Her son, Baxter, at this time a youth of eighteen, had just a year or two before taken a young girl by force, a well-developed and seductive red-haired girl of fourteen. This event, so far from causing his mother any distress, had seemed to her so funny that she had published it to the whole town, describing with roars of laughter her interview with the girl’s outraged mother:
“Why, hell yes!” she said. “She came down here to see me, all broke out in a sweat about it, sayin’ Baxter had ruined her daughter an’ what was I goin’ to do about it!—‘Now, you look a-here!’ I said. ‘You jist git down off your high horse! He’s ruined no one,’ I says, ‘for there was no one to ruin to begin with’—har!—har!—har!—har!”—the full, choking scream burst from her throat—“‘Now,’ I says, ‘if she turns out to be a whore, she’ll come by it natural’—har!—har!—har!—har!—‘an’ Baxter didn’t make her one,’ I says. ‘What do you mean? What do you mean?’ she says—oh! gittin’ red as a ripe termater an’ beginnin’ to shake her finger in my face—‘I’ll have you put in jail fer slander,’ she says, ‘that’s what I’ll do!’ ‘Slander!’ I says, ‘Slander! Well, if it’s slander,’ I says, ‘the law has changed since my day and time. It’s the first time I ever knew you could slander a whore,’ I says, ‘by callin’ her by her right name.’ ‘Don’t you call my daughter no name like that,’ she says, oh, madder’n a wet hen, you know—‘Don’t you dare to! I’ll have you arrested,’ she says. ‘Why, God-damn you!’ I says—that’s just the way I talked to her, you know, ‘everyone knows what your daughter is!’ I says, ‘so you git on out of here,’ I says, ‘before I git mad an’ tell you something you may not like to hear!’—and I’m tellin’ you, she went!” And the huge creature leaned back gasping for a moment.
“Hell!” she went on quietly in a moment, “I asked Baxter about it and he told me. ‘Baxter,’ I says, ‘that woman has been here now an’ I want to know: did you jump on that girl an’ take it from her?’ ‘Why, mama,’ he says, ‘take it from her? Why, she took it from me!’ says Baxter—har!—har!—har!—har!”—the tremendous laughter filled her throat and choked her. “Hell!’ says Baxter, ‘she throwed me down an’ almost broke my back! If I hadn’t done like I did I don’t believe she’d ever a-let me out of there!’—har!—har!—har!—har!—I reckon ole Baxter figgered it might as well be him as the next one,” she panted, wiping at her streaming eyes. “I reckon he figgered he might as well git a little of it while the gittin’ was good. But Lord!” sighed, “I laffed about that thing until my sides was sore—har!—har!—har!—har!—har!”—and the enormous creature came forward in her creaking chair again, as the huge laughter filled her, and made the walls tremble with its limitless well of power.
Towards her own daughter, however, whose name was Grace, and who was fifteen at this time, Mrs. Lampley was virtuously, if brutally, attentive. In both the children the inhuman vitality of their parents was already apparent, and in the girl, especially, the measureless animal power of her mother had already developed. At fifteen, she was a tremendous creature, almost as tall as her mother, and so fully matured that the flimsy little cotton dresses she wore, and which would have been proper for most children of her age, were almost obscenely inadequate. In the heavy calves, swelling thighs, and full breasts of this great, white-fleshed creature of fifteen years there was already evident a tremendous seductiveness; men looked at her with a terrible fascination and felt the wakening of unreasoning desire, and turned their eyes away from her with a feeling of strong shame.
Over this girl’s life already there hung the shadow of fatality. Without knowing why, one felt certain that this great creature must come to grief and ruin—as one reads that giants die early, and things which are too great in nature for the measure of the world destroy themselves. In the girl’s large, vacant, and regularly beautiful face, and in the tender, empty, and sensual smile which dwelt forever there, this legend of unavoidable catastrophe was plainly written.
The girl rarely spoke, and seemed to have no variety of passion save that indicated by her constant, limitlessly sensual, and vacant smile. And as she stood obedient and docile beside her mother, and that huge creature spoke of her with a naked frankness, and as the girl smiled always that tender, vacant smile as if her mother’s words had no meaning for her, the feeling of something inhuman and catastrophic in the natures of these people was overwhelming: