test.txt

The expedition that had discovered Ozagen had succeeded in correlating two thousand Siddo words with an equal number of American words.
The description of the Siddo syntax was very restricted.
And, as Hal found out, obviously mistaken in many cases.
This discovery caused Hal anxiety.
His duty was to write a school text and to teach the entire personnel of the Gabriel how to speak Ozagen.
Yet, if he used all of the little means at his disposal, he would be instructing his students wrongly.
Moreover, even getting this across would be difficult.
For one thing, the organs of speech of the Ozagen natives differed somewhat from Earthmen's; the sounds made by these organs were, therefore, dissimilar.
It was true that they could be approximated, but would the Ozagenians understand these approximations?
Another obstacle was the grammatical construction of Siddo.
Consider the tense system.
Instead of inflecting a verb or using an unattached particle to indicate the past or future, Siddo used an entirely different word.
Thus, the masculine animate infinitive dabhumaksanigalu'ahai, meaning to live, was, in the perfect tense, ksu'u'peli'afo, and, in the future, mai'teipa.
The same use of an entirely different word applied for all the other tenses.
Plus the fact that Siddo not only had the normal (to Earthmen) three genders of masculine, feminine, and neuter, but the two extra of inanimate and spiritual.
Fortunately, gender was inflected, though the expression of it would be difficult for anybody not born in Siddo.
The system of indicating gender varied according to tense.
All the other parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and conjunctions operated under the same system as the verbs.
This was not, for the Angel, just a matter of running through a logical or deductive chain, or deciding on some action from some already established premise.
No doubt the Angels could do that kind of thing as fast as any computer.
What Gabriel was being asked to do now, however, was to re-examine all his basic assumptions, make value-judgments on them, and give them new and different powers in his mind to govern his motives.
This is not wholly a reasoning process- a computer cannot do it all- and even in an Angel it takes time.
(Or, perhaps, especially in an Angel, whose assumptions had mostly been fixed millions of years ago.)
Being reasonably sure of the reason for the long pause, however, did not make it seem any less long to Jack.
He had already become used to Hesperus' snapping back answers to questions almost before Jack could get them asked.
There was nothing he could do but wait.
The dice were cast.
At last Gabriel spoke.
"We misjudged you", he said slowly.
"We had concluded that no race as ephemeral as yours could have had time to develop a sense of justice.
Of course we have before us the example of the great races at the galactic center; individually they are nearly as mortal as you- the difference does not seem very marked to us, where it exists.
But they have survived for long periods as races, whereas you are young.
We shall recommend to them that they shorten your trial period by half.
"For now, it is clear that we were in the wrong.
You may reclaim your property, and the penalty on Hesperus is lifted.
Hesperus, you may speak".
"I did not perceive this essential distinction either, First-Born", Hesperus said at once, "I was only practicing a concept that Jack taught me, called a deal".
"Nevertheless, you were its agent.
Jack, what is the nature of this concept"?
"It's a kind of agreement in which each party gives something to the other", Jack said.
"We regard it as fair only when each party feels that what he has received is as valuable, or more valuable, than what he has given".
His heart, he discovered, was pounding.
"For instance, Hesperus agreed to help me find my property, and I agreed to take him to Earth.
Between individuals, this process is called bargaining.
When it is done between races or nations, it is called making a treaty.
And the major part of my mission to your nest is to make a treaty between your race and mine.
Recovering the property was much less important".
"Strange", Gabriel said.
"And apparently impossible.
Though it might be that we would have much to give you, you have nothing to give us".
"Hesperus and Lucifer", Jack said, "show that we do".
Another pause; but this one was not nearly as long.
"Then it is a matter of pleasure; of curiosity; of a more alive time.
Yes, those could be commodities under this concept.
But you should understand, Jack, that Hesperus and Lucifer are not long out of the nursery.
Visiting the Earth would not be an offering of worth to those of us who are older".
This explained a great deal.
"All the more reason, then", Jack said, "why we must have a treaty.
We will gladly entertain your young and give them proper living quarters, in return for their help in running our fusion reactors.
But we must know if this is in accordance with your customs, and must have your agreement they will not misuse the power we put in their hands, to our hurt".
"But this simply requires that they behave in accordance with the dictates of their own natures, and respect yours in turn.
To this we of course agree".
Jack felt a wave of complete elation, but in a second it had vanished without a trace.
What Gabriel was asking was that mankind forego all its parochial moral judgments, and contract to let the Angels serve on Earth as it is in Heaven regardless of the applicable Earth laws.
The Angels in turn would exercise similar restraints in respect for the natural preferences and natures of the Earthmen- but they had no faintest notion of man's perverse habit of passing and enforcing laws which were contrary to his own preferences and violations of his nature.
The simple treaty principle that Gabriel was asking him to ratify, in short, was nothing less than total trust.
Nothing less would serve.
And it might be, considering the uncomfortable custom the Angels had of thinking of everything in terms of absolutes, that the proposal of anything less might well amount instead to something like a declaration of war.
Furthermore, even the highly trained law clerk who was a part of Jack's total make-up could not understand how the principle could ever be codified.
Almost the whole experience of mankind pointed toward suspicion, not trust, as the safest and sanest attitude toward all outsiders.
Yet there was some precedent for it.
The history of disarmament agreements, for instance, had been unreassuringly dismal; but the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics nevertheless did eventually agree on an atomic bomb test ban, and a sort of provisional acceptance of each other's good intentions on this limited question.
Out of that agreement, though not by any easy road, eventually emerged the present world hegemony of the United Nations; suspicion between member states still existed, but it was of about the same low order of virulence as the twentieth-century rivalry between Arizona and California over water supplies.
Besides, agreements "in principle", with the petty details to be thrashed out later, were commonplace in diplomatic history.
The trouble with them was that they almost never worked, and in fact an agreement "in principle" historically turned out to be a sure sign that neither party really wanted the quarrel settled.
Suppose that this one were to work?
There was no question in Jack's mind of the good faith on one side, at least.
If mankind could be convinced of that **h It was worth trying.
In fact, it had to be tried.
It would be at once the most tentative and most final treaty that Earth had ever signed.
Secretary Hart had taught Jack, at least partially, to be content with small beginnings in all diplomatic matters; but there was no small way to handle this one.
He turned back to the screens, the crucial, conclusive phrase on his lips.
But he was too late.
He had lost his audience.
## For a moment he could make no sense at all of what he saw.
It seemed to be only a riot of color, light and meaningless activity.
Gradually, he realized that the pentagon of Angel elders had vanished, and that the ritual learning dance of the nursery had been broken up.
The Angels in the nursery were zigzagging wildly in all directions, seemingly at random.
"Hesperus!
What's going on here?
What's happened"?
"Your brothers have been found.
They are on their way here".
"Where?
I don't see them.
The instruments don't show them".
"You can't see them yet, Jack.
They'll be in range in a short while".
Jack scanned the skies, the boards, and the skies again.
Nothing.
No- there was a tiny pip on the radar; and it was getting bigger rapidly.
If that was the skiff, it was making unprecedented speed.
Then the skiff hove into sight, just a dot of light at first against the roiling blackness and crimson streaks of the Coal Sack.
Through the telescope, Jack could see that both spacesuits were still attached to it.
The sail was still unfurled, though there were a good many holes in it, as Langer had predicted would be the case by now.
It was a startling, almost numenous sight; but even more awesome was the fact that it was trailing an enormous comet's-tail of Angels.
The skiff was not heading for the nursery, however.
It seemed unlikely that her crew, if either of them were alive, could even see the Ariadne, for they were passing her at a distance of nearly a light-year.
And there would be no chance of signaling them- without the Nernst generator Jack could not send a call powerful enough to get through all the static, and by the time he could rebuild his fusion power the skiff would be gone.
Fuming, helpless, he watched them pass him.
The sail, ragged though it was, still had enough surface to catch some of the ocean of power being poured out from the nursery stars.
He would never have believed, without seeing it, that the bizarre little vessel could go so fast.
But where was it going?
And why was it causing so much agitation among the Angels, and being followed by so many of them?
There was only one possible answer, but Jack's horrified mind refused to believe it until he had fed the radar plots of the skiff's course into the computer.
The curve on the card the computer spat back at him couldn't be argued with, however.
The skiff was headed for the very center of the nebula- toward that place which, Jack knew now, could hold nothing less important than the very core of the Angel's life and religion.
It was clear that Langer had at last found a way to attract the Angel's attention.
It was equally clear that as of this moment, the treaty was off.
LANGER WOULD HAVE to be headed off, whether he knew where he was going or not.
Almost surely he did; after all, he had had the same set of facts as Jack had had to work from, and he was an almost frighteningly observant man.
But not having talked to the Angels, he had made a wrong turn in his reasoning somewhere along the line.
Had he decided, perhaps, that the center of the cloud was a center of government, instead of a center of life and faith"?
But it didn't matter now whether he meant to invade the Holy of Holies, or was simply headed in that direction by accident.
If it was intentional, it was now also unnecessary; and whether intentional or not, the outcome would be disastrous.
Jack crawled under the boards and restored the six feet of lead line he had excised from the Nernst generator switch.
When he was back on his feet again and about to reinstall the fuses, however, he hesitated.
He had to have fusion power to catch up with the skiff, and he had to have it fast.
But fusion power in the Coal Sack was what had triggered all the trouble in the first place- and he already had an Angel aboard.
"Hesperus"?
"Receiving".
"I'm going to turn my generator back on, as I promised to do.
But I can't take you to Earth yet.
First I've got to intercept my brothers before they get any deeper into trouble.
Will you obstruct this, or will you help?
I know it's not part of the bargain, and your elders might not like it".
"Nobody else can live in your hearth while I am in it", Hesperus said promptly.
"As for my elders, they have already admitted that they were wrong.
If because of this incident they become angry with Earth, I will not be permitted to go there at all.
Therefore of course I will help".
With a short-lived sigh of relief, Jack plugged the fuses back in and threw the switch.
Without an instant's transition, the green light that meant full fusion power winked on the board.
Always before, it had taken five minutes to- Of course.
Hesperus was in there.
From here on out, the Ariadne was going to be hotter than any space cruiser man had ever dreamed of.
But since he had failed to anticipate it, he lost the five minutes anyhow, in plotting an intercept orbit.
"Hesperus, don't use this t-tau vector trick of yours, please.
Ryan hefted his bulk up and supported it on one elbow.
He rubbed his eyes sleepily with one huge paw.
"Ekstrohm, Nogol, you guys okay"?
"Nothing wrong with me that couldn't be cured", Nogol said.
He didn't say what would cure him; he had been explaining all during the trip what he needed to make him feel like himself.
His small black eyes darted inside the olive oval of his face.
"Ekstrohm"?
Ryan insisted.
"Okay".
"Well, let's take a ground-level look at the country around here".
The facsiport rolled open on the landscape.
A range of bluffs hugged the horizon, the color of decaying moss.
Above them, the sky was the black of space, or the almost equal black of the winter sky above Minneapolis, seen against neon-lit snow.
That cold, empty sky was full of fire and light.
It seemed almost a magnification of the Galaxy itself, of the Milky Way, blown up by some master photographer.
This fiery swath was actually only a belt of minor planets, almost like the asteroid belt in the original Solar System.
These planets were much bigger, nearly all capable of holding an atmosphere.
But to the infuriation of scientists, for no known reason not all of them did.
This would be the fifth mapping expedition to the planetoids of Yancy-6 in three generations.
They lay months away from the nearest Earth star by jump drive, and no one knew what they were good for, although it was felt that they would probably be good for something if it could only be discovered- much like the continent of Antarctica in ancient history.
"How can a planet with so many neighbors be so lonely"?
Ryan asked.
He was the captain, so he could ask questions like that.
"Some can be lonely in a crowd", Nogol said elaborately.
## "WHAT will we need outside, Ryan"?
Ekstrohm asked.
"No helmets", the captain answered.
"We can breathe out there, all right.
It just won't be easy.
This old world lost all of its helium and trace gases long ago.
Nitrogen and oxygen are about it".
"Ryan, look over there", Nogol said.
"Animals.
Ringing the ship.
Think they're intelligent, maybe hostile"?
"I think they're dead", Ekstrohm interjected quietly.
"I get no readings from them at all.
Sonic, electronic, galvanic- all blank.
According to these needles, they're stone dead".
"Ekstrohm, you and I will have a look", Ryan said.
"You hold down the fort, Nogol.
Take it easy".
"Easy", Nogol confirmed.
"I heard a story once about a rookie who got excited when the captain stepped outside and he couldn't get an encephalographic reading on him.
Me, I know the mind of an officer works in a strange and unfathomable manner".
"I'm not worried about you mis-reading the dials, Nogol, just about a lug like you reading them at all.
Remember, when the little hand is straight up that's negative.
Positive results start when it goes towards the hand you use to make your mark".
"But I'm ambidextrous".
Ryan told him what he could do then.
Ekstrohm smiled, and followed the captain through the airlock with only a glance at the lapel gauge on his coverall.
The strong negative field his suit set up would help to repel bacteria and insects.
Actually, the types of infection that could attack a warm-blooded mammal were not infinite, and over the course of the last few hundred years adequate defenses had been found for all basic categories.
He wasn't likely to come down with hot chills and puzzling striped fever.
They ignored the ladder down to the planet surface and, with only a glance at the seismological gauge to judge surface resistance, dropped to the ground.
It was day, but in the thin atmosphere contrasts were sharp between light and shadow.
They walked from midnight to noon, noon to midnight, and came to the beast sprawled on its side.
Ekstrohm nudged it with a boot.
"Hey, this is pretty close to a wart-hog".
"Uh-huh", Ryan admitted.
"One of the best matches I've ever found.
Well, it has to happen.
Statistical average and all.
Still, it sometimes gives you a creepy feeling to find a rabbit or a snapping turtle on some strange world.
It makes you wonder if this exploration business isn't all some big joke, and somebody has been everywhere before you even started".
## THE surveyor looked sidewise at the captain.
The big man seldom gave out with such thoughts.
Ekstrohm cleared his throat.
"What shall we do with this one?
Dissect it"?
Ryan nudged it with his toe, following Ekstrohm's example.
"I don't know, Stormy.
It sure as hell doesn't look like any dominant intelligent species to me.
No hands, for one thing.
Of course, that's not definite proof".
"No, it isn't", Ekstrohm said.
"I think we'd better let it lay until we get a clearer picture of the ecological setup around here.
In the meantime, we might be thinking on the problem all these dead beasts represent.
What killed them"?
"It looks like we did, when we made blastdown".
"But what about our landing was lethal to the creatures"?
"Radiation"?
Ekstrohm suggested.
"The planet is very low in radiation from mineral deposits, and the atmosphere seems to shield out most of the solar output.
Any little dose of radiation might knock off these critters".
"I don't know about that.
Maybe it would work the other way.
Maybe because they have had virtually no radioactive exposure and don't have any R's stored up, they could take a lot without harm".
"Then maybe it was the shockwave we set up.
Or maybe it's sheer xenophobia.
They curl up and die at the sight of something strange and alien- like a spaceship".
"Maybe", the captain admitted.
"At this stage of the game anything could be possible.
But there's one possibility I particularly don't like".
"And that is"?
"Suppose it was not us that killed these aliens.
Suppose it is something right on the planet, native to it.
I just hope it doesn't work on Earthmen too.
These critters went real sudden".
## EKSTROHM lay in his bunk and thought, the camp is quiet.
The Earthmen made camp outside the spaceship.
There was no reason to leave the comfortable quarters inside the ship, except that, faced with a possibility of sleeping on solid ground, they simply had to get out.
The camp was a cluster of aluminum bubbles, ringed with a spy web to alert the Earthmen to the approach of any being.
Each man had a bubble to himself, privacy after the long period of enforced intimacy on board the ship.
Ekstrohm lay in his bunk and listened to the sounds of the night on Yancey-6 138.
There was a keening of wind, and a cracking of the frozen ground.
Insects there were on the world, but they were frozen solid during the night, only to revive and thaw in the morning sun.
The bunk he lay on was much more uncomfortable than the acceleration couches on board.
Yet he knew the others were sleeping more soundly, now that they had renewed their contact with the matter that had birthed them to send them riding high vacuum.
Ekstrohm was not asleep.
Now there could be an end to pretending.
He threw off the light blanket and swung his feet off the bunk, to the floor.
Ekstrohm stood up.
There was no longer any need to hide.
But what was there to do?
What had changed for him?
He no longer had to lie in his bunk all night, his eyes closed, pretending to sleep.
In privacy he could walk around, leave the light on, read.
It was small comfort for insomnia.
Ekstrohm never slept.
Some doctors had informed him he was mistaken about this.
Actually, they said, he did sleep, but so shortly and fitfully that he forgot.
Others admitted he was absolutely correct- he never slept.
His body processes only slowed down enough for him to dispell fatigue poisons.
Occasionally he fell into a waking, gritty-eyed stupor; but he never slept.
Never at all.
Naturally, he couldn't let his shipmates know this.
Insomnia would ground him from the Exploration Service, on physiological if not psychological grounds.
He had to hide it.
## OVER the years, he had had buddies in space in whom he thought he could confide.
The buddies invariably took advantage of him.
Since he couldn't sleep anyway, he might as well stand their watches for them or write their reports.
Where the hell did he get off threatening to report any laxness on their part to the captain?
A man with insomnia had better avoid bad dreams of that kind if he knew what was good for him.
Ekstrohm had to hide his secret.
In a camp, instead of shipboard, hiding the secret was easier.
But the secret itself was just as hard.
Ekstrohm picked up a lightweight no-back from the ship's library, a book by Bloch, the famous twentieth century expert on sex.
He scanned a few lines on the social repercussions of a celebrated nineteenth century sex murderer, but he couldn't seem to concentrate on the weighty, pontifical, ponderous style.
On impulse, he flipped up the heat control on his coverall and slid back the hatch of the bubble.
Ekstrohm walked through the alien glass and looked up at the unfamiliar constellations, smelling the frozen sterility of the thin air.
Behind him, his mates stirred without waking.
EKSTROHM was startled in the morning by a banging on the hatch of his bubble.
It took him a few seconds to put his thoughts in order, and then he got up from the bunk where he had been resting, sleeplessly.
The angry burnt-red face of Ryan greeted him.
"Okay, Stormy, this isn't the place for fun and games.
What did you do with them"?
"Do with what"?
"The dead beasties.
All the dead animals laying around the ship".
"What are you talking about, Ryan?
What do you think I did with them"?
"I don't know.
All I know is that they are gone".
"Gone"?
Ekstrohm shouldered his way outside and scanned the veldt.
There was no ring of animal corpses.
Nothing.
Nothing but wispy grass whipping in the keen breeze.
"I'll be damned", Ekstrohm said.
"You are right now, buddy.
ExPe doesn't like anybody mucking up primary evidence".
"Where do you get off, Ryan"?
Ekstrohm demanded.
"Why pick me for your patsy?
This has got to be some kind of local phenomenon.
Why accuse a shipmate of being behind this"?
"Listen, Ekstrohm, I want to give you the benefit of every doubt.
But you aren't exactly the model of a surveyor, you know.
You've been riding on a pink ticket for six years, you know that".
"No", Ekstrohm said, "No, I didn't know that".
"You've been hiding things from me and Nogol every jump we've made with you.
Now comes this!
It fits the pattern of secrecy and stealth you've been involved in".
"What could I do with your lousy dead bodies?
What would I want with them"?
"All I know is that you were outside the bubbles last night, and you were the only sentient being who came in or out of our alarm web.
The tapes show that.
Now all the bodies are missing, like they got up and walked away".
It was not a new experience to Ekstrohm.
No.
Suspicion wasn't new to him at all.
"Ryan, there are other explanations for the disappearance of the bodies.
Look for them, will you?
I give you my word I'm not trying to pull some stupid kind of joke, or to deliberately foul up the expedition.
Take my word, can't you"?
Ryan shook his head.
"I don't think I can.
There's still such a thing as mental illness.
You may not be responsible".
Ekstrohm scowled.
"Don't try anything violent, Stormy.
I outweigh you fifty pounds and I'm fast for a big man".
"I wasn't planning on jumping you.
Why do you have to jump me the first time something goes wrong?
She lived and was given a name.
Helva.
For her first three vegetable months she waved her crabbed claws, kicked weakly with her clubbed feet and enjoyed the usual routine of the infant.
She was not alone for there were three other such children in the big city's special nursery.
Soon they all were removed to Central Laboratory School where their delicate transformation began.
One of the babies died in the initial transferral but of Helva's "class", seventeen thrived in the metal shells.
Instead of kicking feet, Helva's neural responses started her wheels; instead of grabbing with hands, she manipulated mechanical extensions.
As she matured, more and more neural synapses would be adjusted to operate other mechanisms that went into the maintenance and running of a space ship.
For Helva was destined to be the "brain" half of a scout ship, partnered with a man or a woman, whichever she chose, as the mobile half.
She would be among the elite of her kind.
Her initial intelligence tests registered above normal and her adaptation index was unusually high.
As long as her development within her shell lived up to expectations, and there were no side-effects from the pituitary tinkering, Helva would live a rewarding, rich and unusual life, a far cry from what she would have faced as an ordinary, "normal" being.
However, no diagram of her brain patterns, no early IQ tests recorded certain essential facts about Helva that Central must eventually learn.
They would have to bide their official time and see, trusting that the massive doses of shell-psychology would suffice her, too, as the necessary bulwark against her unusual confinement and the pressures of her profession.
A ship run by a human brain could not run rogue or insane with the power and resources Central had to build into their scout ships.
Brain ships were, of course, long past the experimental stages.
Most babes survived the techniques of pituitary manipulation that kept their bodies small, eliminating the necessity of transfers from smaller to larger shells.
And very, very few were lost when the final connection was made to the control panels of ship or industrial combine.
Shell people resembled mature dwarfs in size whatever their natal deformities were, but the well-oriented brain would not have changed places with the most perfect body in the Universe.
So, for happy years, Helva scooted around in her shell with her classmates, playing such games as Stall, Power-Seek, studying her lessons in trajectory, propulsion techniques, computation, logistics, mental hygiene, basic alien psychology, philology, space history, law, traffic, codes: all the et ceteras that eventually became compounded into a reasoning, logical, informed citizen.
Not so obvious to her, but of more importance to her teachers, Helva ingested the precepts of her conditioning as easily as she absorbed her nutrient fluid.
She would one day be grateful to the patient drone of the sub-conscious-level instruction.
Helva's civilization was not without busy, do-good associations, exploring possible inhumanities to terrestrial as well as extraterrestrial citizens.
One such group got all incensed over shelled "children" when Helva was just turning fourteen.
When they were forced to, Central Worlds shrugged its shoulders, arranged a tour of the Laboratory Schools and set the tour off to a big start by showing the members case histories, complete with photographs.
Very few committees ever looked past the first few photos.
Most of their original objections about "shells" were overridden by the relief that these hideous (to them) bodies were mercifully concealed.
Helva's class was doing Fine Arts, a selective subject in her crowded program.
She had activated one of her microscopic tools which she would later use for minute repairs to various parts of her control panel.
Her subject was large- a copy of the Last Supper- and her canvas, small- the head of a tiny screw.
She had tuned her sight to the proper degree.
As she worked she absentmindedly crooned, producing a curious sound.
Shell people used their own vocal cords and diaphragms but sound issued through microphones rather than mouths.
Helva's hum then had a curious vibrancy, a warm, dulcet quality even in its aimless chromatic wanderings.
"Why, what a lovely voice you have", said one of the female visitors.
Helva "looked" up and caught a fascinating panorama of regular, dirty craters on a flaky pink surface.
Her hum became a gurgle of surprise.
She instinctively regulated her "sight" until the skin lost its cratered look and the pores assumed normal proportions.
"Yes, we have quite a few years of voice training, madam", remarked Helva calmly.
"Vocal peculiarities often become excessively irritating during prolonged intra-stellar distances and must be eliminated.
I enjoyed my lessons".
Although this was the first time that Helva had seen unshelled people, she took this experience calmly.
Any other reaction would have been reported instantly.
"I meant that you have a nice singing voice **h dear", the lady amended.
"Thank you.
Would you like to see my work"?
Helva asked, politely.
She instinctively sheered away from personal discussions but she filed the comment away for further meditation.
"Work"?
asked the lady.
"I am currently reproducing the Last Supper on the head of a screw".
"O, I say", the lady twittered.
Helva turned her vision back to magnification and surveyed her copy critically.
"Of course, some of my color values do not match the old Master's and the perspective is faulty but I believe it to be a fair copy".
The lady's eyes, unmagnified, bugged out.
"Oh, I forget", and Helva's voice was really contrite.
If she could have blushed, she would have.
"You people don't have adjustable vision".
The monitor of this discourse grinned with pride and amusement as Helva's tone indicated pity for the unfortunate.
"Here, this will help", suggested Helva, substituting a magnifying device in one extension and holding it over the picture.
In a kind of shock, the ladies and gentlemen of the committee bent to observe the incredibly copied and brilliantly executed Last Supper on the head of a screw.
"Well", remarked one gentleman who had been forced to accompany his wife, "the good Lord can eat where angels fear to tread".
"Are you referring, sir", asked Helva politely, "to the Dark Age discussions of the number of angels who could stand on the head of a pin"?
"I had that in mind".
"If you substitute 'atom' for 'angel', the problem is not insoluble, given the metallic content of the pin in question".
"Which you are programed to compute"?
"Of course".
"Did they remember to program a sense of humor, as well, young lady"?
"We are directed to develop a sense of proportion, sir, which contributes the same effect".
The good man chortled appreciatively and decided the trip was worth his time.
If the investigation committee spent months digesting the thoughtful food served them at the Laboratory School, they left Helva with a morsel as well.
"Singing" as applicable to herself required research.
She had, of course, been exposed to and enjoyed a music appreciation course which had included the better known classical works such as "Tristan und Isolde", "Candide", "Oklahoma", "Nozze de Figaro", the atomic age singers, Eileen Farrell, Elvis Presley and Geraldine Todd, as well as the curious rhythmic progressions of the Venusians, Capellan visual chromatics and the sonic concerti of the Altairians.
But "singing" for any shell person posed considerable technical difficulties to be overcome.
Shell people were schooled to examine every aspect of a problem or situation before making a prognosis.
Balanced properly between optimism and practicality, the nondefeatist attitude of the shell people led them to extricate themselves, their ships and personnel, from bizarre situations.
Therefore to Helva, the problem that she couldn't open her mouth to sing, among other restrictions, did not bother her.
She would work out a method, by-passing her limitations, whereby she could sing.
She approached the problem by investigating the methods of sound reproduction through the centuries, human and instrumental.
Her own sound production equipment was essentially more instrumental than vocal.
Breath control and the proper enunciation of vowel sounds within the oral cavity appeared to require the most development and practice.
Shell people did not, strictly speaking, breathe.
For their purposes, oxygen and other gases were not drawn from the surrounding atmosphere through the medium of lungs but sustained artificially by solution in their shells.
After experimentation, Helva discovered that she could manipulate her diaphragmic unit to sustain tone.
By relaxing the throat muscles and expanding the oral cavity well into the frontal sinuses, she could direct the vowel sounds into the most felicitous position for proper reproduction through her throat microphone.
She compared the results with tape recordings of modern singers and was not unpleased although her own tapes had a peculiar quality about them, not at all unharmonious, merely unique.
Acquiring a repertoire from the Laboratory library was no problem to one trained to perfect recall.
She found herself able to sing any role and any song which struck her fancy.
It would not have occurred to her that it was curious for a female to sing bass, baritone, tenor, alto, mezzo, soprano and coloratura as she pleased.
It was, to Helva, only a matter of the correct reproduction and diaphragmic control required by the music attempted.
If the authorities remarked on her curious avocation, they did so among themselves.
Shell people were encouraged to develop a hobby so long as they maintained proficiency in their technical work.
On the anniversary of her sixteenth year in her shell, Helva was unconditionally graduated and installed in her ship, the XH-834.
Her permanent titanium shell was recessed behind an even more indestructible barrier in the central shaft of the scout ship.
The neural, audio, visual and sensory connections were made and sealed.
Her extendibles were diverted, connected or augmented and the final, delicate-beyond-description brain taps were completed while Helva remained anesthetically unaware of the proceedings.
When she awoke, she was the ship.
Her brain and intelligence controlled every function from navigation to such loading as a scout ship of her class needed.
She could take care of herself and her ambulatory half, in any situation already recorded in the annals of Central Worlds and any situation its most fertile minds could imagine.
Her first actual flight, for she and her kind had made mock flights on dummy panels since she was eight, showed her complete mastery of the techniques of her profession.
She was ready for her great adventures and the arrival of her mobile partner.
There were nine qualified scouts sitting around collecting base pay the day Helva was commissioned.
There were several missions which demanded instant attention but Helva had been of interest to several department heads in Central for some time and each man was determined to have her assigned to his section.
Consequently no one had remembered to introduce Helva to the prospective partners.
The ship always chose its own partner.
Had there been another "brain" ship at the Base at the moment, Helva would have been guided to make the first move.
As it was, while Central wrangled among itself, Robert Tanner sneaked out of the pilots' barracks, out to the field and over to Helva's slim metal hull.
"Hello, anyone at home"?
Tanner wisecracked.
"Of course", replied Helva logically, activating her outside scanners.
"Are you my partner"?
she asked hopefully, as she recognized the Scout Service uniform.
"All you have to do is ask", he retorted hopefully.
"No one has come.
I thought perhaps there were no partners available and I've had no directives from Central".
Even to herself Helva sounded a little self-pitying but the truth was she was lonely, sitting on the darkened field.
Always she had had the company of other shells and more recently, technicians by the score.
The sudden solitude had lost its momentary charm and become oppressive.
"No directives from Central is scarcely a cause for regret, but there happen to be eight other guys biting their fingernails to the quick just waiting for an invitation to board you, you beautiful thing".
It would have killed you in the cabin.
Do you have anything for me"?
Mercer stammered, not knowing what B'dikkat meant, and the two-nosed man answered for him, "I think he has a nice baby head, but it isn't big enough for you to take yet".
Mercer never noticed the needle touch his arm.
B'dikkat had turned to the next knot of people when the super-condamine hit Mercer.
He tried to run after B'dikkat, to hug the lead spacesuit, to tell B'dikkat that he loved him.
He stumbled and fell, but it did not hurt.
The many-bodied girl lay near him.
Mercer spoke to her.
"Isn't it wonderful?
You're beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
I'm so happy to be here".
The woman covered with growing hands came and sat beside them.
She radiated warmth and good fellowship.
Mercer thought that she looked very distinguished and charming.
He struggled out of his clothes.
It was foolish and snobbish to wear clothing when none of these nice people did.
The two women babbled and crooned at him.
With one corner of his mind he knew that they were saying nothing, just expressing the euphoria of a drug so powerful that the known universe had forbidden it.
With most of his mind he was happy.
He wondered how anyone could have the good luck to visit a planet as nice as this.
He tried to tell the Lady Da, but the words weren't quite straight.
A painful stab hit him in the abdomen.
The drug went after the pain and swallowed it.
It was like the cap in the hospital, only a thousand times better.
The pain was gone, though it had been crippling the first time.
He forced himself to be deliberate.
He rammed his mind into focus and said to the two ladies who lay pinkly nude beside him in the desert, "That was a good bite.
Maybe I will grow another head.
That would make B'dikkat happy"!
The Lady Da forced the foremost of her bodies in an upright position.
Said she, "I'm strong, too.
I can talk.
Remember, man, remember.
People never live forever.
We can die, too, we can die like real people.
I do so believe in death"!
Mercer smiled at her through his happiness.
"Of course you can.
But isn't this nice **h" With this he felt his lips thicken and his mind go slack.
He was wide awake, but he did not feel like doing anything.
In that beautiful place, among all those companionable and attractive people, he sat and smiled.
B'dikkat was sterilizing his knives.
## Mercer wondered how long the super-condamine had lasted him.
He endured the ministrations of the dromozoa without screams or movement.
The agonies of nerves and itching of skin were phenomena which happened somewhere near him, but meant nothing.
He watched his own body with remote, casual interest.
The Lady Da and the hand-covered woman stayed near him.
After a long time the half-man dragged himself over to the group with his powerful arms.
Having arrived he blinked sleepily and friendlily at them, and lapsed back into the restful stupor from which he had emerged.
Mercer saw the sun rise on occasion, closed his eyes briefly, and opened them to see stars shining.
Time had no meaning.
The dromozoa fed him in their mysterious way; the drug canceled out his needs for cycles of the body.
At last he noticed a return of the inwardness of pain.
The pains themselves had not changed; he had.
He knew all the events which could take place on Shayol.
He remembered them well from his happy period.
Formerly he had noticed them- now he felt them.
He tried to ask the Lady Da how long they had had the drug, and how much longer they would have to wait before they had it again.
She smiled at him with benign, remote happiness; apparently her many torsos, stretched out along the ground, had a greater capacity for retaining the drug than did his body.
She meant him well, but was in no condition for articulate speech.
The half-man lay on the ground, arteries pulsating prettily behind the half-transparent film which protected his abdominal cavity.
Mercer squeezed the man's shoulder.
The half-man woke, recognized Mercer and gave him a healthily sleepy grin.
"'A good morrow to you, my boy'.
That's out of a play.
Did you ever see a play"?
"You mean a game with cards"?
"No", said the half-man, "a sort of eye-machine with real people doing the figures".
"I never saw that", said Mercer, "but I"- "But you want to ask me when B'dikkat is going to come back with the needle".
"Yes", said Mercer, a little ashamed of his obviousness.
"Soon", said the half-man.
That's why I think of plays.
We all know what is going to happen.
We all know when it is going to happen.
We all know what the dummies will do"- he gestured at the hummocks in which the decorticated men were cradled- "and we all know what the new people will ask.
But we never know how long a scene is going to take".
"What's a 'scene'"?
asked Mercer.
"Is that the name for the needle"?
The half-man laughed with something close to real humor.
"No, no, no.
You've got the lovelies on the brain.
A scene is just a part of a play.
I mean we know the order in which things happen, but we have no clocks and nobody cares enough to count days or to make calendars and there's not much climate here, so none of us know how long anything takes.
The pain seems short and the pleasure seems long.
I'm inclined to think that they are about two Earth-weeks each".
Mercer did not know what an "Earth-week" was, since he had not been a well-read man before his conviction, but he got nothing more from the half-man at that time.
The half-man received a dromozootic implant, turned red in the face, shouted senselessly at Mercer, "Take it out, you fool!
Take it out of me"!
When Mercer looked on helplessly, the half-man twisted over on his side, his pink dusty back turned to Mercer, and wept hoarsely and quietly to himself.
Mercer himself could not tell how long it was before B'dikkat came back.
It might have been several days.
It might have been several months.
Once again B'dikkat moved among them like a father; once again they clustered like children.
This time B'dikkat smiled pleasantly at the little head which had grown out of Mercer's thigh- a sleeping child's head, covered with light hair on top and with dainty eyebrows over the resting eyes.
Mercer got the blissful needle.
When B'dikkat cut the head from Mercer's thigh, he felt the knife grinding against the cartilage which held the head to his own body.
He saw the child-face grimace as the head was cut; he felt the far, cool flash of unimportant pain, as B'dikkat dabbed the wound with a corrosive antiseptic which stopped all bleeding immediately.
The next time it was two legs growing from his chest.
Then there had been another head beside his own.
Or was that after the torso and legs, waist to toe-tips, of the little girl which had grown from his side?
He forgot the order.
He did not count time.
Lady Da smiled at him often, but there was no love in this place.
She had lost the extra torsos.
In between teratologies, she was a pretty and shapely woman; but the nicest thing about their relationship was her whisper to him, repeated some thousands of time, repeated with smiles and hope, "People never live forever".
She found this immensely comforting, even though Mercer did not make much sense out of it.
Thus events occurred, and victims changed in appearance, and new ones arrived.
Sometimes B'dikkat took the new ones, resting in the everlasting sleep of their burned-out brains, in a ground-truck to be added to other herds.
The bodies in the truck threshed and bawled without human speech when the dromozoa struck them.
Finally, Mercer did manage to follow B'dikkat to the door of the cabin.
He had to fight the bliss of super-condamine to do it.
Only the memory of previous hurt, bewilderment and perplexity made him sure that if he did not ask B'dikkat when he, Mercer, was happy, the answer would no longer be available when he needed it.
Fighting pleasure itself, he begged B'dikkat to check the records and to tell him how long he had been there.
B'dikkat grudgingly agreed, but he did not come out of the doorway.
He spoke through the public address box built into the cabin, and his gigantic voice roared out over the empty plain, so that the pink herd of talking people stirred gently in their happiness and wondered what their friend B'dikkat might be wanting to tell them.
When he said it, they thought it exceedingly profound, though none of them understood it, since it was simply the amount of time that Mercer had been on Shayol: "Standard years- eighty-four years, seven months, three days, two hours, eleven and one half minutes.
Good luck, fellow".
Mercer turned away.
The secret little corner of his mind, which stayed sane through happiness and pain, made him wonder about B'dikkat.
What persuaded the cow-man to remain on Shayol?
What kept him happy without super-condamine?
Was B'dikkat a crazy slave to his own duty or was he a man who had hopes of going back to his own planet some day, surrounded by a family of little cow-people resembling himself?
Mercer, despite his happiness, wept a little at the strange fate of B'dikkat.
His own fate he accepted.
He remembered the last time he had eaten- actual eggs from an actual pan.
The dromozoa kept him alive, but he did not know how they did it.
He staggered back to the group.
The Lady Da, naked in the dusty plain, waved a hospitable hand and showed that there was a place for him to sit beside her.
There were unclaimed square miles of seating space around them, but he appreciated the kindliness of her gesture none the less.
The years, if they were years, went by.
The land of Shayol did not change.
Sometimes the bubbling sound of geysers came faintly across the plain to the herd of men; those who could talk declared it to be the breathing of Captain Alvarez.
There was night and day, but no setting of crops, no change of season, no generations of men.
Time stood still for these people, and their load of pleasure was so commingled with the shocks and pains of the dromozoa that the words of the Lady Da took on very remote meaning.
"People never live forever".
Her statement was a hope, not a truth in which they could believe.
They did not have the wit to follow the stars in their courses, to exchange names with each other, to harvest the experience of each for the wisdom of all.
There was no dream of escape for these people.
Though they saw the old-style chemical rockets lift up from the field beyond B'dikkat's cabin, they did not make plans to hide among the frozen crop of transmuted flesh.
Far long ago, some other prisoner than one of these had tried to write a letter.
His handwriting was on a rock.
Mercer read it, and so had a few of the others, but they could not tell which man had done it.
Nor did they care.
The letter, scraped on stone, had been a message home.
They could still read the opening: "Once, I was like you, stepping out of my window at the end of day, and letting the winds blow me gently toward the place I lived in.
Once, like you, I had one head, two hands, ten fingers on my hands.
The front part of my head was called a face, and I could talk with it.
Now I can only write, and that only when I get out of pain.
DAN MORGAN TOLD HIMSELF HE WOULD FORGET Ann Turner.
He was well rid of her.
He certainly didn't want a wife who was fickle as Ann.
If he had married her, he'd have been asking for trouble.
But all of this was rationalization.
Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night thinking of Ann, and then could not get back to sleep.
His plans and dreams had revolved around her so much and for so long that now he felt as if he had nothing.
The easiest thing would be to sell out to Al Budd and leave the country, but there was a stubborn streak in him that wouldn't allow it.
The best antidote for the bitterness and disappointment that poisoned him was hard work.
He found that if he was tired enough at night, he went to sleep simply because he was too exhausted to stay awake.
Each day he found himself thinking less often of Ann; each day the hurt was a little duller, a little less poignant.
He had plenty of work to do.
Because the summer was unusually dry and hot, the spring produced a smaller stream than in ordinary years.
The grass in the meadows came fast, now that the warm weather was here.
He could not afford to lose a drop of the precious water, so he spent most of his waking hours along the ditches in his meadows.
He had no idea how much time Budd would give him.
In any case, he had no intention of being caught asleep, so he carried his revolver in its holster on his hip and he took his Winchester with him and leaned it against the fence.
He stopped every few minutes and leaned on his shovel as he studied the horizon, but nothing happened, each day dragging out with monotonous calm.
When, in late afternoon on the last day in June, he saw two people top the ridge to the south and walk toward the house, he quit work immediately and strode to his rifle.
It could be some kind of trick Budd had thought up.
No one walked in this country, least of all Ed Dow or Dutch Renfro or any of the rest of the Bar B crew.
Morgan watched the two figures for a time, puzzled.
When they were closer and he saw that one was a woman, he was more puzzled than ever.
He cleaned his shovel, left it against the fence, picked up his Winchester, and started downstream.
His visitors had crawled through the south fence and were crossing the meadow, angling toward the house.
Now he saw that both the man and woman were moving slowly and irregularly, staggering, as if they found it a struggle to remain on their feet.
Reaching the house ahead of them, he waited with his Winchester in his hands.
They crawled through the north fence and came on toward him, and now he saw that both were young, not more than nineteen or twenty.
They were dirty, their clothes were torn, and the girl was so exhausted that she fell when she was still twenty feet from the front door.
She lay there, making no effort to get back on her feet.
The boy came on to the porch and sat down, his gaze on Morgan as if half expecting him to shoot and not really caring.
Morgan hesitated, thinking that if this was a trick, it was a good one.
He didn't think it was possible for this couple to be pretending.
The boy licked his dry lips.
He asked, "Could we have a drink"?
Morgan jerked his head toward the front door.
"In the kitchen", he said.
Leaning his Winchester against the front of the house, he walked to the girl.
"Get up.
There's water in the house".
She didn't move or say anything.
Her eyes were glazed as if she didn't hear or even see him.
She had reached a point at which she didn't even care how she looked.
Her face was very thin, and burned by the sun until much of the skin was dead and peeling, the new skin under it red and angry.
Her blond hair was frowzy, her dress torn in several places, and her shoes were so completely worn out that they were practically no protection.
It must have hurt her even to walk, for the sole was completely off her left foot and Morgan saw that it was bruised and bleeding.
He picked her up, sliding one hand under her shoulders, the other under her knees, and carried her into the house.
She was amazingly light, and so relaxed in his arms that he wasn't even sure she was conscious.
Any lingering suspicion that this was a trick Al Budd had thought up was dispelled.
No girl would go this far to fool a man so she could kill him.
Besides, she had a sweet face that attracted him.
He put her down on the couch, and going into the kitchen, saw that the boy had dropped into a chair beside the table.
They looked a good deal alike, Morgan thought.
Both had blonde hair and blue eyes, and there was even a faint similarity of features.
Morgan filled the dipper from the water bucket on the shelf, went back into the front room, lifted the girl's head, and held the edge of the dipper to her mouth.
She drank greedily, and murmured, "Thank you", as he lowered her head.
He stood looking down at her for a moment, wondering what could have reduced her to this condition.
He had seen a few nester wagons go through the country, the families almost starving to death, but he had never seen any of them on foot and as bad off as these two.
The girl dropped off to sleep.
Morgan returned to the kitchen, built a fire, and carried in several buckets of water from the spring which he poured into the copper boiler that he had placed on the stove.
He brought his Winchester in from the front of the house, then faced the boy.
"Who are you and what happened to you"?
he asked.
"I'm Billy Jones", the boy answered.
"That's my wife Sharon.
We ran out of money and we haven't eaten for two days".
"What are you doing here"?
"Are we in Wyoming"?
Morgan nodded.
"About five miles north of the line".
Jones sighed as if relieved.
"We've been looking for work, but all the ranchers have turned us down".
"You mean you dragged your wife all over hell's half-acre looking for work"?
Morgan demanded.
"The town of Buckhorn's only about six miles from here.
Why didn't you go there"?
"We didn't want town work", Jones said.
"This is a mighty empty country", Morgan said.
"There's only one more ranch three miles north of here.
You'd have starved to death if you'd missed both places".
"Then we're lucky we got here.
Could you give us a job, Mr **h" "Morgan.
Dan Morgan".
He was silent a moment, thinking he could use a man this time of year, and if the girl could cook, it would give him more time in the meadows, but he knew nothing about the couple.
They might kill him in his sleep, thinking there was money in the house.
He dismissed the possibility at once.
The girl's thin face haunted him.
It wasn't the face of a killer.
He wasn't so sure about the boy.
He hadn't shaved for several weeks, his sparse beard giving his face a pathetic, woebegone expression.
There was more to this than Jones had told him.
They were running from something.
He'd be an idiot to let them stay he thought, but he couldn't send them on, either.
"I could use some help", Morgan said finally, "but I can't afford to pay you anything.
I guess you'd better go on in the morning".
"We'll work for our keep", the boy said eagerly.
"I've been mucking in a mine in the San Juan, but I used to work on a ranch.
Sharon, she's cooked in a restaurant.
We'll work hard, Mr Morgan".
"I'll see", Morgan said.
"Right now you need a meal and a bath.
Your wife's in terrible shape".
"I know", Jones said dejectedly.
Morgan filled the fire box with wood again, then started supper and set the table.
When the meal was ready, he told Jones to wash up, and going into the front room, woke the girl.
He said, "I've got some supper ready".
She rubbed her eyes and stretched, then sat up, her hands going to her hair.
"I'm a mess", she said, and suddenly she was alarmed.
"Who are you?
How did we get here"?
"I'm Dan Morgan.
This is the Rafter M. You fell down in front of the house, and I carried you in.
I gave you a drink and then you went to sleep".
"Oh".
She stared at him, her eyes wide as she thought about what he had said; then she murmured: "You're very kind, Mr Morgan.
Do you take in all the strays who come by"?
"I don't have many strays coming to my front door", he said.
"Think you can walk to the table"?
"Of course".
She got to her feet, staggered, and almost fell.
He caught her by an arm and helped her into the kitchen.
She sat down at the table, shaking her head.
"I'm sorry, Mr Morgan.
I'm usually a very strong woman, but I'm awfully tired".
"And hungry", he said.
"Start in.
It's not much of a meal, but it's what I eat".
"Not much of a meal"?
the girl cried.
"Mr Morgan, it's the best-looking food I ever saw".
He told himself he had never seen two people eat so much.
When they were finally satisfied, Jones said, "I think he's going to give us work".
The grateful way she looked at Morgan made him ashamed of himself.
When he saw the expression in her eyes, he knew he couldn't send them on.
She said, "I guess the Lord looks out for fools, drunkards, and innocents".
Morgan laughed.
"Which are you"?
"We're not drunkards", she said.
"That's all I'm sure of".
She helped him with the dishes, then he brought more water in from the spring before it got dark.
He carried the tub from the back of the house where it hung from a nail in the wall.
He said: "You'll feel a lot better after you have a bath.
Your feet are in bad shape, Mrs Jones.
You'll have to go to town to see the doc".
"No, she'll be all right", Jones said quickly.
"I mean, we don't have any way to get there and we can't expect you to quit work just to take us to town".
"We'll see", Morgan said.
"Could you find me a needle and thread"?
the girl asked.
"My dress needs some work on it".
He nodded and, going into the bedroom, brought a needle, thread, and scissors.
He said: "I'm going to bed".
He nodded at the door in front of him.
"That's my spare bedroom.
The bed isn't made, but you'll find plenty of blankets there".
"You're awfully kind", the girl said.
"We'll pay you back if you'll let us.
Some way".
"It's all right", he said.
"I get up early.
You'd better sleep".
Jones followed him into the front room, closing the door behind him.
He said: "If it's all right with you, Mr Morgan, I'll sleep out here on the couch.
We haven't slept together since we started.
I just can't take any chances on getting her pregnant, and if we were sleeping together **h" He stopped, embarrassed, and Morgan said, "I understand that, but I don't savvy why you'd go off and leave your jobs in the first place".
"We got fired", Jones said.
"We had to do something".
They were a pair of lost, whipped kids, Morgan thought as he went to bed.
Gavin paused wearily.
"You can't stay here with me.
It's late and you said they'd be here by dawn".
"You can't make me go".
Gavin sank down again into his chair and began to rock.
He was thinking of Rittenhouse and how he had left him there, to rock to death on the porch of the Splendide.
It was the only thing in his life for which he felt guilt.
Beneath his black shirt his frail shoulders shook and croaks of pain broke from his throat, the stored pain shattering free in slow gasps, terrible to see.
Clayton tried to call back the face of the man he had known.
Against that other man he could rally his anger; against this bent man in the chair he was powerless.
Gavin's lips moved so that Clayton had to stoop to catch the words.
"Do you remember Big Charlie"?
he whispered.
"He stuck with me all these years.
Just a half-breed 'pache, never said much, never meant anythin to me, but he stuck with me.
He got into a fight with Tom English, your brother's son.
It was a fair fight, the boy provoked it- Big Charlie told me so.
I believed him.
They killed Big Charlie, dumped his body in my rose garden two nights ago.
My men, they all left me.
Just cleared out.
I didn't understand why, Clay.
They just all cleared out.
I treated them fair **h" He wiped his lips with a sleeve, then stared at Clayton in a childish kind of wonder.
"Do you mean"- he asked almost shyly- "you want me to go with you, wherever you're goin"?
"Yes".
"You don't hate me any more"?
Clayton choked, shook his head, murmuring, "No".
"Come here".
The old man beckoned with one finger and Clayton went forward to him.
Gavin slipped his arms around his chest and hugged him fiercely.
"All my life", he said, "I tried.
I tried.
I saw you driftin away- but I tried.
And you wanted no part of me when I had so much to give.
Now there's nothin left of me.
Laurel is gone, my men are gone, Ed is dead- and you come to me, to help me.
Oh!
God in Heaven, I can't refuse you now.
That would mock me too much!
Can't let you go way from me again **h" He closed his eyes, ashamed of his tears.
"I'll go, Clay".
Clayton freed himself from the embrace and stepped back.
The eyes followed him fearfully.
"The horses.
There isn't much time.
I'll saddle the horses and bring them round.
You get ready".
He burst from the hot confinement of the room into the cold night air.
Gavin's stallion was in the barn and he tightened the cinches over the saddle blanket, working by touch in the darkness, comforting the animal with easy words.
When he had finished he led him and the mare to the porch.
The stallion had smelled the mare coming into heat and began to paw the turf, shaking his head.
Clayton looped the reins in a knot over the veranda post and patted the warm flesh of his neck.
The mare had backed away.
"You take it easy, boy", Clayton whispered.
"She doesn't want you now.
You take it easy, your time will come".
Gavin stood on the porch, a thin figure.
He had taken a carbine down from the wall and it trailed from his hand, the stock bumping on the wood floor.
Clayton called to him and he came slowly down the steps.
"Clay", he said, "where are we goin"?
"To a ranch in the valley.
There's someone there I have to see.
We may take her with us- to California.
I don't know yet, it's crazy; I have to think about it.
But California is where we're goin".
"California".
Gavin began to nod.
"That's a new land.
A man could make a mark there.
two men, together like us, we could do somethin fine out there, maybe find a place where no one's ever been.
Start out fresh, the two of us, like nothin had ever happened".
"Yes, like a father and son".
"I made you what you are", Gavin whispered.
"I made you so you could stand up.
I made you a man".
"Yes, Gavin, you did".
He approached the horse and laid a hand on the stallion's quivering neck.
"Help me up, Clay.
Help me up, I feel kind of stiff".
Clayton lifted him gently into the saddle, like a child.
"I hate to leave my garden", Gavin said.
"They'll trample it down.
I loved my garden".
"It will grow again- in California".
"I loved this valley", he whispered huskily.
"Lived alone here for three years, before any man came.
Lived alone by the river.
It was nice then, so peaceful and quiet.
There was no one but me.
I don't want to leave it".
Clayton swung into the saddle and whacked the stallion's rump.
The two horses broke from the yard, from the circle of light cast by the lamp still burning in the house, into the darkness.
THEY RODE at a measured pace through the valley.
Dawn would come soon and the night was at its coldest.
The moon had sunk below the black crest of the mountains and the land, seen through eyes that had grown accustomed to the absence of light, looked primeval, as if no man had ever trespassed before.
It looked as Gavin had first seen it years ago, on those nights when he slept alone by his campfire and waked suddenly to the hoot of an owl or the rustle of a blade of grass in the moon's wind- a savage land, untenanted and brooding, too strong to be broken by the will of men.
Gavin sighed bitterly.
In that inert landscape the caravan of his desires passed before his mind.
He saw them ambushed, strewn in the postures of the broken and the dying.
In vain his mind groped to reassemble the bones of the relationships he had sought so desperately, but they would not come to life.
The silence oppressed him, made him bend low over the horse's neck as if to hide from a wind that had begun to blow far away and was twisting slowly through the darkness in its slow search.
They passed ranches that were framed dark gray against the black hills.
Then at last the darkness began to dissolve.
A bold line of violet broke loose from the high ridge of the mountains, followed by feathers of red that swept the last stars from the sky.
The wan light spread over the ground and the valley revealed in the first glimmer the contours of trees and fences and palely shadowed gullies.
## THEY HAD been seen as soon as they left the ranch, picked out of the darkness by the weary though watchful eyes of two men posted a few hundred yards away in the windless shelter of the trees.
The two men whipped their horses into town and flung themselves up the steps of the saloon, crying their intelligence.
The men in Pettigrew's were tired from a night's drinking, their faces red and baggy.
But the liquor had flushed their courage.
They greeted the news angrily, as though they had been cheated of purpose.
Lester heard their muttering, saw their eyes reveal their desire.
He worked his tongue round and round in the hollow of his cheek and his voice came out of his throat, dry and cracked.
"He's leavin.
That's what you wanted, isn't it?
Clayton is with him, takin him out of the valley.
You can't"- "Keep out of this", Purvis snarled.
"He's not your brother, he's Gavin's son.
You see, he lied to us when he said he was leavin alone".
Joe Purvis was thinking back many years.
First he thought of the time he had ridden to Gavin and told him how his cattle were being rustled at the far end of the valley.
He remembered Gavin's smirk, his own cringing feeling, his impotence.
Then he thought of a time when Clayton's horse had fallen lame in the Gap.
His wife had said to him: "Nellie is in love with Clayton Roy.
He wouldn't even dance with her at Gavin's party.
He treats her like she was dirt.
And you stand by like a fool and let him do it **h" He remembered Clayton's mocking smile in the saloon when he had asked him what he would do if they brought their cattle to water.
It was the night Clayton had tricked them in the poker game.
"You're Gavin's son", Joe Purvis had said.
He turned to Lester.
"You brought him back to this valley thinkin he would help you find your boy.
He meant to help Gavin all the time.
He made a fool of you, Lester".
He swung round to the other men- "We can catch him easy!
There are plenty of fresh horses halfway at my place.
If we let them go, they won't stay away, they'll find men to ride with them and they'll be back.
There's only one way they can get out now and that's through the Gap- if we ride hard we can take them".
Lester's hand fluttered to Cabot's shoulder.
The boy jerked away.
"He killed Tom- do you understand that"?
Cabot turned back to the men and he was drunk with the thing they would do, wild to break from the cloying warmth of the saloon into the cold of the ebbing night.
He fled through the door and down the steps, running, and the men grunted and followed, pushing Lester to one side where he backed against the wall with the sleeve of his jacket raised before his eyes to shut out the light.
Purvis and Silas Pettigrew were the last to leave.
They mounted up and rode slowly behind the others at a safe distance.
IN THE cold dawn the mist swirled low to the ground, then rose with a gust of sudden wind to leave the valley clear.
The clouds parted and hard gashes of sunlight swooped down to stain the earth with streaks of white and gold light so that the shadows of the running horses flowed like dark streams over the dazzling snow.
When they turned in the saddle they could see the men behind them, strung out on the prairie in a flat black line.
The wind of their running was cold and wild, the horses were lathered and their manes streamed like stiff black pennants in the wind.
The mare began to tire and Clayton felt the spray of snow from the hoofs of Gavin's stallion.
He looked over his shoulder at the thin dotting of pursuers.
They neither gained nor fell back.
He rode low on the mare's neck.
Ahead of him Gavin turned slightly off the trail and pointed for the Gap, no more than a mile away.
Gavin's face was bloodless with excitement.
He did not look back; he could feel more than hear the staccato beat of hoofs that fanned out across the prairie to the north.
He knew who was riding after him- the men he had known all his life, the men who had worked for him, sworn their loyalty to him.
Now they were riding to kill him.
And he was fleeing, running- fleeing his death and his life at the same time.
The land over which he sped was the land he had created and lived in: his valley.
With every leaping stride of the horse beneath him he crossed one more patch of earth that had been his, that he would never see again.
The Gap looming before him- the place where had confronted Jack English on that day so many years ago- was his exit from all that had meaning to him.
California is too far, he thought.
He would never reach California.
He was too old- when he passed up and through the corridor of pines that lined the trail he could see ahead, he was passing from life.
The sentry was not dead.
He was, in fact, showing signs of reviving.
He had been carrying an Enfield rifle and a holstered navy cap-and-ball pistol.
A bayonet hung in a belt scabbard.
He was partially uniformed in a cavalry tunic and hat.
Mike stripped these from him and donned them.
He and Dean tied and gagged the man, using his belt and shirt for the purpose.
They dragged him inside the building.
Fiske joined them, unsteady on his feet.
Julia, seeing the bandage, rushed to him.
"You are hurt"!
she breathed.
"I never felt better in my life", Fiske blustered.
He turned to Susan and kissed her on the cheek.
"Thank you, My dear", he said.
"You are very brave".
Mike silenced them.
"We'll talk later.
First, we've got to get out of here".
"We'll grab horses", Dean said.
"The main bunch is outside, but there are some over there inside the wall".
Mike debated it, trying to decide whether Fiske was strong enough to ride.
But it at least offered him a chance for living.
He had none here.
And, for the sake of Julia and Susan, it had to be tried.
The guerrilla bivouac remained silent.
Light showed in the orderly room across the parade ground.
Someone evidently was on duty there.
No doubt there would be men guarding the horses.
About a dozen animals were held inside the stockade, as best Mike could make out in the moonlight.
Evidently this was a precaution so that mounts would be available in an emergency.
He handed the guard's rifle to Fiske.
"Dean and myself will try to cut out horses to ride", he said.
"We'll stampede the rest.
You stay with the ladies.
All of you be ready to ride hell for leather".
He added, "If this doesn't work out, the three of you barricade yourself in the house and talk terms with them".
He handed the bayonet to Dean and kept the pistol.
Susan halted Dean and kissed him.
She clung to him, talking to him, and dabbing at her eyes.
Mike turned away.
He was thinking that the way she had responded to his own kiss hadn't meant what he had believed it had.
He felt unutterably weary.
Dean turned from Susan and took Julia Fortune in his arms.
He kissed her also, and with deep tenderness.
She too began to weep.
He released her and joined Mike.
"All right", he said.
Mike only said, "Later".
"Be careful, McLish"!
Susan said fiercely.
"The way you were careful"?
he snorted.
"Running around in the moonlight almost naked and slugging a man with a rock"?
He kept going.
He wanted no more sentimental scenes with her.
He might say or do something foolish.
Something all of them would regret.
He might tell her how sorry a spectacle she was making of herself, pretending to be blind to the way Julia Fortune had taken Dean's affections from her.
And using him, Mike McLish, as a sop to her pride.
He handed the bayonet to Dean and kept the pistol.
"Stay well back of me", he said.
"I'm going to walk up to the horses, bold as brass, pretending I'm one of the guerrillas.
There's bound to be someone on guard, but the hat might fool them long enough for me to get close".
Holding the pistol concealed, he walked to the rear wall of the stockade.
It was pierced by a wagon gate built of two wings.
One wing stood open.
Mike passed through it and moved toward the dark mass of horses.
They were tethered, army style, on stable lines.
A voice spoke near-at-hand.
"Who's thet"?
Just me", Mike said.
"Is that you, Bill"?
He located his man.
The guard stood in the shadow of the stockade wall just out of reach of the moonlight.
Mike kept walking and got within arm's reach before the man became suspicious and straightened from his lax slouch.
Mike struck with the muzzle of the pistol.
But the luck that had been running their way left him.
The guard instinctively parried the blow with his rifle.
He tried to veer the rifle around to fire into Mike's body.
Mike, off balance, managed to bat the muzzle away a moment before it exploded.
The bullet went wide.
Mike swung the pistol in a savage backlash.
This time it connected solidly on the man's temple, felling him.
The explosion of the rifle had crashed against the walls of the stockade and the deep echoes were still rolling in the hills.
The startled horses began rearing on their tethers.
Dean came rushing up.
"Are you hit"?
he demanded.
"No, but the fat's in the fire"!
Mike said.
"There's no chance now of all of us getting away.
You'll have to try it alone".
The sentry's saddled horse stood picketed nearby, having been kept handy in case of need.
Mike took the bayonet from Dean's hand and slashed the picket line.
"Up you go"!
he said.
"Ride"!
Dean resisted Mike's attempt to push him toward the horse.
"Why not you"?
he protested.
"Dammit"!
Mike said frantically.
"You're lighter than me.
It's our only chance now.
Try to find these Feds.
The rest of us can fort up in the house and hang on until you get back.
You're the one that's taking the big chance".
Dean still hesitated, but Mike lifted him almost bodily into the saddle and thrust the reins in his hand.
"No telling how good this horse is", Mike panted.
"Favor him and save something in case you hit trouble.
Watch out for Apaches when it comes daylight.
Take the pistol.
You might need it.
We'll still have the rifle, and I might be able to round up some more.
I'll stampede the rest of these horses so they can't chase you".
Dean leaned from the saddle and gave him a mighty whack on the back.
"McLish", he said as he kicked the horse into motion, "I'd be a mighty sad man if we never met again".
Then he was on his way at a gallop.
Mike ran down the line, slashing picket ropes with the bayonet.
He lifted a screeching war whoop.
That touched off a total stampede.
He darted inside the stockade and freed the horses there.
These poured through the gate and joined the flight.
The animals thundered away into the moonlight, heading for the ridges.
The guerrillas were swarming from their bivouac at the west end of the enclosure.
"'Paches"!
Mike yelled.
"They're stealin' the stock"!
He scuttled in shadow along the east wall of the stockade and then followed the south wall until he was at the rear of the two frame buildings.
He crouched there.
His shout had been taken up and repeated.
The guerrillas were running across the parade ground and through the rear gate in the wake of the departing horses.
All were carrying guns they had seized up, but they were half-clad or hardly clad at all.
Durkin and Calhoun came running from the post.
They had pistols in their hands.
They bawled questions that were not answered in the uproar.
They followed the others toward the east gate.
Beyond the stockade rifles began to explode as some of the guerrillas fired at shadows that they imagined were Apaches.
Mike made a dash to the rear of the frame buildings.
He crawled beneath the two supply wagons which stood between the buildings and peered around a corner.
The area was deserted.
A man was standing in the open door of the lighted orderly room a few yards to Mike's left, but he, too, suddenly made up his mind and went racing to join the confused activity at the east end of the stockade.
Mike crawled to the door and peered in.
The orderly room seemed to be deserted.
A lantern hung from a peg, giving light.
Ducking inside, he found that three rifles were stacked in a corner.
A brace of pistols, holstered on belts, hung from a peg, along with ammunition pouches.
An ammunition case stood open, containing canisters which contained powder cartridges.
Mike seized a blanket from a pallet in a corner, spread it on the floor and used it to form a bag in which he placed his booty.
Shouldering the load he peered from the door.
His looting of the orderly room had taken only a minute or two and the vicinity was still clear of guerrillas.
He looked at the looming hoods of the supply wagons, struck by a new inspiration.
He set his bundle down.
Snatching the lantern from its peg, he shattered its globe with a blow against a post.
He picked up the powder canister and ran out.
Bursting paper cartridges, he scattered powder beneath the nearest wagon and dumped the contents of the canister upon it.
He shouldered the blanket again, backed off, and tossed the lantern with its open wick beneath the wagon.
He turned and raced across the parade ground toward the rock house.
Powder flame gushed beneath the wagon.
The stockade was brilliantly lighted and the guerrillas sighted him.
They realized the truth.
Bullets began to snap past him.
One struck the muzzle of one of the rifles that projected from the shoulder pack.
Its force spun him around, but he recovered and got into stride again.
A bullet tore the earth from beneath his foot when he was a stride or two from safety.
Another struck him heavily in the thigh and he went down.
Guerrillas were racing toward him.
Susan and Julia came from the door and dragged him with them.
The three of them floundered through the door into the interior and fell in a heap.
Susan bounced to her feet and slammed the door.
She crouched aside as bullets beat at the portal, chewing into the planks.
Some tore entirely through the whipsawed post oak.
The iron hinges held, but the planks were in danger of being torn from the crossbars.
mike rolled to Susan, grasped her around the knees, dragging her off her feet.
He hovered over her to shield her, for spent bullets were thudding against the rear walls.
He peered from a loophole.
Guerrillas were only a dozen yards away, charging the house.
Mike snatched a pistol from the heap of scattered booty and fired.
He dropped a man with the first bullet.
At the same moment Wheeler Fiske fired the rifle Mike had given him and another guerrilla was hit.
That halted the rush.
The guerrillas scattered for cover.
The wagons were burning fiercely.
The mudwagon had caught fire also.
The blaze was spreading to the frame buildings.
The guerrillas realized they faced a new problem.
"Gawdamighty"!
one screeched.
"There goes our grub an' ammunition"!
"Get a bucket line going"!
Calhoun shouted.
"Hurry!
Hurry"!
The guerrillas began a frantic search for pails in which to bring water from the spring.
But what few containers they found were inadequate.
Many of them, in increasing panic, came running with water in their hats in a ludicrous effort.
Both buildings were in flames.
The heat drove the guerrillas back.
The roof of the command post began to buckle.
"Drag the wagons to the spring"!
Lew Durkin yelled.
"Run 'em right into the spring!
Hustle"!
One of the wagons erupted a massive pillar of flame.
A sizable supply of powder had been touched off.
The wagons and the coach were beyond saving and so were the buildings.
The glow of the fire reached through the openings in the windows, giving light enough to examine Mike's wound.
The bullet had torn through the flesh just above the knee, inflicting an ugly gash that was forming a pool of blood on the floor.
But it had missed the bone and had passed on through.
Susan and Julia ripped strips from their clothing and bound the injury.
Mike tested the leg and found that he was able to hobble around on it.
"So it wasn't the earthquake that made him return to his village"!
"No.
Now dammit, I don't want to go into any more explanations.
Here comes Jason.
Keep this to yourself".
Reverend Jason, looking worried, hurried toward us.
"Anything wrong, cap'n?
The men seem to think so".
"Dirion found a large war party south of us.
They'll probably attack at dawn", Montero said.
He brushed past the clergyman and walked into the center of the camp.
Using his hands as a trumpet he shouted, "Fort up!
Fort up!
There's a large war party on their way"!
For a second, engages, cooks, voyageurs appeared struck dumb.
Then Little Billy began shouting orders to round up the ponies and fill the water buckets and for the cooks to hurry up with the meal.
They all flew into action.
"That was a terrible thing to do", I said to Oso.
The Aricaras treated us like friends.
And here all the time you knew the Sioux would be using our rifles on them!
God, what a world you people live in".
Oso gave me an unruffled look.
"Old Knife's got the largest war party ever seen on the river", he said calmly.
"What would you have done in Montero's moccasins?
Let Old Knife come up and kill you and your people, or would you steer him on someone else"?
He shook his head.
"Mr Manuel did that in the war.
That's why the British never got the tribes to fight for the King.
Mr Manuel whispered in the ears of the Sioux that the Cheyennes were comin' to raid 'em for their horses.
Then he went on to the Cheyennes and told them that the Sioux was goin' to move up.
He did that with all the Nations.
Hell, they were fightin' each other so hard they had no time for anyone else.
The War Department wrote Mr Manuel a letter and said he was a hero.
I saw that letter.
He carried it in a little wallet made of fish skin".
"But that was war", I said.
"There's no war on now".
"You're wrong, Matt.
In this country there's a war on every time the grass turns green.
First it was the Nations against themselves, then it was them against the whites.
And it's goin' to go on like this year after year until the white people take over this land".
I remember being told it would happen so fast people would think it took place overnight.
"That's why this company's important.
Once we get over the mountains others will come along.
That's why the Trust don't want us to make it.
That bastard Chambers!- Old Knife's not the only chief he'll get to do his dirty work!
Before we get through he'll have the Blackfeet hankerin' for our hair and our goods.
Well, talkin' ain't goin' to help- let's fort up"!
As I dug in behind one of the bales we were using as protection, I grudgingly found myself agreeing with Oso's logic, especially when I imagined what would have happened to Missy if Old Knife's large party of screeching warriors had overrun our company.
For, unlike the Sioux and the Crows, the Aricaras are not great horsemen, nor are they aggressive like the savage Blackfeet.
More of an agricultural nation, they have relied on their warriors only for defense and for survival in the endless wars of the plains.
Still, I was disgusted with myself for agreeing with Montero's methods.
Surprisingly, he had told the others what he had done.
In the brief moment I had to talk to them before I took my post on the ring of defenses, I indicated I was sickened by the methods men employed to live and trade on the river.
"I think Montero did right", Amy said firmly.
"Let the savages kill each other What do we care"?
Reverend Jason was understandably bitter.
"It was a terrible thing to do.
Those little children **h".
But Oso replied calmly, "Trouble ain't easy to dodge out in this country, rev'rend".
GRAY EYES ATTACKED OUR camp just as the first pink threads stitched together the hills and the sky.
Our camp was in the center of a wide valley.
Montero had set up a strong position, using every bale and box we had in addition to barricades of logs and brush.
He had ordered the ponies brought inside the fortified circle and had assigned Pierre and a band of picked engages the job of trying to keep them steady under fire.
The pony herd was the one flaw in our defense; the Rees undoubtedly would try to cut down as many of the animals as possible.
Wildly bucking horses would make the position difficult to defend against charging warriors.
The cooks had prepared one of the best meals we'd had in a long time, and on Montero's orders had baked enough bread to last the day.
Buckets were filled, the herd fed and watered.
The worst part had been the waiting; although we didn't expect the attack before dawn, the long cloudy night, filled with the sounds of the industrious insects, seemed endless.
Coyotes and hunting wolves sounded like signaling Indian scouts, the whinny of a restless pony made one's skin crawl.
Oso slept unconcernedly, his rifle cradled in his arms; I didn't catch a wink.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Gray Eyes rushing at me with a knife.
It was a relief when they finally came.
They poured through the opening in the valley, then spread out in a long line to come at us, brandishing their lances and filling the morning with their spine-chilling scalp cry.
"Oso", Montero called "I'll get Gray Eyes".
"That'll be a pleasure to see", the big black murmured as he stared down the barrel of his rifle.
"Hold your fire", Montero was shouting.
"Wait until my shot.
I'll shoot the first man who doesn't".
I could see them in my sights.
They were about a mile off; under me the ground quivered slightly.
At first they were only feathers and dark indistinguishable faces and bodies, hunched over their horses' heads.
Gradually they emerged as men.
Gray Eyes was in the lead.
His face was split by a vermilion streak, his eyes were pools of white; jagged red and black medicine symbols covered his chest.
He was naked except for a clout.
Next to him was a young boy I was sure had sat near me at one of the trading sessions.
His mouth was open, his neck corded with the strain of his screams.
I found his chest in my sights.
It had a red circle.
The circle came nearer and nearer.
My God, how long is he going to wait, I thought **h. Montero's rifle cracked.
At first I thought he had missed.
Gray Eyes remained erect.
The feathered lance was still above his head.
As he started to slump over, another warrior swung him onto his horse.
I squeezed the trigger.
At the last second I dropped my sights from the bare chest and bright red circle to the chest of his pony.
I saw the pony fall like a stone and the young warrior flew over its head, bouncing like a rubber ball.
He started to run but Oso's shot caught him on the wing.
He jerked once in the grass and lay still.
"If you're goin' to kill 'em- kill 'em"!
Oso growled.
What else he said was lost in the rattle of gunfire on all sides.
The Aricaras broke under the devastating fire, wheeled and retreated.
"Lead up!
Lead up!
They'll be back"!
Montero was shouting.
Far up the valley I could see the Rees circling and reorganizing.
Out in front of our walls the grass was covered with dead and dying men, war shields, lances, blankets and wounded and dead horses.
The morning air was filled with the sweetish odor of new-spilled blood, the acrid stench of frightened horses, and the bitterness of burned powder.
A horse screamed as it twisted from side to side in a frenzy.
A rifle cracked; the square head fell over.
One of the warriors suddenly leaped to his feet and began running across the valley to the trees that lined the small creek.
His legs pumped furiously, his long black hair streamed out behind him.
There was a ragged volley.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
"For Christ's sake, don't waste your powder on one of 'em"!
Montero shouted furiously.
"Wait for the charge!
The charge, I tell you"!
The sharp cries at the end of the valley were faint.
They grew louder as the Indians charged again.
I could see their faces glistening with sweat and bear grease, their mouths open, shouting their spine-chilling cries.
"Gray Eyes is back", Montero said.
The war captain had been badly wounded and was fighting to hold his seat.
I could see the blood running down his chest.
He was riding between two warriors, who held him erect when he started to slump.
I forgot to aim.
In my sights I watched him looming bigger and bigger.
Montero's shot had caught him high in the chest; there was no doubt he was dying.
Again we waited for Montero.
This time he delayed so long that some of the engages shouted frantically, but they held their fire.
The horses were only several lengths away when he fired.
The bullet flung Gray Eyes from his horse.
Our rolling volley swept most of the other riders from their mounts.
But a few reached our wall.
I heard the whir of an ax and a Canadian's face burst apart in a bloody spray.
I saw Little Billy rise and fire almost point blank and an Indian's face became shattered flesh and bone.
A second leaped from his horse to the top of the bale, firing four arrows in such rapid succession it didn't seem possible they were in flight.
Men screamed.
Oso reached up, jerked the buck from the bale and snapped his neck.
Other Indians were running at the ponies, shrilling and waving blankets.
Reverend Jason got one, the Canadians the others.
I saw the clergyman kneel for a moment by the twitching body of the man he had shot, then run back to his position.
The ponies were almost uncontrollable.
The pall of dust they raised made it difficult to see when the Aricaras charged again.
This time more of them hurdled the barrier.
A small Indian dived at Montero, who caught him with a swift upward stroke of his rifle butt.
It sounded like a man kicking a melon.
Above me a dark rider was whipping his pony with a quirt in an attempt to hurdle the bales.
Although my shot killed his horse, he rolled off the bale on top of me.
I could smell woodsmoke, grease, and oil.
His eyes were dark, fluid, fearful, and he gave a sigh as my knife went in.
Coming over the wall he had seemed like a hideous devil.
Now under me I could see him for what he really was, a boy dressed up in streaks of paint **h. The Aricaras made one last desperate charge.
It was pitiful to see the thin ranks of warriors, old and young, wheeling and twisting their ponies frantically from side to side only to be tumbled bleeding from their saddles by the relentless slam, slam of the cruelly efficient Hawkinses.
Others, badly wounded, gripped hands in manes, knees in bellies, held on as long as possible and then, weak from ghastly wounds, slipped sideways, slowly, almost thoughtfully, to be broken under the slashing hoofs.
Some gracefully soared from the backs of their wounded, screaming mounts to make one last defiant charge before the lead split their hearts or tore their guts **h. None of them reached our walls again.
The few survivors grudgingly turned away.
In the distance we could hear the drums and the wail of the death song.
She was carrying a quirt, and she started to raise it, then let it fall again and dangle from her wrist.
"I saw your fire", she said, speaking slowly, making an effort to control her anger.
"You could burn down this whole mountainside with a fire that size.
It wouldn't matter to a fool like you.
It would to me".
"All right", Wilson said quickly.
"The fire's too big.
And I appreciate the advice".
He was losing patience again.
An hour before, with the children asleep and nothing but the strange darkness, he would have appreciated company.
She had helped him change his mind.
"I'm not advising you", she said.
"I'm telling you.
That fire's too big.
Let it burn down.
And make sure it's out when you leave in the morning".
He was taken aback.
It took him a long time to compose himself.
"There's some mistake", he said finally.
"You're right about the fire.
It's bigger than it has to be, though I don't see where it's doing any harm.
But you're wrong about the rest of it.
I'm not leaving in the morning.
Why should I?
I own the place".
She showed her surprise by tightening the reins and moving the gelding around so that she could get a better look at his face.
It didn't seem to tell her anything.
She glanced around the clearing, taking in the wagon and the load of supplies and trappings scattered over the ground, the two kids, the whiteface bull that was chewing its cud just within the far reaches of the firelight.
She studied it for a long time.
Then she turned back to Wilson and smiled, and he wasn't quite sure what she meant by it.
"You own this place"?
she said, and her tone had softened until it was almost friendly.
"You bought it"?
"From a man in St Louis", Wilson said.
"Jake Carwood.
Maybe you know him".
The girl laughed.
"I know him.
I ought to.
My father ran him off here six years ago".
Wilson didn't say anything.
He stood watching the girl, wondering what was coming next.
She had picked up the quirt and was twirling it around her wrist and smiling at him.
"Carwood didn't tell you that", she said.
"No", Wilson said.
"But it's understandable.
It's not the kind of thing that a man would be proud of.
And it doesn't make any difference.
He sold me a clear title.
I have it with me, right here.
If you want to see"- "Never mind", she said sternly.
"It wouldn't matter to my father, and not to me.
I meant what I said about that fire.
Be sure it's out when you leave.
That's all.
I'll let you go back to doing the dishes now".
It was meant to insult him, and didn't quite succeed.
He took the reins just below the bit and held them firmly, and it was his turn to smile now.
"I don't mind washing dishes now and then", he said pleasantly.
"It doesn't hurt.
It might hurt you, though.
Somebody might mistake you for a woman".
He meant to say more, but he never got the chance.
She was quick.
She brought the quirt down, slashing it across his cheek, and he tried to step back.
She swung the quirt again, and this time he caught her wrist and pulled her out of the saddle.
She came down against him, and he tried to break her fall.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and went down on one knee, taking her weight so that some of the wind was driven out of him.
It made him a little sick, and he let go of her.
He got up slowly, and she was already on her feet, and he stood facing her.
He wiped the blood from his cheek.
"I ought to"- he said.
He was shaking with anger, his breath coming in long, painful gasps.
"That quirt- I ought to use it on you, where it would do the most good.
If you were a man"- "She isn't, mister".
The voice came from behind him, and Wilson turned.
The fire had gone down, and the man was only a shadow against the trees.
But a moment later he brought his horse forward into the light, and Wilson had a good look at him.
He was tall and dark-skinned, a half-breed, Wilson thought.
And he was handsome, despite the long thin scar that slanted across his cheek.
"She's not a man, mister", he said.
"I am.
If you've got any ideas".
He raised the Winchester and pointed it at Wilson's chest.
"Put the rifle down, Joseph", the girl said.
She seemed irritated.
"I thought I told you to stay home".
The half-breed eased the Winchester down and rested it across his lap.
The scar looked pure white in the half-darkness; his eyes were black and deep-set, and expressionless.
"You shouldn't be riding up here after dark, Judith", he said quietly.
"I can take care of this.
It's no job for you".
The girl tapped the quirt impatiently against her knee and glared at him.
He took it without flinching.
"I said go home, Joseph.
You've got no business up here".
The half-breed didn't answer this time.
But the scar seemed to pull hard at the corner of his mouth, and his eyes were hurt and angry.
It made Wilson wonder.
He watched the half-breed as he turned silently.
They could hear the pony's feet on the dry leaves for a while, then the sound faded out.
Wilson brushed the dust from his coat.
"Who was that"?
he asked.
"Your personal guard?
You're pretty hard on him".
"He works for my father", the girl said, and then seemed to change her mind.
