Sheba Read online

  “The eel business is mighty good,” Millie said. “I know plenty of folks who eat them.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Sheba said. “I thought you just blew the money away.”

  “It blew away all right,” Luke declared. “It blew all the way straight to hell.”

  “You make it sound as though it were deliberate,” his father said. “Like I didn’t make any effort at all.”

  “You can kiss that money goodbye,” Luke told Sheba. “It’s gone where the big birds go.”

  Sheba’s father pushed his empty plate aside and reached for the sugar bowl. He always used three or four spoons of sugar in each cup of coffee.

  “Don’t pay no attention to Luke, girl. He was just tag-gin’ along and he don’t know what it was all about.” The elder Irons stirred his coffee and reached for a cigarette. “As I said, I met old Mort and he was all shook up. I couldn’t blame him none. A man goes to all that work of puttin’ a rack in the river, buildin’ up the wings and what not, then the kids come along and stomp out the slats in the bottom of it. It’s hell, I tell you, for a man to get shook that way.”

  “What happened to the money?”

  Hap Irons regarded his cup of coffee with disfavor.

  “We had to talk it over. There he was with the eel rack and there I was with the money. I couldn’t just go off the handle straight out and say that I would.”

  “You could have talked on the street.”

  “The street is no place for business. When men talk business they have to sit down where it’s quiet and mull the whole thing through.”

  “You didn’t have to go into any bar,” Millie said.

  “It was the only place close.”

  “And we was thirsty,” Luke added. “You walk to town the way we did and anybody’d get thirsty.”

  “You were both born thirsty,” Sheba said disgustedly. “Why don’t you come right out and say you spent it on booze and let it go at that?”

  “It was an accident,” her father declared. “I didn’t know until we got inside that old Mort owed them ten dollars in there. And when you’re goin’ into business with a man you don’t back down on somethin’ that he owes. You go the whole hog or none at all.”

  “What bar was that?” Sheba wanted to know.

  “The Lexington.”

  “Near the railroad?”

  “Right alongside it. Why, if they built that place ten feet closer to the tracks the passengers could grab the bottles off the shelves as they pass by.”

  “That’s where the girls hang out,” Sheba said.

  Her mother dropped her fork.

  “What girls?”

  “The girls from the factories. We had a couple of them buy cars from us and they never paid for them. Some of the girls are all right but a lot of them hang around that bar and pick up men.”

  There was a long silence in the house.

  “Damn you, Hap,” Millie said finally. “If you spent one penny of that money on some woman I’ll bust your head in.”

  “Weren’t me. I was with old Mort.”

  “And you drank it all up?”

  “Luke, here, was talkin’ to a girl. She had a few shots, I guess, but it wasn’t much.”

  “She was a nice girl,” Luke said. “She’s got a kid and the guy who did it for her ran away someplace.”

  “A fine girl,” Sheba said. “Not married and with a child.”

  Luke leered. “You jealous?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Here, here,” Hap said. “Ain’t no call to fight. Old Mort had a good proposition but it didn’t come off and the money is sure enough gone. There’s no use hashing it over. We didn’t do right, none of us, but at the time it seemed like the proper thing to do. I couldn’t let old Mort get hung up with that ten and after we got to talkin’ the drinkin’ just came natural-like.”

  Sheba drank some of her coffee but she couldn’t finish it. All her life it had been the same way — nothing but poverty. It seemed to her that she had been supporting the family ever since she could remember. And so she made a decision.

  “It’s the last time any of you will ever get any money from me,” she said. “In just a few words, I’ve had it.”

  “All of it was my fault,” her mother pointed out. “Mrs. Frisbee got sick and she couldn’t go into town so I gave the money to your father. I should have known better.”

  “You should have,” Sheba agreed.

  “It could have worked out,” Hap said. “I could have gotten into the eel business. The only thing was we got to talkin’ and the first thing I knew my share was shot. No wonder all these people go to the banks when they want to start somethin’. The gettin’ ready costs somethin’ terrific.”

  There was no use, Sheba thought, none at all. Her father was lazy and Luke was lazy and her mother couldn’t do a thing with them. She could go on for the rest of her life paying for their food and their mistakes and she would never get anywhere. All she would ever get out of it would be debts and still more debts.

  “I’m leaving,” she said, saying the words that she had wanted to say hundreds of times before. “I’m getting out of here.”

  This time her mother dropped her knife.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just that. I’m fed up. I’ve had enough, twice enough. All they do is squander the money that I make.”

  “I’m figuring on getting something to do,” Hap said. “As soon as it breaks I’ll take some of the load off of your shoulders.”

  Sheba stood up.

  “You’d better not waste any time,” she said. “I won’t spend another night in this house. I don’t mind supporting Mom but it’s up to you and Luke to support yourselves. If you were any kind of men at all you wouldn’t want to take my money.”

  “Money is money,” Luke said.

  “To you it is.”

  “I know what’s pushing her out of here,” Luke said, shoving his chair away from the table. “All the girls do it nowadays. As soon as they get a guy they want to have some place to take him.”

