Hill girl - By Charles Williams Page 0,3

a big sloping lot half as big as a city block, with a driveway going back to it and two enormous oaks in front, and a hedge along the sidewalk.

It was one of the ugliest houses it would be possible to imagine. Built around 1910, it had all the gingerbread and scrollwork and hideousness of its time, and its last coat of white paint was now about six years old and peeling in places. My grandfather, who was a salty old gentleman and possessed of a caustic wit that was widely respected, referred to it invariably as “that architectural abortion.” It was built by the Major while he was still a young man.

At the housewarming he had asked my grandfather, so the story goes, what he thought of the parlor.

“I don’t know why, son,” the old man is said to have answered, “but I keep expecting a woman to come in and say that the girls will be down in a minute.”

I got out and went up the walk under the big oaks, feeling warmly happy about it and wondering why, for there had never been much happiness attached to the old pile when I was growing up.

I banged the big brass knocker and a Negro girl came in a minute. “Is Mrs. Crane in?” I said. “Tell her I’ve got a search warrant.”

Her eyes opened wide, showing a lot of white, and she went back down the dark hallway. I stepped inside and saw it hadn’t changed much; there was the same old milky mirror by the hat-rack and the hard-bottomed bench and the straw carpeting.

From the living room at the end of the hall came the clicking of spike heels and then she was in the doorway.

“Hello, Mary,” I said.

She came down the hall toward me, walking fast, with that long-legged gracefulness I remembered so well, and the red-haired loveliness of her gave me the same old feeling of warmth. I was never really in love with Mary, I guess. As accurately as I can describe it, the feeling she always gave me when I saw her was one of pride that she was a friend of mine and liked me.

She came close to me and I took both her hands. “Hello, you big horse,” she said. “Don’t step on me.”

“I’m glad to see you, Mary,” I said.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” she demanded. “Don’t just stand there like a stadium or something and grin at me.”

I kissed her lightly on the cheek and was conscious of the amusement in the cool green eyes so close to mine.

“Well,” she said, “that’ll put me in my place, all right. Middle-aged housewife.”

She was twenty-three and she and Lee had been married a little less than a year. “You’re looking great,” I said. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Bob. Come on back to the kitchen and tell me about yourself. Rose just made some coffee.”

We went through the living room, where a small fire was burning in the big fireplace, and on back to the kitchen and sat down at the table.

“Darn it, Bob, but I’m glad to see you. It’s a shame you just missed Lee. He left a little while ago and won’t be back for an hour or two. Tell me about yourself. You’re home for good this time, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad you’re through college. But I’ll always hate the way you had to go.”

I stirred my coffee and broke off a piece of the coffee cake Rose had put on the table. “Why? It suited me.”

She leaned back and looked at me and sighed, shaking her head gently. “I guess it did, at that. It’s a wonder you didn’t turn professional like all the rest of the mastodons.”

I didn’t tell her about turning pro fighter and the whipping I’d taken. It was something I’d rather forget. I was good enough in intercollegiate boxing to begin to get the impression I was good, but it didn’t take me long to find out I was slow and too easy to hit, and when those heavies can get to you and keep on getting to you they can hurt you, whether you can take it or not. I’d had eight professional fights and I took the short end of six of them and quit it before I was slapped silly. It’s no racket for the second-rate.

“I see your nose has been broken again,” she said, leaning her elbows on the table and cupping her chin in her hands. “I suppose