"He's a friend.
His name's Joseph Sanchez.
Is there anything else you want to know"?
"Not now", Wilson said.
"I guess I'll find out soon enough.
You've got blood on your cheek.
Not yours.
Mine.
It must have got there when you fell against me".
She wiped it off with the sleeve of her coat.
"I'll bet that's as close as you've been to a man since you were a baby", Wilson said.
He saw her hand start to work down the leather thong toward the handle of the quirt, and he grabbed her wrist.
"Oh, no", he said, and he was without humor now.
"I've had enough of that.
I've had enough of you.
I don't know what goes on around here, and I don't care.
I don't know what makes you think you can get away with this kind of business, and I don't care about that, either.
You took me by surprise.
But I'll know how to handle you next time".
She brought up her free hand to hit him, but this time he was quicker.
He side-stepped her blow and she fell, stumbling against the gelding.
She finally regained her balance and got up in the saddle.
Her hat had come off and fallen behind her shoulders, held by the string, and he could see her face more clearly than he had at any time before.
He had forgotten that she was so pretty.
But her prettiness was what he had noticed first, and all the other things had come afterward: cruelty, meanness, self-will.
He had known women like that, one woman in particular.
And one had been too many.
He watched the girl until she had gone into the trees, and waited until he couldn't hear the sound of her horse any longer, then went up to where the children were sleeping.
They weren't sleeping, of course, but they thought they were doing him a favor by pretending.
He hadn't shown up too well in their eyes, letting himself be browbeaten by a woman.
They expected greater things from him, regardless of how trying the circumstances, and they were disappointed.
And determined not to show it.
They lay a little too stiffly, with their eyes straining to stay closed.
"Go to sleep", he said.
"Both of you.
There's better things to do than listen to something like that.
I'll be down at the creek finishing the dishes, if you want me".
He found the pan where he had dropped it and carried it back down to the stream.
The coyote was calling again, and he hoped that this time there would be no other sounds to interrupt it.
Not tonight, at any rate.
He had a feeling that the girl meant trouble.
If she did, he could stand it better in the light.
He scrubbed absent-mindedly at the pans and reflected on how things had turned out.
That afternoon when they had pulled up in front of the broken-down ranch house, his hopes had been high.
Already some of the pain had gone from Amelia's death.
Not all of it.
There would still be plenty of moments of regret and sadness and guilty relief.
But they were starting a new life.
And they had almost everything they needed: land, a house, two whiteface bulls, three horses.
The land wasn't all Wilson had expected of it.
Six hundred and forty acres, the old man back in St Louis had said; good grass, good water.
Well, the grass was there, though in some places the ground was too steep for a cow to get to it.
The water was there, so much of it that it spread all through the dead orchard.
And there was a house; livable perhaps, but badly in need of repairs.
In the last analysis, though, Wilson had little cause to complain.
The place had been cheap- just the little he had left after Amelia's burial- and it would serve its purpose.
There was only one place where Jake Carwood's description had gone badly awry: the peace and quiet.
It hadn't started out that way.
And he had a feeling- thanks to the girl- that things would get worse before they got better.
They had the house cleaned up by noon, and Wilson sent the boy out to the meadow to bring in the horses.
He stood on the porch and watched him struggling with the heavy harness, and finally went over to help him.
Kathy was already in the wagon.
They were going to town, and they were both excited.
Wilson backed the team into the traces, and wished they weren't going to town at all.
He had an uneasy feeling about it.
That girl last night, what was her name?
Judith Pierce.
It was the only thing about her that was the least bit hard to remember.
He finished with the team and filled his pipe and stood looking about him.
He had spent two hours riding around the ranch that morning, and in broad daylight it was even less inviting than Judith Pierce had made it seem.
There was brush, and stands of pine that no grass could grow under, and places so steep that cattle wouldn't stop to graze.
But there was water.
There was an artificial lake just out of sight in the first stand of trees, fed by a half dozen springs that popped out of the ground above the hillside orchard.
Yes, there was plenty of water, too much, and that was probably the trouble.
There were tracks of cattle all over his six hundred and forty acres.
The first part of the road was steep, but it leveled off after the second bend and curled gradually into the valley.
It was hotter once they reached the flat, and drier, but the grass was better.
A warm breeze played across it, moving it like waves.
A red-tailed hawk flew in behind them and stayed there, watching for any snakes or rabbits that they might stir up from the side of the road.
It took them an hour before they came to the first houses of Kelseyville.
The town was about what Wilson expected: one main street with its rows of false-fronted buildings, a water tower, a few warehouses, a single hotel; all dusty and sunbaked.
The place was quiet.
Such was my state of mind that I did not question the possibility of this; under the circumstances I was only too willing to confess all.
I was nearly thirty at the time.
I went to the hall in the afternoons only, on these preliminary matters.
It was dark and, I sensed, very large; only the counter at one end was lighted by a long fluorescent tube suspended directly above it.
Sometimes I was aware of people moving about in the darkness.
I would turn away from my writing in the hope of getting a good look at them but I never quite succeeded.
A glimpse of three of four vague figures, at the most.
Drifting here and there.
Squatting, as if waiting.
The pulsing glow of a cigarette.
Since they could see me but I not them, their presence in the hall disturbed me.
The clerk paid them no attention.
This impressed me, until I realized how limited was his sphere of influence.
His job simply consisted in registering new men.
When the phone rang he answered it.
His authority extended to the far edge of the counter, no further.
None of the men hanging around the hall bothered to speak to him.
Baldness was attacking his pate.
He spoke to me in a gruff voice, an affectation which quite belied his personality.
He wore his white shirt open at the neck, revealing a bit of scrawny pale chest underneath.
It was obvious that he wished himself different from the sort of person he thought he was.
But it was not easy for him and he often slipped.
When one of the men in the hall behind us spat on the floor and scraped his boot over the gob of spittle I noticed how the clerk winced.
I felt certain he was really a spineless little man.
His hat (the cause of his baldness?)
hung on a hook on the wall, and underneath it I could see his tie, knotted, ready to be slipped over his head, a black badge of frayed respectability that ought never to have left his neck.
The morning's tabloids were on the counter, and a stack of dog-eared men's magazines.
On a shelf in the office behind the counter was a small radio dialed permanently on a station which broadcast only vulgar commercials and cheap popular music.
Everything about the clerk was trivial.
Once, pressing him, I learned that his job was only part-time, in the afternoons when nothing went on in the hall.
Noticing my disappointment he attempted to salvage what scraps and shreds of authority he felt might still be clinging to his person.
With distaste I saw him assume a pompous air.
When he saw me coming he turned his radio off.
He made a show of rearranging my forms on the shelf.
He would pick up the ringing phone with studied negligence, then bark into it with gruff importance.
What limited knowledge he possessed he forced upon me.
In the mornings, I was informed, fluorescent tubes, similar to the one above the counter, illuminated the entire hall.
They, and the two large fans which I could dimly see as daylight filtered through their vents, down at the far end of the hall, could be turned on by a master switch situated inside the office.
He pointed out the switch to me and for a moment I foolishly believed that he would let deed follow words.
I was shown, instead, a batch of white tickets of the sort handed out, he told me, every morning.
Now, here was something of obvious importance to me, yet when I reached for the tickets he snatched them away from my hand.
He couldn't afford to have anyone mess around with them, he said.
Each of those tickets was of great value to its rightful recipient.
I withdrew my hand.
Later I would remember what this pompous little man had told me about the worth of a ticket.
Having nothing else to do except wait for my forms to be processed, I gave myself over to speculations concerning the hall itself.
When suitably lighted, what would it look like?
The presence of the two exhaust fans seemed to indicate that the hall could become crowded for air.
One afternoon, upon receiving permission and the necessary instructions from the clerk, I had visited the toilet adjoining the hall.
By counting the number of stalls and urinals I attempted to form a loose estimate of how many men the hall would hold at one time.
For although I had crossed a corner of the hall on my way to the toilet I still could not tell for sure how far to the rear the darkness extended.
I could observe the two fans down at the end, but their size in themselves meant nothing to me as long as I had no measure of comparison.
I had for some time been hoping, in vain, for one of the dim figures to pass between the fan vents and myself.
I knew that three or four of them were almost always present in the hall, but what they were doing, and exactly where, I could not tell.
It was, I felt, possible that they were men who, having received no tickets for that day, had remained in the hall, to sleep perhaps, in the corners farthest removed from the counter with its overhead light.
This light did not penetrate very far back into the hall, and my eyes were hindered rather than aided by the dim daylight entering through the fan vents when I tried to pick out whatever might be lying, or squatting, on the floor below.
Also the clerk appeared to disapprove of my frequent curious glances back over my shoulder.
No sooner would I turn my head away from the counter before he would address me, at times quite sharply, in order to bring back my attention.
And I had hardly finished my business in the toilet on the aforementioned occasion when the lights in that place, like the hall lights controlled from the switch in the office, flicked off and on impatiently.
This sort of petty vigilance annoyed me.
I felt certain it was self-appointed.
It sprang from a type of mentality I'd encountered often enough but certainly had not expected to find here.
I decided to see no more of the clerk until the processing of my papers was completed.
I felt strongly attached to the hall, however, and hardly a day passed when I did not go to look at it from a distance.
I lived in a state of suspense because of it.
I could not cling to my past nor did I wish to.
I had signed it off on the forms.
My future lay solely with the hall, yet what did I know about the hall at this point?
Although I had been inside it I had not yet seen it functioning.
I wished to prepare myself but did not even know what sort of clothes I ought to be wearing.
I did not despair, however; far from it!
I was constantly searching for clues around the neighborhood of the hall.
Though only a relatively short walk separated it from my own part of town, its character was wholly foreign to me.
Large warehouses flanked the street on which the hall fronted.
The river was only a few blocks away but an unbroken line of piers prevented me from seeing it.
Sometimes I noticed the tops of ships' masts and funnels reaching above the pier roofs.
The sounds issuing from beyond- winches whirring, men shouting- indicated great activity and excited me.
The hall, on the other hand, appeared lifeless and deserted on these long waterfront afternoons.
It resembled nothing I'd ever seen before.
Its front was windowless, but irregularities in the masonry might be an indication that windows, now blinded, had once looked out upon the street.
I kept circling the block hoping to see, from the street behind it, the rear of the hall.
But it was not a tall structure and other buildings concealed it.
For weeks I wandered about this neighborhood of warehouses and garages, truck terminals and taxi repair shops, gasoline pumps and longshoremen's lunch counters, yet never did I cease to feel myself a stranger there.
I returned to the hall, despite my dislike for the clerk.
As I had expected, he insisted that my visits to the hall would do nothing to further the process of my application.
Meanwhile spring had passed well into summer.
At last, when I put it to him directly, the clerk was forced to admit that the delay in my case was unusual.
When I asked him what, if anything, I could do about it, he surprised me by referring me to the director of the hall.
I could consult this personage on any weekday morning, though not before ten o'clock.
The clerk impressed this upon me: that I should not arrive in the hall before ten o'clock.
When I went for my interview with the director I saw why.
Although it was dark as usual I could see that the hall had only recently contained a great many people.
Cigarette butts littered the floor.
The big fans were going, drawing from the large room the remnants of stale smoke which drifted about in pale strata underneath the ceiling.
I had felt the draft they were making while mounting the stairs.
The staircase itself seemed still to be echoing the heavy footfalls of many men.
I stopped by the counter.
No one was behind it, but in the rear wall of the office I noticed, for the first time, a door which had been left partially open.
Past it I could see part of a desk, a flag in a corner, a rug on the floor.
The director's office.
I rapped my knuckles on the counter.
The director came to the door.
I was at once disappointed, although just what I had expected him to look like I could not have explained.
He was a man in his late forties, with graying hair, of medium height; he looked dapper in a lightweight summer suit, brown silk tie and green-tinted soft collar.
He wore perforated, white-topped shoes; they somehow made me expect to see him launch into a vaudeville tapdance routine any moment.
But he came toward me sedately enough, showed me around the counter, offered me a seat inside his office, then walked to a file cabinet and got out my application.
I had the impression that he had read my forms, perhaps several times.
He did not look at them now.
As he lowered himself on the chair behind his desk I wondered what this dapper, slightly ridiculous man could possibly have to do with the workings of the hall.
He spoke, in a voice as immaculate as his appearance.
Why had I registered?
Begging my pardon, he must express his astonishment over seeing a person of my background applying at the hall.
He had looked over my forms and was impressed by what he had seen there; indeed, my scholastic qualifications were such that he, a college graduate himself, must envy me them.
Was I sure, he asked, that I knew what I was applying for?
What sort of men I would come into contact with, at the hall?
These questions did not surprise me; I felt certain that the director, like the afternoon clerk, seldom moved beyond the counter, that the hall, to them, was a jungle, a dark and unwelcome place.
Though I doubted that he would understand me, I told the director my motives for applying.
I had always, I said, hankered after working hard with my hands.
This desire, I went on, growing voluble as my conviction was aroused, had mounted at such a rate recently that I now found its realization necessary not only to my physical but also to my spiritual wellbeing.
To this effect I had already severed all connections which bound me to my former existence.
The flat, hard cap was small, but he thrust it to the back of his head.
"Tie him up".
"Hell with it".
Before they could guess his intention Rankin stepped forward and swung the guard's own gun against the uncovered head, hard.
The man went over without sound, falling to the bare floor.
Barton said harshly, "Why did you do that"?
Rankin sneered at him.
"What did you want me to do, kiss him?
He dumped me in solitary twice".
Barton caught the lighter man's shoulder and swung him around.
"Let's get one thing straight, you and me.
The only reason we brought you was to get Miller out.
If you ever try anything without my orders I'll kill you".
Fred Rankin looked at him.
It seemed to Barton that the green eyes mocked him, the thin-lipped smile held insolence, but he had no time to waste now.
"Come on.
Let's move".
They filed out through the guard-room door, into the paved square.
There were three other men within this prison whom Barton would have liked to liberate, but they were in other cell blocks.
There was no chance.
They moved slowly, toward the main gate, following the wall.
There was no moon.
They had chosen this night purposely.
They reached the guard house without alerting the men on the walls above, and Powers slipped through the door.
Two men were on duty inside, playing pinochle, relaxed.
They looked up in surprise as Powers came in.
"What are you doing out of the block"?
"It's Curtiss", he said, naming the man Rankin had hit.
"I've got to have help".
They stared at him.
The sergeant in charge climbed to his feet.
"What's wrong with him"?
"He's having some kind of a fit".
The sergeant turned to the door.
As he passed through it Barton shoved his gun against the man's side.
"One sound and you're dead".
The sergeant froze.
Powers had not followed.
Powers was covering the remaining guard.
The man half-reached for the cord of the alarm bell.
Powers knocked his arm aside.
Deliberately, with none of Rankin's viciousness, he laid the barrel of his gun alongside the guard's head.
They were free.
Even Barton could not quite believe it.
It had gone without a hitch.
They slid through the wicket in the big gate, ghosted across the dark ground.
Five minutes later they reached the horses.
Barton was relieved to see that Carl Dill and Emmett Foster had brought extra mounts.
He had been worried that with Miller and Rankin added to the escape party they would be short.
No one hurried.
They walked the horses, heading along the river, Barton and Emmett Foster in the lead, seven men riding quietly through the night.
The only thing which would have attracted attention was that two wore the uniform of prison guards, three the striped suits of convicts.
Five miles.
In a small grove against the river they halted, turning deep into the protection of the trees.
Foster had brought extra clothing also.
A good man, Emmett.
He had been one of the original Night Riders, one who had escaped the trial.
It was to him that Barton had sent Carl Dill on Dill's release from the prison.
Clyde Miller was crying softly to himself, shedding his striped suit and fumbling into the nondescript butternut pants, the worn brown shirt.
Kid Boyd was unusually silent, Rankin watchful, a few paces apart.
Barton finished his dressing and extended his hand to Powers.
"I won't even try to thank you".
The ex-prison guard was embarrassed.
He said in a studied voice, "I didn't do it for you.
I did it for the valley.
You're the only man the Night Riders will follow.
We've been starving and I don't like to starve".
Barton turned away, his eyes falling upon Rankin beside his horse.
"Good luck".
The murderer lifted his head.
"Meaning you want me to ride out"?
"You aren't one of us.
There's nothing for you here".
"I got no place to go".
Barton hesitated.
He did not trust Rankin, his violent temper, his killer instinct.
But ten years in prison had taught him realities.
They were in a fight, outweighed in both numbers and money.
It was all right to put a bunch of ranchers onto horses, to call them Night Riders, to set out to attack the largest mining combination the country had ever seen if all they wanted was adventure.
But if they really hoped to succeed they needed professionals, men who knew how to use a gun against men, who would match the killers on the other side.
"Your choice", he said briefly, and turned to Kid Boyd.
"Bury those uniforms so they won't be found".
Then Barton touched Carl Dill's arm and moved off, up the river bank.
He wanted a careful, uninterrupted report from Dill on the conditions in the valley.
They squatted on their heels in the deep mud and Dill found a cigar in his breast pocket, passing it over silently.
He too knew the agony of going for weeks, sometimes months without the solace of tobacco.
Mitchell Barton drew in the fragrance deeply, letting the smoke lie warm and soothing in his throat for a moment before he exhaled.
Through the gloom he could not see the man beside him clearly but he knew him thoroughly.
For his first five years in prison, they had shared a cell.
Carl Dill was neither a rancher nor a valley man.
He had been the auditor for the mining syndicate, and he had stolen fifty thousand dollars of the syndicate's money.
He had done time for the theft.
The one thing they had in common was their hatred.
Both hated Donald Kruger.
It had drawn them together, and since his release from prison Dill had worked tirelessly to effect this night's escape.
He said now, "I've got the perfect headquarters set up.
The old Haskell mine".
Mitch Barton knew the place.
Twenty years before a group of Easterners had bought out the Haskell claims in the rocky hills south of Grass Valley.
They had spent a million dollars, carving in a road, putting up buildings, drilling their haulage tunnel.
Then the vein had petered out and the whole project had been abandoned.
"The road's washed badly", said Dill, "but there's a trail you can get over with a horse.
A company of cavalry couldn't come in there if two men were guarding that trail".
Barton nodded.
"How do the valley people feel"?
"As mad as ever.
But Kruger's men keep them off balance, and they don't trust me.
I'm an outsider.
When they learn you're in the hills though, they'll rally, don't worry about that".
Barton waited for a long moment, then asked the question which lay always uppermost in his mind.
"My boy.
Did you find him"?
Dill was silent as if he hated to answer, and Barton had a cold, sick feeling of apprehension.
"He's in Morgan's Ferry".
Barton half-straightened in surprise.
"What's he doing there"?
Again Dill hesitated.
"Dealing faro".
"Dealing faro?
How come"?
"Your sister-in-law has the faro bank in Cap Ayres' saloon".
Barton cursed under his breath.
After another long pause he asked, "How many people know who they are"?
"Everyone.
Your cousin Finley saw to that.
He's quite a rat, you know.
He sold out to Kruger's men.
He's informed them of everything you've ever written him.
He wants your ranch".
Barton stood up.
He said tensely, "All right.
Let's go get the boy".
Dill had come up also.
"I was afraid of this.
I almost didn't tell you".
"If you hadn't I'd have killed you".
Dill's voice tightened.
"But you can't ride into the Ferry.
That's what they'll expect you to do.
They'll be there waiting for you.
I understand how you feel about the child **h".
"The hell you do".
Barton's voice was rougher than Dill had ever heard it.
"I never saw him.
My wife died in childbirth after I was sent away.
"I can't leave him there.
Donald Kruger would like nothing better than to hold him as hostage, and I wouldn't entrust a snake to his tender care.
I've got to get the boy.
Let's ride".
BARTON'S MEN CUT the telegraph wires in half a dozen places, carrying away whole sections to make repairs more difficult.
It was over an hour before their escape was discovered, but still the news that Barton was free flashed across the central portion of the state.
It reached Donald Kruger in his massive home in Burlingame.
It reached the mines at North San Juan and Bloomfield.
It brought men out of bed and sent them into hurried conferences.
For everyone involved knew that the whole valley was a powder keg, and Mitchell Barton the fuse which could send it into explosive violence.
Creighton Hague sat in his office above the Ione pit.
The office was of logs, four rooms, each heated by an iron stove.
The building was dwarfed by the scene outside.
There a dozen giant monitors played their seventy-five-foot jets of water against the huge seam of tertiary gravel which was the mountainside.
The gravel was the bed of an ancient river, buckled in some prehistoric upheaval of earth.
It was partially cemented by ages and pressure, yet it crumpled before the onslaught of the powerful streams, the force of a thousand fire hoses, and with the gold it held washed down through the long sluices.
A million dollars' of gold a month.
A million tons of rock and soil and brush.
The monitors ran twenty-four hours each day.
Their roar, like the swelling volume of a hundred tornadoes could be heard for miles.
Hague, like all who worked near the pits, was partly deafened from the constant assault against his eardrums.
He was a big man, wearing a neat flannel shirt against the cold foothill air.
Fat showed in loose rolls beneath the shirt.
Ten years older than Mitch Barton, he had clawed his way up from mucker in the pits to manager of the operation.
He was proud of his accomplishments, proud of his job, proud that Donald Kruger and his associates trusted him.
He lived and breathed for the mining company.
No man could have reached his spot nor held it without being ruthless, and Hague had made a virtue of ruthlessness all of his life.
There came a ghost of noise at the office door and Hague swung to see Kodyke in the entrance from the outer room.
Hague had never accustomed himself to Kodyke.
The man was tall, thin, with a narrow face and a too-large nose.
The eyes always held Hague, eyes of a dead man, lidless as a lizard's, with the fixed intensity of a cobra.
Even Hague was repelled by the machinelike deadliness that was Kodyke.
He knew nothing about the man's history.
Kodyke had appeared at the mine one day bearing a letter from Kruger.
Kodyke was to head the dread company police.
He ran the change rooms.
He threw out the hi-graders.
He supervised the cleanups and handled the shipments of raw gold which each week went out to San Francisco.
Hague squeezed down his uneasy dislike.
He pulled open the top drawer of his desk and drew out a tintype.
"This is Mitchell Barton.
He broke out of Folsom last night.
Apparently he bribed one of the guards.
We want him back there or we want him dead".
Kodyke took the picture in a lean hand, studying it thoughtfully.
"Dangerous"?
"Dangerous, yes.
You know how the ranchers in the valley are.
They blame us for all their troubles.
Ten years ago they blew up some of our ditches.
It cost us a hundred thousand dollars and thirty days lost time to fix them.
We don't want Barton's Night Riders loose again".
The gunman nodded, slipping the picture into his breast pocket, saying nothing.
Normally Hague wasted no words, but now he found himself unable to stop their flow although he knew Kodyke was aware of all he said.
If she sensed any unusual preoccupation on the part of her mother, she did not comment upon it.
After they had finished eating, Melissa took Sprite the kitten under her arm- "so that Auntie Grace can teach it about the whistle"- and climbed into the station wagon beside her mother.
She had offered to walk, but Pamela knew she would not feel comfortable about her child until she had personally confided her to the care of the little pink woman who chose to be called "Auntie".
When they reached their neighbor's house, Pamela said a few polite words to Grace and kissed Melissa lightly on the forehead, the impulse prompted by a stray thought- of the type to which she was frequently subject these days- that they might never see one another again.
Then she turned the station wagon around and headed it back down the hill, with the village as her ostensible destination.
As she drove, she thought about her plan.
It was really quite simple.
So simple, in fact, that it might even work- although Pamela, now, in her new frame of mind, was careful not to pretend too much assurance.
That mistake, she thought, had cost her dearly these past few days, and she wanted to avoid falling into any more of the traps that the mountain might set for her.
She must be cautious so as not to alert the scheming forest.
When the station wagon drew abreast of the dusty dirt road that led up to the porch of the Culver house, Pamela turned the wheel, guiding the car to its familiar parking spot close to the house, and stopped.
All of her movements were careful and methodical, partaking of the stealth of a criminal who has plotted his felony for months in advance and knows exactly which step to take next in the course of the final execution of his crime.
She locked the ignition, removed the keys, stepped out of the car and went into the house.
Here, she dropped the keys on a small table beside the door and went upstairs to her bedroom.
On her bureau lay a small, brass ornament of simple design and faded engraving- an object which, Pamela believed now, had been the property of her great-grandfather, Major Hiram Munroe Culver.
He had belonged to this land and, perhaps, had desecrated it- and this was the only material symbol that remained of him.
If she, Pamela, were being held responsible for his crimes, then hers must be the final act of expiation.
She would return this symbol to the mountain, as one pours seed back into the soil every Spring **h or as ancient fertility cults demand annual human sacrifice.
Slowly and thoughtfully, she slipped the ornament into the pocket of her slacks, moved down the stairs and out of the house.
There was only one place where the mountain might receive her- that unnamed, unnameable pool harbored in its secret bosom.
Atonement, if atonement were possible, could only be made at that sacred, sacrificial basin.
It was there that she would have to enact her renunciation, beg forgiveness.
Perhaps it was insane, Pamela thought.
Perhaps it was all a vividly conceived dream.
But she was caught in it, and she faced the terrible possibility that, if it were a dream, it was one from which she might never awaken.
Facing the forest now, she who had not dared to enter it before, walked between two trees at random and headed in what she believed was the direction of the pool.
She remembered little of her previous journey there with Grace, and she could but hope that her dedication to her mission would enable her to accomplish it.
The forest was open and freely welcoming, extending an enchanted hand.
The ground was covered with soft pine needles and the slope was gentle.
Birds chirped and chattered in the trees and the sun, all dewy-eyed and soft, caressed her shoulders warmly from time to time.
It was not, thought Pamela, such an evil place after all.
No wonder Melissa responded so completely to its beckoning.
Perhaps she had no reason to fear these trees that whispered their secrets above her head as she passed.
Was it not possible, after all, that the forest was in league with her and her child **h that its sympathy lay with the Culvers **h that she had erred in failing to understand this?
Pamela felt calm and peaceful as she walked along.
The slight flutter that had disturbed the motion of her heart when she entered the forest was gone now, and even the dim groves of trees through which she occasionally passed did not reawaken her fear.
She regarded them as signs that she was nearing the glen she sought, and she was glad to at last be doing something positive in her unenunciated, undefined struggle with the mountain and its darkling inhabitants.
Having persisted too long in deliberate ignorance and denial of the forces that threatened her, Pamela was relieved now to admit their potency and to be taking definite steps toward grappling with them.
A few days ago, she would have thought such an expedition as this utterly ridiculous; today, on the contrary, it seemed utterly reasonable.
She did not pause to consider what she would do if her plan should fail; she directed all of her mental and physical energy toward achieving this one goal.
If, as she walked, her steps fumbled from time to time, she chose to ignore that omen.
If the slope grew steeper and the groves more dim, she tried not to heed.
Success depended upon maintaining her equanimity; she must be poised and proud and unafraid in order to prove to the mountain that she was in earnest.
The forest took on an impersonal aspect.
It did not care what sort of person prowled its woods, plucked at its bark or stripped the berries from its bushes.
Unconcerned, indifferent, unmotivated, the forest was simply there- fighting man's depredations with more abundant growth and man's follies with its own musical evening laughter.
Red man or white man, pacifist or killer, the forest would accept them all- knowing that it could thrive equally well on slaughter and beneficence; knowing that its ageless mass would always dwarf the short span of time allotted to any man.
Pamela shook her head.
She must not think about time.
That was another one of those traps.
In her grim pursuit of tranquillity, Pamela focused her thoughts on her husband.
If, when this was all over, she found the words to tell him about it, she wondered if he would ever understand.
How could he comprehend her need when he himself was innocent?
Indian ghosts would not impinge upon his nights, nor would his days be haunted by the dimly-outlined, ill-conceived figure of her benighted ancestor.
His bright, daylight mind would whistle away such images; they would not dare to face his scoffing.
Pamela was glad Jim was nowhere near.
His presence would have interfered with her duty.
The mountainside grew steeper and she slipped once or twice on the smooth pine needles.
The trees huddled more closely together, their limbs and leaves intertwined in a coarse curtain against the sun.
Bushes and vines abetted the rocks in forming thorny detours for the struggling stranger, and without the direct light of the sun to act as compass, Pamela could no longer be positive of her direction.
Nevertheless, she continued to move upward.
She was sure she would reach the pool by climbing, and she clung to that belief despite the increasing number of obstacles.
The forest had become an alien world where she strove, alone, unprotected, unguided, to deal with whatever hindrances were offered.
It was a bold, dark castle of pine boughs that stood like a medieval fortress, eclipsing the sun and human time.
At one and the same time, she was within it but still searching for the drawbridge that would give her entry.
Silence came into the forest- a solid being that clapped its hand over the murmuring mouths of the birds and the whispered comfort of the trees.
Silence walked at Pamela's side, its presence numbingly close, yet too far for her to hear.
Silence stood in front of her, waiting, and in back of her, blocking her retreat.
She stumbled over the root of a tree that protruded maliciously above the earth.
In spite of her attempt to preserve her balance, she fell, bruising her arm on a naked stone.
For a moment, she could not catch her breath and then, her breath returning in short, frightened spasms, she lifted herself to her feet laboriously.
She started to brush the dirt and bits of leaves off her clothes.
Her arm bled slightly, and the offended skin cried out in pain.
She looked around.
She was bewildered.
She seemed to have come such a long distance- too far for her destination which had wilfully been swallowed up in the greedy gloom of the trees.
She stood quite still, trying to focus upon a direction in which to turn, a path to follow, a clue to guide her.
She was standing in a thick grove.
The trees were crowded so closely together that their branches overlapped, virtually shutting out the sun completely.
The earth smelled moist and pungent as it might in a cave deprived of the cleansing effect of the sun's rays.
She had the feeling that, under the mouldering leaves, there would be the bodies of dead animals, quietly decaying and giving their soil back to the mountain.
The thought made Pamela shudder.
A terrible chill swept through the grove.
Not a breeze exactly, but a pocket of icy air that settled with a loathsome familiarity upon the deep confines of the grove, catching Pamela in a leering embrace.
There was a peculiar density about it, a thick substance that could be sensed but never identified, never actually perceived.
Where before had she felt or dreamt or imagined such a scene?
She already knew this unwholesome, chilling atmosphere that was somehow grotesquely alive.
It enclosed her clammy hands and twined around her ankles.
It crept into the open neck of her blouse and slid down her body, seeping into her flesh through all the quivering pores of her skin.
It crawled across her breasts, suffocating the life in her nipples.
It circled her thighs, exploring with its icy tentacles.
It entered her body with the ghastly intimacy of an incubus, and its particles, spreading, creeping, crawling, joined themselves into steel bands that constricted her knees so tightly that they ached; stifled her lungs so that her breath came in harsh gasps; clutched her throat and sucked up the moisture in her mouth so that her tongue was dry and hard and stuck to the roof of her mouth and her teeth were clenched together in the rigid fixture of her jaws.
She had to get away from here before this demoniac possession swallowed up the liquid of her eyes and sank into the fibers of her brain, depriving her of reason and sight.
But she did not know which way to go.
The shadows of the trees engulfed her, foreclosing every possible exit from the grove.
She had been snared here by a vile sensuality that writhed around her throat in ever-tightening circles.
She could not scream, for even if a sound could take shape within her parched mouth, who would hear, who would listen?
Does the mountain listen?
Pamela groped blindly.
She had to escape.
She had to move in some direction- any direction that would take her away from this evil place.
She thrust forward through the shadows and the trees that resisted her and tried to fling her back.
Her own body protested, aching painfully where the blood in her veins had congealed, where cold demon wisps still clung and caressed.
Every movement she made seemed unnecessarily noisy.
Twigs cracked loudly under her feet; bushes swished and scratched at her slacks; tree branches snapped as she pushed them ruthlessly away from her.
Miraculously, she found exactly the right statement.
She began it deliberately, so that none of her words would be lost on him.
"I want to tell you something Thomas DeMontez Lord.
I'm well aware that you've got a pedigree as long as my leg, and that I don't amount to anything.
But"- "But it don't matter a-tall", Lord supplied fondly.
"To me you'll always be the girl o' my dreams, an' the sweetest flower that grows".
Beaming idiotically, he pooched out his lips and attempted to kiss her.
She yanked away from him furiously.
"You shut up!
shu-tt up-pp!
I've got something to say to you, and by God you're going to listen.
Do you hear me?
You're going to listen"!
Lord nodded agreeably.
He said he wanted very much to listen.
He knew that anything a brainy little lady like her had to say would be plumb important, as well as pleasin' to the ear, and he didn't want to miss a word of it.
So would she mind speaking a little louder?
"I think you stink, Tom Lord!
I think you're mean and hateful and stupid, and- louder"?
said Joyce.
"Uh-huh.
So I can hear you while I'm checkin' the car.
Looks like we might be in for a speck of trouble".
He opened the door and got out.
He waited at the car side for a moment, looking down at her expectantly.
"Well?
Wasn't you goin' to say somethin'"?
Then, helpfully, as she merely stared at him in weary silence, "Maybe you could write it down for me, huh?
Print it in real big letters, an' I can cipher it out later".
"Aah, go on", she said.
"Just go the hell on".
He grinned, nodded, and walked around to the front of the car.
Lips pursed mournfully, he stared down at its crazily sagging left side.
Then he hunkered down on the heels of his handmade boots, peered into the orderly chaos of axle, shock absorber, and spring.
He went prone on his stomach, the better to pursue his examination.
After a time, he straightened again, brushing the red Permian dust from his hands, slapping it from his six-dollar levis and his tailored, twenty-five-dollar shirt.
He wore no gun- a strange ommission for a peace officer in this country.
Never, he'd once told Joyce, had he encountered any man or situation that called for a gun.
And he really feels that way, she thought.
That's really all he's got, all he is.
Just a big pile of self-confidence in an almost teensy package.
If I could make myself feel the same way **h She studied him hopefully, yearningly; against the limitless background of sky and wasteland it was easy to confirm her analysis.
Here in the God-forsaken place, the westerly end of nowhere, Tom Lord looked almost insignificant, almost contemptible.
He was handsome, with his coal-black hair and eyes, his fine-chiseled features.
But she'd known plenty of handsomer guys, and, conceding his good looks, what was there left?
He wasn't a big man; rather on the medium side.
Neither was he very powerful of build.
He could move very quickly, she knew (although he seldom found occasion to do so), but he was more wiry than truly strong.
And his relatively small hands and feet gave him an almost delicate appearance.
Just nothing, she told herself.
Just so darned sure of himself that he puts the Indian sign on everyone.
But, by gosh, I want him and I'm going to have him!
He caught her eye, came back around the car with the boot-wearer's teetering, half-mincing walk.
Why did these yokels still wear boots, anyway, when most had scarcely sat a horse in years?
He slid in at her side, tucked a cigar into his mouth, and politely proffered one to her.
"Oh, cut it out, Tom"!
she snapped.
"Can't you stop that stupid clowning for even a minute"?
"This ain't your brand, maybe", Lord suggested.
"Or maybe you just don't feel like a cigar"?
"I feel like getting back to town, that's what I feel like!
Now, are you going to take me or am I supposed to walk"?
"Might get there faster walkin'", Lord drawled, "seein' as how I got a busted front spring.
On the other hand, howsomever, maybe you wouldn't either.
I figger it's probl'y a sixty-five-mile walk, and I c'n maybe get this spring patched up in a couple of hours".
"How- with what?
There's nothing out here but rattlesnakes".
"Now, ain't it the truth"?
Lord laughed with secret amusement.
"Not a danged thing but rattlesnakes, so I reckon I'll get the boss rattler to help me".
"Tom!
For God's sake"!
"Looky".
He pointed, cutting her off.
"See that wildcat"?
She saw it then, the distant derrick of the wildcat- a test well in unexplored country.
And even with her limited knowledge of such things, she knew that the car could be repaired there; sufficiently, at least, to get them back into town.
A wildcatter had to be prepared for almost any emergency.
He had to depend on himself, since he was invariably miles and hours away from others.
"Well, let's get going", she said impatiently.
"I"- She broke off, frowning.
"What did you mean by that rattlesnake gag?
Getting the boss rattlesnake to help you"?
"Why, I meant what I said", Lord declared.
"What else would I mean, anyways"?
She looked at him, lips compressed.
Then, with a shrug of pretended indifference, she took a compact from her purse and went through the motions of fixing her make-up.
In his mood, it was the best way to handle him; that is, to show no curiosity whatsoever.
Otherwise, she would be baited into a tantrum- teased and provoked until she lost control of herself, and thus lost still another battle in the maddening struggle of Tom Lord Vs Joyce Lakewood.
The car lurched along at a snail's crawl, the left-front mudguard banging and scraping against the tire, occasionally scraping against the road itself.
Lord whistled tunelessly as he fought the steering wheel.
He seemed very pleased with himself, as though some intricate scheme was working out exactly as he had planned.
Along with this self-satisfaction, however, Joyce sensed a growing tension.
It poured out of him like an electric current, a feeling that the muscles and nerves of his fine-drawn body were coiling for action, and that that action would be all that he anticipated.
Joyce had seen him like this once before- more than once, actually, but on one particularly memorable occasion.
That was the day that he had practically mopped up the main street of Big Sands with Aaron McBride, field boss for the Highlands Oil + Gas Company.
Tom had been laying for Aaron McBride for a long time, just waiting to catch him out of line.
McBride gave him his opportunity when he showed up in town with a pistol on his hip.
He had a legitimate reason for wearing it.
It was payday for Highlands, and he was packing a lot of money back into the oil fields.
Moreover, as long as the weapon was carried openly, the sheriff's office had made no previous issue of it.
"So what's this all about"?
he demanded, when Lord confronted him.
I'm not the only man in town with a gun, or the only one without a permit".
It was the wrong thing to say.
By failing to do as he was told instantly- to take out a permit or return the gun to his car- he had played into Lord's hands.
The trouble was that he had virtually had to protest.
The deputy had forced him to by his manner of accosting him.
So, "How about it"?
he said.
"Why single me out on this permit deal"?
"Well, I'll tell you about that", Lord told him.
"We aim t' be see-lective, y'know?
Don't like to bother no one unless we have to, which I figger we do, in your case.
Figger we got to be plumb careful with any of you Highlands big shots".
McBride reddened.
He himself had heard that there was gangster money in the company, but that had nothing to do with him.
He was an honest man doing a hard job, and the implication that he was anything else was unbearable.
"Look, Lord", he said hoarsely.
"I know you've got a grudge against me, and maybe I can't blame you.
You think that Highlands swindled you and I helped 'em do it.
But you're all wrong, man!
I'm no lawyer.
I just do what I'm told, and"- "Uh-huh.
An' that could mean trouble with a fella that's workin' for crooks.
So you get rid of that pistol right now, Mis-ter McBride.
You do that or take you out a permit right now".
McBride couldn't do either, of course.
Not immediately, as the deputy demanded.
Not without a face-saving respite of at least a few minutes.
To do so would make his job well-nigh impossible.
Oil-field workers were a rough-tough lot.
How could he exert authority over them- make them toe the line, as he had to- if he knuckled under to this small-town clown?
"I'll get around to it a little later", he mumbled desperately.
"Just as soon as I go to the bank, and"- "Huh-uh.
Now, Mis-ter McBride", said Lord, and he laid a firmly restraining hand on the field boss's arm.
It was strictly the deputy's game, but McBride had gone too far to throw in.
Now, he could only play the last card in what was probably the world's coldest deck.
He flung off Lord's hand and attempted to push past him, inadvertently shoving him into a storefront.
It was practically the last move that McBride made of his own volition.
Lord slugged him in the stomach, so hard that the organ almost pressed against his spine.
Then, as he doubled, gasping, vomiting the breakfast he had so lately eaten, Lord straightened him with an uppercut.
A rabbit punch redoubled him.
And then there was a numbing blow to the heart, and another gut-flattening blow to the stomach **h But he couldn't keep up with them.
No more could he defend himself against them.
He seemed to be fighting not one man but a dozen.
And he could no longer think of face-saving, of honor, but only of escape.
Why, he's going to kill me, he thought wildly.
I meant him no harm.
I've given willful hurt to no man.
I was just doing my job, just following orders, and for that he's going to kill me.
Beat me to death in front of a hundred people.
Somehow more terrible than the certainty that he was about to die was the knowledge that Lord would probably not suffer for it: the murder would go unpunished.
He, McBride, would be cited as in the wrong, and he, Lord, would go scot-free, an officer who had only done his duty, though perhaps too energetically.
McBride staggered into the street, flopped sprawling in the stinging dust.
Fear-maddened, fleeing the lengthening shadow of death, he scrambled to his feet again.
He couldn't see; he was long past the point of coherent thinking.
Dimly, he heard laughter, hoots of derision, but he could not read the racket properly.
He could not grasp that Lord had withdrawn from the fight minutes ago, and that his leaden arms were flailing at nothing but the air.
He hated them too much to understand- the people of this isolated law-unto-itself world that was Lord's world.
This, he was sure, was the way they would act; laughing at a dying man, laughing as a man was beaten to death.
And nothing would be done about it.
Nothing unless **h Donna!
Donna, his young wife, the girl who was both daughter and wife to him.
Donna was like he was.
She lived by the rules, never compromising, never blinded or diverted by circumstance.
And Donna would- When he regained consciousness he was in Lord's house, in the office of Doctor Lord, the deputy's deceased father.
The Brannon outfit- known as the Slash-B because of its brand- reached Hondo Creek before sundown.
The herd was watered and then thrown onto a broad grass flat which was to be the first night's bedground.
Two of the new hands, a Mexican named Jose Amado and a kid known only as Laredo, were picked for the first trick of riding night herd.
The rest of the crew offsaddled their mounts and turned them into the remuda.
They got tin cups of coffee from the big pot on the coosie's fire, rolled and lighted brown-paper cigarettes, lounged about.
There was some idle talk, a listless discussion of this or that small happening during the day's drive.
But they deliberately avoided the one subject that had them all curious: the failure of the boss's wife and son to join the outfit.
It especially bothered the older hands.
The cook, Mateo Garcia, had arrived there long before the herd.
He'd started a fire and put coffee on, and now was busy at the work board of his chuck wagon.
He was readying a batch of sourdough biscuits for the Dutch oven.
Supper would be ready within the hour.
The Maguire family was setting up a separate camp nearby.
Billie had unhitched the mules from both Tom Brannon's and his father's wagon.
Hank had gathered wood for a cookfire, and his wife was busy at it now.
Conchita kept an eye on the twins and little Elena, trying to keep them from falling into the creek by which they persisted in playing.
Conchita nagged at the younger children, attempting without success to keep her thoughts off Tom Brannon.
Tom Brannon had caught up with the outfit shortly after the Maguires joined it, which had been at midday.
He'd come alone, without his wife and child.
He'd been in an angry mood: Conchita had thought his face almost ugly with the anger in him.
She wondered what had taken place in town, between him and his wife.
She wished that she could talk to her mother about it.
Not that her mother knew what had happened, but they could speculate upon it.
But her mother would rebuke her if she mentioned it, and say that it was none of her concern.
"Pat, get out of that creek!
You too, Sean!
Elena, you'll get mud all over your dress"!
Even as she called to the children, Conchita let her gaze seek Tom Brannon.
Tomas, she called him- as the Mexican hands did.
He was in earnest conversation with her father and the old vaquero, Luis Hernandez.
Whatever they are talking about?
Conchita wondered.
It bothered her that she probably would never know.
Certainly, she wouldn't dare ask her father afterward.
He would tell her not to pry into grownups' affairs- as though she were a little kid like Elena!
At the moment, the three men were not saying much of anything.
They were sitting on their heels, rider-fashion, over by the still empty calf wagon.
Brannon was hunkered down with his broad back to the left rear wheel, with the other two facing him.
He held a cigarette in his right hand.
It was burning away, forgotten.
His face was clouded with unhappiness.
He'd told Hank Maguire and Luis Hernandez about his wife's refusal to come with him and about what he now intended to do.
They were considering it gravely, neither seeming to like what he planned.
Finally Hernandez said, "I could offer you advice, Tomas, but you wouldn't heed it".
"Let's hear it, anyway".
"Wait a little while.
Let Senora Brannon live in her father's house for a time.
Give her time to miss you.
Maybe she will then come to you.
After all, you want the senora as much as you want the boy.
You need her even more than you need him".
"She won't change her mind", Brannon said.
"John Clayton will see to that".
"But after a time away from you **h".
"A year, Luis?
Five?
Ten?
How long should I wait"?
"Maybe in a year, Tomas **h".
"In a year she'll like living in Clayton's house too much to come back to me", Brannon said flatly.
"And the boy will be too much under his influence by then.
I've got to take Danny away from Clayton before I lose him altogether.
Hell, in a year or five or ten, the boy will have forgotten me- his own father"!
"But to take him and leave his mother behind is not good".
"In my place, you'd follow such advice as you give me"?
Hernandez looked suddenly uncertain.
"That I can't answer, for I can't imagine something like this happening to me.
Maybe I should withdraw my advice- no"?
Brannon looked at Hank Maguire.
"And you?
What would you do in my place"?
Hank shook his head.
"I don't know, Tom.
Like Luis, I can't see something like this happening to me.
With Maria and me, there's never any problem.
Where I go, she goes- and the kids with us.
You're going to need your woman.
And the boy will need his mother.
If you take the one, you'd better take both".
Brannon shook his head.
"I won't force Beth to come against her will.
But I'm going to have my son".
They were silent for a little while, each looking glum.
Finally Luis Hernandez said, "What must be, must be.
I am with you, of course, Tomas".
And Hank Maguire added, "So am I, Tom".
"All right", Brannon said, rising.
"We'll ride out as soon as we've had chuck".
## Brannon timed it so that they rode in an hour after nightfall.
They had for cover both darkness and a summer storm.
During much of the fifteen-mile ride they had watched a lurid display of lightning in the sky to the east.
Later, they'd heard the rumble of thunder and then, just outside Rockfork, they ran into rain.
Those who had slickers donned them.
The others put on old coats or ducking jackets, whichever they carried behind their saddle cantles.
There were seven of them, enough for a show of strength- to run a bluff.
It was to be nothing more than that.
There was to be no gunplay.
If the bluff failed and they ran into trouble, Brannon had told the others, they would withdraw- and he would come after his son another time.
He didn't want to put himself outside the law.
With him were Hank Maguire, Luis Hernandez, and Luis's son Pedro.
The Ramirez brothers were also along.
The seventh man was Red Hogan, a wiry little puncher with a wild streak and a liking for hell-raising.
They were all good men.
It was dark early, because of the storm.
Also because of the storm, the streets of Rockfork were deserted.
Lighted windows glowed jewel-bright through the downpour.
They reined in before the town marshal's office, a box-sized building on Main Street.
A lamp burned inside, but Brannon, peering through the window, saw that the office was empty.
He'd hoped to catch Jesse Macklin there.
"Probably just stepped out", he said.
"Maybe to have supper.
Red, come along.
The rest of you wait here".
With Red Hogan, he rode to the Welcome Cafe.
Hogan got down from the saddle and had a look inside.
"Not there", he said, getting back onto his horse.
"Maybe he's at the hotel".
They rode to the Rockfork House, a little farther along the opposite side of the street.
They reined in there, Brannon remaining in the saddle while Hogan went to look for Jesse Macklin in the hotel dining room.
Brannon had no slicker.
He'd put on his old brown corduroy coat and it was already soaked.
But he felt no physical discomfort.
He was only vaguely aware of the sluicing rain.
He hardly noticed the blue-green flashes of lightning and the hard claps of thunder.
Hogan reappeared, stopped on the hotel porch, lifted a hand in signal.
Brannon dismounted and climbed the steps.
"He's finished eating", Hogan said.
"Sitting with a cup of coffee now.
It shouldn't be long".
It seemed long, at least to Tom Brannon.
He and Hogan waited by the door, one to either side.
Macklin was the third man to come out, and he came unhurriedly.
He was puffing on a cigar, and he was turning up his coat collar against the rain.
It was not until he moved across the porch that he became aware of them, and then it was too late.
They closed in fast, kept him from reaching inside his coat for his gun.
"Just come along", Brannon told him.
"Don't start anything you can't finish".
"Now, listen"- Macklin began.
"We'll talk over at your office".
"Brannon, I warn you"!
"Let's go, Marsh al", Brannon said, and took him by the arm.
Hogan gripped the lawman's other arm.
They escorted him down from the porch and through the rain to his office.
The other five Slash-B men followed them inside, crowding the small room.
His face was stiff with anger when they let go of his arms.
He looked at each of them in turn, Brannon last of all.
"I'll remember you", he said.
"Every last one of you.
As for you, Brannon"- "Put your gun on the desk, Marshal".
"Now, hold on, damn it; I won't"- Red Hogan's patience ran out.
He lifted the skirt of Macklin's coat, took his gun from its holster, tossed it onto the desk.
"Too much fooling around", he said.
"Don't press your luck, badge-toter".
Brannon said, "Now the key to the lockup, Marshal".
"Key"?
Macklin said.
"What for"?
"Can't you guess"?
Brannon said.
"We're putting you where you won't come to harm.
Come on- the key.
Get it out"!
"Damned if I will.
Brannon, you've assaulted a law officer and"- They moved in on him, crowded him from all sides.
No man laid a hand on him, but the threat of violence was there.
His face took on a sudden pallor, became beaded with sweat, and he seemed to have trouble with his breathing.
He held out a moment longer, then his nerve gave under the pressure.
He swore, and said, "All right.
It's here in my pocket".
"Get it out", Brannon ordered.
Then, as Macklin obeyed: "Now let's go out back".
Resignedly, Macklin turned to the back door.
They followed him into the rain and across to the squat stone building fifty feet to the rear.
The door of the lockup was of oak planks and banded with strap iron.
It was secured by an oversized padlock.
Macklin balked again, not wanting to unlock and open the door.
They crowded him in that threatening way once more, forced him to give in.
Once the door was open, they crowded him inside the dark building.
He was uttering threats in a low but savage voice when they closed and padlocked the door.
They returned to the street, mounted their horses, rode through the rain to the big house on Houston Street.
Its windows glowed with lamplight.
Deputy Marshal Luke Harper still stood guard on the veranda, a forlorn, scarecrowish figure in the murky dark.
He came to the edge of the veranda, peered down at them with his hand on his gun.
"Don't try it", Brannon told him, dismounting and starting up the steps with his men following.
"Don't get yourself killed for something that doesn't concern you".
He strode past the now frightened man, entered the house.
Miguel and Arturo Ramirez remained on the veranda to keep Harper from interfering.
The others followed Brannon inside.
They trailed him across the wide hallway to the parlor, four roughly garbed and tough-looking men who probably had never before ventured into such a house.
They brought to it all the odors that clung to men like themselves, that of their own sweat, of campfire smoke, of horses and cattle.
They tracked mud on the oaken floor, on the carpet.
Their presence fouled the elegance of that room.
And their arrival caught John Clayton and Charles Ansley off guard.
The author of the anonymous notes seemed to be all-knowing.
For men who had left cattle alone after getting their first notices had received no second.
But the day of the deadline came and passed, and the men who had scoffed at the warnings laughed with satisfaction.
For, with a single exception, nothing had happened to them.
The exception was an Iron Mountain settler named William Lewis.
After walking out to his corral that morning, he'd been amazed to see the dust puff up in front of his feet.
A split second later, the distant crack of a rifle had sounded.
He'd mounted up immediately and raced with a revolver ready toward the spot from which he'd estimated the shot had come.
But he had found all of the thickets and points of cover deserted.
There had been no sign of a rifleman and no track or trace to show that anyone had been near.
Lewis was a man who had made a full-time job of cow stealing.
He hadn't even pretended to be farming his spread.
His land had never been plowed.
He had done his rustling openly and boasted about it.
He had received both first and second anonymous notices, and each time he had accused his neighbors of writing them.
He had cursed at them and threatened them.
He was a man, those neighbors testified later, who didn't have a friend in the world.
William Lewis made the rounds of all who lived near him again, that August morning after a bullet landed at his feet, and once more he accused and threatened everyone.
"I'll be ready next time"!
he raged.
"I'll be shootin' right back".
He had his chance the very next morning, for exactly the same thing happened again.
This time Lewis had his own rifle in his hands, and he threw some answering fire back at the mysterious far-off shot, then spent most of the day searching out the area.
He found nothing, but he still refused to give up and move out.
"Just let me meet up with that damned bushwhackin' coward face-to-face"!
he exploded.
"That's all I ask"!
He never got that chance.
For the unseen, ghostlike rifleman aimed a little higher the third time.
A .30-30 bullet smashed directly into the center of William Lewis' chest.
He slumped against a log fence rail, then tried to lift himself.
Two more shots followed in quick succession, dropping him limp and huddled on the ground.
An inquest was held, and after a good deal of testimony about the anonymous notes, the county coroner estimated that the shooting had been done from a distance of 300 yards.
Rumors of the offer Tom Horn had made at the Stockgrowers' Association meeting had leaked out by then, and as a grand jury investigation of the murder got underway, the prosecuting attorney, a Colonel Baird, ordered that the tall stock detective be summoned for questioning.
It took some time to locate Horn.
He was finally found in the Bates Hole region of Natrona County, two counties away.
Prosecutor Baird immediately assumed he was hiding out there after the shooting and began preparing an indictment.
But that indictment was never made.
For Tom Horn, it turned out, had a number of rancher and cowboy witnesses ready and willing to swear with straight faces that he had been in Bates Hole the day of the killing.
The former scout's alibi couldn't be shaken.
The authorities had to release him.
He immediately rode on to Cheyenne, threw a ten-day drinking spree and dropped some very strong hints among friends.
"Dead center at three hundred yards, that coroner said"!
he'd grin.
"Three shots in that fella 'fore he hit the ground!
You reckon there's two men in this state can shoot like that"?
Publicly, he denied everything.
Privately, he created and magnified an image of himself as a hired assassin.
For a blood-chilling ring of terror to the very sound of his name was the tool he needed for the job he'd promised to do.
## Tom Horn was soon back at work, giving his secret employers their money's worth.
A good many beef-hungry settlers were accepting the death of William Lewis as proof that the warning notes were not idle threats.
The company herds were being raided less often, and cabins and soddies all over the range were standing deserted.
But there were other homesteaders who passed the Lewis murder off as a personal grudge killing, the work of one of his neighbors.
The rustling problem was by no means solved.
Even in the very area where the shooting had been done, cattle were still disappearing.
For less than a dozen miles from the unplowed land of the dead man lived another settler who had ignored the warnings that his existence might be foreclosed on- a blatant and defiant rustler named Fred Powell.
"Fred was mighty crude about the way he took in cattle" his own hired man, Andy Ross, mentioned later.
"Everyone knew it, but he sort of acted like he didn't care who knew it- even after them notes came, even after he'd heard about Lewis, even after he'd been shot at a couple o' times hisself"!
On the morning of September 10, 1895, Powell and Ross rose at dawn and began their day's work.
Haying time was close at hand, and they needed some strong branches to repair a hay rack.
Harnessing a team to a buckboard, they drove out to a willow-lined creek about a half-mile off, then climbed down and began chopping.
Andy Ross had just started swinging an ax at his second willow when the distant blast of a rifle sounded.
He looked around in surprise, then noticed that Fred Powell was clutching his chest.
The hired man ran over to help his boss.
"My God, I'm shot"!
Powell gasped.
And he collapsed and died instantly.
Ross had no intention of searching for the assassin.
He heaved the dead man onto the buckboard, yelled and lashed at the team and got out of there fast.
But he brought back the sheriff and several deputies, and to the lawmen the entire affair seemed a repetition of the Lewis killing.
A detailed scouring of the entire area revealed nothing beyond a ledge of rocks that might have been the rifleman's hiding place.
There were no tracks of either hoofs or boots.
Not even an empty cartridge case could be found.
Once again, Tom Horn was the first and most likely suspect, and he was brought in for questioning immediately.
Once again, he shook his head, kept his face expressionless and his voice very calm, and had a strongly supported alibi ready.
Later, riding in for some lusty enjoyment of the liquor and professional ladies of Cheyenne, he laid claim to the killing with the vague insinuations he made.
"Exterminatin' cow thieves is just a business proposition with me", he'd blandly announce.
"And I sort o' got a corner on the market".
"Tom", a friend asked him once, "how come you bushwhacked them rustlers?
They wouldn't o' stood no chance with you in a plain, straight-out shoot-down".
He had lots of friends, then as always.
Even as he became widely known as a professional killer, nearly every cowboy and rancher in Wyoming seemed proud to call him a friend.
No man's name brought more cheers when it was announced in a rodeo.
"Well", he explained, "s'posin' you was a nester swingin' the long rope?
Which would you be most scairt of- a dry-gulchin' or a shoot-down"?
"Yeah, I can see that", the friend was forced to agree.
"But **h well, it just don't seem sportin' somehow"!
"Sportin'"!
The tall sunburnt rustler-hunter stared in amazement.
"Sportin'"!
he echoed again in soft wonder.
"I seen a lot o' things in my time.
I found a trooper once the Apache had spread-eagled on an ant hill, and another time we ran across some teamsters they'd caught, tied upside down on their own wagon wheels over little fires until their brains was exploded right out o' their skulls.
I heard o' Texas cattlemen wrappin' a cow thief up in green hides and lettin' the sun shrink 'em and squeeze him to death.
But there's one thing I never seen or heard of, one thing I just don't think there is, and that's a sportin' way o' killin' a man"!
After the first two murders, the warning notes were rarely ignored.
The lesson had been learned.
The examples were plain.
When Fred Powell's brother-in-law, Charlie Keane, moved into the dead man's home, the anonymous letter writer took no chances on Charlie taking up where Fred had left off and wasted no time on a first notice: IF YOU DON'T LEAVE THIS COUNTRY WITHIN 3 DAYS, YOUR LIFE WILL BE TAKEN THE SAME AS POWELL'S WAS.
This was the message found tacked to the cabin door.
Keane left, within three days.
All through Albany and Laramie counties, other men were doing the same.
Houses of settlers who'd treated the company herds as a natural resource, free for the taking, were sitting empty, with weeds growing high in their yards.
The small half-heartedly tended fields of men who'd spent more time rustling cattle than farming were lying fallow.
No cow thief could count on a jury of his sympathetic peers to free him any longer.
Jury, judge and executioner were riding the range in the form of a single unknown figure that could materialize anywhere, at any time, to dispense an ancient brand of justice the men of the new West had believed long outdated.
## For three straight years, Tom Horn patrolled the southern Wyoming pastures, and how many men he killed after Lewis and Powell (if he killed Lewis and Powell) will never be known.
It is possible, although highly doubtful, that he killed none at all but merely let his reputation work for him by privately claiming every unsolved murder in the state.
It is also possible, but equally doubtful, that he actually shot down the hundreds of men with which his legend credits him.
For that legend was growing explosively, Rumor was insisting he received a price of $600 a man.
(The best evidence is that he received a monthly wage of about $125, very good money in an era when top hands worked for $30 and found.)
Rumor had it he slipped two small rocks under each victim's head as a sort of trademark.
(A detailed search of old coroner's reports fails to substantiate this in the slightest.)
One thing was certain- his method was effective, so effective that after a time even the warning notices were often unnecessary.
The mere fact that the tall figure with the rifle and field glasses had been seen riding that way was enough to frighten three rustling homesteaders out of the Upper Laramie country in a single week.
"My reputation's my stock in trade", Tom mentioned more than once.
He evidently couldn't foresee that it might be his downfall in the end.
He had made himself the personification of the Devil to the homesteaders.
But to the cattlemen who had been facing bankruptcy from rustling losses and to the cowboys who had been faced with lay-offs a few years earlier, he was becoming a vastly different type of legendary figure.
Such ranchers as Coble and Clay and the Bosler brothers carried him on their books as a cowhand even while he was receiving a much larger salary from parties unknown.
He made their spreads his headquarters, and he helped out in their roundups.
In the cow camps, Tom Horn was regarded as a hero, as the same kind of champion he was when he entered and invariably won the local rodeos.
The hands and their bosses saw him as a lone knight of the range, waging a dedicated crusade against a lawless new society that was threatening a beloved way of life.
The wailing, guitar-strumming minstrels of the cattle kingdom made up songs about him.
By 1898, rustling losses had been driven down to the lowest level ever seen in Wyoming.
When several minutes had passed and Curt hadn't emerged from the livery stable, Brenner reentered the hotel and faced Summers across the counter.
"I have a little job for you, Charlie.
I'm sure you won't mind doing me a small favor".
Brenner's voice was oily, but Summers wasn't fooled.
He moistened his lips uneasily.
"What is it you want me to do, Mr Brenner"?
Brenner shrugged carelessly.
"It's very simple.
I just want you to take a message to Diane Molinari.
Tell her to come here to the hotel".
Vastly relieved, Summers nodded and started toward the door.
"One thing, Summers", Brenner said.
"You're not to mention my name.
Tell her Curt Adams wants to see her".
Summers pulled up short, and turned around.
"I don't know, Mr Brenner", he said haltingly, beginning to get an inkling of Brenner's plans.
"It doesn't seem quite right, telling her a thing like that.
Couldn't I just"- His voice trailed off into silence.
Brenner continued to smile, but his eyes were cold.
He turned and looked around at the lobby as though seeing things he hadn't before noticed.
"You know, Summers", he said thoughtfully.
"Eagle's Nest ought to have a fire company.
If someone were to drop a match in here, this place would go up like a haystack".
He started toward the stairway, then turned to add, "Tell her to come to Adams's room, that Adams is in trouble.
Tell her to hurry".
"Yes sir".
His face pale, Summers headed for the street.
## Curt's visit to the livery stable had been merely a precaution in case anyone should be watching.
He paused only long enough to ascertain that Jess's buckskin was still missing and that his own gray was all right, then climbed through a back window and dropped to the ground outside.
The fact that Jess's horse had not been returned to its stall could indicate that Diane's information had been wrong, but Curt didn't interpret it this way.
A man like Jess would want to have a ready means of escape in case it was needed.
Probably his horse would be close to where he was hiding.
From the back of the barn it was a simple matter to reach Black's house without using the street.
Curt approached the place cautiously, and watched it several minutes from the protection of a grove of trees.
There was a light in Black's front room, but drawn curtains prevented any view of the interior.
Curt circled the house and located a barn out back.
He could hear horses moving around inside, and nothing else.
There was no lock on the door, only an iron hook which he unfastened.
He opened the door and went in, pulling it shut behind him.
Again he stood in the darkness listening, but there was only the scrape of a shod hoof on a plank floor.
He moved ahead carefully, his left hand in front of him, and came to a wooden partition.
Horse smell was very strong, and he could hear the crunch of grain being ground between strong jaws.
He found a match in his pocket and lit it.
There were two horses in the barn, a sway-backed dun and Jess Crouch's buckskin.
Curt snuffed out the match.
It was certain now that Jess was in the house, but also, presumably, was Stacey Black.
Curt wanted to get Jess alone, without interference from anyone, even as spineless a person as the store owner.
He studied the problem for a few seconds and thought of a means by which it might be solved.
Reaching across the side of the stall, he slapped the buckskin on the rump.
The startled animal let out a terrified squeal and thrashed around in the stall.
As Curt had hoped, the house door banged open.
He slapped the buckskin again and it kicked wildly, its hoofs rattling the side of the stall.
Curt moved over beside the door and waited.
Presently he heard footsteps crossing the yard, and Jess's smothered curses.
The door swung open, and Jess said sourly, "What the hell's the matter with you?"
The horse continued to snort.
Curt doubted that any animal belonging to Jess would find much reassurance in its owner's voice.
Jess cursed again, and entered the barn.
A match flared, and he reached above his head to light a lantern which hung from a wire loop.
As he crossed to the side of the stall, Curt drew his gun and clicked back the hammer.
"Before you try anything", he said.
"Remember what happened to Gruller".
Jess caught his breath in surprise.
He started to reach for his gun, but apparently thought better of it.
"That's the stuff", Curt said.
"Just hold it that way".
He reached out to pull the door shut and fasten it with a sliding bolt.
"You and I have a little talking to do, Jess.
You won't be needing this".
He moved up and lifted Jess's pistol out of its holster.
"Damn you, Adams"- Jess was beginning to recover from his initial shock.
"We ain't got nothing to talk about.
If I don't come back in the house, Breed's going to"- "Your trigger-happy brother isn't in the house.
About now he's probably having supper.
That long ride the four of you took must've given him a good appetite.
Now turn around so I can see your face".
Jess turned.
There was raw fury in his eyes, and the veins of his neck were swollen.
"You're about as dumb as they come, Adams.
I don't know what you're up to, but when Brenner"- "You can forget about Brenner, too", Curt said.
"It's Ben Arbuckle we're going to talk about".
"Arbuckle"?
Jess stiffened.
"I don't know nothin' about him".
"No?
I suppose you don't know anything about a piece of two-by-four, either; one with blood all over it, Arbuckle's blood".
Curt's fingers put a little more pressure on the trigger of his gun.
"So help me, Crouch, I'd like to kill you where you stand, but, before I do, I'm going to hear you admit killing him.
Now start talking.
Who told you to do it?
Was it Dutch Brenner"?
Curt was holding Jess's gun in his left hand.
He drew back his arm to slash the gunbarrel across Jess's face, but didn't finish the motion.
Pistol-whipping an unarmed man might come easy to someone like Jess, but Curt couldn't bring himself to do it.
Apparently sensing this, and realizing that it gave him an advantage, Jess became bold.
"Having all the guns makes you a big man, don't it, Adams?
If we was both armed, you wouldn't talk so tough".
"No"?
Curt reached out and dropped Jess's pistol back into the holster.
He retreated a step and holstered his own.
"All right, Crouch; we're on even terms.
Now draw"!
Sweat bubbled out on Jess's swarthy face.
The fingers of his right hand twisted into a claw, but he didn't reach for the gun.
Curt, angry enough to be a little reckless, raised his hands shoulder high.
"Does this make it any easier, coward"?
"I ain't drawin' against you", Jess said thickly.
"I heard how you outdrew Chico.
I ain't a gunslinger".
"No.
You're the kind of bastard who sneaks up on a man from behind and hits him with a club.
I just wanted to hear you say so".
Jess stared at him without answering and let his hands fall to his sides.
He had found Curt's weakness, or what to Jess was a weakness, and was smart enough to take advantage of it.
Somewhere in the distance, a woman screamed.
Curt was too involved in his own problems to pay much attention.
He had to make Jess talk, and he had to do it before Stacey Black got curious and came to investigate.
Once more he lifted Jess's gun from its holster, only this time he tossed it into the stall with the frightened buckskin.
He dropped his own beside it.
"We'll do it another way, then", he said harshly.
Jess's coarse features twisted in a surprised grin which was smashed out of shape by Curt's fist.
With a roar of pain and fury Jess made his attack.
Curt managed to duck beneath the man's flailing fist, and drove home a solid left to Jess's mid-section.
It was like hitting a sack of salt.
Pain shout up Curt's arm clear to the shoulder, but Jess seemed hardly aware that he had been hit.
He slammed into the wall, bounced back, and caught Curt with a roundhouse right which sent him spinning.
An inch lower and it would have knocked him out.
As it was, his vision blurred and for a moment he was unable to move.
When his eyes began to focus, he saw Jess charging at him with a pitchfork.
Curt twisted to one side, and the tines of the fork bit into the floor.
Jess wasted a few seconds trying to yank them loose.
It gave Curt time to stagger to his feet.
The tines broke off under Jess's twisting, and he swung the handle in an attempt to knock Curt's brains out.
His aim was hurried; so the pitchfork whistled over Curt's head.
By now Curt was seeing clearly again.
He stepped inside Jess's guard and landed two blows to the big man's belly, putting everything he had behind them.
They made Jess double over.
When his head came down, Curt grabbed him by the hair and catapulted him head first into the wall.
The building shook, setting the lantern to swaying, and the buckskin to pitching again.
Even Black's old crowbait began to snort, and from the house Black yelled, "Jess!
What's going on out there"?
Jess didn't seem too sure himself.
He lurched drunkenly to his feet, lowered his head, and took one step away from the wall.
Curt caught him flush on the nose with a blow which started at the floor.
Jess had had enough.
Blood gushed from his nose, and he backed off as rapidly as he could, stumbling over his own feet in his frantic haste to get away from Curt's fists.
Curt was in almost as bad shape, but he wouldn't quit.
He backed Jess into a corner, grabbed a handful of the man's shirtfront, and drew back his right fist.
"Tell me about Arbuckle!
You killed him, didn't you"?
"It was Brenner's idea", Jess mumbled, dabbing at his nose.
"He found out about you and Arbuckle talking.
He wanted to show the town what happened to anyone who tried to start trouble".
"You mean anyone who stood up for his rights", Curt said.
He let go of the shirt, and Jess slumped to the floor.
Turning his back, Curt crossed to the stall, reached over to untie the buckskin's halter rope, and waved his hand in the animal's face.
The buckskin bolted out of the stall.
Curt moved in and picked up his gun.
He shook loose straw out of the action, and placed the gun in his holster.
Leaving Jess's where it lay, he left the stall.
"Get up, Crouch.
We're going someplace".
Jess painfully got to his feet as someone rattled the door.
"Who's in there"?
Black called fearfully.
Curt opened the door, grabbed Black by the shoulder, and pulled him into the barn.
"You're staying right here for a while.
This dirty coward just admitted killing Arbuckle.
I'm going to let him tell it to somebody else".
He shoved Black toward the stall, and pointed his pistol at Jess.
"Get out of here.
You're coming along peacefully, or I'll put a bullet in your leg".
Jess stumbled through the door.
Curt followed, reaching behind him to shut the door and hook it.
Black would have little trouble getting out, but it might delay him a few minutes.
"Where're you takin' me"?
Jess asked worriedly.
"We're going to Marshal Woods's house.
Maybe if the marshal hears this himself, it'll make a difference.
Somebody in this town must still have some backbone".
Over his shoulder he could see Max's loose grin and the Burnsides' glowering faces.
"Honey", he whispered.
"Soon as we send them on their way and make camp, let's you and me go for a walk down by the Snake- all by ourselves".
"Sally", admonished her mother, "you've got all evening to visit with Dan.
His wounds need dressing now".
Mrs Jackson's words recalled Dan to his lack of fitness for courting.
What a spectacle he was, caked with dirt and sweat and blood, filthy as a pig and naked as an Indian, kissing the finest, the sweetest, the bravest, and absolutely the prettiest girl in this whole wonderful world.
He released her reluctantly for her enthusiastic reunion with Old Hap.
"Got a lot to tend to, but I'll get back quick as I can", he assured her.
Dan could hear Clayton Burnside and Eben Jackson summing up their final reckoning for rental on the oxen.
Jackson was doing most of the talking.
So long as Sally's pa was coming out best on the haggle, Dan didn't feel the need of putting in his two-bits' worth.
Soon as the Burnsides moved on, he'd lead Rex down by the river; there he could shave and scrub himself up for the evening.
Damn it, he thought bitterly, picking up his shirt and staring at the fresh bullet hole in the sleeve.
If I hadn't got Nate stopped when I did, my duds'd all be shot plumb to hell!
He stooped, picked up his ruined hat, and pursed his lips thoughtfully.
From the way the wound in his head was itching, Dan knew that it would heal.
But his only hat was something else again.
"Nate!
Nate"!
he shouted.
The Burnsides, now ready to roll, were purposefully deaf to his cry.
"Nate"!
he bellowed to the retreating back directly in front of him.
"I ain't going to fight you no more".
Nate turned his head, attempting to speak in a soothing voice.
"I know you ain't"!
Dan affirmed, feeling ten feet tall.
He moved in close, jerked the handsome, broad-brimmed beaver hat from Nate's head and clamped it on his own.
"Here's a present for you", he said, shoving his bullet-riddled hat down over Nate's purpling forehead.
"Me and you's trading hats so's you'll have something permanent to remember me by"!
Sally left her choring to stand beside Dan.
Slipping her hand in his, they silently watched the Burnsides make the bend in the road and disappear from sight.
Much as they had to look forward to, they didn't begrudge a moment of the time they spent seeing them go.
AT FIRST Matilda could not believe her own eyes.
She had spent too many hours looking ahead, hoping and longing to catch even a glimpse of Dan and finding nothing but emptiness.
And now she could see him, looking uncommon handsome, standing there beside Sally Jackson and her folks in front of their trail-worn wagon.
Seeing them waiting there at the foot of Emigrant Rock was so overwhelming that, for a good minute after they rounded the bend and started down the grade leading toward them, Matilda could not speak at all.
Then, with a glory that almost wiped out the deep, downward sags in her careworn face, Matilda leaned over the wheel and shouted to Hez, who was stumbling along in the heat and the dust on the opposite side of the wagon "Pa!
Pa!
I can see Dan.
And he's with the Jacksons"!
"What about Burnsides"?
Hez asked, who still believed they'd have them to lick.
"They ain't even in sight"!
she replied.
By then Hez could see for himself, and so could the others.
Soon they were all shouting greetings, exchanging smiles, and rejoicing to think that they were all back together again.
But even a reunion as joyous as this one did not make a break in the routines of the day.
Nor could they stop and find out about all that had happened until they made circle, tended the cattle, tethered the horses, gathered fuel, carried water, and started their cooking fires.
Then, and only then, with the Jacksons and Dan as their true guests of honor, did the Harrows take time to catch up on the news.
No sooner did they hear of Dan's injury than both Gran and Matilda went into immediate action.
The wound in his scalp was examined, pronounced healing, and well doctored with simples, before they dished up the victuals.
From then on, in keeping with the traditions they had followed since childhood, the whole group settled down to relish their food.
Even Sally, in spite of her gaiety and obvious welcome, followed the old taboo of "quitting the gab when wearing the nosebag".
After their supper, the evening turned into a regular "Hoe-Down".
Only, they carefully substituted old country folk dances for the Virginia Reels and square dances that were so popular among more worldly trains in the great westward migration.
But with Bill O'Connor on the fiddle, and Gran Harrow exuberantly shouting "Glory Be" and "Hallelujah" above their united chant of the lilting old ballads, they played their quaint folk games with all the fervor and abandon of a real celebration.
"Golly", Rod exclaimed to Harmony as he dutifully stood by her side among the ringed spectators, "don't that fiddle make you wish the Bible didn't say us Baptists can't dance"?
"Nor Methodists, neither", she replied.
"Not that it matters to me, being this far along".
Rod gave her a warm pat on the shoulder before he replied.
"Come spring, you'll be kicking up your heels and feeling coltish again too, gal".
At these words of sympathy and understanding, Harmony said generously, "I don't mind setting here along with Gran while you go out and join in the games".
Rod shifted his eager eyes from the milling group out in the circle long enough to reply, "I ain't much of a hand for Dare-Base and Farmer-in-the-Dell, but I'd sure like to get in on the handhold and wrestles".
He looked down at his big hands and slowly flexed his long fingers.
"Don't reckon there's nobody out there, 'cept maybe Dan, who can outgrip me, Harmony".
With Rod on his way and Matilda visiting with Mrs Jackson while they searched out familiar names on the face of the cliff, Harmony settled on the edge of the grub box, to ease the pressure of her swollen body on her bone-weary legs, and worried about all that might have happened to Sally.
And she was deeply thankful that she could see her now, out there in the midst of a gay, youthful circle, skipping and singing, "Farmer in the dell, Farmer in the dell, Heigh-ho the dairy-oh, the farmer in the dell".
At the sight of Sally's happy face and carefree expression, Harmony's dark, brooding eyes quickly brightened with unshed tears.
She was glad, completely and unselfishly glad, to see that things were working out the right way for both Sally and Dan.
**h And she really tried to go a step further and say she hoped they'd be just as right as they now were for her and for Rod.
But she couldn't, not yet.
Not with the memory of her folks and the lost Conestoga still holding her close **h. Out in the center of the circle the farmer, who was Dan, wasted no time when they came to the line, "The farmer choose his wife".
With a swift swoop of his big arms, he grabbed Sally out of the circle surrounding him, and then kissed her soundly before setting her down so she could stand by his side while they jointly chose the rest of their "outfit".
Soon the child, the dog, the cat **h and even the cheese, all joined them out there in the circle.
By now Harmony could see that most of the adults in the train were winded and resting, or else siphoned off from the games by the challenging lure of the great cliff towering above them.
No matter how many registry rocks they came to on this journey, each one exerted its own appeal.
Even strange names seemed to make them feel closer to some kind of civilization when stumbled across out here in this wilderness.
Already a few hardy folk from their own train were zealously chipping away at the register rocks, leaving their own records along with those made by the earlier trains.
Soon she saw Rod and Hez moving over to join them.
No sooner were they through and the guards posted, than the whole camp turned in for a night of sound sleep.
For Matilda, it was the first she had known in many a night.
Even the knowledge that she was losing another boy, as a mother always does when a marriage is made, did not prevent her from having the first carefree, dreamless sleep that she had known since they dropped down the canyon and into Bear Valley, way, way back there when they were crossing those other mountains.
## Next morning, they moved on again.
"My souls' a-gracious"!
Gran Harrow exclaimed, watching their rippling muscles as Rod and Dan swung her up into the load.
"A body would swear I floated right up here on a cloud"!
Rod and Dan released their holds on the arms of her hickory rocker and exchanged embarrassed grins.
"Shucks, Gran", they said almost in unison.
"That wasn't nothing at all"!
Leaning forward in her chair, Gran nearsightedly scrutinized Dan's face.
"How's Sally like rubbin' agin that thar little ticklebrush ye're a-raising"?
"Quit ragging him, Gran", Rod protested.
"I ain't ragging him"!
Gran peered again at the week-old blond mustache shadowing Dan's upper lip.
"But honest-to-Betsy, I've seed more hair than that on a piece o' bacon".
The two tall brothers waited silently while their mother handed Gran her cold snack and water jug, placed the chamber pot beside her feet, and returned to her place at the front of the wagon with Alice.
"Rheumatics worse, Pa"?
Dan asked Hez, who had limped back from his team to hold the notched-stick chair braces in place while his boys swung up the tailgate and tied it tight at the ends.
"My right leg's stiff as a board this morning", he replied.
"But the sun'll fry it out'n me onct we git to rolling".
The three men stepped out to the side to wait for Captain Clemens' signal.
Hez looked up at the high face of Emigrant Rock, official signboard for the Raft River turnoff, and gloated, "Seems funny that them Burnsides never took time to leave their John-Henry up thar".
"Wonder what made them hurry so", Rod drawled, giving Dan a sly wink.
Dan grinned, and changed the subject.
"From now on, Sally and me and her folks aim to give you our turn when it comes up and fall in behind you and Rod's outfit".
"Ain't no sense you eating our dust", Rod protested.
"Sally and her ma want to trade off on account of Harmony being so far along", Dan explained.
"Jackson recruited his critters, and him and me fixed up his wagon while we was waiting for you to catch up.
He's got the tightest running gear in the train now.
Besides, 'tain't no more'n right for me to follow with my black oxen, so's I can unhook and pull up fast if either of you get in a pinch".
Captain Clemens' signal shot sent the men hurrying to their waiting teams.
"Reckon ye're right, Dan", Hez called back over his shoulder.
"I'll shore be needing ye both on the pull out o' the canyon".
Rod looked apprehensively ahead at the narrowing, precipice-walled gorge.
"We'll double teams zigzagging up the mountain, Harmony", he spoke reassuringly, concerned by the pinched look around her mouth.
"Like enough we'll all be up on top by sundown".
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his father's wheels beginning to turn.
Before Harmony had a chance to reply, Rod cracked his long whip over his thin oxen's backs **h. While no larger than Dutch Springs, this mining supply town had the appearance of being far busier and more prosperous.
Men crowded the streets and freight rigs and teams were moving about.
