The Awakening Page 7

  Taylor announced that Amanda was going to read for them.

  “Don’t let me stop you,” Hank said from behind his paper, but he was aware of the heavy silence in the room and knew he was supposed to give proper attention to the show. Slowly, he folded his paper, put it aside, then sat primly with his hands folded in his lap like a proper young gentleman.

  Amanda, wearing a prim little blue dress with a sedate lace collar, was standing perfectly straight before the two of them, holding her poetry book open. As he would have guessed, she read the most boring poems ever written: William Collins’s “Ode to Evening,” Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.” He would have fallen asleep except that her reading gave him a chance to look at her: long, thick, lush lashes, a full mouth that moved enticingly as she talked. He listened to her voice, felt it caress the lovely words and wondered how it would sound if it were murmuring love words to him.

  But any love words she said would be to Taylor. Hank looked at Taylor and saw the man wasn’t enjoying her reading so much as judging it. He looked like a teacher with a student—not like a man listening to the woman he loved.

  Hank was aware that Amanda had stopped reading and he watched while she walked toward Taylor and handed him the book. She gave him a soft, tentative smile and said, “Please,” in almost a whisper. Hank felt a pang of jealousy as cold, unsmiling Taylor took the book from her. Hank thought that if Amanda had smiled and said please to him, he’d certainly smile back; in fact, he just might do anything she wanted. But Taylor just took the book, opened it and began to read John Milton’s “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.”

  While Taylor read in a monotonous voice, Hank watched Amanda, saw the way she looked at Taylor as if he were a god, as if he had the power of life and death, yet Taylor seemed to be oblivious to her adoration. It suddenly made Hank angry that Amanda should give so much and get so little in return. If she were his he’d give to her. He’d give all she could take and then some. If he were engaged to her he’d not spend his evenings reading poetry to her, he’d take her into the lanes where the jasmine grew and he’d kiss her while slipping that awful dress from her shoulders. He’d—

  “Dr. Montgomery?”

  He came out of his reverie to hear Amanda. She was holding out the book of poetry to him.

  “Perhaps you’d read something for us?”

  Hank was so deep in his thoughts that at first he didn’t understand what she was saying.

  “Dr. Montgomery is an economist,” Taylor said in that brittle way of his. “I doubt if poetry interests him.”

  Hank didn’t take the book but looked at Amanda, his eyes as hot as he was feeling, and he began to quote from William Butler Yeats.

  “A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

  Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

  By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

  He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

  “How can those terrified vague fingers push

  The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

  And how can body, laid in that white rush,

  But feel the strange beating where it lies?”

  There was silence in the room when he stopped speaking, and he was aware only of the lovely blush stealing up Amanda’s neck and onto her face.

  “I cannot say that that was to my taste, Dr. Montgomery,” Taylor said in a remote voice. “Amanda!” he said sharply, making her turn her attention back to him. “I think you should read another selection.”

  Suddenly, Hank couldn’t bear to be in the same room with them. “If you will pardon me,” he said, and without waiting for anyone to do so, he left the room. He went outside, but even there he felt hemmed in, as if he were suffocating and couldn’t get enough air. He went to the big garage where his car was, and before he thought about what he was doing, he was in the Mercer and driving away.

  The cool wind on his face and body made him feel better. He drove down the rough dirt road, faster and faster still, pushing the Mercer to its limits, knowing that its brakes weren’t worth a damn, but he needed the speed and the feeling of freedom. He needed to put some distance between himself and that house. “…her thighs caressed,” he thought. “…fingers push the feathered glory from her loosening thighs.”

  The car was doing sixty when he saw the girl. She was standing in the middle of the road, startled by the car’s headlights as she crossed. She just stood there, frozen in space, as Hank approached faster than she’d ever seen anything move.

  Hank had the reflexes of a race car driver, and he swerved to the right a foot before he hit her and plowed into a fence, tearing up posts for fifty feet as Hank used all his strength to slam on the brakes, trying to stop the speeding car. He took up about twenty feet of a row of Caulden’s hop plants before the car at last stopped.

  It took him a second to recover as he just sat there, staring at the hop field illuminated by the car lamps. Then he began to move, to pull hop vines and strings from around him so that he could get out the doorless side. His legs were weak but they gained strength as he started back to the road, so that he was running by the time he reached the girl.

  It was dark but he could see her sitting in the middle of the road. He didn’t think he’d hit her, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  “Are you all right?” he asked anxiously, kneeling in front of her.

  “I ain’t never seen somethin’ move that fast,” she said in wonder.

  As Hank inspected her, he smelled liquor on her breath and realized she was drunk. Gently, he took her arm and hauled her up. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

  Smiling, she collapsed against him, her body like rubber. “You the one stayin’ at the Cauldens’?”

  “I am. Come on with me. If I can get my car out I’ll take you home.”

  “Home with you? Amanda won’t like that.”

  “She’ll never notice,” he said, his arm about her waist as he supported her and led her to the car.

  He had to tear away more vines and string to make room enough to get her in the passenger seat.

  “Nice,” she murmured and leaned back against the leather seat.

