Peyton Place (38 page)

“It won't rain,” said Norman.

He did not think of it particularly, but his was a statement being spoken all over town that day. The farmers, who long ago had lost all hope of saving their crops, stood with unchanged faces in front of the Citizens’ National Bank. Their faces were no different than they had been in the spring, when the men had seeded the earth. But if a deep crease or two in a neck, or carved deep in the skin from nose to mouth, showed gray now, this was understandable. A farmer could not go out for long to stand and gaze at his burnt fields without getting a bit of dust on him somewhere. The farmers stood in front of the bank, waiting for Dexter Humphrey to come in and sit behind his desk in the mortgage loans department, and they looked up at the sky and said, “It won't rain.” They said it in the same tone which they would have used had it been raining for a week, and were they expressing their opinion of the next day's weather.

“No, I guess it won't rain,” said Allison MacKenzie, pushing her sunglasses back onto the slippery bridge of her nose. “Let's push awhile, Norman. It's too hot to pedal.”

They came to the bend in the river at last, and they did much as they had done on previous visits to this place, but there was a subtle difference to this particular day. It was as if each of them sensed vaguely that the Saturday afternoons of youth are few, and precious, and this feeling which neither of them could have defined or described made every moment of this time together too short, too quickly gone, yet clearer and more sharply edged than any other. They swam and ate and read, and Norman brushed Allison's long hair. He put his face against it and told her that it was like silk. Like corn silk in August, when the season had not been dry. For a while, they pretended that they were Robinson Crusoe and Friday, but later they decided that they were both Thoreau, and that the Connecticut River was Walden Pond.

“Let's stay all day,” said Allison. “I brought plenty of food to eat.”

“Let's stay until dark,” said Norman. “We both have lights on our bikes. We can get back easily enough.”

“We could see the moon come up,” said Allison, enthused.

“Except that we're facing the wrong way,” said Norman practically. “The moon doesn't come up over Vermont. It rises from the opposite direction.”

“We could pretend,” said Allison.

“Yes, we could do that,” agreed Norman.

“Oh, what a beautiful day!” exclaimed Allison, stretching her arms wide. “How can anyone be cranky or mean on a day like this!”

“I wasn't,” said Norman.

“I was,” said Allison, and for a moment the sun seemed less bright. “I was perfectly beastly to Nellie Cross. I'll have to make it up to her on Monday.”

The shadow of Allison's shame departed quickly on the feet of her good resolution. The sun returned to its brightness, and Allison grasped Norman's hand.

“Let's run,” she cried happily. “I feel so good I could run for an hour without getting tired,” and she had no premonition that this was the last day of her childhood.

During the minutes when Allison and Norman were running down the strip of sandy beach on the shore of the Connecticut River, Nellie Cross stepped away from the sink in the MacKenzie kitchen and sat down on the floor. It had seemed only a few minutes that she had been standing as Allison had left her, but she was tired. Her head, she felt, had grown enormous, and she held it carefully on her neck so that it would not fall off and break into pieces on the clean linoleum. She leaned back against a cabinet, and it seemed perfectly natural to her to sit calmly on the kitchen floor on a hot Saturday afternoon, resting her feet which ached from standing too long in one place. She stretched her legs straight out and folded her arms against her chest.

It wa'nt goin’ to hurt nothin’, she thought, if she just let her mind dwell on Lucas for a minute, and it might make her feel better. Sometimes it did.

But she couldn't seem to think too clearly about Lucas, right this minute. There was so much else going on in her monstrous huge, pus-filled head.

Not that she blamed Lucas for that. It wa'nt his fault that he'd gone and caught the clap off that whore woman, and it was no more than right that he should give the sickness to his wife. Where else could a man leave a thing like that to get rid of it, if he couldn't leave it with his own wife?

But there was something else. Something she should be able to remember. Now what was it? Nellie Cross sat still, first opening her eyes wide and then closing them tightly. Her mouth pursed with the effort to remember, and a line of sweat appeared over her top lip. At last, she shrugged.

