Read Online Rainbow's End by James M. Cain - Free Book Online Page A

slapping the Listerine on, I got the bleeding stopped and finally went back to her. Her crying seemed to have stopped, but as soon as I opened the door, it started up again, the old camp-meeting yodel, loud, clear, hopeless, and 100 percent phoney. I said: “OK, knock it off or I’m letting you have it.”
    All that got was more of the same, but louder.
    I hauled off and slapped her, first on one side of the face, then on the other. She just hollered louder. I got a pitcher of water and started to pour. “Cool it or you’re getting cooled.”
    She didn’t quite stop but did ease off, so I knew at last that we could talk. “Now,” I asked her, “what’s this all about? What in the hell is it all about?”
    â€œOh!” she wailed. “That I should live to see this day!”
    â€œWhat day?” I wanted to know. “It’s Sunday. What other day is it?”
    â€œAfter all these years, after all I’ve done, slaving and scrimping and slaving—”
    â€œAnd don’t forget those fingers,” I reminded her. “Working them to the bone.” Because, of course, I’d heard some of this before, in one connection or another. In fact, I knew most of it by heart. But this time she went on and on, reciting it by the book, leaving nothing out. It wasn’t until all of it had been said two or three times that at last she got around to the night before. “And then to think, that when at last there was hope, when the sun was coming up, when the rainbow had showed in the sky, that I should be stabbed in the back—by my own little boy, and a horrible Jezebel!”
    â€œWhere was this creature? I didn’t see any Jezebel.”
    â€œA slut, that slept up with men, then took up with my own little Davey!”
    â€œHey! Little Davey is me!”
    â€œJust a Jezebel!”
    â€œHow you know she slept up with guys?”
    â€œI can tell by looking at her. Anyone can tell. That rotten look on her face.”
    â€œAnd sleeping up with guys, that makes her a Jezebel?”
    â€œWhat do you think it makes her?”
    â€œI wouldn’t know what it makes her—maybe nothing. What she is is a very nice girl.”
    â€œI say she’s a Jezebel.”
    â€œSleeping up makes her that?”
    â€œWhat do you think it makes her?” she said again.
    â€œMaybe a girl in love.”
    â€œLove? Love?”
    â€œMom, tell me something.”
    â€œTell you what?”
    â€œThere was a girl I looked up, that I had reason to look up. Named Myra Giles, who sounds a lot like you. She was sixteen years old and went in the hospital here to have a child. She had it and two months later got married. So she must have been sleeping up. Does that make her a Jezebel?”
    She raised up on one elbow and stared at me a long time. In the dark her eyes looked big, no longer blue, but black. “When did you find that out?”
    â€œOh, a few months ago. I was getting my papers in order for some insurance I thought I might buy. They want birth certificates, parents’ marriage license, and so on. So I went down and looked myself up. It’s OK with me. All I saw in those papers was a sixteen-year-old girl who was in love. There’s no law against it. I glory in her, and if I’m what came of it, I’m thankful for that, too. But let’s get back to the subject. Did that make her a Jezebel?”
    â€œCould be, it did.”
    â€œWell, Jezzie, hello.”
    â€œHow’d you like to go to hell?”
    â€œWell, you said it, I didn’t.”
    â€œYou bet I said it. I have to. But it wasn’t me.”
    â€œNot you? Are you being funny?”
    â€œIt wasn’t me, now you know! I wasn’t even supposed to tell you, you’re not my son! And Jody was not your father! It wasn’t me who had you! I was the one who got married, but I didn’t have you! It was Big Myra, my cousin who has