Although they were forced to maintain a sharper watch, this activity enabled them to ride in and rack their broncs without any particular attention being paid them.
"Gyp'll be holdin' forth in some bar if he's here at all", Cobb declared, glancing along the street as they stretched their legs.
There were no less than six or seven saloons in Ganado, not counting the lower class dives, all vying for the trade of celebrating miners and teamsters.
Pat only nodded.
"Take one side of the street, and I'll take the other", he proposed.
"If you spot Carmer give a yell before you move in".
Cobb's assent was tight.
"You do the same.
It's all I ask, Stevens".
Separating, they took different sides of the main drag and systematically combed the bars.
Russ visited two places without result and his blood pressure was down to zero.
Suddenly it seemed to him insane that they might hope to locate Gyp Carmer so casually, even were he to prove the thief.
He tramped out of the Miners Rest with his hopes plummeting, and headed doggedly for the Palace Saloon, the last place of any consequence on this side of the street.
The Palace was an elaborate establishment, built practically on stilts in front, with long flights of wooden steps running up to the porch.
Behind its ornate facade the notorious dive clung like a bird's nest to the rocky ribs of the canyonside.
Russ ran up the steps quickly to the plank porch.
The front windows of the place were long and narrow, reaching nearly to the floor and affording an unusually good view of the interior.
Heading for the batwings, Cobb glanced perfunctorily through the nearest window, and suddenly dodged aside.
Nerves tight as a bowstring, he paused to gather his wits.
Against all expectation, Carmer was inside, clearly enjoying himself to the hilt and already so tipsy that it seemed unlikely he was bothering to note anything or anyone about him.
Fierce anger surged through Russ.
He fought down the impulse to rush in and collar the vicious puncher on the spot.
Reaching the porch rail beyond view of the bar windows, he feverishly scanned the busy street below.
Stevens was nowhere in sight.
Muffling an exclamation, Russ sprang to the nearest steps and ran down.
As luck had it, he had not gone twenty feet in the street before Pat appeared.
"What luck, Cobb"?
he said swiftly.
Russ pointed upward.
"He's there", he got out tersely, curbing his rising excitement.
Hitching his cartridge belt around, Pat glanced upward briefly at the Palace and started that way with Cobb at his side.
Climbing the steps steadily, they reached the top and headed for the door.
Pat pushed through first.
Forced behind him momentarily, Russ followed at once and halted two steps inside.
His eyes widened.
While five minutes ago the place had presented a scene of easy revelry, with Gyp Carmer a prominent figure, it was now as somnolent and dull as the day before payday.
Carmer himself was nowhere to be seen.
A man knocked the roulette ball about idly in its track, and another dozed at one of the card tables.
Two men murmured with their heads together at the end of the bar, while the sleek-headed bartender absently polished a glass.
Looking the setup over, Stevens started coolly for the rear of the place.
"Where yuh goin'"?
It was the barkeep.
Halting, Pat turned to survey him deliberately.
He did not reply, going on toward the back.
Less assured than the tall, wide-shouldered man in the lead, Cobb followed alertly, a hand on his gun butt.
The bartender measured this situation with heavy eyes and decided he wanted no part of it.
He said no more.
A hall opened in back of the bar, running toward an ell.
Pat moved into it.
Small rooms, probably for cards, opened off on either side.
All the doors were open at this hour except one, and it was toward this that Stevens made his way with Russ close at his shoulder.
The door was locked.
A single kick made it spring open, shuddering.
Pat saw Gyp Carmer staggering forward, a half-filled bottle upraised as if to strike.
Russ sprang through to bat it nimbly aside.
With a bellow Carmer lunged at him.
But he was more than half-drunk, and his faculties were dulled.
Cobb unleashed a single powerful jab that sent Gyp reeling wildly and crashing down with a whining groan.
He started to struggle up, heaving desperately.
Russ gave him a brutal thrust that tumbled him over flat on his stomach.
Kneeling, Cobb planted a sturdy knee in the small of his back, holding him pinned.
"Okay, Stevens.
I've drawn his fangs", he snapped.
"Go through his pockets, will you?
If we have to we'll take him apart and see what he's made of"!
Complying methodically, Pat pulled pocket after pocket inside out without finding a thing.
Cobb watched this with hunted eyes, his desperate hope waning by the moment.
Stevens was grunting over the last empty pocket when Russ abruptly rose and lunged toward Carmer's hat, which had tumbled half-a-dozen feet away when he first fell.
Cobb got it.
Straightening up, his eyes ablaze, he held out the battered Stetson.
"Look at this"!
Inside the crown, stuffed behind the stained sweatband, could be seen thin, crumpled wads of currency.
Carmer's ingenious cache for his loot had been found.
"By golly, Stevens!
You were right", Russ exclaimed, tearing the loose bills out of Carmer's hat.
"That is, if we can be sure this is Colcord's money"- Pat grunted.
"Where else would he get it?
Count what you've got there, Cobb.
We can soon tell".
Russ ran through the bills and named an amount it was highly unlikely any cowpuncher would come by honestly.
Pat nodded.
"It's within a hundred of what Crip had", he declared.
"We know Penny spent some- and Carmer must have dropped a few dollars getting that load on".
Handing the money over, Russ wiped his hands on his pants-legs as if ridding himself of something unclean.
His glance at Gyp Carmer was disdainful.
"Shall we get out of here"?
Leaving the card room, they moved back through the Palace the way they had come.
Glowering looks met them in the bar, but there was no attempt to halt them.
Pausing in the outside door to glance behind him, Pat looked his unspoken warning and stepped out.
He and Cobb clattered down the high steps to the street.
Neither spoke till they reached their horses.
Pat paused there, looking across at the young fellow.
It'll be a pleasure for you to return this money to Colcord and tell him about it, Russ".
He started to return it.
To his faint surprise Russ held up his hand.
"Not me", he ruled decidedly.
I've had enough.
It was you that tracked it down anyway, Stevens", he pursued strictly.
"I'll shove along home".
"Whatever you say".
Pat swung into the saddle, yet still he delayed, his brows puckered.
"You owe it to Penny to give her a chance to explain that she was defending you, really", he observed mildly.
"Old Crip wasn't", retorted Cobb tartly.
"He'll know when you tell him.
But I want this to sink in awhile.
Then maybe next time he won't be so quick on the trigger".
"Pat had never pretended to give advice in such affairs.
"You're the doctor", he returned with a smile.
"But I still think Penny's an awful nice girl, Russ"- "You don't have to tell me", flashed Cobb.
Giving the other a dark look, he hauled his bronc around and trotted down off the street.
Pat let him go, following more leisurely.
At the first restaurant he sensibly pulled up to go in for his dinner, and as a consequence did not see Cobb strike the open range at the mouth of the canyon and head straight across the swells for Antler.
The truth was, the puncher was both bewildered and dismayed by his own mixed luck.
"Penny's always glad to see me over there", he mused bleakly.
Yet had he not visited the girl at Saw Buck he would never have been involved in this latest tangle.
Over and above that, however, was his growing suspicion of Chuck Stober's part in recent events.
"Gyp Carmer couldn't have known about Colcord's money unless he was told- and who else would have told him"?
he asked himself.
"It's the second time War Ax hands made a play for that money.
How much of an accident could that be"?
Nearing home, he jerked to attention at the distant crack of a gun.
In town no one paid much attention to an occasional shot; but on the range gunfire had a meaning.
Hauling up, Russ listened carefully.
Two minutes later it came again- a double explosion, followed by a third, sounding more distant.
As near as Cobb could determine the shots came from the direction of the Antler ranch house.
He tightened up in a twinkling.
So far as he knew, only his father could be there.
What did it mean?
Clapping spurs to the bronc he set off at a sharp canter, with growing alarm.
His first glimpse of the ranch house across the brushy swells told him nothing.
Still a quarter-mile away, the fresh clap of guns only served to increase his speed.
Setting a course straight for the house, he was covering ground fast when an angry bee buzzed past close to his face.
When it was followed by a second, whining even closer, Cobb swerved sharply aside into a depression.
He knew now what he was up against.
Whoever was out there hiding in the brushy cover was besieging the Antler house and, having spotted his approach, was determined to drive him off before he could get into the fight.
Cursing himself for having ridden out the last few days without a rifle in his saddle boot, Russ drew his Colt and examined it briefly.
If he wondered whether the attackers would allow him to pull away unmolested, he had his answer a moment later.
"Over this way!
He ain't gone far"!
a harsh cry floated to him across the brush.
A carbine cracked more loudly, and a slug clipped fragments from the brush off at one side.
The would-be assassin had his position figured pretty close.
Dismounting, Russ looked about hastily.
Toward the west this depression led toward a draw.
Leading his pony, he hurried that way, not remounting till he was well below the level of the surrounding range.
Swinging up then, and bending forward over the horn, he urged his mount down the meandering draw.
He had not covered a hundred yards before a gun crashed from somewhere behind.
He had been sighted, and his attacker pumping shot after shot.
A shot or two went wild before Cobb felt something tug at his foot.
A slug had torn half of his stirrup-guard away.
A second twitched his shirtsleeve, and he felt a brief burn on his upper arm.
Another snarled close overhead.
"Jumping Jerusalem!
Let's get out of here"!
At the first shot Russ had hurled his mount to the left toward the side of the winding draw.
The long minute before he reached effective cover seemed endless.
Sweeping a look around, he saw that he was safe for the moment.
He heard cries from behind him, but he could make out no words.
He dashed madly for the next elbow turn in the draw, and made it.
Recklessly hurling the bronc sidewise into an intersecting draw, he plunged forward with undiminished speed.
Gradually the wash climbed upward, forcing him toward open range.
Yet he must chance it.
He clambered out of the dwindling wash, the loose dirt flying behind him, and flashed a look about.
Early in November the clouds lifted enough to carry out the assigned missions.
And Sweeney Squadron put its first marks on the combat record.
Every plane that could fly was sent into the air.
Cricket took eight ships and went south across the Straits and along the north coast of Mindanao to Cagayan.
Anything the enemy flew or floated was his target.
Fleischman with eight was to patrol the Leyte Gulf area, with his main task to get any kamikaze before they got to the ships.
Greg himself took two flights, with Todman leading the second, to patrol and look for targets of opportunities around Ormoc on the east coast of Leyte.
Each plane carried two five-hundred pound bombs.
A weapons carrier took Greg, Todman, Belton, Banjo Ferguson, and Walters and the others the two miles from the bivouac area to the strip.
It was a rough long ride through the mud and pot holes.
No one had much to say.
The sky glowered down at them.
There was a feeling that this mission would be canceled like all the others and that this muddy wet dark world of combat would go on forever.
The truck dropped them off at the various revetments spread through the jungle.
Donovan snatched Greg's chute from him with a belligerent motion and almost ran to the plane with it.
His face was dark as the sky above it as he stood on the wing and waited for his pilot.
Greg climbed into the cockpit feeling as if he had never been in one before.
But his hands and those of Donovan moved automatically adjusting and arranging in the check-out procedure.
"I've got her as neat as I can", Donovan said, as he dropped the straps of the Seton harness over Greg's shoulders.
"But this goddamn climate.
It's for carabao not airplanes".
"We'll make out.
Don't you worry, chief", Greg replied, wondering if he himself believed it.
"Yeah.
See you", Donovan said as he jumped off the wing.
The expression was his trade-mark, his open sesame to good luck, and his prayer that pilot and plane would always return.
At the prearranged time, Greg started the engine and taxied out.
From the time the chocks were pulled until the plane was out of sight, he knew Donovan would keep his back to the strip.
He wondered where the superstition had originated that it was bad luck for a crew chief to watch his plane take off on a combat mission.
Yet long before the scheduled time for return, Donovan would be watching for every speck in the sky.
Greg rumbled down the rough metal taxi strip, and one by one the seven members of his flight fell in behind him.
The dark brown bombs hanging under each wing looked large and powerful.
The pilots' heads looked ridiculously small.
The control tower gave him immediate take-off permission, and the clean roar of the engine that took him off the rough strip spoke well of the skill of Donovan.
Greg's mission was the last to leave, and as he circled the ships off Tacloban he saw the clouds were dropping down again.
To the west, the dark green hills of Leyte were lost in the clouds about halfway up their slopes.
Underneath him the sea was a dark and muddied gray.
Water splashed against his windshield as he led the flight in and out of showers.
The metal strip they had taken off from was coal black against the green jungle around it.
He possessed the fighter pilot's horror of bad weather and instrument flying, and he wondered, if the ceiling did drop, whether he and the other flights would be able to find their way back in this unfamiliar territory.
He shivered in the warm cockpit.
The overcast was solid above him.
As far as he could see there was no hole to climb through it.
They would have to go west through the narrow river valley that separated Leyte from Samar and hope that it didn't close in before they returned.
Greg pushed the radio button on his throttle.
"Todman, let's try to go under this stuff.
Stay in close and we'll go up the valley".
"Roger, Sweeney", Todman called back, and pulled his four in and slightly above Greg.
Greg took the formation wide around three A-26 attack bombers that were headed north over the Gulf.
He dropped down to five hundred feet, swinging a little north of the city of Tacloban, and punched into the opening that showed against the mountain.
The valley was only a few hundred yards wide with just about room enough for a properly performed hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.
It was only a fifteen-minute flight, but before it was through Greg felt himself developing a case of claustrophobia.
The ceiling stayed solid above them at about eight hundred feet, and at times the sheer cliffs seemed about to close in.
If the other pilots were worried, they did not show it.
The formation remained perfect.
When the sea was visible ahead of them, the relief was as great as if the sun had come out.
He spread the flight out and led them across a point of land and then down the coast.
Although they drew light ground fire they saw no signs of activity.
Once Todman thought he had spotted a tank and went down to investigate while Greg covered him.
"Somebody beat us to it"!
Todman said over the radio as he came back up in formation.
Visibility continued to be limited, and Greg was never able to get above a thousand feet.
It was frustrating.
His earphones were constantly full of the sounds of enemy contacts made by other flights.
He thought once that he identified the somewhat hysterical voice of Fleischman claiming a kill.
But Greg's area remained as placid as a Florida dawn.
Finally, as time began to run out, he headed into Ormoc and glide-bombed a group of houses that Intelligence had thought might contain Japanese supplies.
The low clouds made bombing difficult.
There was not enough room to make the usual vertical bomb run.
The accuracy was deplorable.
One of Greg's bombs hung up, and he was miles from the target before he could get rid of it.
Only one of the flight scored a direct hit and the rest blew up jungle.
With their load of bombs gone, the planes moved swiftly and easily.
Greg went up tight against the ceiling and led them back to their pass to home.
Mercifully, it was still open.
Like a man making a deep dive, Greg took full breath and plunged back into the valley.
He was about to make a gas check on his flight when Todman's voice broke in: "Sweeneys!
Three bogies.
Twelve o'clock level".
Greg's eyes flicked up from his instrument panel.
He saw them, specks against the gray, but closing fast.
They were headed straight for each other on a collision course.
Friend or enemy?
The same old question.
And only a few seconds to answer it.
"Zeros"!
Todman said excitedly, and hopefully.
And then he thought Todman might be right.
His mind flicked through the mental pictures he had from the hours of Aircraft Identification.
He narrowed the shape down to two: either a Zero or a U S Navy type aircraft.
If it were the enemy, tactically his position was correct.
Japanese aircraft were strong on maneuverability, American on speed and firepower.
His present maximum altitude, up against the overcast, gave him the opportunity to exploit his advantages.
But it also made him conspicuous to the enemy, if it was the enemy, and he hadn't been spotted already.
But the closing aircraft showed no sign of deviating from their original course.
In seconds, Greg made his decision.
He pushed the radio button.
"Sweeney Blue, hit the deck.
Lots of throttle.
Todman, you take the one on the left.
I'll take the middle.
Belton, the one on the right.
If **h if they're Japs.
Let's make sure first".
Greg had the stick forward and the throttle up before he heard the two "Rogers".
The planes, light with most of the gas burned out, responded beautifully.
Greg's airspeed indicator was over 350 when he leveled off just above the trees.
The opposing aircraft continued to come on.
They appeared to be the enemy.
Greg wished the Air Corps had continued to camouflage planes.
There was, of course, no way for the other planes to get by them.
It was a box.
But they could turn and escape to the east.
Greg pushed the radio button again.
"Todman, drop your second element back.
If any of us miss, they can pick up the pieces.
Now let's make sure they're Japs".
Even as he said it, Greg knew they had found the enemy.
The shapes were unmistakable and the Rising Suns were showing up, slightly brighter pinpoints in the gray gloom.
Greg slapped his hand across the switches that turned on the guns and gun camera and gun sight.
The circle with the dot in the center showed up yellow on the reflector glass in front of him.
His hands shook.
"Arm your guns, Sweeneys".
"They're Japs.
They're Japs", came a high-pitched voice.
"Greg to Sweeney Blue.
One pass only.
No turns.
You'll bust your ass in this canyon.
That's an order".
He moved the flights over against one wall.
It gave them all a chance to make a high-speed climbing turn attack and a break-away that would not take them into the overcast or force a tight-turn recovery.
If the turn was too tight, a barrel roll would bring them out.
A hell of an altitude for a barrel roll, but it could be done.
Greg slammed his throttle to the fire wall and rammed up the RPM, and the engine responded as if it had been waiting.
The clearly identifiable enemy continued on as if no one else were around.
"They haven't seen us", Greg yelled to himself over the engine noise.
"They haven't seen us".
He hit the radio button.
"Now, Sweeneys, now.
Let's take 'em home".
He hauled back on the stick and felt his cheeks sag.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched his wingman move out a bit and shoot up with him.
Perfect, he thought.
With the rapid rate of closure, the approach from below, the side, and ahead, there would be only a moment when damage could be done.
Just like shooting at a duck while performing a half-gainer from a diving board.
He tightened his turn.
His nose up.
It was going to be dangerous.
Eight aircraft in this small box.
Please, dear God, make my pilots good, he prayed.
He took a lead on the enemy, using a distance of five of the radii in his circular sight and then added another.
The enemy did not veer.
It did not seem possible that they hadn't been spotted.
Blind fools.
Now!
Greg's fingers closed on the stick trigger.
The plane rumbled and slowed.
Six red lines etched their way into the gray and vanished.
As if drawn by a wire the enemy flew into them.
Greg tightened his turn until the plane shuddered.
Luck was with him.
His burst held for a second on the engine section of the plane.
The Jap's propeller flew off in pieces.
A large piece of engine cowling vanished.
It was all Greg had time to see.
His maneuvering for the shot had placed him near the overcast, almost inverted and heading up into the clouds.
His speed was dropping rapidly.
If he spun out now, he would join his opponent on the ground.
Wingman, stay clear, he prayed.
He pushed stick and rudder and entered the overcast on his back.
He fought the panic of vertigo.
He had no idea which was up and which was down.
He held the controls where they had been.
Sweat popped out over him and he felt the slick between his palm and the stick grip.
His air speed dropped until he thought he would spin out.
Over the rattling of fenders, humming of tires and chattering of gears there was a charming melody of whispers and tiny giggles.
Cool air moving slowly through the open or smashed-out side windows hinted of blooming roadside vegetation, and occasionally a faint fragrance of perfume swirled from the back seat.
"Moriarty", my driver suddenly exclaimed with something so definite, so final in his tone I once more repeated the absurdity, mustering all my latent powers of hypocrisy to sound convinced.
We were coming to an intersection, turning right, chuffing to a stop.
Forced to realize that this was the end of a very short line I scanned a road marker and discovered what the end of a slightly longer line would be for the old Mexican: Moriarty, New Mexico.
"Gracias.
Adios", I said, exhausting my Spanish vocabulary on my host and exchanging one of a scarcely-tapped store of smiles with my host's daughters.
I waved with discretion and moderation to the vague golden faces fading through rising dust and the distortions of the back window glass.
Then I saw the father's head slightly turn; gauche rainbow shapes replaced the poignant ovals of gold.
## Autos whizzed past.
White-shirted and conservatively-cravated drivers stared conspicuously toward the eastern horizon and past my supplicating and accusing gaze.
Suddenly a treble auto horn tootley-toot-tootled, and, thumbing hopefully, I saw emergent in windshield flash: red lips, streaming silk of blonde hair and- ah, trembling confusion of hope, apprehension, despair- the leering face of old Herry.
"Mor-ee-air-teeeee", he shrieked, his white teeth grossly counterpointing those of the glittering blonde.
Over the rapidly-diminishing outline of a jump seat piled high with luggage Herry's black brushcut was just discernible, near, or enviably near that spot where- hidden- more delicately-textured, most beautifully tinted hair must still be streaming back in cool, oh cool wind sweetly perfumed with sagebrush and yucca flowers and engine fumes.
Damn his luck.
I would have foregone my romantic chances rather than leave a friend sweltering and dusty and- Well, at least I wouldn't have shouted back a taunt.
Still nursing anger I listlessly thumbed a car that was slowly approaching, its pre-war chrome nearly blinding me.
It was stopping.
Just as I straightened up with my duffel bag, I heard: "Sahjunt Yoorick, meet Mrs Major J A Roebuck".
The voice was that of Johnson, tail gunner off another crew.
Squeezing a look between Johnson's fat jowls and the car frame a handsome and still darkhaired lady inquired "Y'all drahve"?
I nodded.
"Onleh one thiihng", Mrs Roebuck continued.
"Ahm goin nawth t'jawn mah husbun in Sante Fe, an y'all maht prefuh the suhthuhn rewt.
But Corporal Johnson has alreadeh said it didn make no diffrunce t'hi-im".
I said that it didn't make any difference to me either, as far as I knew.
How far I knew will shortly become apparent.
Let me pass over the trip to Sante Fe with something of the same speed which made Mrs Roebuck "wonduh if the wahtahm speed limit" (35 mph) "is still in ee-faket".
I let up on the accelerator, only to gradually reach again the 60 mph which would, I hoped, overhaul Herry and the blonde, and as there were cars whose drivers apparently had something more important to catch than had I, Mrs Major Roebuck settled down to practicing on Corporal Johnson the kittenish wiles she would need when making her duty call on Colonel and Mrs Somebody in Sante Fe.
When Johnson ejaculated "Howsabout my buying us all a nice cold Co-cola, Ma'am"?
Mrs Roebuck smilingly declined and began suddenly to go on about her son, who was "onleh a little younguh than you bawhs".
Johnson never would have believed she had a son that age.
Mrs Roebuck thought Johnson was a "sweet bawh t'lah lahk thet", but her Herman was getting to be a man, there was no getting around it.
"Just befoh he left foh his academeh we wuh hevin dack-rihs on the vuhranduh, Major Roebuck an Ah, an Huhmun says 'May Ah hev one too'?
just as p'lite an- an cohnfidunt, an Ah says 'Uh coahse you cain't', but he says 'Whah nawt, you ah hevin one'?
an Ah coudn ansuh him an so Ah said 'Aw right, Ah gay-ess, an his fathuh didn uttuh one wohd an aftuh Huhmun was gone, the majuh laughed an tole me thet he an the bawh had been hevin an occasional drink t'gethuh f'ovuh a yeah, onleh an occasional one, but just the same it was behahn mah back, an Ah doan think thet's nahce at all, d'you"?
"No, I don't", Johnson said.
"I'm a good Baptist, and drinking **h" ## Mrs Roebuck very kindly let me drive through Sante Fe to a road which would, she said, lead us to Taos and then Raton and "eventshahleh" out of New Mexico.
How lightly her "eventshah-leh" passed into the crannies where I was storing dialect material for some vaguely dreamed opus, and how the word would echo.
And re-echo.
Hardly had Mrs Roebuck driven off when a rusty pick-up truck, father or grandfather of Senor "Moriarty's" Ford sedan, came screeching to a dust-swirling stop, and a brown face appeared, its nose threatened by shards of what had once been the side window.
"Get in, buddies.
Get in".
The straight, black hair flopped in a vigorous nod, the slender nose plunged toward glass teeth and drew safely back.
Johnson unwired the right hand door, whose window was, like the left one, merely loosely-taped fragments of glass, and Johnson wadded himself into a narrow seat made still more narrow by three cases of beer.
"In back, buddy", the driver said to me.
Quickly but carefully lowering my duffel bag over the low side-rack, I stepped on the running board; it flopped down, sprang back up and gouged my shin.
The truck was hurtling forward.
I seized the rack and made a western-style flying-mount just in time, one of my knees mercifully landing on my duffel bag- and merely wrecking my camera, I was to discover later- my other knee landing on the slivery truck floor boards and- but this is no medical report.
I was again in motion and at a speed which belied the truck's similarity to Senor X's Ford turtle.
Maybe I would beat old Herry to Siberia after all.
Whatever satisfaction that might offer.
Something pulled my leg.
I drew back, drawing back my foot for a kick.
But it was only Johnson reaching around the wire chicken fencing, which half covered the truck cab's glassless rear window.
The way his red rubber lips were stretched across his pearly little teeth I though he was only having a little joke, but, no, he wanted me to bend down from the roar of wind so he could roar something into my ear.
"Wanna beer"?
"Hell, yes", I roared back between dusty lips.
Did I want a beer?
Did an anteater want ants?
"Bueno, amigo.
Gracias", I hollered, my first long swallow filling me with confidence and immediately doubling the size of my Spanish vocabulary.
At once my ears were drowned by a flow of what I took to be Spanish, but- the driver's white teeth flashing at me, the road wildly veering beyond his glistening hair, beyond his gesticulating bottle- it could have been the purest Oxford English I was half hearing; I wouldn't have known the difference.
Johnson was trying to grab the wheel, though the swerve of the truck was throwing him away from it.
White teeth suddenly vanishing, the driver slammed the side of his bottle against Johnson's ear.
We were off the road, gleaming barbed wire pulling taut.
I ducked just as the first strand broke somewhere down the line and came whipping over the sideboards.
We were in a field, in a tight, screeching turn.
Prairie dogs were popping up and popping down.
When I fell on my back, I saw a vulture hovering.
Just as I got to my knees, there was again the sound of the fence stretching, and I had time only to start taking my kneeling posture seriously.
This time no wire came whipping into the truck.
We were back on the road.
I regained my squatting position behind the truck cab's rear window.
Johnson's left hand was pressed against the side of his head, red cheeks whitening beneath his fingers.
"Tee-wah", the driver cackled, his black eyes glittering behind dull silver chicken fencing.
"That was Tee-wah I was talking.
You thought I was a Mexican, didn't you, buddy"?
I nodded.
"Hell, that's all right, buddy", the Indian (I now guessed) said.
"Drink your beer".
Miraculously, the bottle was still in my hand, foam still geysering over my (luckily) waterproof watch.
No sooner had I started drinking than the driver started zigzagging the truck.
The beer foamed furiously.
I drank furiously.
A long time.
Emptied the bottle.
Teeth again flashing back at me, the driver released a deluge of Spanish in which "amigo" appeared every so often like an island in the stormy waves of surrounding sound.
I bobbed my head each time it appeared.
Suddenly the Spanish became an English in which only one word emerged with clarity and precision, "son of a bitch", sometimes hyphenated by vicious jabs of a beer bottle into Johnson's quivering ribs.
A big car was approaching, its chrome teeth grinning.
Beyond it the gray road stretched a long, long way.
The car was just about to us, its driver's fat, solemn face intent on the road ahead, on business, on a family in Sante Fe- on anything but an old pick-up truck in which two human beings desperately needed rescue.
I tossed the bottle.
High, so it would only bounce harmlessly but loudly off the car's steel roof.
Too high.
On unoccupied roadway the bottle shattered into a small amber flash.
"Aye-yah-ah-ah"!
The Indian was again raising his bottle, but to my astonished relief- probably only a fraction of Johnson's- the bottle this time went to the Indian's lips.
Another car was coming, a tiny, dark shape on a far hill.
I started looking on the splintery truck bed for a piece of board, a dirt clod- anything I could throw and with better aim than I had thrown the beer bottle.
We were slowing.
In the ditch sand was white and soft-looking, only an occasional pebble discernible, faintly gleaming.
But Johnson couldn't quickly unwire the truck door, and if I escaped, he might suffer.
The car was approaching fast.
On the truck bed there was nothing smaller than a piece of rusty machinery; with more time I could have loosened a small burr or cotter pin- Suddenly and not a second too soon I thought of the coins in my pocket.
There was no time to pick out a penny; I got a coin between my thumb and forefinger, leaned my elbows in a very natural and casual manner on top of the truck cab and flipped my little missile.
There was a blur just under my focus of vision, a crash; the car's far windshield panel turned into a silver web with a dark hole in the center.
I heard the screech of brakes behind me, an insane burst of laughter beneath me.
Looking back I saw a gray-haired man getting out of his halted car and trying to read our license number.
"S-s-sahjunt".
Johnson's fat hand, another bottle were protruding from the truck cab, and that self-proclaimed Baptist teetotaler, had a bottle at his own lips.
Two cars came over a crest, their chrome and glass flashing.
The Indian's arm whipped sidewise- there was a flash of amber and froth, the crash of the bottle shattering against the side of the first car.
Brakes shrieked behind us.
I saw Johnson's bottle snatched from his hand, saw it go in a swirl of foam just behind the second car.
This time there was no sound of brakes but the shrieking of women.
I looked back at pale ovals framed in the elongated oval of the car's rear window.
"Drink, you son of a bitch"!
I quickly turned around and began to drink.
But the Indian was jabbing another bottle toward Johnson.
I guided her to the divan, turned off the TV, faced her.
She sat quietly, staring at me from the wide eyes.
And what eyes they were.
Big and dark, a melting, golden brown.
Eyes like hot honey, eyes that sizzled.
Plus flawless skin, smooth brow and cheeks, lips that looked as if you could get a shock from them.
It was a disturbingly familiar face, too, but I couldn't remember where we had met.
I said, "Do we know each other, Miss"?
"No, I remembered reading about you in the papers and that you lived here, and when it happened all I could think of was"- This time she stopped the rush of words herself.
"I'm sorry.
Shall I go on"?
She smiled.
It was her first smile.
But worth waiting for.
"Sure".
I said.
"But one word at a time, OK"?
She was still hugging the stained coat around her, so I said, "Relax, let me take your things.
Would you like a drink, or coffee"?
"No, thanks".
She stood up, pulled the coat from her shoulders and started to slide it off, then let out a high-pitched scream and I let out a low-pitched, wobbling sound like a muffler blowing out.
She was wearing nothing beneath the coat.
She jerked the coat back on and squeezed it around her again, but not soon enough.
There had been a good second or two during which my muffler had been blowing out, and now I was certain I'd seen her somewhere before.
## "I forgot"!
she yelped.
"Oh, do forgive me.
I'm sorry"!
"I forgive"- "That's what started all the trouble in the first place.
Oh, dear, I'm all unstrung".
"You and me both, dear.
Haven't we **h haven't I seen you **h. I mean, surely we've"- "You may have seen me on TV", she said.
"I've done several filmed commercials for"- Then it hit me.
"ZING"!
I cried.
"Why, yes.
And you recognized me"?
"Yes, indeed.
In fact, I was watching you on that little seventeen-inch screen when you rang my bell.
Man, you rang- it was in color, too, Miss, and **h Miss?
What's your name, anyway?
Ah, you were splendid".
I sat by her on the divan.
"Splendid.
In a waterfall **h and all that".
"That's the last one we did.
That was a fun one".
"I'll bet.
It was fun for me, all right.
I don't mean to pry, but do they hide the swimsuit with the bubbles?
I mean: Is advertising honest?
"It depends on who does it.
I never wear anything at all.
It wouldn't- wouldn't seem fair, somehow".
"I couldn't agree with you more".
"I really do have something important to tell you, Mr Scott.
About the murder".
"Murder?
Oh, yeah", I said.
"Tell me about the murder".
She told me.
ZING was the creation of two men, Louis Thor and Bill Blake, partners in ZING!, Inc.
They'd peddled the soap virtually alone, and without much success, until about a year ago, when- with the addition of "SX-21" to their secret formula and the inauguration of a high-powered advertising campaign- sales had soared practically into orbit.
Their product had been endorsed by Good Housekeeping, the AMA, and the Veterinary Journal, among other repositories of higher wisdom, and before much longer if you didn't have a cake of their soap in the john, even your best friends would think you didn't bathe.
My lovely caller- Joyce Holland was her name- had previously done three filmed commercials for ZING, and this evening, the fourth, a super production, had been filmed at the home of Louis Thor.
The water in Thor's big swimming pool had been covered with a blanket of thick, foamy soapsuds- fashioned, of course, from ZING- Joyce had dived from the board into the pool, then swirled and cavorted in her luxurious "bath" while cameras rolled.
The finished- and drastically cut- product would begin with a hazy longshot of Joyce entering the suds, then bursting above the pool's surface clad in layers of lavender lather, and I had a hunch this item was going to sell tons and tons of soap; even to clean men and boys.
Joyce went on, "When we'd finished, Lou- Mr Thor- asked me to stay a little longer.
He wanted a few stills for magazine ads, he said.
Everybody left and I stayed in the pool, then Lou came back alone and leaped into the pool too.
And he didn't have any clothes on".
"He didn't"!
"Yes, he didn't.
Did, I mean".
She paused.
"Did leap into the pool, and didn't have anything on.
Anyway, it was evident what he had in mind".
"You got away, didn't you"?
"Yes.
He caught up with me once and grabbed me, but I was all covered with ZING- it's very slippery, you know".
"I didn't know.
I wouldn't have the stuff in the house.
But I'm pleased to hear"- "So I just scooted out of his clutches.
I swam like mad, got out of the pool, grabbed my robe, and ran to the car.
The keys were still in it, and I was miles away before I remembered that my clothes and purse and everything were still in the little cabana where I'd changed".
She'd driven around for a while, Joyce said, then, thinking Louis Thor would have calmed down by that time, she'd gone back to his home on Bryn Mawr Drive, parked in front, and walked toward the pool.
While several yards from it, still concealed by the shrubbery, she'd seen two men on her left at the pool's edge.
She went on: "A man was holding onto Lou, holding him up.
Maybe Lou was only unconscious, but right then I thought he must be dead.
The man shoved him into the water, then ran past the cabana.
There's a walk there that goes out to Quebec Drive.
I was so scared **h well, I just ran to my car and came here".
"You know who the other man was"?
"No, I never did see his face.
I didn't get a good look at him at all, his back was to me, and I was so scared **h It was just somebody in a man's suit.
But I'm sure the other one was Lou".
What Joyce wanted me to do was go to Thor's house and "do whatever detectives do", and get her clothes- and handbag containing her identification.
She realized I'd have to notify the police, but fervently hoped I could avoid mentioning her name.
Her impact in the ZING commercials had led to her being considered for an excellent part in an upcoming TV series, Underwater Western Eye, a documentary-type show to be sponsored by Oatnut Grits.
But if Joyce got involved in murder or salacious scandal, the role would probably go to the sponsor's wife, Mrs Oatnut Grits.
Or at least not to Joyce.
"And I so want the part", she said.
"The commercials have just been for money, there hasn't been any real incentive for me to do them, but in Underwater Western Eye I'd have a chance to act.
I could show what I can do".
## As far as I was concerned, she had already and had dandily shown what she could do.
But I promised Joyce I would mention her name, if at all, only as a last resort.
Seeming much relieved, she smiled one of those worth-waiting-for smiles, and I smiled all the way into the bedroom.
There I got my Colt Special and shoulder harness, slipped my coat on, and went back into the front room.
Joyce squirmed a little on the divan.
"I'm starting to itch", she said.
"Itch"?
"Yes, I'm still all covered with that soap.
I was loaded with suds when I ran away, and I haven't had a chance to wash it off.
Mmmm, it sure itches".
"You might as well wait here while I'm gone, so you can use my shower if you'd like".
"Oh, I'd love to".
I showed her the shower and tub, and she said, smiling, "If you really don't mind, I think I'll get clean in the shower, then soak for a few minutes in your tub.
That always relaxes me.
Doesn't it you"?
"Only when I do it".
I shook my head.
One of my virtues or vices is a sort of three-dimensional imagination complete with sound effects and glorious living color.
"Soak **h as long as you want, Joyce.
It'll probably be at least an hour or two before I can check back with you.
So you'll have everything all to yourself, doggone **h" I looked at my watch.
Ten after nine.
Time to go, I supposed.
"Well, goodbye", I said.
"Goodbye.
You'd better hurry".
"Oh, you can count on that".
She smiled slightly.
Softly.
Warmly.
"Don't hurry too much.
I'll be soaking for **h at least half an hour".
That was all she said.
But suddenly those hot-honey eyes seemed to have everything but swarms of bees in them.
However, when there's a job to be done, I'm a monstrosity of grim determination, I like to think.
I spun about and clattered through the front room to the door.
As I went out, I could hear water pouring in the shower.
Hot water.
She wouldn't be taking a cold shower.
Hell, she couldn't.
Bryn Mawr Drive is only two or three miles from the Spartan, and it took me less than five minutes to get there.
But the scene was not the quiet, calm scene I'd expected.
Four cars were parked at the curb, and two of them were police radio cars.
Lights blazed in the big house and surrounding grounds.
I followed a shrubbery-lined gravel path alongside the house to the pool.
Two uniformed officers, a couple of plain-clothesmen I knew, and two other men stood on a gray cement area next to the pool on my left.
At the pool's far end was the little cabana Joyce had mentioned, and on the water's surface floated scattered lavender patches of limp-looking lather.
A few yards beyond the group of men, a man's nude body lay face down on a patch of thick green dichondra.
Lieutenant Rawlins, one of the plain-clothesmen, spotted me and said, "Hi, Shell", and walked toward me.
"How'd you hear about this one"?
I grinned, but ignored the question.
He didn't push it; Rawlins worked out of Central Homicide and we'd been friends for years.
He filled me in.
A call to the police had been placed from here a couple of minutes after nine pm, and the first police car had arrived two or three minutes after that- 10 minutes ago now.
Present at the scene- in addition to the dead man, who was indeed Louis Thor- had been Thor's partner Bill Blake, and Antony Rose, an advertising agency executive who handled the ZING account.
Neither of them, I understood, had been present at the filming session earlier.
"What were they doing here"?
I asked Rawlins.
"They were supposed to meet Thor at nine pm for a conference concerning the ad campaign for their soap, a new angle based on this SX-21 stuff".
"Yeah, I've heard more about SX-21 than space exploration lately.
What is the gunk"?
"How would I know?
It's a secret.
That was the new advertising angle- something about a Lloyd's of London policy to insure the secrecy of the secret ingredient.
Actually, only two men know what the formula is, Blake and"- He stopped and looked at Thor's body.
I said, "OK, so now only Blake knows.
How's it strike you, foul or fair"?
"Can't say yet.
Deputy coroner says it looks like he sucked in a big pile of those thick suds and strangled on 'em.
The PM might show he drowned instead, but that's what the once-over-lightly gives us.
Accident, murder, suicide- take your pick".
"I'll pick murder.
Anything else"?
"According to Rose, he arrived here a couple minutes before nine and spotted Thor in the water, got a hooked pole from the pool-equipment locker and started hauling him out.
Too many people think that the primary purpose of a higher education is to help you make a living; this is not so, for education offers all kinds of dividends, including how to pull the wool over a husband's eyes while you are having an affair with his wife.
If it were not for an old professor who made me read the classics I would have been stymied on what to do, and now I understand why they are classics; those who wrote them knew people and what made people tick.
I worked for my Uncle (an Uncle by marriage so you will not think this has a mild undercurrent of incest) who ran one of those antique shops in New Orleans' Vieux Carre, the old French Quarter.
The arrangement I had with him was to work four hours a day.
The rest of the time I devoted to painting or to those other activities a young and healthy man just out of college finds interesting.
I had a one-room studio which overlooked an ancient courtyard filled with flowers and plants, blooming everlastingly in the southern sun.
I had come to New Orleans two years earlier after graduating college, partly because I loved the city and partly because there was quite a noted art colony there.
When my Uncle offered me a part-time job which would take care of my normal expenses and give me time to paint I accepted.
The arrangement turned out to be excellent.
I loved the city and I particularly loved the gaiety and spirit of Mardi Gras.
I had seen two of them and we would soon be in another city-wide, joyous celebration with romance in the air; and, when you took a walk you never knew what adventure or pair of sparkling eyes were waiting around the next corner.
The very faces of the people bore this expectation of fun and pleasure.
It was as if they could hardly wait to get into their costumes, cover their faces with masks and go adventuring.
My Uncle and I were not too close socially because of the difference in our ages.
Sometimes I wondered vaguely what he did about women for my Aunt, by blood, had died some years ago, but neither of us said anything.
One Monday morning I saw him approach the store with a woman and introduce me to her as my new Aunt.
They were married over the week-end, though he was easily sixty and she could not have been even thirty.
She looked more like twenty-five or six.
It was really a May and December combination.
My new Aunt was perhaps three or four years older than I and it had been a long time since I had seen as gorgeous a woman who oozed sex.
There was something about the contour of her face, her smile that was like New Orleans sunshine, the way she held her head, the way she walked- there was scarcely anything she did which did not fascinate me.
Her legs were the full, sexy kind, full bodied like a rare wine and just as tantalizing to the appetite; the calf was magnificent, the ankle perfect.
You must forgive me if I seem to dwell too much on her physical aspects but I am an artist, accustomed to studying the physical body.
The true artist is like one of those scientists who, from a single bone can reconstruct an animal's entire body.
The artist looks at an ankle, a calf, a bosom and, in his mind's eye, the clothes drop away and he sees her as she really is.
And that is the way I first saw her when my Uncle brought her into his antique store.
That she impressed me instantly was obvious; I was aware that when our eyes met we both quickly averted them.
I thought I saw a faint surge of color rise to her neck and quickly suffuse her cheeks.
True, she was my Aunt, married to an Uncle related to me only by marriage, but why she had married a man twice her age, and more, perhaps, I did not know or much care.
She was standing with her back to the glass door.
Her form was silhouetted and with the strong light I could see the outlines of her body, a body that an artist or anyone else would have admired.
As it is in so many affairs of the heart, a man and a woman meet and something clicks.
Something clicked in this instance, but I treated her circumspectly and I felt that she knew it, for we both kept our distance.
When she appeared at the store to help out for a few hours even my looking at her was surreptitious lest my Uncle notice it.
And then I became aware that she, too, glanced at me surreptitiously.
I felt that her eyes were undressing me as if she were a painter and I a nude model.
I dismissed these feelings as wishful thinking but I could not get it out of my head that we had a strong physical attraction for one another and we both feared to dwell on it because of our relationship.
When our eyes met the air was filled with an unuttered message of "Me, too".
You have probably experienced this.
It is nothing you can put your fingers on but the air suddenly fills with a high charge of electricity.
Why she married him I do not know.
I myself was fond of him but what a young woman half his age saw in him was a mystery to me.
He already had that slow pace that comes over the elderly, while she herself had all the signs of one who appreciates the joys of living.
Perhaps, with my Uncle, she found a measure of economic security that she needed; or maybe she liked men old enough to be her father; some women with father fixations do.
For several weeks we eyed one another almost like sparring partners, and then one day Uncle was slightly indisposed and stayed home; his bride opened the store.
I was waiting in front of it when she showed up and told me of my Uncle's indisposition.
Even as she was telling me about it I became aware of a give-away flush that suffused her neck and moved upwards to her cheeks, and subconsciously I realized that when she entered the store she did not switch on the lights.
The cavernous depth, cluttered with antiques, echoed to her hard heels as she walked directly to the office in the rear and took the seat at his desk.
She placed her palms, fingers outspread, on the desk in an odd gesture as if to say, "Now, what next"?
I was aware of a humid look in her eyes that told me the time was opportune.
There was little likelihood of any customers walking in at that hour.
I was standing beside her, watching the outspread palms and wondering about the old horsehair sofa against the wall on which he sometimes napped.
I bent and kissed the still pink neck and suddenly she jumped up, and her two arms encircled me in a bear-like crush.
Her mouth, which had been so much in my thoughts, was warm and moist and tender.
I heard her murmur, "We'd better lock the door".
It did not take me long to slip the bolt securely and return to the rear and its couch.
When we opened the door again for business and switched on the lights she said: "He will not always be indisposed".
"I know.
I was thinking about that.
How will we work it out"?
"I don't know", she said.
"You're the man.
You figure it out.
I've noticed the way you've been looking at me ever since we met".
"I guess we both felt it".
I said.
"I guess so", she said.
"But now what"?
Even as I said it I realized that an education can be invaluable.
"I know what we can do", I said.
"Tell him I made a pass at you".
She raised a protesting hand with a startled air.
"What are you trying to do?
Get thrown out?
If I even hint at it do you think it will matter that you are his nephew- and not even a blood nephew"?
"I don't want to be thrown out and I don't think I will.
I think I have a way so we can carry on without his suspecting us".
"By telling him you are making passes at me"?
she said incredulously.
"When I was in college", I grinned, "I remember a poem I had to read in my lit class.
I don't even remember who wrote it but it was one of those 15th or 16th century poets.
In those days poems often told a story in verse and those boys had some corkers to tell; and now I think we can use the knowledge they passed on to us.
Tomorrow Mardi Gras opens officially.
A lot of people will roam the streets in costumes and masks, and having a ball.
There will be romance and flirtation.
If you tell him I made a pass at you he might think you misunderstood something I said or did, so instead of just telling him I made a pass, say I tried to date you and that you agreed so you could prove to him what a louse I really am.
We made a rendezvous tomorrow evening at nine on some street near Lake Ponchartrain.
And to prove what you tell him about me you suggest that he keep the date instead.
You are both the same size.
He could use your clothes for a costume and a heavy veil for a mask.
When I show up he will know you are a good wife to have told him about it".
"But you"- she began.
"Don't worry about me.
It will turn out all right".
"I don't understand", she insisted.
"Are you trying to cut your throat"?
"No", I chuckled, "I'm just beginning to collect dividends on my investment in education".
As we expected, on the following day my Uncle was completely recovered and opened the store as usual at 10 in the morning.
I felt that he looked at me coldly and appraisingly and seemed to be uncertain what his attitude towards me should be, but he did not say one word which might indicate that he had been told of advances to his wife.
I quit work at my usual hour as if this day was no different from other days.
I heard subsequently that my Uncle and Aunt had dinner in a nearby restaurant in the French Quarter after which he went home to get into his costume to keep the date.
Shortly before nine I drove my jalopy to the street facing the Lake and parked the car in shadows far enough away from the rendezvous corner but near enough to keep the corner in clear view.
A few minutes later I saw my Uncle's car drive up and a woman's figure emerge and walk to the corner.
I must say the figure was well made up.
If it were not that I knew who it was I could have mistaken it for my Aunt so well did her clothes fit him.
In one hand he gripped firmly a parasol though there had been no indication of rain.
I suspected why he brought it along.
In the half darkness I approached cautiously, making sure he did not see me.
He was looking out on the dark waters of the Lake when I came upon him and without wasting words I smacked him hard across the face.
"You cheap bitch"!
I exclaimed.
"You cheap, no good, two-timing bitch!
You get a good, loyal husband- smack!- and you fall for a pass by his own nephew!
You should- smack!- be ashamed of yourself.
He had better write a postcard to Walter.
He opened the myth book again and there (along the margin next to Robert Graves' imaginative interpretation of the creation of the Dactyls from Rhea's fingertips) were the names of four Munich bars and Meredith Wilder's address.
The bars were marked as Walter had marked them in a small black book kept in a nearly secret drawer.
The code, which had probably something to do with sex or some other interest, Nicolas was determined to find out and put to use.
A card to Walter would get him an introduction to this Meredith, and that might be good for something.
Nicolas called on his muse, a line came back: "Squaresville, man, and all the palazzos are crummy Palasts".
That ought to draw a laugh, Nicolas reasoned, as he stored the line away on the wax tape that was his mind.
And indeed, his postcard did draw from Walter a letter recommending his friend, the poet Nicolas Manas, to his friend Meredith Wilder.
Five days later, on receiving it, Meredith sat drumming his dactyls on his writing table.
Dammit!
he inwardly cried.
His hand was large and square and heavily tanned.
The voice crying in him was the voice of guilt.
His four weeks in Italy had turned into nearer three months.
He had returned to the pension a week ago.
Now, he was just in the late poems of Ho^lderlin and therefore had most of the nineteenth century before him- plus next semester's class preparation.
He was determined to spend an industrious summer.
Well, maybe Manas wouldn't call.
Meredith's fingers slowed and stopped over a line before him: Sie la^cheln, die Schwarzen Hexen.
The menace of Manas gradually faded as Meredith asked himself should he translate it, 'How the dark fates laughed'?
or, more rhythmically, 'The swarthy witches are laughing'?
And he missed the point that the swarthy witches might be laughing at him for hoping to escape Nicolas Manas.
But Nicolas, too, was being interrupted, that morning.
Not by the 11:00 sun which had spread a warmth around his spot of grass in the English Gardens and sent him off to sleep; but by a blond girl in a sweater and skirt who stood a few yards off and tenderly regarded him.
Should she wake him?
She didn't have the heart.
Her heart, her maternal feeling, in fact her **h her being was too busy expressing itself, as quietly thrilled by this sight of her Nicolas curled asleep under a blanket, in a park like a scene from Poussin.
She was just not able to break the spell.
(Would she have been able to had she known that the blanket belonged to a young ballet dancer Nicolas had found his first night in one of Walter's marked bars?
Nicolas: "Look, Nicolas doesn't go to bed with boys- no sex, see?
So if all these beers was to get me in bed, man, you just spent a lot of money".
Ballet dancer: Protests, tears, and "take what you want, Nicolas, I am a dancer, you are a poet, it is all beautiful".
To this meek conjugation Nicolas had replied, "OK I can use this blanket.
And when you get off this job tonight, well, you can gimme something to eat".
And, as a matter of fact, Nicolas had slept in the park only part of one night, when he discovered that Munich's early mornings even in summer are laden with dew.
He had always known how to find a bed, and on his own terms.
He used the blanket for late morning naps when hosts of the night had gone off to jobs and proved reluctant to leave him in their small rooms with their few possessions.
Mary Jane Lerner knew none of this.)
Her Nicolas lay curled in the sun like a fawn, black hair falling over his eyes.
She was telling herself that this might just be her reward at the end of a long meaningful search for truth.
This was surely a reunion in art, it was all that poetry promised.
That long night with Nicolas and marijuana in Venice had opened her eyes.
His advice, his voice saying his poems, the fact that he had not so much as touched her- on the contrary, he had put his head back and she had stroked his hair- this was all new.
Her eyes had opened, she had caught a glimpse of a new faith.
The next day he was gone.
Mary Jane might not be the most intelligent woman, but she was one of the most determined.
Even so, it took her several days to force Walter to tell her Nicolas's whereabouts.
Packing a small suitcase, informing her husband whom she found in Harry's Bar that she was taking a train to Germany to get away for a while, patting his arm, refusing a drink, getting on the train- all this had only taken her two hours.
She had arrived this morning and come straight to the English Gardens.
"Dear girl", Walter had finally said, "he writes me that he is sleeping in the English Gardens".
"How like him"!
Mary Jane had smilingly said.
"His address", Walter added, "is that great foundling home, the American Express.
And I will greatly appreciate it if you will not tell your husband **h".
For the last half hour Mary Jane had criss-crossed half the length of the Gardens and, at last, come upon her knight.
His presence there, asleep in the grass, confirmed all that Mary Jane believed it was in his power to teach her: freedom from the tedium of needs such as hotels, the meaning of nature, how to live, simply, with the angels.
She set down her suitcase.
Should she wake him?
No.
Smiling, she sat down on the suitcase and waited and watched.
The sun grew hotter as it approached the midday.
Nicolas was dreaming he had his head pressed against the dashboard of a speeding car.
He began sweating.
In his dream he cried, "Slow down, for Chrissake"!
He half woke and rolled over with his face in the cooler grass.
His nose was tickled.
He sneezed.
He blew his nose expertly between his fingers.
He spit.
He half sat up and scratched at the hair on his forehead and then, more vigorously, between his legs.
He belched, he stretched.
Mary Jane got up, quietly, and walked away.
Twenty minutes later she was at the desk of the Gra^fin's pension, her tears dried, signing a hotel form and asking for a bath.
Mary Jane belonged to a world acquainted with small attractive hotels and pensions in all the major and minor cities.
She had retreated to this world.
The Gra^fin, who was charmed by her, told her, "Your sister who was here two years ago has quite dark hair.
Families are very interesting.
Nevertheless, there is no bath.
But a young American has a bath next to his room and I shall ask him if you might use it this once.
And then we shall see **h".
(The Gra^fin was partial to the word 'shall'.)
Meredith was irritated when the Gra^fin knocked at his door and told him, "She is a great beauty!
Shall we allow her not to have a bath?
Actually, she is a sad beauty, I believe.
You shall see her at dinner".
Rather erotically he listened to the bath water running; when it stopped he began busily typing, sitting up in a virtuous way.
Before dinner, he shaved for the second time that day.
A thing he did not like doing, generally.
Singing into the mirror and his interested eyes, he was pleased to note, when he stripped for his own bath, that he still had the best part of his Italian sun tan.
He flexed his muscles for several minutes, got into the tub, and then grew self-conscious of splashing as he washed.
In the small gallery used as the guests' dining room, Meredith sat down at his place and, as always, began teasing the young waitress.
He was asking had it been she who left the love note in his sheets (she also served as maid) when he saw the Gra^fin followed by a stately blond girl approaching his table.
It would be literary license calculated to glamorize life to say that he, oh, dropped his napkin, so startled was he by Mary Jane's beauty.
Yet he did drop his badinage with the ordinary country girl as much in deference to the Gra^fin as acknowledgement that here, indeed, was something special.
Mary Jane had made very little effort.
Above a dark green skirt she wore a pale green cashmere sweater with, as he soon perceived, no brassiere beneath.
Her white blond hair was clean and brushed long straight down to her shoulders.
Perhaps her eyes were larger and more of a summer blue for all they had seen and wept that day.
She had touched her face, truly a noble and pure face, only with a lip salve which made her lips glisten but no redder than usual.
The result was grace and modesty.
As she was rather tired this evening, her simple "Thank you for the use of your bath"- when she sat down opposite him- spoken in a low voice, came across with coolnesses of intelligence and control.
Meredith began falling in love.
Soup: "Only this morning"; veal cutlets: "Oh, I couldn't possibly eat all this"!
; wine: "Then you were typing poems this afternoon"?
; fruit compote: "If you think I would understand it"; a smile.
"What a beautiful room.
Like **h as if it were built of books".
Having opened the windows onto the terrace, lit the fire, translated the motto, Meredith grinned and took down a little triplet of books bound together in old calfskin.
Opening these he brought out a schnapps bottle and small gold thimble-sized glasses hidden inside it.
"I think the maids tipple in the afternoon".
"Those sweet girls?
Oh **h you're joking.
It tastes a little like poppyseed.
What's its name?
Steinha^ger **h" She whispered Steinha^ger to herself, several times, memorizing it.
"Would you first read the poem aloud to me and then let me read it to myself"?
Meredith's voice was always deep, with rough bass notes in it; in reading, on platforms, even in the large auditorium of the YMHA, Poetry Center nights, his voice was intimate, thoughtful, and a trifle shy.
His new poem, a love poem, told of a young husband leading his wife upstairs to the bedroom when the lights in the house have failed.
The husband points the steps out with his flashlight: "Its white stare filling her pale eyes To the blind brim with appetite, Bleaching her hands that grazed my thighs And sent us from the table in surprise To let the dishes soak all night," (Mary Jane asked herself if Meredith was blushing at this line, or was it the fire?)
But he read on.
In the bedroom before the husband and wife find their way to the bed, the lights go on: "In dull domestic radiance I watch her staring face, still blind, Start wincing in obedience To dirty waters, counters, pots and pans, Waiting below stairs, in her mind".
Mary Jane took the page from him and began reading it, moving her lips with the words.
"Oh, it's that myth, about Orpheus and **h What is her name?
I can never pronounce it".
She repeated "Eurydice".
The third time rather urgently.
But with her hand poem again.
She raised her face and nodded, "It's sweet, and very sad".
They discussed the way people never tell each other the things on their minds.
They finished the small bottle of Steinha^ger.
She confessed she was unhappy, he asked was it her husband?
She began to explain, "There was this poet, in Italy **h" He interrupted, "Please don't judge all poets".
They smiled.
At her door, two or three hours later, Mary Jane whispered, "Everyone is asleep".
Kissing her he whispered, several times, "Eurydice".
The third time rather urgently.
But with her hand softly on his cheek for a last moment, she closed the door and he went back down the hall and into his bed excited, expectant, and finally faintly grinning with the feel of her hand against his mouth.
They were west of the Sabine, but only God knew where.
For three days, their stolid oxen had plodded up a blazing valley as flat and featureless as a dead sea.
Molten glare singed their eyelids an angry crimson; suffocating air sapped their strength and strained their nerves to snapping; dust choked their throats and lay like acid in their lungs.
And the valley stretched endlessly out ahead, scorched and baked and writhing in its heat, until it vanished into the throbbing wall of fiery orange brown haze.
Ben Prime extended his high-stepped stride until he could lay his goad across the noses of the oxen.
"Hoa-whup"!
he commanded from his raw throat, and felt the pain of movement in his cracked, black burned lips.
He removed his hat to let the trapped sweat cut rivulets through the dust film upon his gaunt face.
He spat.
The dust-thick saliva came from his mouth like balled cotton.
He moved back to the wheel and stood there blowing, grasping the top of a spoke to still the trembling of his played-out limbs.
The burning air dried his sweat-soaked clothes in salt-edged patches.
He cleared his throat and wet his lips.
As cheerfully as possible, he said, "Well, I guess we could all do with a little drink".
He unlashed the dipper and drew water from a barrel.
They could no longer afford the luxury of the canvas sweat bag that cooled it by evaporation.
The water was warm and stale and had a brackish taste.
But it was water.
Thank the Lord, they still had water!
He cleansed his mouth with a small quantity.
He took a long but carefully controlled draught.
He replenished the dipper and handed it to his young wife riding the hurricane deck.
She took it grudgingly, her dark eyes baleful as they met his.
She drank and pushed back her gingham bonnet to wet a kerchief and wipe her face.
She set the dipper on the edge of the deck, leaving it for him to stretch after it while she looked on scornfully.
"What happens when there's no more water"?
she asked smolderingly.
She was like charcoal, he thought- dark, opaque, explosive.
Her thick hair was the color and texture of charcoal.
Her temper sparked like charcoal when it first lights up.
And all the time, she had the heat of hatred in her, like charcoal that is burning on its under side, but not visibly.
A ripple ran through the muscles of his jaws, but he kept control upon his voice.
"There must be some water under there".
He tilted his homely face toward the dry bed of the river.
"We can get it if we dig", he said patiently.
"And add fever to our troubles"?
she scoffed.
"Or do you want to see if I can stand fever, too"?
"We can boil it", he said.
Her chin sharpened.
"We're lost and burning up already", she bit out tensely.
"The tires are rattling on the wheels now.
They'll roll off in another day.
There was no valley like this on your map.
You don't even know where we're headed".
"Hettie", he said as gently as he could, "we're still headed west.
Somewhere, we'll hit a trail".
"Somewhere!"
she repeated.
"Maybe in time to make a cross and dig our graves".
His wide mouth compressed.
In a way, he couldn't blame her.
He had picked out this pathless trail, instead of the common one, in a moment of romantic fancy, to give them privacy on their honeymoon.
It had been a mistake, but anything would have been a mistake, as it turned out.
It wasn't the roughness and crudity and discomfort of the trip that had frightened her.
She had hated the whole idea before they started.
Actually, she had hated him before she ever saw him.
It had been five days too late before he learned that she'd gone through the wedding ceremony in a semitrance of laudanum, administered by her mother.
The bitterness of their wedding night still ripped within him like an open wound.
She had jumped away from his shy touch like a cat confronted by a sidewinder.
He had left her inviolate, thinking familiarity would gentle her in time.
But each mile westward, she had hated him the deeper.
He stared at the dipper, turning it over and over in his wide, calloused hands.
"I suppose", he muttered, "I can sell the outfit for enough to send you home to your folks, once we find a settlement".
"Don't try to be noble"!
Her laugh was hard.
"They wouldn't have sold me in the first place if there'd been food enough to go around".
He winced.
"Hettie, they didn't sell you", he said miserably.
"They knew I was a good sharecrop farmer back in Carolina, but out West was a chance to build a real farm of our own.
They thought it would be a chance for you to make a life out where nobody will be thought any better than the next except for just what's inside of them.
Without money or property, what would you have had at Baton Rouge"?
"I might have starved, but at least I wouldn't be fried to a crisp and soaked with dirt"!
He darkened under his heavy burn.
His blue eyes sought the shimmering sea of haze ahead.
To his puzzlement, there suddenly was no haze.
The valley lay clear, and open to the eye, right up to the sharp-limbed line of gaunt, scoured hills that formed the horizon twenty miles ahead.
## Then he noticed the clouds racing upon them- heavy, ominous, leaden clouds that formed even as they sliced over the crests of the surrounding hills.
He had never seen clouds like them before, but he had the primitive feel of danger that gripped a man before a hurricane in Carolina.
He hollered hoarsely, "Hang on"!
and goaded the oxen as he yelled.
He wanted to turn them, putting the wagon against the storm.
Too late, he realized that in turning, he had wheeled them onto a patch of sandy ground, instead of atop a grade or ridge.
He swung up over the wheel.
"You had better get inside", he warned her.
But she sat on in stubborn silence.
The clouds bulged downward and burst suddenly into a great black funnel.
Frozen, they stared at it whirling down the valley, gouging and spitting out boulders and chunks of earth like a starving hound dog cracking marrowbones.
The six-ton Conestoga began to whip and shake.
Their world turned black.
It was filled with dust and wind and sound and violence.
The heavens opened, pelting them with hail the size of walnuts.
And then came the water- not rain, but solid sheets that sluiced down like water slopping from a bucket.
Walls of water rushed down the slopes and filled the hollows like the crests of flash floods.
Through the splash of the rising waters, they could hear the roar of the river as it raged through its canyon, gnashing big chunks out of the banks.
The jetting, frothing surface of the river reached the level of the runoff.
The dangerous current upon the prairie ceased, but the water stood and kept on rising.
They cringed under sodden covers, listening to the waves slop against the bottom.
The cloudburst cut off abruptly.
They were engulfed by the weird silence, broken only by the low, angry murmur of the river.
Then the darkness thinned, and there was light again, and then bright sunlight.
Beaten with fear and sound and wet and chill, they crawled to the hurricane deck and looked out haggardly at a world of water that reached clear to the surrounding hills.
The water level was higher than their hubs.
Only the heavy bones of the oxen kept them anchored.
There was no real sign of the river now, just a roiling, oily ribbon of liquid movement through muddy waters that reached everywhere.
Clumps of brush rode down the ribbon.
Now and then, the glistening side of a half-swamped object showed as it swept past.
The girl crawled out into the renewing warmth of the sunshine, hugging her shoulders and still trembling.
Her face was pale but set and her dark eyes smoldered with blame for Ben.
Out of compulsion to say something cheery, Ben Prime blurted, "Well, we were lucky to be on soft ground when the first floodheads hit.
At least, the wheels dug in.
The soaking will put life back in the wagon, too".
His wife didn't give a sign she'd heard.
She was watching a tree ride wildly down that roiling current.
Somebody was riding the tree.
It raced closer and they could see a woman with white hair, sitting astride an upright branch.
She did not call out.
But as the tree passed, she lifted an arm in gesture of better luck and farewell.
They watched the tree until it twisted sharply on a bend.
It speared up into the air, then sinking back, the up-jutting branch turned slowly.
The pale blob of the woman disappeared.
"There's the one who's lucky"!
the girl murmured harshly.
Ben's eyes strained with the bitter hurt, his homely face slashed with gray and crimson.
Then he took off his wet boots and dropped down into the water to talk with the beasts, needing their comfort more than they needed his.
It was nearly sundown and he went to the back of the wagon, half-swimming his way, for he was not a tall man.
He let down the tailgate and was knocked over by the sluice of water.
He sputtered back to his feet and scrambled madly to pull his bags of seed grain forward.
They were already swollen to bursting.
Of all their worldly belongings, next to the oxen and his gun, the seed grain had been the most treasured.
It was spoiled now for seed, and it would sour and mold in three days if they failed to find a place and fuel to dry it.
The oxen might as well enjoy it.
He examined the water marks on the iron tires when the animals were finished.
The waters lay muddy but placid, without a ripple of movement against the wheels; there was not a match-width of damp mark to show they were receding.
He doubted if a man could wade as far as the desolate, dry hills that rimmed the valley.
A terrible, numbing sense of futility swept over him.
He gripped the wheel hard to fight the despondency of defeat.
Then he noticed that the dry wood of the wheels had swollen.
The spokes were tight again, the iron tires gripped onto the wheels as if of one piece.
Hope surged within him.
He swung toward the front to give the news to Hettie, then stopped, barred from her by the vehemence of her blame and hate.
Still, he felt better.
A tight wagon meant so much.
## He got a small fire started and put on bacon and coffee.
He poured the water off the sourdough and off the flour, salvaging the chunky, watery messes for biscuits of a sort.
Their jams and jellies had not suffered.
He found a jar of preserved tomatoes and one of eggs that they had meant to save.
Now he broke them open, hoping a good meal might lessen this depression crushing Hettie.
His long nose wiggled at the smells of frizzling bacon and heating java, but the fire was low, and he wanted to waste no time.
He furled the slashed sides of the canvas tarpaulins, leaving the ribs and wagon open.
He looked thoughtfully at his wife's trunk, holding her meager treasures.
He said hesitantly, "Hettie, I don't figure your things got wet too much.
That's a good trunk.
If you want to get them aired **h" She said without turning her head, "After that rain beating in atop the dust, there isn't a thing that won't be streaked".
He drew a long breath and opened the trunk and hung out her clothes and spoilables upon the wagon ribs.
Sulphur, oil, and copra make the kind of tinder any firebug dreams of.
I suppose a Lascar sailor had sneaked a cigarette in the hold and touched off the blaze.
Now, roaring up in great oily clouds of smoke and flames, the fierce heat quickly drove us to the stern where we huddled like suffocating sheep, not knowing what to do **h. The lifeboats were stuck fast.
We couldn't budge them.
I heard a cry from a stoker as a pillar of flame leaped from a hatch and tongued the man's bare back.
He sprinted to the rail and leaped overboard into the shark-infested waters.
One especially bad detonation shook Lifeboat No 3 which trembled violently in the davits.
Brassnose yelled: "Come on, Sommers, Max **h step on it, we got a chance now.
Heave on those ropes; the boat's come unstuck".
We pulled and swore and yanked and wept, scraping our hands until they bled profusely.
The Bonaventure was quivering and lurching like an old spavined mare.
Her stern was down and a sharp list helped us to cut loose the lifeboat which dropped heavily into the water.
Brassnose, Max and I leaped into the sea and swam to the boat.
"Let's get away fast", said Brassnose, shaking water from his mop of bleached hair.
"That tub is going to explode all at once".
Then the Bonaventure seemed to disintegrate with a roar of live steam, geysers of sparks and flames, and a dense cloud of black-and-orange smoke.
Dimly, we heard the voices of men in mortal agony but we couldn't go back into that inferno.
Already our leaky lifeboat was filled with five inches of water.
"Sommers, you bale while we row", Brassnose commanded.
As best as I could determine, we were some 700 miles west of New Guinea, in the Bismark Archipelago.
Three days previously, we had steamed past barren Rennell Island in the distance.
Now we peered anxiously for any speck of land in the Pacific, for this interminable bailing would have to stop soon.
There were gigantic blisters and rope burns on our hands; our muscles were hot wires of pain.
Brassnose was strangely silent.
The big man with the whitened hair murmured something: his words sounded as if they were in the Manu tongue, which I recognized, having studied the dialect in my Anthropology /6, class at the University of Chicago.
He then said something which struck a chord in my memory.
"God help us if we're near the island of Eromonga.
We'd be in real trouble then.
I'd rather keep bailing- or sink".
I was puzzled by the remark, then I recalled the voice of mild Professor Howard Griggs three years ago in a university lecture on primitive societies.
He had been speaking of this archipelago: "Even when the islands were under German mandate before World War /1,, Europeans gave Eromonga a wide berth.
The place is inhabited by several hundred warlike women who are anachronisms of the Twentieth Century- stone age amazons who live in an all-female, matriarchal society which is self-sufficient".
I remembered, too, the jesting voice of a classmate, Bobby Pauson: "But how do they reproduce, Dr Griggs?
I'm sure that males have something to do with that process"!
There had been classroom guffaws which quickly subsided as Professor Griggs said dryly: "I see your point, Pauson.
Of course, males play a role there, but believe me when I say you wouldn't enjoy yourself one bit on Eromonga.
Indeed, you wouldn't live long, for the females either drive the men they've seized from neighboring islands back to their boats after exploiting them for amatory purposes, or they destroy them by revolting but ingenious methods.
In fact, one important aspect of their very religion is the annihilation of men".
"I think I know what you mean, Brassnose", I said.
"I know something about Eromonga.
Let's hope we come to a safer place".
But we didn't.
Three hours later, while we were bailing desperately, a dot of land came into view.
Foster Lukuklu Frayne made a sign over his heart with his two linked thumbs: I recognized it as an ancient Manu gesture intended to propitiate the Devil.
A half-hour passed; we had drifted closer.
In a voice so frightened as to seem not his own, the big bo'sun's mate quavered: "Tchalo!
It is Eromonga- look hard, you can see with your naked eye the wooden scaffolding on the cliff".
I squinted at the looming shoreline.
There was a wooden tower or derrick there, something like a ski jump; it was perhaps 80 feet high and had been artfully constructed of logs.
A fine example of engineering in a primitive society.
"What is the scaffolding for, Brassnose"?
He made a sound of despair deep in his throat.
It was embarrassing to see strapping, blonde Brassnose comport himself like a child who talks about bogeymen.
"Aaa-ee!
It is their tultul, the 'jumping platform' of death.
It is the last of the three tests of manhood which the women impose, to discover if a male in worthy of survival there.
Often, I heard my uncles and cousins speak of it when I was a small boy growing up in Rabaul.
They had never seen a tultul but they had heard about it from their fathers".
Our lifeboat was filling rapidly and despite what I had heard of the inhabitants of Eromonga, I was glad to see a long and graceful outrigger manned by three bronzed girls glide out of a lagoon into the open sea and toward our craft.
I expected Brassnose- as a man with a strain of Melanesian in his blood- to speak to them.
But he had turned a sickly green and appeared tongue-tied or panicked.
So, I mustered my few words of the Manu dialect and said, "We greet you in peace.
In ngandlu.
My friends and I come from a ship which was destroyed by fire.
We are thirsty and hungry; our sore and burned hands and arms need attention".
The girl in the prow of the outrigger turned a smile like a beacon on me.
I noted that her full breasts were bare and that she wore a garland of red pandanus fruit in her blue-black hair.
She said, "My name is Songau and these girls are Ponkob and Piwen.
You are welcome to Eromonga.
My people await you on the shore.
You shall have food, water and rest".
Thirty minutes later, the outrigger grated on sand and other girls, waiting on shore, rushed forward to pull it up on the beach and make it fast with vine ropes to a large boulder.
I saw a dozen or so other outriggers moored there.
I looked.
All my rosy visions of rest and even pleasure on this island vanished at the sight.
There was a mound of bleached human bones and skulls at the base of the big wooden derrick.
Some had been there for years; others still had whitened shreds of decayed flesh sticking to them.
There was one object which sickened yet fascinated me.
This was also a corpse- a male, judging from the coral arm bands, the tribal scars still discernible on the maggoty face, the painted bone of the warrior caste which still pierced the septum of the rotting nose.
The body may have been two or three weeks' dead.
I looked with revulsion at the legs.
They were shattered.
Many small bones protruded crazily from the shreds of flesh.
The man must have leaped to his death from the topmost rung of the tultul.
As if divining my thoughts, the girl Songau smiled warmly and said in the casual tone an American woman might use in describing her rose garden: "This is our tultul, a jumping platform, maku.
Later, you shall know it better.
Is it not well-made?
Our old one blew down in a storm at the time of the pokeneu festival fifteen moons ago.
It took thirty of our women almost six moons to build this one, which is higher and stronger than the old one.
We are very proud of it".
"You have every right to be", I replied gravely in the Manu dialect, but my attention was fixed on Brassnose, the biggest and strongest of us.
He looked as if he was going to keel over.
I felt a queasiness in my own stomach but it wouldn't do to show these girls that we were afraid.
Not so soon, anyway.
I clapped the big man with the bleached hair on his shoulder and said heartily, hoping it would make an impression on the women: "This one is the maku Frayne.
He speaks your language too, for he is the grandson of a chieftain on Taui who made much magic and was strong and cunning.
The maku Frayne has inherited this strength from his grandfather".
This was the worst thing I could have said.
Brassnose turned a stricken face toward me and said brokenly, "Sommers, you meddling Yank, you're a fool!
They despise males who brag of their strength; they destroy such men with their damned tests.
You've ruined me, blast you"!
At first, I thought he was out of his head, talking wildly like this.
But a glance at Songau and the other women confirmed what Brassnose had blurted out.
The women's faces had hardened after my statement.
At a nod from Songau, four lithe and muscular girls darted to Frayne's side and seized him by the arms.
The man was an ox and he put up a creditable struggle; but four Eromonga women are more than a match for the strongest male that ever lived.
Besides, terror had sapped some of Frayne's vitality and will.
My last impression as they led him off to a stockade was of his pale face In the Manu tongue, "eromonga" means manhood- a quality which the women derisively toasted in weekly feasts at which great quantities of a brew like kava were imbibed.
In the hut to which I was assigned- Max had his own quarters- my food was brought to me by a wrinkled crone with bare drooping breasts who seemed to enjoy conversing with me in rudimentary phrases.
Her name was L'Turu and she told me many things.
For an anthropologist, loquacious old L'Turu was a mine of information.
Though I had a great dread of the island and felt I would never leave it alive, I eagerly wrote down everything she told me about its women.
(Her account was later confirmed by the Scobee-Frazier Expedition from the University of Manitoba in 1951.)
From L'Turu, I heard that until about 1850 the people of this island- which was about the size of Guam or smaller- had been of both sexes, and that the normal family life of Melanesian tribes was observed here with minor variations.
But in the middle of the last century an island woman named "Karipo" seized a spear in the heat of an inter-tribal battle and rallied the women after their men had fled.
Miraculously, Karipo and her women had succeeded in driving a hundred invaders from the isle of Pamasu back to their war canoes, after considerable loss of life on both sides.
Karipo was something of a politician as well as a militarist.
She quickly exploited the exalted position she now occupied, by harassing the disorganized males and even putting many of them to death.
Within a decade or less, few men were left and a feminist society had sprung up.
"Karipo was great goddess, told our mothers that men were not necessary except to father children", the crone told me.
"All men went away from here.
Those who stayed had to pass tests.
Few passed".
She cackled with mirth, showing the stumps of betel-stained teeth.
"Karipo's women then named this place 'Eromonga'- manhood- for just the strongest men could stay here.
Come, I show you".
The old woman arose stiffly and led me to a clearing where a small hut stood.
In the shade of a palm tree in front of the squalid dwelling I saw four figures in a semi-circle on the ground.
"I guess he spent the morning getting himself all organized, then headed for home.
Maybe to beat up on his squaw".
Benson looked up and saw Ramey's long head tilt forward to rub his chin on the stiff edge of the overall bib.
Ramey reached out with the tire iron and dislodged a chunk of mud that was caked on the spare tire rack.
"I'd like to know just which it is that those guys don't understand, the liquor or automobiles".
Somehow the thought of a simple man bewildered by things no one had ever really helped him understand moved the driver.
For a moment his hatred toward drunken or careless drivers softened.
Maybe the Indian wasn't too much at fault, Ramey thought.
Maybe he was only doing the best he knew how, like any of us.
Anyway, he doesn't deserve to lie there in the sun and be stared at.
"Ever see yourself spread out on the pavement, Benny"?
he said to his partner.
"You mean dream"?
"Not exactly.
Just see it".
Benson grinned and flipped a rock with his thumb like a marble.
"Nope, just you, all the time- sometimes I think it's the only way I'll ever get a decent partner".
Ramey smiled but he thought to himself, I always see me too.
Never Benny.
Whenever he saw someone lying in the dirt, Ramey wondered what the person had been thinking and he would try out thoughts in his own mind.
Then he would realize they were really things that only he himself could think.
With this realization, sometimes, he saw himself as he looked down.
"You seen him yet"?
Benson said, referring to the Indian.
"He wasn't in the car", Ramey said.
"You didn't go clear around", Benson said.
"If you want to see something, he's back on the other side by the trunk of the car".
"Too long a waiting line", Ramey answered, pretending to joke.
A few minutes later the insurance man, a road checker, drove up in the gray coupe with license plates on it from a far-away state.
It was a trick they used to try and conceal their identity when they followed trucks to check their speed.
Sometimes they just parked at the side of the road and used radar on the trucks as they passed.
All the drivers knew about the plates and they also knew about the big floppy straw hat with shredded edges, the kind natives in travel ads wear when they are out joyfully chopping cane.
Horsely, an agent on the east end, wore the hat, trying to look like a tourist.
It had always seemed strange to Ramey that to disguise himself as a tourist, an ex-truck driver like Horsely would merely pick something outlandish and put it on his head.
The insurance man informed them that he had talked to Crumley who was all right and that he would watch the men's personal effects until they towed the rig back to town.
He chatted with Ramey and Benson for a minute or so in the meager shade of the trailer.
Every so often the diminishing sound of a car came under the trailer as it slowed down for the wreck then speeded up again as it got clear.
When they were ready to leave, Benson and Ramey walked back around the rear of the trailer.
"There's a body you won't mind looking at", Benson said and they stopped.
She had driven up with her husband in a convertible with Eastern license plates, although the two drivers knew nothing at the moment about that.
She wore shorts and a loose terry-cloth shirt.
Slender and tanned, her dark brown hair was drawn straight back, simply.
"What outfit does she drive for"?
Benson said.
Seeing her caused a lurch in Ramey, a recognition.
She might have been someone he had once loved.
He had never seen her before, but now he thought of the manner in which he and Benson went in and out of the cities, at each end of their run.
The truck routes, the industrial areas with walls grimed with diesel smoke passed briefly through his mind- back alleys were their access to a city and they could never stay.
How would you ever see her again?
The feeling subsided, it was only a small yearning.
Their work was lonely.
"What's she doing in this bunch"?
Benson said, and Ramey wondered how close their thoughts might have been.
The girl looked around at the countryside.
Her glance swung past the trailer where the two drivers were standing.
It made only a tiny bump over the two men like a tire over a piece of gravel then moved on.
She began to watch a blonde-haired man, also in shorts, standing right at the rear of the wrecked car in the one spot that most of the crowd had detoured slightly.
What had caught his attention was obscured by the car itself, so that neither the girl nor the truck drivers could see, but Benson knew what it was.
The girl took a couple of steps toward the man in shorts when Benson, in that barefoot courtliness Ramey could never decide was real, said, "You don't want to go around there, Ma'am".
The girl stopped but did not turn her head or acknowledge that someone had spoken to her.
The man stood near the bent levi-clad body of the Indian who lay face down almost under the car.
The two drivers moved closer.
"What does he want, a spoon"?
Benson said to Ramey.
One tiny detail in a happening can clog the memory and stick like meat in a crooked tooth, while the rest of the occurrence will go hazy and uncertain.
With Ramey it was a dusty work shoe that was half-off the Indian's foot that he would always remember.
The laces were broken at the bottom of the eyelets but there was still a bow knot at the top.