Didn't do no good to struggle. Try as she might, her poor head just wouldn't let her think what it was that she should rightly remember. It was somethin’ to do with havin’ a baby, and she'd be a monkey's uncle if she could recall anythin’ else. She could remember layin’ on the bed and twistin’ and turnin’ with the pain of it. Doc Swain was right there, though, same as he always was when you needed him. Stayed all night, he must've, although she couldn't rightly remember havin’ seen him when it come daylight. That was all right, though. She didn't need him no more when it come day. It was all over by then, and she could hear little Joey cryin’. Funny, though, the way little Joey had come in from outside. She could see him plain as anythin’, walkin’ through the door and bawlin’ that his pa was gone. It was after that when she saw the pus for the first time. It was right after Joey'd come in, because that's when she got up and went outside to the privy. That's when she seen it for the first time. Runnin’ out of her like a river it was, all yellow and thick. That's when she knew it was no baby she was gettin’ the night before. It was the clap she'd been gettin’. Gettin’ it off her husband, like any decent woman should. Funny, though. Sometimes she could swear that it was somethin’ to do with gettin’ a baby. She was sure that she could recollect hearin’ The Doc tellin’ about a baby. Lucas’ baby, The Doc said. She could hear him sayin’ it plain as day. Lucas’ baby. Now if she could just remember when it had been. Couldn't of been too long ago, because it'd been hot then, just like now, and there hadn't been rain for a long time. The woods was dry, Lucas had told her, dry as gunpowder and just as ready to explode any time. The Doc tellin’ about a baby must of been on the same day, because her and Lucas was talkin’ while they et, about the woods bein’ dry and all. They had waited for Selena for a while, but she hadn't showed up. Off somewheres with that bastard Carter, Lucas had said. Lucas was a good father to his children, and as good to Selena as he was to his own. He didn't hold none with his kids runnin’ wild. But Selena didn't come and didn't come, not even after it turned dark. And she couldn't of been with young Carter, because he come lookin’ for her. It made Lucas kinda mad when he seen Selena wa'nt with young Carter. Off alley-cattin’ with some other bastard, Lucas had said, and in the end Carter and Joey went to look for her. God, how her head hurt! She lifted her arms and spread them as wide as she could, but her hands could not reach the sides of her aching head. It just grew bigger and bigger every second–

Allison was right. Her head was gonna bust wide open and make one helluva mess all over the clean, waxed linoleum. But that wa'nt what Allison had said, was it? She couldn't rightly remember. No. No, that wa'nt it. Allison had said somethin’ about Lucas. Somethin’ mean, like she was always doin’. And you couldn't tell that little know-it-all nothin’. She was always harpin’ about the way Lucas beat Nellie, and no matter how many times Nellie told her that a man didn't go around beatin’ a woman he didn't give a damn about, it didn't mean nothin’ to Miss Know-It-All Allison. That one always thought she knew it all. And Nellie had told her. When a man didn't give a damn about a woman, he just turned his back on her, but when he thought a lot of her, and wanted to teach her right, he beat her. Well, Allison'd find out different one of these days. So would everybody else. They'd all see that Lucas was a good man who didn't go around givin’ the clap to nobody but his own wife. Funny, though, she coulda swore it was some-thin’ to do with a baby. Lucas’ baby. Still, it couldn't of been that, because Lucas'd never go off and leave her when she was havin’ a baby. He beat her up plenty, and that showed he cared a lot for her, didn't it? Besides, there was Joey, full grown and cryin’, so it couldna had nothin’ to do with havin’ a baby. Funny, though, the way she could hear The Doc plain as day.

“Nellie.”

She looked around the empty kitchen matter of factly.

“That you, Lucas?”

“Yep. I'm upstairs.”

With no sense of surprise in her mind, Nellie left the MacKenzie kitchen and mounted the stairs to the second floor. She looked into Allison's empty bedroom.

“You in here, Lucas?” she demanded.

“Over here by the window, Nellie.”

She walked to the window and looked down at the empty street below, and then she saw him.

“What're you doin’ out there, Lucas?”

“I'm dead, Nellie. I'm an angel now, Nellie. Can't you see the way I'm floatin’?”

“I see you, Lucas. You enjoyin’ yourself out there?”

“Well, there's always plenty to drink, and nobody has to work. But a man don't feel right without his woman along.”

Nellie giggled coyly. “Was you lookin’ for me, Lucas?”

“Been lookin’ for you day after day, Nellie. But you don't never stay in one place long enough for me to catch up with you, a pretty girl like you.”

