“Aint doin nothin,” Tommy said.
“Are you following me around?”
“I aint trailin nobody,” Tommy said sullenly.
“Well, dont, then,” Popeye said.
“Come on,” Goodwin said.
“Van’s waiting.”
They went on.
Tommy followed them.
Once he looked back at the house, then he shambled on behind them.
From time to time he would feel that acute surge go over him, like his blood was too hot all of a sudden, dying away into that warm unhappy feeling that fiddle music gave him.
Durn them fellers, he whispered, Durn them fellers.
9
The room was dark.
The woman stood inside the door, against the wall, in the cheap coat, the lace-trimmed crepe nightgown, just inside the lockless door.
She could hear Gowan snoring in the bed, and the other men moving about, on the porch and in the hall and in the kitchen, talking, their voices indistinguishable through the door.
After a while they got quiet.
Then she could hear nothing at all save Gowan as he choked and snored and moaned through his battered nose and face.
She heard the door open.
The man came in, without trying to be silent.
He entered, passing within a foot of her.
She knew it was Goodwin before he spoke.
He went to the bed.
“I want the raincoat,” he said.
“Sit up and take it off.”
The woman could hear the shucks in the mattress as Temple sat up and Goodwin took the raincoat off of her.
He returned across the floor and went out.
She stood just inside the door.
She could tell all of them by the way they breathed.
Then, without having heard, felt, the door open, she began to smell something: the brilliantine which Popeye used on his hair.
She did not see Popeye at all when he entered and passed her; she did not know he had entered yet; she was waiting for him; until Tommy entered, following Popeye.
Tommy crept into the room, also soundless; she would have been no more aware of his entrance than of Popeye’s, if it hadn’t been for his eyes.
They glowed, breast-high, with a profound interrogation, then they disappeared and the woman could then feel him, squatting beside her; she knew that he too was looking toward the bed over which Popeye stood in the darkness, upon which Temple and Gowan lay, with Gowan snoring and choking and snoring.
The woman stood just inside the door.
She could hear no sound from the shucks, so she remained motionless beside the door, with Tommy squatting beside her, his face toward the invisible bed.
Then she smelled the brilliantine again.
Or rather, she felt Tommy move from beside her, without a sound, as though the stealthy evacuation of his position blew soft and cold upon her in the black silence; without seeing or hearing him, she knew that he had crept again from the room, following Popeye.
She heard them go down the hall; the last sound died out of the house.
She went to the bed.
Temple did not move until the woman touched her.
Then she began to struggle.
The woman found Temple’s mouth and put her hand over it, though Temple had not attempted to scream.
She lay on the shuck mattress, turning and thrashing her body from side to side, rolling her head, holding the coat together across her breast but making no sound.
“You fool!” the woman said in a thin, fierce whisper.
“It’s me.
It’s just me.”
Temple ceased to roll her head, but she still thrashed from side to side beneath the woman’s hand.
“I’ll tell my father!” she said.
“I’ll tell my father!”
The woman held her.
“Get up,” she said.