The slightest twitch would have parted the shoe entirely from the foot, yet the toes were still inside.
The two men in overalls stood just behind the blonde-headed man.
He wore tennis shorts and a white sweater with a red V at the neck, the sleeves pushed above the elbows.
He turned and looked at them with clear blue eyes, immaculate eyes.
He was very tanned- big hands might have torn him from a Coca-Cola poster.
"He's dead, isn't he"?
the man said.
He turned and bent over the body of the Indian.
There was nothing in particular on the man's face.
It was simply a matter of curiosity, a natural right to examine.
"What's this"?
the man said, backing up a step, still looking down.
His words were mostly to himself.
"Don't".
There was a gentle concern in Benson's voice.
Ramey looked down and saw the white sneaker at the bottom of the man's tanned leg cautiously nudge a bit of folded, blood-flecked substance lying by itself on the pavement.
"But what is it"?
the man said with a tone of impatience.
But what is it?
The man had spoken only once.
Ramey heard the words again inside, weakened, the way moving water sounds through a grove of trees, until he was not sure whether it was sound or light-headedness pressing in his ears.
The sneaker reached out once more to tap against the mass and Ramey's vision darkened except for an unreasonable clarity of the man's leg.
Ramey saw sunlight touch the curly blonde hairs on the brown skin.
He stared at the shining, shining circles of hairs and heard the voice of his partner through trees, "Don't do that, fella.
Them's brains".
The man seemed to sink a little as Ramey brought the tire iron down on his shoulder and it seemed that the blonde head was turning as he hit the man again, with his fist.
Ramey swung and caught the man just to the left of his mouth.
It was a straight, solid, once-in-a-lifetime shot; he laid all four knuckles in between the man's cheekbone and his chin.
Ramey's fist and the air expelled from the man's collapsing cheek made a hollow pop in the air like cupped hands clapping together.
The man took two short steps backward then sat down heavily on the pavement.
Ramey heard a cry from the girl and felt a slight pain somewhere in his hand.
As he watched the man sit suddenly, a detached part of his mind observed how very difficult it was, really, to knock a man off his feet.
He hadn't done it this time and he would never again hit anyone so hard.
With a thoughtful look, the man sat on the pavement, legs straight out in front of him.
His arms hung like empty shirt sleeves, and his mouth was slightly open.
After what seemed several seconds, the open mouth grew dark inside then blood began to ooze from it.
The man brought one hand up slowly and the fingers fumbled across his face until he touched his mouth.
He moaned and pulled the hand away.
Even yet there was no realization in his eyes.
Ramey could hear the crowd coming up rapidly behind him and the questioning voices coming over his shoulder had no identity or importance to him.
He did not look around.
"What happened"?
someone said.
"He's hurt"!
A woman's voice said, and then he heard a sort of wail from the man's wife.
The man on the ground began to move; one of his hands flattened out on the pavement and supported him.
Blood dripped down the front of his sweater, soaking into a dark streak of dirt that ran diagonally across the white wool on his shoulder, as though the bright V woven into the neckline had melted, running a darker color.
The girl kneeled by her husband with one arm at his back.
"Can you hear, can you talk to me"?
she begged.
An incoherent, puzzled sound came from the red mouth.
The girl looked around quickly at several of the people.
None of the crowd had stepped forward to help.
Then she saw Ramey and her face was misshapen with bewilderment.
"Why did you do it- why did you hit him"?
she said, her voice rising.
Ramey said nothing.
A shine in her eyes suddenly became tears and she turned back to her husband again.
Behind Ramey feet scraped beneath sharp questioning whispers.
No one seemed to know for sure what had happened, nor was there any purpose or responsibility in the muttering feet and urgent voices behind the driver, beyond finding out.
Ramey looked around and caught sight of his partner near the front end of the wrecked truck talking to the patrolman.
Benson moved his arms, gesturing with an unfamiliar vigor and talking rapidly.
Ramey caught a glimpse of the insurance man.
Some of the ruddiness was gone from his face and he stared at Ramey.
It's all over now, the driver thought as he saw the patrolman turn and walk rapidly down along the trailer toward them.
Ramey watched him coming with a vision as clean as the glare on the metal sides of the trailer.
He saw the dark sweat spots flip in and out of sight under the patrolman's swinging arms and in the leather holster that swaggered and rolled at the side of his stocky body, the sun left a smoky shine on the narrow strip of blue metal that ran between the horned handles of his pistol.
"All right, step back"!
the patrolman said to no one in particular as he pushed between the fat man in the baseball cap and a young boy in levis.
He walked straight up to the man sitting on the ground and bent over to look at him.
"You all right"?
"Mough- it's my mough", the man said, trying to talk without moving his lips.
His brown face looked gray from dirt streaks where his hand had come off the dusty pavement and rubbed across it.
Then he calmly and carefully slugged the remaining five shots into the venomous head- caught in the wicker back of the chair, the eyes dead on him as the life finally went out of the brute.
The body continued to lash, but now Keith used the legs of the chair to fork the loathsome, bloody mass out of the bungalow.
He slammed the door and listened as his servants ran up, alarmed at the sound of the shots.
He heard their chattering, and then the sounds of hacking as they dismembered the snake right on the porch with wood axes.
It was only then that he turned to look at Penny.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed again, back in the same position where the snake had found her.
The fear had not entirely gone from her face, but there were some other emotions now, crowding into her eyes and the lines of her mouth.
But her hands were calm, now.
She's got guts, thought Keith.
She's got more guts than any other woman in the world.
"Keith", said Penny, "Keith, you were wonderful.
I don't suppose a wife should be grateful to her husband for saving her life, but I am.
Thank you, Keith".
He smiled at her sincerity.
And for the hundredth time that week, he was startled at her beauty.
Strange.
Seven years they'd been married.
He knew her mind pretty well, by now, its quick perceptions and sympathies, its painful insistence on truth and directness, its capacity for love almost too deep for a man to reciprocate, even in part.
But her beauty always surprised him anew.
"I realize that this is hardly the time to say it, Penny", said Keith.
"But knowing you, I know that you're glad to be alive, and grateful- and sorry because I killed the snake, even though I had to.
Isn't that so"?
Penny lowered her eyes.
"Yes", she said, almost in a whisper, as if admitting to a crime.
"The snake was beautiful, wasn't it"?
asked Keith, his voice getting harsher in spite of himself, as he struggled to control his growing anger.
"It was a king cobra, the largest you ever saw, and it deserved to live out its life in the jungle, didn't it?
DIDN'T IT?"
Penny did not answer.
Now, she just sat there looking at him, without an expression except concern for him.
"We're all God's creatures, aren't we"?
Keith was snarling now.
"All of us- every goddam roach and worm and killer in that jungle.
You love this village and these stinking brown people because they're God's creatures, too.
And you love Ahmiri, that black bastard of a servant even a little more, because he's a beautiful man.
And he loves you because you're a beautiful woman.
We're all God's creatures, aren't we, Penny?
All of us, that is, except me.
You hate me, you hate my guts, because I like to hunt.
You actually hate me- and we both know it- because I killed that filthy snake.
**h Well, why don't you say something"?
Penny would not rise to his mood.
"There isn't anything left to say, is there, Keith"?
She softly let herself into the bed, and took her regular side, away from the door, where she slept better because Keith was between her and the invader.
He knew she was not sulking, not even angry at him.
Just as he knew that she had stopped loving him.
The Brahmaputra has its headwaters in the tableland of the world, the towering white headwalls of the Himalayas that are unknown to man as any other space on the planet.
For a brief period each year, the rays of the sun are warm enough to melt some of the snows piled a mile deep at the base of the headwalls, and then the pinnacles glisten in the daytime at high noon, and billions of gallons of water begin their slow seepage under the glaciers and across the rockstrewn hanging valleys on their long, meandering journey to the sea- running east past the sky-carving massifs of Gurla Mandhata and Kemchenjunga, then turning south and curling down through the jungles of Assam, past the Khasi Hills, and into Bengal, past Sirinjani and Madaripur, until the hard water of the melting snows mingles with the soft drainage of fields and at length fans out to meld with the teeming salt depths of the Bay of Bengal.
Keith Sterling had looked down on the Brahmaputra more times than he could remember, during the war days when he flew over the Hump of the world, thinking it high adventure in those times before man was guiding himself through outer space.
But Keith looked down more than up.
He thought of the jungles below him, and of the wild, strange, untracked beauty there and he promised himself that someday he would return, on foot perhaps, to hunt in this last corner of the world where man is sometimes himself the hunted, and animals the lords.
At first it had been just a romantic dream of his, the same as the idea of finishing Oxford after the war.
But "after the war" was a luxury of a phrase he did not permit himself.
Wing Commanders in the RAF do not imply survival in the future either in their orders or in their attitudes, to their men or to themselves.
And Keith's record of kills made him a man to listen to- a man paradoxically, who might even survive.
He became a fighter pilot after the stint over the Hump in the big crates.
The RAF was Britain's weapon of attrition, and flying a fighter plane was the way her sons could serve her best at this point in the war.
He knew how to shoot down Nazis.
And he knew that the men talked about him behind his back, saying that he was one up on everybody else- including the pilot of the plane with the swastika on it- because he was chemically incapable of fear.
That was true, but only half the truth.
The other half he didn't like to recognize, even to himself.
He enjoyed the killing.
Not defending England, or being an ace, or fighting for humanity.
He enjoyed killing.
And he would have enjoyed it just as much if he had been a Nazi.
Nowadays, we talk as though the blitz were just a short skirmish.
The Nazis bombed Britain, so the RAF retaliated and shot them all down.
Not quite.
It was a war of nerves, of stamina, of dogged endurance in which the stupid insistence of the British on their right to their own country became ultimately an unsurmountable obstacle to the Nazis, who were better organized and technically superior.
It took a long time before the British tipped the balance.
Keith learned too much about air combat, and air killing, to be risked.
They grounded him (over his protests- not including his true reason for wanting to fly) and put him in the Command offices.
That was where he met Penny.
He was aware of her as a frightfully good-looking American WAC, a second lieutenant assigned to do the paper work, (regardless of how important she might have thought she was) in the Command offices, but that was all.
Penny knew him better, on her part.
He had a war reputation, but this was the kind of man women like even without medals.
They don't go for bull-like muscle, as a rule.
He had strength in his six-foot frame, but it was like the tensile steel in a rapier.
He was on the thin side, with big hands, and the kind of wrists that give away the power in forearm and bicep.
His hair was black, already greying at the temples in the classic beauty-idiom, the only one permitted to a man.
The pretty little twittering WACS said he had the look of eagles- and Penny, hating the cliche, had to admit that in this case it applied.
Keith was an eagle.
Penny and Keith had no romance.
No dates or hand-holding.
But they met in one searing moment that gave them to one another instantly.
The Command offices were in the border country, up north, where the radar systems centralized their intelligence reports, and the fighters were dispatched to harry the enemy.
The Nazis knew this, of course, and while their chief quarry was the industrial centers, they let a few drop every time they went over, hoping for a lucky hit.
This time, they had been lucky.
The Command post was underground, and well camouflaged.
But there hadn't been enough time to build it for keeps.
There was a measure of protection in its concrete walls and ceiling, but the engineers who hastily installed it were well aware that concrete is not much better than prayer, if as efficacious, when a direct hit comes along.
This one was actually more of a "near miss".
The bomb plunged into the ground near the Post, but not precisely into the Command room itself.
There was a shattering, cracking sound as the concrete started to buckle, the air filled with dust and flying debris, and everyone in the room- men and women hit the floor and used the desks as turtlebacks, as ordered.
That is, everyone but Keith and Penny.
They stood there, just the two of them, in the rocking, shattering blast.
Keith was on his feet because he didn't care at all about life any more: Penny on her feet, proudly, because she cared too much.
The bomb was a solitary one.
The blast damaged, but did not destroy the room.
Keith's eyes met Penny's as they stood there in this strange marriage of destruction.
And, as the others began to crawl out from beneath the desks and tend to those wounded, and mark the several killed, he climbed across the debris to Penny and took her hand in his.
The chaplain married them, on the next day.
After the war, Penny had wanted Keith at least to visit her home with her.
She came from Ohio, from what she called a "small farm" of two hundred acres, as indeed it was to farmer-type farmers.
But to Keith's London-bred mind, such acreage sounded rather invincible.
It wasn't that, however, which decided them not to go to America.
Keith told Penny about his dream to return to India and Burma.
He stressed the wild beauty of the mountains, and the jungles.
He didn't tell her the truth he now freely admitted to himself.
He couldn't stop killing.
That was his true love, not Penny.
The terrible power of a gun, the thing that blasted the soul out of a living body, man or beast, was one he never wanted to lose.
And in the hunting land, this hunger was considered to be a noble thing.
When they got to Shillong, in Assam, he was happy.
This is a paradise for hunters.
This was the land of the sladang, the great water buffalo with horns forty inches across the spread.
The great black leopards.
The sambur buck, the jungle stag that is even more noble than the Scottish elk.
He even hunted elephant, although the Asian elephant is not quite as ferocious as his African cousin.
But there are big rogues in both countries.
These were the ones Keith sought out- the loners, the ones who killed for the joy of it, like himself.
He and Penny would go out on tame elephants, raised from babyhood in the keddah.
And while he was ever alert for game, and most particularly a tiger, Penny marvelled at the Eden they were traversing.
They came upon cheetal deer at woodland pools.
Peacocks strutted across their path, preening.
There were fantastic flowers without perfume, and gaudy birds without song.
Mouse deer played around the feet of the elephants, or fled when the mighty legs thrashed too close.
Wild boar watched their progress with little pig eyes, and grunted derision when they didn't consider such game worthy of a shot from the .404's.
Now, the next morning, they were anchored at The Elbow and the boat was riding directly over the underwater ledge where the green water turned to deepest blue and the cliff dropped straight down 600 fathoms, with the weighted line beside it; and Robinson Roy, who had gone down this line ten minutes before to set a new depth record for the free dive, was already back on the surface.
He and his safety man, Herr Schaffner, swam up to the boarding ladder together.
The German courteously indicated that Robinson should mount first.
Robinson clambered heavily into the boat, sat down, and stripped off his triple-tank assembly.
He was frowning.
He took his mask from his forehead and threw it, unexpectedly, across the deck.
"Temper, temper", Mrs Forsythe said, laughing uneasily.
A phony blonde hanging onto a bygone youth and beauty, but irreparably stringy in the neck, she was already working on her second gin and tonic, though it was not yet ten AM "I loused it", Rob said, with a savage note in his voice.
"All I have to do to set the record is to go on down.
So instead I come up".
"Was it my equipment"?
the German asked.
"Was it something went bad with the breathing"?
"The equipment was fine", Rob stated, standing up.
He was a huge young man of twenty-four, clothed in muscle, immensely strong, with a habitual gentleness and diffidence of manner that was submerged under his present agitation.
He stared stonily at the floor.
"I was down to 275.
I've been that far half a dozen times.
I don't get it why this time I should pull such a stupid trick".
"Well, I get it", Artie said, still on the ladder.
"You are a big muscle-bound ape and you got this idea about setting a record.
And you also got this little spark in your bird-brain that tells you to turn around before you drown yourself.
So you turn around".
"No, it wasn't that", Rob said.
A note of awe came into his voice.
"When I came up, damnit, I thought I was going down.
I came up maybe fifty feet before I knew what was happening".
"Pressure-happy", Artie said, and climbed in.
"That's right", Robinson said.
"I was expecting it, sure.
But when it happens to you like that, I tell you, and you're a hundred feet from where you thought you were- well, it makes you think.
You don't head back down again.
Not me, anyway.
Not right away".
He had his voice under control again: no one became aware that he was terrified by what had just happened to him.
Waddell, the newspaperman, was a fellow in his middle forties, with a graying crewcut, heavy-framed glasses, and a large jaw padded with fat.
Now he was going to show how much he knew.
"Our boy didn't chicken out, no sir.
He ran into the rapture of the depths.
Nitrogen narcosis.
It makes the diver feel drunk".
"Well, that's the only way to be", Mrs Forsythe said, and gave her brassy laugh.
"Maybe not, if you're 200 feet under water", Artie said.
"Anyway", Waddell went on.
"it's nothing to fool with.
It can kill you.
Personally, I don't blame him for giving up the dive, much as I regret losing the story".
"Nobody's giving anything up", Robinson said.
He stood there, towering over them all: gentle, mighty, determined, the moving force in the group; and yet like a child among adults.
"You think I got you and Artie and Herr Schaffner all the way out here just for the boat ride?
I'm going down again".
"That's my boy"!
Mr Forsythe exclaimed.
"Rob's not going to give up as easy as all that".
He was a florid, puffy man in his early sixties, very natty in his yachting cap, striped jacket and white flannels.
He went to Key West every fall and winter and was the only man in town who did not know that his title of "Commodore" was never used without irony.
Old Commodore Forsythe, who had once lost a fifty-dollar bet on whether he could get both motors started and turn on the running lights without accidentally turning on something else first.
Now it did not occur to him even to wonder whether it was wise for Robinson to dive again: Rob was his boy, the kid he had rescued from the streets, the object of his pride.
"Why", he went on, "when Rob asked me if he could make his dive on this trip, I didn't think twice about it.
I've helped him along ever since he was a youngster hanging around his brother's tackle shop.
Hell, I gave him the first decent job he ever had, six, seven- how many years ago was it, Rob"?
"Seven years ago, Commodore", Rob said impassively.
He was thinking, big deal: skipper on his drunken fishing parties for seven years and no better off than when I started.
"Excuse me", he said abruptly.
He went down the steps to the galley and sleeping quarters; went into the forward stateroom and locked the door behind him.
"When you gotta go, you gotta go", Mrs Forsythe said.
Waddell muttered something about taking a look around and climbed up to the flying bridge.
He was disturbed by what had happened on the dive and by what he remembered of a conversation he had had the night before with the German, who had come out of the head while he was fixing himself a drink in the galley.
"Hi there, Schaffner", he had said.
"Can I make you one"?
"No thank you very much", Schaffner had answered in his accented English.
"I do not drink so much, thank you".
Waddell had looked the man over, trying to size him up.
He was in his early forties, rather short and very compactly built, and with a manner that was reserved and stiff despite his efforts to adapt himself to American ways.
His open face seemed to promise a sort of innocence, until one looked into his eyes, which had no warmth in them but only alert intelligence.
Waddell had heard that he had been a commando in Rommel's Afrika Corps, and he said to himself: I'd hate to run into him in the desert on a dark night.
Aloud he had said, making conversation: "Rob tells me he's using your Atlantis equipment on the dive".
"Yes", Herr Schaffner had said.
"He's one hell of a decent boy.
I like that kid".
"I agree, yes".
"And if the dive goes OK he has the exclusive import rights to your line for this country, is that right"?
"Well, no", Herr Schaffner said.
Waddell turned to face him.
"No"?
he asked.
"But that's what he told me.
Why, that's his main reason for making the dive".
Shaffner looked at him, altogether without guile, and shrugged his shoulders, making a little spreading gesture with his two hands.
"What do you mean"?
Waddell asked, frowning.
"Please let me explain", the German said earnestly, his face still devoid of deceit.
"I have in Europe a gross business of seven million dollars the year.
Now I wish to enter the American market, where the competition is very strong.
I must have a powerful representative here, a firm with a national distribution and ten, twenty thousand dollars to advertise my products.
With all respect to a fine young man, Mr Roy is not able to provide these necessaries".
Waddell was not an eminently moral person, but he did not like what he had just heard.
"Did you tell him all this"?
he asked.
"Perhaps not in so many words", the German said.
"But surely you have misunderstood Mr Roy.
Never, never did I offer him the exclusive rights.
We spoke of the need for advertising, and I agreed that the deep dive would be most useful for publicity.
He was most eager to make the dive; of course, I was willing.
But there was no definite agreement about business arrangements".
"Well, damn", Waddell said.
There was the end of his front-page feature story, with byline.
He started out the door.
"One moment"!
Herr Schaffner said.
"You intend to speak with Mr Roy"?
"What else"?
Waddell asked.
"If you will pardon, I think it would be better if not.
Mr Roy is determined to make this dive.
Whatever you tell him he will dive.
I know this from my talks with him".
"Well, let's let him make up his own mind, OK"?
Waddell said.
"On the basis of the facts".
"You will make him unhappy and anxious", the German said.
"At 200, 300, 400 feet under the water, when he must be paying very much attention, he will be thinking about what you are telling him.
It is not good, Mr Waddell: you will do him great harm".
There was no doubt that Herr Schaffner meant every word of what he said.
Waddell came back from the door and sat on a bunk.
"I am an honest man", the German said with fervor.
"I will give Mr Roy his due for this dive.
I will make him distributor for all of Florida- a big market.
All tourists come to Florida.
This will help him to get out of his little tackle shop.
Yes!
But there is no use causing him to worry at this time".
The German's words worked on the newspaperman like a reprieve from an odious duty.
He took a big swig of his drink.
It would be a colossal shame to throw away a story like this.
"I think maybe you're right, Schaffner", he said.
"He has the distributorship for Florida, you say"?
"Yes", the German said.
"At least for South Florida".
"By God", Waddell said, "we don't want to upset the boy at this time of all times.
I guess you're right".
He sloshed his drink around and drained it in a few large gulps.
The story was shaping up nicely in his mind: the young pioneer, as of old, altruistically braving the unknown; the rewards prompt and juicy in modern big-business America.
"Join me in another"?
he had asked.
"Thank you", the German had said courteously.
"I do not drink so much".
## Now, in that same cabin, Robinson fell to his knees beside a bunk.
Fear and relief mingled in his churning emotions.
He pressed his palms together and addressed himself to the patron saint of divers in a hurried and anxious whisper.
"Blessed Saint Nicholas, I thank thee for getting me out of that mess and sending me up instead of down when I was bewildered.
And when I make the dive again"- He paused; crossed himself; said a Hail Mary, slowly and with understanding.
Folding between his hands the cross that hung from his neck, he took his appeal direct to Headquarters.
"Holy Mary, Mother of God, Star of the Sea, stay Thou with me on this next dive.
Make it come off all right.
Let me set the record this time, and let me get back OK, so the German will give me the exclusive.
And make my life different and better from this time on.
Amen".
He crossed himself again and rose.
He felt a good deal less shaky.
As he reached for the door there was a knock on it and when he opened he found Artie, who came in and sat down on a bunk.
Artie had picked up a snorkle and was twirling it on his forefinger.
He waited awhile before he said, "Roy, you know your decompression table, don't you"?
"You know I know it", Robinson answered warily.
"You came straight up from 275 without a stop", Artie said.
"Well, I was a little bit confused.
Anyway, I wasn't down long enough to matter.
You don't see me stretched out on the deck, do you"?
"You know what they say about two deep dives in one day", Artie went on, still twirling the snorkle and studying it intently.
"I don't think you should go down again".
EARLY that day Matsuo saw a marine.
The enemy came looming around a bend in the trail and Matsuo took a hasty shot, then fled without knowing the result, ran until breath was a pain in his chest and his legs were rubbery.
As his feet slowed, he felt ashamed of the panic and resolved to make a stand.
He crossed the next meadow and climbed a tree where the jungle trail resumed.
In the leafiest part of the tree, straddling a broad horizontal limb, he could see over the meadow.
For a while he was content to let events develop in their good time.
He had no doubt the marine was the lead scout of a column, and while his shot had probably bred indecision, they would soon come hunting.
His superiors had emphasized that marines tortured others for the sheer pleasure.
Yesterday; today; tomorrow: no surrender.
His remembering the self-dictate brought no peace- only a faint chill of doubt.
He murmured to himself, with firmness: "No surrender".
It was best to die fighting the marines.
His superiors had also preached this, saying it was the way for eternal honor.
What if the marines never came?
His comrades were all dead.
He had no rice.
Then it would be a choice between starvation and suicide.
Whichever the way, he would rot in this vast choking green, his wife never to receive an urn of his ashes.
He sighed and leaned for a moment against the trunk.
His fingers touched the bone handle of a knife.
The knife, an ammunition pouch, and a half-filled bottle of purified water hung on his belt.
Besides the belt he wore a loin cloth.
As he looked up from picking at a leg ulcer, he saw a marine in the jungle across the clearing.
Gloom receded.
The marine came to the edge of the green jungle mist and stayed, as though debating whether to brave the sunlight.
His fatigues made a streak of almost phosphorescent green in the mist.
"Come out, come out in the meadow", Matsuo said under his breath.
The man leaned against a tree and wiped a sleeve across his face.
A signal?
Matsuo lifted his rifle, easing the sling under his left upper arm for steadiness.
Fresh on his mind were events of the past day when his whole regiment was destroyed in the hills.
They had fought from caves, and the marines resorted to burning them out.
Even now, like a ringing in his ears, he heard the wooooosh of flame-throwers squirting great orange billows.
A wave of flame rippling through their cave had reached Nagamo, his friend, and with a shriek the man bolted through the entrance, then slowed to the jerky walk of a puppet, his uniform blazing.
The marines let him advance.
When he sank on his knees, they had allowed him to char without administering the stroke of mercy.
Matsuo had faked death and was pitched on a stack of corpses, both the burned and the unburned, the latter decomposing rapidly under the tropical sun.
The callous marines had laughed at each other's retching, while stacking bodies.
Matsuo repeatedly choked down his own nausea.
At nightfall he had been able to sneak down a hillside and into the jungle, reeking of death.
Apprehensively he peered to the left, to the right into the leafy, vine-crisscrossed maze.
He decided that the marines must be deploying around the meadow, with the one left to distract him.
He strained his hearing.
Cautious feet stepping on leafmold; faint creaking of belts and slings; whispers: he heard none of these.
Only the hum of insects and the distant fluttering call of a bird.
Because he couldn't hear them, he was more convinced they were there.
A spectacle occurred across the meadow: the lone marine took a seat on the ground; leaning sidewise on a tree trunk, he embraced it.
Humiliation made Matsuo tremble.
While his comrades cocked the trap, that one behaved as if it was some dull maneuver.
Taking aim at the man's face, Matsuo squeezed the trigger up to the point of discharge, and then he changed his mind.
He wanted the arrogant marine to know fear, and so he aimed above the head.
The shot reverberated in diminishing whiplashes of sound.
Hush followed.
Like a mischievous boy expecting punishment, Matsuo awaited reaction from the jungle.
How stupid to give his position away.
The jungle did not retort.
The sitter remained seated hugging the tree.
Before long the atmosphere reverted to its old normalcy, and insects hummed and birds occasionally called.
Matsuo puzzled and grew anxious over the complete passiveness, concluding that he was the butt of a devilish joke.
Five or so minutes later the marine abruptly pulled up and stepped into sunlight, immediately throwing his hands over his eyes.
He went into a whirling dance, a sort of blind chasing of the tail.
It ended when he tumbled; but jumping right up, he staggered in no particular direction.
He wore no head cover of any kind and, more odd, had no visible weapon.
With a sudden decisiveness he lurched in Matsuo's direction, crossing the meadow in a zigzagging gallop.
When he got closer to the tree, Matsuo noted the wild look on his face.
The pockets of his jacket bulged.
Hand grenades.
the bobbing head was a poor target, so Matsuo shot him in the upper trunk.
The marine spun, clapping a hand high on his chest, and dived forward.
In the hush that followed the echoes, Matsuo was tense.
They could come on him now without difficulty.
Gradually he reached a conclusion.
The marine was alone, for they were impatient people and by now would have vied to knock him from the tree.
Down the tree he scrambled and knelt at the edge of foliage.
The marine was sprawled some thirty yards away, one arm extended.
Matsuo jumped when the hidden arm flopped out.
Reflex?
Rifle leveled on the man, he made a rush.
Heat, in the sunlight, pressed in like an invisible crowd.
He squatted by the head, gently placing the rifle on the ground.
With a snakestrike motion he grasped the hair, and, twisting, pulled the marine over on his back.
He was bearded.
The bullet had penetrated in the area of the right collarbone; around the hole, blood glistened in a little patch.
Maintaining his clutch on the hair, Matsuo watched the closed eyes while rummaging in the jacket pockets.
In one: a package of cigarettes and a tinplated lighter, both sticky from the man's bleeding.
In the other: a wristwatch with broken crystal wrapped in a dirty handkerchief.
One by one he tossed the objects aside.
He didn't smoke and could not light fires with a flintless lighter; he had no use any longer for exact time, even had the watch been running.
Then there was no saying how many times the marine had blown his nose on the handkerchief.
Too bad the marine had no water.
From its holder he took his own canteen.
The cap was stuck and made a thin rusty squeaking as he applied pressure.
The marine's eyes opened, squeezed shut, then opened squinted in the glare.
So, alive.
Matsuo put the bottle to his own lips.
The marine reached up a hand.
Matsuo shook his head.
"None for you".
The marine blinked, soon dropping his hand.
Not only had he no canteen, but he lacked even the belt to hang one on.
"You came well equipped to die".
Some odor made him lean over the man.
He sniffed and recognized it.
Sake.
So that had been his difficulty.
Drunk on sake, he must have wandered off from his bivouac.
The marine tried to roll on his right side, and moaned.
When he rolled on the left side, propping on his left elbow, Matsuo seized his hair and pulled him back over.
"Be a good turtle".
Awkwardly with one hand Matsuo got the cap back on the water bottle.
The smell of sake had freshened yesterday's events in his thoughts.
In the caves, with other supplies, they had kept cases of sake.
The marine shut his eyes.
"Are you a thrower of flame, marine"?
Matsuo took the small knife from its scabbard and laid it on the ground, out of the marine's reach and away from their shadows.
He waited in his squat, gripping the hair.
Every so often he turned the knife.
Its blade was dazzling in the intense sunlight.
The sun was noon high and Matsuo perspired until his body was dripping.
Wet also were the marine's fatigues and the face had an oily film.
The man had thrown the left hand over his eyes.
Now and again he murmured something that ended in a giggle.
He must have saturated himself in the drink, for the bullet not to shock him out of his drunken haze.
Matsuo shook his head.
Strange.
At last he reached for the knife.
Even the bone handle scorched, and he retrieved the marine's handkerchief to wrap it.
First he barely touched the blade on the hand which shaded the eyes.
The marine yelled and flung the hand away.
With a firm grip on the man's hair Matsuo applied the blade flat on a cheek.
A shrill yelp, kicked legs, and groping hands that circled Matsuo's wrist.
Matsuo wrenched free and burned the hands into retreat; burned the other cheek; burned each hand when they came groping again.
The marine commenced to weep and it blighted the sense of enjoyment.
Matsuo stood up.
"A small measure of payment, marine".
He dropped the knife in its scabbard, hung the rifle behind a shoulder.
The marine, hands on cheeks, rolled by his unwounded side onto his stomach.
He ceased weeping.
Matsuo walked toward his tree, once glancing back.
The marine was still.
He would soon die.
As Matsuo climbed by using the vines and kicking his feet against the trunk, a mood of gloom immersed him like a jungle shadow.
What now?
In the jungle, birds were mute, while insects preserved only the monotony of living.
Someone called.
It was the marine: head lifted, he strained and called.
Then he astonished Matsuo by pushing and dragging himself until he sat.
He cupped his mouth and yelled.
Matsuo hustled the rifle off his shoulder.
Once and for all he'd finish this marine who would not die.
He aimed, but listened.
It sounded as if the man were calling him: "Hey, Japanese **h hey there, Japanese".
The man tilted back his head and went through the pantomime of drinking from a container.
He performed the act twice more, and the begging in his tone grew more distinct.
"Sake"?
Matsuo called.
The marine nodded vigorously.
Matsuo laughed, slung the rifle.
The marine was a winehead.
His superiors had said that all marines were depraved.
The marine slumped forward into a bow like a priest before an idol.
Remembering his own thirst, Matsuo took out his water bottle.
One swallow was all he would have; he was very thirsty, but he must observe water discipline.
His years of campaigning had taught him the value of water discipline.
He began to uncap the bottle, the rusty cap squealing on its threads.
Popping upright, the marine waved both hands and shouted.
Of course it was water he really craved; down in the broil of the sun he was becoming dried out.
The marine shouted for it until it seemed that his voice had to crack.
Matsuo shook his head.
He had no water for an enemy.
And when this was gone, he hadn't even a little bitter tablet to purify other water if he were to discover some stagnant jungle pool.
He capped the bottle and replaced it.
After all, he had less reason to desire it than the marine.
Before much longer the marine quieted down.
His head slumped.
The upper part of his packet had stained dark.
"Marine.
There is nothing for you", Matsuo said.
"Your superiors will certainly beat you for your desertion, besides the dishonor of it.
I've nothing for you".
From the convulsive quivers of the man's shoulders it was plain he had resumed the weeping.
He reminded Matsuo of a similar thing he had witnessed in China.
In China it was a baby sitting on a railroad platform, smudged, blood-specked, with the village burning about him and shells exploding.
CHAIRS SCRAPED BACK and customers hastily vacated their tables as the tall young buffalo hunter pushed open the swing doors and walked towards the bar.
Only Blue Throat and his gang stayed where they were.
Blue Throat was slumped with his back against the bar, elbows supporting his massive frame.
He leered at the stranger as the distance between them closed.
"Since when did they allow beardless kids into the saloon bars of this town, boys"?
he asked.
"Seems to me I don't remember altering any law about that".
He straightened up, alert now as the buffalo hunter came closer.
"Stay right here where you are, kid", he called.
"I don't aim to have minors breathing down my neck when I'm a-drinking": The stranger ignored him.
He didn't stop till he was within three feet of Blue Throat and by that time the gang leader's right hand was on the butt of his revolver.
"I'm Billy Tilghman", said the stranger, "and I've come for Pat Conyers' body".
"And what makes you think you're going to get it, pretty boy"?
"Because I'm asking.
Most of the time I get what I ask for".
Blue Throat winked at his six cronies.
"The kid has no manners, boys.
Shall we teach him some"?
His gun was half drawn when he asked the question, but the weapon never left its holster.
Tilghman's clenched fist swept over in a terrific right cross and clipped the big gunfighter on the side of his chin.
His head snapped round and he reeled back, crashing into the table where his buddies were sprawling.
Tilghman leapt on to him, dragged him upright and hit him again, this time sending him careening against the bar.
A bullet gouged into the bar top an inch from Tilghman's stomach as Blue Throat's henchmen started shooting.
Tilghman flung himself aside, dropped on one knee and pulled his own gun.
The Colt roared twice and two men dropped, writhing.
A third shot doused the light.
Somewhere at the far end of the room a voice yelled, "You all right, Billy"?
"Yes, George, but I ain't got poor old Pat's body yet.
And I aim to have it".
He fired again, and somewhere in the gloom a man screamed.
Another took off his gun belt and flung his weapons to the floor.
"OK, Tilghman, I'm quitting".
"And me", said another Blue Throat henchman.
Somebody brought a light.
Tilghman and his partner, George Rust, herded the men into a corner.
"And now", said Tilghman with deadly calm, "I'll repeat what I said.
I've come for Pat Conyers' body".
In two minutes the body of Tilghman's former comrade, who had been killed by Blue Throat in a gambling brawl the previous night, was carried into the town's funeral parlor to be prepared for decent burial.
Blue Throat, nursing an aching jaw and a collosal dose of wounded pride, rode out of town with the survivors of the fight.
"That critter will be back tomorrow", predicted George Rust, "and he'll bring fifty of his kind back with him.
Blue Throat won't stand for this.
He'll shoot up the town".
The prediction was correct.
The Reverend James Doran had scarcely completed Pat Conyers' last rites on Boot Hill in the township of Petrie, when shots were heard in the distance.
"Amen", said the Reverend Doran, grabbing his rifle propped up against a tombstone, "and now my brethren, it would seem that our presence is required elsewhere".
Billy Tilghman and his comrades rode off to the battle.
Blue Throat, who had ruled the town with his six-shooter for the last six months, certainly had no intention of relinquishing his profitable dictatorship.
It was essential that he should restore his formidable reputation as a rip-roaring, ruthless gun-slinger, and this was the time-honored Wild West method of doing it.
He rode in at the head of sixty trigger-happy and liquor-crazed desperadoes and took over a livery barn at the entrance to Main Street.
The entire length of the street could be raked with rifle fire from this barn.
Any posse riding down the street to demand Blue Throat's surrender would be wiped out with one deadly burst of fire.
The law-abiding citizens of Petrie had gathered inside Kaster's Store, halfway down the street.
Several were firing into the barn when Billy Tilghman arrived.
He sized up the situation and shook his head.
"If Blue Throat has his way he'll keep us all cooped up in here for days", he said.
"There's only one thing to move him fast, and we have it right here in this very store".
He called the store owner and together they went into the stockroom.
Billy returned with six sticks of dynamite.
"I'm gonna drop these into Blue Throat's lap", he announced, "and I'd like every gun to be firing into that barn while I get near enough to toss 'em through the window".
He slipped outside, hugging the walls of buildings and dodging into doorways.
Blue Throat's men spotted him and a hail of bullets splintered the store fronts and board walk as he passed.
Fifty yards away from the barn he dodged inside a barber's shop and came out at the back.
Here he couldn't be seen by Blue Throat and his gang.
All he had to do was light the fuses of the dynamite sticks, run to within ten yards of an open window in the barn and hurl the sticks through.
Billy Tilghman did just that.
Within seconds the big barn was blasted into smoking splinters, with every outlaw either dead or injured inside.
It was the abrupt end of Blue Throat's dictatorship in Petrie.
Though only slightly injured himself the big hoodlum never returned to those parts.
To Tilghman the incident was just one of a long list of hair-raising, smash-'em-down adventures on the side of the law which started in 1872 when he was only eighteen years old, and did not end till fifty years later when he was shot dead after warning a drunk to be quiet.
Of all the rip-roaring two-fisted tough boys of the Old West, "Uncle Billy Tilghman" stands out head and shoulders.
He was the lawman who survived more gunfights than any other famous gun-slinging character in the book.
He saw the most action, beat up more badmen with his bare fists, broke up the most gangs and sent more murderers to the gallows than any other US marshal who lived before or after him.
For fifty years his guns and ham-like fists shot holes through and battered the daylights out of the enemies of law and order in the frontier towns of the West.
The deeds of countless western bandits and outlaws have been glorified almost to the point of hero-worship, but because Billy Tilghman remained strictly on the side of the law throughout his action-packed career, his achievements and the appalling risks he took while taming the West have remained almost unsung.
Citizens took the view that a lawman was expected to risk his life on the odd occasion anyway, but this fighting fury of a man risked it regularly over a period of half a century.
He came within an ace of being riddled with bullets during his long fight with the Doolin gang which terrorized Oklahoma in the 1890's.
Led by Bill Doolin, these mobsters specialized in train robberies but as a sideline they looted stores and robbed banks, making liberal use of their guns.
Bill Doolin's ambition, it appeared, was to carve out his name with bullets alongside those of Jesse James and Billy the Kid, and Bill Tilghman had sworn he would stop him.
Tilghman knew that some ranchers were hand-in-glove with the Doolin gang.
They bought rustled cattle from the outlaw, kept him supplied with guns and ammunition, harbored his men in their houses.
Billy decided to set an example by arresting one of the ranchers, named Ed Dunn, who lived at Rock Fort.
On a bitterly cold day in January, 1895, accompanied only by Neal Brown as his deputy, Tilghman left the township of Guthrie and headed for Rock Fort and Dunn's ranch.
It was snowing hard when they got there and they saw no horses outside.
The only evidence of occupation came from the chimney, which was belching out thick smoke.
The two lawmen halted their wagon about twenty yards from the door.
"Wait here, Neal", said Tilghman.
"If I don't come out within half an hour ride back to town and bring out a posse".
Leaving his rifle in the wagon, Tilghman walked up to the door and hammered on it.
There was no reply so he shoved it open with his foot and stepped inside.
Directly opposite the door was a roaring log fire, a welcome sight on that bitterly cold day.
Seated near it with his back to the door was the rancher, Ed Dunn.
"Hello, Ed", said Tilghman.
The rancher grunted an acknowledgement but didn't move.
Tilghman closed the door behind him and walked towards the fire.
Suddenly he saw something which made his big heart give a sickening lurch and caused the hairs to bristle on the back of his neck.
Along each side of the room were six tiered bunks, each one screened off with a curtain.
And projecting wickedly through these curtains were the gleaming muzzles of six rifles, all trained on Billy Tilghman.
The fighting marshal had walked right into a trap and at any moment six slugs might slam into his hide.
Thinking fast, Tilghman never hesitated for one instant.
He walked right up to the fire as though blissfully unaware of the guns covering him.
The men behind them were Bill Doolin and five of his gang- every man a killer.
"Cold day", said Tilghman, placing his hands behind him and casually presenting his backside to the fire.
"Just dropped in to ask where Jed Hawkins lives.
Can't seem to locate landmarks in this snow".
The rancher was trembling.
He wouldn't look Tilghman in the face.
"Follow the river for five miles", he said hoarsely.
"Jed's homestead is on the south bank".
Resisting the overwhelming temptation to flng himself out of that bristling death-trap, Tilghman deliberately engaged the nervous rancher in trivial conversation for a good ten minutes.
All that time rifle barrels were pointing unwaveringly at his head and body.
One false move on his part and he would be a dead man.
"Well", he announced, "Guess I'll be going now, Ed, and thanks for the warmup".
He strolled back to the door, whistling softly, hands still clasped behind him.
He left the house and almost certain death without even increasing his pace and wondered by what remarkable stroke of Providence he had been allowed to come out alive.
But he knew well enough that those guns would still be trained on his back as he walked towards the wagon.
If he showed signs of collecting his rifle and going back with his deputy to the ranch he would be shot down instantly.
Leisurely he climbed on to the wagon next to Neal Brown.
"Don't say or do anything", he said softly.
"Just get out of here without it looking as though we're in a hurry.
That place is crawling with Bill Doolin and his gang".
Even as he spoke those words Billy Tilghman's life hung on a thread.
Back in the house a hoodlum named Red Buck, sore because Billy had been allowed to leave unscathed, jumped from a bunk and swore he was going after him to kill him right then.
"You'll stay right here", commanded Bill Doolin, covering Red with his rifle.
"Billy Tilghman is too good a man to shoot in the back.
We'll let him go".
But the fighting marshal's fifty-year run of immunity from violent death came to a full and final stop one night in a street at Cromwell, Oklahoma, where he had been sent to clean up the gambling and vice rackets.
Wiley Lynn, a self-styled prohibition officer, had hit town the previous day and had been drinking ever since.
That night he reeled out of Ma Murphy's dance hall and proceeded to disturb the peace by shooting off his revolver.
FOR SEVERAL MONTHS now, Jack Carter, a big overgrown boy of fifteen with a fuzzy, pimpled face and greenish catlike eyes with a lot of red in them, had been haunted by a dream, a vision, of a Woman.
This Woman had no distinct shape or size and no particular face, but she radiated warmth, a sweet warmth; she would talk to him in a soothing voice about things his mother would have said were not nice and put her hands on him and kiss him passionately.
When she would do these things, he would turn blind for an instant and become sick at his stomach.
Then he would run to the toilet behind the house.
Sometimes he did this three or four times a day, for this Woman was almost always with him.
He would feel ashamed each time and wonder whether his mother and father knew- thinking they might see it in his eyes or smell it on him.
But they never said anything, so he figured it was all right.
And so when Miss Langford came to teach at the one-room Chestnut school, where Jack was a pupil in the eighth grade, the Woman of Jack's mind assumed the teacher's face and figure.
He could not keep his eyes off her when at school; when he went home at night, he took her with him in his mind, and she did the things the anonymous Woman used to do, and he did the thing afterwards each time as he used to do.
When he awoke in the mornings, she was in his mind and he could hardly wait to get to school to be near her in the flesh.
Miss Langford (her first name was Evelyn) was an attractive girl.
Tall, blonde, blue-eyes, fair, buxom without being heavy, she cut a fine figure of budding womanhood as she swished among the pupils in her fresh, starched summer dress.
Something was beginning to stir and come alive in her, too (it may have been there for a good while, since she was twenty now; but if it had been, it had been smothered until now by fear): you could tell it by the way she watched the older, bigger boys, like Jack.
She would look at Jack, with that hidden something in her eyes, and Jack would see the Woman and become breathless and a little sick.
School began in August, the hottest part of the year, and for the first few days Miss Langford was very lenient with the children, letting them play a lot and the new ones sort of get acquainted with one another.
The first two or three days they went home early.
All, that is, except Jack.
He hung around the schoolhouse, watching through a window from outside while Miss Langford straightened desks and put the room in order.
Once (this was on the third day of school) she kneeled down to pick up some books where they'd dropped on the floor and Jack looked up her dress- at the bare expanse of incredibly white leg.
He thought for a moment his heart had stopped beating.
About that time Miss Langford straightened up and looked out the window directly at him, he thought, although probably she didn't even see him.
He jumped back, ducked and ran, crouching, down the hill away from the school.
He didn't look back and he ran until he was out of sight of the schoolhouse and out of breath; then he slowed to a walk.
The vision became even stronger now.
"I'll get her yet", he muttered to himself.
"I've got to get her".
That night he dreamed a dream violent with passion, in which he and the Woman, now the teacher, did everything except engage in the act (and this probably only because he had never engaged in the act in reality), and when he awoke the next morning his heart was afire.
He ate litle that morning, and his mother became concerned, inasmuch as he usually ate heartily.
"What's the matter, honey"?
she said, with the solicitude of a middle-aged woman for her only child.
"Aren't you hungry"?
"No, I'm not hungry", he said, pushing back the bacon and eggs.
Outside it was already hot at 7:30 AM, and it was getting hot in the kitchen.
He felt a little sick at his stomach.
"Are you sick"?
"No", he said.
"I'll be all right.
I guess it's this hot weather".
"Don't you play hard today then.
And if you get sick, ask the teacher to let you come home early.
Daddy left the car for me, and I'm going to town this afternoon".
"O K, I won't play hard", he promised.
Just then Charles Lever yelled, "Hey, Jack", from the quarry road which ran behind the Carter house, and Jack grabbed the lunch from the table and darted out the kitchen door, yelling "Good-bye, Mom" over his shoulder.
"Whaddya say, boy"?
Charles said, grinning, showing his huge yellow teeth.
Charles, also fifteen, was tall and skinny, scraggly, with straight black hair like an Indian's and sharp brown eyes.
He considered himself handsome and seemed to think all the girls were after him.
"You know what I done last night"?
Charles said as they picked their way over the rocky road which led up the hill away from the Dixie Highway, through a corn field and a patch of woods to the school.
Jack knew of course that the tale to be unfolded would involve a girl and probably be dirty, because girls were Charles' only apparent interest.
But Jack always derived vicarious sensual thrills from Charles' revelations (even when he suspected his friend of exaggeration or invention), so he usually invited them, as he did now.
"No.
What"?
"I got Margaret Rider in one of them old box cars down there by the quarry".
A nude imaginary picture of Miss Langford flashed across Jack's mind.
His heart beat faster.
"Hell you say"?
he said, lapsing into the profanity he often used when away from his parents and especially when he was with Charles.
"How'd you do it"?
"Hell, I jist got on top of-" "No, I mean how'd you get her to do it"?
"Hell, I jist ask her".
"Jist like that"?
"Hell, yes.
She's been hangin' around me a lot here lately, and I figgered I might as well's try it.
Besides I heard her old uncle that stays there has been doin' it".
"I never heard that".
"It's all over Branchville.
If you'd get out of your back yard once in a while you might even get her your ownself".
"I might try it one of these days", Jack said wonderingly, thinking of Miss Langford.
## WHEN THEY reached the school, a gang of boys and girls were already there playing "crack the whip" in front of the schoolhouse.
Miss Langford, in a fresh white dress and low-heeled white sandals, without socks, was out there with them, trying to get them inside.
"Time for books", she yelled, jingling a little five-and-dime store bell in her right hand.
"Let's go inside".
"Oh, come on Miss Langford, play with us just onct", one of the little girls begged, smiling wistfully.
"No, not now", said the teacher.
"Maybe at dinner time.
Come inside now".
The children grudgingly stopped playing then and straggled into the schoolhouse.
Jack watched Miss Langford all morning.
He could think of nothing else save his mental image of her nude figure and what Charles had said that morning about Margaret Rider.
Occasionally he would look across the aisle at Margaret, fourteen and demure in a fresh green organdy dress, sitting in the sixth-grade row, and he coud hardly believe she would do what Charles had said she did.
At noontime, remembering what the teacher had said about maybe playing with the kids, Jack stayed close to the schoolhouse while all the other big boys, except Charles, went off out the road to play ball.
"Why ain't you playin' ball"?
he asked Charles suspiciously as they sat in the well-house shade, watching the girls congregate in front of the schoolhouse.
"Miss Langford, come out and play with us like you promised", several of the little girls called.
"I'd druther stay here and watch the girls", Charles grinned.
"Maybe some of 'em will fall down and we'll see up their dress".
"Maybe", Jack said idly, watching for Miss Langford.
Presently she came out of the schoolhouse.
When she appeared, two or three of the little girls jumped up and down, yelling, "Goody, goody".
"Let's play with 'em", Jack said, rising from where he sat on the ground and dusting off his overall pants.
"OK" Charles rose also, and the two of them moved over to join the girls.
They played crack the whip a few minutes without mishap.
Then when Miss Langford was on the end of the line of girls, Jack, in the middle of the line, gave an extra hard pull and the young teacher sprawled backwards, sitting down hard, her dress flying over her head.
While she was struggling to get her skirt down and get on her feet again, Jack ran over, offered her his hand and said, "Gosh, I'm sorry, Miss Langford.
I didn't mean to pull so hard".
"That's all right", she said, tossing her head back to get the hair out of her eyes.
"It was my fault".
With one hand she held her skirt down while she took Jack's extended hand with the other.
When her hand touched his, fire went through Jack and he felt weak, but he managed somehow to get her on her feet.
He thought she gave him that look with the hidden something in it as he let her hand go.
"Thank you", she said, dusting herself off.
"Will you play with us again, Miss Langford"?
one of the little girls said.
"No more today.
Maybe some other day".
"Oh, shucks", the girl said.
"I don't believe I'll play any more neither".
"Me neither", others said, and soon the game broke up, the children going off in pairs, in larger groups and alone.
Jack walked off alone out the road in the searing midday sun, past Robert Allen's three-room, tarpapered house, toward the field where the other boys were playing ball, thinking of what he would do in order to make Miss Langford have him stay in after school- because this was the day he had decided when he thought he saw the look in her eyes.
When he came back to the schoolhouse, his mind was made up.
He simply would not work his arithmetic problems when the teacher held his class.
That should do it, he thought, because Miss Langford had said she was going to be strict about school work.
He had considered throwing erasers or flipping paperwads at someone or pulling the hair of the girl sitting in front of him, but he couldn't take a chance on either of these possibilities: the teacher probably would make him stand face-to-wall in a corner instead of stay in after school.
The only drawback now to the plan he'd decided on was that someone else might fail to do his work, too, and the teacher would have that person stay late along with Jack.
"But I've got to take a chance on it", he told himself desperately.
To his surprise his plan worked perfectly.
"All right, if you can't do your arithmetic during school hours you can do it after school it out", Miss Langford said firmly, not smiling.
"You will stay here thirty minutes after the others go home this afternoon and work your problems".
And so when the others stampeded out that afternoon Jack remained docilely in his seat near a window, looking out in what he hoped was a pitiable manner, while the other kids laughed and yelled in at him and made faces as they dispersed, going home.
He scarcely saw them.
His heart was pounding like a mighty dynamo and he was trying to think, his mind seeming to scream at him like a hurt or frightened child, "How will I do it?
On the fringe of the amused throng of white onlookers stood a young woman of remarkable beauty and poise.
She munched little ginger cakes called mulatto's belly and kept her green, somewhat hypnotic eyes fixed on a light-colored male who was prancing wildly with a 5-foot king snake wrapped around his bronze neck.
The youth with the snake had a natural pride and joy of life which appealed to the woman.
Lithe and muscular, he had well-molded features, and his light color told of the European ancestors who had been intimate with the slave women of his family.
The haughty white girl turned to a distinguished, hawk-faced man standing at her side and murmured: "Look at your watch, Col Garvier.
It is almost time for and calinda to begin".
Col Henri Garvier was one of New Orleans' most important and enlightened slave owners.
He chuckled and gave the signal for the dance to start.
The slaves ran gaily to the center of Congo Square and gathered around a sweaty youth they called Johnny No-Name.
Johnny vigorously pounded two bleached steer bones against the gourd which served as his drum.
He showed his gleaming tusks of teeth and bellowed incoherently, his brass earrings jangling discordantly as he shook and trembled in ecstasy.
The drummer flogged the gourd with frantic intensity as the dancers began the calinda, a sensual gyration which had long been a favorite of voodoo practitioners and their disciples in the Louisiana slave compounds.
The dance was of Haitian origin.
The white girl with the penetrating green eyes sipped the lemonade handed to her by a handsome man of about 30, who had coppery skin and beetling eyebrows.
He was possessive in his manner and, though a slave, obviously was educated after a fashion and imitated the manners of his owners.
He proudly wore the blue livery of her house, for the girl was Madame Delphine Lalaurie, wife of the prominent surgeon, Dr Louis Lalaurie, who bore one of the South's oldest and most cherished names.
Delphine was a pace-setter in high society.
She was a top horsewoman and one of the city's most gracious hostesses.
Although New Orleans was not to learn of it for a spell, she also was a sadist, a nymphomaniac and unobtrusively mad- the perpetrator of some of the worst crimes against humanity ever committed on American soil.
Madame Lalaurie gestured with her riding crop toward the 20-year-old youth who was stomping and writhing with the king snake still draped over his bare shoulders.
The slender, handsome fellow was called Dandy Brandon by the other slaves.
He was gifted with animal magnetism and a potent allure for women of any race.
But Dandy had had little experience with girls on his master's plantation in Bayou St John.
Shy, actually, he avoided feminine overtures and seemed truly ignorant of the girls' desires when they sought to make liaisons with him in the open fields, in carriages and in boathouses.
This young slave was therefore quite unprepared when Delphine Lalaurie signaled that she wanted him to draw near.
The woman eyed the youth with the avidity a coin collector might display toward a rare doubloon which is not yet in his collection.
"What is your name, boy?
Come a bit closer.
I won't bite, you know".
He gaped at Madame Lalaurie and sniffed the Paris perfume which emanated from her.
Then he smiled shyly.
"My name is Dandy Brandon, missy.
I belong to Master Alexander Prieur".
She said with intense feeling: "Come near, let me feel your arms.
You look quite strong and healthy to me, Dandy".
Mrs Lalaurie impatiently propelled the slave toward her waiting carriage.
Lifting her skirts, she climbed in, never relinquishing her grip on his arm.
The woman seemed utterly unafraid of the snake which coiled on the floor in a torpor.
Once inside the luxuriosly-upholstered landau, she drew the curtains and proceeded to give the startled youth the kind of physical examination usually reserved for army inductees.
Satisfied at last, and after a few amorous gambits on her part which convinced Delphine that Dandy was capable of learning new arts, she opened the window and called to her liveried driver.
This was the big man with the proprietory air and the beetling, shaggy eyebrows.
"Aristide!
I want you to find Monsieur Prieur at once and give him this money for the boy's purchase.
There's $600 in gold in this chamois sack.
If the old fool argues about the price, tell him I shall order my husband not to treat him as a patient any longer.
Prieur has gout and depends on Louis' pills and bleedings.
Besides, he owns 300 slaves.
One less shouldn't matter to him".
Aristide Devol, the sardonic manservant who had been brought in chains years before from his native Sierra Leone, smiled thinly and touched his well-brushed beaver hat.
His bold eyes raked the woman, and a perceptive spectator might sense that there was more to their relationship than that of slave to owner.
"Another youth, Madame"?
the coachman said softly.
"This one is a tender chicken, oui?
Such delicate beauty, such fine flesh.
It will rip and shred easily for Madame".
"Be quiet, Devol!
You are forgetting your place".
The tall coachman walked off briskly in search of Alexander Prieur.
Delphine Lalaurie took the reins in her gloved hands and drove Dandy Brandon- cowering in the back seat of the carriage- to her mansion at 677 Perdido Street.
Dr Louis Lalaurie stood on the veranda at the head of the driveway and watched his carriage as it approached the pillared mansion.
Dandy, curiosity overcoming his apprehensions, peered out at the doctor from the window of the vehicle.
He saw a pint-sized man with a graying spade beard and an unusually large head.
Dr Lalaurie wore a maroon smoking jacket, and his myopic eyes were blurry and glistened behind thick octagonal lenses.
He was about 50 years old.
"Another young man, my dear?
Really, you are most indiscreet to drive him here yourself", he said, frowning with displeasure.
Delphine presented her cheek for a kiss, and the physician pecked it like a timid rooster.
"Dandy is to be our house guest, Louis.
I want the room in the attic prepared for him He is a most unusual lad, quite precocious in many ways.
He deserves a better life than just rotting away on the Prieur plantation".
"Quite so, my dear.
His room will be ready shortly".
The physician led the horses to the stable after a cursory glance at the cringing slave.
Had Dandy been older or wiser, instinct might have warned him that he would be well advised to flee from the Lalauries' tender care if he valued his life.
But he liked the smell of Delphine's perfume.
Besides, her endearments and caresses in the carriage had been new and stirring experiences to the simple youth.
Also, he was weary of plantation drudgery and monotony.
So Dandy Brandon trustingly entered the house with Delphine Lalaurie and trudged up the rear steps to the attic room which was to be his new home.
Airless and dingy though it was, the attic represented luxury to a slave who had led a wretched life with six brothers and sisters and assorted relatives in a shanty at Bayou St John.
He bounced exuberantly on the sagging bed and was even more delighted when Madame Lalaurie- after closing the door- showed the slave that the bed was designed for something other than slumber.
It was just as well that the ignorant Dandy enjoyed himself to the hilt that first evening, for the room was to become his prison cell.
When he finally left the sinister mansion on Perdido Street, he was carried out in a coroner's basket.
## JUST six weeks after Dandy Brandon's arrival at the mansion, the little surgeon and his svelte young wife gave their annual open house and ball, to which only New Orleans' oldest and wealthiest families were invited.
A stringed orchestra played softly behind the potted palms, and Delphine circulated graciously among her guests, chatting airily of the forthcoming races, the latest fashions from Paris, and Louisiana politics.
Suddenly there was a commotion upstairs, a despairing boyish shriek, and the strains of the waltz faltered and died as the musicians and guests gaped at an apparition descending the marble staircase.
It was Dandy Brandon, clad only in a bloody loincloth, emaciated and quaking as if the devil were breathing hard on him.
The lad's once superb body was a mass of scars and welts.
His pinched face showed the ravages of malnutrition.
Feebly he pointed an accusing finger at Madame Lalaurie and shouted: "Evil woman!
You did this **h you like to hurt **h to beat people **h I want **h to go home".
These were the last words he ever uttered.
Convulsively, he spat up some blood and collapsed into the arms of Senator Gaston Berche, crimsoning the frilly shirt and waistcoat the politician wore.
Dr Louis Lalaurie examined the inert form of the slave on the parquet dance floor and pronounced him dead.
The ball broke up in confusion.
Guests stared with horror at Madame Lalaurie and made speedy departures.
Delphine stood like stone, her eyes alive with hate as she looked down at the sheeted corpse.
But at the coroner's inquest Delphine told a forthright story.
"I saw the boy Dandy at the Congo Square festivities and felt sorry for him.
It was our hope to educate him and to give him his freedom when the right time came, for he was a bright and friendly youth who seemed worthy of our interest.
After I paid Monsieur Prieur for Dandy, I brought him home, but he was ill at ease and ran away the same night.
How he returned in such a ghastly condition, or why, I cannot say.
Dr Lalaurie and I didn't even know he was in the house until the night of our ball when he came down the stairs".
She daubed at her swimming eyes with a lacy handkerchief and said with obvious emotion: "That poor boy!
He must have fallen in with evil companions, for he was a simple youth and quite trusting and inexperienced.
Ruffians must have robbed and beaten him before bringing him back to our house to die.
Such a pitiful end"!
Though the slave's dying words about the woman troubled the coroner's panel, Dandy's accusation was adjudged an aberration by the jury and disregarded.
The Lalauries were at the top rung of the social ladder, and even a jury didn't feel privileged to doubt the veracity of so illustrious a lady.
Moreover, runaway slaves frequently got into serious trouble in New Orleans' dives.
So the verict was "death at the hands of a person or persons unknown", and the elite of the city, accepting Delphine's testimony, welcomed her and the doctor back into the fold.
Once again life went its serene way- soirees, fox hunts, balls and dinners.
The excitement over Brandon's bizarre death abated and Madame Lalaurie's stock soared when she resumed her self-imposed chores of visiting the poor and bringing cakes and comfort to destitute patients in the county hospital.
Then, on July 2, there occurred another incident which set tongues to wagging at a furious clip.
Mrs Victor Dominique, socially prominent and a neighbor of the Lalauries, chanced to glance out of her parlor window at dusk one evening and beheld an amazing sight.
The manservant Devol and his mistress, Delphine Lalaurie, were pursuing a young girl- an octoroon of cameo-like beauty- across the front lawn of the Lalaurie mansion.
The girl was not more than 16.
She was nude to the waist and her tumbled abundance of black hair did not conceal the knife slashes on her back.
The bleeding girl was tiring fast; the coachman and Delphine were gaining on her as she raced down Perdido Street.
The fugitive cried out in an oddly sibilant voice: "Help me, somebody!
They have pulled out all my teeth and now she will carve out my tongue with her hacksaw!
"Bastards", he would say, "all I did was put a beat to that Vivaldi stuff, and the first chair clobbered me"!
Since then, and since the pure grain had gotten him divorced from every decent- and even indecent- group from Greenwich Village to the Embarcadero, he had become a sucker-rolling freight-jumper.
"There ain't nothin' faster, or lonelier, or more direct than a cannonball freight when you wanna go someplace", Feathertop would say.
"The accommodations may not be the poshest, but man!
there ain't nobody askin' for your ticket stub, neither".
He had been conning the freights for a long, long time now.
Ever since the hooch, and the trouble with the Quartet, and Midge and the child.
Ever since all that.
It had been a very long time that had no form and no end.
He was- as he told himself in the vernacular of a trade no longer his own- riding the dark train out.
Out and out and never to return again.
Till one day the last freight had been jumped, the last pint had been killed, the last beat had been rapped.
That was the day it ended.
## THE FREIGHT CAR WAS COLD, early in the morning.
He was pressed far back into the corner of the car on his hay sacks, the rattling and tinning of the wheels on the rails almost covering the sound of his ocarina.
He held his elbows away from his body, and the little sweet potato trilled neatly and sweetly as he tickled its tune-belly.
The train slowed at a road crossing, and the big door slid open; at first gratingly, caught by grains of corn- then with a clash into its slot.
The boy lifted the girl by the waist and set her on the lip of the floor.
She pulled her legs up under her, to rise, her full peasant skirt drawing up her thighs, and Feathertop's music pffft-ed away.
"Now that is a very nice, a very nice", he murmured to himself, back in his corner.
A little thing, but the right twist for the action that counted.
Hot, that was the word, hot!
Hair like a morning-frightened sparrow's wings, with the sun shining down over them.
A poet, yet!
His thoughts for the swanlike neck, the full, high breasts, the slim waist, and the long legs were less than poetic, however.
Zingggg-O!
Then the boy straight-armed himself up, twisting at the last moment so he landed sitting.
He was less to see, but Feathertop took him in, too, just to keep the records straight.
Curly hair, high cheekbones, wide gnomelike mouth, a pair of drummer's blocky hands, and a body that said well, maybe I can wrestle you for ten minutes- but then I'm finished.
"We made it, Cappy", the chick said.
"Yeah, seems so, don't it", the boy laughed, hugging her close.
"Ah-ah"!
Feathertop interrupted, standing up, brushing the pig offal from his dirty pants.
"None of that.
We run a respectable house here".
They whirled and saw him, standing there dim in the slatted light from the boarded freight wall.
He was big, and filthy, and his toes stuck out of the flapping tops of his shoes.
He held the black plastic kazoo lightly.
"Come sit", said Feathertop, motioning them toward him.
"That crap is softer over here".
The girl smiled, and started forward.
The boy yanked her back hard, tugging her off her feet, and gathered her into the crook of his arm.
"Now stay with me, Kitty", he snapped irritably.
"I vowed to take care of you- and that's what I'm gonna do.
We don't know this guy".
"Oooo, square bit", Feathertop screwed his face up.
This guy was strictly from Outsville.
But nowhere!
"What is with this vow jazz"?
Feathertop inquired, lounging against the freight's vibrating wall.
"We- we eloped", Cappy said.
His head came up and he said it defiantly.
"Well, congratulations".
Feathertop made an elaborate motion with his hand.
These two were going to be easy pickins.
They couldn't have much dough, but then none of the freight-bums Feathertop rolled had much.
And besides, the chick had a little something the others didn't have.
That was gonna be fun collecting!
But not just yet.
Feathertop was a connoisseur.
He liked to savor his meat before he tasted it.
"Come sit", he repeated, motioning to the piled hay bags, over the pig leavings.
"I'm just a poor ex-jazz man, name of- uh- Boyd Smith".
He grinned at them wolfishly.
"That ain't your name, Mister", the boy accused.
"And you know- you're right"!
Feathertop aimed a finger at him.
"Oh, come on, Cappy", the girl chided.
"He's okay.
He's a nice guy".
She started to move toward the hay bags, dragging the reluctant Cappy behind her.
Feathertop watched the smooth scissoring of her slim, trim legs as she walked to the bags, and tucked them beneath her, smoothing the skirt out in a wide circle.
He cleared his throat; it had been a long, hot while since he'd seen anything as nice as this within grabbin' distance.
He had it all doped, of course.
Slug the kid, grab his dough- at least enough to get to Philadelphia- and then have a rockin' ball with the doll.
Hmm- diddle!
"Where'd you come from, Mr- uh- Mr Smith"?
Kitty inquired politely.
"Where from"?
he mused.
"Out.
I been riding train for a ways now".
They lapsed into silence, and the freight wallowed up a hill, scooted down the other side, shaking and clanking to itself.
After a while, Kitty murmured something to Cappy, and he held her close, answering, "We'll just have to wait till we pull into Philly, honey".
"What's the matter, she wanna go the bathroom"?
Ernie found it immensely funny.
The boy scowled at him, and the girl looked shocked.
"No!
Certainly not, I mean, no that isn't what I said"!
she snapped at him.
"I only said I was hungry.
We haven't had anything to eat all day".
Joviality suffused Feathertop Ernie Cargill's voice as he reached behind him, pulling out a battered carpet bag, with leather handles.
"Whyn't ya say so, fellow travelers!
Why, we got dinner right here.
C'mon, buddy, help me set up the kitchen and we'll have food in a minute or two".
Cappy looked wary, but he moved off the floorboards and followed the dirty ex-musician to the center of the refuse-littered boxcar.
Ernie crouched and opened the carpet bag.
He took out a small packet filled with bits of charcoal, a deep pot of thin metal, some sheets of newspaper, a book of matches and a wrinkled and many-times folded piece of tin foil with holes in it.
He put the charcoal in the pot, lit the paper with the matches, and carefully stretched the tin foil across the top of the pot.
"A charcoal pit, man", he said, indicating the slightly-smoking makeshift brazier.
"Fan it", he told Cappy, handing him a sheet of newspaper.
"Yeah, but what're we gonna eat?
Charcoal"?
"Fella", Ernie waggled a dirty finger at the younger man, "you try my ever-lovin' patience".
He reached once more into the carpet bag and brought up a package of wieners.
"Hot dogs, man.
Not the greatest, but they stick to your belly insides".
He ripped down the cellophane carefully, and laid three dogs on the tin foil.
Almost immediately they began to sizzle.
He looked up and grinned.
"A Kroger's self-serve", he explained.
"I self served".
## WHEN THEY HAD LICKED the last of the wieners' taste from their fingers, they settled back, and Cappy offered Ernie a cigarette.
Nice kid, Ernie thought, too bad.
"How come you're riding the rods, kids like you"?
Ernie asked.
Cappy looked down at his wide hands, and did not reply.
But surprisingly, Kitty's face came up and she said, "My father.
He didn't want us to get married.
So we ran away".
"Why didn't he want you to get hitched"?
This time even she did not answer.
She looked down at her hands, too.
After a few seconds, she said, "Dad didn't like Cappy.
It was my fault".
Cappy's head came around sharply.
"Your fault, hell!
It was all my fault.
If I'd been careful it never woulda"- he stopped abruptly.
Ernie's eyebrows went up.
"What's the matter"?
The girl still did not raise her eyes, but she added simply, "I'm pregnant".
Cappy raged at himself.
"Oh he was stupid, her old man!
You never heard nothin' like it: Kitty's gonna go have an abortion, and Kitty's gonna go away to a convent, and Kitty's this and Kitty's that **h like he was nuts or somethin', y'know"?
Ernie nodded.
This was a slightly different matter.
He remembered Midge, and the child.
But that had been a time before all this, a time he didn't think about.
A time before the white lightning and the bumming had turned him inside out.
But these kids weren't like him.
Oh crap!
he thought, Pull out of it, old son.
These are just another couple of characters to roll.
What they got, you get.
Now forget all this other.
"Wanna drink"?
Ernie offered, taking the pint of sweet lucy from his jacket pocket.
"Yeah.
Now that you offer".
The answer came from the open door of the boxcar.
From the man who had leaped in from the high bank outside, as the train had slowed on the grade.
Ernie stared at the man.
He was big.
Real big, with shoulders out to here, and hair all over him like a grizzly.
Road gang, Ernie thought.
"You gonna give me a drink, fella"?
the big man asked again, taking a step into the boxcar.
Ernie hesitated a moment.
This character could break him in half.
"Sure", he said, and lifted the pint to his own lips.
He guzzled down three-quarters of the strong home-blend and proffered the remainder.
The man stalked toward them, his big boots heavy on the wooden flooring.
He took the bottle with undue belligerence, and making sucking noises with his thick lips, drained it completely.
He threw his head back, closed his eyes, and belched ferociously.
He belched again, and opening his eyes, threw the bottle out the open door.
"Well, now", he said, and reached into his pocket.
"I didn't know I was gonna have company in this car".
"We're going to Philadelphia", Kitty said, pulling her skirt down around her legs all the more.
"No, I don't think so", said the big man, and it was the final clincher for Ernie.
He had suspected this guy was trouble, and now he was sure of it.
"Maybe you and me will, girlie, but these two ain't goin' nowhere".
He advanced on them, and abruptly there was a shocked electricity in the car.
Ernie was screaming inside himself: No, damn you, you ain't gonna take my meal ticket away from me!
The newcomer stalked toward them, and Kitty shied back, her hand to her mouth.
Her scream split up the silence of the car, accompanied by the rattling of the freight, and then Cappy came off the floor, his legs driving him hard.
The kid hit the bigger man with an audible thwump!
and carried him backward in a footballer's tackle.
They went down in a heap and for a long minute there was nothing to see but flailing arms and legs.
The kid showed for an instant, and his arm was cocked back.
The fist went down into the pile of flesh, and Ernie heard the bigger man's deeper voice go, "Aaawww"!
Then they were tumbling again, and the big man reached into the same pocket he had gone for earlier, and came up with a vicious switchblade.
He held the knife aloft an instant- an instant enough to press the stud.
The blade came out with a snick!
He fisted the knife overhand, and drew back to plunge it into the kid's throat.
Kitty screamed insanely and her face was white.
She grabbed at Feathertop's sleeve and shrieked, "Help him!
Help him!
Do something"!
They neither liked nor disliked the Old Man.
To them he could have been the broken bell in the church tower which rang before and after Mass, and at noon, and at six each evening- its tone, repetitive, monotonous, never breaking the boredom of the streets.
The Old Man was unimportant.
Yet if he were not there, they would have missed him, as they would have missed the sounds of bees buzzing against the screen door in early June; or the smell of thick tomato paste- the ripe smell that was both sweet and sour- rising up from aluminum trays wrapped in fly-dotted cheesecloth.
Or the surging whirling sounds of bats at night, when their black bodies dived into the blackness above and below the amber street lights.
Or the bay of female dogs in heat.
They never called him by name, although he had one.
Filippo Rossi, that's what he was called in the old country; but here he was just Signore or the Old Man.
But this was not unusual, because youth in these quarters was always pushed at a distance from its elders.
Youth obeyed when commanded.
It went to church on Sunday and one Saturday a month went to confession.
But youth asked nothing of its parents- not a touch of the hand or a kiss given in passing.
The only thing unusual about the Old Man had long since happened.
But the past was dead here as the present was dead.
Once the Old Man had had a wife.
And once she, too, ignored him.
With a tiny fur-piece wrapped around her shoulders, she wiggled her satin-covered buttocks down the street before him and didn't stop.
In one hand she clutched a hundred dollar bill and in the other a straw suitcase.
The way she strutted down the street, the Old Man would have been blind not to have noticed both.
Without looking at him, without looking at anything except Drexel Street directly in front of her, she climbed up into one of those orange streetcars, rode away in it, and never came back.
"But she shouldn't have come here in the first place", the women had said.
"No, no.
Not that one.
She thought she was bigger than we are because she came from Torino".
"Eh, Torino!
She gave herself fancy airs!
Just because she had a part on the stage in the old country, she thought she could carry her head higher than ours".
They had slapped their thighs.
"It's not for making pretty speeches about Dante those actresses get paid so good".
"Henh"!
Calloused fingers, caressed only by the smoothness of polished rosaries, had swayed excitedly beneath puckered chins where tiny black hairs sprouted, never to be tweezed away.
Mauve-colored mouths that had never known anything sweeter than the taste of new wine and the passion of man's tongue had not smiled, but had condemned again and again.
"Puttana"!
But if the Old Man even thought about his wife now, nobody cared a fig.
It was enough for people to know that at one time he had looked down the street at the fleshy suppleness of a woman he had consumed- watching her become thinner and thinner in the distance, as thin as the seams on her stockings, and still thinner.
His voice had not commanded her to stop.
It had not questioned why.
The women said they had seen him wave an exhausted farewell; but he might have been shooing away the fleas that hopped from his yellow dog onto him.
(He was never without that dog.)
And his eyes- those miniature sundials of variegated yellow- had not altered their expression or direction.
The Old Man's very soul could have left him and flown down that street, but he wouldn't have had anyone know it.
Perhaps he had known then where that hundred dollar bill had come from and where it was taking his wife.
But when he called for his withered, wrinkled sister Rose to care for him and the children, had he guessed that all he would remember of his woman was the memory of her climbing into that streetcar?
There seemed to be a contemptuous purpose in the way he sat there with his eyes glued to Drexel Street and his back in opposition to the church behind him.
For all he saw or cared to see, this could have been a town in Italy, not the outskirts of Philadelphia.
It could have been Bari or Chieti for the way it smelled.
What did it matter to him that the park at the foot of Ash Road stretched beneath elevated trains that roared from the stucco station into the city's center at half-hour intervals?
Or that the tiny creek spun its silent course toward the Schuylkill?
This place was hatred to him, just as hatred was his only companion in his aloneness.
To him they were one and the same.
Sameness for the Old Man was framed in by a wall of ginkgo trees which divided these quarters from the city.
Sameness lined the streets with two-story houses the color of ash.
It slashed the sloping manure-scented lawns with concrete steps which climbed upward to white wooden porches.
It swayed with the wicker swings and screeched with the rusted hinges of screen doors.
Even the stable-garage, which housed nothing now but the scent of rot, had a lawn before it.
And the coffee shop on Drexel Street, where the men spent their evenings and Sundays playing cards, had a rose hedge beneath its window.
The hedge reeked of coffee dregs thrown against it.
Only one house on the street had no lawn before it.
It squatted low and square upon the sidewalk with a heavy iron grating supporting a glass facade.
That was Bartoli's shop.
Above it, from a second-story showroom, wooden angels surveyed the neighborhood.
Did the Old Man remember them there?
Yet everywhere else sameness was stucco and wood in square blocks- like fortresses perched against the slant of the hill, rising with the hill to the top where the church was and beyond that to the cemetery.
Only paved alleyways tunneled through the walls of those fortresses into the mysterious core of intimacy behind the houses where backyards owned no fences, where one man's property blended with the next to form courtyards in which no one knew privacy.
Love and hatred and fear were one here, shaded only by fig trees and grape vines.
And the forked tongue of gossip licked its sinister way from back porch to back porch.
The Old Man silently fed upon these streets.
They kept him alive, waiting.
Waiting for what and for whom, only he could tell and would not.
It was as though he had made a pact with the devil himself, but it was not yet time to pay the price.
He was holding out for something.
He was determined to hold out.
The Old Man's son threw himself down, belly first, upon a concrete step, taking in the coolness of it, and dreaming of the day he would be rich.
At fifteen he didn't care that he had no mother, that he couldn't remember her face or her touch; neither did he care that Aunt Rose provided for him.
He was named Pompeii as a tribute to his heritage, and he couldn't have cared less about that either.
To him life was a restless boredom that began with the rising sun and ended only with sleep.
When he would be a man, he would be a rich man.
He would not be like the "rich Americans" who lived in white-columned houses on the other side of the park.
He would not ride the eight-thirty local to the city each morning.
He would not carry a brief case.
Nor would he work at all.
He would square his shoulders and carry a cane before each step.
He would sit inside the coffee shop and pound a gloved fist upon the table and a girl would hear him and come running, bowing with her running, calling out in her bowing, "At your service".
He would order her to bring coffee, and would take from his vest pocket a thin black pipe which he would stuff- he would not remove his gloves- and light and smoke.
He could do that when he would be a man.
"Hey, Laura"!
he called to his sister on the porch above the steps.
She was only ten months older than he.
"Laura, what would you say if I smoked a pipe"?
Laura did not answer him.
She leaned unconcerned against the broken porch fence, brushing and drying her wet, gilded hair in the sun.
One lithe leg straddled the railing and swung loosely before the creaking, torn pales.
Her tanned foot, whose arch swept high and white, pointed artfully toward tapering toes- toes like fingers, whose tips glowed white.
All the while she sat there, her sinewy arms swirled before her chest.
Her face showed no sign of having heard Pompeii.
It was a face that had lost its childlike softness and was beginning to fold within its fragile features a harshness that belied the lyric lines of its contours.
The eyes, blue and always somewhat downcast, possessed a sullen quality.
Even though the boy could not see them, he knew they were clouded by distance.
He was never sure they fully took him in.
Pompeii called again, "Laura"!
But the only answer that reached him was the screeching of the porch rail from her leg moving against it.
"She's in a mood", he thought "There's not a month she doesn't get herself in a mood".
Well, what did that matter when the sun was shining and there were dreams to dream about?
And as for his pipe, if he wanted to smoke one, nobody would stop him.
Not even Laura.
Suddenly he was interrupted in his daydreaming by a warm wetness lapping against his chin, and his eyes opened wide and long at the sight of a goat's claret tongue, feasting against the salt taste of him.
Above the tongue, an aged yellow eye, sallow and time-cast, encrusted within a sphere of marbleized pink skin, stared unfalteringly at him.
"Christ sake, goat, git"!
But the goat would not.
"You're boiling milk, ain't you"?
soothing it with his hand, knowing the whiskered jowls and the swollen smoothness of teats that wrinkled expectantly to his touch.
Pompeii rolled over.
His head undulated gradually, covering space, to come straining beneath the taut belly within the warmth of those teats.
With his mouth opened wide, he squirted the warm white milk against the roof of his mouth and his tongue savored the light, earthy taste of it.
The boy's fingers and mouth operated with the skilled unity of a bagpipe player, pressing and pulling, delighting in what he did.
