The Accused, Harold R. Daniels [read out loud books txt] 📗

planned this gambit in the powder room, Morlock was certain. Strangely he was not particularly surprised or disappointed. Dodson’s thick neck reddened. “We’ll take you home,” he said hopefully.

Audrey glanced at her sister and then back toward Morlock. “We’ve got our own car,” she said.

Dodson half stood, and for a terrible moment Morlock was afraid that he was going to remind the girls of the money that he had spent on them. He did not. He controlled himself while they swayed away again. When they were out of hearing he began to curse them, viciously and obscenely.

Snapper consoled them in the lower bar. “I could have told you,” he said sadly. “Those two pull that stunt pretty regular. You know what they did after they left your table?”

Dodson said sourly, “I don’t think they went home.”

Snapper swallowed his drink. “Hell, no. They’ve got regular boy friends. They leave them off in here to have a good time while they shoot pool across the street. You should have picked up something a little older. Those kids are only after what they can get. How much did you blow?”

Dodson said glumly, “Fifteen dollars.”

Snapper whistled softly. “Too bad.” He offered to help them make another choice; closing time was still an hour away. Morlock shook his head. He was feeling an exhilaration that was beyond anything he had experienced. He had never before reached this stage of drunkenness—usually he became quite sick after drinking half what he had tonight. He easily convinced himself that he had had no great desire for Audrey, that he could have had her if he had really wanted to. The way she had glanced at her sister before saying that they had their own car—he had practically sent her away. He glowed with his own nobility.

Dodson was becoming increasingly maudlin and it was apparent that he would make no more conquests.

In the hour that remained before the bar closed, Morlock had several more drinks, trying to retain his mood. Strangely, his thoughts became clearer but the mood began to dissipate the moment they left the bar and walked through the streets to the hotel. He had some trouble with Dodson. By the time he undressed, the mood was entirely gone.

He had had for years a recurrent dream in which he was a boy. Awake, he could never remember the dream in its detail. He could only vaguely remember climbing green hills beside a lake where the mists rose slowly in the cool morning; and yet sometimes the dream was realer than reality—certainly it was happier than reality. In the dream he had a companion, usually a girl a year or two younger than himself. Morlock often courted the dream. He even made preparations for it, putting on fresh pajamas, fresh sheets on the bed. Like a bride preparing the wedding bed. He wooed the dream by returning in memory to his own childhood before falling asleep. He was not often successful and there was always the risk that the sweet pain of nostalgia would go unrewarded by the dream.

Tonight his memory was acute. Lying on the bed, he let it drift rapidly back, the quicker to escape the dreary hotel bedroom. As he usually did, he remembered best when he was twelve….

There was a green pasture littered with great out-croppings of the conglomerate rock they called puddingstone. Through the pasture a path made aimless progress into a cool glade where oak trees formed a park. Beyond the glade were low hills that dressed themselves in white and silver birch, in aspen and wild cherry, and in the spring the wild cherry sang with white blossom. Morlock remembered the way they looked and smelled. He could not have expressed the beauty of the trees in allegory at twelve as he could now but he was completely aware of that beauty. And there was the smell of grass and earth and leaves and the cows in the pasture and even their droppings; and these smells were picked up and blended by the west wind of spring so that the very smell was alive with promise. Beyond the low hills were the somewhat more somber pines and among the pines stood a colossal mass of that same puddingstone that dotted the pastures. It had been rolled up and left there like some toy by the glaciers, and it towered above the pines and hemlocks that soughed mournfully beneath it. There were ledges and faults in the mass and crevices and niches where arrowheads could be found and occasional shards of broken pottery. They called this Abram’s Rock after the legendary Indian who had plunged from it after the death of his bride. Here Morlock, when there was time, played the wonderful games that could be played upon such a mighty site. Here, when he was twelve, came Marian, a grave child of ten with black hair that hung down her back to her waist after the manner of an old-fashioned illustration of_ Alice in Wonderland._ Morlock was with some other boys of his own age; when they saw her standing quietly near them there was a rustle of whispering and snickering. “There she is,” one boy said. “The Portagee kid.”

Morlock remembered then that a Portuguese family from the Cape Verde islands had moved into a worn-out farm not far from Abram’s Rock. There had been some loose and irresponsible indignation. “Ain’t no difference between a nigger and a Portagee. One’s as black as the other.”

This was the first member of the family he had seen and she seemed to be just like any other girl or boy he knew. Her skin was no darker than his own would be at the end of the summer. Her eyes were blue and set wide apart in her oval face. Morlock had been born on the shabby-genteel side of absolute poverty; he knew hand-me-down and make-do as brothers and he could recognize the signals of poverty in the girl’s clothing. She wore a simple dress of some gray material. It was clean but there was a patch in the skirt and it fitted her in the shapeless manner of a larger garment that had been taken in. He was too familiar with the device to miss it. She wore a worn pair of boy’s shoes and her legs were bare. Morlock, out of the kinship of poverty, felt sorry for her.

One of the youngsters in the group called suddenly, “Hey, Portagee I Who said you could climb on our rock?”

And another boy, “Sure. Let’s chase her on home.”

She stood her ground bravely but Morlock could see that she was frightened. She said in a low voice, “My fa’der say I can play here.”

None of the boys had actually been much interested up to this point. The Portagee girl looked much like any other girl and was probably as dull a playmate. Now the heavy accent identified her as an outsider and her soft obstinacy offered them the opportunity to defy authority, the authority of her father, without risk. They surrounded her and one boy mocked her accent.

“What right has your fodder to say you can play here? He doesn’t own Abram’s Rock!”

The girl—she was very thin, Morlock noticed—began to tremble. Tears formed in the outer corners of her eyes but she repeated stubbornly, “My fa’der say I can play here.”

Morlock pushed two of the boys aside. “Let her alone,” he said as fiercely as he could. “She isn’t bothering anybody.”

They had a certain respect for Morlock. He was not as big as some of the boys in the group but he actually worked after school and earned money. Not nickels for running errands but half dollars and dollars for cutting lawns and hoeing gardens which he gave to his mother. He could be identified with authority. More to the point, they were bored and maybe a little ashamed of the incident. They ran off shouting, leaving Morlock with the girl. That had been his first meeting with Marian—actually her name was Marianna—Cruz….

Morlock, lying in the sagging hotel bed, remembered this as he had remembered it on a hundred nights, waiting for sleep to transport him back to a time when he had been happier than he had ever been since.