“Now go on, Lucas. You was always a big one for the talk.”

“Not me, Nellie. I mean every word I'm sayin’. Come on with me, Nellie. I'm lonesome for a pretty girl like you.”

“Oh, stop that.”

“No foolin’, Nellie. You're the prettiest gal I ever seen. Go look in the mirror if you don't believe me.”

“Just for that I will, you fancy talker you.”

She went to Allison's closet and opened the door. She looked at herself in the long mirror fastened to the inside of the door.

“See, Nellie? What'd I tell you?”

He was right beside her now, blowing on the soft hair at the back of her neck. She could see him behind the reflection of the slim, pretty girl in the mirror.

“A man don't feel right without his woman,” whispered Lucas. “Come on, Nellie. It's lonesome as hell without you. My bed gets awful cold.”

Nellie smoothed the hair at the nape of her neck with a pretty gesture.

“All right, Lucas,” she said. “There's no girl could resist your pretty talk. You go on outside while I get dressed now. It won't take me a minute.”

As Nellie spoke, she fingered the strong silk cord of Allison's bathrobe which hung on a hook just inside the closet door, and she was smiling, a moment later, when she dragged a straight chair into the closet. It took two tries before she could get the end of the silk cord over the two-by-four beam which the closet had been constructed to hide.

“You quit that stampin’ ‘round out there, Lucas,” she giggled. You sound just like a stud horse. I'll be ready in no time. I'm fixin’ myself up just like a pitcher I seen in a magazine once.”

“Well, damn it, Nellie, a man don't want to wait forever for a girl as pretty as you. Get a move on.”

“There was somethin’ I wanted to ask you, Lucas,” Nellie called. “But I can't rightly remember what it was. It was somethin’ to do with a baby.”

“That's a helluva thing for a young girl like you to be thinkia’ about,” Lucas called back. “Come on, now, get a move on.”

In the quick second after she had kicked over the chair, and before the strong silk cord of Allison MacKenzie's bathrobe had cut off her life, Nellie Cross remembered.

Selena! she screamed silently. It was Selena havin’ Lucas’ baby!

Shortly after six o'clock, Constance MacKenzie entered her house on Beech Street. She had no premonition of tragedy as she surveyed her living room. She was terribly angry. Nothing had been done. The ash trays still held last night's cigarette ends, the sofa pillows had not been straightened, and there were two magazines on the floor, in the exact position in which they had been left the previous day. The rug had not seen a vacuum cleaner since Nellie Cross's last cleaning day, and it should most certainly have been attended to that morning. Constance strode angrily to the kitchen, and she nearly burst into tears at the disorder which she encountered there. There were plates, caked with dried egg yolk, sitting on the table, and dirty dishes in the sink. The garbage had not been taken out, and the glass coffee maker, still half full, sat on one of the burners on the electric stove. “That damned Nellie,” muttered Constance angrily, forgetting all the times when she had come home from work to find her house spotless. “She hasn't done a thing all day!”

Constance, who had been looking forward to a cool bath and clean clothes all afternoon, slapped her purse, hat and gloves down on top of the refrigerator. She snatched one of Nellie's tentlike aprons from a hook inside the broom closet door and began to run clean water into the sink.

Steak, French fries and a green salad, she thought. That was what Allison and Tom would get for dinner. There wasn't time for anything else. And as for Allison, where was the child? Constance had told her distinctly to be home in plenty of time to bathe and change, because Mr. Makris was coming to dinner at seven-thirty. Constance glanced at the clock set into the back of the stove. Six-thirty. Well, dinner was going to be late and there was nothing she could do about it. Certainly, no one could expect her to prepare food in a kitchen as messy as this one.

At seven o'clock, when Constance went upstairs to her room, she glanced carelessly through Allison's half-open door. The room was empty, Allison's bed still unmade, and there was a pair of crumpled pajamas on the floor.

Why couldn't that girl do as she was told for once? she wondered angrily. And why hadn't Nellie Cross cleaned the house? Nellie had come in plenty of time this morning. She had come before Constance had left for work. She had had all day to clean. Constance shrugged impatiently. It just went to show, she thought, how little you could depend on anyone. If you wanted anything done to your own satisfaction, it was best to do it yourself.