Above him slid the evasive shadow of a storm cloud.
Its form was a heavy figure in a fluttering soutane.
But the boy could see only the goat's belly.
The Old Man near the corner let the shadow pass over him, sensing something portentous in it.
He knew it was there, knew also what it was about, but he wouldn't raise a finger except to smooth his yellow dog's back.
There would be time enough, perhaps the Old Man reassured himself, to pay the devil his due.
Time enough to give up his soul.
In the meantime, six sandals, stained an ocher, the same color as Pompeii's shaved hair, edged up close to him.
The clapping they made on the concrete interrupted him in the ecstatic pleasure he knew, so that he quickly released his hold on the goat and pretended to be examining its haunches for ticks.
He knew at a glance that the biggest sandals belonged to Niobe, the neatest ones to Concetta, and the laced ones to Romeo, Concetta's idiot brother.
Pompeii expected Romeo's small body to sink closer and closer to the ground.
He expected Concetta's thin hand to reach down to grasp the boy, and her shrill, impetuous voice to sound against the rotundity of his disfigured flesh that was never sure of hearing anything.
People came in and out all evening to see the baby and hold it.
The room filled with smoke, and Maggie's head throbbed with excitement and fatigue, but Stuart had such a happy, earnest look of proud possession on his face that Maggie couldn't bear to do anything to quench it.
Little Anne rapidly outdistanced her mother in recovery.
In two months she became a fat highly social baby, with a fuzz of flaxen hair all over her head.
She stopped flying into rages and started digesting her food; she developed a peaches and cream complexion and a sunny disposition, and she asked for nothing more of life than that she be kept dry and comfortable and fed huge amounts of food at stated intervals and be carried to where she could watch activity going on around her.
She was so heavy that Maggie's arms shook from lifting her and taking care of her.
Maggie couldn't seem to get her strength back or catch up with herself with all she had to do: there was the big basket of clothes to be coaxed through the rackety old washer and lugged out and lugged back; there was the daily round of household chores in which Maggie insisted on participating.
Worry had a great deal to do with it; Stuart had been laid off at the produce company and had to go back to sitting in his father's office, taking what salary his father could hand out to him.
Mr Clifton would have preferred death and bankruptcy to having his son stay with his wife's people without contributing to his and his family's upkeep, and besides that there were the things that had to be bought for the baby, milk and orange juice and vitamins and soap, just plain soap.
Maggie and Stuart pored over figures every night, trying to find how they could squeeze out a few pennies more.
In desperation Maggie consulted Eugenia one afternoon: "Do you think you could find me something I could do here at home to make some money, so I could still watch the baby and do the rest of the things"?
"It seems to me you have enough to do as it is", Eugenia said.
She had been watching Maggie go from the washing machine to the baby to the stove and back again.
"I have plenty of odd moments when I could be doing something", Maggie said.
"It would make me feel a lot better, but the Woman's Exchange isn't taking baked goods any more and I can't leave the baby with Grandma because she isn't strong enough and the baby's too young to be put in a nursery".
"I should think so", Eugenia said.
"For one thing you can stop keeping that child in starched dresses and changed from the skin out nineteen times a day".
"She's so beautiful, and I do like to keep her looking nice".
Maggie said.
She picked up the baby and nuzzled her fat warm little neck.
"She'll be just as beautiful in something that doesn't have to be ironed", Eugenia said.
"Evadna Mae Evans said she didn't put a thing on her child but a flannel wrapper until it was nine months old".
"Evadna Mae Evans got all her baby clothes from Best's Liliputian Bazaar in New York, and I'm sick and tired of hearing about Evadna Mae Evans".
"Well now, Maggie, you don't have to snap at me", Eugenia said.
"I'm just thinking of a way for you to be sensible".
"I'm sorry.
I do seem to snap at everybody these days, but I would like to think of a way to make a little extra money".
"Well, let's see.
Let's make a list of your assets".
Maggie started laughing, and she laughed so hard she couldn't stop, and she kept on laughing while she lugged the clothes out to the yard to hang them up while the sun was still shining.
When she came back Eugenia was sitting at the kitchen table with a pencil and envelope jotting down words and figures.
"I have here that you could run a nursery of your own for working mothers", Eugenia said.
"We could put up cribs on the second floor sleeping porch and turn the front bedroom into a playroom where it's nice and sunny, but of course it would entail quite a bit of running up and down stairs and Chris said you were to be careful about that".
"What else"?
"You might set up a dress shop in the living room".
"Every woman in the block has tried that".
"What about a tea room, then?
You could set up tables in the front room and serve salads and your baked beans and brown bread and Grandma could dress like a gypsy and tell fortunes".
"It's too elaborate.
And Grandma isn't strong enough to take on something like that, and to tell you the truth neither am I".
Eugenia sighed.
She said, "Well, those are the really interesting things, but if you don't like any of those I can turn over some of my extra typing jobs to you, if you think you can type well enough".
"Oh, I'm sure I could do that", Maggie said.
"But it really wouldn't be fair, taking your jobs away from you".
"Don't worry, I can get plenty more", Eugenia said, wondering where in the world she could.
Maggie was looking much happier already, clearing a space on the table and chattering about how she could put up a typewriter right there, and be brushing up on her typing so Eugenia wouldn't be ashamed of it.
"And then whenever I have a minute I can be working at it, and keep an eye on the baby and the stove at the same time.
And I can go back to my contests and be thinking while I'm doing the washing".
"What are you going to do with your feet so you don't waste anything"?
Maggie laughed.
She said, "Oh Eugenia, I wish **h" "What"?
"I wish I had three wishes", Maggie said.
"All of them for you".
## It grew bitterly cold toward the end of November, contributing to the miseries of countless numbers of people.
The temperature dropped to twenty below at night and stood at zero during the days.
The cold settled like a tangible pall over the Mile High City, locking it in an icy grip that harshened its outlines and altered its physical appearance; it had a look of grim stark realism, resembling other cities whose habitual climate was cold, instead of the sprawling bumptious open-handed greedy Western city basking in eternal sunshine at the foot of mountains stored with endless riches and resources.
The jobless huddled in the streets outside of employment offices, outside newspaper buildings, in parks, in relief lines, outside government agencies.
There weren't facilities to take care of them; there never had been a need felt for such facilities.
That kind of poverty was regarded as the exclusive property of the East, which created depressions with their stock markets and their congested populations and their greedy centralization of industries, protected by discriminatory freight rates.
The East was popularly supposed to have got the country into war and into depression, dragging the west along; and now the East was creating government agencies for which the West doubtless would have to pay.
The government offices were being opened but they weren't being opened fast enough and meanwhile the cold penetrated everything.
Shivering, people talked and argued; all this government spending would have to be paid for somehow, but on the other hand desperate circumstances called for desperate remedies and something had to be done.
Something had to be done; it was the theme song of millions of American people, their personal problems no less urgent than those of the government.
Something had to be done.
The Abernathys said it to each other a dozen times a day.
Something had to be done about the furnace, the fuel bills, the washing machine, the doctor and dentist bills, about making money stretch for food, for the mortgage, for taxes, for shoes, for half soles, for overshoes, for clothes, for the new leaks in the roof, for gas and light bills; about keeping warm, about keeping well, about meeting the minor emergencies that came up once, twice, fifty times a day.
Just dropping the baby's bottle and breaking it became a catastrophe, and Stuart wore out his shoes so fast that he was termed a major disaster.
The Abernathy furnace consumed fuel like a giant ravenous maw that had to be appeased by hurling tons of coal into its evil red depths, and no matter how much coal they put in the house remained cold.
Cold came in the innumerable cracks that seemed to have sprung up, under doors, around loosened window frames, from the sleeping porches, the attic, from the widened cracks between shingles on the roof.
Presently they had to give up running the furnace at full capacity and depend on the old coal range in the kitchen, which had never been removed when the new gas range was installed, and the fireplaces and an electric heater in Grandma's room.
It was so cold and so wretched that a sort of desperate gaiety infected all of them, like people stormbound or shipwrecked or caught in some other freak of circumstance so that time stood still and minor anxieties fell away and the only important thing was to cling together and survive.
The pipes burst and they all laughed and stood in ice water to their ankles while they swabbed the bathrooms.
They lived mainly in the kitchen; they moved Maggie's bed and the baby's basket there, and the rest of them undressed by the stove and ran groaning and shivering to the upper polar regions and plunged into icy beds.
Grandma said it was just like the early mining camp days, and it was the way people ought to live, only she was getting too old to take the pleasure from it that she used to.
"You said a mouthful", Eugenia said grimly.
Eugenia hated being cold worse than anything, and she was beginning to find the joys of poverty wearing thin.
She said to Maggie that it was one thing to meet an emergency and another to wallow in it, and it was beginning to look at if this one was going to last forever.
"Plenty of people are poor all their lives".
"Plenty of people haven't our brains and talent".
"I know you when you start talking about brains and talent", Maggie said.
"You're working up to something, and if you don't watch out you'll ruin your whole life one of these days just to prove that the Abernathy family is superior to everything, even a depression".
"The only thing that worries me is how I'm going to prove it", Eugenia said.
They begged Grandma to let them put a bed in the kitchen for her, but Grandma said she was getting too old to sleep in strange beds and be seen with her teeth out, and that she hoped to die in privacy like a Christian and if the Lord willed it to be of pneumonia than it would have to be that way.
She didn't want to be the only one with a stove in her room, especially as her life span was nearly run out anyway, and she insisted that Hope have the heater.
Hope wouldn't hear of it, and she took the heater back to Grandma's room, and Grandma took it back to Hope's room, and the two of them dragged it back and forth until Grandma tipped it over and almost set her bedspread on fire.
She said that proved she wasn't to be trusted with a fire in her room, and she could be burned to a crisp without anybody knowing it.
Eugenia suspected her of deliberately overturning the heater because she was getting tired of dragging it back and forth and still wanted her own way, but Hope said if Grandma wouldn't have the heater nobody would have it, so Grandma had to give in.
"Thrifty of her to use it up.
Unusual in a case like this, but"- "You can joke!
Didn't you read it?
She's married that tenant!"
"I read it, yes.
This ought to simplify Tolley's life".
Laban had more to say.
Tolley had gone to live in California.
He'd mentioned it, himself, at church and everybody seemed to have the idea that Tolley had left because Jenny had jilted him for Roy robards.
"It was plain as the nose on your face that they're laughing about it, Mamma.
Zion stayed to get my pin, but it'll be a cold day in June when I go back".
"We will both go back, Laban"!
Kizzie turned to go inside.
"Let me stay and take the pictures you wanted, Mamma.
The sun's right"- "Pictures"?
She swung around.
"What pictures"?
"In Brace's room!
You told me to bring my camera.
I'm not going back"- "Indeed you are!
Why should I want pictures of an empty room now?
Tolley had no idea of marrying that sneaky little Jenny!
This- trip of his had nothing to do with her consorting with tenants, and I am going to see that everybody at Mt Pleasant understands that simple fact.
Wait for me, Laban, I'll be dressed in half a second"!
Frank followed her into the bedroom, hooked her dress up the back.
"Hurry, Frank!
They're not going to laugh at the Fairbrothers and Labans very long!
Tolley's going is my fault.
I drove him away.
You know it and I'll tell everybody exactly how it happened".
She was so beautiful, so valiant, so pitiable.
He kissed her.
"Make your confession to God, Kizzie dear, not to the congregation".
"I'll decide that when I get there.
I was so cruel to Tolley, so unfair.
But I'll be fair now!
He is coming back, isn't he, Frank"?
Yes, oh yes.
What else was there to say?
Returning to the log-house he found some favorite lines from Jonathan Swift on his lips: "Under the window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together.
Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder".
Absolution for his lie?
He questioned God's taking time to telegraph the message, but he felt better about Kizzie, and he took the sealed envelope from its pigeonhole, wondering why he had preserved it.
If he died before she did, she would never be unable to resist opening it.
In any case he would be thrusting a burden on his remaining sons, making them parties to a deception peculiarly his own.
It was simply his necessity to confess which had made him write and keep this thing.
"You've told God, Frank", he said.
"Why lacerate the- congregation"?
Reaching for an old clay pot, relic of pioneer days, he tore the envelope in pieces, dropping them into it, touching the little pyre to flame, watching it curl, the red sealing wax melting and bubbling in the feathery ash.
Surely now his beloved son could rest in peace.
"'And let me go, for the night gathers me, and in the night shall no man gather fruit'".
A beautiful and haunting line, a subtle genius, Swinburne, difficult not to envy a gifted man, and perhaps he did **h. But there were great satisfactions, even for a small man.
Beyond his window were the greening trees, new spring, eternal hope, eternal life.
There lay Grand Fair's Quinzaine, his own young parents' graves, but new life and promise for his sons, grandsons.
He poured his thimble of wine for the toast he'd made so often.
"To absent loved ones".
But this last time he drank not to Brace but "To Tolley"!
MR ROBARDS- Jenny was the only person she knew of in the Mt Pleasant neighborhood who called him that- was kind but too easygoing.
It didn't bother him for everybody from the blacksmith to the preacher to say, "Howdy, Miss Jenny", adding a careless "Roy", but it did her.
He could put a stop to it, she told him again and again.
Simply call Mr Whipsnade Oscar, and Dr Dunne PG, and C'un Major Frank.
Mr Robards laughed, said he'd feel a damn fool, plain-out couldn't do that even to please her.
"You could try.
And if I ever hear you say 'Mist Laban' again I'll scream.
And don't tell me you didn't at church Sunday.
I heard you"!
He really hadn't meant to, he assured her, but it was plain to her that the importance of these small things was lost on Mr Robards.
How strange it was that he could give her this handsome house and carte blanche as to its beautiful furnishings, and fail her in- spiritual ways.
Another weakness- far more irritating than his manner of speaking, which he made only token effort to change- was his devotion to that old horse of Tolley's.
Her horse, rather.
But Mr Robards' now, oh my yes, indeed, yes!
He called her "the Mare" much as Mrs Whipsnade spoke of "the Queen, God bless her".
**h He, with fifteen or twenty horses or mares or geldings or what-nots out there in the barn, was reverent only of "the Mare", "the Racin' Mare", the revolting Gunny.
For the first few months of their marriage she had tried to be nice about Gunny, going out with him to watch this pearl without price stamp imperiously around in her stall.
And what had happened?
Gunny invariably tried to bite her.
Nerves, Mr Robards said, just a nip anyway.
"Stand back, Miss Jen, she's oneasy of your scarf".
Never, "Quit that, you sor'l devil"!
Never concern for his wife's nerves, or the danger that the curled lip and big teeth might mark their own dear baby due in January.
She musn't annoy Gunny whose foal was due then too!
Listening for hours to his laments that the war and "Mist Fair's" poverty afterwards had robbed the mare of many a racing triumph, and to his predictions of greatness for the procession of foals to come, Jenny could look forward to years of conflict with an animal who disliked her intensely and showed it.
Gunny symbolized so much that was unpleasant- Tolley, the indifference with which the Fairbrothers and indeed the whole neighborhood now treated her and which she would die rather than acknowledge to her husband, his lack of understanding and sympathy in her present condition, her disgusting swollen stomach.
Human birth was no novelty to Mr Robards.
Tillie was a fine midwife and could get here quick, he suggested.
Jenny's aversion to having Dr Dunne, a former admirer, seemed silly to him, but he would humor her, get anybody she wanted, the best never being too good for her.
The chances were against his being here to humor her when her time came, she was sure.
He would be in the barn, or riding for the veterinarian!
Night after night he stayed with Gunny in the dead of winter, rubbing her with quarts of expensive liniment, fussing over her bran mash as the cook did over charlotte russe, tracking manure on the pretty new carpet when he did come to the house.
Yet when the dear baby came, he had Tillie over here in a jiffy, and was as attentive and sweet and worried and happy when it was all over as any husband could have been.
Jenny wished now that she had had Dr Dunne, feeling that somehow he wouldn't have allowed the dear baby to turn into triplets.
There was something not nice about triplets, though their father seemed pleased, showing no disappointment that they hadn't been the son he wanted, saying, "You don't see triplets trippin' down the pike ever' day, Miss Jen, hon.
Rhyme 'em up cute- Arcilla, Flotilla **h" Edmonia for her mother, she said firmly, Jennifer, for herself, and- "Kezziah, for Miss Kizzie", he suggested.
"She was mighty good to you past times, an' this'll fetch her".
Now she must be thinking of a boy-name, something special.
Just wait till she saw the Mare's foal.
Handsomest colt in all Kentucky.
Strong too, up on his legs when he was an hour old.
What about Royal Robards?
"Why don't you name him Jesus Christ!"
She burst into tears.
Roy was deeply distressed.
He'd had no idea how unhappy his sweet peach had been.
Of course she wasn't herself right now, but as her strength came back her spirits didn't seem to rise with it.
He had a good idea why not.
Those elegant "At Home" cards she sent out, now she could wear her pretty clothes again, and had the house all trimmed up, hadn't brought many callers in two whole months.
Doc Dunne and Miss Sis had come.
So had Miss Shawnee Rakestraw, full of criticisms about the changes here, giving thanks that her dear old father had gone to his Heavenly Rest last year, saying how much she enjoyed her boarding house in town in inclement weather, was looking forward to Quinzaine Spa this summer.
There was an idea.
Miss Kizzie had been right snippy ever since they were married, though you'd have thought a namesake would have brought her round.
Oh, she'd come to see them once, left silver teething rings for all of the trips.
But when Miss Jen went over right away to return the call, Miss Kiz couldn't have been very cordial, for she'd come back before she hardly had time to get there.
More and more, these days, she'd been driving that pretty little mare that looked like her, over to Tillie's and Nick's- his own old square frame box on posts, chickens and cats and pups under the house, everybody friendly inside, making a to-do over the babies dressed like dollies.
Though he was glad she got on well with his young folks, she ought to be welcome at the finest house in the land, too.
It made him pretty hot under the collar, after the idea Miss Sis had given him, to be told by Miss Kiz that her holy spa was all reserved for this summer and next, if you please, and that much as she regretted it, they would be unable to entertain Mrs Robards and the children.
She hoped they were well.
He didn't tell Miss Jen, but she must have got word from the cook or nurse, who of course knew those Quinzaine nigs, and she really took a fit.
If he ever did such a thing again she'd die of shame.
"Have a party an' leave 'em out, hon", he suggested.
"A swell party, send an invite to ever'body but them- those folks you met at the Galt House, the ones I've got to know in this new Jockey Club affair, the whole dang neighborhood.
We'll have oystchers- couple bar'l oystchers'll fetch in a crowd any time.
I'll see word gets round".
"Don't you dare!"
Miss Jen was funny that way, funny that she didn't seem to take to his ideas and perk up.
He was downright worried about her, but there was one more thing he could try **h. Zion was surprised when Roy's buggy stopped beside her on the pike one early summer day as she was walking home from the country school where she was teaching now that Eph Showers had had a call to preach in some mountain town.
Roy smiled- he did have a nice smile- took off his hat most politely, told her to hop in, and he'd give her a lift to Quinzaine.
Her hesitation was only momentary and she hoped he didn't notice it, as she settled herself, asked quickly how Miss Jenny and the babies were getting on.
"See for yourself, Miss Zion.
It won't take a minute".
He swung in through his own wide gateway.
"Them's the purtiest babes you ever did see, but Miss Jen gets mighty lonesome.
She'll relish the sight of a friendly face.
Miss Kiz won't care your comin', will she"?
"Why of course not", Zion said uncomfortably.
"He must have forgiven me", Henrietta murmured to the room.
The absolution of Doaty's last will and testament was proof enough of that; Doaty would never have left her house to a godless woman.
She found herself wishing an old wish, that she had told Doaty she was running away, that she had left something more behind her than the loving, sorry note and her best garnet pin.
Perhaps Doaty had guessed already and kept her counsel.
Henrietta thought, It's extraordinary how much she always knew about both of us.
There had been more to know about Hetty, inevitably, and most of it unfavorable.
Adelia was the good one, or, if not always good, less frequently tempted.
Their childhood would have been quite circumspect without Hetty's flair for drama, especially through the long summers.
In winter, in the city, there had been the Maneret School, which taught excellently with a kind of austere passion for knowledge; there had been lessons in French from a small Polish nobleman with a really profound distaste for his pupils; there had been the dancing class- Miss Craddock, thin and tireless, with her supervising wand and her everlasting one-two-three, one-two-three.
There had been supper parties and teas, fetes and little balls, Mama small and pretty and gay and Papa enormously jocular, enormously possessive, the sun around which the Blackwell planets revolved.
Mama had died before the corruption of the family circle, the interruption of Charles.
It was safe to assume that Papa, sighing heavily, had said many times to his remaining daughter, "Thank God your poor mother was spared this", and indeed it might be true that it had been easier for Henrietta to leave, with her hand in Charles' hand, just because her "poor mother" was gone already and would never know.
Mama was vulnerable; one had always felt the need to make a safe world around her.
But I would have gone anyway, thought Henrietta.
She had always been able to ignore the moral question because there had been no choice.
Only at this moment- perhaps because it was before dawn and she was lying in Doaty's bed- she found herself examining how others might regard her.
Perhaps they would argue that morality consisted just of that ability to see a choice.
She turned on her side, finding the idea oppressive.
If Adelia had felt about someone as Henrietta felt about Charles, would she have run away with him?
Impossible to imagine Adelia feeling so about anyone.
No temptation, no sin.
No temptation, no virtue?
A curious thought to end a curious night.
The birds were really awake now in a colloquy of music, and light was beginning to creep across the room, touching sill and door, table and chair and all of Doaty's flowers in their artificial blossom and leaf.
Before anything else, she would go to Doaty's grave with flowers from Doaty's forgotten garden.
Everything must wait upon this mission, this sentimental duty of a pilgrim whose nature avoided graveyards.
She closed her eyes, remembering the small French cemetery, enclosed by stone walls.
It had always seemed to rain there, and even the grass was gray.
After the sad impatient moment, waiting for comfort which could not come, she slipped out of bed and went to the open window.
The garden below was lacy with dew and enchanting in its small wildness.
Leaning out, she could see a tangle of rosebush and honeysuckle, one not quite come to bloom, one just beyond it.
On a thrusting spray thick with thorns and dewdrops and swelling pink buds, like a summer Valentine, a bird balanced and sang, nondescriptly brown and alive with its own music, a little engine of song.
It was so pretty and artless that she felt like a child again and would have enjoyed running out barefoot to play on the wet grass with all the growing things, but Doaty never permitted bare feet and she was decidedly not a child but une femme d'un certain age.
Feeling suddenly neat and subdued, she dressed quite soberly and went downstairs.
Rosa, unbelievably, was not yet up and about, reassurance that Rosa was human.
Feeling protective toward this sleeping being, Henrietta found a yesterday bun and milk in a white jug, a breakfast which was somewhat the equivalent of going barefoot.
Outside, the garden, the tame wilderness, yielded a patchwork bouquet of daisies, sweet william, scented stock and lady's bedstraw, which she tied with long grasses and took back to show Rosa, who was now stirring about the kitchen and haranguing Folly.
The poodle came gleefully to Henrietta and begged for the flowers, supplicating the air with prayerful forepaws.
Henrietta held her bouquet out of reach and said it was for Doaty.
"Rummaging in the dew", said Rosa coldly.
"Go change your shoes before you turn around".
She sounded so exactly like Doaty that Henrietta obeyed her under the clear impression that she could either comply or stay home.
Folly danced, eager for whatever lay beyond the door.
To a Blackwell, there was only one church.
The cemetery slumbered just behind it, and the way lay through the village and close to the sea.
For the first time in thirty years, Henrietta walked down the narrow street with its shuttered shops just stirring and its inhabitants eying her with the frankest curiosity.
She smiled and bowed, recalling the princess-in-a-carriage feeling she had enjoyed when she was a child.
Now, some of the acknowledgments were cautious, but all were interested.
An old man, sitting against the wall of a cottage and waiting for the sun to find him, gave her a more than reflective look as she passed, the sap still plainly rising in his branches.
On an impulse, she turned back and said good morning.
He cupped his ear and shook his head at her repetition, announcing in a nettled way that he had heard her the first time.
He then offered his own estimate of the weather, which was unenthusiastic.
"Summer's been slow to come", he said.
"It's my dryin' out time".
He scowled at her flowers.
"I'm taking them to the cemetery", said Henrietta, out of a vague feeling of hospitality.
"They'll be takin' me next", he said pleasantly, "but not so soon's they plan.
See half of 'em in their graves before I choose my own coffin.
It's dryin' myself out that does it".
He regarded her with rising hope.
"You'd like to hear how I go about it".
"It's nice of you", Henrietta said doubtfully.
"Y're welcome".
He straightened himself, soldierly against the wall, and pulled his sprawled feet together so they stood side by side in their old boots.
His stick ceased to be a thing to rest his chin on and became a pointer for emphasizing the finer aspects of his text.
"Every month, f'r three days", he said happily, "I take no water into my system, no water whatsoever.
It rests the tissues".
Henrietta murmured that she could quite see how it would, and he nodded approval of her womanly good sense.
"Rests the tissues", he said, "and pacifies the system.
My dad did it, and he lived to a great age".
He looked up at her sharply.
"Don't remember, do you"?
She did suddenly, through the link of memory with his father, old Titus, who must have been in his nineties when Henrietta ran away.
Next to the Blackwells, Titus had owned the island most, and she and Adelia had often stood in front of him, silenced by his terrible years- a scanty man with a thin beard and very deep-set blue eyes like a mariner, more aged than possible.
He had never spoken once to the awed sisters, but his son had been friendly, a big fellow of fifty or more, a fishing-boat captain and powerful like the sea.
It must be that son who sat before her now, shriveled to half his size and half his senses.
She said gently, "Of course I remember you".
"Not so well's I remember you", he said.
"Y're the young Blackwell woman.
Ran away on a black night with a lawful wedded man.
I know all about you".
"You do seem to", said Henrietta, impressed.
"Can't blame a man for leavin' his wife", he said quite cheerfully.
"Left mine many a time, only she never knew it.
Man in a boat, there's a lot of places he can put in at and a lot of reasons he can be away for a bit.
Any harm in that"?
"Probably", said Henrietta dryly.
He gave a short hard laugh and looked at her knowingly.
"You'd be the one to say", he observed, and she found herself liking his approval none too well, but she could not defend herself and say that her actions were "different", since all actions had their own laws.
Only, this old man's connivance was even less to her taste than Selma Cotter's open censure.
Well, she had not come back to Great Island to be understood, praised or condemned.
She had come to make her peace with the past, and of that past this ancient of the earth was only a kind of shadow.
She started to move away, just as a woman came out of the cottage, a big-boned, drab-haired figure with a clean apron tied over her limp print dress.
She smiled vaguely at Henrietta and spoke to the old man.
"You've not had your breakfast yet, gran'dad".
"Y'r dam' porridge is no breakfast", he said.
"Milk and sops"!
He beat the air with his stick, and it fell from his claws and clattered on the stones.
"He's owly today", his grand-daughter said wearily, and bent to pick it up.
"He's got this idea about drying out **h" "It ain't an idea"!
"If it ain't an idea", she said, "how comes it you can drink beer but not water"?
He looked piously to heaven and said, "Beer don't affect the tissues none", and the ingenious hypocrisy of this defense pleased Henrietta so that she forgave him his stint of malevolence.
His grand-daughter sighed.
"Come on, do.
The children are eating, and Miss Blackwell's on her way somewheres".
"To the graveyard.
Who ain't"?
"Not me.
I've got a day's work to do.- You'll be visiting Miss Doaty, ma'am"?
Henrietta nodded.
How much they knew about her!
The woman (she must have been a tiny baby when Hetty and Delia had stood arm in arm, watching great age grow small) answered the nod with her own.
"God rest her soul, she was a sweet one.
Come on now".
She put a strong hand under the old man's arm and lifted him up, patiently, with the gentle cruelty and necessary tyranny that the young show toward the very old.
He mumbled at her but let himself be led off inside the house, shuffling mightily to make it clear how weak and aged he was and how he was buffeted about by those who still had their wicked strength.
There was a gabble of voices from indoors, young hungry sounds like cats after fish, and a burst of swearing from the old man.
Henrietta looked down at her bouquet, still lively with its color and scent, and set her feet on their journey's way again, leaving the village street and crossing the first field, Folly dancing ahead of her.
At the edge of the field, the wild rolling land took over, dotted with fat round bushes like sheep.
They were covered with tiny white blossoms, their scant roots clawing at the stony ground, and wild birds darted in and about and through them so they were nearly alive with the rustle and cry.
The air was full of sounds too but placid ones, a terrestrial humming as much out of the earth as out of the blue sky.
She felt mindless, walking, and almost easy until the church spire told her she was near the cemetery, and she caught herself wondering what she would say to Doaty.
Both church and graveyard were smaller than she remembered them (how many things had lessened while she was gone away) but the headstones had grown so thick in thirty years that to find one named "Dorothy Tredding" seemed suddenly impossible.
She sat down on the nearest, fallen with age and gray with sea-damp, her fingers tracing the indecipherable carved letters padded with green moss.
The day's sun was gathering its strength in gold, and she wished she had brought her parasol, if only to shade Doaty's flowers.
A small, rock-carved angel watched her from a nearby tomb, the only angel in the cemetery.
She remembered, suddenly, a night of savage moonlight and scudding clouds when she and Adelia, having dared each other, had stolen out of their great safe house and come here, hand in hand, hoping and fearing ghosts.
The Momoyama family had come from Miyagi Prefecture, in the northeast of the main Japanese island of Honshu, where there are still traces of the mysterious Ainu strain.
The Ainus were a primitive people, already living on the island before the principal ancestors of the Japanese came from Southern Asia.
Apparently they were of Caucasian blood.
They had white skins and blue eyes; all their men were bearded, and many of their women were beautiful.
A pitiful few of them are left now, to subsist mainly on the tourist trade and to sing their ancient tribal chants, which have the same haunting sadness as the laments of the American Indians.
Most of them have been assimilated, but sometimes a man in Miyagi or Akita prefectures is much more hairy than the average Japanese, and occasionally a girl will be strikingly lovely, her coloring warmed and improved by a little of the tawny honey-in-the-sun tint of the invaders from the South.
Tommy Momoyama was one of these fortunate occasions.
She was taller than most Japanese girls, and had the exquisitely willowy form of the Japanese girl who is lucky enough to be tall.
Her nose was higher of bridge, her complexion so pale as to be quite susceptible to sunburn, and the fish and vegetable diet of her forebears had given her teeth that were white and regular and strong.
Her mouth, soft and full, was something for any man to dream about.
She had black eyes, long and intriguingly tilted, and the way she walked was melody.
She had been in Japan just one week.
It was an alien land, and she hated it intensely; she was already considering putting in rebellious requests for duty at San Diego, Bremerton, the Great Lakes, Pensacola- any place the Navy had a hospital- with a threat to resign her commission if the request were not granted.
Anywhere would be better than the land of her ancestors.
There was nothing wrong with her job.
Tommy had been assigned to the psychopathic ward.
There were no depressingly serious cases: the ward doctor sometimes teamed up with the chaplain to serve as a marriage counselor- sometimes the Navy sent people back to the States to preserve a marriage- but mental health as a rule was very high.
At present the doctor's main concern was in seeing to it that Japanese salvage firms were not permitted to operate on the hulks of warships sunk too close inshore, because the work involved setting off nerve-shattering blasts at all hours.
Tommy was interested in psychiatry, because there was much an understanding nurse could do to help the patients.
But she suffered in her off-duty hours.
Such as now, when she sat at a table in the coffee shop at the Officers' Club, having coffee and a hamburger to sustain her until dinnertime.
She had changed into a cocktail dress, and the whole evening should have been before her, but already she was beginning to get a tight feeling at the back of her neck.
This was one of the Navy's crossroads- you find them all around the world.
Ships from the West Coast rotated on six-month tours of duty with the Seventh Fleet, and Yokosuka was the Seventh Fleet's principal port for maintenance, upkeep and shore liberty.
Sooner or later, all the gray Navy ships came in here; if Tommy sat long enough, she would be sure to see all the young officers she had met in San Diego and Long Beach.
And she wanted desperately to see someone she had known back there.
She felt, rather than saw, the approach of the good-looking young man.
He came through from the Fleet Bar, which was stag, with the ice cubes tinkling in a glass he carried.
When he saw Tommy sitting alone, the tinkling sound stopped.
He was perhaps a trifle tipsy, having been long at sea where drinking is not permitted, and consequently out of practice; he wore a brown tweed sports jacket obviously tailored in Hong Kong, and he was of an age that marked him as a lieutenant.
Probably off one of the carriers- an aviator.
There was a fifty-fifty chance, perhaps, that he would be unmarried, and an even more slender chance that his approach would be different.
Japan did something to a man- and it wasn't just Japan, either, because the same thing applied anywhere overseas.
It was as if foreign duty implied and excused license; it intimated that the folks at home would never know about it, and, therefore, why not?
Then the young man in the brown sports jacket spoke, and it was no different.
"Harro, girl-san"!
he said, turning on what was meant to be charm.
"You catchee boy-furiendo?
Maybe you likee date with me"?
"I beg your pardon"!
Tommy said out of her cold rage.
"I don't believe I know you, and I can't understand your quaint brand of English- it was meant to be English, wasn't it"?
The nice-looking young officer fell back on his heels, open-mouthed and blushing.
At least, he had the decency to blush, she thought.
"Oh- I'm sorry!
You see, I thought- I mean I really had no idea"- "Oh, yes- you had ideas"!
Tommy interrupted furiously.
"All wrong ones"!
Then she jerked her thumb toward the door in a very American gesture, and dropped into Navy slang.
"Take off, fly-boy"!
"Uh- sorry"!
he muttered, and took off, obviously feeling like a fool.
The trouble was that there was no lasting satisfaction in this for Tommy.
She felt like a fool, too.
It hadn't been this way in college, or in nurses' training; it wasn't this way in the hospital at San Diego.
Everybody had accepted her for what she was- a very charming girl.
Nobody had addressed her in broken English at any of those places, nobody had suggested that she wasn't American.
There are Spanish girls who look like Tommy Momoyama, brunettes with a Moorish hint of the Orient in their faces; there are beauties from the Balkan states who are similarly endowed, and- back in the blessed United States- they were regarded simply as pretty women.
Now, having been sent halfway around the world on a job she had not asked for, Tommy was being humiliated at every turn.
She looked around, self-consciously.
Four little Japanese waitresses were murdering the English language at the counter- Yuki Kobayashi happened to be one of them.
Everybody but Tommy seemed to think it was charming when they called, "Bifutek-san"!
for a steak sandwich, or "Kohi futotsu"!
for one cup of coffee.
Two other Japanese girls were sitting at the tables, both quite pretty and well groomed.
One was with a whitehaired and doting lieutenant commander; the other was with her American husband and their exceptionally appealing children.
Seeing these did nothing for Tommy's mood.
She told herself rebelliously, and with pride, I am an American!
And so she was, and would remain.
But she was learning that so long as she was in this country, and wore civilian dress in the Club, there would always be transient young men who would approach her with broken English.
There had been occasions when some of the more experienced had even addressed her in what might have been perfectly good Japanese.
Tommy wouldn't know; after coming to America, her parents had spoken only English.
One thing was becoming increasingly sure.
She had been sent to the wrong place for duty.
There was more to service in the Navy Nurse Corps than the hours in the ward.
One had to have friends, and a congenial life in after-duty hours **h. Now there was raucous male singing from the Fleet Bar.
It was terribly off key, and poorly done, and Tommy could never admit to herself that male companionship was a very natural and important thing, but all at once she felt lonesome and put-upon.
She finished her hamburger and drank her coffee and paid her check; she got out of the coffee shop before the incident could be repeated.
Eating while angry had given her a slight indigestion.
Back in her living quarters at the hospital she took bicarbonate of soda, and sulked.
Then, after a while, she went to her mirror.
It was all true.
She certainly looked Japanese, and perhaps she could not really blame the young men.
And, still, they did not have to be so crude in their approach **h. There was a letter to write to her mother, and she tried to make its tone cheerful.
She promised that she would soon take a few day's leave and visit the uncle she had never seen, on the island of Oyajima- which was not very far from Yokusuka.
And tomorrow she would take time to shop for the kimono her mother wanted to present to the young wife of a faculty member as a hostess gown.
Tommy, of course, had never heard of a kotowaza, or Japanese proverb, which says, "Tanin yori miuchi", and is literally translated as "Relatives are better than strangers".
Actually, this is only another way of saying that blood is thicker than water.
Doc Doolittle's scheduled appearance at captain's mast was a very unusual thing, because the discipline dispensed there is ordinarily for the young and immature, and a chief is naturally expected to stay off the report.
But the beer hall riot in Subic had been unusual, too, and Walt Perry was convinced that Doc had started it through some expert tactics in rabble rousing.
Just why anybody should wish to start a riot the executive officer didn't know.
In his opinion, Doc had not grown up.
The lieutenant was not entirely wrong in the belief.
There had never been a good reason for Doc Doolittle to grow up.
He had come into the Navy too young, with the image of the fun-loving Guns Appleby before him.
The war found him much too early, and its perils- and especially its awful boredom- were best forgotten in horseplay and elaborate practical jokes, and even now Doc had never found any stabilizing, sobering influence.
He remained young at heart, with an overdeveloped sense of humor.
He wisecracked about the captain's indoctrination of new men, took great delight in slaughtering cockroaches with ethyl chloride, and gave no thought for tomorrow.
He was doing thirty years, and the Navy would take care of him.
The job security enjoyed by Doc Doolittle, and nearly all members of the Armed Forces, is a wonderful thing.
Actually, all a man in uniform has to do is to get by.
He may not rise to the heights, but he can get by, and eventually be retired.
Doc had been under restriction to the ship since the Bustard left Subic.
This deprived him of liberty in Hong Kong, but he told Boats McCafferty that Hong Kong was a book he had read before, and the Navy would always bring him there again, some day.
At Yokosuka he was restricted to the confines of the Base because Walt Perry, being thoughtful, knew that Doc might have to draw some medical supplies from the hospital or the Supply Base.
This gave Doc the whole range of the naval establishment, and suited him quite well.
There were two things he wanted to do: inspect one of the many caves that had been dug into the hills on the Naval Base, and visit an old shipmate.
A telephone line had been hooked up to connect the ship with the Base exchange.
After supper, Doc called Whitey Gresham, who was now a lieutenant and had a family.
"Well, Doc, you old sonofabitch"!
Whitey exclaimed, with true affection.
"Come over and have a drink.
We live down by the Base commissary.
Grab a taxi".
"I'll be there, but I'll walk", Doc said.
"I've got to run an errand on the way.
See you in about an hour".
He threw a smart salute at the gangway, went up the dock, and turned down the wide street in front of the Petty Officers' Club.
How, he wondered, does one enjoy one's spare time?
He considered some interesting excursion but he was on the road every day from dawn to dusk.
Then there was exercise, boating and hiking, which was not only good for you but also made you more virile: the thought of strenuous activity left him exhausted.
Perhaps golf, with a fashionable companion- but he'd lost his clubs, hadn't played in years.
There was swimming over at the Riverside Hotel, but his skin was so white he looked like the bottom of a frog.
Perhaps a packing trip into the Sierras, let his beard grow- but that was too stark.
I could, he thought, take a long walk- but where?
The telephone rang.
"You missed it", Buzz's voice said, "You should have gone over to the Pagan Room with us.
Wow.
Strippers, but scrumptious, and Toodle Williams and her all-lesbian band".
"Hi, Buzz", Owen said.
"I went over to the Willows and dropped two notes".
"Tough", Buzz said, "Listen, we're having a stag dinner over at the Pagan Room on Friday.
Imagine a stag dinner with Toodle Williams".
He laughed and laughed.
Owen wanted to be pleasant because Buzz worked the territory next to his, but he hadn't come to Reno for stag dinners.
"Thanks", Owen said, "but Friday is a long way off and anything can happen".
Buzz was a tireless instigator who never let his victims rest.
When Owen was finally rid of him, there was a timid rap at the door.
"Yes", Owen called out.
"Yes"?
"I'm Mrs Gertrude Parker", a soft voice explained, "And I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes, please".
Ahah, he thought, a lush divorcee at last.
Probably saw me in the lobby.
He was disappointed to find a nervous, scrawny woman with a big hat standing at the door.
She frowned at his green pajamas with the yellow moons.
"How do you do"?
she said, semi-professionally.
"Our church is sponsoring a group of very courageous women up in Alaska.
We call them lay-sisters and they go among the Eskimos making friends and bringing the light.
They're up there in that freezing climate and all of us have to try and help them".
"Oh"?
"You see", she said, looking past him into the room, where the highball glasses sparkled dully in the bright light, "you and I can't understand the many hardships they have to undergo".
"Why is that"?
She apparently wasn't satisfied with his reaction.
Smug, Owen thought, smug and sappy.
There was a slight nervous twitch in the region of her left eye.
It gave her a lewd, winking effect.
"Have you ever tried to reason with an Eskimo"?
she asked, winking wildly.
"They are a very difficult group of people".
"I don't know much about them", Owen admitted, "but I suppose they have their own religion and they probably resent outsiders coming in and telling them what to do and what not to do".
She smiled in a sickly-tolerant fashion.
"You know, that's very interesting.
People don't know how much they give away about themselves by remarks like that.
The more canvassing I do, the more I note how far most people are from their personal God".
Forebearing, Owen kept his peace.
What would happen next?
That she was out for a touch was certain, but when did she get to the pitch?
Several people passed in the hall and stared as he slowly retreated, trying to close the door a little, and she slowly leaned toward him and raised her voice.
"How did you get by the desk"?
he asked curiously.
"I'm sure the hotel doesn't know you're wandering around the corridors, knocking on strangers' doors and talking down Eskimos".
"Oh, I just come once a week.
Every day I visit a different hotel.
I feel it's my duty.
I do this work all on my own, because I understand the difficulties and I want to help these lay-sisters.
Do you know these women go all through Alaska, and they don't have the proper facilities?
They travel in pairs as much as a hundred-and-fifty miles a day".
"Do you have any idea how far I travel every day?
I have the whole Pacific Northwest".
Owen was aware he was getting overexcited but he couldn't help himself.
Mrs gertrude Parker drew back.
"That's hardly a Christian approach", she remonstrated.
"You're in the secular world".
"I didn't say it was Christian.
I don't think you'll find many active Christian salesmen.
Not that religion isn't big business; those bibles and prayer books make a lot of money for publishing houses, but they don't get top personnel.
Our key salesmen are in appliances and cosmetics".
"God, I take it, plays no part in this", she said waspishly.
"God doesn't have any appliance or cosmetics", he said heatedly before he caught himself.
It sounded silly; why go on?
More people were passing; he had to find some way to close this impossible conversation.
"And whiskey", she said, smiling and blinking at the highball glasses.
"Don't forget whiskey; it's such a big seller".
"You know", he said, getting a grip on himself, "I think you're going to have to excuse me.
I have an appointment".
"I can imagine", she said.
"Probably down at the bar.
But what do you want to do about the lay-sisters?
They must be freezing up there now.
Can't you help them"?
"Leave a card or something.
I'll think it over".
"I have no card", she said bitterly.
"You haven't been listening to what I've been telling you.
I only hope my talking to you has helped you a little, anyway, because you need spiritual bucking-up".
She looked crestfallen, as if he had somehow disappointed the whole human race.
She stood indecisively for a moment, then walked down the hall; he heard her knocking on another door.
It took him about fifteen minutes to calm himself; then he realized he was hungry.
He showered, shaved, dressed and went down to the dining room for breakfast.
On the way he stopped at the desk to receive his mail.
There was a check from his company, and the usual enthusiastic bulletins on new lines they always issued.
His lawyer had sent him a statement on his overdue alimony, and there was a letter from the Collector of Internal Revenue asking him to stop in his office and explain last year's exemptions.
He ate breakfast in a sullen mood, but afterwards, when he walked out onto Virginia Street, he felt braced.
He looked off to the crest of the Sierras, still white-topped; the glisten of the Truckee River made a wide spangle.
He felt suddenly elated, adventurous.
With any luck at all he could easily find a flowerpot.
Although it was only three o'clock, he stopped in at the Golden Calf.
The tables were all spinning, the dice rattling, the bar crowded.
Just to test himself, he played roulette for quarters on his old combination, five and seventeen, and within an hour, he had won, surprisingly, twenty dollars.
The way was opening up; when the management brought around champagne, the breakfast settled its whirling around in his stomach.
The Golden Calf was dimly lit with shaded neon.
There were more women than men in the place, but he couldn't find a flowerpot.
They all had the hard look of gamblers who had stopped dreaming, who automatically turned the cards, hardly caring what showed up.
The mural around the wall depicted early settlers in covered wagons, who appeared much more animated than the gamblers.
The women had a bright shining expectancy as they leaned out from the wall and gazed splendidly into the distance, while the men were stern but hopeful.
All, of course, except the Donner party who were bent on starving to death.
"I wonder if they did eat each other at the end", Owen mused.
He sat down next to a heavily-upholstered blonde, but she was cleaned out in twenty minutes.
She sighed a dirty word and left.
Owen was surprised to see Mrs Gertrude Parker playing the one-arm bandits that were cunningly arranged by the entrance.
She sat down and played two slots at once, looking grim, as if bested by mechanical devices, and Owen felt sorry for the lay-sisters depending on her support.
A dried-up cowboy sat down next to him in the blonde's place.
He was a little more authentic than usual because he smelled slightly of the stables.
"What you need is a steady martingale", the cowboy announced after watching Owen play.
"You can't build on your hit-and-miss five-seventeen".
"What are you playing"?
Owen asked.
"I'm just logging", the cowboy explained.
"I keep all these plays in this little black book, and I watch over a twelve-hour period to find out what numbers are repeating.
But roulette's not my game.
I'm always trying to find a breaking table in blackjack.
Incidentally, I'm pretty famous in these parts: I'm called The Wrangler".
"Nice to know you.
Don't you have to spend any time on your ranch"?
"Well, of course I do.
I'm with the Bar-H, pushing a horse called Sparky.
He's my own horse, and what I collect from him I use on blackjack.
This Sparky can rack and single-foot and he's the fastest thing in Washoe County.
I figure if I can get any kind of publicity campaign going, I'll land him on TV- you know, one of those favorite horses for some Western hero.
I once trained a horse for Hoot Gibson, but nothing like Sparky.
He's a pinto and he photographs wonderfully".
Five came up while Owen was listening to The Wrangler and he neglected to play, a loss of ten dollars.
This proved conclusively that The Wrangler was a jinx, so he walked on down to Hurrays, an even more glorified gambling den than the Golden Calf.
When he looked in the back, Mrs Gertrude Parker was marking keno cards.
His adventurous spirit had waned; he studied the pistol exhibition that Hurrays featured as an added attraction.
He ogled a long redhead with green eyes, but she was a shill with her money in front of her.
He had no great prejudice against shills; it just seemed such a dry run.
There was no cash around; everyone was flipping silver dollars.
The management discreetly withdrew the green stuff into the office and gave the customers chips or checks or premium points.
He read a special announcement whereby Hurrays would feature a special floorshow at three am starring Adele (The Body) Brenner and fourteen glamorous schoolgirls.
He wondered if he might bag a tourist, but they looked frightened of him.
He passed two brides, both wearing orchids, and they made him feel a little sad.
Owen found Buzz watching chuck-a-luck.
Buzz had on a Hawaiian shirt and was carrying some sun-tan oil and dark glasses.
He was shorter and fatter than Owen, who felt good standing next to him.
"We're all going over to Lake Tahoe and try our luck at Cal-Neva", Buzz explained, still instigating.
"We ran into a guy at the Pagan Room who guarantees we can beat the wheel.
He started out as a stickman, then became a pit boss until the Club found him crossroading.
He was knocking down checks at faro".
"I'm allergic to Tahoe", Owen explained.
"Something about the pollen".
"Well, okay", Buzz said.
"We'll see you around later".
Owen went over to the crap table and the dice were hot, but he couldn't pyramid with any consecutive success.
"How's your luck, honey"?
A short platinum blonde in a bursting sun-suit addressed him.
She looked well-fed and prosperous, but he didn't get the impression he was being propositioned the way he'd been hoping.
"I haven't had any luck since I was a baby".
"Stake me", she said, "and let me at those dice.
I'll make them dance the tango.
We'll get it in a hurry and get it out".
"Let's have a drink and discuss a merger".
"If you go broke", she said, smiling up at him, "I'll leave you".
"Sounds like real love", Owen said.
"It sort of brings a lump to my throat".
"My name's Gisele", the blonde said after she ordered a Scotch.
"Named after the ballet.
My mother wanted to call me Sylphide, but it sounded too affected".
Spencer said nothing.
"Is there any word you would like to offer in your own defense"?
Spencer shook his head.
Alexander said, "Answer me properly, Spencer".
Spencer was quiet for a moment longer, then he said, "There is nothing I want to say, Captain".
"Very well".
Alexander walked away.
Naval procedure, he thought, had its moments of grim humor.
Philip Spencer had cold-bloodedly planned the murder of his captain, yet it seemed in order to chide him for a lapse of proper address.
During the morning hours, it became clear that the arrest of Spencer was having no sobering effect upon the men of the Somers.
Those named in the Greek paper were manufacturing reasons to steal aft under pretence of some call of duty, so as to be near Spencer, watching an opportunity to communicate with him.
Hostile glances were flashed at both Alexander and Gansevoort.
The two met in the Captain's cabin.
"What is the next step, Captain"?
"More arrests, I fear".
In your opinion, who is this E Andrews on the 'certain' list"?
"Cromwell, of course.
He is the oldest and most experienced of the lot.
He saw the dangers, not the glories of being identified as a mutineer.
Somehow he talked Spencer into letting him use another name".
There was a tap at the door and Oliver entered with the word that Heiser wished to see the Captain.
"Have him come in".
Heiser, breathless and wild-eyed, brought the chilling news that the handspikes, heavers and holystones had been mysteriously removed from their customary places.
"And also, sir, two articles which were considered souvenirs now must be regarded in another light entirely.
An African knife and battle-ax are at this moment being sharpened by McKinley and Green.
McKinley was overheard to say that he would like to get the knife into Spencer's possession and that"- "Where did you gather all this information, Heiser?
Who reported to you the disappearance of handspikes and heavers and who"- He was interrupted by a crash from the deck and sprang toward the ladder, with Gansevoort and Heiser behind him.
A glance revealed that the main topgallant mast had been carried away.
The aimless milling about of what had been a well-trained, well-organized crew struck Alexander with horror.
He bellowed orders and watched the alert response of some of his men and watched, too, the way a dozen or more turned their heads questioningly toward the shackled figure as though for further instruction.
Adrien Deslonde hastened to Alexander's side.
"Small violently jerked the weather-royal brace with full intention to carry away the mast.
I saw him myself and it was done after consultation with Cromwell.
I swear it, sir".
And it was clear that Adrien was not mistaken, for both Small and Cromwell took no step toward aiding in the sending up of the new topgallant mast till Philip Spencer had given the signal to obey.
Then, with disappointment evident upon their faces, they moved to the work.
Alexander guessed that they had planned confusion and turmoil, thinking it the ideal climate in which to begin battle and bloodshed.
Their strategy was sound enough and, he reasoned, had been defeated only by Philip Spencer's unwillingness to sanction an idea he had not originated.
When the mast was raised, Alexander gave the order for Small and Cromwell to be placed under arrest, and now three figures in irons sprawled upon the open deck and terror stalked the Somers.
Spencer's potential followers were openly sullen and morose, missing muster without excuse, expressing in ominous tones their displeasure at the prisoners being kept in irons, communicating with the three by glance and signal.
One of the missing handspikes came out of its hiding place after Midshipman Tillotson had been insolently disobeyed by Seaman Wilson.
Tillotson had reported the man to Gansevoort and an hour later, with back turned, had been attacked by Wilson, brandishing the weapon.
Wilson, shackled and snarling, was thrown with the other prisoners and was soon joined by Green, McKee and McKinley.
Not a man on the brig, loyal or villainous, could be unaffected by the sight of seven men involved in the crime of mutiny.
In the tiny cabin, Alexander met with Gansevoort, Heiser and Wales to speak and to listen.
Three days had passed since Spencer's arrest and each day had brought new dangers, new fears.
Gansevoort said, "It requires an omniscient eye to select those if any on whom we can now rely.
To have the Greek paper is not the great help that at first flush it seemed.
From actions aboard, it is easy to guess that Spencer's boast of twenty staunch followers was a modest estimate".
"Well", Heiser ventured, "why don't we hold an investigation with questioning and"- "That would be worse than useless", Alexander broke in.
"There is not space to hold or force to guard any increased number of prisoners.
Besides, suppose we hold a court of inquiry, then what?
Then we have informed a large number of our crew that when they reach the United States, they will be punished but that in the meanwhile, they may run loose and are expected to perform their jobs in good order.
Mr Heiser, does this sound like a truly workable plan to you?
Do you not think these men might choose the black flag here and now"?
Wales said, "Of course they would.
They are about to do so at any moment as it is.
All that is needed is for one man to feel self-confident enough to take the lead.
As soon as that one man is appointed by himself or the others or by a signal from Spencer, we are going to be rushed.
We are going to be rushed and murdered".
"That is extravagant language, Mr Wales.
We are not going to be rushed and murdered", Alexander said.
"We are going to bring the Somers into New York harbor safe and sound".
"Of course, I agree with the Captain", Gansevoort said thoughtfully, "but the conspiracy is ferocious and desperate.
The instinct of discipline has been lost.
Anything is possible when anarchy has the upper hand".
He paused, then added, "Everything on a ship is a weapon.
Implements of wood and iron are available for close and hasty combat no matter where a man stands.
And we are positive of so few and suspicious of so many".
"We ourselves must stand sentinel".
Alexander said.
"Under arms day and night, watch and watch about.
Those of us present, the Perry brothers, Deslonde and the other midshipmen now have the responsibility of the Somers.
A great deal of labor we have as well, for we are too uncertain of where trust may be placed".
And when he was alone again in the cabin, Alexander lowered his head into his arms and wept, for he knew full well what must be done, what in the end would be done.
With all his heart he had loved the Navy and now he must act in accordance with the Navy's implacable laws.
And when he did, when he gave to his ship that protection necessary to preserve her honor, he knew he would lose forever the Navy to which he had dedicated his soul.
Where had he failed?
How had he failed?
He who had tried so hard, who had yearned so passionately to be a great officer.
It came to him as he wept there aboard the Somers that it was as foolish to strive for greatness as to seek to storm the gates of heaven.
It was given or it was not given.
One did one's best and if fortune smiled, there was a reward.
One did one's best and if fortune frowned, an eighteen-year-old boy with murder in his heart sailed aboard one's ship.
And Alexander sobbed like a girl for the dreams he had had, and he felt no shame.
God knew his tears were his to shed if he so desired, for it had not been with an egotist's rage for fame that he had held precious his naval career.
Another field had given him fame enough to satisfy any egotist.
It was for love that he had served the Navy.
To have someday that love returned was what he had lived for.
Now the hope was gone.
Yes, he would bring the Somers safely into New York harbor but at a price.
Dear God, at what a price.
And after a while, he dried his tears and walked the deck as a captain should with assurance and dignity.
Stern-faced, he inspected the prisoners, satisfying himself that they were clean, well fed and comfortable within reason.
The prisoners averted their eyes but not before he had glimpsed hatred and anger.
Only Cromwell, the giant boatswain, was mild-mannered and respectful.
He said, "Captain, may I speak, please?
Captain, I am innocent of any plot against you or the ship".
"Are you, Cromwell"?
"Yes, sir.
Before God I swear I am innocent.
I know nothing of any plot, if there is such a thing".
"You are the only man aboard who can be in doubt".
"I cannot speak for others, sir, but I am innocent".
He leaned closer to Alexander, squinting up at him from the deck.
"Surely, Captain, you did not find my name on any suspicious paper or anything".
"No, Cromwell, I did not find your name.
You were careful about that".
Now Spencer, seeming with effort to shake himself from lethargy, spoke.
He said, "Cromwell is telling you the truth.
He is innocent".
Alexander shifted his gaze to Spencer.
The calmness and detachment of his tone suggested unawareness of how implicit was his own guilt in the words he had used to defend Cromwell.
Alexander knew Spencer too well to think him nai^ve or thick-skulled.
And in a sudden wave of painful clarity, Alexander recognized a kinship with Spencer.
Here was another human who understood the stupidity of quarreling with the inevitable.
There was good fortune and there was bad and Philip Spencer, in handcuffs and ankle irons, knew it to be a truth.
He expected nothing for himself but that which naturally follows those marked for misfortune.
The red-haired captain, towering above the prisoner as a symbol of decency and authority, was shocked to find himself looking with sympathy upon Philip Spencer.
This tragic lad had forged his own shackles.
But he could not have done so, could not have found the way, had fortune favored him.
And because fortune had favored neither the prisoner nor the red-haired captain, they would be each other's undoing.
"Spencer, if there is guilt, if you do not deny your own, how is it possible for Cromwell to be innocent?
He was your constant companion".
The hazel eyes met Alexander's.
"I tell you he is innocent".
"And do you think there is a reason why I should accept your word"?
"Yes.
I have nothing to gain by defending Cromwell".
"Nothing to lose, either, Spencer".
"That's true", Spencer agreed and withdrew himself from the conversation.
His eyes went back to contemplation of the sea.
"I am innocent, Captain", Cromwell said again.
"Before God, Captain, I am innocent".
And though it was logical that a man who could plot mass murder would not hesitate to speak an untruth, still it was difficult to understand why Spencer spoke only for Cromwell.
The boatswain was as guilty as any.
No action of his could be interpreted in his favor and four midshipmen, prior to their knowing the significance of the Greek paper, had seen it in Cromwell's hands while Spencer whispered explanations.
"I thought", Midshipman Rogers had told Alexander, "that Spencer was teaching him geometry".
It was fantastic to turn from the seven men in shackles to the wardroom, where a class of apprentices awaited him.
This was a training ship and the training would continue, but there was an element of frightful absurdity here which Alexander recognized.
Some of these apprentices were, in physical strength, already men and doubtless a percentage of them were Spencer's followers.
Rachel steered me along toward a school for young boys beginning to study the Torah.
Bits of trash lay in the roadway.
The air smelled warmish and foul.
A young man appeared out of a side alley and walked toward us with quick strides.
He wore a long double-breasted coat of a heavy material, dark trousers, and black boots with buckles.
His black hat with its wide brim, high crown, and fur trim rode high.
With his head erect, he approached, not glancing at us, and passed by with his clear eyes raised and fixed straight ahead.
He had a pinkish-white complexion, a small straight nose, a short black beard, and tightly curled paot.
I was suddenly conscious of my bare arms.
The girls in the market place wore long-sleeved dresses and covered their legs with cloth stockings.
I turned and watched him stride down the center of the road.
His hands were swinging at his sides, and he passed through the dingy market place with his back straight and, pivoting on his heel, he entered an old stone building.
Rachel had seen me watching the young man.
She smiled.
"When your mother was here he must have been a young boy.
Like the ones you will see now".
I swallowed hard and looked down at my feet plodding along beside Rachel.
She led me into a twisting side alley.
The dirty, discolored buildings looked boarded up, and their few windows stood high above our heads.
Rachel said that schools and synagogues occupied most of the buildings.
We entered one where the front door stood ajar and climbed a flight of steep steps to the main floor.
An old man with a white beard and dressed in a long shabby coat, baggy trousers, and a black skullcap greeted us.
Rachel talked to him.
He nodded, clasping and unclasping his hands over his paunch, and flicked glances at me.
I thought he would ask us to leave because Rachel and I were bare-armed, but he looked down into his beard and preceded us down the corridor.
His toes pointed out toward the walls.
He stopped in front of a door, placed a finger on his lips, and, still peering down into his beard, pushed open the door to a classroom.
We stepped inside.
He left us.
Little boys crowded together on long wooden benches, and in the center of the room sat the teacher.
His black beard dripped down over the front of his coat.
One white hand poised a stick above his desk.
He turned his surly, half-closed eyes toward us, stared for a second, then shouted in Yiddish, "One, two, three"!
rapping the stick against the desk.
The little boys shrilled out a Yiddish translation or interpretation of the Five Books of Moses, which they had previously chanted in Hebrew.
They chanted a fixed tune in time to the report of the stick.
Each boy opened his small mouth wide and rocked back and forth on the bench in the way his grandfather and great-grandfather had studied and prayed in the ghettos of Europe.
The boys were tiny.
They had large bright eyes, the small upturned noses of all babies everywhere, and hair cropped short except for the long ringlets of paot framing their little white faces.
They bent over yellowed prayerbooks and looked up only to watch the teacher.
Since they did not glance curiously at us once, I guessed that there was a penalty for distraction.
The guttural language from the ghetto stopped.
The teacher plunged the children into a new portion, this time in Hebrew, rapping the stick incessantly.
One boy who rocked back and forth over his worn book had bright red hair and freckles.
His tightly curled paot hung down to his narrow shoulders.
In the center of his brilliant curls sat a small black skullcap.
His head barely rose above the table.
I stared at him for a long time.
He did not return my interest.
My eyes traveled over the bare walls and up to the one partially open window high above the little figures and back to the boys.
Some of them ignored the texts and had apparently memorized the words long ago.
They singsonged the portion at the teacher, who accompanied them in an off-key baritone and spurred them on with the stick.
The tapping defined the rhythm and kept the boys awake.
I could not keep my eyes away from the boy with the red hair.
His body pitched back and forth on the bench.
His front teeth were missing.
I shuddered and backed out of the room.
Rachel followed, looked at me, and clucked with her tongue.
We walked down the cool hall silently.
From behind us came the rapping of the stick and the high-pitched voices of the boys who would grow to devote their lives to rigid study and prayer.
I said, "How long do they keep that up"?
"All day", she said.
"Except for Shabbat, when they are praying all day".
I rubbed my hands together.
They had turned numb and prickly in the classroom.
The old man in the baggy clothes waited at the foot of the steps.
He glanced down into his beard and muttered something in Yiddish.
Rachel said, "He asks for money".
She passed by him.
I reached into the pocket of my skirt, fingered ten pruta, and dropped the coin.
Then I picked it up again and handed it to the old man.
He thanked me.
I didn't look at him.
I grinned at Rachel.
"Does this bother you"?
I said.
She smiled to herself.
"Most of our Sabras think it's horrible.
When we were fighting, a few of our orthodox people were lying down in the roads so we could not pass.
They said that we must not fight but wait for the Messiah".
I was amazed.
You had to have convictions to lie down in the road in all those clothes and appear as though you might wish to turn yourself out of your own home.
You had to be stupid or crazy or immortal.
And I wasn't.
I was American.
You had to know, also, that you were going to fail.
All of it might have been heroic, but they had done it in the wrong place.
I resented them.
Rachel faced me.
Her bright eyes were twinkling.
She said, "Sometimes I think they are keeping religion for us while we play around.
Your mother hated this way of life.
She wished to change much for the children here".
I said quietly, respectfully, "What did she do here?
In this section"?
Rachel clicked her tongue behind her teeth.
"Here, nothing.
But when she saw the children you have just visited, she wanted to take them away and put them out in the country, in the kibbutzim.
She loved the children.
She was a strange woman, your mother.
When she loved, it was with a passion that drove her along and carried along with her those things she loved.
Nothing was too impossible for her to do when she wanted.
She stayed here to work for Aliah.
For many immigrants, for many children, the first thing they knew of Israel and freedom was your mother.
Sometimes it was dangerous for her".
Rachel grinned slyly.
"But she loved danger.
She took it with her wherever she went; she chose it.
And I think she sought out danger as much as she sought out helping other people.
She was most strange woman.
Ready to follow her impulse.
It was an impulse when she was here in Me'a She'arim- I was with her- that led her to stay in Israel.
Your mother wanted to bring children to Israel so that they could leave their ghettos.
Here they did not need to be in ghettos.
If she could not take the children out of this section, at least she could take other children out of their countries and put them on the farms.
She set out to make sure that no Jewish child anyplace in the world had to live in a place such as this".
I said quietly, gaining nerve, ready to ask any question at all, no matter how intimate, ready to be rebuffed, "Then why did she leave Israel?
I'd like to know that very much".
Rachel clasped her hands together and slowed her pace.
The soles of her sandals reported sharply on the cobblestones.
She pursed her lips, then clamped them together so tightly that I thought she was angry with me.
But she sighed and her face relaxed.
"Trouble came into her life.
She had good friends here, people who liked her.
Who loved her.
But she had to go out and hurt herself.
There was a man here in town.
He helped her meet people so she could go out and do the work she wanted.
She worked very hard.
There was a refugee who was able to come here because of her.
He came with his son.
At first I thought they were relatives of your mother, but it was not so.
This refugee was a middle-aged man, a big, handsome man with a strut to his walk as I have never before seen.
He had the black numerals on his arm, so he had been branded in a concentration camp.
Yet he walked like a young man.
Often he was terribly despondent and talked to no one.
Then he would walk off for a few days alone in the direction of Europe.
All his family was dead, except for his son.
Your mother would always retrieve him when he wandered off, and she would send him home to his son.
He loved the son and was always glad to be sent back to him.
Then his son did something"- Rachel threw up her hands- "I don't know what, but something, to an official here- it was during the Mandate- and the son was imprisoned.
A few hours after the son was arrested, your mother was informed.
She ran from a little group of us.
We were sitting together, talking.
She went to the father and found he had hanged himself".
Rachel paused.
It was silent in the stone alley.
Then she continued with energy, "I myself did not see her until a week after she had run off to find the father.
No one saw her except the man Reuveni".
"Yes", I said.
"I know him".
Rachel gave me a direct, bright-eyed look.
She said, "Reuveni wanted your mother to give up her deep interest in this refugee.
He said she would only hurt herself.
He complained to me once that I must talk to her.
When I did, she shrugged her shoulders and said that Reuveni wanted her to marry him.
I asked her if she would, and she said she would not.
He had known when he first helped her to meet the right people and work with them that she did not intend to marry him.
Anyway, I did not see her until two weeks after the refugee hanged himself.
She came to me one day.
She was pale and skinny; she was terribly alone.
And she said that after this man had been dead for a week she had gone to Reuveni and accepted his proposal.
He shouted at her and told her he loved her and couldn't understand why she had upset herself.
But now he was happy she would let him straighten out her life and take care of her.
He would never let her harm herself again.
For one whole week he never let her stay alone.
She let him lead her around.
He took her to a doctor, for she was run down, nervous, did not care where she was.
Reuveni took her with him wherever he went.
He did not let her talk to people; he did not let her choose her own food.
She was limp and beaten from her loss; she did not care.
"And I'll take you with me".
The two of them against the world.
That had been how she imagined it.
For when he began to talk and dream all at the same time, making his plans as he went, she had begun dreaming too.
But now the dream was over.
The big waking up had happened.
"What did I imagine"?
she thought.
"Did I see him about to swing low in a chariot?
Or maybe poling up the south fork of the Forked Deer River braving the wastes dumped in it?
Maybe I saw him on a barge with a gang of Ethiopians poling it".
And I'll take you with me.
He had taken her all right.
Wednesday nights after youth fellowship.
Out of the church and into his big car, it tooling over the road with him driving and the headlights sweeping the pike ahead and after he hit college, his expansiveness, the quaint little pine board tourist courts, cabins really, with a cute naked light bulb in the ceiling (unfrosted and naked as a streetlight, like the one on the corner where you used to play when you were a kid, where you watched the bats swooping in after the bugs, watching in between your bouts at hopscotch), a room complete with moths pinging the light and the few casual cockroaches cruising the walls, an insect Highway Patrol with feelers waving.
And the bed that sagged in a certain place where all the weight had been put too many times before and the walls fine and thin for overhearing talk in the next room when Gratt went out for ice, the sound coming through the walls like something on the other side of the curtain, so you knew they heard you when they were quiet and while you lay wondering what they had heard you listened.
And Gratt Shafer would be in Memphis today for the wedding rehearsal and then tomorrow he would marry just like everybody knew he would, just like everybody knew all along.
Like Mattie and the mayor up there gripping the microphone and Toonker Burkette back in his office yanking out teeth, like they all knew he would.
Just like the balloon would go up and you could sit all day and wish it would spring a leak or blow to hell up and burn and nothing like that would happen.
Or you could hope the parachute wouldn't open just so you could say you saw it not open, not because you meant any harm to Starkey Poe in his suit of red underwear, but mainly because you were tired of being an old maid- a thing which cannot admit when it thinks it might be pregnant, but must stand the dizzy feeling all alone and go on like everything is all right instead of being able to say to somebody in a normal voice: "I think I'm pregnant".
You could wish that.
Or you could wish your daddy would really do it- kill Gratt Shafer like he said when you all the time, all along, could feel the nerve draining out of him like air out of a punctured tire when you are on a muddy road alone and it is raining and at night.
So you sit in the car and listen to the air run out and listen to the rain and see the mud in front of the headlights, waiting for you, for your new spectator pumps, waiting for you to squat by yourself out there in your tight skirt, crying and afraid and trying to get that damned son-of-a-bitch tire off, because that is being an old maid too, if you happen to drive a car, it is changing the tire yourself in the night, and in the mud and the rain, hating to get out in it but afraid to stay and afraid to try to walk out for help.
And every sound that might be the rain also might be the man who thinks after he has raped you he has to beat your brains out with a tire tool so you won't tell, a combination like ham and eggs, rape her and kill her, and that is being an old maid too.
It is not having his baby nestled warm and fat against your breast and it is not having somebody that really gives a damn whether some tramp cracks your skull.
And most of all it is not having the only man you could love, whether he drives a bread truck or delivers the mail or checks the berry crates down at the sheds, or owns seventeen oil wells and six diamond mines, for if you are anybody what he is or does makes no difference if he is the one.
He can even be a mild-voiced little-town guy with big-town ideas and level gray eyes and a heart even Houdini couldn't figure out, how it is unlocked.
And he can be on the way to Memphis, your Gratt Shafer can, and you discover you can stay alive and hate him and love him and want him even if it means you want him- really want him- dead.
Because if you can't then nobody else can either, nobody else can have him.
For you don't share him, not even with God.
If it is love, you don't.
And I'll take you with me.
Even if that's all the promise he ever gave or ever will give, the giving of it once was enough and you believed it then and you will always believe it, even when it is finally the only thing in the world you have left to believe, and the whole world is telling you that one was a lie.
Even when he is on the way to Memphis you will still have the promise resting inside you like a gift, and it is he inside of you.
And in a way the promise works out true, for whether he wants you or not, you go with him in your heart.
You feel him every mile further away.
You feel where he is and what he sees, and at night you feel when he is asleep or with the other woman, the one that never could love him the way you do, the one who got him because she didn't particularly give a damn whether she got him or didn't.
And you know you will always wonder all of your life whether it was because you wanted him so bad that you didn't get him, and you can feel nearly sorry enough to cry when you think of that other guy, the chump who begged you to marry him, the one with the plastered hair and the car he couldn't afford and the too-shiny shoes.
You think: "Did he feel that way about me"?
It comes to you that probably he did feel that way to let you use him like you did when you couldn't have Gratt Shafer; that he must have since he was there like the radio for you to turn on or snap off when you got tired of him, that other guy.
It dawns on you that instead of a lump to fill the seat across the bridge table from you, he was a man, and that because Gratt Shafer was making you miserable, you were passing it down to him, to Gratt Shafer's substitute, that other guy.
And you wonder if that is why the little man lost his job and his car and stayed drunk about a year before he straightened out and moved to St Louis, where he got to be a big unhappy success.
You wonder if he looks at his wife now and thinks of you.
You wonder about the Christmas card with no name on it, and it comes to you that maybe it would have been better to have made somebody else happy if you couldn't be happy yourself, to give somebody else the one they wanted- to give them you.
"Damn the world", she thought.
She looked out at the corn field, the great green deep acres of it rolled out like the sea in the field beyond the whitewashed fence bordering the grounds.
The mayor envisioned factories there.
Homes and factories and schools and a big wide federal highway, instead of peaceful corn to rest your eyes on while you tried to rest your heart, while you tried not to look at the balloon and the bandstand and the uniforms and the flash of the instruments.
The bands were impatient, but they were the only ones.
The others, the ones in the stands, were spellbound, for hearing the mayor was for them like listening to a symphony was for sophisticated folks in New York City.
It was like being in the concert hall in the afternoon and hearing the piano virtuoso rehearsing.
He was good and they knew that what he was doing for them he would do all over the United States some day.
So they stayed quiet and hung not on what he said but on how he said it, not listening exactly, but rather, feeling.
If a man was good, if he was going to be governor, you felt it and you wanted him to go on forever.
You were sorry when he finished talking because while he was up there you were someone else and the world was something else too.
It was a place full of courage and hope and you were part of it.
You laughed and then your chest swelled and you felt you could cry for a little bit, and then a feeling hit you like a chill in your stomach and the goose bumps rippled along your arm.
He hit the theme about dying to defend your country, and you were ready to do it right then, without a second thought.
While he talked you wouldn't trade being a West Tennessee farmer for being anything else in the whole damned world, no matter if it hadn't, in six weeks, rained enough to wet a rat's ass.
She glanced at the man nodding beside her, a man with weather cracks furrowed into his lean cheeks, with powdery pale eyes reflecting all the droughts he had seen, reflecting the sky and the drought which must follow now in August- yes, with eyes predicting the drought and here it was only June, only festival time again and thoughts of Gratt Shafer would not leave her.
"I should have stayed at the store", she thought.
Back at the Factory-to-You with the other old maids, back there she was the youngest clerk and she was thirty-four, which made her young enough to resent the usual ideal working conditions, like the unventilated toilet with the door you had to hold shut while you sat down.
There was no lock because Herman didn't allow a lock.
A lock on the toilet would encourage malingering and primping.
The toilet hadn't had a sincere scrubbing in years and there were things written on the walls of the little boxed-in place because you couldn't keep the public out- entirely.
She could not count the times Herman had rapped on the door, just a couple of bangs that shook the whole damned closet and might, someday, break away the pipe connections from the wall.
The two little bangs meant that he was getting impatient to have a crowd of customers waited on and that if he had to he would jerk open the door and drag out, by the opposite door handle which she would be clutching, whichever-the-hell clerk it was who thought she could waste so much store time on the pot.
And the hours were six-thirty in the morning until eleven at night on Saturdays and during sales, and there were no chairs and you couldn't smoke and the cooling was overhead fans and there was no porter or janitor.
Among us, we three handled quite a few small commissions, from spot drawings for advertising agencies uptown to magazine work and quick lettering jobs.
Each of us had his own specialty besides.
George did wonderful complicated pen-and-ink drawings like something out of a medieval miniature: hundreds of delicate details crammed into an eight-by-ten sheet and looking as if they had been done under a jeweler's glass.
He also drew precise crisp spots, which he sold to various literary and artistic journals, The New Yorker, for instance, or Esquire.
I did book jackets and covers for paperback reprints: naked girls huddling in corners of dingy furnished rooms while at the doorway, daring the cops to take him, is the guy in shirt sleeves clutching a revolver.
The book could be The Brothers Karamazov, but it would still have the same jacket illustration.
I remember once I did a jacket for Magpie Press; the book was a fine historical novel about Edward /3,, and I did a week of research to get the details just right: the fifteenth-century armor, furnishings, clothes.
I even ferreted out the materials from which shields were made- linden wood covered with leather- so I'd get the light reflections accurate.
McKenzie, the art editor, took one look at my finished sketch and said, "Nothing doing, Rufus.
In the first place, it's static; in the second place, it doesn't look authentic; and in the third place, it would cost a fortune to reproduce in the first place- you've got six colors there including gold".
I said, "Mr McKenzie, it is as authentic as careful research can make it".
He said, "That may be, but it isn't authentic the way readers think.
They know from their researches into television and the movies that knights in the middle ages had beautiful flowing haircuts like Little Lord Fauntleroy, and only the villains had beards.
And girls couldn't have dressed like that- it isn't transparent enough".
In the end, I did the same old picture, the naked girl and the guy in the doorway, only I put a Lord Byron shirt on the guy, gave him a sword instead of a pistol, and painted in furniture from the stills of a costume movie.
McKenzie was as happy as a clam.
"That's authenticity", he said.
As for Donald, he actually sold paintings.
We all painted in our spare time, and we had all started as easel painters with scholarships, but he was the only one of us who made any regular money at it.
Not much; he sold perhaps three or four a year, and usually all to Joyce Monmouth or her friends.
He had style, a real inner vision of his very own.
It was strange stuff- it reminded me of the pictures of a child, but a child who has never played with other kids and has lived all its life with adults.
There was the freshness of color, the freedom of perception, the lack of self-consciousness, but with a twist that made the forms leap from the page and smack you in the eye.
We used to kid him by saying he only painted that way because he was so nearsighted.
It may have been true for all I know, because his glasses were like the bottoms of milk bottles, but it didn't prevent the paintings from being exciting.
He also had, at times, an uncanny absent-minded air like a sleepwalker; he would look right through you while you were talking to him, and if you said, "For Christ's sake, Donald, you've got Prussian blue all over your shirt", he would smile, and nod, and an hour later the paint would be all over his pants as well.
Mrs Monmouth thought of him as her discovery, and she paid two to three hundred dollars for a painting.
It was all gravy, and Donald didn't need much to live on; none of us did.
We shared the expenses of the studio, and we all lived within walking distance of it, in cheap lodgings of one kind or another.
Attending the life class was my idea- or rather, Askington's idea, but I was ripe for it, and the other two wouldn't have gone if I hadn't talked them into it.
I wanted to paint again.
I hadn't done a serious picture in almost a year.
It wasn't just the pressure of work, although that was the excuse I often used, even to myself.
It was the kind of work I was doing, the quality of the ambition it awoke in me, that kept me from painting.
I kept saying, "If I could just build up a reputation for myself, make some real money, get to be well known as an illustrator- like Peter Askington, for instance- then I could take some time off and paint".
Askington was a kind of goal I set myself; I had admired him long before I talked to him.
It looked to me as though he had everything an artist could want, joy in his work, standing in the profession, a large and steady income.
The night we first met, at one of Mrs Monmouth's giant parties, he was wearing a brown cashmere jacket with silver buttons and a soft pink Viyella shirt; instead of a necktie he wore a leather bolo drawn through a golden ring in which was set a lump of pale pure jade.
This set his tone: richness of texture and color, and another kind of richness as well, for his clothing and decorations would have paid the Brush-off's rent for a year.
He was fifteen years older than I- forty-four- but full of spring and sparkle.
He didn't look like what I thought of as an old man, and his lively and erudite speech made him seem even younger.
He was one of the most prominent magazine illustrators in America; you saw one of his paintings on the cover of one or another of the slick national magazines every month.
Life had included him in its "Modern American Artists" series and had photographed him at his studio in the East Sixties; the corner of it you could see in the photograph looked as though it ought to have Velasquez in it painting the royalty of Spain.
I had a long talk with him.
We went into Mrs Monmouth's library, which had low bookshelves all along the walls, and above them a Modigliani portrait, a Jackson Pollock twelve feet long, and a gorgeous Miro with a yellow background, that looked like an inscription from a Martian tomb.
The fireplace had tiles made for Mrs Monmouth by Picasso himself.
Like certain expensive restaurants, just sitting there gave you the illusion of being wealthy yourself.
In the course of our talk, Askington mentioned that he spent part of each week studying.
"By yourself"?
I asked.
"No, I take classes with different people", he said.
"I don't think I've reached the point, yet, where I can say I know everything I ought to know about the craft.
Besides, it's important to the way a painter thinks that he should move in a certain atmosphere, an atmosphere in which he may absorb the ideas of other masters, as Du^rer went to Italy to meet Bellini and Mantegna".