  He spent another few minutes cleaning off the front of the car and inspecting the ground. It was dry and he thought he could get out without help. He bent the broken fencing back, then got in the car.

  The only light was from the moon and the headlamps, but he could see that the woman was young and pretty in a dark, flamboyant way. She wore heavily applied cosmetics on a face that was already strongly featured, but the red lipstick drew his attention to her lips.

  When she saw him looking, she smiled in a slow, seductive way. “I like a man who drives fast.”

  He started the engine and began to back out. “Where can I take you?”

  “Charlie’s Roadhouse,” she said.

  Hank hesitated for only a moment, then said, “All right.” It might make him feel better to see a little life. “Only if they don’t have poetry readings.”

  She laughed in a way that made him know that she’d been to Charlie’s Roadhouse several times before and knew there were no poetry readings.

  He enjoyed the ride to the roadhouse with her, enjoyed seeing a woman relaxed in the seat, not sitting stiffly and inhumanly. He liked seeing a woman who looked as if she might be able to laugh.

  The roadhouse was about five miles out of town, set a little back off the road behind a graveled parking lot, about three autos parked there now. The lights and the sound of laughter drew Hank inside.

  The girl had already got out by the time Hank had walked to her side. She was wearing a cheap red satin dress and her lipstick was smeared at one corner of her wide mouth, but the drive seemed to have cleared her head because she was standing on her feet more steadily.

  She took his arm and pressed her body close to his. She was well rounded and pleasing now, but in a few more years she’d be fat.

  “The gang’s gonna be green w
ith envy when they see you,” she said. “What’s your name?”

  “Hank Montgomery,” he answered, smiling down at her. “And yours?”

  “Reva Eiler.” She pulled a bit on his arm and guided him toward the front door of the tavern.

  There were only four customers in the tavern, which was lined with booths around three sides, a long bar on the fourth wall. Half the floor space was taken up by tiny tables and lots of chairs; the other half was a dance area and bandstand. Reva greeted the man behind the bar, but no one else, as she led Hank to a booth in one corner.

  “So tell me all about yourself,” she said, taking a compact from a little beaded bag and beginning to repair her face. When she’d finished she removed a cigarette from a silver-plated case with most of the plating worn off. Hank took the matching lighter from her and lit her cigarette as she pushed her heavy hair back. It was cut to shoulder length, and Hank realized that he rarely saw women with hair this short and he liked it. He wondered how Amanda would look with hair like this.

  “Not much to tell,” he said. “I teach economics at—”

  “Economics!” she gasped just as the bartender set two beers before them. “Thanks, Charlie,” she murmured. “You don’t look like no teacher of economics. I thought maybe you and Amanda were lovers or somethin’.”

  Hank took a deep drink of his beer. “You know Amanda?”

  She looked at him for a long time. There was something about him that appealed to her. He was good-looking, extraordinarily so; dark blond hair, blue eyes, that nose that gave him the look of a prince—those lips. She liked those lips of his a lot. But there was something else, too. It was…

  “You’re rich, aren’t you?” she said, picking a piece of tobacco off the tip of her tongue.

  Hank was startled and didn’t speak for a moment.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody if you want to keep it a secret. It’s just that I can smell it on somebody. You develop the sense when you grow up as poor as I have. No, no sympathy, just buy me another beer and tell me what’s going on at the Cauldens’.”

  Hank put his hand up to the bartender, then turned back to Reva. “You know Amanda? I mean, do you know the Cauldens?”

  She smiled at him. She was young but he sensed that in another few years she wouldn’t be. He didn’t think she’d age gracefully.

  “You meant Amanda,” she said. “How is she? Still a brat?”

  “Amanda?” he said. “Amanda Caulden a brat? You must mean someone else. Amanda is perfect. She walks perfectly, talks perfectly, discusses only perfect subjects; she eats perfectly healthy food; she loves a perfect man. Amanda is not a brat.”

  Reva finished her first beer and started on her second one. “When you were in elementary school, did you have one kid who was your archenemy? Somebody who rubbed you the wrong way no matter what he did?”

  “Jim Harmon,” Hank said, smiling in memory. “I thought he was the meanest kid ever born. We fought all the time.”

  “Right. Well, Amanda and I were enemies from the first day of the first grade. I still remember it. My old man had been drunk for three days and my mother’d run off again, like she always did when he got mean, so there was just my big sister and me. She dressed me as best she could, but my clothes were torn and dirty and wrinkled and when I got to school the other kids laughed at me. I was used to being laughed at and it was something I understood, but then little Miss Amanda, all clean and white, came up to me and put her arm around me and told the others to stop laughin’. It made me crazy. I could stand bein’ made fun of but I couldn’t stand pity. I pushed Amanda down, jumped on her and started beating her.”

  Hank listened to this with great interest. “And what did Amanda do?” he asked, thinking that she no doubt went crying to the teacher.

  Reva grinned. “Blacked my eye is what she did. She got in trouble but I didn’t, because the teacher walked out when Amanda was sitting on me and slamming a right fist into my face. We were enemies forever after that—until ol’ man Caulden took her out of school. Nobody’s seen much of her since then. It’s like she moved to another state. Has she changed much?”

