the chairs and sofa upholstered in a worn brocade of some red and gold design, with a dark rug on the floor showing even darker stains in places. They sat on the sofa and had a drink, but she was soon in his arms, warm and soft, and willing. He had been with women before, girls, but somehow this was different. She was older, more experienced; forbidden, and yet exciting.
She led him toward the bedroom, toward a wide spindle bed that sat against one wall. Her dress was suddenly off, and he marveled at how full and round her breasts were in his hands. She was pulling at his overalls, his workshirt, as he unlaced his shoes and kicked them off; and then they were on the bed, and the world went away.
Her body moved beneath his as no woman’s ever had before, her nails biting into the flesh of his back. She said things, did things, that no lady should—but it did not matter. His urgency came, the pleasure, and he strained forward, giving into the feelings. The tension mounted and peaked and he found release, collapsing into her arms, breathing heavily.
“Honey, get off ’a me. You’re too heavy—” she said, pushing at his sweating shoulders, her voice sounding annoyed.
Janson rolled away, seeing her reach for the quilt at the foot of the bed and pull it up over herself—not out of embarrassment, he knew, but simply as a matter of course. He felt self-conscious now beneath her hazel eyes as they moved over him, and he reached for his underdrawers and sat up to pull them on.
“Honey, don’t be gettin’ ready to go an’ all just yet. There’s a whole lot more lovin’ we can do tonight. I know some tricks I can teach you, how to last longer for a lady. You’re no worse than any other young fella your age, s’ eager an’ all; you just got t’ learn that it takes more sometimes for a lady to get what she—”
As Janson’s eyes came to rest on her again, she seemed to realize she had said too much.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, honey. You sure got what a lady wants. It just takes learnin’ to—”
But he was standing up, pulling on his shirt and reaching for his overalls. “I can find my way back int’ town,” was all he said.
“I didn’t mean to get you mad at me.” She sat up, letting the quilt drop from her breasts as she leaned forward. “Come on back to bed, honey. We got the whole night to love—”
Suddenly he was dizzy and his stomach hurt—love, this was not love. He did not even know this woman, and he wished now that he had never met her. Not being a lady was one thing, but she was something so much worse.
And, even worse still, he was drunk and he knew he was going to be sick. He fought down the nausea that rose to his throat, refusing to allow himself to be humiliated even further in front of this woman.
“Come on back to bed, James—”
“No, ma’am,” he said, and thought—and my name’s not James, though he did not bother to say it. He pulled the galluses of his overalls up over his shoulders and hooked them, then began to look for his socks and shoes, finding them under the bed. When he straightened up she was sitting up in bed, the quilt having fallen now to her waist. She held his coat in her hands.
“When you get ready for some more lovin’, you just give me a call,” she said as he took his coat in one hand, his shoes and socks in the other, and left the room.
“That ain’t lovin’,” he said aloud, but to himself, as he walked up the dark road a few moments later. He had not gone more than a few paces from the house before he collapsed to his knees by the side of the road and vomited silently into the ditch.
He continued to retch long after there was nothing left to come up, then knelt there in the dirt at the roadside for a long time, allowing the cold night air to clear his head somewhat. He felt sick and alone, the memory of the woman’s words bringing a burning embarrassment to his face now even as they had not before.
After a time he moved to sit in the winter-dead grass beside the road, taking the time to pull on his socks and shoes and shrug into his coat, feeling chilled now all the way through to his soul. He got to his feet and started down the lonely stretch of road toward town, shoving his hands deep into his worn coat pockets—then he froze, panic filling him. The money, it was gone. He turned the pockets of the coat inside out, then searched his overalls pockets—gone, those few coins that were his only pay for almost two weeks worth of work. Gone. Then suddenly he understood—the way the woman had held his coat in her hands, the look that had been on her face when he had straightened up from finding his shoes, and, even earlier, when she had first smiled at him in the drugstore—she had seen the coins in his hand. That was the only reason she had taken him to her home, to her bed. She had seen the coins.
Anger and shame fought within him as he clenched his fists and turned back toward her house—but he could go no farther. If he went back—but he could not strike a woman, so he stayed where he was in the road and stared at her house and cursed himself. Those few coins were so little. They would not buy her a dress. They were worth so little to anyone else—
But they had been worth the world to him.
He fought to control the rage building within him, knowing there was nothing he could do—and knowing she knew there was nothing he could do. Then he forced himself to walk on, toward town, toward that bricked section of Main Street, toward the drugstore, and the men who could give him a ride in the truck back to Whitley’s place.
When he arrived, Main Street was deserted. Dobbins’ Drugstore was dark; the moving picture theatre was dark; even the billiard parlor at the far end of the street was closed—and there was no sign of the truck or of the men from Whitley’s. He was alone.
He sighed and looked up the long, dark stretch of road he had ridden down earlier, then sat down on the sidewalk to remove his shoes and socks—there was no more need for them tonight. Then he began to walk, cursing his stupidity every step of the way, swearing to himself that he would never again be taken, that he would never again trust anyone through the remainder of his life, no matter who that person might be.
The night was cold and he was shivering in the worn old coat long before he had covered the miles to Whitley’s place and to the lonely, dark room that was now his home. The fire he had built earlier in the black stove had gone out, but he did not take the time to rebuild it. He shrugged out of the old coat and lay down on the cot, too tired and too sick to even bother to pull off his overalls and change into a nightshirt.
Outside the winter wind rustled the dead branches of a tree, whistling through the cracks in the walls and banging a shutter off somewhere in the distance. Inside there was only the sound of his own breathing, the beat of his own heart.
It was a long time that night before he slept.
The spring rain had blown up quickly. Only a short time before the sky had been blue and the sun shining, but now all was gray and wet outside. Elise stared out the window in silence, watching as the rain washed away the remnants of what had been a beautiful late-April day. Water stood now in muddy red puddles on the campus grounds, hanging in droplets from the shrubs outside the window, and running in narrow, red-stained rivers alongside the streets. Girls in pale spring dresses ran from the dormitory to their classrooms, holding folded Atlanta newspapers over carefully crimped bobs, laughing and giggling and splashing in puddles of water as if they were still no more than children. Elise watched them, envying their carelessness, their minds without trouble or worry or thought beyond new chiffon stockings
