“He better get on to where he’s going, where his women folks can take care of him.”
She listened to him.
“From my window I could see the grape arbor, and in the winter I could see the hammock too. But in the winter it was just the hammock.
That’s why we know nature is a she; because of that conspiracy between female flesh and female season.
So each spring I could watch the reaffirmation of the old ferment hiding the hammock; the green-snared promise of unease.
What blossoms grapes have, that is.
It’s not much: a wild and waxlike bleeding less of bloom than leaf, hiding and hiding the hammock, until along in late May, in the twilight, her—Little Belle’s—voice would be like the murmur of the wild grape itself.
She never would say,
‘Horace, this is Louis or Paul or Whoever’ but
‘It’s just Horace’.
Just, you see; in a little white dress in the twilight, the two of them all demure and quite alert and a little impatient.
And I couldn’t have felt any more foreign to her flesh if I had begot it myself.
“So this morning—no; that was four days ago; it was Thursday she got home from school and this is Tuesday—I said,
‘Honey, if you found him on the train, he probably belongs to the railroad company.
You cant take him from the railroad company; that’s against the law, like the insulators on the poles.’
“ ‘He’s as good as you are.
He goes to Tulane.’
“ ‘But on a train, honey,’ I said.
“ ‘I’ve found them in worse places than on the train.’
“ ‘I know,’ I said.
‘So have I.
But you dont bring them home, you know.
You just step over them and go on.
You dont soil your slippers, you know.’
“We were in the living room then; it was just before dinner; just the two of us in the house then.
Belle had gone down town.
“ ‘What business is it of yours who comes to see me?
You’re not my father.
You’re just—just——’
“ ‘What?’ I said.
‘Just what?’
“ ‘Tell Mother, then!
Tell her.
That’s what you’re going to do.
Tell her!’
“ ‘But on the train, honey,’ I said.
‘If he’d walked into your room in a hotel, I’d just kill him.
But on the train, I’m disgusted.
Let’s send him along and start all over again.’
“ ‘You’re a fine one to talk about finding things on the train!
You’re a fine one!
Shrimp!
Shrimp!’ ”
“He’s crazy,” the woman said, motionless inside the door.
The stranger’s voice went on, tumbling over itself, rapid and diffuse.
“Then she was saying
‘No!
No!’ and me holding her and she clinging to me.
‘I didn’t mean that!
Horace!