  Hank couldn’t imagine the Amanda he knew being in a fist fight. What had made her change so drastically? Did she finally realize she was the richest kid in town and that she was better than everyone else?

  “She’s changed,” he answered at last. “She’s not the same Amanda she was then. You want another one?”

  What I want, Reva thought, can’t be found in a bottle. I want somebody like you: clean, smart, strong, somebody to take care of me. How involved was he with Amanda? “So,” she said, “are you visiting her or somebody else at the Cauldens’?”

  For some reason, he was reluctant to mention the unionists that said they were coming to Kingman. He didn’t want the town frightened; people had fanciful ideas of what unionists were and what they hoped to do, so he decided to keep it quiet.

  “I’m learning about the ranch. I didn’t know J. Harker had a daughter before I came. And Amanda is engaged to her tutor.”

  Reva leaned back against the bench and smiled sweetly at him. “Then you should get to know the people of Kingman. There’s a dance Saturday night,” she said, and there was hope in her voice.

  Hank knew Reva wasn’t his type but in the last few days, since meeting Amanda, he wasn’t sure what his “type” of woman was. No doubt he was fascinated by a prude like Amanda because she was the only woman he saw daily. It was as if they had been shipwrecked on an island alone. After a while, any woman would start to look good. Maybe if he went to a dance and saw other women, he wouldn’t be watching the self-righteous, skinny little Amanda so much.

  “Could I pick you up?” he asked at last.

  Reva grinned broadly and pushed her hair back. “I’ll meet you there. Eight o’clock?”

  “Great,” he said. “I better be getting back. The Cauldens may lock the door.”

  She almost said, you can stay with me, but she didn’t. He drove her to the corner of Fourth and Front streets and let her off. She wasn’t going to let him see where she lived. She watched him drive away toward the Cauldens’ big, dark ranch and she knew that once again Amanda had something she wanted. Reva had often pondered and cursed the accident of birth that had given one person everything and her nothing. Amanda lived a life of ease, no worries, no cares, no drunken father threatening her every day, no one telling her what to do or how to do it, while Reva’s life was the opposite. Amanda had always had everything good and Reva was handed all that was bad.

  Reva started walking toward the railroad tracks. But maybe, this time, Reva could win. She began planning how she could scrape together enough money from her cashier job to buy a new dress for Saturday night. Wouldn’t everyone be surprised to see her with someone like him?

  Chapter Six

  Amanda didn’t exactly sneak out of the house but she certainly didn’t make any noise either. She took her notebook with her and her fountain pen, but she didn’t take a light. She hoped the moonlight would be enough; besides, she wanted to study the constellations and she could do that better in the darkness.

  It had been an odd evening, as every minute had been since Dr. Montgomery had arrived. After reciting that…that poem he had left the house and she’d heard him drive away in his pretty little automobile. For a while afterward she had not heard a word Taylor had said. She kept remembering the way Dr. Montgomery had looked at her while saying those words, words she’d never thought could be put together in such a way.

  She wished he didn’t dislike her so much and that perhaps he would teach her poetry. She felt a pang of disloyalty to Taylor for even considering another teacher but, after all, the goal was for her to learn, wasn’t it? And when she had learned enough, Taylor would marry her and they’d live happily ever after here on the ranch.

  Once downstairs, she went to the summerhouse where she and Dr. Montgomery had sat while he ate his plateful of food. Amanda thought it best not to
think of food because her stomach grumbled from the missed dinner—missed because Dr. Montgomery refused to follow the schedule.

  She leaned back against the post and gazed up at the stars. In spite of the fact that she hadn’t been able to sleep for several nights in a row, she wasn’t sleepy tonight. Something about the heavy, hot night air, the fragrance of flowers and the clearness of the sky made her feel very odd.

  While she was stargazing, the quiet, deep rumble of a car came down the driveway and Amanda immediately tried to draw herself up as small as possible so Dr. Montgomery wouldn’t see her. She held her breath as she heard the engine stop then the sound of footsteps crunching on the gravel. She’d wait until he was in the house, then she’d go in. She didn’t want to meet him on the stairs and be subjected to more of his caustic remarks.

  As she waited and listened, to her disbelief, he seemed to be not moving toward the house but toward her. She didn’t dare move.

  “I thought I saw someone,” he said while still several feet from her.

  Amanda let out her breath with a sigh. Caught! she thought. “Good evening, Dr. Montgomery,” she murmured.

  Hank walked into the summerhouse and sat down across from her, as far away as he could get. He’d seen just a corner of her white dress reflected in his headlamps. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have noticed, but it was as if he had a second sense about Amanda. Go to bed, he told himself. You’ve had too many beers and you’re feeling too good from the run in the car and you shouldn’t be here with her. But his mind didn’t tell his body to move, so he continued sitting there. “I met a friend of yours tonight.”

  Amanda couldn’t imagine who would describe herself as a friend; it had been years since she’d seen anyone but Taylor and her family. “Oh?” she asked. She needed to get upstairs. Taylor would not like for her to be here. This wasn’t on the schedule; in fact, she wasn’t even studying constellations right now.