Another Country Read Online Free PDF Page A

think I want to hurt you?”
    “People do, ” she said, finally, “hurt each other.”
    “Is somebody been hurting you, Leona?”
    She was silent, her face leaning into his palm. “My husband,” she said, faintly. “I thought he loved me, but he didn’t— oh, I knew he was rough but I didn’t think he was mean . And he couldn’t of loved me because he took away my kid, he’s off someplace where I can’t never see him.” She looked up at Rufus with her eyes full of tears. “He said I wasn’t a fit mother because— I— drank too much. I did drink too much, it was the only way I could stand living with him. But I would of died for my kid, I wouldn’t never of let anything happen to him.”
    He was silent. Her tears fell on his dark fist. “He’s still down there,” she said, “my husband, I mean. Him and my mother and my brother is as thick as thieves. They think I ain’t never been no good. Well, hell, if people keep telling you you ain’t no good”— she tried to laugh— “you bound to turn out pretty bad.”
    He pushed out of his mind all of the questions he wanted to ask her. It was beginning to be chilly on the balcony; he was hungry and he wanted a drink and he wanted to get home to bed. “Well,” he said, at last, “I ain’t going to hurt you,” and he rose, walking to the edge of the balcony. His shorts were like a rope between his legs, he pulled them up, and felt that he was glued inside them. He zipped up his fly, holding his legs wide apart. The sky had faded down to purple. The stars were gone and the lights on the Jersey shore were out. A coal barge traveled slowly down the river.
    “How do I look?” she asked him.
    “Fine,” he said, and she did. She looked like a tired child. “You want to come down to my place?”
    “If you want me to,” she said.
    “Well, yes, that’s what I want.” But he wondered why he was holding on to her.
    Vivaldo came by late the next afternoon to find Rufus still in bed and Leona in the kitchen making breakfast.
    It was Leona who opened the door. And Rufus watched with delight the slow shock on Vivaldo’s face as he looked from Leona, muffled in Rufus’ bathrobe, to Rufus, sitting up in bed, and naked except for the blankets.
    Let the liberal white bastard squirm, he thought.
    “Hi, baby,” he called, “come on in. You just in time for breakfast.”
    “I’ve had my breakfast,” Vivaldo said, “but you people aren’t even decent yet. I’ll come back later.”
    “Shit, man, come on in. That’s Leona. Leona, this here’s a friend of mine, Vivaldo. For short. His real name is Daniel Vivaldo Moore. He’s an Irish wop.”
    “Rufus is just full of prejudice against everybody,” said Leona, and smiled. “Come on in.”
    Vivaldo closed the door behind him awkwardly and sat down on the edge of the bed. Whenever he was uncomfortable— which was often— his arms and legs seemed to stretch to monstrous proportions and he handled them with bewildered loathing, as though he had been afflicted with them only a few moments before.
    “I hope you can eat something, ” Leona said. “There’s plenty and it’ll be ready in just a second.”
    “I’ll have a cup of coffee with you,” Vivaldo said, “unless you happen to have some beer.” Then he looked over at Rufus. “I guess it was quite a party.”
    Rufus grinned. “Not bad, not had.”
    Leona opened some beer and poured it into a tumbler and brought it to Vivaldo. He took it, looking up at her with his quick, gypsy smile, and spilled some on one foot.
    “You want some, Rufus?”
    “No, honey, not yet. I’ll eat first.”
    Leona walked back into the kitchen.
    “Ain’t she a splendid specimen of Southern womanhood?” Rufus asked. “Down yonder, they teach their womenfolks to serve .”
    From the kitchen came Leona’s laugh. “They sure don’t teach us nothing else.”
    “Honey, as long as you know how to make a man as happy as you making me, you don’t need to know nothing