He made a circle with his thumb and fingers.
"Painting isn't this big, you know.
It doesn't embrace only the artist, alone before his easel.
It is as large as all of art, interdependent, varied, multitudinous".
He threw his arms wide, his face shining.
"The artist is like a fragment of a mosaic- no, he is more than that, a virtuoso performer in some vast philharmonic.
One of these days, I'm going to organize a gigantic exhibition that will span everything that's being painted these days, from extreme abstract expressionism to extreme photorealism, and then you'll be able to see at a glance how much artists have in common with each other.
The eye is all, inward or outward.
Ah, what a title for the exhibition: The Eye is All"!
"What do you study"?
I asked.
I was fascinated; just listening to him made me feel intelligent.
"I'm studying anatomy with Burns", he replied.
"Maybe you know him.
He teaches at the Manhattan School of Art".
I nodded.
I had studied with Burns ten years before, during the scholarship year the Manhattan gave me, along with the five-hundred-dollar prize for my paintings of bums on Hudson Street.
Burns and I had not loved each other.
"I'm also studying enameling with Hajime Iijima", he went on, "and twice a week I go to a life class taught by Pendleton".
"Osric Pendleton"?
I said.
"My God, is he still alive?
He must be a million years old.
I went to a retrospective of his work when I was eighteen, and I thought he was a contemporary of Cezanne's".
"Not quite".
Askington laughed.
"He's about sixty, now.
Still painting, still a kind of modern impressionist, beautiful canvases of mountains and farms.
He even makes the city look like one of Thoreau's hangouts.
I've always admired him, and when I heard he was taking a few pupils, I went to him and joined his class".
"Yes, it sounds great", I said, "but suppose you don't think of yourself as an impressionist painter"?
"You're missing the point", he said.
"He has the magical eye.
And he is a great man.
Contact with him is stimulating.
And that's the trouble with so many artists today.
They lack stimulation.
They sit alone in their rooms and try to paint, and only succeed in isolating themselves still farther from life.
That's one of the reasons art is becoming a useless occupation.
In the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, right up to the early nineteenth century, the painter was a giant in the world.
He was an artisan, a man who studied his trade and developed his craftsmanship the way a goldsmith or a wood carver did.
He filled a real need, showing society what it looked like, turning it inside out, portraying its wars and its leaders, its ugliness and its beauties, reflecting its profound religious impulses.
He was a propagandist- they weren't afraid of the word, then- satirist, nature lover, philosopher, scientist, what you will, a member of every party and of no party.
But look at us today!
We hold safe little jobs illustrating tooth-paste ads or the salacious incidents in trivial novels, and most of our easel painting is nothing but picking the fluff out of the navel so it can be contemplated in greater purity.
A bunch of amateur dervishes!
What we need is to get back to the group, to learning and apprenticeship, to the cafe and the school".
He could certainly talk.
The upshot of the evening was that I got the address of Pendleton's studio- or rather, of the studio in which he gave his classes, for he didn't work there himself- and joined the life class, which met every Tuesday and Thursday from ten to twelve in the morning.
It was an awkward hour, but I didn't have to punch any time clock, and it only meant that sometimes I had to stay a couple of hours later at the drawing board to finish up a job.
After a short time, both George and Donald joined the class with me so they wouldn't feel lonely, and we used to hang a sign on the door of the Brush-off reading OUT TO WORK.
It was mostly for the benefit of the mailman, because hardly anybody else ever visited us.
In a way, Askington was right.
"Stimulating" was the word for it.
I don't know that it was always as rewarding as I had expected it to be.
Partly, it was because Pendleton himself wasn't what I anticipated.
I had come prepared to worship at the feet of this classic, and he turned out to be a rather bitter old man who smelled of dead cigars.
No, that isn't quite fair.
Actually, there was a lot of force in him, which is why I kept on in that class instead of quitting after a week.
## SUCH a little thing to start with- the car registration.
"Ida, where is the car license"?
she asked.
"I can't find it in the glove compartment".
"Via must have it", I answered readily enough, recalling her last visit.
"Via", she was frowning.
"Why should Via have it"?
Had she forgotten she had signed the car away, that whatever they mutually owned had been divided among the children?
I was silent.
I didn't want to stir things up.
"I drive my own car by courtesy of Via"?
"I'm sure she'd turn it over to you, if you'd rather.
You know that".
She looked as if she were accusing me of some fraud.
"She must have taken the registration when she went to Walter's.
I'll call her".
"No, thank you.
I want nothing of Via's".
Why should this suddenly assail her?
Walter was giving me checks for my pay, the household bills.
Had she been in such a turmoil that this had slipped her mind?
"What a fool I've been", she said quietly.
"I knew all this, but I paid no attention.
I don't even own the house I'm standing in.
I was so sure it was all temporary **h that we would all embrace, and then the lawyer would tear up all those things **h "It narrows down down down and finally there is no way out.
If I am not to be Mrs Salter I am nothing".
I suppose I should have paid attention to that half-murmured remark, but it seemed one of those extreme statements women under stress indulge in.
I love you, I hate you, I feel like killing you and myself, and in the same sequence I love you I think you're the most wonderful the most noble and so on and on, meanwhile eating a good breakfast and dinner and enjoying living.
So I went about my business.
I made a lemon sponge, a light dessert, roasted a chicken, parboiled some frozen vegetables, so there would be something nice in the icebox for the weekend.
"Don't bother, Ida", she said.
"I have these appointments in town for Saturday, and I'll probably spend Sunday with Dolly or the Thaxters".
At last, I thought, she's recovering her spirits.
With this movie-to-be in London, and new faces about her there, she would soon be a more tranquil, a wiser person, all the better for her stay out here.
I felt more cheerful, as if I had had a part in bringing her through to a greater tolerance of herself.
And I went back to my own cottage to live my own little patch of life.
It was foggy that evening, but the path to my house was so well grooved that I could feel my way, accustomed as I was to the dense mists that rise from the sun-warmed palisades of the river and sometimes last for days.
In the morning the fog was still thick so that to go to the village I crept along with my headlights full on.
I did notice a twinkle of light from the big house through the woods but as I had left a light on in my own house because of the fog I assumed Mrs Salter had done the same before she left for town.
I did my shopping, had my dentist appointment, and from there I went to the women's lunch at our parish church where we discussed plans for the annual Christmas bazaar, so that dusk was beginning to gather when I drove home in the late afternoon.
But the next day- Sunday.
Why, when I drove down to church, didn't it speak to me, seeing the lights still on and the day crisp and clear?
Prisoners brought to the dock accused of murder or accident say they cannot remember, and reading the accounts of their testimony you cannot believe that the mind can remove, absent itself, unsee.
When I came back from church at noon Mrs Thaxter was turning into the Salter driveway.
Even at a car's length I could sense that something was wrong, and so I followed her up to the turnaround in front of the house.
Dolly Engisch was waiting there on the steps and she came running toward us.
"She's nowhere, nowhere"!
she screamed, and both women ran up to the house, and I followed.
The search began, in all the rooms, running upstairs, down, opening closets, talking, exclaiming in rushes and gasps.
Everything was as I had left it the night before last- her portfolio and bag for town, her lingerie and dress and shoes laid out **h only her mink coat was missing.
And she.
Then the telephoning began.
I, who until that day before had been Mrs Salter's friend, her equal, was the servant now.
It was Dolly and Mrs Thaxter who were calling Via, everybody.
And when they spoke they spoke to each other and not to me.
And after I brought them sandwiches and coffee I had to go back to my place in the kitchen and wait.
Sitting in the kitchen I recalled every word Mrs Salter said that could have been a sign to me.
"If I am not to be Mrs Salter then I am nothing".
Why didn't that alarm me then?
And when she returned from taking her guests back to New York she had said, "All they talked about was Harvie **h Harvie this, Harvie that **h When they know the truth will they drop away from me, will I become a nothing"?
And then I remembered a few years before after their return from a short trip to Rome I had heard her boast, over and over again, "On the boat people liked me for myself".
I had made a habit of calling her at night from my cottage, just to check.
The last night I had called, but the line was always busy and it reassured me.
I assumed it was one of those hour-long conversations with Dolly or Constance, she comfortable in bed.
But it seemed not from what they were saying.
Then was it a final desperate plea from her, to whom?
**h hanging on and on past any man's patience **h some final stab of conclusion?
She was found the day after at the bottom of the cliff.
I tried to believe that what must have happened was that, restless, disturbed by this telephone call or whatever, she walked out in the night, as she had a habit of doing.
Sometimes she took the path that winds up around my cottage to the walk at the edge of the cliff.
It's so romantic up there, she used to say, with the broad river gleaming in its moontrack like an enormous dark mirror and all the sounds of the night, so poetic.
With all that warm rain and the fog it might have been as simple as a loosened rock, a misstep.
But I didn't really think it was as simple as that, nor did anyone else.
When a fisherman brought her up in his arms, still, small, as if she were a child asleep, I began to shudder with a terrible excitement, almost triumphant, that I still cannot account for.
Was it a hysterical release from the long strain of vigilance of those weeks?
that at last the vigilance, the will gives way?
Or what was it that, before Via, Sonny, Walter and all, I began almost to dance with shuddering and cry out, "I knew she'd do it!
I knew"!
Everyone stared at me and drew back.
Their eyes turned cold and accusing, even Via's.
And they have never changed.
At the same time that I thought I understood her at long last and pitied her, underneath this knowing had there burned unquenched by my pity a fire of hate, an enduring envy that burst out in that ghastly outcry?
Was that what had given way in me?
Even now I am appalled at how little anyone knows of what they really are.
It is absurd of course to say that that one exclamation estranged me from the family I considered my very own, but there it hangs, a cooling void that broke our close connection with each other.
At the time I was filled with self-pity at this separation, but in the years since I have come to understand that the sight of me was painful to them after that outcry.
In my person they would always remember that last long time of me alone with her, so if they told themselves that I could have prevented it, I can understand that by now and love them still, because everyone must justify, have a scapegoat for what is not to be borne.
It is not their avoidance that rankles; it is when I meet someone who was a close friend of the family, and therefore of mine, and they nod to me so coolly and walk away, that it hurts.
I could tell them, but no one ever asked, why I had cried out so triumphantly at the sight of her body.
No, I forget Mrs Mathias, who had been away visiting a married daughter when it happened.
She haunted me; she persisted in explaining how and why she had advised Mrs Salter to return to the country.
"We all feel guilty", I turned away from her coldly.
"It was nobody's fault.
She overplayed her hand".
"What do you mean"?
she frowned.
"Why put such a high value on being top dog"?
I added.
It was coarse, almost insulting, this harsh appraisal, and she has never come to see me since.
But suppose she had not taken Mrs Mathias' advice and lived on like thousands of women in towns, dispossessed of love, hanging on to makeshifts, and altogether and finally arid.
If she chose, and in that final decision discarded, what, above all, all of us value, life itself, must she not have risen to her fullest height, and transcending her murky self, felt at last the passion of a great moral decision?
If they say I could have stopped her it is because they are ignorant of her last weeks of self-examination, her search into herself and its conclusions.
Yes, I had cried out that I knew she'd do it, but without my fully realizing it at the time, it was a cry of triumph for her, praise at her deliverance from pettiness and greed- and guilt.
She was finally at rest in truth, of her own proud free choice.
At rest with my darling Ellen, the first Mrs Salter.
## MR SALTER came home.
The funeral service was in the house, the Methodist minister, how clean and glistening his eyeglasses and his neat body standing beside that coffin with that doll inside, a stranger speaking to strangers the old sacred words, and the rain drumming incessantly in accompaniment, seven days of relentless rain that turned the ground to mud so the burial had to be postponed.
I waited.
Then Via called to say they had decided to cremate her- as they had Ellen, the thought leaped to my mind- and did I want to meet her at the funeral home the next morning.
The coffin stood on trestles in a corner of the long low dimly lit funeral parlor, on its dark shining surface the sheaf of white roses I had ordered.
I knelt, just for decency I thought at the time, but found myself whispering, "Our Father which Art in Heaven **h" And it was only after that that something unlocked in me and I felt a grief.
Via was in the parking lot when I went outside.
Together we waited in her car until the hearse moved out and we followed it down into the heavy traffic of New Jersey.
By the time we arrived and entered the building sacred music was already swelling out into the chapel-like auditorium with its discreet symbols of religious faiths.
Again I felt impelled to kneel, and reached back and pulled Via down.
Something would come into her heart **h if nothing else the sounds of Bach would give her some healing.
"I had a rather small place of my own.
A nice bachelor apartment in a place called the Lancaster Arms".
"Uhhu", she said, hardly listening as she studied her left eyelid.
"And then I had another place farther downtown I used as a studio".
"Uhhu".
"I'm not a man who has many close intimate friends, Carla", he said, wanting her to know all about him.
"Oh, I'd drink with newspaper people.
I think I was what you might call a convivial man, and yet it was when I was alone in my studio, doing my work, that I really felt alive.
But I think a man needs at least one intimate friend to communicate with".
Pausing, he waited for her to turn, to ask a question.
She showed no interest at all in the life he had led back home, and it hurt him a little.
"Well, what about you, Carla"?
"Me"?
she asked, turning slowly.
"What about me"?
"Did you make friends easily"?
"Umm, uhhu".
"Somehow I imagine that as you grew up you were alone a lot.
How about it"?
"I guess so", she said taking a Kleenex from her purse.
When she had wiped some of the lipstick from her mouth, she stared solemnly at her image in the mirror.
"Are your people still alive"?
he asked, trying to touch a part of her life Alberto hadn't discussed; so he could have something of her for himself.
"You talk so well, Carla", he went on.
"You seem to have read so much, you have a natural gift for words", he added, trying to flatter her vanity.
"You must have been good at history at school.
Where did you go to school"?
"What is this"?
she asked, turning suddenly.
"Don't you know all about me by this time?
My name's Carla Caneli.
This is my town.
I sleep with you.
You know something more about me every day, don't you?
Would you be happier if I made up some stories about my life, told you some lies?
Why are you trying to worry me"?
"I'm not trying to worry you".
"Well, all right then".
The cleansing tissues she had been using had been falling on the floor, and he got up and picked up one, then another, hoping she would notice what he was doing.
At home he had been a clean orderly man, and now he had to hide his annoyance.
Was she just naturally sloppy about everything but her physical appearance?
he wondered.
Would he have to clean up after her every day, clean the kitchen, the bathroom, and get down on his knees and scrub the kitchen floor, then hang up her dresses, pick up her stockings, make the bed while she lay around?
He straightened up, ready to vent his exasperation, then grew afraid.
If he dwelt on the indignities he suffered he would lose all respect for her, and without the respect he might lose his view of her, too.
"What's the matter"?
she asked suddenly.
"Nothing.
Nothing at all", he said quietly.
"Let's go out".
"Are those the only shoes you have, Sam"?
"What's the matter with them"?
"The heavy thick soles.
Look at them".
"They're an expensive English shoe for walking around a lot.
I like them".
"Sam, no one around here wears such heavy soles.
Can't you get another pair"?
"Maybe I could", he said, surprised that she could turn from herself and notice anything about him.
"I'll get an elegant pair of thin-soled Italian shoes tomorrow, Carla".
"And I don't know why you want to go on wearing that outfit", she said, making a face.
"What's the matter with it"?
He had put on the gray jacket and the dark-gray slacks and the fawn-colored shirt he had worn that first night in Rome when he had encountered her on the street.
"Oh, Sam.
You look like a tweedy Englishman.
Can't you wear something else and look a little more as though you belonged"?
"I don't mind at all", he said, delighted with her attention.
Changing his clothes, he put on his dark-blue flannel suit, and laid away the gray jacket with the feeling that he might be putting it aside for good.
But it was a hopeful sign, he told himself.
She no longer wanted anything about him to remind her of the circumstances of their meeting that first night in Parioli.
That day they loafed around, just getting the feel of the city.
They looked at the ruins of the old Roman wall on the lower Via Veneto, then they went to the Farnese Gardens.
She had some amusing scandal about the Farneses in the old days.
Then they took a taxi to Trastevere.
"There's a church you should see", she said.
And when they stood by the fountain in the piazza looking at Santa Maria he had to keep a straight face, not letting on he had been there with Alberto.
He let her tell him all about the church.
Then they had dinner.
All evening she was eloquent and pleased with herself.
When they got home at midnight she was tired out.
And in the morning when he woke up at ten the church bells were ringing.
He had never heard so many bells, and as he lay there listening, he thought of her scolding him for his remarks when he had looked up at the obelisk and the church at the top of the Spanish Steps.
It was a good thing that she clung to her religion, he thought.
She might like to take him to St Peter's.
"Carla, wake up", he said shaking her.
"It's ten o'clock.
Aren't you going out to mass?
You could take me to St Peter's".
"Uhhu", she muttered.
"Come on, you'll be late".
"I think I'll sleep in this morning", she said drowsily, and as she snuggled against him, he wondered if she ever went to church.
Why did he want her to go to church?
he wondered **h Probably because it was a place where she might get a feeling of certainty and security.
It would be good for her.
It was too bad he had no feeling himself for church.
Not his poor mother's fault.
She would have been better off if she had stuck to her Bible.
As for himself, he just didn't have the temperament for it.
From the time he had been at college he had achieved a certain tranquility and composure by accepting the fact that there were certain things he could never know.
Then he thought of those Old Testament figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Just figures out of a tribal folklore.
Could he honestly believe it would be good for Carla to have those old prophets gripping her imagination now?
Being a woman though, she would take only what she needed from church.
It was too bad he wasn't a Catholic himself.
Or a Protestant, or one of those amusing dogmatic atheists, or a strict orthodox Communist.
What was the matter with him that they all wearied him?
It was the times, he was sure.
All the ideologies changing from day to day, right under his eyes, so how could a man look to any one of them for an enlargement of his freedom?
It was all too wearying.
Look somewhere else.
But where?
Just the same, he thought, pondering over it, it would be a good thing for a girl like Carla if she got up and went to church.
A half hour later he got her up to go out for breakfast so the Ferraros, hearing them hurrying down the stairs, would think they were going to a late mass.
It seemed to him that if the Ferraros felt sure of them, could place them, it would help him to feel more sure of himself with Carla.
"Since we're having coffee with them this afternoon", he said, "I think I'll ask the daughter if we can pay her to come in every day to clean for us".
And he waited for her to say, "Oh, no, I can do it, Sam.
There's so little to do".
"Why not"?
she said.
"I'm not good at that kind of thing".
"This afternoon let's take an air with them.
Let's be fine superior people of great dignity", he said as if he were joking.
"If you find it necessary, Sam, go ahead", she said, turning on the stair.
"I am what I am.
I can't help it".
Her words remained with him, worrying him for hours.
He didn't know how she would behave with other people.
When they walked into the Ferraro apartment, the old lady, bowing and smiling, said softly.
"Ciao," and put out her hand.
Her little brown face wrinkled up, her brown eyes gleamed, and with her little gestures she said all the courteous things.
Agnese, smiling too, said, "'Ello", and then more slowly, "I am happy".
And they sat down and began their little coffee party.
The Ferraros offered them biscuits with the coffee.
Acting only as interpreter Carla, her hands folded on her lap, was utterly impersonal.
She would turn to them, then turn to him, then turn again.
Watching her, he felt like a spectator at a tennis game, with the ball being bounced back and forth.
Signora Ferraro, bobbing her head encouragingly, asked Sam about Canada, having a special interest.
Carla translated.
The old woman had a nephew from North Italy, a poor boy from a lumber mill who had got tired of the seasonal unemployment, and who had migrated to Canada to work on the railway.
For a year the boy had lived in the bush in a boxcar.
Did many of Sam's countrymen live in boxcars in the bush?
Had Sam ever lived in a boxcar?
she wanted to know.
Regretfully Sam explained that he had no experience with boxcars.
Just the same, the old woman said, she would write to her nephew in his boxcar and tell him she had met a nice man from his adopted country.
And Sam thanked her, and hoped he might meet her nephew back home, and asked her if she had any further news of the Pope.
A very great Pope, this one, the old woman explained, her black eyes sparkling.
An intellectual.
But very mystical too.
It was said that he had had a vision.
Just as thousands that day in Portugal had seen the sun dancing in the sky, he had seen the same thing later in his own garden, and she turned to Agnese for confirmation.
Agnese had been sitting quietly, listening with the serenity of the unaware.
Now a little flush came on her pale homely face and enchantment in her eyes.
The Holy Father would die soon, she said to Carla, so she could translate for Sam, although he had a brilliant doctor, a man who did not need the assistance of those doctors offered by the great rulers of the world.
Yes, the Pope could die and quickly be made a saint.
No, he was indeed a saint now.
Nodding approvingly and swelling with importance, the old lady whispered confidentially.
There was a certain discontent among the cardinals.
The Pope, in the splendor of his great intellect, had neglected them a little.
There would be changes made, and Signor Raymond should understand that when the Pope died it was like the end of a regime in Rome.
Jobs would be lost and new faces would become prominent.
Did Signor Raymond understand?
Indeed he did, Sam said solemnly, trying to get Carla's eye.
Surely she could see that these women were her Italians, too, he thought.
Devout, orthodox and plain like a family she might meet in Brooklyn or Malta or Ireland.
But Carla; eyes were on Agnese whose glowing face and softening eyes gave her a look of warmth and happiness.
And Carla, watching in wonder, turned to Sam.
"It means so much to her.
It's like a flame, I guess", she said in a dreamy tone.
But one night Dookiyoon moved in the direction of the women's lodge, where Shades of Night had gone to purify herself.
With the blue flesh of night touching him he stood under a gentle hill caressing the flageolet with his lips, making it whisper.
He saw her emerge suddenly, coming in her unhesitant fashion, her back stiff, her head erect, facing with contempt the night and whatever she would encounter, as if in her extreme disdain and indifference she would pass by all the outraged looks of those whom she might approach.
In her dark, scornful fashion she proceeded to her destination, afraid of nothing, not even the evil spirits which kept her company in her time of bleeding.
Seeing her come, he caught his breath, feeling his heart bounce in him, and turned away, afraid now.
Even he, wanting her, afraid of her and not knowing how to press his suit, feared the evil presences in her metabolism more.
His breath caught, and, trembling, he closed his eyes and stumbled off.
Going, he saw as often before some queer, hideous yellow face over his head, shining and weird like the old images which had invested him at other times like those that appear sometimes near the eyeballs when they are perhaps pressed by the thumbs.
He cried out to her, his back turned.
Then he fled, not waiting to see if she minded him or took notice of his cry.
But she heard him go.
Yet she did not hesitate and only turned slightly, her neck tall as she looked in his direction, and continued on her way toward the end of the camp.
Elsewhere others heard and stopped and waited, the women peering from their lodges then gathering in small, curious clusters.
Early Spring came from her bed, from beside her half-drunk husband, Walitzee, and stood at the entrance way to her lodge hearing the mild commotion, the sound of hushed voices.
Standing there she saw Shades of Night come through the trees and stop beside the lodge, silent, almost imperious, her body taut, simply standing without speaking or moving while the wife of Walitzee waited, perhaps denying the dread that moved in her.
When at last she could suffer the insult no longer, nor face the girl's scorn, she said in a voice overloud: "I shall call your father!
Go back where you can bring no harm, or I will go and get the old man from his bed so he can see your shame"!
But the girl said only, "Tell him I am here, that I have come".
And it was not Pile of Clouds she meant.
But now with real anger at last, something proud and indignant, Early Spring stood like a she wolf before her den and cried, "I will not shriek at you!
I will tell you to go, not begging.
Telling you"!
And unsheathing the knife she used for curing hides she stepped away from the lodge, holding the knife at her side.
"You bring only wickedness", she said and it was not to a child any longer but to another woman who had come to skirt her lodge with the cunning hunger of a wild animal.
Speaking in a low voice of loathing she went up to the girl, who stood with the same upright, scornful bearing and did not even look at the knife.
"Go take helsq'iyokom, your evil spirit, to the young boys", the woman said.
"They do not have to face battle.
I will not let your evil in.
I will simply kill you first.
Now go"!
The other women had come close now, their voices murmuring together until they stood buzzing in an angry knot, their threats mingling, rising, nagging at each other, each trying to make her indignation and anger felt.
They picked up sticks and hurled them at the girl.
The sticks fell like a shower around her and she felt them sting her flesh and send tiny points of pain along her thighs.
They were all shouting at her as if she were the embodiment of the evil she brought.
But she did not move, taking the words and the sticks in that old defiance of her extreme youth until suddenly Pile of Clouds came howling among them, swinging a great bullhide whip.
"Go back to your lodges"!
he shouted.
"A pack of dogs makes less noise"!
He made the long whip sing and snap around their heads so that they ran screaming, some tripping over themselves in their flight.
And Early Spring seized the whip and said: "If you must flog someone, let it be her, your daughter.
Drive the demons out of her and teach her to stay away from my husband"!
But the old man turned on her, jerking the whip from her hand.
"Get into your hovel"!
he spat.
"Go back to that double-married man of yours who so parades his fine body among the young women.
Keep him back, if you must tell me what to do.
I will be the one to confront my daughter, not the wife of him who leads her to sin"!
She retreated before the naked shame in the old man and the fury beyond it and sank into the darkness of her lodge where Walitzee stirred, mumbling, sitting up in a half stupor to say: "What worrisome thing happens?
I thought I dreamed of wolves fighting".
But she went to him and pressed herself against his nakedness, smelling the stale odor of the whisky he had stolen from TuHulHulZote.
She said, "There is nothing that concerns you here.
Lie back and go to sleep.
But do not dream.
Do not let the wicked spirits enter your brain".
He sank back, sighing, and was soon asleep again.
Outside, the old man, beyond all the curses of the spirits his daughter bore, went to her and twisted the gnarled talons of his fingers in her hair and turned her and pushed her rudely ahead of him into the trees where the moon sent out a thousand arms.
And, shoving her against a spruce, her back to him, he retreated with the whip and made it whine and crack in the damp air, shortening its arc until it narrowed to her flesh and the sound of it snarled and cracked, settling its own cruel demons on her shoulders while she stood as unchanged, as dark and motionless as ever, her eyes open and staring at the pale delineaments of the bark so close to her face.
She said to him, her father, "How was I begotten, in pain or joy?
Is it for me to be forbidden the flesh you made grow on me?
They all know your foolish name"!
She stared at the pale tracings on the tree, hearing her breath refracted from it, her face close and touching at time the rough edges of the bark.
She felt the lash bite and heard her father say in crazed monosyllables words which had no meaning, like, "unnnt!
**h sssshoo"!
The sounds of an animal in rage and despair.
Suddenly the lash stopped fighting the air and she heard Pile of Clouds say in his high, quavering voice: "Did you follow me to see my shame?
Move from the line or I will settle the whip on you **h. Move!
Do you hear the anger of the whip's whine"?
Turning, the girl saw Dookiyoon standing between, his narrow shoulders unbent, his arms hanging long and resigned.
He said, "Let me take her blows, for there are demons in me too".
Then, without knowing why, she found herself running from them, fleeing wildly through the trees, dodging her own shadows until she came to a little hollow in the rocky ground with a big stone in the center behind which she knelt and hid, listening to the madness of her heart and wanting for once to cry.
For a while the young men waited outside the lodge of Tu Hul Hul Zote, glorying in his harsh language as he talked with himself.
He shouted like a hoarse old mastiff, his hair stiff and bristling.
He ranted and prophesied the doom of his enemies, walking in circles in and out of his living place, drinking stolen whisky in great, gasping draughts until finally, incoherent and sick, he fell into his own oblivion.
He amused the young men who had been silent long enough.
But they could taste the appeasement of violence and retribution through his antics.
Now they moved, rubbing their flesh alive again, disdaining the gloom they saw in the faces around them.
They came out and held their games and races.
It was they who held the future in their hands.
They went into the sun together and paraded grandly in their war clothes, painting their faces with the sacred attis dug far off in the cave of skeletons.
They danced the paxam wildly at night, the war dance, and dipped their arrowheads in the venom of rattlesnakes and rode their horses in swift maneuvers, firing their few guns in unison at some indeterminate signal.
Walitzee was among them, and Sarpsis, and they wore red blankets which flew like broad wings in the air of their passing.
And a very young one, Swan Necklace, tried to emulate them and followed timidly.
Yellow Wolf was there, nephew of the young chief by an older brother long dead, in whom also the disordered chemistries of youth worked.
He would spring bolt upright suddenly after sitting quietly with inaction, because something had boiled over in his fermenting juices.
All the young men, Alokut among them, challenged them in matched racing.
They raced and maneuvered for war, swinging their horses in single file and then abreast like cavalry.
At times they would ride frenziedly through the camp, letting the women see their courage, how handsome they were in their regalia.
Then again they would stand in circles making other preparations.
They combed their hair and streaked it at the part and greased the bangs so that the hair above their foreheads stood rigid like the tails of sage hens making love.
Walitzee whitened his leggings with clay, knowing the girl watched from her place in the trees.
He saw himself in a superior reflection, and he was as a speeding arrow from the taut bow, hurtling with a mad grace, his maleness shining and scented with meadow rue.
He was always aware of the women's eyes which followed him, admiring him.
And the suspicious, envenomed eyes of Pile of Clouds.
And those of Early Spring, haunted and now full of hurt and envy.
He felt so much like laughing; even like shouting and crying out from the hilltops from which he could descend as an eagle in a mad caper from the cliffs.
He and Sarpsis planned a great parade with the young men.
They would give one final testimony of their challenge to let the people see their arrogance.
They would ride with streaming amulets, their colors ripening in the sun, shouting the last bellicosity of a nation in the throes of death.
And so the sun came up again and for a moment its color was the young men's blood, shifting then into the full heat and outcry which ran with their hearts.
They mounted their horses and rode off into the hills.
The young chief stared at the wall of his lodge, listening.
The sound rose on the other side of the hills, vanished and rose again and he could imagine the mad, disheveled hoofs of the Appaloosas, horses the white men once had called the Dogs of Hell.
He saw them in fleet images as they came rolling and now burst across the ridge.
Standing then with the others, peering into the sun, he saw the bright, multicolored legion, their hair flying like dark banners, only the thunder, the roll of drums, the mad cacophony of the hoofs accompanying them.
They leaned into the wind and seemed like one thousand-legged monster hurtling and plunging until suddenly they rose straight in their saddles and in one terrifying voice shouted, ejaculated their grotesque cry of war.
She was moving through a screen of hemlocks, in among the white birch and maples.
The sounds from the quarry began to pulse in her ears.
She stood, once more listening.
She had never been here at this hour.
She felt as if some dark, totally unfamiliar shape would clutch at her arm; but she found the path she always used, the stubs of branches she had broken, those she had pushed aside; and she walked easily now, and more slowly, until she could see the dark glisten of water beneath her.
If I ever committed suicide, she thought, I would dive straight down from here- and no one would find me for days.
She smiled, and expertly let herself downward, holding this known root or that, her sneakers sliding in the leaves.
She jumped out onto the flat expanse of rock and, seating herself, shook her short-cut brown hair and tilted her chin far upward.
The reedy music of the frogs had faded, but presently it began again, growing in volume until it was vibrant.
Julia felt at peace and drew her legs up and clasped her hands tightly around the bent knees.
She had accomplished a miracle.
This was her place.
The hour couldn't change it **h. Only- only- her thoughts were a little strange.
They were becoming confused.
Perhaps it was because it was so late, and because she had no business to be here now.
She was thinking of Paul a few weeks ago, in the Easter holidays, with her at one of those awful Friday Evening Dancing Class parties her mother had made her attend.
"Hello, Julie, how are you"?
**h And then off he went so casually, to someone else with breasts better developed, more obvious in a lower-cut dress, someone without a mouthful of wire bands and an inability to find words that would hold him.
I wish he was with me now, she thought, and that we were both the ages we are and doing what was once only pretense and acute embarrassment.
Oh God!
I wish I were older or younger, Julia Bentley thought.
I wish so much someone loved me.
George Rawlings remembered seeing the door open sometime during the night- Millie, in a white robe, standing like a ghost at the threshold.
She had vanished; he must have slept again.
He was staring at the blue china lamp left on beside him.
It seemed too much trouble even to reach for the switch; but of course the impossible effort of leaving would have to be made on this Monday morning.
This room was like a prison.
He would not be indebted to Sam!
Below him, as if at the end of some remote tunnel, he heard the humming of a vacuum cleaner.
His fingers fumbled across the bandages.
They had left both of his eyes uncovered **h. Well, he told himself, let's put the show on the road.
He was walking across to the bathroom.
He drank a glass of water and gripped the sink with both hands.
A fearful pain had come from his head, as if the water were coursing up through the blood vessels and expanding them **h. He recognized his jacket and trousers.
The fabric was dark; the stains weren't too apparent; and there were his shoes, thank God, but his shirt was one terrible mess.
He shivered, and then tore away the blood-soaked parts and wound the rest around his neck like a scarf.
Sam would be amazed to find him gone.
Millie would have to understand.
She must have put his clothes in the closet.
He found a lump rising in his throat because of that one simple act of tidiness.
He was on the verge of tears.
Alex Poldowski- in a fashion he owed a debt to that effete gentleman.
At least Alex had told him he wasn't dying.
Perhaps George Rawlings would be better off dead.
What time was it?
He peered at his wristwatch.
Strange, it was still running.
A quarter to seven.
Too early for a vacuum cleaner, but probably Sam wanted the whole house in order before he came downstairs.
He was kneeling to tie his shoelaces.
His fingers felt absurdly thick and clumsy.
He rose slowly and looked into the mirror on the inside of the closet door.
He barely knew himself.
This was some freak, two strands of adhesive tape across his nose, like ugly roots from the mass of gauze, suddenly moist over his cheekbones.
The surface, however, was perfectly white.
He was drinking another glass of water.
It was after seven o'clock.
He was supposed to be in court this afternoon, at City Hall.
Who would take over?
He'd have to think, but the main thing, the imperative necessity, was to leave before Sam Bentley was up and about, and before Millie detained him with sympathy.
He entered the hallway.
He was actually walking down the stairs.
A plane up in the sky, above the clouds, and this freakish wreck of a man desperately trying to get away.
"Father, is that you"?
The voice issued from the cavern of the hall below.
George did not reply.
"Is that you, Father?
**h Who's there"?
For a moment he felt like a thief discovered.
Then Julia appeared under the arch leading to the dining room.
She stood gazing at him.
"Uncle George"!
He was trying to smile at her.
"Gosh!
You shouldn't be up, should you"?
"I- I was just leaving here, Julie **h. I'm all set.
Just about to call a taxi".
She was wearing some sort of gray blazer.
She seemed overly tall, her brow knitted in concern.
"Well, at least you won't have to do that", she was saying.
"I'm about to leave myself.
I'll drop you off".
"You're leaving"?
"I'm going back to school", she answered.
"Pietro's driving me.
I'm just finishing breakfast **h. But have you told Mother you were going"?
she asked him.
"No **h. I just don't want anyone disturbed, Julie.
That's my wish.
It's quite a big one", he added.
Her face seemed to float in an implausibly bright shaft of sunlight.
"Well, won't you come in then, have a cup of coffee- or something?
**h Or maybe a drink"?
she asked, in a way that seemed oddly sophisticated, considerate, and yet perhaps partly scornful.
He tried to see her face more clearly.
"No- nothing at all", he said after a moment's hesitation.
"I'll just wait for you here".
He leaned his head against the wood paneling behind him, but the vivid red images of pain inserted themselves against his eyelids.
He raised them.
Julia moved past.
"I have to say good-by upstairs.
I won't be long".
"As a great favor, Julie", he said, "please don't mention you've seen me".
"Not to anyone"?
"No- please **h. "I'll call your mother as soon as I get home.
It'll be so much easier".
"All right **h" She was staring at him.
"I'm fine, Julie **h. Please, you just go ahead".
She had disappeared.
He could feel a pulse pounding against the bandages.
He imagined Sam's voice: "George, what the hell goes on"?
I wouldn't have the strength to answer, he thought.
Maybe I couldn't have called a taxi.
He could hear the footsteps overhead.
He saw the suitcase, which Julia was holding.
He stood up.
"I'll take that, Julie- for you".
"Oh no", she said.
"I can manage".
She went ahead of him.
Outside the Lincoln was parked.
He could hardly believe he was getting in.
Pietro was gazing at him in an insolent, disdainful fashion; but that didn't matter.
We'll drop Mr Rawlings off in Ardmore", Julia said, and for the merest second George was reminded of her father's tone with servants.
To the manner born- odd to have such a thought at a time like this; yet her inflection seemed forced or rehearsed.
He could not stop to analyze.
He had never felt particularly close to her.
Carrie seemed more affectionate, but obviously Julia had respected his request.
He took her hand.
"I wish I didn't have to go back to school", she said, and then, "I wish you lived in New York.
That's in the opposite direction".
"I wish I did", he responded.
"I wish I wasn't wearing this ridiculous costume, and that we could go to a theater together, or a nice restaurant, forget we knew **h" He stopped speaking.
"Forget we ever knew what"?
"Oh, just sort of everything in general".
She said nothing until Pietro had slackened their pace.
"I know you feel badly, but that sounds like such a queer thing for you to say".
"Does it"?
he asked.
"Yes, perhaps.
I'm supposed to joke about things, aren't I?
**h But sometimes life can be rather a disappointing business".
His voice seemed thick and purposeless.
He relinquished her hand.
He could see the stone building where he lived.
Just a few more steps **h. Abruptly he reached into his pocket.
Yes, there was the key.
"Are you positive you'll be all right by yourself"?
she asked him.
For a moment he smiled.
"Yes, Julie dear.
You've done me the greatest possible service.
By myself I'll be fine".
"Take care of yourself then".
"I will **h. you, also **h. don't work too hard".
It was an automatic phrase; as he crossed through the courtyard he regretted it.
He should have discovered a more tender farewell.
Someone shouted at him, "Well!
Will you look at George Rawlings!
What happened to you"?
"I bumped into a door handle", George said.
Someone laughed.
George walked steadily ahead into his entry.
His bandages seemed on fire.
He had shut his door with the brass number screwed to it.
In the kitchenette the raw whiskey made him gasp.
Just one or two swallows, he told himself, enough to lessen some of the pain.
He was telephoning.
"No, Millie, I'm home **h. No, really, right as rain **h. Tell Sam not to worry about the car.
I'll get it hauled away **h. No, please- no visit today- I'll be asleep **h. For God's sake, don't worry.
That upsets me more than anything **h. Yes, sure, I'll see the doctor- this evening, if you insist **h".
There was one more call to make.
"Joan, did I wake you"?
he asked.
"Yes, I thought you'd probably be up **h. Look, sweetheart, some fool was **h. happened to be driving somewhat intoxicated last night.
Unfortunately it turned out to be me, but I wouldn't quite put it that way to the boss **h. Oh hell no, I'm not in a hospital.
I won't be in town for a couple of days, though, and there's that case I was supposed to handle this afternoon.
Too bad a jury isn't involved.
I might struggle in for a jury.
I'd win hands down.
But I thought maybe Tony Elliott could pinch-hit for me.
He'll understand- you might give him sort of a tactful nudge.
He's got all the facts.
I wouldn't want to ask for a postponement- it's really just a routine thing **h. What?
**h No, darling I'd rather you didn't come out".
A smile pulled at the lower strip of adhesive tape.
"Don't even send flowers.
I'll see you Wednesday.
I'll bribe you with a nice"- He was about to say "double martini" but thought better of it.
"I'll take you out to dinner.
Okay?
**h" He had put down the receiver.
A strange relationship between Joan Fulbright and himself.
Who knew about it?
She lived alone in the older part of the city, in one of those renovated houses whose brick facade some early settler had constructed.
She had two tiny rooms on the second floor.
She was a clever girl, a most efficient secretary.
She let him come and go as he pleased, or as it pleased her.
In the office you might have thought them only casual friends; yet if he said: Make an excuse yourself, come out here today, she would have been on the next train- and, similarly, if she had been in need, he would have gone to her.
"They make us conformists look good".
"That's a peculiar way to think".
It wasn't just the obnoxious birds that had ruffled her own feathers, of course; she knew that.
It was Jim's "little" sister Myra, the unreliable, irresponsible, forever flyaway, Myra.
She's a year older than I am, Lucy told herself.
"Come, come", Jim said, jollying Lucy a little.
"I love you.
Susan ready"?
Lucy listened.
Obviously, Susan was not.
Upstairs, busy feet, showering like raindrops, pattered around her room.
Susan would be visiting her grandmother for only a few days, but even at seven she was a prudent soul; she always packed for a lifetime, just in case.
"Not yet.
Every doll in the house must be going with her".
"She'd better step on it.
It's a long way to Websterville".
Jim's fine young face was an expressive one, too; as he looked at her, it registered anxiety.
"You know", he said.
"Myra wanted me to thank you for taking Cathy.
It'll be only a couple of weeks before she finds a home for them in Paris- but even so, she wants you to know that she's awfully grateful".
Lucy did not believe him; Myra appreciated nothing.
Jim had put the thanks in his sister's mouth.
"Darling"- she said, and the single word mingled love and exasperation in an equal blend.
"She should have told me herself.
And will it be only a couple of weeks?
Remember what happened the last time"?
Leaving Cathy with them, Myra had gone out to the Coast for a supposedly brief visit; but she had stayed all winter, and Cathy had stayed all winter too- with them.
Lucy suspected that Myra would never have come home if Gregg, Myra's husband, hadn't gone out to fetch her.
"That was an awfully long two weeks".
## FOR an otherwise silent moment, Jim's keys jingled nervously in his pocket.
"But she promised- This will be different", he said at last.
"You've got to admit she was smart to scare up this fine government job over there- she'll get a home for herself and Cathy in no time.
You'll see, Myra's settling down".
On the defensive, he added, "I wish you'd think what it must be like for her to be without Greg, to be a new widow, a young widow".
"It depends on the widow".
Lucy had an idea that Myra loved it.
And not for one moment did she believe that Myra had settled down.
It seemed to Lucy that all their married life, she and Jim had been doing nothing but rescue his sister from the constant crises that were her way of life.
Remembering that succession of disasters, she now considered Cathy, an ominous child-cloud on her horizon.
It was not that she disliked Cathy.
The youngster drew her, troubled her depths; whenever Lucy saw her, she tried, without noise or fuss, to give her the warmth she had never had from Myra.
But Cathy was Myra's responsibility, not hers.
"I wouldn't even be surprised", she said unhappily, "if Myra tried to leave her with us forever".
Myra loved big cities; thousands of miles away- in Paris, of all places- she might forget she had ever been a mother.
Lucy knew her too well to find it impossible.
"That's a horrible thing to accuse her of"!
Jim was so indignant it was obvious that no matter what he said, he too had seen the looming specter of a forever-Cathy.
He went to the foot of the stairs and shouted up, fiercely, "Susan!
Susan!
Get moving"!
A startled piping sound returned.
"Don't yell at us", Lucy said.
Was it only a few nights ago that they had been standing together in front of the house looking at the moon-washed river?
Their arms around each other, they had been talking of the present and the future; their talk and their feeling had been as deep and warm, as steeped in light, as the air around them.
Then, from within the still, sleeping house, the telephone had rung; Myra, with her news, was on the other end of the line.
Jim turned back from the stairway and looked at her.
His dark brows, which had been lowered in anger, smoothed.
"Please", he said.
"There isn't a chance of Myra's letting anything like that happen.
Let's stay friends".
But they weren't just friends, Lucy thought; they were husband and wife, and Myra had no right muddling and chilling their marriage.
The only thing that had ever come between them was that worthless, selfish sister of his.
Lucy was sick of it.
"Well, at last", she said, because Susan was clattering down the stairs.
## SUSAN looked like an overwhelmed baby nurse; her arms were straining with a burden of dolls.
"I'm ready", she announced.
"Do you need that big bundle"?
Jim said.
His voice had sharp edges, as though he knew very well Lucy and he were not friends at the moment.
"All that junk"?
Susan stared at him with hurt blue eyes that gushed an instant grief; to her, each of her dolls was a real person with a living heart.
"Now, now", Lucy said, approaching Susan with a handkerchief, mopping skillfully.
"Your father didn't mean it, Susan".
She gave Jim a quick, shape-up look of warning.
"He'll take every one of them".
Jim groaned, but he lifted Susan's suitcase and said, in a gentler tone, "Sure- the entire thousand.
And when you get back from Grandma's, Cathy will be here to play with you.
Nice"?
"No", Susan said, grappling with her outsized armload of dolls with a Scrooge-like effect.
And at this point, Lucy thought, there should be a lecture on little cousins' sharing dolls- but she could sympathize with Susan; there ought to be a limit to sharing, too.
That was one more reason she didn't look forward to Cathy's visit, short or long; the last one had been a Lilliputian war.
She suspected that Cathy had been competing with Susan for attention that she had never had.
"Well", Jim said, out of the silence, "let's get going, dolls and all".
When the car, with Susan's hands waving wildly from the rear window, disappeared down the driveway, Lucy stood looking after its pale dust.
The day was brilliant around her- flower-scented, crisp with breeze- yet her inner turmoil darkened it.
She had let Jim go with a chilly good-by, a chillier kiss.
She was sorry, and angry at herself, because never in their life together had she done that.
She turned and began to walk toward the house.
At the feeding station, the raffish group of cowbirds again bobbed and gobbled over the ground, but now, gorgeous among them, was a beautiful red cardinal, radiant in its feathered vestments.
The handsome bird was solitary; its mate must be at home, silently guarding their nest.
She had better stay there, Lucy thought; the sly female cowbirds took instant advantage of nests without sentinels.
Well, Lucy?
she said to herself, abandoning the cardinals and the cowbirds.
She had a day of things to do; among them, she had to prepare the guest room.
How long would it be occupied?
she wondered, with a baffled feeling of helplessness.
As long as the unscrupulous Myra chose?
For a moment, her mind returned again to the strange, flying world of birds, and she said to herself.
It isn't only birds that dump their children in other people's nests **h. In the sunshine of late afternoon, Lucy stood looking at the ready guest room.
There were new yellow curtains, bright as a child's life ought to be, a new bedspread, lively with hopping rabbits, and hanging from the ceiling was an airy Mother Goose Mobile, spinning slowly in the breeze.
A row of little hangers waited for a child's clothes in the neatly empty closet; since Myra had always put most of Greg's money on her own back, Lucy suspected that no more than a few of that long row would be needed.
The closet was faintly fragrant with lavender, and as Lucy shut the door an unhappy memory slipped into her mind, like a lavender ghost: Greg's house, on the day he was buried, and the child, pale, silent, baffled, watching the funeral guests with panicky eyes.
Many times since his death that memory had worried and troubled her.
Out in the hall, the upstairs phone shrilled, and the small ghost vanished.
When she picked up the receiver, her mother's cheerful voice was there.
"Websterville Junction calling", she said.
"I just thought I'd let you know.
Myra dropped Cathy this morning, and Jim picked Cathy up and left Susan a few hours ago.
I'd have phoned sooner but I've been busy".
"I can imagine"!
Susan was an active character; for Mother to be able to call, Susan must be napping now, surrounded by her multitude of dolls.
Lucy drew out the chair and sat down; she relaxed a little, and some of the tension went out of her.
You could think yourself as grown up as Methuselah, yet the maternal voice still kept its comforting magic.
"How was Cathy"?
"Subdued.
But Myra was the merriest widow I ever saw".
On her way to the airport, on her way to Paris- you bet, Lucy said to herself.
"I've been fixing up the guest room for Cathy".
There was a momentary pause, and then her mother said, "How long is she supposed to stay"?
"Just for a couple of weeks, till Myra finds a place for them".
"Well"- This time there was a long silence, while the telephone hummed faintly with a voiceless life.
Puzzled, Lucy stared at the flowered wallpaper; her mother was forthright; she was not usually given to mysterious silences.
Was she thinking along the same lines Lucy was- that it was quite possible Cathy might be left with her for good?
"You mean once Myra gets to Paris"?
Once the soft, pretty moth found the bright light she had always wanted?
Suddenly, seekingly, Lucy asked, "Mother, do you know something I don't know"?
Again there was that curious pause, and then her mother said, "I guess I do.
Just before Myra left- She was saying good-by to Cathy, and she didn't realize I was near".
She hesitated, as though hunting over words and ways of putting them.
"Cathy was in tears, of course, and I heard Myra say, 'Now be good, and at Christmastime I'll send you a wonderful present from Paris'".
Shocked speechless, Lucy sat there.
Then she jumped to her feet, the elastic phone cord uncoiling like a black snake.
"Christmastime!"
Then it was no bogey she had dreamed up; it was only too true.
Myra had no intention whatever of sending for Cathy in two weeks.
For a moment, anger darkened the hallway about her, and when she found her voice, anger thickened it.
"That does it"!
she said.
"I'll keep Cathy for two weeks.
Then, if Myra does nothing about fetching her, I'll pack her right back to her mother- if I have to take her myself"!
Her hand tightened on the receiver.
"And that's what I'm going to tell Jim".
For Lucy, the day's nagging to-and-fro had come to an abrupt end.
As she hung up, she saw through the hall's open window the purple-black flying of the cowbirds' wings, and heard their grotesque singing.
Cowbird Myra!
She's not going to get away with it.
## CATHY is tired, Lucy thought, watching them come slowly up the path.
The child's thin legs were plodding.
She trudged along slowly, both hands clutching a tired teddy bear.
She was at the moment just a small, walking package, being delivered to her aunt's and uncle's house.
Unlike Susan, she was traveling light; the worn teddy bear, a tiny suitcase that Jim carried, and the clothes she wore, were all she had.
Lucy glancing at the miniature case, knew there would not be enough in it for the shortest of stays; they would have to buy things for her.
She opened the door.
Unimpressed, the dog plopped on the sand.
Quint couldn't blame Maggie for disbelieving.
For eleven days they'd done the same thing, leaving the cottage quietly before breakfast, before Esperanza Beach got jammed with tourists and beach balls and show-offy lifeguards.
The swirling sand made Quint's limp more pronounced.
They walked slowly past the sherbet-colored cottages- eleven lemon, nine mint, seven orange- around the curve to a deserted stand with an "Eats" sign jiggling in the wind.
Now they were in friendly territory.
Nobody around.
Nothing but sand and a ridge of rocks sloping jaggedly to the water's edge.
His rock was to the right of a V-shaped inlet, a big, brown, lumpy rock trailing seaweed whiskers.
His rock was special because no one on the beach could see him here.
Here he was enclosed and safe.
(If a dragon or a sea monster came along, didn't he have a red Swiss hunting knife on his belt- ten blades and a corkscrew?)
Here was a perfect place to lie down and make believe.
He was Canute controlling the waves.
He was a knight of the Round Table, "Sir Quintus the Brave", slaying evil spirits and banshees and vampires and witches with warty noses.
(One good thing about a suit of armor, his leg wouldn't show.)
He was the first astronaut on the moon, chosen because of his small size and intrepid nature.
He was six feet one like his father, with big hands and a hairy chest, a man the weak and persecuted would turn to.
Fearless.
Every night when he wanted a drink of water, didn't he practice being fearless by not turning on the bathroom light?
A dark bathroom can be pretty scary, and he'd creep back to bed, proud of himself, thinking: Tomorrow, for sure, I'll go down to the rock and keep my promise to Dad.
He hadn't intended to make the promise.
It happened two weeks ago, the night before his father left on a business trip to South America.
Every piece of the nightmare was clear, in place; and when he woke up, his father was saying, "Stop screaming, Quint.
It's all right.
Stop shaking".
He could remember the feel of his father's big hands, the thump of his father's heart sending out signals- regular, like radar.
"Let's talk about the beach.
Son.
While I'm gone you get brown and fat as a pig, hear?
Look, I can put two fingers between the cords in the back of your neck.
Dr Fortman says swimming would help your leg.
He says you're limping more than you need to".
"How does he know?
Big dumb nut.
He never had polio".
In the light from the bedside table his father looked so worried that the promise spilled out.
"You just wait, Dad.
When you get back I'll probly be swimming better than Victoria.
Wait and see, Dad".
Victoria was fourteen months younger than Quint, a head taller, and could lick any boy or girl on the beach.
He called her "Fatso".
She called him "Stuck-up- that's why nobody plays with you, Mister Stuck-up".
Or, what was worse, she prayed for him out loud at bedtime: "Please, Lord Gord, please give my brother the strength to go swimming like he promised".
"She's got a nerve".
Quint said now to the clouds.
Strength began to zip up and down his chest.
He felt strong as a giant.
He unlaced his high brown shoes and took off the metal brace on his leg.
He wadded his sweat shirt into a ball and stripped down to his swimming trunks.
"Goolick, goooolick", creaked a sea gull.
"Aw, shut up", he said.
He stood on the rock, a skinny, dignified boy surrounded by the ocean.
The wind bored a hole between his shoulder blades, and when he looked at the choppy waves coming and going and crossing each other he could see his head down there, bleeding, wedged between the rocks and the waves.
I can't go in.
I'm scared of the nightmare.
## Shivering, he put on his clothes.
And shivering with shame, he crawled to the narrow end of the rock and spat into the water.
"Watch it, big shot", a hoarse voice yelled back.
She was holding on to his rock with one hand.
She smelled of peppermints.
She wore a bathing suit like his mother's, no straps on the shouders.
"Why didn't you duck"?
he snapped.
"This is my rock".
"Isn't".
"Is".
"Isn't".
"Is".
She was sore as a boil.
"Ever hear of squatter's rights"?
"Sure.
They started with the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of eighteen"- "Mister Big Britches, aren't you"?
"I'm Mark Gordon Peters the Fifth.
They call me Quint".
"Then why don't you stop squinting"?
"I said Quint.
That's short for Quintus.
Quintus in Latin means"- "I can speak both kinds of Latin, smart aleck".
Her cough sounded like cloth ripping.
"You shouldn't smoke so much", he said, unconsciously imitating Victoria's holier-than-thou voice.
"I don't smoke".
She was horrified.
"Do you"?
"Hell, yes".
Not having said "hell" before, he stumbled a bit before gathering momentum.
"Sometimes eleven, fourteen a day".
"If I was your mama, I'd wop your tail off".
"My mother never wops me.
I've got this leg brace".
She seemed so unimpressed that he was obliged to roll up his blue jeans so she could see his brace.
"Dingy-looking", was what she said.
"Why don't you paint it red and white like a barber pole"?
"Because maybe I won't have to wear it always.
Dr Fortman says if I exercise my leg more, maybe I can use a cane when I'm big".
She spouted a mouthful of water into the air.
"A cane's mighty handy.
Someone's walking past, you want to stop him, zoooop, snag him around the neck with the crook in your cane.
Or say a waiter brings you a bowl of soup with a dead fly in it- all you got to do is bannnnnng, stooooomp your cane on the floor **h. Hey, will you look at that"?
Maggie had shaken himself awake and was licking the sand off his stubby whiskers and his long plume of a tail.
"That's some dog.
What kind"?
"Part collie, part wire-haired terrier".
Quint glared.
He always did when people asked.
"Holy mackerel, that's the most unique dog I ever saw", she said firmly.
"His real name's DiMaggio, only we call him Maggie because he has to take tranquilizers.
He's braver than he looks.
He's been sick lately.
Last Tuesday he went on a ham jag".
"A what"?
He would have told her, but Victoria was yodeling.
That meant "Mama wants you Quint.
Come home or I'll come find you".
"I gotta go.
Even though this is my rock, you can use it sometimes.
I come early in the morning".
"So do I.
See you around, Mister Squint".
## That was how they started being friends.
They met next morning and all the mornings thereafter.
Same time, early, before the fog burned off, because she didn't like the sun; it made her blister.
Her name was Sabella, and the strip of seaweed around her neck was an emerald necklace the King gave her as a token of his undying love.
"You going to marry the King"?
"No.
He's got a long beard and picks his teeth with a fork.
My hair is what he's nuts about.
Naturally curly hair runs in my family.
Personally, I prefer straight hair like yours, but as they say on the Continent, 'What can one do'"?
"Which continent"?
"Name one, I been there".
Japan, she said, smelled pugh because people let dead fish lie on the beaches till the fish got hard as rocks; then they scraped off the mold and made fish soup.
Pugh.
Camels in Tripoli had harelips.
Near Galway the tinkers drove their caravans down to the beach and sang and drank and fought all night.
As for dancing- holy mackerel, he ought to see the gypsies in Jerez; they danced on the sand till your blood got hot and danced with them.
"Really".
Quint smothered a yawn.
She made better pictures than any book he'd read, but he didn't say so.
Artfully, as the days went by, he found occasion to tell her that his father had won the Navy Cross in the Korean War; that his baby sister could spit up through her nose when she felt like it; that he personally had an IQ of 141 and was currently reading the Mushr to Ozon volume of the encyclopedia.
"Books are for schnooks".
She skipped a piece of water at him and laughed, a funny, hoarse laugh he liked to hear.
Nobody ever appreciated his jokes as much as Sabella.
("What did one tonsil say to the other tonsil?
Let's get dressed up- the doctor's taking us out tonight".
And "What time did the Chinaman go to the dentist?
Tooth-hurty".)
Encouraged by her giggles he imitated Maggie who was crazy about ham.
He described the ham decorated with pineapple and cherries, cooling on the porch.
He snuck up on the ham like Maggie, gumming it with soft, stumpy teeth, then panting with thirst, lapping up the water in the lagoon, swelling up like a balloon, staggering home to be sick, while his mother said, "That does it.
That dog has to go".
"Say, you're quite a comic", Sabella said admiringly.
"Ever thought about going on the stage"?
He hadn't.
But it was such a nice thought that he nodded his head.
"Either that or a veterinarian".
"Better make up your mind, son", Sabella said.
"You can't serve cod and salmon".
Sometimes they argued.
She said sharks have no bones and shrimp swam backward.
His encylopedia agreed with Sabella.
Next morning he tied a bunch of sea daisies with string and threw them across the V-shaped inlet to the rock where she was swimming around.
Boy, could she catch!
Like Willie Mays in the outfield.
"Nobody gave me flowers before.
Thank you, Quint".
Her face turned pink with pleasure and a smothered cough.
"You can always tell a real gentleman- they got a certain je ne say quok".
Sometimes they didn't talk at all.
He daydreamed on the rock while she swam and splashed around.
Once when she asked why he never went swimming and he answered, "Don't feel like it", he was tempted to tell her about being scared.
But Victoria began yodeling just then and he went home, carrying Sabella in the back of his head, not thinking about her, just knowing she was there, smiling, smelling of peppermints.
As for his promise- oh, he had plenty of time, buckets of time.
## Wednesday morning it happened.
They were eating breakfast.
"We beseech thee, Lord Gord, to bless this food"- that was Victoria saying grace while the baby sprayed raisin toast on her plastic bib.
Same old breakfast till the phone rang, making his mother's voice shake with excitement.
"Your Daddy's in San Francisco", she told them.
"He says he'll be here on the one-o'clock plane.
Fifteen days early- isn't that wonderful"?
"Yeah, keen".
A cave seemed to be opening in Quint's stomach.
"Children, we'll have to get organized.
The baby can have an early nap.
Victoria, I want you to **h" Quint closed the screen door quietly so Maggie wouldn't be scared.
"Hurry up, we're late", he said, noticing with a chill how gray the sky was this morning, the fog like a rope along the horizon, the choppy waves sending off sheets of blue and Kool-Aid green.
The cave in his stomach hurt.
He had to go into the water.
He'd tell Sabella about the nightmare.
It had started two years ago when he was in an iron lung.
What caused it, he didn't know.
The metal collar gagging his neck?
Sweating so much?
The unbearable weight on his chest?
All of it together meant drowning.
The first time the nurse took him out of the lung, she said if he got frightened, she'd put him back for a second.
## When Bobbie Evans smashed up his car, the Jaguar his wife Linda had given him for his last birthday, and himself quite thoroughly with it, driving back from an afternoon's golf at Oakmont, it seemed to mark the end of a long, miswritten chapter in the social life of the community.
Linda looked remote yet lovely in black, and everyone held his or her breath.
Not that Linda was heartless, not that she would do anything prematurely or in bad taste any more than John Cooper would.
Hadn't Linda been a perfect wife to Bobbie, who was the least bit of a disappointment all these years?
Wasn't John Cooper even more attractive at forty-seven than he had been twenty-five years earlier?
And wasn't John's wife, Edythe, even more appalling, if possible?
Didn't John Cooper, after all this time, deserve something better of life?
Wasn't it adult and realistic to look at it that way?
And romantic?
Everybody knew that John Cooper had married Edythe on the rebound.
It was the kind of thing that could ruin a man's life, and it was a tribute to John's strength of character and very real business ability that it hadn't ruined his.
"Of course, there was nothing you could do, but you still ought to be ashamed of yourself for letting it happen", Mousie Chandler said to Linda Stuart.
"Poor John"!
Linda accepted the reproach, which was something she did rarely in all her life and most rarely in that summer of 1936 when she was by all odds the prettiest and brightest young woman west of the Allegheny Mountains, and John was surely one of the handsomer and brighter young men around Pittsburgh.
For it had been John and Linda ever since she had come out two seasons before at the Golf Club to the goggle-eyed admiration not only of the stag line but even of her fellow debs.
John had claimed her from the stag line, a young man a year out of Dartmouth with skiing crinkles still around his eyes.
You saw them always together those years.
You talked about John-and-Linda as an entity.
John-and-Linda were at Longue Vue last night; John-and-Linda drove to Conneaut in three and a half hours.
Then there was a spat over something, as there had been lovers' spats before; only this one didn't heal.
You still said "John-and-Linda", but as if you were speaking of a national catastrophe such as the depression or Dillinger.
It got worse instead of better.
First, it came out after Mr Cooper's will was settled- he had died the year before- that John and his mother weren't rich any more.
And then there was Linda's engagement to Bobbie Evans.
There was no connection between the two events, because Bobbie wasn't rich, either, though he was more aggressive than John.
He was a bright and handsome young man from New York, who worked for the same steel company as John did.
Some people said Linda had just announced the engagement to jolt John into some action, but when John came home from a business trip to Cleveland with Edythe, with Edythe his bride, it could no longer be John-and-Linda even to sentimental wishful thinkers.
It wasn't even John and Edythe.
It was simply Poor John.
There was nothing specifically wrong with Edythe, but there was absolutely nothing right about her either.
Mousie Chandler had been to school with her someplace near Baltimore and tried to explain rather than defend her to the gang having lunch at Horne's.
"Well, you shouldn't underestimate Edythe", Mousie said.
"I know she gives the impression of being shallow and frivolous and scatterbrained.
She is frivolous and scatterbrained, but she really isn't shallow"**h. Bobbie and Linda looked magnificent at their wedding.
John was at the church with Edythe.
She giggled during the ceremony, and Mousie Chandler, who was one of Linda's bridesmaids, said John glared black as death at her.
"As if he were choking", she said.
"Poor John"!
Edythe settled down to become a social myth and a horrible example.
Her hair never seemed to be in place and her skirts were never quite the correct length.
She didn't have a bad shape when you caught her at the pool at Longue Vue, but her bathing suits were far from smart.
And you didn't see her much at Longue Vue or anywhere, for John had drifted away from the gang.
Mousie said it was because he was too proud to stand pity.
Others thought he couldn't stand seeing Linda, Mrs Bobbie Evans, still so beautiful, so much in command of everything.
There were less-dramatic reasons too.
John's mother died not long after his marriage, and there was even less Cooper money left.
John sold the big old place in Sewickley and bought a smaller house in Fox Chapel.
He was not reduced to poverty, but his job at the steel company had become a real job and not a method of passing the day.
John was good at his job.
It probably wasn't hard for him to keep his nose to the grindstone with nothing but Edythe to come home to.
Though that may be unfair since Ben Cooper, John's first son, came along early in 1938, the cutest baby you ever saw and a blessing that he looked all Cooper from fontanel to pink toes, nary a trace of Edythe.
But the continuing charm of the other children- Sally in 1940 and Jack in 1944- and all John's success at his work only made Edythe's dizziness and general uselessness more glaring.
She never could fit into a crowd which had known, which still knew and admired Linda.
When there was bridge at Edythe's house, the cards shuffled like wet graham crackers and the food probably was wet graham crackers.
She managed a missionary drive for the church once and got the books so confused that old Mr Webber, the eldest elder, who'd never donated more than five dollars to anything, had to cough up five hundred dollars to avoid a scandal in what Edythe called "the bosoms of the church".
John did find the missing checks and money afterward, and the drive was actually oversubscribed, which was a real bit of luck for the missionaries.
## Being an intelligent man, John must have guessed what everyone thought about Edythe, but he never let on by so much as a brave smile.
Poor John was the kind of stock that keeps a bargain without whimpering and maybe bends over backward to keep a bad one.
He was an attentive and generous husband, overgenerous, a lot of people felt, because they knew that money must be a problem to him.
But he got ahead in business: on leave from his job to an important Washington assignment during the war; after the war back to the heir apparency of the steel company.
The Coopers saw Bobbie and Linda socially, but no more than was necessary.
Bobbie had been successful, too, though he didn't match John's pace, and after all he didn't need to, with all the Stuart money.
He and Linda settled down to being social leaders, and Linda managed to look a little more beautiful each year.
And then came the hairpin turn, the smashed Jaguar and Linda, mourning alone and lovely.
Everyone held his or her breath.
"Don't think Linda couldn't have got John back any time, if she'd tried", Mousie Gordon, who had been Mousie Chandler, said between bites of a chicken sandwich at a luncheon table at Le Mont.
"Now you know she could've, but she isn't that kind of girl.
But now- well, it would be a blessing, I think.
Poor John".
Linda Evans felt more wretched than she had ever dreamed Bobbie's death could move her to feeling.
What she felt was a bone-deep loss with a sense of waste to it, not so much sorrow for handsome, ambitious Bobbie, but for the lost years that had been brought into high relief by his death.
She knew what people were thinking; it was what she had been thinking herself.
It was up to her to save Poor John, dear John, to undo the wrong she had done, but she trembled at the decision as at the brink of a cold stream.
There was no one who would blame her or John; she could be sure of that.
It might be rough on Edythe at first, but Linda and John between them could make a settlement handsome enough to soothe her, to send her back to Cleveland or anywhere.
And Linda felt capable of capturing the affection of the children, anxious even, since she and Bobbie had had none of their own.
It would be good for them to have a mother they need not be ashamed of.
Linda would have to wait, she knew.
But what was a decent six months or so after the more than twenty years gone by?
Years of watching while Poor John struggled without the help and understanding of the kind of wife a man needed to get ahead.
Of course, he had done wonders **h. ## Alloy steels and regular steels had different sales departments at Smith + MacIsaacs, where John and Bobbie both worked.
Bobbie had been head of the alloy division, while John was just another good salesman in the regular branch.
So when old Mr Lovejoy, the company president, talked about putting in a single sales manager for both branches after the head of the regular steels had gone with Carnegie-Illinois, it looked like the perfect chance for Bobbie.
For Linda knew how to help her husband, not just the Stuart-family contacts but also the little dinners for Reuben Lovejoy.
She was almost sick when Bobbie came home with the news that Poor John had won the job.
"What did you do"?
she asked Bobbie.
"You must have done something, something wrong.
Lord knows I had everything set for you".
Bobbie said something about damned Pittsburghers sticking together, and Linda got angry at him.
They had their first real fight, and Bobbie went off to get drunk.
Linda dragooned her uncle, Donald Murkland, into a lunch the next day to find out what had happened.
He was a director of S + M and must have been in on the decision.
But jolly old Uncle Donald would tell her no more than that Bobbie had certainly been considered for the job, but there were factors in a large company which outsiders and even some insiders couldn't understand.
He didn't tell her of the long board meeting where Bobbie and John were weighed one against the other.
"I'm behind John Cooper", Mr Lovejoy said finally.
"I think we're agreed that he and Evans are equal in ability, so we have to look at the thing in terms of incentive.
"Now, I believe Poor John'll work just a little harder.
With that wife of his, I think he feels every chance he gets is his big chance.
Bobbie, with Linda behind him, will have plenty of other opportunities.
And also, the money can't mean as much to Bobbie.
"Bobbie will take the job as his just reward and work hard at it; Poor John will take it as a miracle and have every other independent steel company sitting up nights worrying about us".
Most of the directors nodded.
Uncle Donald Murkland found himself nodding agreement too.
After the surprise was over, Linda was almost as pleased as anyone with John's good luck, though she agreed with Bobbie's decision some months later to move to Funk Furnaces.
The job at Funk wasn't particularly better, but it got him away from being subordinate to John and assured him steady advancement, since Funk was owned to a large degree by various branches of Linda's family.
Poor John's rise continued to be meteoric.
When he was made a vice president only a year after the new sales job, a leading business magazine ran his photograph with a brief biography in a series on NATIONAL BUSINESS LEADERS OF THE FUTURE.
She called then to say she had a baby-sitter for that night.
"Shirley appreciated the chance to make some money.
Such a nice little thing- lives right in the building".
"That's swell", I said sweetly.
I could get along without that three dollars.
In some ways it was worth being out the money- just knowing I was no longer obligated to Nadine!
It was past midnight and we were in bed when the phone rang.
I stumbled through the hall, wondering who would be calling at this hour.
I answered to find Nadine at the other end.
"You scared me half to death", I said shakily.
"What's wrong"?
"Janice, nobody answers at the apartment"!
Her voice came shrill.
"I'm absolutely frantic!
That stupid girl might have gone off and left Francie"!
"Oh, she wouldn't do that", I said.
"She's probably fallen asleep and doesn't hear the phone.
But if you're worried you can go home and check"- "I can't leave the party!
We're at Ken Thom's apartment, and when one couple leaves early everything falls flat!
Old Mr Thom is already down on Wally, and we simply can't afford to get Ken mad at us"- I was all set for what came next.
"Janice, could you possibly go over and make sure everything's all right?
I'll call you there in ten minutes"- "I can't make it in ten minutes"- Wondering, as I said it, why I should make it at all.
Why should I go over at midnight to check on Francie, when her parents didn't care enough to leave a party?
"Fifteen minutes, then!
Please, Janice.
I'll be glad to pay you"- So sure that money could do anything!
"All right", I said.
I'd do it.
Not for the dollar or so Nadine would give me.
But because there was the chance that something had gone wrong at the apartment, and if I didn't go over, who would?
## CHRIS WAS sound asleep, and I didn't see any sense in waking him.
I dressed in the kitchen, then left a note on the table telling him what had happened.
I drove off through the cool darkness to Nadine's apartment and rang the bell, and in a few seconds a young girl opened the door.
Her face was flushed from sleep.
"It's all right", I said, as she started to look scared.
"Mrs Roberts had called, and couldn't wake you.
I just came over to make sure everything was all right".
"I'm- hard to wake up", she faltered.
She didn't look over thirteen.
And Nadine insisted that her sitters be reliable!
"I have to get up early for church tomorrow", she went on.
"I didn't know it was going to be this late"!
The phone started ringing.
"That's Mrs Roberts again", I said.
"I'll answer it".
I crossed the beautifully furnished living room to the pale yellow phone.
I told Nadine everything was fine, and that I'd be getting on home.
"Janice, would you mind staying"?
There was a ragged edge to her voice now, as if she'd been crying.
"Wally's drunk- I'll get him out of here as soon as I possibly can, but I don't want Shirley to see him like this.
You know how gossip of that sort spreads through an apartment building"- Not a word of thanks for what I'd already done.
The receiver clicked in my ear.
She didn't even give me a chance to refuse.
Well, there wasn't any law that said I had to stay!
But then I looked at Shirley and thought that I might as well- the child needed her sleep, and Heaven knew what kind of a mess it would be, with Wally coming home drunk.
So I told her Mrs Roberts would pay her in the morning, and she scooted off to her own apartment.
After I looked in at Francie, I went into the living room and waited.
I must have dozed off, because I came to with a start at the sound of voices.
Nadine's, shrill with anger- Wally's loud and thick- As I went to the door I heard the clock strike two.
I opened the door, and Wally stumbled in- fast- as if Nadine had pushed him.
I had always thought she was so beautiful.
But now she looked ugly.
Her skin was stretched so tight that her cheekbones stuck out, and if looks could kill, Wally would have been dead.
"Pack your clothes", she hissed.
"Pack- and get out"!
"You're crazy", Wally said thickly.
He lurched and stumbled to the davenport and sank down on it, and was instantly asleep.
Nadine strode over to him, and her pointed nails raked across his face.
I grabbed her arm and she turned on me and for a scared second I thought that maybe Wally was right, and she was crazy.
"You stay out of this", she spat at me.
"He's ruined us- do you hear me- he's ruined us!
He insulted Ken Thom"!
Her eyes were wild.
"He told Ken to his face that he doesn't have what it takes to get a woman!
And the other people there were listening!
We're ruined and he's going to get out if I have to throw him down the stairs"- ## "YOU'D BETTER simmer down", I said nervously.
I was plenty scared.
In the state she was in, she could actually kill him!
"Now you just take it easy, and I'll make you some tea"- "Tea," Nadine screeched.
"How can you be so damn stupid?
Wally's lost his job!
Ken will never forgive him- never!
And we don't have any money- we don't have a dime!
All we own is Francie's bedroom set and the televison-record player and we even owe on them.
And we'll be poor and have to live in a grubby little house like yours- and all because of that"- I clamped my hand over her mouth to stop the stream of filth.
"Stop that!
You'll wake up the whole building.
Wally can't go any place at this hour"- "Well then, I'll get out"- But she looked uncertain.
She was coming to her senses enough to realize that you don't go traipsing off anywhere at two in the morning.
"You go to bed", I said curtly.
"In the morning you and Wally can talk things out"- She collapsed against me, as if everything inside her snapped.
I got her into bed, and sat with her until she had sobbed herself out.
It was three o'clock before I figured it was all right to go.
I left her, a limp bundle of self-pity, shivering with terror because her bubble had burst around her.
Wally was snoring on the davenport.
I had done all I could.
I had done all I was going to do.
Whether or not Wally lost his job was no concern of mine.
I drove home, found Chris still asleep.
I snuggled up close to him- loving him- thankful for a man like him.
Thankful I wasn't Nadine.
I kept on being thankful.
In the afternoon Nadine and Wally came over with Francie.
Wally sat in our big chair, his hands between his knees, looking ready to cry.
"I'd had all this trouble with the old man, that's why I drank so much.
I- got fired yesterday for not attending to business"- Old Mr Thom himself had stopped at the service station for a grease job, Wally confessed, and couldn't get one because there were cars on the pits waiting to be repaired.
Seems that the kid Wally had hired had a repair business of his own going on the side.
Mr Thom had gotten Wally on the phone, and fired him.
"I thought I'd smooth things over through Ken", Wally said miserably.
"But Ken got coy and wouldn't make any promises.
And I was plastered and I blew my stack"- "And told him right to his face he'd never slept with a woman"!
I tried to quiet Nadine because the children were there.
But she was beyond caring what she said.
"Things may smooth over yet", Chris said, his nice lean face grave with honest concern.
But I couldn't help thinking that Nadine and Wally were getting just what they deserved.
Now maybe they'd realize that life can be tough.
## WHEN A bubble breaks, there's nothing.
Little by little, during the week, Chris and I discovered the crazy unbelievable way Nadine and Wally had lived.
They had not only spent every cent- they were in debt up to their necks, owing on everything they owned.
On top of everything else they were two months behind on their apartment rent, and the day Wally received written notice that he was fired, they were evicted.
Worst of all, Wally had no training for any kind of work.
He had fallen into a soft job, and now the job was gone and he was stranded.
Chris fretted.
"I wish we were in a position to offer a little money to tide them over".
I said I wished we were, too.
It was easy enough to say it, because of course we couldn't spare a cent.
But Chris brightened up like a candle.
"I'm glad you feel that way, honey.
There is one big way we can help them.
We can let them move in with us"- Something I had simply never thought of.
Something so incredible- I just stared at him.
It was incredible- He gave me an embarrassed, pleading look.
"I know we'd be pretty crowded.
But it would only be for a couple of weeks- until they get straightened out".
Straightened out- They'd had years of making all that money!
"I won't do it", I said flatly.
"Nadine was always too good to live in a little house like this!
Well, now she can sleep in the street for all I care"!
"That isn't like you, Janice", Chris said uncomfortably.
Then I felt uncomfortable, too.
I didn't want to be like that, mean and bitter.
But, darn it all, why should we help a couple of spoiled snobs who had looked down their noses at us?
But, in the end, we did.
It just seemed as if there was nothing else to do.
The finance company took all their furniture- and they didn't have a cent to their name.
Then Wally got sick.
To my way of thinking, he was scared sick.
His luck had failed him, and it was easier to crawl off into bed than to get out and fight the world.
Chris made trip after trip in our old car, moving the clothes and dishes and the stock of groceries Nadine had bought on special.
At least we'll eat, I thought grimly as I put all the food away.
While I worked, Nadine sat and cried.
When she wasn't crying, she was in our bedroom fighting with Wally.
"Virus infection nothing", she'd scream at him.
"You're too lazy to go out and look for another job.
You're just a no-good bum"!
It was a mess, all right.
But it couldn't go on forever- A couple of weeks, Chris had said.
I figured I could stand practically anything for a couple of weeks.
But the two weeks dragged into three, and they were still with us.
Nadine's constant nagging had finally gotten Wally out of bed.
He set out every morning looking for work, and come home around noon, full of alibis and excuses.
Wendell Thom had black-balled him.
Nobody would even take his application.
"You can get something," Nadine would snap.
"You can get a job working in a grocery store, if nothing else".
"The high school kids have got everything sewed up", he said, a whine in his voice.
"Those damn punks- taking work away from men who need it".
## "BY FALL they'll be back in school", I'd say, trying to sound encouraging.
But this was only the middle of July **h. And I couldn't take six more weeks of this.
I mentioned it to Chris one stifling hot night, when I had slipped outside for a breath of fresh air.
I DON'T really believe in intuition.
But I swear to you from the moment I opened my eyes, I knew it was going to be a bad day.
Part of it was the weather, so foggy it would take me twice as long to get to the hospital.
Part of it was being so tired- I'd not only had my usual full day yesterday, but a dinner meeting as well, that kept me up late.
But the rest of it, the main part, wasn't based on logic at all.
It was just going to be one of those days.
For the thousandth time, I wished I'd chosen some nice, nine-to-five, five-days-a-week profession.
And for the thousandth time, I answered myself.
I hadn't chosen medicine- it had chosen me.
Actually, I shouldn't complain, I told myself in the shaving mirror.
I had a lot to be thankful for.
A profession that brought me as good an income as mine wasn't to be sneezed at.
Maybe I didn't see as much of Gladdy as I'd like, but how much worse it would have been if I'd had to board her out somewhere after Alice went- send my daughter to an orphanage or a boarding-home.
At least, we were together and we had Mrs Hodges, bless her, to look after us- no mother could be fonder of Gladdy than Mrs Hodges was.
I was lucky in lots of ways, no doubt about it.
Especially in the way Gladdy had turned out.
Growing up without a mother from the time she was three- it wasn't a good thing for a child, even knowing the kind of mother Alice had been.
But I mustn't start on Alice.
She is a closed book, a picture I keep on my bureau, but never look at.
If she'd kept on as she'd been going, the story I'd told Gladdy would probably have been true by now, anyhow **h As usual, Gladdy's bright smile greeted me at the breakfast table.
Her first class wasn't until ten, but she always got up to have breakfast with me.
It made me feel good and knowing that she'd decided, all on her own, to go to college right here in town made me feel good, too.
Oh, I knew that I couldn't give myself all the credit for her decision.
I had a feeling that young Pete Michelson, the most promising intern at Fairview, had something to do with it, too.
