The Snare

7. SURVIVING (Continued)

7. SURVIVING (Continued) She had stolen the dress she wore to her announcement party, the one of off-white net printed in black fronds. It had been like a game and a much more tricky one than the first time she had stolen something , which had been a white bag. That first time, she had really surprised herself. All she had been doing was shopping, spending some money Uncle Maurice had sent her until it went in some other way, God knew how. She had gone first to Holmes, then to Godchaux's, then back to Holmes, and she couldn't get the clerk to pay attention. It was getting later and this was the bag she wanted for her new outfit and her day-long date on Saturday, a trip outside the city with the insurance man. They would take a drive to St. Martinsville, to the bayou country, an all-day jaunt, this time without his little girl, who had gone back to stay with her grandparents up in Birmingham. In the store the clerk saw her twice but each time waited on customers who had come there after her. Suddenly impatient, she wondered what would happen if, instead of complaining, she simply walked out with the bag, and she did and nothing happened. She got nearly to the door and thought, Now 111 turn around and come back, but something made her want to know if they'd stop her at the door and what it felt like, so she kept walking, and they didn't and then she was on the street. It was like something that never happened; the store was forgotten like a station passed through on a train, but she had the bag and must go back and pay for it, the 260 Elizabeth Spencer 261 next day. How? She looked at it, after supper alone, in her small apartment, getting ready to bathe and put up her hair and do her nails for the next day. It was handsome and right, fresh white calf with a gold clasp, made in France. Just never do it again, she thought; but whatever it was she had felt in the park near the cathedral that day when the man had touched her and spoken of Jake Springland, she felt again. Well, Jake stole, it suddenly dawned on her. He was in those stick-ups. Why, that's pretty awful, isn't it? Wasn't it? They had talked about it, she and Jake, had discussed it openly between them. They both thought of themselves as having the intellectual approach—it is intellectual to discuss your own lawlessness. Jake's talking face came back. He'd had a way of looking at it. He had wanted to soak his very soul, he had said, in something that wasn't the straight-side-up U.S.A. If you went in for the straight life, he said, you wound up killing the ones who weren't straight. Just to teach them a lesson, you threw them into outer darkness, that was the absurd goal of the 100 percent red-blooded American. Why? Well, nine times out of ten because they didn't believe in the sacredness of money. This was Jake's philosophy. When he talked like this, she remembered Martin's sister. "Aman in business," Jake had said, "knows and secretly accepts it that his actions will sooner or later have to include murder or he is not a good businessman. People in politics know this— the ones who aren't bureaucrats. But every businessman knows it." Remembering how Jake used to go on this way, she thought of the insurance man's even profile. She thought of his kindly humorous eyes when he looked at her, his firm touch whether driving the car, paying bills or kissing her goodnight. All that Jake thought was wrong. Jake was sophomoric. He belonged to her immature years. To hell with Jake. The next morning saw her on another errand near Amelia Street, and just for old times' sake she walked 2 6 2 T H E S N A R E past the Mulligan house under the trees. As she did so, change as sudden as a chemical transformation came over her. She could have been a maiden bound to a stake while flames started up around her ankles and climbed her legs, and a drum...