baking down on his shoulders through his faded workshirt and the crossed galluses of his overalls as he turned off North Ridge Road and onto the road toward Pine. There would be a long walk ahead of him, and a hot one, but it was a walk he had made many times in the past, and in weather even hotter than the weather of this day. Besides, it was likely someone would stop to offer him a ride before he had gone too far a distance, some passing farmer or one of the churchfolk, for someone almost always did.
There was a little money in his pocket from hired work he had done the day before, and, after several hours debate with himself over the waste, he had decided to treat himself to a phosphate at the soda fountain in the drugstore, and then to some time spent watching girls pass along the street. He would have liked to have gone to the picture show as well, to see the moving picture people he heard so much talk about: Clara Bow, whose photograph he had seen once on the front of a moving picture magazine in the drugstore, Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin, John Barrymore, Theda Bara; but he knew he would not go. He had been to a movie show only once in his life, on a day he had told his parents he was going elsewhere, only to go to the picture show in town instead. When his mother had found out, his pa had taken him out behind the smokehouse—but Janson had not gotten a whipping that day, or ever again since. His pa had told him he was a man now, and that it was time he learn to choose right from wrong on his own—Janson had never again gone to see a picture show after that, though he still could not see why it was supposed to be wrong, even if the preacher did say it was; any more than he could see why it was supposed to be wrong for a man to curse, if the occasion warranted it; or to drink corn liquor, even if Prohibition had made liquor illegal since five years back; or to dally with a girl who was not a lady, so long as he did not have a wife at home to take care of the things any man needed.
He was thinking on that subject as he walked toward town that morning, of a wife, and of how nice it would be if there were a girl in his bed at night. He was a man now, eighteen years old, with the needs of any man. He knew plenty of nice girls—and a man only married a nice girl—plenty of girls who were pretty, with nice figures and long hair, girls who had been raised to be ladies, who would not let any man see their bare knees until they were married, and then only in the privacy of a bedroom with the door closed behind them, and then maybe only if he was very lucky and all the lamps were blown out. His pa had said ladies did not know much about the sort of things that happened between men and women, and that a man had to be understanding with the girl he married, for ladies were delicate in such matters—there were good girls and there were bad girls, and a man only married a good girl. He was not really supposed to have fun with a bad girl before then, or ever—Janson knew plenty of good girls, and a few bad ones, but he had not found one he could really think of himself being married to.
There was the sound of a motor car coming along the road behind him, headed in the direction of Pine, but Janson paid little attention to it as it drew near. It seemed to have an expensive sound to it, unlike the rattly Model T Fords and the Chevrolets that most people who could afford cars drove, sounding nothing like the sort of car that would stop to give someone like him a ride, someone in patched overalls, and with feet dirty from the walk over the red clay roads—but the car did stop, slowing and then coming to a halt beside him, the door opening after a moment, and a female voice calling out: “Hey, honey, you want a lift or not?” as he continued to walk on.
Janson stopped and turned back, staring with surprise as he saw the car, and then the driver.
Lecia Mae Eason, the oldest of Walter Eason’s two granddaughters, sat staring at him from behind the wheel of the black Cadillac touring car, one eyebrow raised in question. She was perhaps at least a few years older than his eighteen years, with a well-known reputation in the County for being “fast,” as Janson’s mother would have called her—and in that moment she looked to Janson as he thought a “fast” woman would look. Her brown hair was bobbed short in the current style, her face painted with lipstick, powder, and rouge. She was not exactly pretty, with the same square jaw and self-possessed attitude that her brother, Buddy Eason, often wore, but she was pleasant enough to look at, and she seemed almost to have an air of sexuality about her that Janson fancied he could sense even over the distance.
Her eyes seemed to move over him for a moment through the windshield of the Cadillac, her eyebrow raising again, this time in irritation. “Well?”
“Ma’am,” he asked, unsure.
“You want a lift or not?” she asked, her voice rising with impatience.
He never knew later why it was he said yes—or perhaps he did, finding himself seated beside her in the touring car as it headed on toward Pine. He looked around the interior of the Cadillac with curiosity, never once in his life having thought to be inside such a fancy machine—then the girl took his attention away, or the woman, he told himself, for she looked perhaps even a few years older now that he was sitting beside her. She kept glancing at him, and he tried not to stare at her too openly, for her knees were actually visible below the edge of her skirt, her silk stockings rolled right down to them, and, even as he tried not to stare, he knew she noticed, and that she did not seem to mind.
“You like this car?” she asked a moment later, after having secured his name and where it was he was headed.
“Yeah, it’s nice.”
“It’s ten years old now, you know. It’s not mine; it belongs to the Old Man, my grandfather, but I had to borrow it for the day. Had a new Packard myself, that is until I got a bit blotto and ran it into a tree a few weeks back—”
Janson stared at her for a moment, but did not respond, not knowing what to say. He had never before met a woman who drank, much less one who admitted to having done so.
After a moment, she reached and took up a paper sack from the seat between them, pulling down on the top of it with a thumb to reveal the shiny cap of a hip flask. “You want a drink, honey?” she asked, holding the flask out toward him.
“No, ma’am—” he said, staring at her openly now. He had tried corn liquor several times in his life, as had any other young man his age in the County, but had never really acquired a taste for it—besides, she was a woman, even if she was not a lady, and a man never drank in front of a woman, not even a woman who herself might drink.
“You sure?” she asked, bracing the flask between her exposed knees and unscrewing the cap. She tilted it up for a moment, the car almost going off the road as she swallowed a mouthful and then offered it to him again. “It’s good gin, smuggled in off a rumrunner, not any of this bathtub swill—”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m sure—”
“Stop calling me ma’am,” she snapped. “I’m not any older than you are—” It was a lie, and they both knew it. “My name’s Lecia Mae—”
He looked at her for a moment, surprised at her words, reminding himself again who she was. “Yes, ma’am—I mean, Lecia Mae.”
“Good—” She smiled, glancing at him again. After a moment she asked: “How old are you, anyway?”
“I’m eighteen.”
“Eighteen—” she said, but said nothing more.
Silence fell between them for a time, and she seemed again to appraise him with a side-long glance. He felt that look, and he wondered again if she was thinking the same thing he was thinking—if women, even “fast” women, thought such things.
“You in any particular hurry to get anywhere?” she asked after a moment.
“No, ma’am, not really.”
“Good—”
