She laid the canteen on the bed and picked her dress up from the floor and brushed it with her hand and folded it carefully and laid it on the bed.
Then she turned back the quilt, exposing the mattress.
There was no linen, no pillow, and when she touched the mattress it gave forth a faint dry whisper of shucks.
She removed her slippers and set them on the bed and got in beneath the quilt.
Tommy could hear the mattress crackle.
She didn’t lie down at once.
She sat upright, quite still, the hat tilted rakishly upon the back of her head.
Then she moved the canteen, the dress and the slippers beside her head and drew the raincoat about her legs and lay down, drawing the quilt up, then she sat up and removed the hat and shook her hair out and laid the hat with the other garments and prepared to lie down again.
Again she paused.
She opened the raincoat and produced a compact from somewhere and, watching her motions in the tiny mirror, she spread and fluffed her hair with her fingers and powdered her face and replaced the compact and looked at the watch again and fastened the raincoat.
She moved the garments one by one under the quilt and lay down and drew the quilt to her chin.
The voices had got quiet for a moment and in the silence Tommy could hear a faint, steady chatter of the shucks inside the mattress where Temple lay, her hands crossed on her breast and her legs straight and close and decorous, like an effigy on an ancient tomb.
The voices were still; he had completely forgot them until he heard Goodwin say
“Stop it.
Stop that!”
A chair crashed over; he heard Goodwin’s light thudding feet; the chair clattered along the porch as though it had been kicked aside, and crouching, his elbows out a little in squat, bear-like alertness, Tommy heard dry, light sounds like billiard balls.
“Tommy,” Goodwin said.
When necessary he could move with that thick, lightning-like celerity of badgers or coons.
He was around the house and on the porch in time to see Gowan slam into the wall and slump along it and plunge full length off the porch into the weeds, and Popeye in the door, his head thrust forward.
“Grab him there!” Goodwin said.
Tommy sprang upon Popeye in a sidling rush.
“I got—hah!” he said as Popeye slashed savagely at his face; “you would, would you?
Hole up hyer.”
Popeye ceased.
“Jesus Christ.
You let them sit around here all night, swilling that goddam stuff; I told you.
Jesus Christ.”
Goodwin and Van were a single shadow, locked and hushed and furious.
“Let go!” Van shouted.
“I’ll kill—” Tommy sprang to them.
They jammed Van against the wall and held him motionless.
“Got him?” Goodwin said.
“Yeuh. I got him.
Hole up hyer.
You done whupped him.”
“By God, I’ll—”
“Now, now; whut you want to kill him fer?
You caint eat him, kin you?
You want Mr Popeye to start guttin us all with that ere artermatic?”
Then it was over, gone like a furious gust of black wind, leaving a peaceful vacuum in which they moved quietly about, lifting Gowan out of the weeds with low-spoken, amicable directions to one another.
They carried him into the hall, where the woman stood, and to the door of the room where Temple was.
“She’s locked it,” Van said. He struck the door, high.
“Open the door,” he shouted.
“We’re bringing you a customer.”
“Hush,” Goodwin said.
“There’s no lock on it.
Push it.”
“Sure,” Van said;
“I’ll push it.”
He kicked it.