A Southern Exposure Read Free Page B

Theatre? Provincetown Players? Well, the thing is to write it, forget who for—for whom. And forget too the actual Ursula and her pig, and Kansas. A familiar but recently unavailable excitement trembles in Russ’s blood, and his face involuntarily smiles as he thinks, I could, no reason why not. It’s what they’ve wanted and kept saying I could do. An American classic. Folk but never folksy. I could do it.
    He allows himself this moment of mindless excitement, of baseless confidence, silly joy—but only a moment, before he begins to think, But Jesus, the work, all the words, I’ll never be able.
    Next he wonders if he gave Ursula enough money. Fifty bucks is a lot for these days, but it wouldn’t hurt to add a few bucks, maybe another twenty or so? What’s money for, anyway?
    And how can he sleep with these kids all over him? Disentangling his legs from the warm, insistent arms and legs, Russ creeps from that bed toward the door to the hall, down which is the bathroom and presumably other sleeping quarters. But just as he gets to the door there is Brett, suddenly beside him, her hand on his arm as she whispers, very softly, “There’s another bed right next door. A nice big wide one. Want to meet me there?”
    “But—” But he doesn’t, for so many reasons: one, a ravishingly beautiful girl named Deirdre.
    “They probably hoped they’d rent it late tonight. Just lucky for us they didn’t.”
    “I guess—”
    “Oh, Russ, come on.”
    He does.

     3     
    “And then there’s the suite,” says the clerk at the Pinehill Colonial Inn, after a pause during which Harry and Cynthia have considered other offerings—a double room, with two beds; two single rooms, connected; or a double room with a single room down the hall. None of which were very appealing. Also, Harry is already having trouble with what he takes to be the local accent. At first he thought this young man was kidding, dragging out his words that way and seeming to make fun of certain words even as he spoke them, but then Harry realized that this was how he, the clerk, talked: when he said “suite,” in three or maybe four syllables, he may have been kidding the concept (Southerners, as the Bairds are soon to learn, are quick to knock pretense of any sort; anything that smacks of “airs” invitesderision), but a suite is what this young man meant. “There’s this sitting room and two—I think three—little bitty bedrooms, and then there’s this sort of a breakfast room. And a kitchen. But I think y’all better take a look.”
    Their first “y’all.” Harry and Cynthia exchange glances.
    The “suite,” reached at the end of a very long hall and up a small creaking flight of stairs, has turned out to be amazingly pretty. “Attractive,” which is Cynthia’s usual word, even uttered at its most intense, did not seem sufficient. It was Abigail who, standing on tiptoe to look out from a narrow window, turned back to gasp, “This is beautiful. We could stay here forever. Have people over all the time.”
    Abigail was right. The rooms were beautifully proportioned, and the furniture, instead of the anticipated shabby pseudo-Victorian, or some other bogus Sears antique, was very plain and comfortable. In fact it all looked handmade, beautiful wood all polished, and upholstered in obviously handwoven wool and linen of a remarkable spectrum of color, colors in amazing combination, as in a garden. A small fireplace had as its mantel some of the same plain dark and resinous wood. Next to the hearth were large unpainted clay pots, which Cynthia’s ready imagination instantly filled with roses or, perhaps in another season, clusters of bright leaves.
    “Well,” said Cynthia and Harry, in almost identical tones, simultaneously. “It’s really nice. We’ll take it.”
    Cynthia in her mind has already peopled the room with a small dinner party, one of her elegant but unpretentious ventures. A simple French casserole, a little