The Butterfly - James M. Cain [2]
"That's no way to talk."
"It's one way."
When we got back to the cabin I told her she had to go, to get her things and I'd run her down to wherever she wanted to go, in the little Ford truck I use for hauling stuff. She went in the back room where her suitcase was, and was gone quite a while. When she came back she had taken off her clothes and put on a nightgown, wrapper and slippers. I tried to tell her to get dressed again, but nothing would come out of my mouth. She sat down beside me and put her head on my shoulder.
"Don't make me go."
"You got to."
"I couldn't stand it."
All of a sudden she broke out crying, and hung on to me, and talked all kind of wild stuff about what she'd been through, and how I had to help her out. Then after she quieted down a little she said: "Don't you know who I am?"
"I told you three times, no."
"I'm Kady."
"...Who?"
"Your little girl. The one you like."
If I could write it down in this old ledger I'm using that I took her in my arms and told her to stay because she was my child, and could have anything from me she needed, I would do it, because on what happened later it would look like I never meant anything like that at the start, and like I got into it without really knowing what I was doing. But it wouldn't be true. I took her in my arms, and told her to stay, and fixed the back room for her, and took my own blankets to the stable, where there's a bunk I can sleep in. But all the time my heart was pounding at the way she made me feel, and all the time I could see she knew how she made me feel, and didn't care.
Chapter 2
"What was it that happened to you?"
"What is it ever?"
"You mean a man?"
"If you could call it a man."
"And what did he do to you?"
"He left me."
"And what else?"
"That's all."
It was Sunday morning, and she was lying on the stoop in the sun, still in the pink gingham dress she had put on to help me with the feeding. I mumbled how sorry I was, and switched off to Blount, where Belle was running a boarding house for miners in the Llewelyn No. 3. Then all of a sudden she changed her mind, and did want to talk. "That's not all. There's a lot more to it than that. I didn't have much to say when you were talking about Morgans, did I? I know about that. I was twelve I guess when I woke up to a few things that were going on. Jane, she knew about them before I did, and we talked about it a lot, and kept saying we would never be like that. And we decided the whole trouble, when you see something like that, is how ignorant people are, like Belle not even being able to read.
And then we made up our minds we were taking the bus every day and going to high school. And that was when Belle got sick."
"Her sickness all comes out of a bottle."
"This was lung trouble."
"You mean she's really got lung trouble?"
"The doctor said if she was careful she'd get along, but she couldn't work hard so one of us had to run the place. So Jane said it would be her."
"She sounds nice."
"She's just wonderful."
"She still favor me?"
"Yes, and we talked about you a lot, and it was on account of you we wanted to go to school, because we knew you read and wrote and went to church. So she studied my books at home. Then when I graduated I led the class, and at Blount last year they gave me a job, teaching the second grade. I mean, little kids. It caused a lot of talk that a miner's girl should teach school, and there was a piece in the paper about it."
"Well, I'm proud of it."
"So was I."
She lay there looking at the creek for quite a while, and I said nothing, because if she didn't want to tell me about it I didn't want to make her. But she started up again. "And then he came along."
"Who was he?"
"Wash Blount."
"He belong to the coal family?"
"His father owns Llewelyn. And because he used to be a miner, he thinks a miner's girl isn't good enough for his boy, and wants Wash to marry in a rich family, like the girl did, that lives in Philadelphia. So he kept after Wash. And at Easter he left me."
I said she'd get over it, and a couple more things, but then her