The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [191]
An hour later, after he has stripped it and reassembled it, he grins happily. They ain't nothin' like a piece of machinery. He feels a deep content as he traces in his mind the wires and nuts and levers that make up the hand brake.
All that machinery is simple, you jus' got to work it out for yourself. He whistles a little, pleased with himself. Ah bet in a coupla years they won't be anythin' Ah cain't fix.
But in a couple of years he is working in a hotel. The bicycle shop shuts down in the depression, and the only job he can get is as a bellhop working for tips in the fifty-room hotel at the end of the main street. He makes a little money and there are always women and liquor to be had. On night duty there seldom is a time when he can't find a girl in the hotel to spend a few hours with.
One of his buddies has an old Ford, and on weekends when he's off he goes tearing around the sandy roads with him, a gallon jug between them rattling over the loose rubber pads near the gear shift. Sometimes they take a couple of girls with them, and many Sundays they wake up in a strange room, not knowing what happened.
One Sunday he wakes up married. (Turning in bed drowsily, slipping his arm about the round belly beside him. The sheets are over his head and he looks at the warm skin and the deep black hair of the triangle. He places his finger in her navel.) C'mon, wake up. He is trying to remember her name.
Mornin', Woodrow. She has a heavy strong face, and she yawns evenly and turns to him. Mornin', hubby.
Hubby? He shakes his head and slowly assembles the events of the past night. You two sure you want to get married? the j.p. had said. He begins to laugh. Goddam! He is trying to think of where he met her.
Where's ol' Slim?
He'n Clara are in the nex' room.
Ol' Slim's married too? That's right, he is. Wilson begins to laugh again. He is beginning to remember their making love, and he feels a spasm of heat. Slowly he caresses her. You're pretty good, honey, as I remember.
You're a fine man, Woodrow, she says huskily. Yea-a-ah. For a moment, he is thinking. (Guess Ah had to git married, sometime. Ah can move out from Pa's, and git that house over on Tolliver Street, an' we can set up.) He looks at her again, gazes at her body. (Knew what Ah was doin' even if Ah was drunk.) He giggles. Married, goddam, let's give us a kiss, honey.
The day after his first child is born, he talks to his wife in the hospital.
Alice, honey, Ah want ya to gimme some money.
What for, Woodrow, you know why Ah been keeping the money, same thing's gonna happen as last time, Woodrow, we need that money, we got the kid to pay for, bein' born in a hospital.
He nods. Alice, a man wants to git drunk once in a while, Ah been workin' goddam hard at the garage, and Ah feel like havin' me a little time, Ah couldn' be more hones' with ya.
She looks at him suspiciously. You ain't gonna be layin' up with no woman.
Ah'm sick an' tired of that, Alice, ifen you don' trust your own husband, you're pretty bad off, Ah'm kinda hurt you talk like that.
She signs a check for ten dollars, scrawling her name laboriously. He knows she's proud of the checkbook. You write mighty fine, he says.
Come back tomorrow mornin', honey?
Sure.
On the street, after he has cashed the check, he stops for a drink. Ah don' know, a woman's the goddamnedest animal God eveh made, he announces. You marry 'em an' they're one thing, and damn ifen they don't turn out plumb opposite. You marry a girl that's cherry and she turns out a whore, an' you marry a whore and damn if she don't cook and sew and keep her legs clos' for everyone but you, and goddam ifen by the time she's done she don' keep 'em closed for you too. (Laughter.) Ah tell ya Ah'm gonna be a free man for a couple of days.
He wanders down the road, and hitches a ride on an automobile through the shrub lands. After he has been let off, he hefts his gallon of corn to his shoulder and trudges down a trail through the stunted pines. At a farm cabin he stops