Paris Trout (5 page)

They drove slowly out of Indian Heights. Henry Ray
winced as he steered the car through the place in the road where the
trees from either side grew almost together, as if he could feel the
branches on his own skin. It already seemed to the girl that a car
was more worry than it was worth.

In a few minutes, though, Henry Ray turned out onto
Route 27, going south, and she saw his troubles were all behind. They
crossed the bridge over the Indian River and then headed away from
town.

Henry Ray's expression relaxed when they were on the
highway, relaxed until he looked like he'd gone simple. His foot
pressed the gas pedal to the floor, and she counted the telephone
poles as they went past, it seemed like there was hardly enough time
to count one before the next was there.

"Lookit here," he said a little later.
"Spring is sprung . . . Grass is riz . . .

I It took her a moment to realize he was reading the
words off the signs along the road.

"Where last year's . . . Careless drivers is . .
. Burma Shave."

He laughed out loud, she stared at him. "How
come you know how to read?" she said.

And that made him laugh too. "All Momma's
children got to read," he said. "She wouldn't let none of
us out the house unless we could. You see them little babies, Linda
and Jane Ray? They already learnt too." He was shouting over the
wind and the engine. "Sometimes I think that woman's crazy."

Saying that seemed to change Henry Ray's driving. He
slowed down, and she watched the needle of the speedometer drop back
into the middle of the numbers. "She ain't crazy," he said
suddenly.

"
I never said she was."

"Well," he said, "I never said it
neither."

She looked out the window. The prettiest thing she
saw was a mare in foal, which wasn't anything special. "How far
you going to drive us?" she said. `

"Where you want to go?"

"Home."

He slowed down, looking for a place. The more they
slowed, the more she realized how fast they'd been going. He pulled
into a field, following some tire tracks through the weeds until they
ended. He turned off the engine, and in the absence of its sound she
heard the noises of the field. It felt peaceful to be stopped, and
she wished she was alone.

He slid across the car seat for her. She sat still.
He put his hands on her legs and then on her chest; she did not move.
He lay back in the seat, pulling her after him. She didn't fight him,
she didn't help him.

He touched the waist of her dress and then followed
the line of her legs on both sides until he got to the hem. Then he
came back up, and the dress came up with him. Her underpants were
fastened with a safety pin.

"Well, well," he said.

She did not move or answer. He unfastened his own
trousers then, and she saw what he intended to put inside her. °°I
never done nothing before," she said.

"
That's all right," he said.

She said, "Nobody told me so."

He put himself between her legs and took her safety
pin. She felt herself exposed. "Please," she said, "I
gone bleed all over your new car. I bleed bad when it comes."

It stopped him, that fast. "You ain't bled
nowhere yet?" he said.

"No."

He lifted himself off her, carefully, as if he were
afraid to wake her up. He opened the door behind him and slipped
outside backwards. She thought he would pull her after him, but he
left her there and buttoned his trousers. She found the safety pin in
the crack between the cushions of the seats and put herself back
together.

Henry Ray did not speak when he got back in the car.
He turned in a slow, careful circle, sticking his head out the window
to see where the wheels were going. He drove that same slow speed
back over the tire tracks. She did not know if he was mad or not; she
wished she were there with Thomas. Thomas didn't take a temper.

Henry Ray stopped the car at the highway and pulled
on the hand brake. "They ain't nothing to tell about this,"
he said. She didn't answer. "I let you go, so you ain't got
nothing to tell."

She looked down at herself and wondered what it would
have been like, to have that inside her. She wondered if there would
be a baby there now. She wondered if it would be as black as Henry
Ray. "If you tell, Miss Mary prob'ly send you out of the house,"
he said.

"
I ain't said nothing."

"She don't like stories on her boys."

Rosie wished he would turn the engine off so she
could hear the sounds of the country. She wanted to feel peaceful. "I
don't tell no stories," she said.

He made no reply. He pushed the clutch to the floor
and put the car into gear and then killed the engine. When he saw
that he'd forgotten to take off the hand brake, he cussed her. Then
he said, "Ain't nothing gone right in this world since I seen
you and tried to be nice."

And she sat still, thinking of things she could say
back.

He drove back to Cotton Point slower than he had come
out. Twice she felt him begin to talk and then quit before the first
word. She looked out the window for the mare in foal, but she didn't
see it again.

Nothing looked the same on
the way back.

* * *

THEY CAME OVER the bridge and stopped at the
crossroad. Indian Heights was left; the town itself was straight on.
Henry Ray spoke to her then. "You want a Popsicle?" he
said. He wasn't in a temper now.

"
You ain't got no Popsicle," she said.

"
I got money. What color you like?"

"
Purple," she said. She'd had only one
Popsicle in her life, and it was purple.

He seemed to be deciding something again. "You
ain't gone tell stories to Miss Mary?" he said.

"
I already said I don't tell no stories."

He drove across the road that led to the Heights and
into town. He turned right on Main Street, and Rosie studied the
people on the sidewalk, thinking she might see the lady who had taken
her to Thomas Cornell Clinic. She thought she might wave. The woman
wasn't there, though; none of the white people she saw were pretty.
Rosie guessed Mr. Trout kept her inside.

Henry Ray continued east, crossed into Bloodtown, and
pulled into a gas station. The man who pumped the gas smiled at Rosie
as he washed the windshield. He had a uniform with letters over the
pocket. ROY. He was skinny and light-skinned, and she liked his looks
better than Henry Ray's, maybe better than Thomas's.

