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By Root 4372 0

I am told, they do now, even wearing, I am told, what the advertisements call the shorts or scan-ties capable of giving women the freedom they need in their fight for freedom; in fact, I had never seen a woman alone in a hotel before (Mother would not have been here without Father) and I remember how I wondered how Everbe without a wedding ring even could have got in. They—the hotels—had what were known as ladies' parlors, like this one where we now were—a smaller though still more elegant room, most of it likewise shrouded in holland bags. But I was still on Boon's side; I didn't pass the doorway but stopped outside, where Everbe could know where I was, within call, even if she couldn't actually see me. So I heard. Oh yes, listened. I would have listened anyway; I had gone too far by now in sophistication and the facts of life to stop now, just as I had gone too far in stealing automobiles and race horses to quit now. So I could hear them: Everbe; and almost at once she was crying again:

"No! I wont! Let me alone!" Then Boon:

"But why? You said you loved me. Was that just lying too?" Then Everbe:

"I do love you. That's why. Let me alone! Turn me loose! Lucius! Lucius!" Then Boon:

"Shut up. Stop now." Then nothing for a minute. I didn't look, peep, I just listened. No: just heard: "If I thought you were just two-timing me with that God damned tin-badged—" Then Everbe:

"No! No! I'm not!" Then something I couldn't hear, until Boon said:

"What? Quit? What do you mean, quit?" Then Everbe:

"Yes! I've quit! Not any more. Never!" Then Boon:

"How're you going to live? What will you eat? Where you going to sleep?" And Everbe:

"I'm going to get a job. I can work."

"What can you do? You aint got no more education than me. What can you do to make a living?"

"I can wash dishes. I can wash and iron. I can learn to cook. I can do something, I can even hoe and pick cotton. Let me go, Boon. Please. Please. I've got to. Cant you see I've got to?" Then her feet running, even on the thick carpet; she was gone. So Boon caught me this time. His face was pretty bad now. Ned was lucky; all he had to frazzle over was just a horse race.

"Look at me," Boon said. "Look at me good. What's wrong with me? What the hell's wrong with me? It used to be that I ..." His face looked like it was going to burst. He started again: "And why me? Why the hell me? Why the hell has she got to pick out me to reform on? God damn it, she's a whore, cant she understand that? She's in the paid business of belonging to me exclusive the minute she sets her foot where I'm at like I'm in the paid business of belonging to Boss and Mr Maury exclusive the minute I set my foot where they're at. But now she's done quit. For private reasons. She cant no more. She aint got no more private rights to quit without my say-so too than I got to quit without Boss's and Mr Maury's say-so too—" He stopped, furious and baffled, raging and helpless; and more: terrified. It was the Negro waiter, flapping his napkin in this doorway now. Boon made a tremendous effort; Ned with nothing but a horse race to win didn't even know what trouble was. "Go tell her to come on to supper. We got to meet that train. Her room is Number Five."

But she wouldn't come out. So Boon and I ate alone. His face still didn't look much better. He ate like you put meat into a grinder: not like he either wanted it or didn't want it, but it was just time to eat. After a while I said, "Maybe he started walking back to Arkansas. He said two or three times this afternoon that that's where he would have been by now if folks hadn't kept on interfering with him."

"Sure," Boon said. "Maybe he just went on ahead to locate that dish-washing job for her. Or maybe he reformed too and they're both going right straight to heaven without stopping off at Arkansas or nowhere else, and he just went ahead to find out how to pass Memphis without nobody seeing them." Then it was time to go. I had been watching the edge of her dress beyond the dining-room door for about two minutes, but now the waiter himself came.

"Two-O-Eight,