it-well, I get sick of it! Just once I’d like you to do the thinkin’ and treat me like the lady I am and take a little time first, instead of jumpin’ on me and ruttin’ like a boar!"
"A boar! So now I’m a boar!"
"Don’t change the subject, Harley. I said I wanna know what you’re gonna do about it and I want an answer!"
"Answer-hell, where’m I supposed to get an answer?"
Lula had done some reconsidering and had come to the conclusion that Harley Overmire was better than nothing. Besides, he wasn’t really so bad in bed. And at least her kid would have an old man. Lula curled four fingers and studied her nail polish for chips while suggesting, "You could leave Mae and marry me."
"Leave Mae!"
Lula’s nonchalance disappeared abruptly and her mouth grew sullen. "Well, what’s she to you anyway-you never even do it with her. You told me so yourself!"
"She’s the mother of my children, Lula."
"Oh." Lula tapped her chest. "And what am I?"
Harley couldn’t think up a fast answer.
"What am I, huh, Harley? There’s one of yours breedin’ in me right now, but since Mae is the mother of your children, maybe she’d like to add it to her collection, huh? How about that? How about I pay Mae a call and just happen to mention, Oh by the way, Mae, I’ll have another little monkey-faced brat to add to your brood next summer. How about that, Harley? Would that suit you?"
"Lula, be reasonable-"
"Be reasonable! Be reasonable, he says, when I’m the one faced with disgrace and he’s off rockin’ on his front veranda with Mae and his legitimatebrats. Be reasonable? I’ll give you reasonable, Harley. How’s this for reasonable? Two months. Two months and I’ll be starting to show, and by that time I want one of two things. Either your name on a wedding license beside mine so I’ll know my kid’ll be provided for for the rest of his life, or ten thousand dollars in the bank, in my name, Lula Peak."
"Ten thousand dollars!"
Turning to a bevel-edged mirror on the living room wall, Lula opened her lips and edged each corner with the side of a finger. She patted her varnished topknot and added as if in afterthought, "Or I could still offer it to Mae to raise and my worries’d be over." She swung to face Harley in a shimmer of black and cerise. "Oh, well…" She flipped her palms up. "I never cared much for monkey-faced brats anyway."
It was not a good autumn for Harley Overmire. Lula wouldn’t leave off him. He earned good money at the mill-sure-but it’d be a cold day in hell before he’d hand over ten thousand dollars to a slut like her. And she’d almost torn his face off when he’d suggested looking for a doctor to get rid of it. But worst of all, she was beginning to pester him at home, calling him in the middle of the night, at breakfast time, asking for some trumped-up name if Mae happened to answer.
She showed up at the mill one night when he was getting off at nine o’clock, just to remind him he had only four weeks left to come up with the money or the marriage. When another week passed without any progress toward a solution, she actually called Mae, giving her correct name, and told him about it afterward.
"I talked to Mae today."
"You what?"
"I talked to Mae today. I called her up and said I was collecting for the Red Cross and wondered if she had any donations for Care packages. She said she had buttons and soap and tablets and pencils, and that I could come over there and pick them up anytime, so I did."
"You didn’t!"
"Oh, but I did! I went right over and walked up to your front door and knocked and Mae answered and we had a pleasant little chat."
"Goddammit, Lula-"
Lula’s expression turned serpentine. "You see how easy it is, Harley?"
Harley developed an ulcer. The stomach pains intensified one night when he came home and looked through the mail to find Lula had brazenly directed the doctor in Calhoun to send his bill directly to Harley’s house. When Mae asked what the bill was for, he told her somebody had been hurt at the mill and the bill had come to the house accidentally.
But Lula’s harassment continued daily. Harley began to detest her, wondering what he’d ever seen in her in the first place. She was hard and shallow and stump-dumb to boot. To think he’d actually jeopardized his marriage over a pussy like that.
At work Harley was distracted. At home, jumpy. Everyplace else, wary. The damn woman would show up anywhere, saying anything, doing any rash thing she took a mind to do.
The corker was when she stopped his oldest boy, Ned, coming home from school one day and talked him into Vickery’s to give him a free ice cream cone. Afterward, she had the gall to tell Harley what she’d done and add in a sultry voice while fussing with the ugly yellow hair of hers, "You haven’t been around much, Harley. And that boy of yours is gettin’better lookin’ by the day. Losin’ his monkey face and growin’ tall. How old is he now, Harley? Fourteen? Fifteen maybe?"
The threat was clear as that varnish she spread on her pincurls and it was the last straw. When she started in on the kids, it was time to put a stop to Lula Peak.
Harley planned it out carefully in his mind. The gift he’d left under Lula’s Christmas tree would shut her up temporarily, but he’d do it right after the holiday.
It’d work. He knew Lula and what Lula craved worse than anything, and it’d work. He hadn’t been deaf, dumb and blind these last couple years. The men at the mill made ribald jokes about how Lula stalked Parker, how she ogled him out the window of the restaurant and even pursued him outright at the library. But word had it Parker had never given her a tumble, so Lula’d still be itchin’ to get at him.
Parker. Even the name galled Harley yet. Parker and his goddamn Purple Heart. Parker, the town hero while people sneered at Harley Overmire behind his back and accused him of cutting off his finger on purpose to avoid the draft. Not one of them could even guess what kind of courage it took to run your finger through a sawblade! And besides, somebody had to stay behind and make crates for all those rifles and ammo.
So you think you’re a hero, eh, Parker? Hobbling into town on those crutches and parading around the square in your fancy uniform so everybody’ll fall on their knees and wave banners. Well, I didn’t like you the first time I clapped eyes on you, whore-killer, and I don’t like you any better now. It might not’ve worked when I tried to run you out of town the first time, but this time it will. And it’ll be the law that’ll do it for me.