  “Luke!” Millie’s face was white.

  “It’s the honest truth. You don’t think that Fred Call keeps coming back just for the sights, do you? He may be a tree surgeon — ain’t that a hot name for it? — but I bet he’s never seen any limbs like she’s got.”

  “Luke — ”

  “Never mind,” Sheba said. “He’s got a rotten mouth and a rotten mind. Just because I won’t be around here to be a sucker he’ll say anything that comes into his head.”

  “You never gave me nothin’,” Luke protested.

  “Only money to spend.”

  “A five here and a ten there. What’s that?”

  “More than I’ve had. Much more. You’ve seen the clothes I wear. Two dresses to my name and neither one of them fits me.”

  “You grew too big upstairs.”

  She felt like slapping him across the face.

  “Luke, I’m telling you — ”

  “Let her go,” Hap said. “She wants to go, let her go. Girls are the same as boys — you can’t keep them tied down forever.”

  “You’re crazy!” Luke almost shouted. “You know what’s going on, for Pete’s sake?”

  “I know what’s going on and I have known what’s going on. Both of us, you and me, haven’t done right. Something like that eel business would have been fine but we went and made a botch of it. All we have to do now is look for something else.”

  “She’ll have herself pregnant in less than three months,” Luke stated. “You see if she doesn’t.”

  “It’s all right if she’s married,” Hap said.

  “She’s not going to be married. Hell, if she was going to be married to that guy she’d have done it by this time. She’s the same as the others, Pa. She gets it regular and the only time she’ll quit is when she gets herself caught.”

  “I never thought I’d bring up a son to talk that way,” Millie said. “I never did.”

  Sheba, tears in her eyes, turned and left the room. Why did most men have to be that way, dirty-minded and twisting things around? Why couldn’t they see the beauty in life instead of the ugliness of it?

  She ran up the stairs, feeling the rough, unpainted boards beneath her feet, her heels clicking furiously. Why did the whole world have to be so electric with sex, so fascinated by it? Even Fred — inwardly, he was as bad as any.

  “You don’t have to worry,” he would tell her. “This isn’t the fifteenth century, you know. A little love, being careful, is good for a girl and it’s good for a fellow.”

  She entered her room and slammed the door shut. Maybe she shouldn’t be mad at him, she really shouldn’t. When his lips closed over her mouth she liked it, liked it a lot. Maybe —

  She shook her head.

  She never would.

  Not until marriage. Not until that golden ring was upon her finger, not until she was sure.

  She stood before her dresser, the one her father had dug out of somebody’s barn, and looked at herself in the mirror.

  People said she was pretty. People said she was lovely. Perhaps she was.

  Her hair was the color of washed sand in the moonlight, long and falling in natural curls down over her shoulders. Sometimes she wore it behind her ears as she did now, and sometimes she let it fall forward and frame her face. When she did that it made her blue eyes seem bigger, less serious, and it lifted attention from the tiny, red pout of her lips.

  She never wore lipstick and she had never found it necessary to wear any. Her lips were the color of crushed cherries and when she smiled her teeth were white and even. Yes, she had a good face, a fine face, but it wasn’t just her face that the men were interested in — it was further down.

  Her breasts were full and high, her waist tiny, stomach flat, and her hips were broad and sensuous.

  She stood back, lifted her skirt and inspected her legs. They were all that any girl could want. Sometimes she thought they were a little long for the rest of her body but at other times she didn’t know. They were straight, molded with the smoothness of clay, and they terminated in slim, perfectly-formed ankles.

  Turning away from the mirror, she began to pack. There wasn’t much to pack, just some underwear and the dress. That she laid out on the bed but the rest of the stuff she put into a brown paper bag. Just as she was picking up the things the door opened and her mother came in.

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” Millie Irons said.

  “Mom, I can’t help it.”

  Her mother pushed the dress aside and sat down on the bed.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do, Sheba.”

  “Well, Dad can get a job and so can Luke. There isn’t any reason why Luke can’t work.”

  “Luke isn’t too smart, in spite of all of his talk.”

  “That’s because he thinks of just one thing.”

  “Now you’re getting like him.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m saying the truth. All he wants to do is run with girls. What if he isn’t a brain? He can drive a tractor on a farm and he can learn to milk cows.”

  Millie Irons sighed.

  “Something will have to be done,” she said. “You know how I had that job in Cushe’s store last year and how my legs couldn’t take all that standing. I can’t go out and put in eight hours on my legs; they just won’t stand up under it.”

  Sheba felt sorry for her mother, enough to make her want to cry, but she couldn’t change her mind, not now. This was the only way she could be free.

  “I’ll let you know where I’m staying,” Sheba said. “If you need anything for yourself I’ll give it to you. But I won’t give it to them. They’re men, able to get out and do something, and I won’t have them make a fool of me any longer. How do you think I felt, coming home and finding Mr. Loven waiting for me? And after I gave you the money? My gosh, Mom, this can’t go on, it just can’t. If it hadn’t been for you I’d have done this a long time ago.”