She did not acknowledge his smile, even when he waved
at her with his pinkie finger right up against the windshield. She
thought about it later, though.

The man stopped the pump at one dollar. Henry Ray
came out of the station, carrying a Popsicle, and held it in his
teeth while he opened his wallet to find his dollar bill. Once he was
inside the car he broke the Popsicle in half, and then slid one side
out of the paper and handed it to her.

It was purple, just like he promised.

She put it in her mouth carefully, not wanting it to
break, and held it there a moment, tasting just the cold at first and
then the flavor beneath it. She slid it out as carefully as she'd put
it in, wishing there was some way to make it last.

Henry Ray was chewing his, taking it in bites. He
started the car and began to back out. She put the Popsicle back in
her mouth, feeling the edges turn smooth, and suddenly there was a
bump, and it was broken in half.

She did not realize until Henry Ray screamed that
they had been hit. Then he was sitting up off his seat, looking
through the rearview mirror. He screamed again and got out of the
car. She turned to watch him, half the Popsicle still in her mouth,
and saw the truck. It was a lumber truck, just like the ones that
carried cut boards out of the sawmill near Damp Bottom. The back end
was up against the back end of the car, and a few of the boards had
slid off onto the trunk.

Henry Ray was a crazy man.

He held his head and flapped his arms and jumped up
and down and screamed. The driver of the truck got out slower; he
looked half as heavy as his truck. He watched Henry Ray a few
minutes, then he walked over to the car and had a look. He said, "Be
quiet, nigger, so I  can see what's did."

Henry Ray said, "Who you callin' nigger,
nigger?"

Rosie had heard this before, it meant they were
fixing to fight. She looked at the man who had climbed out of the
truck and did not think Henry Ray ought to fight him. She had seen
enough fighting now to know who would win.

The man in the uniform came out of the station and
stood with his hands on his hips while Henry Ray and the man from the
truck cussed. He studied the back end of the car, and then he studied
the back end of the truck. He pushed the lumber that had slid off
back onto the truck.

Henry Ray and the truck driver stood one on each
side, watching. Rosie opened her door, and when nobody yelled at her
to mind her business, she walked around to the back and had a look
for hersel.

The truck had knocked one shiny piece of the car off
— it was lying on the ground — and tore a hole in another piece,
about big enough that Henry Ray could have fit through it.

That thought came to her because of what the driver
said to him. "I stick your skinny ass through there and back up
some more, you don't shut up."

The driver said that, and then he bent down and
touched the edge of the tear. His finger crumbled the metal there,
and then he moved it a couple of inches farther away, and pushed
straight through.

Rosie was sure Henry Ray oughtn't to tight him.

"
Ain't nothing but paint and rust anyways,"
the truck driver said. He stood up, looking at his finger. Henry Ray
was staring at the hole he'd poked in the car. He bent himself almost
in half and looked underneath.

"
Ooo — e," the man from the station said.

Henry Ray stayed underneath the car a long time,
longer than it took to see the other side of a hole. The truck driver
said time was money and he didn't have any more to spend looking at
this skinny nigger's ass, and he left.

Henry Ray came out from under just as the truck
driver shut his door. He started the engine, blowing smoke over the
accident scene, and ground his gears. Rosie heard something familiar
in the noise, the sound things made when they were forced. She looked
on the ground and saw Henry Ray's Popsicle lying beside the fender,
half melted, showing the ice underneath the purple.

She wished she could pick it up.

The gas man spoke then, startling her. "You
ain't got no insurest, do you?"

Henry Ray looked at him. "Insurest," the
man said. "You got that, they got to fix your car for you."

Henry Ray began to nod. "I got that."

"
Then all you need do is to call them up,"
the gas man said, "and they fix it up like new."

"
That do that, for sure?"

"I swear."

Henry Ray laughed. He picked the fender up off the
ground and tossed it onto the back seat.  "Get in, girl,"
he said to her. He waited until she had pulled the door shut to start
the engine. The tail pipe scraped the ground when they moved, but he
didn't seem to care. She took a chance that it was all right to talk.
"Where you drivin' now, Henry Ray?"

In a way she couldn't quite understand, the question
decided the answer. "Takin' this here right back to Mr. Trout,"
he said. She sat dead still.

He began to nod. "I paid the man his insurest,
he got to fix the car."

"
You gone tell Mr. Trout that?"

And then she was sorry that she'd asked, because that
question decided the answer too. He drove up Main Street, dragging
his tail pipe. White people stopped in their tracks to see what kind
of racket it was. Henry Ray looked straight ahead.

He drove past Mr. Trout's store, around the block,
and back up the alley. He left the car there and pulled her after him
up the steps to the store.

"
They ain't nothing in here for us," she
said, holding back. "I been in here before."

"You just tell him what you seen," he said.

"He don't care what I seen."

Henry Ray paid no attention. He was holding her by
the wrist. He touched the handle of the door, then had a different
thought and knocked. Soft at first, then harder.

Mr. Trout came to the back of the store the same way
he came to the front, which was he didn't come at all, he was just
suddenly there. He stood behind the screen door, looking down at
them, and didn't speak a word.

Henry Ray's hold on her wrist went soft. He dropped
his head. For a long time nobody spoke.

"
Sir," he said finally.

Henry Ray changed and went soft one part at a time.

Mr. Trout got his face closer to the screen. "What
the hell you doin' that for, beatin' on a man's door like that?"