She'd been out with Pete the night before and her gay chatter about their date lightened my mood a little.
But once I was alone again, driving to the hospital, the heaviness returned.
If she and Pete were really getting serious, I'd have to do some hard thinking.
Should I tell him the truth about Alice?
Did he have a right to know the secret I'd kept from Gladdy all these years?
The boys were already waiting in the corridor outside my office when I got to Fairview.
Two interns and Dick Ishii, the other resident.
I'm Chief of Medicine here and this morning would start like all others, with me taking the boys on the rounds.
Pete was down on Seven, Dick told me, and he'd meet us there.
There wasn't anything of special interest that morning, no one sicker than they should have been.
Pete came to meet us when we stepped out of the elevator on Seven- he'd had a case of post-operative shock, but it was all taken care of now.
Seven is a women's floor and, as it happened, not very busy right then.
When we'd finished our regular rounds, Pete pointed me toward the small ward at the end of the floor.
"Got a new one in last night", he said.
"I haven't seen her yet, but I hear she's a lulu"!
I wasn't surprised.
The ward was a small one, four beds, kept reserved for female alcoholics.
We didn't get many at Fairview and they were never pretty sights.
It was thought wiser to keep them segregated from the patients in the regular charity ward.
The moment I walked in, the whole miserable feeling of the day seemed to focus on the woman in the bed.
They'd cleaned her up some, of course, and she'd pretty much slept off her drunk.
But there was something about her- and I felt my lips forming a name.
Alice **h But this woman's name was Rose Bancroft!
I looked at the chart for reassurance.
Yes, Rose Bancroft, diagnosis: acute alcoholism.
She looked about sixty, though I recalled that the chart gave her age as forty-four.
An ugly scar disfigured the somewhat familiar puffy face, already marred by the tell-tale network of broken red veins that heavy drinkers carry.
Her coarse hair was two-colored- bleached blonde and its real, dirty gray.
Oh, could it be?
No, no **h it was an unfortunate resemblance, that was all it was, and I turned to Dick, forcing myself to put my disquiet out of my mind.
In a low voice, Dick filled us in **h SHE'D BEEN picked up downtown, passed out in the doorway.
Although quiet when they brought her in, she'd suddenly turned violent and had to be knocked out.
It was the old story.
We'd keep her a day or two, and the AA people would talk to her.
But if she wasn't interested, she'd just go back to the same life she'd left.
Turning toward the patient again, I- I can't describe what happened to me then, except to say that I felt sick.
I tell you, it took every ounce of control I had to be able to speak.
"Now, Miss- or is it Mrs Bancroft"?
I never liked going straight into an examination with patients- it relaxes them, I've always thought, to chat first.
This was one time I'd have gladly broken my own rule, but habit was too strong.
"Hey"!
Her voice was flat and dull.
But those penetrating eyes- I had to turn my head away.
It was then that I saw what the drawn-back covers revealed.
There were bloodspots on the sheet.
"What's this"?
I asked.
"Your period"?
She shook her head.
"I been spotting a little now and then", she said quietly, no emotion in her voice.
"Have you spoken to a doctor about it"?
Once again, there was a negative shake.
I told Miss Groggins to move her down the hall where we had an examining table.
"Better do a Papanicolaou", I told Pete.
It was only a few moments before Miss Groggins had her in the proper position for a vaginal, but I couldn't see anything wrong on gross examination.
Pete stood by with a slide and took the smear, sent it down to the lab with a request for the test.
That done, I told Miss Groggins to take her patient back to bed and again put her out of my mind.
I was busy the rest of the day.
Late in the afternoon, I was up on Seven again.
One of my private patients was being admitted and I went in to see her settled.
On my way to the elevator, I ran into Pete.
"I've got the results on the Bancroft smear test", he said.
"There's something there, all right.
Class Three, they said.
Do you want to talk to her, doctor"?
"Well"- I didn't- I didn't ever want to see that woman again.
But that was ridiculous, of course.
"All right.
We'll do a D and C and get her permission for a hysterectomy.
Maybe it's nothing, maybe it's intraepithelial or in situ- can't take any chances".
"If you can keep her here that long", Pete said wryly.
"Groggins tells me she's started badgering already, wants to get out.
Wants to get to her booze, I guess".
I grimaced in distaste.
"Well, better see what I can do".
We'd been standing right outside Miss Bancroft's door and as I went to turn the knob to enter, I was surprised to find that the door was slightly ajar.
But she seemed to be dozing and in any case, we'd been talking in low tones.
Her eyes opened as soon as she heard me, though, and once again, I felt an inward shiver.
"I sure can't complain about the service in this place", she said.
"I just got through seeing one of you guys.
What do you want"?
There was something almost insulting in her tone, but I disregarded it.
"I've just been talking to Dr Michelson", I said.
"We'd like you to have a dilatation and curettage.
That's quite minor, nothing to worry about.
But we would like your permission to do- that is, to go further if it proves necessary".
"No".
It was flat, definite.
"Suppose you let me explain.
Actually, I rather doubt that we'll have to do this.
Even if we do, you'll be out of here in a week, probably".
I was sure that was the difficulty- she just didn't want to stay here, where she couldn't get to the liquor.
"No".
I looked at her in amazement.
I'd had patients who'd refused surgery before, of course, but never one who didn't show, in one way or another, the reason why.
Mostly, it was fear, but this woman's voice didn't tremble and her hands were still on the coverlet.
"Will you tell me why"?
I asked.
She smiled, a smile without humor.
"You shouldn't tell your little secrets outside of the patient's door", she said.
"I've got cancer, haven't I"?
She went on, disregarding my protests.
"I'm not going to be one of your guinea pigs.
Let your pupils learn on someone else, doctor.
Just let me die in peace".
I stared at her, almost speechless.
Her little speech was totally out of character with the sort of person I thought she was.
Even her voice had taken on a more cultivated tone.
This was someone who'd come down in the world, I thought.
A long, long way down.
Again there was something familiar about her, something **h "You haven't got cancer", I said as strongly as I could.
"I don't know what you heard that would make you think so, but I assure you I don't even know myself, so how can you be so sure?
And even if"- "Don't give me a lot of talk, Joe".
I gaped at her.
She could have found out my first name, of course- that wouldn't be difficult.
But there was that something, some echo in the way she spoke **h She was watching me intently, a funny little half-smile on her lips.
"Surprised, baby?
Guess I've changed, haven't I?
But you haven't changed much, Joe".
I knew then, knew with a heart-stopping shock.
"Alice"- I stammered through dry lips.
"Alice, for goodness sake"- "Alice", she echoed mockingly.
"What's the matter, Joe, you scared of me?
Think I'm going to make you introduce a drunk as your wife?
Well, don't worry.
Just let me outta here"- "But why did you come back"?
I'd found my voice.
"Where have you been all these years"?
She shrugged.
"Here and there.
As for coming back here- well, I'll tell you the truth, I didn't even know where I was when I came to.
The last thing I remember is a bar in San Diego"- The way she spoke, her flat acceptance of her alcoholic blackout, made me shudder.
And this was Gladdy's mother!
"I never asked you for any favors, Joe", she went on, "but I'm asking one now.
Let me outta here!
You doctors are all alike- all you want is to cut up people and what's the good?
No, I want out, Joe"!
I looked at the pathetic wreck of a woman before me.
Let her out, let her out- that would be the solution, wouldn't it?
What she'd said was true- in all these years, she'd never asked for anything from me.
If I let her go, she'd disappear once more.
And Gladdy would be safe!
I was slowly swimming down to the bottom of the sea.
She made me welcome.
Her dark cool caresses were sweeter than any woman's; the many little tricks she knew made her embrace the ultimate one- the ever more fantastic pressures deeper in her body squeezed not me but the air I breathed into a nitrogen anesthetic.
Yielding-Mediterranean-woman-flesh-of-water, she soothed me, and drew me deeper into her.
I no longer knew how deep I was, somewhere under 230 feet, getting drunker, happier and more contented by the second.
The reasons for this dive seemed foolish now.
Only the dive itself had any meaning.
The metal-tasting nitrogen made me wonder if I should remove the mouthpiece and suck in the sweet water.
Perhaps if I took off the aqua-lung I could swim better, love my woman better.
I chuckled aloud, and the mouthpiece fell out.
While a hazy part of my mind concentrated on swimming down, a clear part sorted over recent events, among them my only positive act in a long time.
It was when I packed up what duds I had and went to Paris.
It was no vacation, just me getting out after a bellyfull.
I knew it wouldn't be the same.
Wild kicks never are, but I hoped to dig up a better frame of mind.
Once before I had been to Paris, long before I married Valery.
That first time was good and it stuck with me.
I was twenty-one back then, in the army, and fog put our plane down at Orly instead of Rhine-Main.
It was a Saturday evening in April with a mist-like rain, and I was a little high on the good taste of life.
I had a pocketful of money, which was unusual when I was in the army, and the plane would be grounded all night.
In less than an hour I had gotten a hotel, showered, shaved and was out on the Champs Elysees in a fresh uniform.
I felt like a Hun in Rome.
All the women were beautiful, and the men were equal to them; everything was glamorous to my dazzled eyes.
There were some sweet machines other than women: an old Bugatti, a lean Farina coachwork on an American chassis, a Swallow, a type 540-K Mercedes and lots more.
There was the Arc de Triomphe and the Tour d'Eiffel- I was no yokel, but I was young, and this was Paris!
I had champagne at Maxim's, then went into a cafe called the Jour et Nuit to ask the way to Montmartre.
I never got there.
I met Claire, which was better.
She was eating bread and cheese just as fast as she possibly could, and washing it down with red wine.
I stared.
I didn't know a human could feed so fast and still be beautiful.
She was blonde, and young, and nice and round in a tight white dress.
Maybe her ravenous eating wasn't grotesque because she was so positive about it.
When she had drained the last of the bottle and paid her bill, she came directly to my table and said: "Handsome soldier, I have assuaged one hunger with food.
I feel another of terrible urgency.
Is your evening free"?
"Madame", I said with noblesse oblige because of the "handsome"- "yeah".
And so off we went to her apartment.
She was a nymphomaniac, of course, the poor girl.
Toward the break of day I waxed philosophical, and drew analogies about her way of eating bread and cheese.
Now it was nine years later, and it wasn't spring but winter when I returned.
I got there on a Saturday evening.
I made the mistake of going to the Jour et Nuit.
The place was busy but I didn't feel like a Hun.
I sat waiting for Life to come along and sweep me up.
I had part of a bottle of French beer called Panther Pils (so help me), then switched to Tuborg.
After a few hours, Life hadn't showed, and I was crocked.
I went to my hotel and slept.
The next morning a little cognac made me feel better- but what can you do in Paris on Sunday morning?
So I drank more cognac.
All that day and Monday I drank just enough to orbit but not make deep space.
I read the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer.
Elemental, but sex.
That's what was on my mind.
I was turning over the idea of a good debauchery when I dozed off.
I felt better Tuesday evening when I woke up.
My head was clear, my thinking sober and I was reconciled to this Paris idea as a flop on top of all my others.
A good binge has that kind of therapeutic value.
Sometime earlier the weather had turned cold and it was snowing.
I went out into it.
I walked around breathing the cold wine of the air until I found a park, and I sat down on a snowy bench where the light was dim and came from the sky.
There was dignity and beauty in the little white flakes falling through the blue night.
I had on only a topcoat, but I wasn't cold.
I was just miserable.
Pretty soon a woman came along carrying a folded umbrella as a walking stick.
She saw me and sat down beside me, three feet away.
Suddenly I understood why she had the umbrella.
It gave her poise and posture.
Without it she would have been drab and limp.
It gave her propriety.
It gave her the right to sit down beside me, back straight, one hand out on the handle.
I couldn't imagine her without it.
I knew all about her.
She was another human being and happened to be a hustler.
I didn't much care if she were there or not.
After a while she said with sort of an unuttered laugh, "You have snow in your hair and ears".
(I didn't have on a hat.)
Hardly glancing at her, I smiled a bleak one which said, Thanks, baby, but I'd rather be alone.
She was silent for a while, then said, "Why are you so unhappy"?
"I'm not unhappy", I lied, staring at the snow.
She was trying to make a hole in my armor, and I didn't want it.
"Is it a woman"?
she asked gently.
She must have seen the ring on my left hand.
"Well- women and unhappiness go together", I observed profoundly, adding, "You can wager your derriere on that".
"Ah, monsieur, it is not my business to wager it **h" This took me so funny I had to look at her.
I felt my frozen sad face crumble, and I grinned a silly one I couldn't have helped.
I even snorted a chuckle.
She smiled at me, but it was an awfully sad smile.
She was even more miserable than me.
Her eyes were smiling, too, but so sadly, and there was tiredness and infinite wisdom in them.
"Now isn't it better to smile"?
she asked.
Because I liked this sad person so much, I said, "Will you have a drink with me"?
I could see the ancient cynicism reinforce itself in her eyes, and I wondered how many men she had picked up with this same gambit.
Anyway, I pulled a bottle of Remy Martin out of my topcoat, drew the cork, and passed it to her.
I could see she was shocked.
"I'm sorry I haven't got a glass", I said.
"Non, non", she said, taking the bottle, "not for that be sorry".
She tilted up and drank, and then I drank.
It's really rotten to drink good cognac like that, but I hadn't cared before.
I wasn't going to lug around a glass.
There wasn't much light in the blue dark, but I could see her well.
No child, this tart, she must have been thirty-five or even forty.
I couldn't be sure.
Somehow she was attractive.
Not good looking, but self-confident and wise so that it made her attractive.
I liked her, and all at once I was glad she was there.
We finished the bottle- I hadn't had a lot out of it earlier- not speaking much to each other, and we stayed sober.
I suppose we were cold, but we didn't feel it.
We seemed to be drowsing, sadly, soberly, in the cold, cold air while the snow fell.
Then she said, "Allons", and we got up and went to my hotel without another word.
I sensed no stranger in her.
We undressed and made love with the comfortable acceptance I had once known with Valery.
I decided thirty-five was the best estimate of her age.
She had a funny little scar on her stomach, on the left side.
I think we were very tired, for we awoke at the same moment, deeply rested, surprised to see the late morning sun on the windows, which were wet where the rime had melted.
I felt wonderful, the absolute opposite of last night's melancholy.
My head was clear.
I was hungry as a wolf, and my body felt lean and vital.
"Bon jour", I said brightly, sitting up, which pulled the covers to her hips.
She looked good, with her short tousled hair and no make-up.
Maybe closer to thirty, I thought.
"Bon jour"!
she exclaimed, smiling.
"J'ai faim"!
"Yeah, but breakfast first".
With a laugh she beat me to the bathroom.
I called downstairs for food and a toothbrush for her.
She came out pink from a hot bath, and I gave her my robe.
I had brushed my teeth, showered, shaved and dressed by the time a waiter wheeled in breakfast.
"The toothbrush monsieur", he said, presenting it.
I gave it to the woman.
"What is this for"?
she asked innocently.
"Why, to brush your teeth".
"But I already have!
I used yours".
"Oh"?
I said with round eyes.
I wondered if I ought to go use the new one myself.
But I smelled the coffee, and thinking, What the hell, live dangerously, I decided I would scald my worries away.
The coffee wasn't very hot though, made in a filter pot, but it was good.
We sent the waiter away and ate a tremendous amount of cold ham, hot hard-boiled eggs and hot garlic bread.
As we ate, we talked.
Her name was Suzanne, and mine Stephen.
We sat back comfortably on the bed with our last cups of coffee.
"You are very tactful, do you know, Stephen", she remarked.
"Um"?
I grunted, sipping.
"Yes, because you didn't run off to use that new toothbrush".
I raised my eyes to look at her in the mirror.
"I didn't really use yours", she went on.
"I carry one in my purse.
I know men never kiss les putains".
To my immense relief, she changed the subject in the next sentence: "Shall we go to the Louvre today"?
"All right".
I said with enthusiasm at the idea.
"But not immediately".
I put aside my empty cup.
She smiled all the way to her wise, sad eyes, and drained her own.
We were not rushed.
"What is this from"?
I asked, touching the scar on her stomach.
It was like a long thin line drawn through a pink circle.
"A bullet", she answered.
The cynicism was back in her eyes, a bitter wisdom, and I wondered if forty were not so far wrong after all.
She understood sex anyway, and played at it well.
We went to the Louvre for a few hours, then by Metro to a cabaret in Montmartre.
It was a nice place, not filled with smoke.
We had champagne and steamed mussels.
The sommelier brought the wine first, a magnum instead of the bottle I had ordered.
He must have thought I was a tourist.
I fixed him with a steely eye and said, "What's this for?
I didn't ask for a Jeroboam of champagne".
I thought that was pretty humorous, but I didn't laugh.
TWO LETTERS HAD ARRIVED FOR MISS THERESA STUBBLEFIELD: SHE PUT them in her bag.
She would not stop to read them in American Express, as many were doing, sitting on benches or leaning against the walls, but pushed her way out into the street.
This was her first day in Rome and it was June.
An enormous sky of the most delicate blue arched overhead.
In her mind's eye- her imagination responding fully, almost exhaustingly, to these shores' peculiar powers of stimulation- she saw the city as from above, telescoped on its great bare plains that the ruins marked, aqueducts and tombs, here a cypress, there a pine, and all around the low blue hills.
Pictures in old Latin books returned to her: the Appian Way Today, the Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine.
She would see them, looking just as they had in the books, and this would make up a part of her delight.
Moreover, nursing various Stubblefields- her aunt, then her mother, then her father- through their lengthy illnesses (everybody could tell you the Stubblefields were always sick), Theresa had had a chance to read quite a lot.
England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy had all been rendered for her time and again, and between the prescribed hours of pills and tonics, she had conceived a dreamy passion by lamplight, to see all these places with her own eyes.
The very night after her father's funeral she had thought, though never admitted to a soul: Now I can go.
There's nothing to stop me now.
So here it was, here was Italy, anyway, and terribly noisy.
In the street the traffic was really frightening.
Cars, taxis, buses, and motorscooters all went plunging at once down the narrow length of it or swerving perilously around a fountain.
Shoals of tourists went by her in national groups- English school girls in blue uniforms, German boys with cameras attached, smartly dressed Americans looking in shop windows.
Glad to be alone, Theresa climbed the splendid outdoor staircase that opened to her left.
The Spanish Steps.
Something special was going on here just now- the annual display of azalea plants.
She had heard about it the night before at her hotel.
It was not yet complete: workmen were unloading the potted plants from a truck and placing them in banked rows on the steps above.
The azaleas were as large as shrubs, and their myriad blooms, many still tight in the bud, ranged in color from purple through fuchsia and rose to the palest pink, along with many white ones too.
Marvelous, thought Theresa, climbing in her portly, well-bred way, for she was someone who had learned that if you only move slowly enough you have time to notice everything.
In Rome, all over Europe, she intended to move very slowly indeed.
Halfway up the staircase she stopped and sat down.
Other people were doing it, too, sitting all along the wide banisters and leaning over the parapets above, watching the azaleas mass, or just enjoying the sun.
Theresa sat with her letters in her lap, breathing Mediterranean air.
The sun warmed her, as it seemed to be warming everything, perhaps even the underside of stones or the chill insides of churches.
She loosened her tweed jacket and smoked a cigarette.
Content **h excited; how could you be both at once?
Strange, but she was.
Presently, she picked up the first of the letters.
A few moments later her hands were trembling and her brow had contracted with anxiety and dismay.
Of course, one of them would have to go and do this!
Poor Cousin Elec, she thought, tears rising to sting in the sun, but why couldn't he have arranged to live through the summer?
And how on earth did I ever get this letter anyway?
She had reason indeed to wonder how the letter had managed to find her.
Her Cousin Emma Carraway had written it, in her loose high old lady's script- t's carefully crossed, but l's inclined to wobble like an old car on the downward slope.
Cousin Emma had simply put Miss Theresa Stubblefield, Rome, Italy, on the envelope, had walked up to the post office in Tuxapoka, Alabama, and mailed it with as much confidence as if it had been a birthday card to her next-door neighbor.
No return address whatsoever.
Somebody had scrawled American Express, Piazza di Spagna?, across the envelope, and now Theresa had it, all as easily as if she had been the President of the Republic or the Pope.
Inside were all the things they thought she ought to know concerning the last illness, death, and burial of Cousin Alexander Carraway.
Cousin Emma and Cousin Elec, brother and sister- unmarried, devoted, aging- had lived next door to the Stubblefields in Tuxapoka from time immemorial until the Stubblefields had moved to Montgomery fifteen years ago.
Two days before he was taken sick, Cousin Elec was out worrying about what too much rain might do to his sweetpeas, and Cousin Elec had always preserved in the top drawer of his secretary a mother-of-pearl paper knife which Theresa had coveted as a child and which he had promised she could have when he died.
I'm supposed to care as much now as then, as much here as there, she realized, with a sigh.
This letter would have got to me if she hadn't even put Rome, Italy, on it.
She refolded the letter, replaced it in its envelope, and turned with relief to one from her brother George.
But alas George, when he had written, had only just returned from going to Tuxapoka to Cousin Elec's funeral.
He was full of heavy family reminiscence.
All the fine old stock was dying out, look at the world today.
His own children had suffered from the weakening of those values which he and Theresa had always taken for granted, and as for his grandchildren (he had one so far, still in diapers), he shuddered to think that the true meaning of character might never dawn on them at all.
A life of gentility and principle such as Cousin Elec had lived had to be known at first hand **h. Poor George!
The only boy, the family darling.
Together with her mother, both of them tense with worry lest things should somehow go wrong.
Theresa had seen him through the right college, into the right fraternity, and though pursued by various girls and various mammas of girls, safely married to the right sort, however much in the early years of that match his wife, Anne, had not seemed to understand poor George.
Could it just be, Theresa wondered, that Anne had understood only too well, and that George all along was extraordinary only in the degree to which he was dull?
As for Cousin Alexander Carraway, the only thing Theresa could remember at the moment about him (except his paper knife) was that he had had exceptionally long hands and feet and one night about one o'clock in the morning the whole Stubblefield family had been aroused to go next door at Cousin Emma's call- first Papa, then Mother, then Theresa and George.
There they all did their uttermost to help Cousin Elec get a cramp out of his foot.
He had hobbled downstairs into the parlor, in his agony, and was sitting, wrapped in his bathrobe, on a footstool.
He held his long clenched foot in both hands, and this and his contorted face- he was trying heroically not to cry out- made him look like a large skinny old monkey.
They all surrounded him, the family circle, Theresa and George as solemn as if they were watching the cat have kittens, and Cousin Emma running back and forth with a kettle of hot water which she poured steaming into a white enamelled pan.
"Can you think of anything to do"?
she kept repeating.
"I hate to call the doctor but if this keeps up I'll just have to!
Can you think of anything to do"?
"You might treat it like the hiccups", said Papa.
"Drop a cold key down his back".
"I just hope this happens to you someday", said Cousin Elec, who was not at his best.
"Poor Cousin Elec", George said.
He was younger than Theresa: she remembered looking down and seeing his great round eyes, while at the same time she was dimly aware that her mother and father were not unamused.
"Poor Cousin Elec".
Now, here they both were, still the same, George full of round-eyed woe, and Cousin Emma in despair.
Theresa shifted to a new page.
"Of course (George's letter continued), there are practical problems to be considered.
Cousin Emma is alone in that big old house and won't hear to parting from it.
Robbie and Beryl tried their best to persuade her to come and stay with them, and Anne and I have told her she's more than welcome here, but I think she feels that she might be an imposition, especially as long as our Rosie is still in high school.
The other possibility is to make arrangements for her to let out one or two of the rooms to some teacher of good family or one of those solitary old ladies that Tuxapoka is populated with- Miss Edna Whittaker, for example.
But there is more in this than meets the eye.
A new bathroom would certainly have to be put in.
The wallpaper in the back bedroom is literally crumbling off **h".
(Theresa skipped a page of details about the house.)
"I hope if you have any ideas along these lines you will write me about them.
I may settle on some makeshift arrangements for the summer and wait until you return in the fall so we can work out together the best **h".
I really shouldn't have smoked a cigarette so early in the day, thought Theresa, it always makes me sick.
I'll start sneezing in a minute, sitting on these cold steps.
She got up, standing uncertainly for a moment, then moving aside to let go past her, talking, a group of young men.
They wore shoes with pointed toes, odd to American eyes, and narrow trousers, and their hair looked unnaturally black and slick.
Yet here they were obviously thought to be handsome, and felt themselves to be so.
Just then a man approached her with a tray of cheap cameos, Parker fountain pens, rosaries, papal portraits.
"No", said Theresa.
"No, no"!
she said.
The man did not wish to leave.
He knew how to spread himself against the borders of the space that had to separate them.
Carrozza rides in the park, the Colosseum by moonlight, he specialized **h. Theresa turned away to escape, and climbed to a higher landing where the steps divided in two.
There she walked to the far left and leaned on a vacant section of banister, while the vendor picked himself another well-dressed American lady, carrying a camera and a handsome alligator bag, ascending the steps alone.
Was he ever successful, Theresa wondered.
The lady with the alligator bag registered interest, doubt, then indignation; at last, alarm.
She cast about as though looking for a policeman: this really shouldn't be allowed!
Finally, she scurried away up the steps.
Theresa Stubblefield, still holding the family letters in one hand, realized that her whole trip to Europe was viewed in family circles as an interlude between Cousin Elec's death and "doing something" about Cousin Emma.
They were even, Anne and George, probably thinking themselves very considerate in not hinting that she really should cut out "one or two countries" and come home in August to get Cousin Emma's house ready before the teachers came to Tuxapoka in September.
Of course, it wasn't Anne and George's fault that one family crisis seemed to follow another, and weren't they always emphasizing that they really didn't know what they would do without Theresa?
The trouble is, Theresa thought, that while everything that happens there is supposed to matter supremely, nothing here is supposed even to exist.
They would not care if all of Europe were to sink into the ocean tomorrow.
It never registered with them that I had time to real all of Balzac, Dickens, and Stendhal while Papa was dying, not to mention everything in the city library after Mother's operation.
It would have been exactly the same to them if I had read through all twenty-six volumes of Elsie Dinsmore.
She arranged the letters carefully, one on top of the other.
Then, with a motion so suddenly violent that she amazed herself, she tore them in two.
"Signora"?
She became aware that two Italian workmen, carrying a large azalea pot, were standing before her and wanted her to move so that they could begin arranging a new row of the display.
"Mi diapiace, signora, ma **h insomma **h".
"Oh **h put it there"!
She indicated a spot a little distance away.
## I knew it as surely as everybody in Westfield- that Lucille was a husband stealer.
You can't keep that kind of information quiet in a town of only 4000-plus.
And I've been told that just about every town, no matter what its size, has its Lucille Warren.
Just as it has its Susan Dolan, though nobody'd ever bothered to tell me that.
Susan Dolan, that's me.
They even talked about Lucille down at the Young Christians' League where I spent a lot of time in Bible classes and helping out with the office work for our foreign mission.
I never heard my folks talk about her, though.
They were good-living religious people, and I can truthfully say I never heard them spread any gossip about anybody.
Even if they ever did say anything about people like Lucille Warren, I know they wouldn't have dreamed of saying it in front of me.
My folks and my faith protected me from things like that.
And so I was really upset the first time I discovered that my boy friend Johnnie was seeing Mrs warren.
I asked him about it one night while we were sitting in his truck.
I asked him if it was true.
He gave me a straight, honest answer.
"Look, Sue baby", he'd said.
Much as I love you- well, a guy's a guy and Lucille's willing to- to come across.
Honest, kitten, that's all it is- I don't even like Lucille much".
I guess it was at that moment that I realized what I was up against in the person of Lucille Warren.
But it didn't seem fair.
My love for Johnnie was young and clean- how could I possibly compete with a woman like that, who didn't hesitate to use her sex.
Johnnie was a trucker with a small lumber outfit in a town about twenty miles away, and he was also pretty good at anything in the carpentry line.
It was a vivid, sharp February morning that Johnnie first made his appearance in my back yard, bringing some stuff Dad had ordered.
I wasn't in the habit of batting my eyes at delivery men, but the moment I saw Johnnie, I knew he was different.
He wasn't only different- he was it.
He had an easy masculine grace about him, the kind that kids don't have, but that I had sometimes admired in other older men.
His smile was quick, and his eyes held some promised secret that made my knees go limp.
The most unbelievable thing about the chance meeting was that he seemed interested in me, too.
I could hardly believe such good luck was mine.
And now Lucille Warren had gotten a look at him.
I guess she was between affairs or something, but anyway, she had set her sights on Johnnie, my Johnnie.
I didn't like it one bit.
But what could I do?
A man had to have his release- at least that's what the boys used to say in high school- and I wasn't providing it for Johnnie.
Neither was his wife.
She wouldn't have, even if he'd asked her.
But he wouldn't ask her- he wasn't the kind of man who would force his wife to submit to him against her will.
And he wouldn't leave her either- he'd told me that.
He was too honorable to leave his wife penniless and leave those helpless children without their daddy.
Johnnie loved me and wanted me.
But the only love I was giving him was the pure kind.
It was weeks before we even kissed for the first time.
## Against my folks' wishes, we'd been seeing each other for short rides in the truck.
The rides were tame enough- mostly we talked.
But by the time the first crackling of spring came around, we both knew we were hopelessly in love.
Yet even then we did nothing much but talk, and maybe neck a little.
"It's so crazy", I told him once.
"I always imagined I would probably end up marrying a minister or somebody like that.
Somebody with no vices.
You know".
"And you fall for a lumber jockey".
"Who drinks far too much".
"And smokes too much".
"And", I was ticking off the items on my fingers, "swears too much and goes out with the boys, whoever they are, too much, and who never goes to church and won't even listen when I try to persuade him to come back to the fold".
He examined his nails carefully.
"I could walk out the door".
"Don't you dare".
"And never show my face or my truck around here again".
He still wasn't looking at me.
"You wouldn't".
"Or I could visit Lucille Warren".
"You wouldn't.
Please!
You wouldn't".
He shrugged noncommittally.
"I might".
And now he was seeing her.
He'd just admitted it to me.
I huddled miserably beside him in the truck.
It was all my doing- his seeing her.
Johnnie and I had been innocent in our love, and that was the way I wanted to keep it.
At first, Johnnie hadn't understood- how could he, not being a religious person like me?
But then he had said, "All right, kid, if that's how you want it, that's how it'll be".
But what had I done, trying to keep us pure?
I had driven him into the arms of that scheming woman.
I had just the same as delivered him into the hands of the Devil!
So one week later, I surrendered to him in the little motel on Route 10.
My very first time.
I was desperate to hold him, to give him whatever in this world he wanted or needed, and to keep him from the clutches of Lucille Warren.
And, though at the time I blushed to admit it even to myself, there was in me a growing desire, a sexual awareness, that Johnnie had set in motion, an awareness that no other man had ever triggered.
I wanted him, with a terrifying fierceness.
Astonishingly enough, it was my own voice I heard there in the darkness, begging this man to make love to me.
"Love me, Johnnie".
"I will, kitten"!
Outside, in the summertime fields behind the motel, a thousand crickets serenaded us.
"Will you always love me this way"?
"Uh huh.
Always".
"Mmm".
And I snuggled closer to the man l loved.
It was as blissful and fulfilling a night as any bride ever experienced.
I had had no wedding ceremony, no witnesses, no certificate of marriage, but I had all the joy that goes with them.
"Johnnie **h?
"It can't be wrong, can it?
Not really".
Johnnie rose on one elbow.
"Stop worrying.
It's never wrong if love is real".
I took great comfort from his words, and smiled to myself in the darkness.
Infinite peace, complete contentment.
Idiot's delight, I later discovered.
## I felt no conflict between what I was doing and my strict religious upbringing.
I had always resisted the passes made at me by other kids, and many times I had thought about my love for Johnnie who, being thirty, brought a maturity to love that the kids around town could know nothing about.
I had also thought a lot about how God must look on true love, and so in a way I was keeping my promise to God, my promise to remain pure until I was married.
I was practically a bride, after all.
There would have been a ceremony if it had been possible.
Of this, I had no doubt.
Wouldn't Johnnie do practically anything in the world to insure my happiness?
Of course he would.
He'd not only told me so, he'd proved it.
It wasn't Johnnie's fault that he was hopelessly tied down to that frightful woman who did her best to make his life unbearable.
Just because he was honorable enough to want to continue supporting his two children, as any decent man would, that was no reason he should be denied his own small share of happiness too.
And if I could contribute to that, I'd do it.
The cost didn't matter.
No price is too high when true love is at stake.
And I had no doubts about how true this love was.
I'd never even petted with a boy, and after I met Johnnie he never touched me for the longest while, not until I all but threw myself at him.
He was plenty attentive, all right, but he behaved like a gentleman, and I figured that, emotionally, I was closer to his age than to my own eighteen and a half.
What could a mere twelve years matter?
It wasn't, I was sure, a difference in age that came between people, but a difference in maturity.
And hadn't I rescued him from Lucille Warren?
She'd have gotten him, if I hadn't stopped her.
After all, Lucille Warren was a husband-stealer from way back.
But I'd been a good girl and now God was blessing me with the gift of this magnificent man and the wondrous love we shared.
It was only fitting that we seek out whatever joy our union might bring.
"Love me"?
"Uh-huh.
Love you".
"Always and always, Johnnie"?
"Always".
"Mmm".
Convention time in Boston.
A chill wind in the air and the narrow streets packed with snow.
From the entire eastern half of the nation they'd be coming, members of the Young Christians' League, and I'd been chosen to represent our chapter.
I had mixed emotions about going.
I'd been seeing Johnnie almost a year now, but I still didn't want to leave him for five whole days.
But I had looked forward so much to being with this church group.
I hadn't been doing as much work as I used to in Westfield and I felt funny about that and wanted to work harder than ever.
I wanted to just throw myself into the good works of this fine group.
So I went to Boston.
The first meeting was held in Faneuil Hall, a great big place where we were able to meet members from all the other states.
My cousin Alma, at whose home I was staying during the convention, introduced me to a group of young people from Rhode Island.
One of them was a very friendly, lovely fellow named Ronald, a boy about my age with slick, blond hair and dancing blue eyes.
He looked very different from Johnnie- in fact, he looked sort of like me.
I thought so, and he mentioned it, and Alma said so too.
After the meeting, there was going to be a party at someone's house.
I assumed Alma would get me there, but in the confusion of the meeting breaking up, we were separated.
Outside the hall, I anxiously looked around for her, then all at once there was a hand on my elbow.
"Hey, there, beautiful twin of mine", Ronald said.
"Need a pumpkin to get to the party"?
I couldn't help laughing with him.
"Well, I should find Alma"- I began.
"Alma, Schmalma.
Come along with me".
I went.
## By the time we arrived, the party was already going strong.
A couple of the girls were laughing rather shrilly and I realized they were drinking.
My folks wouldn't dream of having alcohol in the house, so my first taste of it had been- of course- with Johnnie.
I hadn't liked it at first- it was bitter and burning.
But when Johnnie disguised the taste with ginger ale, I enjoyed it.
Of course I enjoyed 'most anything if I did it with Johnnie.
Johnnie **h I suddenly realized he'd been totally out of my thoughts all evening.
But that was only natural, I decided; surely he was still resting snugly in my heart.
"I don't see Alma anywhere", I said.
"She's invisible tonight.
C'mon, let's find out where they're keeping the glasses".
I drew back.
"I- I don't think so, Ronald.
Not for me".
"Aw, come on".
"No- really".
He shrugged.
"Okay.
But at least come along while I get lubricated".
The kitchen was jammed.
Strange faces, most of them, and I wasn't even sure all of them had come from the League meeting.
Under normal circumstances, he had a certain bright-eyed all-American-boy charm, with great appeal for young ladies, old ladies, and dogs.
Today, he looked like an Astronaut who had left his vitamin pills on the bureau and spent six months in space: hollow eyes, hollow cheeks, hollow stomach.
Breakfast, he thought.
A shot of orange juice would make everything seem better.
He looked around his little Eden: bureau, bed, table, chair, two-burner stove.
Then he remembered.
"You share a refrigerator", Mrs Kirby had said, and somehow, at midnight, after the long drive from New York in pelting rain, that had sounded reasonable.
In the cold light of day, it seemed a lunatic arrangement.
Share bath, maybe- but share refrigerator?
She had explained it- something about summer people's eating out and not enough space in the units.
And where was the thing?
He remembered seeing it last night, when he put away his small store of bachelor-type eatables.
Ah, yes- his half of a refrigerator stood outside, on the "curving veranda" between Unit Number Three and Unit Number Four.
It was still raining, and Mrs Kirby's cottages bloomed through the gray haze like the names they bore, vivid blue and green and magenta.
Charlie downed his orange juice and one of the long, skinny green pills, his spirits as damp as the day.
This vacation had seemed like a good idea last week, when his doctor had prescribed it.
"Take a full month", the doctor had said.
"Lots of sun, lots of rest.
The red pills are a vitamin-and-iron compound.
This is a sleeping capsule.
The others will make you a little more comfortable until you get it licked.
You young men get to be my age, you won't take flu so lightly".
Charlie had accepted the diagnosis without comment.
The doctor could call it anything from flu to beriberi; but Charlie knew what was wrong with him and knew, too, that there was no pill to cure it.
He had loved and lost Vivian Wayne to somebody else, had watched her marry the somebody else, and had caught a bear of a cold by kissing the bride good-by forever, which was really piling it on.
He had caught, too, like an ailment, a confirmed distrust of women.
Once burned- scalded, really, because Vivian had given him every encouragement- forever shy.
From now on, his was going to be a man's world: the North Woods, duck blinds at dawning, beer and poker and male secretaries.
Meanwhile, he had this miserable cold, and as he leaned against the refrigerator, watching the rain make sandy puddles at his feet, the doctor's prescription for lots of sun seemed like a hollow mockery.
In these damp circumstances, he was an odds-on bet to develop pneumonia.
He looked up to see Mrs Kirby, awesome in a black-and-yellow polka-dotted slicker, bearing down on him.
"Three-day blow"!
she bellowed triumphantly.
He had noticed before that the natives seemed to regard really filthy weather as a kind of Pyhrric victory over the tourists.
"Fine, day after tomorrow", she added.
"I hope so", he said.
"I've got this cold.
Thought I'd bake it out in the sun".
"Ah".
She studied him briefly.
"You've got a peaked look.
Better get in out of the wet".
Charlie forbore to mention that the wet was somewhat universal, Peony being less than weatherproof.
As for its being fine, day after tomorrow, he had the unhappy conviction that it would never be fine again, with Vivian lost to him forever.
He could imagine her at this minute, honeymooning in Nassau with what's-his-name, lounging on golden sands, looking forward to a life of unalloyed bliss.
All Charlie could look forward to was a yellow pill at noon, a salami sandwich for lunch, and a lonely old age- if he lived that long.
He leafed through the light reading provided by Mrs Kirby for her guests: four separate adventures of the Bobbsey Twins (At the Seashore, At the Mountains, On the Farm, and In Danger) and several agricultural bulletins on the treatment of hoof-and-mouth disease in cattle, hideously illustrated.
He dozed, only to dream of Vivian, and woke, only to crash into the night table, bruising his other shin.
He took a yellow pill, only to choke on it, and went for the salami, only to find something alive in the refrigerator- something pink and fuzzy.
His first thought was that Mrs Kirby, in her mania for color, had dyed a cat and that cat had somehow managed to open the refrigerator door and climb in; but on further investigation, the thing proved to be a sweater, of the long-hair variety that sheds onto men's jackets- pale, pale pink and, according to the label, size thirty-four.
He thought about it for a minute, could find no reasonable explanation for the presence of a sweater in the refrigerator, got the salami, bread, and a Bermuda onion, and put the whole thing out of his mind.
## Next morning, he found a note in the refrigerator.
"Would you mind wrapping your onion"?
said this note.
"The smell permeates everything"!
Everything being the sweater, a lipstick case, and a squirt bottle of Kissin' Kare pink hand lotion.
The note paper was pink, too, and the handwriting small and dainty and utterly feminine.
Not that he had supposed, considering the evidence, that he was sharing this refrigerator with a member of the Beach Patrol.
He scrawled "Sorry" across the bottom of the note and then, against his better judgment, added: "Don't you eat"?
He didn't want to encourage anything here; but on the other hand, he didn't want her swiping his salami.
"Not onions", came the answer the following day.
"Ugh".
Must have really smelled up her sweater, he thought, and wondered idly just why she kept the sweater fast-frozen.
But then, as he well knew, women are not guided by logic or common sense.
Take Vivian.
Yes, take Vivian.
Somebody had.
Now, if this were Vivian next door to him and if, for some obscure female reason, she kept her clothes in the refrigerator, they would not be pink.
They would be black or white or horse-blanket plaid, chic and splashy, like Vivian herself.
Pink, Vivian once had told him, was for baby girls, and grown-up girls who wore pink were subconsciously clinging to their infancy.
"Why does this girl keep a sweater in the refrigerator"?
he mused aloud.
## Eh"?
It was Mrs Kirby, making her toilsome way along the veranda, laden with a clattery collection of mops, brushes, and pails.
"What's that you say"?
"Oh, nothing.
Just glad the rain's stopped".
"Oh, yes.
Just look at that sky.
Be a scorcher by afternoon".
"I hope so.
I've got this cold".
"So you said".
She scrutinized him.
"My, you're peaked.
You want to watch out that you don't get burned to an ash, first sunny day.
I must remember to warn the girl next to you in Larkspur.
That pale kind's the worst".
That pale kind, Charlie thought.
Hardly an inviting description.
But then, neither was peaked.
He could hear Mrs Kirby now, warning her pale guest against sunburn.
"I spoke to the fellow next door, too", she might say.
"He's that peaked kind".
Surely there was a better word.
Charlie looked in the mirror.
Run-down, iron-poor.
He looked more closely.
Frail, feeble- peaked.
Clearly, two damp days with the Bobbsey Twins had done him no good.
The sun, blazing hot as prophesied, was far from kind to Mrs Kirby's varicolored properties.
When Charlie came up from the beach for his four-o'clock pill, the whole establishment (gaudy enough when seen through mist and fog) looked like a floodlit modern painting- great blocks of dizzy color, punctuated at regular intervals by the glaring white of five community refrigerators.
This weekend, he thought, he would look around for some more subdued retreat, with Cape roses, maybe, at the door.
He could not imagine a flower's being brave enough to grow beside Peony, Larkspur, and the rest.
The sweater was gone from the refrigerator, and in its place was a large plastic bag, full of wet pink clothes.
No wonder she was so pale, wearing all those cold clothes.
He got a red pill and a beer and then, on impulse, transferred the rest of his salami to her side of the refrigerator and scrawled "Be my guest" on the wrapping.
It gave him a good feeling.
"M-m-m.
Thanks", was her answer the next day.
The note was propped against his pill bottles and bore a postscript: "You're not at all well, are you"?
"I've got this cold", he wrote.
Not that it was any of her business.
"It's none of my business", said the next note, "but my aunt Elsie used to take lemon juice and honey in hot water for a cold, and she lived to be ninety-six.
I mean, she's still living, and she's ninety-six.
Why don't you try that"?
"I don't have a lemon".
He had to write very small to get it on the bottom of the scrap of paper.
By the next morning, she had turned the paper over.
"Gee, neither do I".
Charlie grinned.
She didn't sound like a pale girl.
She sounded a little like a redhead.
But then, redheads are often pale.
He stuck his head in Mrs Kirby's little rental office.
"I guess that redhead next to me took your advice.
I haven't seen her on the beach".
"You won't, if you're looking for a redhead.
She's got browny hair".
He spent that afternoon on the beach, looking for a pale, browny-haired girl in a pink bathing suit.
There were pink bathing suits on blondes, and browny-haired girls in red or black or green bathing suits.
There were a sprinkling of daring bikinis and a preponderance of glorified tank suits.
Up on a dune, he saw a girl, all by herself, sitting on a camp stool before an easel and absorbed in her painting.
He paid little attention to her because she was a redhead and because she was wearing white- one of those bulky, turtle-neck sweaters.
On the beach, there were pale girls and not-so-pale girls.
And he saw them all as he walked up and down.
At two that morning, he was still walking- up and down Peony, up and down the veranda, up and down the silent, moonlit beach.
Finally, in desperation, he opened the refrigerator, filched her hand lotion, and left a note.
"I've got this sunburn", said the note, "and I used some of your hand lotion.
Hope you don't mind".
"Of course I don't mind", she answered.
"You're having a miserable time, aren't you?
Use all the lotion you want, and for goodness' sake, stay in out of the sun for a couple of days".
This was a very warm, sympathetic girl, he decided.
Sympathy is a fine quality in a woman.
Now Vivian, for instance, was not too long on sympathy.
She felt, and said, that sympathy only made people feel sorry for themselves; it was a tough world, and you had to be tough to hold your own.
He didn't know what was so tough about Vivian's world, slopping around Nassau with what's-his-name.
Suppose what's-his-name got a sunburn?
Charlie couldn't see Vivian offering any hand lotion.
She might peel him, once the worst of the agony was over.
## Charlie spent the next two days in his pajama bottoms, waiting for the fire in his back to subside, and used generous quantities of the hand lotion.
Correspondence passed back and forth.
"How's your sunburn now?
The only thing, this lotion has glycerin in it, and that whitens the skin, so if you're so anxious to get a tan, you may not want to use it".
"I'm not that anxious, but maybe that's why you're so fair".
"That Mrs Kirby!
I'll bet she told you I was puny, too.
How's your cold"?
"Broiled out.
She didn't say you were puny.
Are you?
What's puny"?
"Puny goes with pale and peaked.
Do you have anything to read while you're shut up?
There are two things here about Surviving in the Wilderness, and a book called 'Tom Swift and His Speedy Canoe'; but the picture of Tom Swift is pretty sinister.
Also the canoe".
There was a crowd in the stands for a change and the sun was hot.
The new Riverside pitcher turned out to have an overhand fast ball that took a hop.
For a few innings the Anniston team couldn't figure him out.
Then, in the fifth, Anniston's kid catcher caught onto a curve and smacked the ball into left center field.
Eddie Lee, Riverside's redheaded playing manager, ran after the ball but it rolled past him.
Phil Rossoff cut over to center from left field to get the relay.
Eddie caught up with the ball near the fence and threw it to Phil.
"Third!
Third base"!
Eddie shouted.
Phil spun around and made an accurate throw into Mike Deegan's hands on third base.
Mike caught the ball just as the catcher slid into the bag.
But the Anniston boy had begun his slide too late.
He came into the bag with his body and Mike Deegan brought the ball down full in his face.
"You bastard"!
the Anniston catcher screamed.
He jumped to his feet and started to throw punches.
Mike Deegan tossed his glove away and began to swing at the catcher.
This brought in everybody from both sides, while the spectators stood up and added to the uproar.
The fighters were separated in a few minutes.
The game was resumed.
But Mike Deegan was boiling mad now.
When the inning was over he cursed the Anniston catcher all the way into the dugout.
Phil Rossoff, coming in from left field, stopped at the water fountain for a drink.
Mike Deegan was standing beside it, facing the field.
He was eyeing the Anniston catcher warming up his pitcher before the inning began.
"Keep your eyes open, sonny"!
Mike yelled to the catcher.
"You're in for trouble".
The Anniston catcher did not reply with words.
He simply turned to Mike and smiled.
This so infuriated Deegan that he spun around and said: "I'll get that little bastard.
So help me God, I'll get him".
Phil Rossoff said: "Why don't you leave him alone"?
"Mind your own goddamn business", Mike Deegan said.
Phil shrugged.
He stepped into the dugout, wondering why Deegan was always looking for trouble.
Maybe the answer was in his eyes.
When Deegan smiled his eyes never fit in with his lips.
In the last of the sixth inning Mike Deegan got up to bat and hit a fast ball over the left fielder's head.
By the time the fielder got his hands on the ball Deegan was rounding third base and heading for home.
The left fielder threw and it was a good one.
But Mike had no chance of being tagged.
The Anniston catcher was straddling home plate.
All Deegan had to do was slide, fall away, but instead, he rammed into the catcher.
Both fell heavily to the ground.
Only Mike got to his feet.
He went back to touch home plate, turned and walked to the dugout without looking back.
The Anniston players and their manager ran out on the field.
They poured water over their catcher's face.
He did not move.
Then the manager called for a doctor.
The Riverside physician came down to look over the injured ballplayer.
Then, quickly, and a little nervously, the doctor ordered a couple of ballplayers to carry the catcher into the dressing room.
Mike Deegan was sitting on the bench, watching.
When the ballplayers started to carry the catcher off the field he said: "That ought to teach the sonofabitch".
Phil Rossoff, seated next to Deegan, got up and moved to the other end of the bench.
The Anniston manager was coming over to the Riverside dugout.
He was followed by four of his men.
It began to look as if something was going to happen.
Mike sat quitely watching the manager come nearer.
Eddie Lee moved over to Mike Deegan's side.
No one said a word.
The Anniston manager came right up to the dugout in front of Mike.
His face was flushed.
"Deegan", the manager said, his voice pitched low, quivering.
"That was a rotten thing to do".
"For God's sake", Mike said, waving the manager away.
"Stop it, will you?
Tell your guys not to block the plate".
"You didn't have to ram him".
"That's what you say".
The Anniston manager looked at Eddie Lee.
It was a cold and calculated look.
He turned and went back across the field to his dugout.
He called in the pitcher who had been pitching, and a big, heavy, powerfully built right hander moved out to the mound for Anniston.
The game started again and in the eighth inning Mike Deegan came up to bat.
Everyone in the ball park seemed to be standing and shouting.
The first ball the hefty pitcher threw came in for Mike's head.
Deegan fell into the dirt, the ball going over him.
He arose slowly and brushed himself off.
He got back into the batter's box and on the next pitch dropped into the dirt again.
"Hit the bum"!
somebody yelled from the Anniston bench.
In the Riverside dugout Frankie Ricco, shortstop, whispered into Phil's ear: "There's gonna be a fight".
"Look at those bastards"!
Charlie Haydon, a pitcher, said.
"They're looking for trouble".
Mike was slow getting into the box this time.
When he finally did he had to duck his head quickly away as the pitch came in.
"Listen"!
he shouted to the pitcher.
"One more and I'm coming out there"!
"I'll be waiting"!
the pitcher yelled back.
Mike Deegan pounded the rubber plate with the end of his bat.
He stood flat-footed in the box, but not very close to the plate now.
The pitcher wound up and the ball came in straight for Mike's head.
Deegan dropped, got up, turned and, holding the bat with both hands up against his chest, began to walk slowly out to the mound.
The pitcher tossed his glove away and came towards Mike Deegan.
They were both walking towards each other, unhurried.
Riverside and Anniston players rushed out on the field.
In the next moment, it seemed, the infield was crowded with spectators, ballplayers, cops, kids and a dog.
There was much shouting and screaming.
Fights sprang up and were quickly squelched.
Mike and the Anniston pitcher were pulled away before they even came together.
Phil Rossoff and two other Riverside players did not go out on the field when the fighting started.
After the game, Phil was taking off his sweatshirt in the dressing room when Mike Deegan came in.
"It's a helluva thing", Mike said, looking at Phil, "when a guy's own team-mate won't come out and help him in a fight".
Phil sighed and pulled the wet sweatshirt over his head.
Frankie Ricco sat down on the bench near Phil.
The other players were undressing quietly.
Eddie Lee had not come in yet.
Mike went over to Phil and stood over him.
"Why the hell didn't you come out when you saw them gang up on me"?
"I didn't think it was necessary".
"Well!
Now that's just fine!
You didn't think it was necessary".
Mike placed both his hands on his hips.
He pushed his jaw forward.
"Listen, wise guy, if you think I'm gonna do all the fighting for this ball club you're crazy".
Mike had a good two inches over Phil and Phil had to look up into Mike's face.
"I didn't ask you to fight for the ball club", Phil said slowly.
"Nobody else did, either".
"You trying to say I started the fight"?
"I'm not trying to say anything".
Phil turned away and opened his locker, and then he heard Mike Deegan say: "You're yellow, Rossoff"!
and Phil banged his locker door shut and spun around.
But before anything could happen Frankie Ricco was between them and Eddie Lee had come into the dressing room.
"Phil, come into my office", Eddie said.
Phil followed Eddie into the office and shut the door.
He sat down before Eddie's desk.
"I'm doing you a favor", Eddie said quickly.
"You get your unconditional release as of today".
Phil's eyes widened just a trifle.
"The best thing for you to do", Eddie said, "is go home.
You don't belong in professional baseball".
Phil had to clear his throat.
"Is this because of what happened out there"?
"No", Eddie said.
"But it does confirm what I've suspected all along".
Phil stood up.
"Listen!
This is the second time **h" "Sit down, sit down", Eddie said.
"I'm not saying you're yellow.
I am saying you're not a professional ballplayer".
Eddie Lee leaned forward over the desk.
"Now listen to me, Phil.
I'm not steering you wrong.
You haven't got the heart for baseball".
Phil shook his head and Eddie frowned.
Suddenly his voice grew hard.
"What the hell do you think baseball is?
You're not in the big leagues, but if you can't give and take down here what the hell do you think it'll be like up there"?
Phil started to say something but Eddie cut him short.
"Now don't tell me what a good ball player you are.
I know you've got talent.
But what you haven't got is the heart to back up that talent with.
The heart, Phil.
You just haven't got the heart for pro-ball, and that's it".
Dazed, Phil said: "I don't get it.
My batting average **h" Eddie stood up abruptly, then sat down just as abruptly.
"What difference does your batting average make?
Or your fielding average.
Or even the way you run bases.
I tell you when it's necessary to hurt in order to win- you won't do it.
That's what I mean by no heart for the game.
Baseball's no cinch.
Deegan had no business ramming into that kid out there.
He did it because he knows for each guy he puts out of commission that's one less who might take his job away later on.
What the hell do you think baseball is?
A sport?
It's a way of life, goddamit!
And you've got to be ready to cut to ribbons anybody who want to take your way of life away from you"!
He's wrong!
Phil thought.
It's only his opinion.
There were other clubs in this league.
He stood up slowly.
He was a little pale and shaky.
His lips felt glued together.
"I think you're wrong, Eddie", he said finally.
Eddie nodded.
"Okay.
You'll get your pay in the morning".
Phil turned and left the room, hearing Eddie say: "Someday you'll see I was right".
Phil shut the door behind him.
Outside in the dressing room, Frankie Ricco sat on the bench dressed in his street clothes.
"What happened"?
Frankie asked.
Phil said: "I got my release".
"You crazy"?
Phil shrugged.
"What for"?
Phil sighed.
Frankie shook his head.
"I don't get it".
"I don't know", Phil said.
They were silent for a few moments.
Then Frankie said: "What are you gonna do"?
Phil started to take his clothes off and Frankie sat down on the bench again.
Phil took off one shoe and stared at it.
"Don't take it like this", Frankie said.
"Hell, plenty of guys get let out and come back later.
The leagues are full of guys like that".
Phil was very quiet.
"What are you gonna do, Phil"?
Phil did not answer.
"Why not try another club"?
Phil looked up.
What the hell right did Eddie have saying a thing like that?
"Springfield's in tomorrow", Frankie said.
"Talk to Whitey Jackson".
He just didn't know what he was talking about, saying a thing like that.
"Will you do it, Phil"?
"Do what"?
"Ask Whitey for a job".
Phil nodded.
"Sure", he said.
"Springfield come in tomorrow"?
Frankie nodded.
"I'll speak to Whitey".
"Atta boy".
"I'll talk to him, all right".
"Don't worry", Frankie said.
"You'll get a job there.
He needs outfielders bad".
"I'm not worried about it", Phil said.
"That's the way to talk.
What else did Eddie have to say"?
"Nothing", Phil said.
Richard's next interest seemed the product of his insularity.
His broad reading took him into certain by-ways of religion and the subject of religion began to fascinate him.
When he was twelve he took to reading St Augustine and Aquinas, then Lao-tse, Confucius, Mencius, Suzuki, Hindu tomes by endless Krishnaists and numerous socio-archaeological papers.
For his birthday, because Richard had seen them in a store and asked for them, his mother bought him the Zend-Avesta and a little image of the Indian god, Acala.
And one day, on her own, his mother came home with a present entitled The Book of the Dead, which she suspected Richard would enjoy.
He was enormously happy with her gift and smiled, then went to his room to read.
At dinner one night, when he was fourteen, Richard announced, "There is only one god".
"Did you think there were two"?
grinned his father.
"You don't understand", Richard said gloomily.
Through quiet laughter his mother said, "Don't speak to your father like that, Richard".
Richard seldom spoke anyhow and he didn't speak to his parents about religion again.
His interest in the formal study of religion waned when he was sixteen and he substituted for it an interest in Asian affairs.
Although he still didn't speak to anyone, he grew fond of saying, "The future lies in Asia", when the opportunity arose, and when he graduated from high school his parents sent him to New York to give him a foundation, they said, for his life in Asian studies.
Richard was a solitary student in New York and acquired, in his remoteness, a thorough if bookish knowledge of Asian lore, literature, life, politics and history.
He was awarded a fellowship to continue his studies in Tokyo and he packed up his clothes, the biwa upon which he had been practicing and his image of Acala, and left to spend a week at home before leaving the country.
The week at home was not comfortable.
His mother, who had seen little of him for four years, appeared worried about his sailing off by himself for an Orient which, she herself having slight knowledge of it, had to be distrusted.
She seemed to work to grow close to her son in the few days he spent at home, talking to him about some of the more pleasant moments of his childhood and then trying to talk to him about those things in which he alone was interested.
"Do you still have The Book of the Dead"?
she asked him and, laughing, she added, "I was nervous about buying a book with a title like that, but I knew you'd like it".
"Yes", he lied to shorten the conversation, "I still have it".
He was no longer able to relax in the presence of his parents and found it difficult to keep up a conversation with his mother or father, no matter the subject.
As for The Book of the Dead, it along with his other books on religion had been incarcerated in a furnace in the basement of the building in which he had lived in New York.
He had dusted each of the books carefully and carried them all to the basement and, trembling at having to open the big furnace, given them up to the flames.
Then he sped from the dark basement and returned to his room and cried.
Richard left America with his clothes, his biwa and his image of Acala and, on the freighter which took him to Japan, he plucked at the biwa, trying to make the sounds he wrought resemble an ancient Japanese tune he had once heard.
During his second week at sea he brought the curious melody out of the instrument and suddenly wanted to force the biwa to remain at just that moment in its history when it had given him pleasure.
He stole from his cabin late that night and crept out into a gusty North Pacific wind and dropped the biwa into the water.
It was so dark that he didn't see it hit the water and the noisy rush of the ocean kept him from hearing it.
It was as though the biwa had been eaten up by the wind.
In Tokyo Richard took up a life similar to that which he had lived in New York, except that he had replaced his biwa with a friend.
An American student named Charlotte Adams had refused to take notice of his evident aversion to people and had at last succeeded in getting him to talk to her.
He had nothing much to say to her but that he said anything seemed to please her and he accompanied her on some of her unusually searching tours of Tokyo.
In Charlotte, Richard saw a frankness and a zest for doing things which, after a fashion, he envied.
In time, he grew to depend upon her occasional company and she at length was able to encourage him to participate in more social activity.
She convinced him that he ought to be a member of some of the small tea-drinking parties she held at her rooms and in the end he complied with her wishes, although it was only rarely that he added anything to the random conversations.
At one such gathering Charlotte announced, "I was at Ryusenji today.
Have you ever been to Ryusenji"?
No one had.
"Well, it's at Fudomae and there was a tan young man, quite naked, taking a shower in the pool.
I was thoroughly startled".
Richard thought it a more promising remark than any made during the last conversation, but Charlotte's manner during the gatherings was more flippant and superficial than when she was alone with him and he was sure her remark would lead to nothing much better than the pointless words which had preceded it.
Three of the four persons present, all foreign students in Tokyo, had been playing a game of judging popular Japanese foods by the In and Out system, an equation in which Zen philosophy was used as the modifier.
Soba, udon and tea were In because they could be taken noisily.
Sushi was Out because it was pretentious.
Sashimi was In, Samuel Burns had suggested, because it was too far Out to stay Out, even if it was a little pretentious.
Richard had kept his eyes down throughout the game, the very sound of the chatter nearly painful to his ears.
"He wasn't the least bit disturbed by my watching him", said Charlotte.
"Did you watch him"?
asked a red-haired girl named Ceecee Witter.
"I shouldn't have been able to do that".
"Well I was able to do it", Charlotte said with no sign of irritation.
"For a minute, anyhow.
I'm surprised no one has been there.
I've been there a number of times.
Sam, I thought you knew everything about Tokyo.
You've never been to Ryusenji"?
"I've heard about it", Samuel Burns said.
"There's a little place there called Lovers Mound dedicated to Gompachi and Komurasaki".
"Yes, a little parkish place", Charlotte said, and concluded, "Anyhow, it's all very nice.
And the man who brought sweet potatoes into Kanto is buried there, next to a beautiful seated statue of Fudo.
Oh, that's what I meant to tell you.
This is the interesting part, Richard", she had a bothersome habit of trying to pull him into the talking.
"There was that fellow out there in the bitter cold"- "My God, it was cold today", said Samuel Burns.
"Twenty-two or twenty-three".
"And the water would be still colder", Ceecee seemed to shiver at the thought of it.
"And your golden god", said Samuel Burns, "probably went right home and poured himself into a boiling bath.
It would kill one of us".
"But the point is", Charlotte said, "there he was, freezing, naked in a little stream of water at Ryusenji, all in worship of Fudo, the god of fire".
Richard's dark eyes came up and seemed for the tiniest moment to reflect sharp light.
It was true; Fudo, the god of wisdom, was also thought of as the Japanese version of Acala.
The conversation went on but Richard stopped listening.
He found himself trying to remember something, but he couldn't decide even the nature of what it was he worked to recall.
He had almost given up when he realized that the dropping of his biwa into the icy jowls of the black Pacific was the memory for which he had been searching.
Perhaps he sensed some connection between the incident on the freighter and the ascetic at Ryusenji, he was unable to put it together.
That night, after leaving Charlotte's apartment, Richard walked about for a time before returning to his room.
When he at last did go to his room, he couldn't sleep and instead paced up and down before his little image of Acala, thinking first of Charlotte's tale of the man at Ryusenji, then of his biwa and the invisible Pacific waters.
And the next morning, not sure of why he went, he took the train to Fudomae and walked to Ryusenji.
He was surprised by the sharp sensation he experienced as he approached the pool which Charlotte had mentioned.
He went through a gate to stand at the edge of the water and gazed at the two thin falls which dropped from large spigots high at the back of the pool.
On the hillside above was caged what might have been an incarnation of Fudo, or perhaps a demon.
The strange creature, housed in wire, made him shudder.
The sensation he so overwhelmingly realized was one which told him he had been there before but he knew he had not, and could not recall any place he had visited to be likened to the limpid green water or the little fountain-falls or the green demon imprisoned beyond his reach.
He left the pool and climbed the steep stone stairs to the temple, and the sense of familiarity with the place would not leave him.
Into a little well before the temple he dropped a hundred-yen coin and then he had an urge to sound the bell before the temple, to take hold of the rope and crash it against the circle of bronze; but the spirit he wished to call out would not, he knew, come in the person of the temple priest.
Instead, he walked around the temple and mounted still another flight of stairs and stood before the seated Fudo at their head.
The black Fudo seemed to stare rigidly back at him and Richard's eyes were caught by the Fudo's in fascination, and then Richard was shocked as, all at once, flames shot out from the sharp features of Fudo's face and there was a terrible metallic scraping sound, as if the large statue were about to burst from some pressure within it.
Then the flames were gone, the stillness fell upon the severe black face and Richard began to tremble violently.
Suddenly he emptied his pockets of all his coins and dropped them into the box before the seated Fudo and hurried back down both stairways and away from the temple, never looking back.
He walked all the miles back to his room.
He seemed to have picked up a virus that day, because the next morning he had a small cough and felt a bit hot.
He stayed home, reading and refusing to think about his frightening experience at Ryusenji.
But the process of refusing to think about it was an active reminder in itself and he couldn't rid himself of a consciousness of it throughout the day.
The cold lingered, making sleep difficult that night, and he remained in bed still the next morning, now unable to keep from thinking about the inexplicable sight of burning metal, the wretched sound, the unbearable feeling of having been to a remote Tokyo temple at some earlier time in his life.
All of the elements of the experience were impossible and yet the reality of them was heavy upon him and he resolved never again to visit the temple at Fudomae.
I was thinking of the heat and of water that morning when I was plowing the stubble field far across the hill from the farm buildings.
It had grown hot early that day, and I hoped that the boy, my brother's son, would soon come across the broad black area of plowed ground, carrying the jar of cool water.
The boy usually was sent out at about that time with the water, and he always dragged an old snow-fence lath or a stick along, to play with.
He pretended that the lath was a tractor and he would drag it through the dirt and make buzzing, tractor sounds with his lips.
I almost ran over the snake before I could stop the tractor in time.
I had turned at the corner of the field and I had to look back to raise the plow and then to drop it again into the earth, and I was thinking of the boy and the water anyway, and when I looked again down the furrow, the snake was there.
It lay half in the furrow and half out, and the front wheels had rolled nearly up to it when I put in the clutch.
The tractor was heavily loaded with the weight of the plow turning the earth, and the tractor stopped instantly.
The snake slid slowly and with great care from the new ridge the plow had made, into the furrow and did not go any further.
I had never liked snakes much, I still had that kind of quick panic that I'd had as a child whenever I saw one, but this snake was clean and bright and very beautiful.
He was multi-colored and graceful and he lay in the furrow and moved his arched and tapered head only so slightly.
Go out of the furrow, snake, I said, but it did not move at all.
I pulled the throttle of the tractor in and out, hoping to frighten him with the noise, but the snake only flicked its black, forked tongue and faced the huge tractor wheel, without fright or concern.
I let the engine idle then, and I got down and went around the wheel and stood beside it.
My movement did frighten the snake and it raised its head and trailed delicately a couple of feet and stopped again, and its tongue was working very rapidly.
I followed it, looking at the brilliant colors on its tubular back, the colors clear and sharp and perfect, in orange and green and brown diamonds the size of a baby's fist down its back, and the diamonds were set one within the other and interlaced with glistening jet-black.
The colors were astonishing, clear and bright, and it was as if the body held a fire of its own, and the colors came through that transparent flesh and skin, vivid and alive and warm.
The eyes were clear and black and the slender body was arched slightly.
His flat and gracefully tapered head lifted as I looked at him and the black tongue slipped in and out of that solemn mouth.
You beauty, I said, I couldn't kill you.
You are much too beautiful.
I had killed snakes before, when I was younger, but there had been no animal like this one, and I knew it was unthinkable that an animal such as that should die.
I picked him up, and the length of him arched very carefully and gracefully and only a little wildly, and I could feel the coolness of that radiant, fire-colored body, like splendid ice, and I knew that he had eaten only recently because there were two whole and solid little lumps in the forepart of him, like fieldmice swallowed whole might make.
The body caressed through my hands like cool satin, and my hands, usually tanned and dark, were pale beside it, and I asked it where the fire colors could come from the coolness of that body.
I lowered him so he would not fall and his body slid out onto the cool, newly-plowed earth, from between my pale hands.
The snake worked away very slowly and delicately and with a gorgeous kind of dignity and beauty, and he carried his head a little above the rolled clods.
The sharp, burning colors of his body stood brilliant and plain against the black soil, like a target.
I felt good and satisfied, looking at the snake.
It shone in its bright diamond color against the sun-burned stubble and the crumbled black clods of soil and against the paleness of myself.
The color and beauty of it were strange and wonderful and somehow alien, too, in that dry and dusty and uncolored field.
I got on the tractor again and I had to watch the plow closely because the field was drawn across the long hillside and even in that good soil there was a danger of rocks.
I had my back to the corner of the triangular field that pointed towards the house.
The earth was a little heavy and I had to stop once and clean the plowshares because they were not scouring properly, and I did not look back towards the place until I had turned the corner and was plowing across the upper line of the large field, a long way from where I had stopped because of the snake.
I saw it all at a glance.
The boy was there at the lower corner of the field, and he was in the plowed earth, stamping with ferocity and a kind of frenzied impatience.
Even at that distance, with no sound but the sound of the tractor, I could tell the fierce mark of brutality on the boy.
I could see the hunched-up shoulders, the savage determination, the dance of his feet as he ground the snake with his heels, and the pirouette of his arms as he whipped at it with the stick.
Stop it, I shouted, but the lumbering and mighty tractor roared on, above anything I could say.
I stopped the tractor and I shouted down to the boy, and I knew he could hear me, for the morning was clear and still, but he did not even hesitate in that brutal, murdering dance.
It was no use.
I felt myself tremble, thinking of the diamond light of that beauty I had held a few moments before, and I wanted to run down there and halt, if I could, that frenetic pirouette, catch the boy in the moment of his savagery, and save a glimmer, a remnant, of that which I remembered, but I knew it was already too late.
I drove the tractor on, not looking down there; I was afraid to look for fear the evil might still be going on.
My head began to ache, and the fumes of the tractor began to bother my eyes, and I hated the job suddenly, and I thought, there are only moments when one sees beautiful things, and these are soon crushed, or they vanish.
I felt the anger mount within me.
The boy waited at the corner, with the jar of water held up to me in his hands, and the water had grown bubbly in the heat of the morning.
I knew the boy well.
He was eleven and we had done many things together.
He was a beautiful boy, really, with finely-spun blonde hair and a smooth and still effeminate face, and his eyelashes were long and dark and brushlike, and his eyes were blue.
He waited there and he smiled as the tractor came up, as he would smile on any other day.
He was my nephew, my brother's son, handsome and warm and newly-scrubbed, with happiness upon his face and his face resembled my brother's and mine as well.
I saw then, too, the stake driven straight and hard into the plowed soil, through something there where I had been not long before.
I stopped the tractor and climbed down and the boy came eagerly up to me.
"Can I ride around with you"?
he asked, as he often did, and I had as often let him be on the tractor beside me.
I looked closely at his eyes, and he was already innocent; the killing was already forgotten in that clear mind of his.
"No, you cannot", I said, pushing aside the water jar he offered to me.
I pointed to the splintered, upright stake.
"Did you do that"?
I asked.
"Yes", he said, eagerly, beginning a kind of dance of excitement.
"I killed a snake; it was a big one".
He tried to take my hand to show me.
"Why did you kill it"?
"Snakes are ugly and bad".
"This snake was very beautiful.
Didn't you see how beautiful it was"?
"Snakes are ugly", he said again.
"You saw the colors of it, didn't you?
Have you ever seen anything like it around here"?
"Snakes are ugly and bad, and it might have bitten somebody, and they would have died".
"You know there are no poisonous snakes in this area.
This snake could not harm anything".
"They eat chickens sometimes", the boy said.
"They are ugly and they eat chickens and I hate snakes".
"You are talking foolishly", I said.
"You killed it because you wanted to kill it, for no other reason".
"They're ugly and I hate them", the boy insisted.
"Nobody likes snakes".
"It was beautiful", I said, half to myself.
The boy skipped along beside me, and he was contented with what he had done.
The fire of the colors was gone; there was a contorted ugliness now; the colors of its back were dull and gray-looking, torn and smashed in, and dirty from the boy's shoes.
The beautifully-tapered head, so delicate and so cool, had been flattened as if in a vise, and the forked tongue splayed out of the twisted, torn mouth.
The snake was hideous, and I remembered, even then, the cool, bright fire of it only a little while before, and I thought perhaps the boy had always seen it dead and hideous like that, and had not even stopped to see the beauty of it in its life.
I wrenched the stake out, that the boy had driven through it in the thickest part of its body, between the colored diamond crystals.
I touched it and the coolness, the ice-feeling, was gone, and even then it moved a little, perhaps a tiny spasm of the dead muscles, and I hoped that it was truly dead, so that I would not have to kill it.
And then it moved a little more, and I knew the snake was dying, and I would have to kill it there.
The boy stood off a few feet and he had the stake again and he was racing innocently in circles, making the buzzing tractor sound with his lips.
I'm sorry, I thought to the snake, for you were beautiful.
I took the broken length of it around the tractor and I took one of the wrenches from the tool-kit and I struck its head, not looking at it, to kill it at last, for it could never live.
The boy came around behind me, dragging the stake.
"It's a big snake, isn't it"?
he said.
"I'm going to tell everybody how big a snake I killed".
"Don't you see what you have done"?
I said.
"Don't you see the difference now"?
"It's an ugly, terrible snake", he said.
He came up and was going to push at it with his heavy shoes.
I could see the happiness in the boy's eyes, the gleeful brutality.
"Don't", I said.
I could have slapped the boy.
He looked up at me, puzzled, and he swayed his head from side to side.
I thought, you little brute, you nasty, selfish, little beast, with brutality already developed within that brain and in those eyes.
I wanted to slap his face, to wipe forever the insolence and brutal glee from his mouth, and I decided then, very suddenly, what I would do.
Cady didn't come unglued easily, but this had not been a day of glad tidings.
Tax worries, production worries, personnel worries, and the letter from Hanford College, his own alma mater, a real snapper.
Hanford realized he had enrolled his son four years ago.
Yes, the boy's credentials were in order- scholastic transcript, character references, picture, health record, successful college boards.
But due to the many applicants on file, would he co-operate and write a personal letter giving them his son's motivation, interests and his qualifications for leadership?
Cady Partlow lit his pipe with no comfort.
This was it.
This was the letter which would or would not enroll his son, David, in Hanford.
His son who had never held an office in any organization in the eighteen years of his life.
His son who did not know whether he wanted to be doctor, lawyer, merchant or chief.
He wondered if he had played it wrong.
Maybe he should have kept in touch.
Gone back for reunions.
But he had been busy building a business, being a big man in his own town just as he had been a big man at Hanford, Class of 1935.
Besides, Cady Partlow knew he wasn't the old-grad-type.
It wouldn't help anyway.
Look at Pete Alcorn, who hadn't missed a Hanford ball game in fifteen years.
Pete's son was rejected.
Hanford College, Little Ivy League, had no room for football players with low grades.
Cady looked at his own son's scholastic record with pride.
Good solid B average with a sprinkling of A's in math and science.
Imagine his son being that good in science!
Mr Partlow could still feel a cold sweat on his slightly gray temples as he remembered what a near thing chemistry had been for him at Hanford.
But then, he hadn't studied very hard.
Getting elected president of the student body took a lot of time and politicking.
## He put down his pipe and started to type.
"In response to your letter, I can in good conscience recommend my son, David, in the field of leadership".
He stopped and looked at the picture of his son, the picture on his desk which had changed with the years from a laughing baby to a candidate for Hanford College.
He didn't have to be told his son looked like him.
David had the same gray eyes, high cheekbones, dark hair and a certain rugged ugliness.
Height, 6'.
Weight, 160.
Health, excellent.
He turned back to the typewriter with a little more confidence.
"His interests range from astronomy and geology to electronics, tennis and swimming.
His chief motivation for enrolling at Hanford is the desire to"- Mr Partlow banged his fist on the keyboard, ruining the letter.
He paced to the window and looked at the city he had helped to build.
How do you tell a college president that your son doesn't know what he wants to do?
That you have refused to drive him into the family business or push him into a profession so you can say at the club, "Of course David has known since he was twelve he wanted to be an engineer"- or a lawyer, or an editor?
How do you tell a college like Hanford that your son has a vast potential, that he will find himself?
Just give him time, give him a chance.
Cady snapped the Venetian blind shut and slammed himself down before the typewriter, rolled in a fresh sheet, and gave his letter the same savage attention he bestowed on a salesman who needed to have the bucket taken off his thick head.
What a production to make of a letter commending your own son!
His eyebrow went up in amusement at his soul-searching panic.
He told Hanford his son wanted to go into the field of electronics.
He told Hanford his son had participated in numerous high-school activities.
He belonged to a social club, a civic group, little theater, swimming team, and had been president of the student forum as well as treasurer of the science club.
He finished with a flurry of good wishes to Hanford College and signed the letter.
There, that did it.
Then he met the grave eyes of his wife, Anne, from the photograph next to David's.
He shoved the unsealed letter into his coat pocket.
Better show it to Anne and see if he had omitted anything.
After all, his wife had written most of his letters for him in those first lean days of Partlow Products.
Anne had a way with words.
Half of it was natural, half was Smith College.
Yet the whole of Anne was something she had never learned in any college.
A woman had it or she didn't.
Anne had it.
She said what she meant and let it be.
She never got on his back.
He could take the advice or leave it.
He whistled as he locked the office and grinned as he got on the elevator.
"You look like you just heard a real gasser, Mr Partlow".
Cady looked at Tom, who had taken him up and down for fifteen years.
"I was just thinking how things have changed.
When I went to college they begged you to come.
Be our guest!
It's our pleasure!
Now you have to be well rounded, firm in motivation and pre-packed with knowledge"!
Tom slid open the door to the lobby.
"That's a fact, Mr Partlow.
My John applied to six colleges before he got in".
"Going to State"?
"No.
He's president of the rocket club here, you know.
Always messing around with science stuff.
Real bright along those lines, you might say.
He got a science scholarship to Yale".
"Oh", said Mr Partlow, "that's fine, Tom.
Just fine".
As he drove home through the thinning traffic, Cady felt the unease growing.
He hadn't told anyone, but he, too, had applied to five colleges for David.
They had all turned down his son.
Weakness in leadership.
So sorry.
Limited interests.
So sorry.
No clear motivation.
So sorry.
He suddenly realized when he walked into his own pretty darned expensive house that he needed the Martini Anne had waiting for him.
But tonight his drink tasted like branch water and even his favorite meal of steak and tossed salad gave no surcease from the growing weight of the letter in his pocket.
Nor did looking at Anne ease the tension as it usually did.
He liked looking at Anne.
Most people did.
He liked her blond hair and the sprinkle of freckles across her nose.
From those navy-blue eyes she saw things as clearly and honestly as David did.
She always could sense the shag end of a woolly day.
"Board meeting tonight, Cady"?
"No, I begged off.
Work to do".
"Can I have the car, dad"?
"Why not let him take it, Cady?
I know it is midweek, but it's only eight days before commencement.
Let's forget the rules".
Cady, deep in thought, neither heard nor answered.
## David grinned.
Carefully he put down his steak knife and said loudly, "Mr Chairman"!
Cady Partlow's head came up like that of the proverbial fire horse.
"I'm sorry, Dave.
The car?
Of course you can have it".
Dave ate two pieces of pie as he did everything else, slowly, methodically and with interest.
"Hear anything from Hanford yet, dad"?
Cady begged the question.
"Don't worry about it, Dave.
Your acceptance will come through".
Dave shrugged on his sports coat and picked up the car keys.
"Don't be too sure, dad.
Charles Burke got turned down by Dartmouth and he is a straight-A student".
Anne said it wasn't surprising because Charles was antisocial, a lone wolf, and completely one-sided.
"I can hardly say the same about you, Dave"!
Dave kissed her lightly.
"Girls, my dear parent, are here to stay!
Get my old man to bed early.
He looks a little bit frayed".
Anne waited until the door had slammed and picked up the coffeepot.
"Let's go into the library.
You do seem somewhat tattered".
Cady trailed her with the coffee cups and settled into his favorite chair in the comfortable book-lined room.
"I didn't know I looked so dilapidated"!
"Wrong word, darling.
Your fur has been rubbed the wrong way and you show it.
Need any help"?
"In a way, yes.
Hanford College hasn't decided on Dave's application yet.
They want a letter from me on his motives, interests and leadership.
Here's what I wrote".
Cady handed her the letter, drank his coffee and waited with what he suddenly realized was belligerence.