  Her mother nodded. “And I would do the same — if I had the courage. But you marry a man, they say, for better or for worse, and sometimes it’s worse. You don’t change it by running away. You have to stay and live with it.”

  “Not me.”

  “It’s different with you. You’ve just seen the bad side of him all of your life, but a long time ago I saw the good side. When he worked for the county — you were just a little kid — the checks were regular and the only thing he drank was a beer with his supper. It’s Luke that’s changed him, Luke and his crazy way of doing things.”

  “You ought to get after Luke.”

  “I am after Luke, but what can I do? He’s my son, same as you’re my daughter, and a mother can only take what she feels just so far. You don’t see it that way now, but later on, when you’re older, you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

  A car horn blew out front.

  “That’s Fred,” Sheba said, gathering up the dress and the bag. “I forgot he was coming.”

  She thought of kissing her mother but it would only make the parting more difficult so she decided against it. Anyway, she would be in town; it wasn’t as though she were going a thousand miles away.

  “Sheba,” her mother said as Sheba reached the door.

  “What?”

  “You aren’t letting him, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t. Don’t let any man touch you until it’s on the marriage bed.”

  “I won’t.”

  She walked along the hall and down the stairs. Her father and Luke were in the kitchen talking about the eel rack and she didn’t go in. She just pushed the front door open and stepped out into the gathering shadows of evening.

  “You moving?” Fred asked.

  Fred Call stood beside the door of his car. He was a tall man, over six feet with broad shoulders.

  “I’m moving.”

  “Honest?”

  She was near tears. “Let’s not talk about it.”

  “Okay.” He opened the car door.

  She got in. There was no use taking the Studebaker — she wouldn’t need the car in town — and if Mr. Loven wanted it he could come out and take it away. The car was worth maybe seventy-five or a hundred dollars and that would be something on the loan. Of course, if she could convince Gregg Walton to adopt Mr. Loven’s plan she would be able to pay the bill quickly, but she had no assurance that she could do this. Gregg was inclined to be stubborn, a top salesman, and things were going very well for him the way they were.

  “Where to?” Fred wanted to know as he drove down the lane.

  “Some place in town where I can get a room. Any suggestions?”

  “How about the hotel?”

  “I couldn’t afford that.”

  They reached the highway and he turned right.

  “My aunt takes roomers,” he said after a while.

  She hadn’t known that he had an aunt.

  “Does she?”

  “She lives on Fourth Street, not far from the garage. It would be handy to your job.”

  “All right.”

  “We’ll try that first.”

  Mrs. Grimes was a pleasant woman in her fifties and she had a vacant room. Not only that, but she wasn’t worried about the rent.

  “You pay me when you get it,” she said.

  The room was on the third floor near the bath, and Mrs. Grimes asked Fred to show Sheba where it was.

  “He knows more about this house than I do,” she said. “He used to play here all the time when he was a little boy.”

  The room was small but clean and nice and there was a three-quarter bed in one corner. A writing desk had been placed before the one large window and to the left of that was a big easy chair that could be adjusted to almost any position.

  “I like it,” Sheba said, dropping the bag and dress on the bed.

  Fred caught her before she could get away from him.

  “And I like you,” he breathed.

  His lips came down over her mouth, clinging, the tip of his tongue trying to reach between her teeth. His arms were around her, pulling her in tightly against him. She kissed him back, briefly, and then she twisted her head away.

  “No, Fred.”

  He was breathing heavily.

  “She can’t hear us.”

  “No.”

  He tried to push her toward the bed, his one hand coming around to the front of her dress, but she stopped him.

  “Please, Sheba.”

  “No!”

  “But there isn’t anything wrong with it.”

  “There is, too.”

  “Not if people love each other.”

  He was kissing her on the side of her face, all the way back to her ear, and she didn’t want him to do that. The kisses sent little chills up and down her spine, delightful chills that came from a burning fire within. Her legs were heavy, almost wooden, and as she felt his body against her she started to tremble.

  “Don’t make me,” she whispered. “Don’t make me.”

  “You want to?”

  “I — don’t — know.”

  He tried to kiss her on the mouth but she avoided him.

  “You drive me crazy,” he said.

  “You drive me a little wild, too,” she admitted.

  “Then why won’t you let me?”

  “You know why. I don’t want this to be cheap. All my life things have been cheap and I don’t want it to be that way with you.”

  He always asked her the same question and she always gave him the same answer.

  “Hell,” he said finally.

  “Don’t be mad at me, Fred.”

  “I’m not, but — look, you don’t have anything to worry about. I told you that before. Even if it happened, even if you got that way, I’d marry you.”

  “No, Fred. Not that way. Let’s keep it right.”

  At last she let him kiss her, just holding her, and she knew that the moment had passed.

  But she also knew something else.

  She wanted him just as badly as he wanted her.

  3

  IT all started because of the Dixons. They had returned to the showroom during the lunch hour when Gregg was out.

  Sheba, who was cutting down on lunches to save money, was alone in the building except for a couple of mechanics out back.