After that, he never saw Trouble again. But he rented a room at Mrs. Davies’s, in her three-story house in Hampden that must once have belonged to a mill owner or at least a manager, and he went to work for Clyde Ward, the most exacting builder he had ever come across. It was from Mr. Ward that he learned the great pleasure of doing things right.
He did send his family a postcard, eventually, but they never wrote him back and he didn’t send another. That was okay; he didn’t even think about them. He didn’t think about Linnie Mae, either. She was a tiny, dim person buried in the back of his mind alongside that other person, his past self—that completely unrelated self who went out carousing every weekend and spent his money on cigarettes and fast girls and bootleg whiskey. The new Junior had a plan. He was going to be his own boss someday. His life was a straight, shining road now with a clear destination, and he supposed he ought to thank Linnie for setting his feet upon it.
12
LINNIE’S FIRST ACT in Baltimore was to get them both evicted.
During the night, Junior had awakened twice—the first time with his heart racing because he sensed the presence of somebody else in the room, but then he found himself in the armchair and thought, “Oh, it’s only Linnie,” which came as a relief, under the circumstances; and the second time when he was jolted upright from what he believed was a dreamless sleep by the sudden realization that when Linnie had said she was of legal age now, she had probably meant legal marrying age. “She’s like a … like one of those monkeys,” he thought, “twining her arms tight around the organ grinder’s neck.” That time, he hadn’t been able to go back to sleep for hours.
Even so, he rose early, both out of natural inclination and because there was always a rush for the bathroom in the mornings. He dressed and went to shave, and then he came back to the room and tapped the sharp peak of Linnie’s shoulder. “Get up,” he said.
She rolled over and looked at him. He had the impression that she had been awake for some time; her eyes were wide and clear. “You can’t stay here while I’m at work,” he told her. “You have to go out. There’s a girl comes upstairs to clean in the mornings.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay.” And she sat up and drew back the covers and swung her feet to the floor. She was wearing a nightgown that would have worked better in the summer, a thin white cotton petticoat-thing that barely covered her knees. It was the first time he had seen her out of her winter wraps, and he realized she had changed more than he had first thought. She might still be too thin, but she had lost her coltish gawkiness. Her calves and her upper arms had more of a curve to them.
When she stood up he turned away from her so as not to see her dressing, and he went over to the bureau. A tin oatmeal canister sat on top; he opened it and took out the loaf of store bread that he kept shut away from the mice. Then he raised the window sash and reached for the milk. “Breakfast,” he told Linnie.
“That’s your breakfast? Doesn’t your landlady give you breakfast?”
“Not me. Some of the others, they can afford to get their three squares here but I can’t.”
He shut the window and uncapped the milk bottle and took a swig. (It was something of a pleasure to show off how handily he dealt with adversity.) Then he held the bottle toward Linnie, still carefully not looking at her, and he felt her lift it out of his grasp. “But what about in hot weather?” she asked. “How’ll we keep the milk from souring when it’s hot?”
We? He felt that organ-grinder panic again, but he answered levelly. “In hot weather I switch to buttermilk,” he said. “Can’t much go wrong with that.”
The milk bottle jogged his elbow and he took it and passed her a slice of bread in exchange, keeping his face set stubbornly toward the window where the smoke stood up from the chimneys outside as if it were too cold to drift. Tonight he should bring the milk in; he didn’t want it freezing solid.
Linnie Mae was unclasping her suitcase now, by the sound of it. Junior folded his own slice of bread into quarters to get it over with quicker, and he took a large bite and chewed doggedly, listening to the rustles behind him. Then he heard the click of the door lock and he wheeled around. She was grasping the doorknob to turn it; he lunged past her and threw himself in front of her. It startled her, he could tell. She drew back as if she thought he might hit her, which he wouldn’t have, but still, it was just as well she knew he meant business.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked her.
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“You can’t. Someone’ll see you.”
“But I need to pee, Junior. Bad.”
“The café down the street has a bathroom,” he said. “Get your coat on; we’re leaving. I’ll show you where the café is.” She was wearing what looked like a summer dress, belted and short-sleeved. Didn’t they have winter back home anymore, or what? And on her feet were those same high-heeled shoes. “Put on warmer shoes, too,” he said.
“I didn’t bring any warmer shoes.”