He did not mind the physical assault so much as he did the poisonous hatred of her tongue, insanely clever in fashioning the most wounding barbs. He went frantic with horror, jerked unexpectedly from Elfland into Hell, he bellowed madly, saw his bountiful angel change in a moment to a snake-haired fury, lost all his sublime faith in love and goodness. He rushed at the wall like an insane little goat, battered his head screaming again and again, wished desperately that his constricted and overloaded heart would burst, that something in him would break, that somehow, bloodily, he might escape the stifling prisonhouse of his life.
This satisfied her desire; it was what deeply she had wanted — she had found purging release in her savage attack upon him, and now she could drain herself cleanly in a wild smother of affection. She would seize him, struggling and screaming, in her long arms, plaster kisses all over his red mad face, soothing him with hearty flattery addressed in the third person:
“Why, he didn’t think I meant it, did he? Didn’t he know I was only joking? Why, he’s strong as a little bull, isn’t he? He’s a regular little giant, that’s what he is. Why, he’s perfectly wild, isn’t he? His eyes popping out of his head. I thought he was going to knock a hole in the wall. — Yes, ma’am. Why, law me, yes, child. It’s GOOD soup,” resorting to her broad mimicry in order to make him laugh. And he would laugh against his will between his sobs, in a greater torture because of this agony of affection and reconciliation than because of the abuse.
Presently, when he had grown quiet, she would send him off to the store for pickles, cakes, cold bottled drinks; he would depart with red eyes, his cheeks furrowed dirtily by his tears, wondering desperately as he went down the street why the thing had happened, and drawing his foot sharply off the ground and craning his neck convulsively as shame burnt in him.
There was in Helen a restless hatred of dullness, respectability. Yet she was at heart a severely conventional person, in spite of her occasional vulgarity, which was merely a manifestation of her restless energy, a very naïve, a childishly innocent person about even the simple wickedness of the village. She had several devoted young men on her list — plain, hard-drinking country types: one, a native, lean, red-faced, alcoholic, a city surveyor, who adored her; another, a strapping florid blond from the Tennessee coal fields; another, a young South Carolinian, townsman of her older sister’s fiancé.
These young men — Hugh Parker, Jim Phelps, and Joe Cathcart, were innocently devoted; they liked her tireless and dominant energy, the eager monopoly of her tongue, her big sincerity and deep kindliness. She played and sang for them — threw all her energy into entertaining them. They brought her boxes of candy, little presents, were divided jealously among themselves, but united in their affirmation that she was “a fine girl.”
And she would get Jim Phelps and Hugh Parker to bring her a drink of whisky as well: she had begun to depend on small potations of alcohol for the stimulus it gave her fevered body — a small drink was enough to operate electrically in her blood: it renewed her, energized her, gave her a temporary and hectic vitality. Thus, although she never drank much at a time and showed, beyond the renewed vitality and gaiety, no sign of intoxication, she nibbled at the bottle.
“I’ll take a drink whenever I can get it,” she said.
She liked, almost invariably, young fast women. She liked the hectic pleasure of their lives, the sense of danger, their humor and liberality. She was drawn magnetically to all the wedded harlotry, which, escaping the Sunday discipline of a Southern village, and the Saturday lust of sodden husbands, came gaily to Altamont in summer. She liked people who, as she said, “didn’t mind taking a little drink now and then.”
She liked Mary Thomas, a tall jolly young prostitute who came from Kentucky: she was a manicurist in an Altamont Hotel.
“There are two things I want to see,” said Mary, “a rooster’s you-know-what and a hen’s what-is-it.” She was full of loud compelling laughter. She had a small room with a sleeping porch, at the front of the house upstairs. Eugene brought her some cigarettes once: she stood before the window in a thin petticoat, her feet wide apart, her long sensual legs outlined against the light.
Helen wore her dresses, hats, and silk stockings. Sometimes they drank together. And, with humorous sentimentality, she defended her.
“Well, she’s no hypocrite. That’s one thing sure. She doesn’t care who knows it.” Or,
“She’s no worse than a lot of your little goody-goodies, if the truth’s known. She’s only more open about it.”
Or again, irritated at some implied criticism of her own friendliness with the girl, she would say angrily:
“What do you know about her? You’d better be careful how you talk about people. You’ll get into trouble about it some day.”
Nevertheless, she was scrupulous in her public avoidance of the girl and, illogically, in a moment of unreasoning annoyance she would attack Eliza:
“Why do you keep such people in your house, mama? Every one in town knows about her. Your place is getting the reputation of a regular chippyhouse all over town.”
Eliza pursed her lips angrily:
“I don’t pay any attention to them,” she said. “I consider myself as good as any one. I hold my head up, and I expect every one else to do likewise. You don’t catch me associating with them.”
It was part of her protective mechanism. She pretended to be proudly oblivious to any disagreeable circumstance which brought her in money. As a result, by that curious impalpable advertisement which exists among easy women, Dixieland became known to them — they floated casually in-the semi-public, clandestine prostitutes of a tourist town.
Helen had drifted apart from most of her friends of high school days — the hard-working plain-faced Genevieve Pratt, daughter of a schoolmaster, “Teeney” Duncan, Gertrude Brown. Her companions now were livelier, if somewhat more vulgar, young women — Grace Deshaye, a plumber’s daughter, an opulent blonde; Pearl Hines, daughter of a Baptist saddlemaker: she was heavy of body and face, but she had a powerful rag-time singing voice.
Her closest companion, however, was a girl whose name was Nan Gudger: she was a brisk, slender, vital girl, with a waist so tightly corsetted that a man’s hands might go around it. She was the trusted, accurate, infallible bookkeeper of a grocery store. She contributed largely to the support of her family — a mother whom Eugene looked upon with sick flesh, because of the heavy goitre that sagged from her loose neck; a crippled sister who moved about the house by means of crutches and the propulsive strength of her powerful shoulders; and two brothers, hulking young thugs of twenty and eighteen years, who always bore upon their charmed bodies fresh knife-wounds, blue lumps and swellings, and other marks of their fights in poolroom and brothel. They lived in a two-story shack of rickety lumber on Clingman Street: the women worked uncomplainingly in the support of the young men. Eugene went here with Helen often: she liked the vulgarity, the humor, the excitement of their lives — and it amused her particularly to listen to Mary’s obscene earthy conversation.
Upon the first of every month, Nan and Mary gave to the boys a portion of their earnings, for pocket money and for their monthly visit to the women of Eagle Crescent.
“Oh, SURELY not, Mary? Good heavens!” said Helen with eager unbelief.
“Why, hell yes, honey,” said Mary, grinning her coarse drawl, taking her snuff-stick out of the brown corner of her mouth, and holding it in her strong hand. “We always give the boys money fer a woman once a month.”
“Oh, NO! You’re joking,” Helen said, laughing.
“Good God, child, don’t you know THAT?” said Mary, spitting inaccurately at the fire. “Hit’s good for their health. They’d git sick if we didn’t.”
Eugene began to slide helplessly toward the floor. He got an instant panorama of the whole astonishing picture of humor and solemn superstition — the women contributing their money, in the interests of sanitation and