The Butterfly - James M. Cain [4]
"People quit that when Prohibition went out."
"But they're starting up again, now the places can't get liquor. The mountain stuff goes in city bottles, and money is paid for it."
"Where'd you learn so much about this?"
"In Carbon, maybe I've been doing more than bringing back boxes for those apples of yours. Maybe I've found friends. Maybe they've told me how to get plenty of money quick."
"Did they tell you it's against the law?"
"Lot of things are against the law."
"And I don't do them."
"I want money."
"What for?"
"Clothes."
"Aren't those clothes pretty?"
"They look all right in a church on a mountain, but in Carbon they're pretty sick. I told you, I've been a sucker too long, and I'm going to step out."
"A church is better for you than a town."
"But not so much fun."
I shelled corn, and did no mealing or mashing. And one day she went off after breakfast and didn't come home till ten o'clock at night.
"Where have you been?"
"Getting me a job."
"What kind of a job?"
"Serving drinks."
"Where?"
"In a café."
"That's no decent job for a girl. And specially it's no job for a girl that has an education and can teach school."
"It pays better. And it is better."
"How do you figure that out?"
"Because if I feel like having a baby or something, they'd let me stay and not kick me out and after I had the baby they'd let me come back and be nice to it and be nice to me."
"What do you mean, feel like having a baby?"
"With the right fellow, it might be nice."
"Quit talking like that!"
She pulled off her hat, threw her hair around, and went to bed. It went on like that for quite a while, maybe two or three months, she staying out till ten, eleven, or twelve o'clock, us having fights, and me going crazy, specially when she began bringing home clothes that she bought, the way she told it with the tip money. But they must have been awfully big tips. And then came the night that she didn't come home at all, and that I didn't go to bed at all. I went down to meet the last bus, and when she wasn't on it I drove to Carbon City and looked everywhere. She was nowhere that I went to. I came back, lay on the bed, did my morning work, and then I knew what I was going to do.
That afternoon I saddled a mule and rode up a trail that ran up the mountain to a shack that the super had built when he was young and used to shoot. It was all dust and there was no furniture in it and it hadn't been used for a long time, but out back was what I was looking for. It was the old hot-water heater, with a coil inside, and the hundred-gallon tank, on a platform outside, that he had put in so him and his friends could have a bath any time they wanted.
"God but I'm glad you're back."
"Well look who's excited."
"I was afraid you weren't coming."
"We had to open a lot of cases, and we didn't get done until late and I missed the last bus. I stayed with a girl that works there."
My arms wouldn't let go of her, and we held hands while she ate the supper I had saved for her, and I was so happy a lump kept coming in my throat. And then when we were sitting in front of the fire I said: "That idea you had, remember?"
"About the corn?"
"Suppose I said yes. Would you quit this work you re doing, and stay out here and help me with it?"
"What's changed you?"
"I can't stand it when you're gone."
"Is it fifty-fifty?"
"Anything."
"Shake."
Chapter 3
The mine, which was where I figured to set up our plant, scared me so bad I almost lost my nerve and quite before we began. Except maybe for rats and dust and spiders, I had thought it would be the same as when they took the machinery away, but when we got up there we found some changes had taken place. The top, where the weight of the mountain was on it, had bulged down in a bunch of blisters, about like the blisters on paint, except that they were the size of a wagon wheel instead of the size of a quarter, and as thick as a concrete road instead of as thick as a piece of