Already he could feel Anne's questioning eyes.
"I know you wrote this in a hurry, but, Cady, Dave was only acting president of the student forum for a few days.
That was when half the school was down with flu".
"But he was president".
"And he wasn't really elected treasurer of the science club.
He just took over the week Bill Daley was in the state basketball play-off".
Cady stuck his jaw out.
"The fact remains he was treasurer".
"And the swimming team.
No, Cady, he made second team.
Just missed the first".
"A team is a team", insisted Cady.
"Anything else"?
"Yes", she said quietly.
"I don't think you've been quite honest, Cady.
It isn't like you.
David's interests.
Astronomy.
He was mad about stars at the age of nine.
Geology, You and Dave used his rock collection for the bottom of the fishpond six years ago!
Those aren't his interests now".
"What do you suggest"?
"Just say he likes swimming, tennis, chess and music".
"Music!
He hasn't been to a symphony concert all season".
Anne smiled.
"But he plays bass with Chief Crazy Horse and his Five Colts"!
"You mean that rock-and-roll combo?
Even in that he never solos like Jack on guitar or Rich on sax.
He's- he's just there, that's all".
"Yes, he's just there.
He keeps the beat going.
He likes to play bass because he doesn't have to solo.
He doesn't like to rise and shine.
Don't worry, Cady, he'll be back in the Beethoven fold by next year".
Cady appeared slightly mollified.
"All right.
But I refuse to be brutally honest and mention Chief Crazy Horse and his Five Colts".
Anne laughed and Cady felt the tension loosen its grip on the back of his neck.
"Maybe I am padding it a bit, Anne", he said.
"But you know how hard it is to get a boy into a good college.
He has to have leadership as well as grades".
Anne folded the worrisome document.
"Did you know he is advertising his ham-radio equipment for sale this weekend?
He hasn't used it now for several years.
Can you really say his motivation for college is electronics"?
Cady felt the jolt as though he had stepped off the curb on his heel.
"And what would you say he wants to do?
Just what"?
"It's Dave who is applying to Hanford College.
Why don't you ask him"?
For once Cady Partlow wished Anne would yell at him so he could yell back.
"I have talked to him, but you know I've never tried to push him into any profession.
I won't be guilty of trying to run his life".
Anne picked up the towel she was hemming for the hospital guild.
"Just because your father tried to make a banker out of you, you've leaned over backward to keep your hands off.
But subconsciously you've wanted him to conform to your mold.
You want him to be a leader of men, like you".
Cady put the well-worn chip back on his shoulder.
"Dave has qualities of leadership.
He just hasn't developed them yet.
Give him time".
He never will, Cady.
Not the kind of leadership you mean, working with lots of people.
All your wishful thinking won't change that.
Remember what you used to say in the Army?
You can't run a war with ninety-nine generals and one private"!
Cady walked the block to the mailbox, almost ashamed of himself for arguing with Anne.
Martin felt it was incredible that the situation had come to exist at all.
And once begun, had grown to such monstrous proportions.
The pair of white cotton shorts ruled his life.
Lying awake at night, he could see them, laid out on the floor of his mind.
When he rose in the morning, the image was still there.
He had always been a messy and negligent man.
In his bachelor days, his bedroom had been strewn with clothes which his mother, or later the hotel maid, generally saw fit to put in order.
No doubt Dolores resented following in their footsteps.
But it was fun those first days, kidding about the trail of garments he left littered across the rug.
There was an assertive maleness in his grinning refusal to pick them up.
Half slyly he enjoyed seeing her stoop to lift the things.
He remembered the first time he saw her, standing across the room at a party.
The smooth curve of her neck, very white against hair which curled against it like petals.
Her hair was the color of those blooms which in seed catalogues are referred to as "black", but since no flower is actually without color contain always a hint of grape or purple or blue- he wanted to draw the broad patina of hair through his fingers, searching it slowly for a trace of veining which might reveal its true shade beneath the darkness.
So he sought her out, and spoke to her, and thought of his hand in her hair.
Or against her back, pressed on the column of vertebrae, which held her so magnificently straight and unyielding, until the segments of bone made tiny sharp cracking noises, like the snapped stem of a tulip.
But, to put it bluntly, nothing snapped.
Yet that had not seriously troubled him, not then.
They married.
More he could take at leisure.
All Martin thought he needed was time: to what better use could time be put?
He saw later that they had made their marriage too quickly.
There was too little occasion beforehand for resistance, the brave strong delights of emotional clash and meeting.
They had left themselves too much to discover.
But, at the start, his new life felt invigorating.
Good.
It was on the tenth day after the wedding (how could it have been so soon?)
that he dropped the shorts on the floor.
"Now, I'm not going to pick up those shorts"!
Martin gave her a teasing pat.
"I think you'll get tired of them there".
In the morning the shorts were where he had left them.
He smiled to himself, and decided not to mention them till Dolores did.
It was almost too easy.
For he had just remembered: tonight they were having their first guests.
The shorts would not be on the floor when he came home that evening.
He was wrong.
The rest of the bedroom had been groomed to a superhuman neatness, but in the middle of the carpet lay the disheveled shorts.
They gave the room a strange note of incongruity, like a mole on a beautiful face.
He saw that Dolores intended to wait until the last minute, thinking he would get nervous.
Quietly he determined to foil her.
I can be as stubborn as she can, he thought; my nerves are as strong.
She'll rush to the bedroom when the doorbell rings.
It rang.
Ten minutes early.
Martin was standing a few feet from the front door.
He swung around, eyes toward the bedroom, some fifteen feet away.
Dolores stood motionless in the doorway.
He could not cross the living room, brush past her, and bend down to retrieve the shorts.
Martin turned his back.
He strode to answer the bell.
Bill's hat was deposited in the hall closet.
With the most casual and relaxed manner in the world, Dolores led Anthea to the bedroom.
Martin strained his ears.
At first he could not be sure.
Then he caught just enough to know that the shorts were still there.
A glissade of giggles slid over their voices.
All evening Anthea favored him with odd, coy looks.
Clearly she had been instructed "not to say a word".
For some reason, this ellipsis in the conversation spread until it swallowed up every other topic.
At last there was a void no one could fill.
The Brainards went home early.
Martin realized, later on, that he should have "had it out" with Dolores that night.
As violently as possible.
But he was so taken aback, he could not believe any rage of his would make her give in.
On the contrary, it would only weaken his position if he fumed, while she stayed calm and adamant.
And if he surrendered after raving at her.
**h He shivered.
Suppose he ran up the white flag altogether?
At once.
He considered the sober possibility.
In his head was the echo of those titters with Anthea.
There was something about private feminine whisperings which always made him feel scabrous and unclean.
He remembered his mother gossiping with her neighborhood women friends, lowering her voice to a penetrating hoarseness which might be trusted to carry to the head of the stairs, where he crouched listening.
He could even recall the last time he sat there.
She was talking about him that time, because he had done some bad thing, something she disliked, but "Afterwards Martin said he was sorry.
He apologized so sweetly, I couldn't keep being annoyed with him".
It wasn't even true that he'd said he was sorry that time; he had in fact said simply that he wished the thing hadn't happened, which was as honest as he could put it.
But his mother told the story over and over, till her "Martin said he was sorry" was as much a part of her as the shape of her thin, pallid ears.
The battle had to be fought.
Let the best sex win.
But his resolution hardly seemed to help.
If the situation had been bad, it now got worse.
About this time people began "dropping in", considering that the newly married had been left alone long enough.
Angrily Martin wished they had delayed the wedding and gone on a trip- preferably one that lasted months- instead of deciding not to postpone the date until he could get away.
Here they were at the mercy of anyone who chose to come by.
These stray people nearly always insisted on Dolores showing them around the apartment.
Of course, the tours of inspection included the ever-present shorts.
It was curious how the different visitors took this.
Some tried to ignore the blot on the bedroom's countenance.
Others asked.
Quite a few laughed.
To them all Dolores told a lighthearted and witty tale.
"It's a little contest Martin and I have", she would begin gaily, carrying the anecdote through a frothy and deceptive course.
While he waited in the living room.
Once Martin went along.
They entered the bedroom, and Dolores said nothing.
Then one of the guests showed his merriment.
"You were in a hurry, weren't you"?
Martin would have liked to break the man's neck.
Dolores smiled; she let the interpretation stand.
Now Martin heard himself give a snort of mock good nature.
With her eyes Dolores dared him for the truth, ready to begin: It's a little contest- Never again did he enter into the ritual of showing the apartment.
They kept up a rigid pretense of speaking relations.
But Martin seldom felt the impulse to talk about anything.
What to talk about?
Dolores kept picking up any of his clothes (except the fatal shorts) which he left about, but he had been robbed of pleasure in scattering his possessions.
He fell into the habit of putting his clothes in drawers and closets, so his life might impinge as little as possible on hers.
The shorts alone remained.
In his moments of worst agony, Martin imagined what his friends were saying.
The sound of their amazement.
Bizarre: He could hear the word.
The most bizarre situation.
We were up to visit them and **h He had thought her exactly what he wanted.
Six weeks of marriage and I'm using the past tense, he told himself furiously.
Pursuing his idea, he saw that it would be impossible to leave her now.
Everyone would know why; he would cut a supremely ridiculous figure.
He was trapped.
Day and night Martin could not drag his mind from the dilemma he had made for himself.
His mind scurried frantically, seeking an exit.
Alternately he had periods of hostile defeatism in which he determined sullenly, morosely, to live out his life in this fashion.
Nothing would change, nothing would ever change.
When the solution finally came to him, one night while he was in bed, he was so shaken by its simplicity that he could only wonder why it had not occurred to him before.
In a frenzy of excitement, he considered his plan.
Beside his shorts, he would place something of hers.
Instantaneously he would have won an immeasurable moral victory, for if she picked up, say, a pair of her panties, she might just as well lift his shorts lying alongside- the expenditure of energy was almost the same.
He felt that it would be a particular humiliation to Dolores to pick up her own underwear which he had laid on the floor.
Furthermore, he could go on repeating the maneuver endlessly: every time he went in the bedroom, he could drop a slip or a brassiere, or maybe a girdle, next to his shorts.
Sooner or later, Dolores would crack.
On the other hand, if she didn't remove her own things, it would be difficult to explain to the parade of guests which traversed the apartment.
Martin guessed that Dolores would not be so eager to tell the next installment of her story.
The tale, he thought, would become less gay.
She had used his rumpled shorts as the very image of his childishness, his lack of control, his general male looseness, while she remained cool, airy, and untouched, the charming teacher who disciplined an unruly body.
To have her underclothes linked with his on the floor would draw her visibly into a struggle both bitter and absurd.
Something in the back of his mind was aware that the magnificence of the plan lay in his faith, that the idea would work because he believed in it, since his courage and virility were involved, because it was truly his.
The knowledge kept him from analyzing his scheme to death, and took him through the last hours of that night in a peace of exalted fanaticism.
The next morning, while Dolores was out of the room, he went to her bureau drawer, took out a pair of nylon lace pants, and tenderly dropped them next to his shorts.
He sat down on the bed.
In a surprisingly short time, Dolores appeared.
To his delight, her eyes focused at once upon the two garments.
Slowly and deliberately she reached down and touched the lace with her fingers, then hesitated for about a second.
Ah, he thought, she's going through the chain of reasoning which says she might really just as well pick up my shorts too.
He saw that in a moment she had grasped all the implications of a plot which had been weeks in occurring to him.
Extending her fingers another inch, she caught up the shorts, and swiftly left the room.
She did not look at him, but he noticed that her face was flushed and her eyes unsteady.
They breakfasted together, but Martin did not refer to his triumph, and Dolores found a great deal to do in the kitchen, bobbing up and down from the table so that talk was impossible.
Well, Martin thought, That'll save.
He left for work in high spirits.
As he relaxed that day, Martin realized how tense he had been these past weeks.
He found that he no longer hated Dolores (he knew how much he had hated her), and he was surprised at a resurgence of an affectionate feeling.
"Good old A-Z", Cap said.
"You know, I've got one of your cars at home.
as a prominent industrialist, you ought to be interested in his nibs' support group.
Isn't his racket down your alley"?
Once it was, William thought.
But not any more.
A rush of memory swept him back, and he forgot Cap.
How did he start on such a ride to brief glory?
Simply enough, through the inadvertent agency of his brother-in-law.
General Hershey's draft and Doc Eddyman and Cap were responsible for his first eminence, but Fearless Freddy Bryan could take credit, if he cared to (and he did), for the second time.
Freddy needed a job, having been detached from a rather dangerous career in real estate and skyscraper financing by Gerry, and it was up to Arthur Willis to provide him with one.
Mr Willis bought Zenith Plastic Products, a skeleton corporation of sorts which had undergone many vicissitudes and whose principal assets were a couple of electronics plants on Long Island engaged in working out government contracts, and installed Freddy in an executive position.
Shortly after, Freddy had his usual proliferation of bold ideas.
Willis listened patiently, and once in a while William was exposed to them at a family gathering; he generally heard Freddy's suggestions without interest, being absorbed by his own prospering concerns.
Probably Mr Willis was influenced toward deeper involvement by familial loyalty and a concern for his grandchildren.
Gerry began to aid Freddy with her father, prodded, no doubt, by Joan's open contempt for Freddy and William's irritating competency.
Another factor must have been the eventual disposal of Willis' fortune; she unquestionably assumed that the more he was entwined with Freddy, the more likely he was to reward Freddy richly upon his death.
Whatever the reasons, Willis and Bryan started expanding Zenith.
They acquired another electronics factory, a specialized ceramics company, an organization that built- very experimentally- high-speed research calculators.
Since they were hunting for national defense contracts, Adam Herberet, a man of surprising resources, entered the combination as a silent partner because of his political connections.
Feeling his power, Freddy looked for additional worlds to conquer.
Heavy industry, slanted toward inexhaustible government coffers, attracted him.
The Allstates Auto Company, a medium-sized firm which manufactured four-wheel-drive vehicles and other off-road equipment, had recently constructed an over-large, modern plant in a burst of misguided optimism.
Cursed with a shaky management and dissatisfied stockholders, it was ripe for amalgamation, and Freddy's instinct was to keep growing by stock mergers and small expenditure of cash, and never mind inevitable consequences.
With Herberet's blessing, he was convinced that Allstates' Wisconsin folly would be ideal for conversion to airplane sub-assembly, tanks, missiles or ordnance of some kind.
At that point William came into the picture.
Although not much desiring the account, he had been appointed advertising head of Zenith.
Freed of routine by having his own firm and a complaisant partner, his work in New York had given him a broader overall knowledge of business administration and corporate structure; and if he wasn't entirely committed to what he did, he was at least fascinated by the chance of wider opportunities.
Mr Willis, eager to have him allied with the family, wanted advice beyond the confines of his field, and William set out on a serious study of the situation, including trips to Wisconsin and Washington.
In the end, he said: "I'm not enchanted by the proposition, sir.
I know a guy named Jack Hamrick, a very bright young engineer who was with Chrysler, and I took him with me to Allstates.
It's his expert opinion that the plant isn't well suited to what you have in mind.
The conversion will cost a fortune.
Besides that, I'm acquainted more or less with the defense hardware situation through my contacts in the Air Force.
I think Adam Herberet is guilty of being too hopeful and better informed on defense financing than on the technical side.
Missiles have thrown everything up for grabs, and nobody seems to be sure where we go from here.
The future of manned aircraft is in doubt, which affects government procurement, and jet transports have revolutionized the airline trade- one jet can take the place of three compound-engine planes.
This means the aircraft companies are going to tear into the government market, looking for anything they can get and making the competition tough.
Here are a few facts and figures I've assembled.
Can't you stay with what you have and wait till the dust settles"?
Willis glanced at the bound pages given him and shrugged.
"Well", he said, "there is Freddy, you know **h. And Gerry.
Freddy is deeply committed to our plans already.
He assures me he has people to handle the money raising, and Ham Richert, my lawyer, says the legal aspects of the wedding of Zenith and Allstates are no problem.
I don't like to exhibit the deadly dampening effect of an elderly man's caution".
"Yes, I appreciate that.
I wish you wouldn't tell Freddy I'm lukewarm; I've caused him trouble before, and he's beginning to resent me.
If we don't take care, the sisters will be entering the fray on opposite sides, brandishing their cudgels".
"Which is a frightful prospect, Bill".
Willis laughed.
"One shouldn't mix commercial affairs with patriarchy, but in this case I have no choice **h. Let me think about it.
I'm most grateful to you, so grateful I wish you were my principal aide instead of Freddy".
Not to William's surprise, Freddy, Adam and Hamilton Richert prevailed; allied to them was Gerry, devoting much time to swaying her father, and Joan dismissed all thought of the project and William was unwilling to interfere further.
Zenith absorbed Allstates, stock transfers were arranged, and Freddy became president of the hyphenated combination.
Through Jack Hamrick, William fell into the world of automobile promotion and got several accounts for Shoals and Clay.
He forgot about A-Z till, unhappily, he and Hamrick were proved correct.
Freddy's backing dropped away from him and Mr Willis was forced to make up the deficit.
Adam, beset by changing defense conditions and the open secret that he was part of the new corporation, couldn't deliver from his end.
The Wisconsin plant turned out to be a white elephant.
Stock Willis held in abundance fell sharply in value.
Confronted by a grim future, Freddy lost his nerve and plumped for a drastic liquidation.
Once more Willis summoned William.
"You were right", he said- "you and your engineer- and I'm in something of a bind.
Freddy's solution doesn't appeal to me.
In addition to other defects, I'm a stubborn man and hate to admit to the common garden variety of bad judgment.
Will you see if you can help me"?
William spent a long week end closeted with Hamrick.
His recent experience in motor car advertising, a love for cars of themselves, the existence of A-Z's useless Wisconsin set-up, exposure to exciting conceptions of Hamrick's that nobody would buy, and the coincidental recent failure of a respected but out-dated small-car manufacturer called Ticonderoga Motors had given him an idea of such dimensions he was almost afraid to broach it.
Initially, Hamrick's reaction to A-Z going into the passenger car market was discouraging.
He thought the financing, the advertising, the production of new models, the founding of a nationwide chain of dealerships was simply too difficult.
Then he caught fire.
If A-Z could buy Ticonderoga cheaply and use their presses and dies and other equipment, if William could hit precisely the right promotion note, if the money hurdle was not insurmountable **h. They took nearly a month to investigate, marshal statistics, and put their arguments down in black and white.
Taking Hamrick with him, William went to Mr Willis.
He was surprised and dubious, but impressed by the engineer and the report.
"Your alternative is breathtaking", he said, "and, I'm frank in saying, a bit mad.
I wish I was younger and less timid **h. Well, I can't resolve this myself.
I'll have to call in the brain trust.
Are you willing to run the gantlet?
I can't guarantee you a sympathetic audience".
"We'll be in there swinging", William said, "but in a way, sir, you've got to decide it yourself.
You have the controlling interest and the principal expenditure is yours- and, besides, nobody else is going to have the courage.
If they follow anyone, it'll have to be you".
He paused.
"I should explain: there's more here for me than advocating my little dream, there's you.
You mustn't take a fall, or publicly back away.
I hate that.
You're- you're Arthur Willis **h. Forgive the hearts and flowers theme".
"I rather like the music", Willis replied quietly.
"Thank you".
At the meeting, attended by Freddy, Richert, Herberet and the A-Z executive staff, with Mr Willis presiding, William and Hamrick did indeed run the gantlet.
From shock and incredulity, most of the listeners went on to open resistance and animosity.
"Oh, my God", Ham Richert said, "a little child shall lead them.
Move over, General Motors".
"It's absurd, Bill", Freddy said, from a pale face.
"You're leading Dad down the garden path".
"Your garden, God damn it"!
William said.
"I don't enjoy family quarrels", Adam said.
"Nor crazy relatives.
We're here to transact business.
Can't we put an end to this, Arthur"?
"Hear me out, please", William begged.
"I'm an advertising hustler, I admit, but I have to get hot once in a larger sphere.
Sure, Ticonderoga went broke in the low-priced market bucking the Big Three.
Their cars weren't small enough, they didn't have the power, they were old-fashioned.
They tried to sell 'em on economy and simple merit.
We've arrived at an age for romance and snobbery.
We've all been rich and spoiled long enough to hate the machine age.
Look what those little European jobs are doing.
We'll woo the consumer with a product, not bludgeon him with chromed excess length and weight.
Let's make it moonlight and the call of far places and a seduction, at reasonable rates.
Ticonderoga folded a few minutes too soon, before the tide changed, still honest and stupid- and the network of dealers the company had is around waiting to be signed up again- waiting for us, ready-made.
We've got rid of the steam yachts and Georgian houses, and the bloated, too-expensive automobile is next.
Why not come down smartly in the world, in a chic fashion, with an Allstates-Zenith"?
He swayed them somewhat, but the debate raged on.
Financing emerged as the main obstacle.
Mr Willis made it evident that he had contributed his maximum.
"Nobody will underwrite it, I'm telling you", Freddy said.
"I know what I'm talking about in that department".
"There's plenty of risk money", Ham Richert added, "but not for anything this risky".
"All right", William said.
"We'll try to swing the deal on that basis.
If we can't raise the capital, we're through.
Nothing has been lost.
You're up against it anyhow.
Why won't you give me a chance"?
A silence fell.
Heads instinctively turned in Willis' direction.
He smiled at William and slowly rubbed his hands together.
"I feel I must answer the question", he said, "since the onus later, if any, should fall on me- I don't relish recriminations spread broadcast outside my family **h. I'm not giving you a chance, Bill, but availing myself of your generous offer of assistance.
Good luck to you".
"All the in-laws have got to have their day", Adam said, and glared at William and Freddy in turn.
Sweat started out on William's forehead, whether from relief or disquietude he could not tell.
Across the table, Hamrick saluted him jubilantly with an encircled thumb and forefinger.
Nobody else showed pleasure.
## Spike-haired, burly, red-faced, decked with horn-rimmed glasses and an Ivy League suit, Jack Hamrick awaited William at the officers' club.
"Hello, boss", he said, and grinned.
"I suppose I can never expect to call you 'General' after that Washington episode".
"I'm afraid not".
It was among these that Hinkle identified a photograph of Barco!
For it seems that Barco, fancying himself a ladies' man (and why not, after seven marriages?
), had listed himself for Mormon Beard roles at the instigation of his fourth murder victim who had said: "With your beard, dear, you ought to be in movies"!
Mills secured Barco's photograph from the gentleman in charge, rushed to the Hollywood police station to report the theft, and less than five minutes later, detectives with his picture in hand were on the trail of Cal Barco.
On their way, they stopped at every gas station along the main boulevards to question the attendants.
Finally, at Ye Olde Gasse Filling Station on Avocado Avenue, they learned that their man, having paused to get oil for his car, had asked about the route to San Diego.
They headed in that direction and, at San Juan Capistrano by-the-Sea came upon Barco sitting in the quaint old Spanish Mission Drive-in, eating a hot tamale.
At the moment, Barco's back was to the road so he didn't see the detectives close in on his convertible which, in their quest for the stolen lap rug, they proceeded to search.
The robe, however, was missing, for by that time Barco had disposed of it at a pawnshop in Glendale.
The detectives placed Barco under arrest and, without informing him of the nature of the charge, took him back to Hollywood for questioning.
Thus it was that Barco, apprehended for mere larceny, now began to suspect that one or another of his murders had been uncovered.
During the return trip, Barco kept muttering to himself in meaningless phrases, such as: "They're under sand dunes **h They're better off, I tell you **h I saved their souls".
The detective, commenting on Barco's behavior, felt that he merely belonged among the myriad citizens of our community who are mentally unhinged- that he was a more or less harmless "nut"!
However while in his cell awaiting trial for theft, Barco, in a fit of apprehension, made an attempt to take his own life.
The attempt had failed because, when endeavoring to cut his wrists, this murderer of seven women had fainted at the sight of blood.
The jail authorities- attaching no particular significance to the episode- offered Barco whisky to revive him; but the old fellow, a lifelong teetotaler, refused it, and no more was thought of the matter.
Then it was that District Attorney Welch entered the case.
A man of vaulting ambition, with one eye on the mayorship of Los Angeles, nothing ever escaped him which might possibly lead to personal publicity.
It was reported to Welch's office that a thief in the city jail had attempted suicide.
Welch wanted to know why.
No one knew.
Now Welch had a pet theory that everyone is guilty of breaking more laws than he ever gets caught at.
The suicide attempt looked to him like an opportunity to put his theory to the test.
So he paid a call on Barco in his cell and began their chat by stating bluntly: "Barco, we've got the goods on you!
It'll be a lot better if you come clean".
At first Barco was evasive and shifty.
But with Welch's relentless pursuit of the subject, Barco finally "broke" and started confessing to one murder after another.
By the time Barco reached the count of three, the situation seemed to Welch almost too good to be true.
But if true, it was the case of which he had dreamed, the case which would throw him into headlines all over America as the hero of a great murder trial.
Welch summoned jail officials to Barco's cell.
But to Welch's chagrin, the police captain pooh-poohed Welch's credulity in Barco's confession.
Barco was clearly a "nut".
It required strength, bravado, daring to commit murder.
"That worm a murderer?
Ridiculous"!
Then, for the first time since his arrest, a glint of spirit lit Barco's eyes.
His manhood had been attacked.
He stiffened and rose to his feet.
He'd show them!
"Is that so"?
he queried.
"Well, for ten years I've been murdering women.
I can lead you to every one of the bodies, and there ain't four, nor five, nor six of 'em- there's seven!"
The next day the police captain, in derision, organized what he termed "Welch's Wild Goose Chase".
For indeed it seemed incredible that anyone could go on committing murder for ten years and not get caught at it, even in Hollywood.
The searching party consisted of the police captain, Welch, Barco, policemen with shovels, newspaper reporters, and cameramen.
Barco, his state of apprehension gone, never to return, had assumed a matter-of-factness which remained his principal attitude from that time on.
He directed the cortege of autos to the sand dunes near Santa Monica.
Stopping the cars at a fork in the road, he got out, paced off a certain distance to a spot between two shrub-covered sand hills, and indicated a location.
Orders were given to dig.
Nothing was found.
Welch was worried.
The police captain chortled.
The newspaper boys cracked jokes and again Barco's pride was aroused.
With greater precision he again paced off a location, this time a little more to the left.
With quibs and gibes, the policemen again started digging.
Welch was on edge.
The captain was remarking that it was a nice day for a picnic when finally one of the shovels struck an object.
"There's something here"!
said the digger.
Joking stopped and everyone gathered around.
The digger, thrusting about with his shovel, now raised into view a package crudely wrapped in one of the murderer's Hollywood sport shirts.
Although it was a mere fragment of the victim's remains, it was enough.
Welch was wild with delight.
His elation grew as Barco's seven disclosures brought to light one reward after another.
Now did Welch truly become the man of the hour, and everything that followed in the procedure of Justice was a new triumph for him.
It went to his head, and his ambition increased.
It was apparent that Welch was in cahoots with Marshall and would use his power as DA to drag every possible sensation into the case.
Every new scandal which would provide more "copy" for Marshall's pen would thus mean more publicity for Welch.
I knew that both these cynics were waiting with impatience for the dramatic moment when Viola was called to the stand.
Once there, the DA with devilish cleverness would provide Marshall with headlines: "Viola's Multiple Romances"**h "Viola Lake an Addict"**h "Downfall of Another Film Idol"!
It would be fine publicity for the man who was willing to walk to the mayor's throne over the broken reputation of a helpless girl!
I studied Welch closely as the trial progressed for any hint which might give me a lead as to how he might be thwarted.
It wasn't long before I sensed that there was something deeper than overvaulting ambition back of his desire for Viola's destruction.
He was bitter and resentful toward her, personally resentful.
A dreadful fear entered my consciousness that perhaps he had entertained aspirations toward Viola's favors- or, even more serious perhaps, that he had attained a share of them and had then been superseded by some luckier chap.
I did not rest until I had tracked the mystery down.
Well, here it is.
One day over a year before, there had been a cocktail party in an apartment of a downtown hotel.
Viola had been urged to attend, by telephone, and not knowing the host or the character of the party, she had gone.
She arrived late and as she entered the party, noted that gentlemen seemed to be in the majority; the air was thick with smoke, empty bottles were in evidence, and several of the guests were somewhat the worse for liquor.
Naturally, Viola had no wish to remain, but she felt she couldn't leave so soon after her arrival, in all politeness to her host.
And it so happened that adjacent to a couch on which she had taken refuge was a small table on which she noted a vase of red rosebuds; while projecting from beneath the couch were a pair of feet which, as Fate would have it, belonged to District Attorney Welch.
As Viola sat there, a playful impulse overcame her to remove the shoes and socks from the unidentified feet and, as a prank, insert rosebuds between the toes.
A little later the district attorney woke up, emerged from under the couch, looked at his watch, and realized he had an engagement that very hour to address a meeting of the Culture Forum on "The Civic Spirit of the Southland", in the Byzantine room of the hotel where his wife, as president of the forum, was to preside.
He made his way to his host's bedroom where he carefully brushed himself off, neatly arranged his hair, and painstakingly selected his hat from the many on the bed.
Then, noting neither the absence of his footwear nor the presence of the rosebuds, he made his way to the Byzantine room and, with his usual dignity, mounted the rostrum.
The effect on the intellectuals among his audience may well be imagined.
The incident, aside from reflecting on Welch's political career, had all but wrecked his home life.
He never rested until he discovered who the culprit was, and when he did, he vowed vengeance on Viola Lake if ever the chance came his way.
And here it was!
By such innocent actions are human tragedies sometimes set in motion.
During these first days of the trial I didn't have as much time to commiserate with Viola as I should have liked.
In the first place, it was difficult for us to meet.
We couldn't be seen together, for the tongue of Scandal was ever ready to link our names, and the tongue of Scandal finds but one thing to say of the association of a man with a girl, no matter how innocent.
I couldn't invite Viola to our house, for Mother snobbishly refused to receive her.
Now the Czarship had not affected my own sense of social values, but Mother had attained a reflected glory through it, which had opened the doors of Los Angeles-Pasadena Society to her.
There, Mother was received by the scions of aristocratic lines which are dominated by the Budweisers (of beer derivation), the Chalmers (of underwear origin), and the Heinzes (whose forbears founded a nationally famous trade in pickles).
I hated being dragged into the salons of these aristocrats.
But Mother insisted, for it is seldom indeed that anyone remotely connected with the cinema is ever received in their exclusive midsts.
In fact, it was not until the King of Spain had visited at Pickfair that Mary and Doug were beckoned to cross the sacred barriers which separate Los Angeles and Pasadena from the hoi-polloi.
Mother even went so far as to trump up for me matrimonial opportunities with Pasadena debs who had been educated abroad, and with those of the more lenient Los Angeles area where a debutante was a girl who had been to high school.
But at long last came a time when I broke away from Mother and her society "chi-chi" in order to spend a cosy evening with Viola and her chaperon at her home.
However, such a hotbed of gossip had grown up during the trial, that every precaution had to be taken to keep my visit from being whispered to the world, Society, and even, alas, to my own mother.
When I arrived at Viola's I was shown, to my surprise, into the kitchen.
Viola greeted me, in checked apron, ladle in hand, and explained it was the cook's night out and that she herself was preparing dinner.
I sat and watched proceedings.
There was to be roast chicken with dressing, giblet gravy, asparagus, new peas with a sprig of mint, creamed onions, and mashed potatoes- all chosen, prepared, and cooked by Viola herself.
I realized that Hamlet was faced with an entirely different problem, but his agony could have been no greater.
The most that was accomplished was adding Mrs Beige's tray to the dish pile, and by means of repeated threats, on an ascending scale, seeing that the girls dressed themselves, after a fashion.
I was saved from making the decision as the phone rang, and the girls were upon me instantly.
Here's a household hint: if you can't find your children, and get tired of calling them, pick up the phone.
No matter if your children are at the movies, in school, visiting their grandmother, or on a field trip in some distant city, they will be upon you magically within seconds after you pick up the phone.
Jennie and Miranda twined themselves around me, murmuring endearments.
Louise climbed onto a stool and clutched the hand with which I was trying to hold the phone, claiming my immediate attention on grounds of extreme emergency.
Somehow managing to get out a cool, poised, "Won't you hold on a second, please", I covered up the mouthpiece, and with more warmth and less poise, gave a quick lecture on crime and punishment, mostly the latter, including Devil's Island and the remoter reaches of Siberia.
I promised to illustrate the lecture, if they so much as breathed till after the call was completed.
Speaking into the phone again and recognizing the caller, I resumed my everyday voice.
Soon we were deep in a conversation that was interrupted many times by little things like Jennie's holding her breath and pretending to black out, Miranda's dumping the contents of the sugar bowl on the table, and various screeches, thuds, and giggles.
Under the circumstances, I had difficulty keeping up with the conversation on the phone, but when I hung up I was reasonably certain that Francesca had wanted to remind me of our town meeting the next evening, and how important it was that Hank and I be there.
I discovered that the girls had shrewdly vacated the kitchen, and were playing quietly in the living room.
It seemed that I would be the gainer if I accepted the peace and quiet, instead of carrying out my threats.
Resolving to get something done, I started in on the dishes.
No.
I'm not saying it right.
What I meant to say was that I started to start in on the dishes by gathering them all together in the kitchen sink.
They looked so formidable, however, so demanding, that I found myself staring at them in dismay and starting to woolgather again, this time about Francesca and her husband.
How about them, I thought.
Francesca and Herbert were among the few people we knew in Catatonia.
We didn't even know them till about a month after we moved- at that time, they had called on us, after I met Fran at a PTA meeting, and had taken us in hand socially.
They had been kind to us and we were indebted to them for one or two pleasant dinners, and for information as to where to shop, which dentist, doctor, plumber, and sitter to call (not that there was much of a choice, since Catatonia was just a village; the yellow pages of the telephone book were amazingly thin).
They were "personalities".
Herb, an expert on narrow ties, thin lapels, and swatches, was men's fashion editor of Parvenu, the weekly magazine with the tremendous circulation.
Fran and he had met about two years after she had arrived in Manhattan from Nebraska, or was it Wyoming?
She was the daughter and sole heiress of either a cattle baron or an oil millionaire and, having arrived in New York with a big bank roll, became a dabbler in various fields.
She patronized Greenwich Village artists for awhile, then put some money into a Broadway show which was successful (terrible, but successful).
It was during her "writing" period that she and Herb met and decided that they were in love.
They were married at a lavish ceremony which was duly recorded in Parvenu and all other magazines and newspapers, and then they honeymooned in Bermuda.
No, not Bermuda.
Bermuda was not in style that year.
They had honeymooned in Rome; everyone was very high on Rome that year.
They had bought their house in Catatonia after investigating all the regions of suburbia surrounding New York; they had chosen Catatonia because of its reputation for excellent schools, beaches, and abundance of names.
"You are bound to get involved with people when you have children", Fran had told me at our first meeting, "so it is good to know that those with whom you get involved are not just dreary little housewives and dull husbands, but People Who Do Things".
I admired their easy way of doing things but I couldn't escape an uneasiness at their way of always doing the right things.
Their house was a centuries-old Colonial which they had had restored (guided by an eminent architect) and updated, and added on to.
It had a gourmet's corner (instead of a kitchen), a breakfast room, a luncheon room, a dining room, a sitting room, a room for standing up, a party room, dressing rooms for everybody, even a room for mud.
It was all set up so there would be no dust anywhere and so that their children would color in the coloring room, paint in the painting room, play with blocks in the block house, and do all the other things in the proper rooms at exactly the right time.
Their two boys were "well adjusted" and, like their parents, always did the right thing at the right time and damn the consequences.
Francesca and Herbert considered themselves violently nonconformist and showed the world they were by filling their Colonial house with contemporary furniture and paintings and other art objects (expensive, but not necessarily valuable, contemporary things).
Fran flaunted her independence by rebelling against the Catatonia uniform of Bermuda shorts and knee-length socks by wearing Bermuda shorts and knee-length socks in color; bright pinks and plaids and vivid stripes.
Sometimes she even wore the uniform in solid, unrelieved black, and with her blonde hair cut so closely, wearing this uniform, she strongly resembled a member of the SS.
No one could dislike them, I thought.
Sometimes, though, they did not seem quite human.
It seemed, indeed, that their house was not so much a home, but rather a perfect stage set, and that they were actors who had been handed fat roles in a successful play, and had talent enough to fill the roles competently, with nice understatement.
Practically the only enthusiasm they showed was when they were discussing "names"; even brand names.
You should hear the reverence in Fran's voice when she said "Baccarat" or "Steuben" or "Madame Alexander".
She always let it be known that there was wine in the pot roast or that the chicken had been marinated in brandy, and that Koussevitzky's second cousin was an intimate of theirs.
I wouldn't have wasted time puzzling over this couple were it not for my fear that all the other inhabitants of Catatonia were equally unreal.
I couldn't feel at home among them.
Besides Francesca, there was Blanche.
Francesca was pleasant and charming, but Blanche was sweet.
Yes, Blanche was very, very sweet- being in her company was like being drowned in warm, melted marshmallows.
I had once been a witness when Blanche had smiled and said with only minimum ruefulness, "Oh, my souffle has collapsed".
Anyone knows how a real, red-blooded woman would react to such a catastrophe!
If Blanche had been honest, she would have yelled, slammed at least a couple of doors, and thrown a few little, valueless things.
But dear me, no; not Blanche.
After five minutes with Blanche, one might welcome the astringency of Grazie, who was a sort of Gwen Cafritz to Francesca's Perle Mesta.
Francesca and Grazie were habitual committee chairmen and they usually managed to be elected co-chairmen, equal bosses, of whatever PTA or civic project was being launched.
They were inseparable, not because they were fond of each other, but because they wanted to keep an eye on each other, as they were keen rivals for social leadership.
Grazie was mean: quietly mean, and bitterly, unfunnily sarcastic.
She it was who had looked to see if I was wearing shoes upon learning that I couldn't drive.
Grazie had a small, slick head and her hair and skin were the color of golden toast.
She lived in an ultra-modern house whose decoration, appointments, paint, and even pets were chosen to complement her coloring; the pets were a couple of Siamese cats.
Her uniform was of rich, raw silk, in a shade which matched her hair, skin, housepaint, and cats, and since she was so thin as to be almost shapeless, she rather resembled a frozen fish stick.
The husbands of these women and others I had met in Catatonia were distinguished only in that they were, to me at least, indistinguishable.
I couldn't tell one from the other.
Like Herbert, they were all in communications: radio, television, magazines, and advertising.
One or two were writers of books; all were fellows of finite charm.
Each had developed a hair-trigger chuckle and the habit of saying "zounds"!
in deference to country-squirehood.
I never thought I'd live to hear people chuckle and say "zounds"!
in real life.
I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
They were "sincere"- men of the too-hearty handclasp and the urgent smile.
These boys acknowledged an introduction to anybody by gently pressing one of his hands in both of theirs, while they gazed, misty-eyed with care, into the eyes of the person they were meeting.
Could such unadulterated love, for a total stranger, be credited?
They were always leaping to light cigarettes, open car doors, fill plates or glasses, and I mistrusted the whole lot of them to the same degree that I mistrusted bake shops that called themselves "Sanitary Bake Shops".
"O Pioneers!"
I thought, and wondered what kind of homesteads such odd pioneers would establish in this suburban frontier; pioneers who looked like off-duty gardeners even at parent-teacher conferences and who never called the school principal "Mister".
I sighed, thinking that among other things, people here seemed to be those who would have to cut down if they earned less than $85,000 yearly; people who would give their teeth for a chance to get on "Person to Person"; people who thought it was nice to be important, but not important to be nice; who were more ingratiating than gracious, more personalities than persons.
In my estimation, they were people who read Daphne du Maurier, and discussed Kafka; well, not discussed him exactly, but said, "Kafka"!
reverently and raised their eyes, as if they were at a loss to describe how they felt about Kafka, which they were, because they had no opinions about Kafka, not having read Kafka.
They were, I felt, people invariably trying to prove not who, but what they were, and trying to determine what, not who, others were.
Becoming aware that it was nearly lunchtime, I brought myself back to the tasks at hand.
I made plans for the afternoon- doing the breakfast and luncheon dishes all at once, making the beds, and then maybe painting the kitchen.
Then, I remembered that the girls had had a banana for dessert every day for the last week.
"BANANAS"!
Jennie had shouted each time.
"They're not dessert!
They're not even food.
They're just something you're supposed to put on cereal for breakfast".
I dug around and found a mix, and was able to surprise them with a devil's-food cake with chocolate icing.
(Sometimes I think you need only one rule for cooking: if you can't put garlic in it, put chocolate in it.)
The cake was received in a stunned silence that was evidence in itself of the dearth of taste thrills Mama had been providing.
Then Jennie closed her eyes, stretched forth her arms, and said: "Take my hand, Louise; I'm a stranger in paradise".
Needless to say, I was furious at this unparalleled intrusion upon free enterprise.
How dared they demand to "snoop" in private financial records, disbursements, confidential contracts and agreements?
"It is as though", I said on the historic three-hour, coast-to-coast radio broadcast which I bought (following Father Coughlin and pre-empting the Eddie Cantor, Manhattan Merry-go-round and Major Bowes shows) "That Man in the White House, like some despot of yore, insisted on reading my diary, raiding my larder and ransacking my lingerie!"
My impassioned plea for civil rights created a landslide of correspondence and one sponsor even asked me to consider replacing the Eddie Cantor comedy hour on a permanent basis.
But what quarter could a poor defenseless woman expect from a dictator who would even make so bold as to close all of the banks in our great nation?
The savage barbarian hordes of red Russian Communism descended on the Athens that was mighty Metronome, sacking and despoiling with their Bolshevistic battle cry of "Soak the rich'!
After an unspeakable siege, lasting the better part of two months, it was announced that the studio "owed" the government a tax debt in excess of eight million dollars while I, who had always remained aloof from such iniquitous practices as paying taxes on the salary I had earned and the little I legally inherited as Morris' helpless relict, was "stung" with a personal bill of such astronomical proportions as to "wipe out" all but a fraction of my poor, hard-come-by savings.
I was also publicly reprimanded, dragged through the mud by the radical press and made a figure of fun by such leftist publications as The New Republic, The New Yorker, Time and the Christian Science Monitor.
It was then that I availed myself of the rights of a citizen and declared the income tax unconstitutional.
The litigation was costly and seemingly endless.
I fought like a tigress but by the time I appealed my case to the Supreme Court (1937), Mr Roosevelt and his "henchmen" had done their "dirty work" all too well, even going so far as to attempt to "pack" the highest tribunal in the land in order to defeat little me.
Presidential coercion had succeeded not only in poisoning the courtiers, "toadies" and sycophants of the "bench" against me, but it had been so far-reaching as to discourage any lawyer in the nation from representing me!
I was ready, like Portia, to present my own brief.
But the Supreme Court wouldn't even hear my case!
My plea was unanimously voted down and "thrown out".
Again, my name was on all the front pages.
I was, it seemed, persona non grata in every quarter, but not entirely without a staunch following of noted political thinkers and students of jurisprudence.
As Charles Evans Hughes said, "Miss Poitrine's limitations as an actress are exceeded only by her logic as a litigant".
Albert Einstein was quoted as saying: "The workings of the woman's mind amaze me".
Henry Ford spoke of me as "utterly astounding".
Heywood Broun wrote: "Belle Poitrine is the most original thinker since Caligula", and even FDR had to concede that "if the rest of this nation showed the foresight and patriotism of Miss Poitrine, America would rapidly resemble ancient Babylon and Nineveh".
Not only were the court costs prohibitive, but I was subjected to crippling fines, in addition to usurious interest on the unpaid "debts" which the governmen claimed that Metronome and I owed- a severe financial blow.
Nor, as Manny said, had the notoriety done my career "any good".
My enemies were only too anxious to level against me such charges as "reactionary", "robber baroness", and even "traitor"!
Traitor indeed!
I point now with pride to the fact that, long ere the Committee on Un-American Activities, the Minute Women, the Economic Council and other such notable "watchdog" organizations were so much as heard of, I was Hollywood's leading bulwark against communism, fighting single-handedly "creeping socialism" against such insuperable odds as the Fascio-Communist troops of the NRA, PWA, WPA, CCC and an army of more than twenty-two million mercenaries whom FDR employed secretly, through the transparent ruse of regular "relief" checks.
Needless to say, my art suffered drastically during this turbulent period.
Could it do otherwise?
Even though I have always had a genius for "throwing myself" into every role and "playing it for all it's worth", no actress can be expected to do her best work when her fortune, her reputation, her livelihood, her home and her nation itself are all imperilled.
Such sweeping distractions are hardly conducive to "Oscar" winning performances.
I tried my hardest, with little help, may I say, from my husband and leading man, but somehow the outside pressures were too severe.
Having (through my unflagging effort and devotion) achieved stardom, a fortune and a world-renowned wife at an age when most young men are casting their first vote, Letch proceeded to neglect them all.
Never a "quick study", he now made no attempt to learn his "lines" and many a mile of film was wasted, many a scene- sometimes involving as many as a thousand fellow thespians- was taken thirty, forty, fifty times because Miss Poitrine's co-star and "helpmate" had never learned his part.
Each time Letch "went up" in his "lines", I was the one to be patient, helpful and apologetic while he indulged in outbursts of temperament, profanity and abuse, blaming others, going into "sulks" and, on more occasions than I care to count, storming off the "set" for the rest of the day.
As for his finances, I was never privileged to know exactly how much money Letch had "salted away".
It was I who paid for our little home, the food, the liquor, the servants- even Letch's bills at his tailor and the Los Angeles Athletic Club.
Never once did he buy me a single gift and for our third anniversary he gave me a dislocated jaw.
(But that is another story.)
As for his private monies, they were rapidly dissipated in drinking, gaming and carousing.
More than once I was confronted by professional gamblers, "bookies", loan "sharks", gangsters, "thugs" and "finger men"- people of a class I did not even know existed- to repay my husband's staggering losses, "or else **h" I shuddered to think that someone so dear to me could even associate with such a sinister milieu.
And at three different times during our turbulent marriage strange girls, with the commonest of accents, telephoned to announce to me that Letch had sired their unborn children!
Having the deepest of maternal instincts, my heart fairly bled when I thought of the darling pink and white "bundles from heaven" I would have proudly given my husband.
"Ah, you're too old", was invariably his ungallant and untrue retort whenever I suggested "starting a family".
Letch had made it abundantly clear that he did not care for the company of my own precious daughter.
I now felt it wiser to keep Baby-dear in school and- during the summers- at a camp run by the Society of Friends all year around.
Her presence only made Letch more distant and irritable and, in the hurry of buying Chateau Belletch, I had neglected to consider a room for Baby-dear, so there was no place to put her, anyhow.
(I sometimes feel that God, in His infinite wisdom, wants us to have these inexplicable little lapses of memory.
It almost always works out for the best.)
Yet I adored this man, Letch Feeley, why, I cannot say.
With faint heart and a brave smile, I endured his long absences from Chateau Belletch, his coldness, his indifference, his slights and his abuse.
The times I can recall when I was publicly humiliated by him- lovely dinner parties in our Trianon Suite where the collation was postponed and postponed and postponed, only to be served dry and overcooked at a table where the host's chair was vacant; a "splash party" at the new pool, which I had built in the hope of keeping Letch away from public beaches, when Letch and a certain Aquacutie stayed underwater together for the better part of an hour; a lovely Epiphany party at Errol Flynn's, on which sacred occasion Letch stole away with an unknown "starlet", leaving me "high and dry" to get home as best I could.
These are but a sampling of the insults I endured.
As Mrs Letch Feeley, was it any wonder that I, once the social arbiter of Filmdom, was excluded from the smart entertainments given by the Astaires, the Coopers, the Gables, the Colmans, the Rathbones, the Taylors, the Thalbergs and such devout, closely knit families as the Barrymores and the Crosbys?
As Letch's antisocial conduct increased, our invitations decreased and my heart was in my mouth whenever I played hostess at a fashionable "screenland" gathering.
Between 1935 and 1939 Letch and I made ten films together, each less successful, both artistically and commercially, than the one before it.
Our last joint venture, Sainted Lady, a deeply religious film based on the life of Mother Cabrini, and timed so that its release date would coincide with the beatification of America's first saint in November, 1938, was a fiasco from start to finish.
As I was playing Mother Cabrini, the picture was actually "all mine", with nearly every scene built around me.
But in order to keep Letch in the public eye and out of trouble, I wrote in a part especially for him- that of a dashing ruffian who "sees the light" and is saved by the inspiring example of Mother Cabrini.
And did he appreciate my efforts on his behalf?
Did he trouble to memorize the very small part which I had "tailor-made" to his specifications, a role eventually cut down to three short speeches?
Did he show the rest of the cast- numbering four thousand- the consideration of arriving at the studio punctually- or even at all?
He did not!
The "shooting" went on for eight months!
Most of our working days were spent on the telephone calling "bookies", illegal gambling dens, a certain "residential club for young actresses", more than a hundred different bars or the steam room of the athletic club.
Whenever he deigned to appear at the studio he was "hung over", uncooperative, rude and insulting.
He made many tasteless, irreverent and unfunny remarks, not only about me in the title role, but about religion in general.
By the time the film was released we were three million dollars over-spent, war was imminent and the public apparently had forgotten all about Mother Cabrini.
Thanks to Letch Feeley and the terrible strain he imposed on me, the notices were few and unfavorable.
Only George Santayana seemed to understand and appreciate the film when he wrote: "Miss Poitrine has perpetrated the most eloquent argument for the Protestant faith yet unleashed by Hollywood".
But it was small consolation.
In a rare fit of anger and spite, I "farmed out" my own husband to a small and most undistinguished studio to make one picture as a form of punishment.
(An actor must have discipline.)
The film was called The Diet of Worms, which I felt was just what Letch deserved.
It turned out to be a life of Martin Luther, of all things!
It was a disaster!
In clothes, Letch simply did not project.
He was laughed off the screen.
At the same time, however, I availed myself of the services of that great English actor and master of make-up, Sir Gauntley Pratt, to do a "quickie" called The Mystery of the Mad Marquess, in which I played a young American girl who inherits a haunted castle on the English moors which is filled with secret passages and sliding panels and, unbeknownst to anyone, is still occupied by an eccentric maniac.
It was a "potboiler" made on a "shoestring" and not the sort of film I like, as all I had to do was look blank and scream a great deal.
My heart was not in it, but, oddly enough, it remains the most financially successful picture of my career.
(I watched it on television late one night last week and it "stands up" remarkably well, even twenty years later.)
Letch had returned from his debacle unrepentant and more badly behaved than before.
I really loved that boy, and, in a feverish attempt to preserve our marriage and to try to revive the wonderful, wonderful person Letch had once been, I took my troubles to Momma, hoping that her earthy advice would help me.
"If I could only think of something at the studio, near me, to absorb his boundless energy", I said.
"What is Letch interested in"?
"Bookies, booze and babes", Momma said bluntly.
Her reply stung me, but this was too important to let my hurt make any difference.
"I can't turn the studio into a gambling hell or a saloon", I said.
Up to date, however, his garden was still more or less of a mess, he hadn't even started his workshop and if there was a meadow pond in the neighborhood he hadn't found it.
It wasn't his fault that these things were so.
The difficulty was that each day seemed to produce its quota of details which must be cleaned up immediately.
As a result, life had become a kind of continuous make-ready.
Once he disposed of these items which screamed so harshly for attention, he could undertake the things which really counted.
Then, at last, his day would fall into an ordered pattern and he would be free to read, or garden or just wander through the woods in the late afternoon, accompanied by his dogs.
His dogs?
He had almost forgotten them, although they had played such an important part in his early dreams.
Then they had always been romping around him on these walks, yelping with delight, dashing off into the bushes on fruitless hunting expeditions, returning to jump up on him triumphantly with muddy paws.
Dogs did something to one's ego.
They were constantly assuring you that you were one of the world's great guys.
Regardless of how much of a slob you knew yourself to be, you could be certain they would never find out- and even if they did it would make no difference.
Now it became increasingly apparent that there were to be no dogs in the picture.
What in the world were you going to do with a lot of dogs when you left for town on Monday afternoons?
You certainly couldn't take them into the little apartment and if you tried to farm them out for two or three days every week they would become so confused that they would have nervous breakdowns.
Why in the world couldn't he live in one place the way everyone else seemed to?
It worried him, this inability to get the simplest things done in the course of a day.
He would wake up in the middle of the night and fret about it.
How in the world had he formerly found time to build up a business, raise a family, be on half a dozen boards, work actively on committees and either go out in the evening or plow through the contents of a bulging brief case?
Was it possible that as people grow older the nature of time changed?
Could it be that it speeded up for the aged in some mysterious way, as if a bored universe were skipping through the end of the chapter just to get it over with?
Or was the answer less metaphysical?
Did older people work more slowly?
Did it take a man of sixty-five longer to write a letter, shave, clean out a barn, read a newspaper, than a man of thirty?
Did men become perfectionists as they grew older, polishing, polishing, reluctant to let go?
It might be that certain people were born with a compulsion to complicate their lives, while others could live blissfully motionless almost indefinitely, like lizards in the sun, too indolent to blink their eyes.
Perhaps it was his misfortune, or good fortune, whichever way one looked at it, to belong to the former group, and he was struggling unconsciously to build up pressure in a world which demanded none, which was positively antagonistic to it.
And then again perhaps the reason why he couldn't find time to do any of the things he had planned to do after retirement: reading, roaming, gardening, lying on his back and watching the clouds go by, was because he didn't want to do them.
There was no compulsion behind them.
They could be done or left undone and nobody really gave a damn.
During all his busy life he had only done things which had to be done.
This habit had become so fixed over the years that it seemed futile to do anything for which no one was waiting.
He looked at the luminous dial of his wrist watch.
It was five minutes after four.
On some distant farm a rooster crowed and, far down the valley, an associate answered.
He turned over impatiently and pulled the sheet over his head against the treacherous encroachment of the dawn.
AT LEAST HE COULD BUY THE equipment for his workshop.
Thus committed, action might follow.
He went down to Mills and Bradley's Hardware Store and bought a full set of carpenter's tools, including a rotary power saw and several other pieces of power machinery that Mr Mills said were essential for babbiting and doweling, whatever they were.
He also bought a huge square of pegboard for hanging up his tools, and lumber for his workbench, sandpaper and glue and assorted nails, levels and T squares and plumb lines and several gadgets that he had no idea how to use or what they were for.
"There", said Mr Mills.
"That'll get you started.
Best not to get everything at once.
Add things as you find you need 'em".
He didn't even ask the cost of this collection.
After all, if you were going to set up a workshop you had to have the proper equipment and that was that.
When he returned home, the station wagon loaded with tools, Jinny had gone with a friend to some meeting in the village, using the recently purchased second car.
He was glad.
It gave him a chance to unload the stuff and get it down to the cellar without a barrage of acid comments.
He had made such a fuss about buying that second car that he knew he was vulnerable.
He piled everything neatly in a corner of the cellar and turned to stare at the blank stone wall.
That was where the pegboard would go on which he would hang his hand tools.
In front of it would be his workbench.
The old nightmare which had caused him so many wakeful hours came charging in on him once more, only this time he couldn't pacify it with a sleeping pill and send it away.
How in the world did one attach a pegboard to a stone wall?
How did one attach anything to a stone wall, for that matter?
After the pegboard there would be the paneling.
He sat down on an old box and focused on the problem.
Perhaps one bored holes in the stone with some kind of an electric gadget.
But then, when you stuck things into the holes, why didn't they come right out again?
It all seemed rather hopeless.
He turned his attention to the workbench.
Perhaps that was the first thing to do.
A workbench had a heavy top and sturdy legs, but how did you attach sturdy legs to a heavy top so that the whole thing didn't wobble like a newborn calf and ultimately collapse when you leaned on it?
Mr Mills had done some figuring on a scrap of paper and given him the various kinds of boards and two-by-fours which, properly handled, would, he had assured him, turn into a workbench.
They lay on the cellar floor in a disorderly pile.
Mr Crombie poked at it gingerly with his foot.
How could anyone know what to do with an assortment like that?
Perhaps he had better have someone help him put up the pegboard and build the workbench- someone who knew what he was about.
Then at least he would have a place to hang his tools and something to work on.
After that everything should be simpler.
He went upstairs to phone Crumb.
To his amazement he reached him.
Mr Crumb was laid up with a bad cold.
He didn't seem to think that attaching a pegboard to a stone wall was much of a problem and he tossed off the building of the worktable equally lightly.
The only trouble was that he himself was tied up on the school job.
That was why he hadn't been able to finish the porch.
No, he didn't know of any handyman-carpenter.
There wasn't any such thing any more.
Carpenters all wanted steady work and at the moment every mother's son for twenty miles around that could hammer nails for twenty-five dollars a day was working on the school job.
There was a fellow named Blatz over Smithtown way.
Nobody liked to hire him because you never could tell when he was going to be taken drunk.
Mr Crumb would probably see him at Lodge Meeting the next night.
If he was sober, which was doubtful, he'd have him get in touch with Mr Crombie.
Mr Blatz had been at least sober enough to remember to telephone and he turned out to be the greatest boon that had come into Mr Crombie's life since he moved to Highfield, in spite of the fact that he didn't work very fast or very long at a time, and he didn't like to work at all unless Mr Crombie hung around and talked to him.
He said he was the lonely type and working in a cellar you saw funny things coming out of the cracks in the wall if they wasn't nobody with you.
So Mr Crombie sat on a wooden box and talked in order to keep Mr Blatz's mind from funny things.
At the same time he watched carefully to see how one attached pegboards to stone walls, but Mr Blatz was usually standing in his line of vision and it all seemed so simple that he didn't like to disclose his ignorance.
While Mr Blatz was putting up the pegboards and starting the workbench, Mr Crombie told him of this idea about paneling the whole end of the cellar.
Mr Blatz agreed that this would be pretty.
Without further discussion he appeared the next morning with a pile of boards sticking over the end of his light truck and proceeded with the paneling, which he then stained and waxed according to his taste.
"Now", he said, "we got to put in some outlets for them power tools; then a couple of fluorescent lamps over the workbench an' I guess we're about through down here".
It all did look very efficient and shipshape.
There was no question of that.
"By the way", said Mr Blatz, packing his tools into a battered carrier, "them power tools needs extra voltage.
I guess you know about that.
Before you use 'em the light company's got to run in a heavy line and you'll need a new fuse box for the extra circuits.
That ain't too bad 'ceptin' the light company's so busy you can't ever get 'em to do nothin'".
Instead of being depressed by this news, Mr Crombie was actually relieved.
At least the moment was postponed when he had to face the mystery of the power tools.
He followed Mr Blatz up the cellar stairs.
As usual, Mrs Crombie was standing in the midst of a confusion of cooking utensils.
Mr Blatz sat down in the only unoccupied kitchen chair.
"Well", he said, "got your man fixed up nice down there.
He oughta be able to build a new house with all them contraptions".
Mr Crombie watched his wife with an anxious expression.
"I was just sayin' to him that I'm all ready now for anything else you want done".
Mr Crombie couldn't remember his saying any such thing.
"Oh, that's wonderful", cried Mrs Crombie.
"I have a thousand things for you to do.
Doors that won't open, and doors that won't close and shelves and broken **h" "But those are the things I built the workshop for", protested Mr Crombie.
"Those are the things I can do, now that I'm set up".
"I've been waiting to get these things done for months", she said.
"We won't live long enough if I wait for you, besides which you don't need to worry- there'll be plenty more".
But the discussion was academic.
Mr Blatz was already taking measurements for a shelf above the kitchen sink.
Nothing in English has been ridiculed as much as the ambiguous use of words, unless it be the ambiguous use of sentences.
Ben Franklin said, "Clearly spoken, Mr Fogg.
You explain English by Greek".
Richard Brinsley Sheridan said, "I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two".
And a witty American journalist remarked over a century ago what is even more true today, "Many a writer seems to think he is never profound except when he can't understand his own meaning".
There are many types of ambiguity and many of them have been described by rhetoricians under such names as amphibology, parisology, and other ologies.
In common parlance they would be described as misses- misinterpreters, misunderstanders, misdirectors and kindred misdeeds.
One species of ambiguity tries to baffle by interweaving repetition.
"Did you or did you not say what I said you said, because Jane said you never said what I said"?
Another woman, addressing Christmas cards, said to her husband: "We sent them one last year but they didn't send us one, so they probably won't send us one this year because they'll think we won't send them one because they didn't last year, don't you think, or shall we"?
Such ambiguous exercises compound confusion by making it worse compounded, and they are sometimes expanded until the cream of the jest sours.
Ambiguity of a non-repetitious kind describes the dilemma one girl found herself in.
"I'm terribly upset", she told a girl-friend.
"I wrote Bill in my last letter to forget that I had told him that I didn't mean to reconsider my decision not to change my mind- and he seems to have misunderstood me".
Evidently Bill was another of those men who simply don't understand women.
Another case involves a newspaper reporter who tripped up a politician.
"Mr Jones, you may recall that we printed last week your denial of having retracted the contradiction of your original statement.
Now would you care to have us say that you were misquoted in regard to it"?
Questions like this, framed in verbal fog, are perhaps the only kind that have ever stumped an experienced politician.
They recall Byron's classic comment: "I wish he would explain his explanation".
Similarly, when a reporter once questioned Lincoln in cryptic fashion, Lincoln refused to make any further statement.
"I fear explanations explanatory of things explained", he said, leaving the biter bit- and bitter.
The obscurity of politicians may not always be as innocent as it looks.
"Senator", said an interviewer, "your constituents can't understand from your speech last night just how you stand on the question".
"Good"!
replied the Senator.
"It took me five hours to write it that way".
The misplaced modifier is another species more honored in the observance of obscurity than in the breach.
This creates an amusing effect because its position in a sentence seems to make it apply to the wrong word.
A verse familiar to all grammarians is the quatrain: "I saw a man once beat his wife When on a drunken spree.
Now can you tell me who was drunk- The man, his wife, or me"?
The "wooden-leg" gag of vaudeville, another standby of this sort, had endless variations.
""There's a man outside with a wooden leg named Smith".
"What's the name of his other leg""?
Another stock vaudeville gag ran: "Mother is home sick in bed with the doctor".
When radio came in, it continued the misplaced modifier in its routines as a standard device.
""Do you see that pretty girl standing next to the car with slacks on"?
"I see the girl but I don't see the car with slacks on"".
In recent years gagwriters have discovered this brand of blunder and thus the misplaced modifier has acquired a new habitat in the gagline.
In one cartoon a family is shown outside a theater with the head of the family addressing the doorman: "Excuse me, but when we came out we found that we had left my daughter's handbag and my wife's behind".
Journalism supplies us with an endless run of such slips.
Not long ago a newspaper advised those taking part in a contest that "snapshots must be of a person not larger than **f inches".
Classified ads are also chockfull of misrelated constructions.
Readers of the Reader's Digest are familiar with such items which often appear in its lists of verbal slips, like the ad in a California paper that advertised "House for rent.
View takes in five counties, two bedrooms".
Since brevity is the soul of ambiguity as well as wit, newspaper headlines continually provide us with amusing samples.
"Officials Meet on Rubbish.
Many Shapes in Bathtubs.
Son and Daughter of Local Couple Married".
Apart from misplaced modifiers and headlinese, journalism contributes a wide variety of comic ambiguities in both editorial and advertising matter.
A weekly newspaper reported a local romance: "**h and the couple were married last Saturday, thus ending a friendship which began in their schooldays".
An item in the letters column of a newspaper renewed a subscription, adding: "I personally enjoy your newspaper as much as my husband".
Then there was the caterer's ad which read: "ARE YOU GETTING MARRIED OR HAVING AN AFFAIR?
We have complete facilities to accommodate 200 people".
The newspaper too is the favorite habitat of the anatomical.
This slip is so-called because its semi-ambiguous English always seems to refer to a person's anatomy but never quite means what it seems to say.
Samples: He walked in upon her invitation.
She kissed him passionately upon his reappearance.
He kissed her back.
Not without good reason has the anatomical been called jocular journalese.
In news items a man is less often shot in the body or head than in the suburbs.
"While Henry Morgan was escorting Miss Vera Green from the church social last Saturday night, a savage dog attacked them and bit Mr Morgan on the public square".
Such items recall the California journalist who reported an accident involving a movie star: "The area in which Miss N- was injured is spectacularly scenic".
The double meaning in the anatomical made it a familiar vaudeville device, as in the gags of Weber and Fields.
When a witness at court was asked if he had been kicked in the ensuing rumpus, he replied, "No, it was in the stomach".
Strangely enough, this always brought the house down.
Apart from journalese and vaudeville gags, the anatomical is also found in jocular literature.
A conscientious girl became the secretary of a doctor.
Her first day at work she was puzzled by an entry in the doctor's notes on an emergency case.
It read: "Shot in the lumbar region".
After a moment of thought, her mind cleared and, in the interest of clarity, she typed into the record: "Shot in the woods".
There are many grammatical misconstructions other than dangling modifiers and anatomicals which permit two different interpretations.
At the home of a gourmet the new maid was instructed in the fine points of serving.
"I want the fish served whole, with head and tail", the epicure explained, "and serve it with lemon in mouth".
The maid demurred.
"That's silly- lemon in mouth", she said.
But since the gourmet insisted that it is done that way at the most fashionable dinners, the girl reluctantly agreed.
So she brought the fish in whole, and she carried a lemon in her mouth.
Another specimen of such double-entendre is illustrated by a woman in a department store.
She said to the saleslady, "I want a dress to put on around the house".
The puzzled saleslady inquired, "How large is your house, Madam"?
This saleslady was a failure in the dress department and was transferred to the shoe department.
When a customer asked for alligator shoes, she said, "What size is your alligator"?
The comic indefinite comprises an extensive class of comedy.
One species is restricted to statements which are neither explicit nor precise regarding a particular person, place, time or thing.
A woman met a famous author at a literary tea.
"Oh, I'm so delighted to meet you", she gushed.
"It was only the other day that I saw something of yours, about something or other, in some magazine".
This baffling lack of distinct details recalls the secretary whose employer was leaving the office and told her what to answer if anyone called in his absence.
"I may be back", he explained, "and then again, I may not".
The girl nodded understandingly.
"Yes, sir", she said, "is that definite"?
An old-fashioned mother said to her modern daughter, "You must have gotten in quite late last night, dear.
Where were you"?
The daughter replied, "Oh, I had dinner with- well, you don't know him but he's awfully nice- and we went to a couple of places- I don't suppose you've heard of them- and we finished up at a cute little night club- I forget the name of it.
Why, it's all right, isn't it, Mother"?
Her woolly-minded parent agreed.
"Of course, dear", she said.
"It's only that I like to know where you go".
No less ambiguous was the indefinity of a certain clergyman's sermon.
"Dearly beloved", he preached, "unless you repent of your sins in a measure, and become converted to a degree, you will, I regret to say, be damned to a more or less extent".
This clergyman should have referred to Shakespeare's dictum: "So-so is a good, very good, very excellent maxim.
And yet it is not.
It is but so-so".
Indefinite reference also carries double-meaning where an allusion to one person or thing seems to refer to another.
A news item described the launching of a ship: "Completing the ceremony, the beautiful movie star smashed a bottle of champagne over her stern as she slid gracefully down the ways into the sea".
This is not unlike the order received by the sergeant of an army motor pool: "Four trucks to Fort Mason gym, 7:30 tonight, for hauling girls to dance.
The bodies must be cleaned and seats wiped off".
A politician was approached by a man seeking the office of a minor public official who had just died.
"What are my chances for taking Joe's place"?
he asked.
"If you can fix it up with the undertaker", returned the politician, "it's all right with me".
The manager of a movie theater received a telephone call from a woman who was equally indefinite.
"What have you got on today"?
she inquired.
"A blue suit", he answered.
"Who's in it"?
she continued.
"I am", he said.
There was a short pause for reflection.
"Oh", said the woman, "I've seen that picture already".
Another brand of indefinite reference arises out of the use of the double verb.
When a question contains two verbs, the response does not make clear which of them is being answered.
The moonlit night was made for romance, and he had been looking at her soulfully for some time.
Finally he asked, "Do you object to petting"?
"That's one thing I've never done", she said promptly.
He thought a moment, then inquired, "You mean petted"?
"No", she smiled, "objected".
Replies to requests for character reference are notorious for their evasive double-entendre.
It would be hard to find anything more equivocal than: "I cannot recommend him too highly".
Another less ambiguous case read as follows: "The bearer of this letter has served me for two years to his complete satisfaction.
If you are thinking of giving him a berth, be sure to make it a wide one".
In the comedy of indefinite reference, it-wit occupies a prominent place because of its frequent occurrence.
Ambiguity arises when the pronoun it carries a twofold reference.
Two friends were talking.
One said, "When I get a cold I buy a bottle of whiskey for it, and within a few hours it's gone".
The speaker referred to the whiskey but his friend thought he meant the cold.
It-wit is a misnomer because it covers slips as well as wit.
An excited woman was making an emergency call over the phone: "Doctor, please come over right away.
My husband is in great pain.
I CALLED the other afternoon on my old friend, Graves Moreland, the Anglo-American literary critic- his mother was born in Ohio- who lives alone in a fairy-tale cottage on the Upson Downs, raising hell and peacocks, the former only when the venerable gentleman becomes an angry old man about the state of literature or something else that is dwindling and diminishing, such as human stature, hope, and humor.
My unscientific friend does not believe that human stature is measurable in terms of speed, momentum, weightlessness, or distance from earth, but is a matter of the development of the human mind.
After Gagarin became the Greatest Man in the World, for a nation that does not believe in the cult of personality or in careerism, Moreland wrote me a letter in which he said: "I am not interested in how long a bee can live in a vacuum, or how far it can fly.
A bee's place is in the hive".
"I have come to talk with you about the future of humor and comedy", I told him, at which he started slightly, and then made us each a stiff drink, with a trembling hand.
"I seem to remember", he said, "that in an interview ten years ago you gave humor and comedy five years to live.
Did you go to their funeral"?
"I was wrong", I admitted.
"Comedy didn't die, it just went crazy.
It has identified itself with the very tension and terror it once did so much to alleviate.
We now have not only what has been called over here the comedy of menace but we also have horror jokes, magazines known as Horror Comics, and sick comedians.
There are even publications called Sick and Mad.
The Zeitgeist is not crazy as a loon or mad as a March hare; it is manic as a man".
"I woke up this morning", Moreland said, "paraphrasing Lewis Carroll.
Do you want to hear the paraphrase"?
"Can I bear it"?
I asked, taking a final gulp of my drink, and handing him the empty glass.
"Just barely", he said, and repeated his paraphrase: "The time has come", the walrus said, "To speak of manic things, Of shots and shouts, and sealing dooms Of commoners and kings".
Moreland fixed us each another drink, and said, "For God's sake, tell me something truly amusing".
"I'll try", I said, and sat for a moment thinking.
"Oh yes, the other day I reread some of Emerson's English Traits, and there was an anecdote about a group of English and Americans visiting Germany, more than a hundred years ago.
In the railway station at Berlin, a uniformed attendant was chanting, 'Foreigners this way!
Foreigners this way'!
One woman- she could have been either English or American- went up to him and said, 'But you are the foreigners'".
I took a deep breath and an even deeper swallow of my drink, and said, "I admit that going back to Ralph Waldo Emerson for humor is like going to a modern musical comedy for music and comedy".
"What's the matter with the music"?
Moreland asked.
"It doesn't drown out the dialogue", I explained.
"Let's talk about books", Moreland said.
"I am told that in America you have non-books by non-writers, brought out by non-publishers for non-readers.
Is it all non-fiction"?
"There is non-fiction and non non-fiction", I said.
"Speaking of nonism: the other day, in a story about a sit-down demonstration, the Paris Herald Tribune wrote, 'The non-violence became noisier'.
And then Eichmann was quoted as saying, in non-English, that Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews was nonsense".
"If we cannot tell evil, horror, and insanity from nonsense, what is the future of humor and comedy"?
Moreland asked, grimly.
"Cryptic", I said.
"They require, for existence, a brave spirit and a high heart, and where do you find these?
In our present era of Science and Angst, the heart has been downgraded, to use one of our popular retrogressive verbs".
"I know what you mean", Moreland sighed.
"Last year your Tennessee Williams told our Dilys Powell, in a television program, that it is the task of the playwright to throw light into the dark corners of the human heart.
Like almost everybody else, he confused the heart, both as organ and as symbol, with the disturbed psyche, the deranged glands, and the jumpy central nervous system.
I'm not pleading for the heart that leaps up when it beholds a rainbow in the sky, or for the heart that with rapture fills and dances with the daffodils.
The sentimental pure heart of Galahad is gone with the knightly years, but I still believe in the heart of the George Meredith character that was not made of the stuff that breaks".
"We no longer have Tom Moore's and Longfellow's 'heart for any fate', either", I said.
"Moore and Longfellow didn't have the fate that faces us", Moreland said.
"One day our species promises co-existence, and the next day it threatens co-extinction".
We sat for a while drinking in silence.
"The heart", I said finally, "is now either in the throat or the mouth or the stomach or the shoes.
When it was worn in the breast, or even on the sleeve, we at least knew where it was".
There was a long silence.
"You have visited England five times in the past quarter-century, I believe", my host said.
"What has impressed you most on your present visit"?
"I would say depressed, not impressed", I told him.
"I should say it is the turning of courts of law into veritable theatres for sex dramas, involving clergymen and parishioners, psychiatrists and patients.
It is becoming harder and harder to tell law courts and political arenas from the modern theatre".
"Do you think we need a new Henry James to re-explore the Anglo-American scene"?
he asked.
"Or perhaps a new Noe^l Coward"?
"But you must have heard it said that the drawing-room disappeared forever with the somnolent years of James and the antic heyday of Coward.
I myself hear it said constantly- in drawing-rooms.
In them, there is usually a group of Anglo-Americans with tragicomic problems, worthy of being explored either in the novel or in the play or in comedy and satire".
I stood up and began pacing.
"If you are trying to get us out of the brothel, the dustbin, the kitchen sink, and the tawdry living-room, you are probably wasting your time", Moreland told me.
"Too many of our writers seem to be interested only in creatures that crawl out of the woodwork or from under the rock".
"Furiouser and furiouser", I said.
"I am worried about the current meanings of the word 'funny'.
It now means ominous, as when one speaks of a funny sound in the motor; disturbing, as when one says that a friend is acting funny; and frightening, as when a wife tells the police that it is funny, but her husband hasn't been home for two days and nights".
Moreland sat brooding for a full minute, during which I made each of us a new drink.
He took his glass, clinked it against mine, and said, "Toujours gai, what the hell"!
borrowing a line from Don Marquis' Mehitabel.
"Be careful of the word 'gay', for it, too, has undergone a change.
It now means, in my country, homosexual", I said.
"Oh, I forgot to say that if one is taken to the funny house in the funny wagon, he is removed to a mental institution in an ambulance.
Recently, by the way, I received a questionnaire in which I was asked whether or not I was non-institutionalized".
## MY HOST went over and stared out the window at his peacocks; then he turned to me.
"Is it true that you believe the other animals are saner than the human species"?
"Oh, that is demonstrable", I told him.
"Do you remember the woman in the French Alps who was all alone with her sheep one day when the sun darkened ominously?
She told the sheep, 'The world is coming to an end'!
And the sheep said- all in unison, I have no doubt- 'Ba-a-a'!
The sound mockery of sheep is like the salubrious horse laugh".
"That is only partly non-nonsense", he began.
"If you saw the drama called Rhinoceros", I said, "think of the effect it would have on an audience of rhinos when the actor on stage suddenly begins turning into a rhinoceros.
The rhinos would panic, screaming 'Help'!- if that can be screamed in their language".
"You think the Russians are getting ahead of us in comedy"?
Moreland demanded.
"Non-God, no", I said.
"The political and intellectual Left began fighting humor and comedy years ago, because they fear things they do not understand and cannot manage, such as satire and irony, such as humor and comedy.
Nevertheless, like any other human being upon whom the spotlight of the world plays continually, Khrushchev, the anti-personality cultist, has become a comic actor, or thinks he has.
In his famous meeting with Nixon a couple of years ago he seemed to believe that he was as funny as Ed Wynn.
But, like Caesar, he has only one joke, so far as I can find out.
It consists in saying, 'That would be sending the goat to look after the cabbage'.
Why in the name of his non-God doesn't he vary it a bit"?
"Such as"?
Moreland asked.
"Such as 'sending the cat to guard the mice', or 'the falcon to protect the dove', or most terribly sharp of all, 'the human being to save humanity'".
"You and I have fallen out of literature into politics", Moreland observed.
"What a nasty fall was there"!
I said.
Moreland went over to stare at his peacocks again, and then came back and sat down, restively.
"The world that was once foot-loose and fancy-free", he said, "has now become screw-loose and frenzy-free.
In our age of Science and Angst it seems to me more brave to stay on Earth and explore inner man than to fly far from the sphere of our sorrow and explore outer space".
"The human ego being what it is", I put in, "science fiction has always assumed that the creatures on the planets of a thousand larger solar systems than ours must look like gigantic tube-nosed fruit bats.
It seems to me that the first human being to reach one of these planets may well learn what it is to be a truly great and noble species".
"Now we are leaving humor and comedy behind again", Moreland protested.
"Not in the largest sense of the words", I said.
"The other day Arnold Toynbee spoke against the inveterate tendency of our species to believe in the uniqueness of its religions, its ideologies, and its virtually everything else.
Why do we not realize that no ideology believes so much in itself as it disbelieves in something else?
Forty years ago an English writer, W L George, dealt with this subject in Eddies of the Day, and said, as an example, that 'Saint George for Merry England' would not start a spirit half so quickly as 'Strike frog-eating Frenchmen dead'"!
"There was also Gott strafe Angleterre", Moreland reminded me, "and Carthago delenda est, or if you will, Deus strafe Carthage.
It isn't what the ideologist believes in, but what he hates, that puts the world in jeopardy.
This is the force, in our time and in every other time, that urges the paranoiac and the manic-depressive to become head of a state.
Complete power not only corrupts but it also attracts the mad.
There is a bitter satire for a future writer in that".
"Great satire has always been clearly written and readily understandable", I said.
"But we now find writers obsessed by the nooks and crannies of their ivory towers, and curiously devoted to the growing obscurity and complexity of poetry and non-poetry.
I wrote a few years ago that one of the cardinal rules of writing is that the reader should be able to get some idea of what the story is about.
One day, the children had wanted to get up onto General Burnside's horse.
They wanted to see what his back felt like- the General's.
He looked so comfortable being straight.
They wanted to touch the mystery.
Arlene was boosting them up when the policeman came by.
He was very rude.
Arlene had a hard voice, too, this time.
The policeman's eyes rather popped for a second; but then Arlene got another tone in a hurry, and she said, "If it wasn't for these dear children"-.
The policeman got a confused, funny look on his face, and he had answered kind of politely, "Now, look here, lady: I know you got to entertain these kids and all.
But this is a public park and it's a city ordinance that the statues cannot be crawled on".
Arlene was so ashamed that she hung her head when she said, "Yes, sir".
The policeman walked on, but he looked back once.
That had happened on the day when two other unusual things had occurred.
Arlene had taught them a new way to have fun in their little private area; and they had told their mother about the tumbles.
In matters of exact information, that kept her one step behind developments; and so they were consistently true to their principles.
"Never mind", Arlene had said, after the policeman had left, having pursued the usual unco-operative course of grownups.
"Never mind.
I know something that is much more fun that we can do on our little lawn".
"What is it"?
asked the children, whose reflexes and replies were invariably so admirably normal and predictable.
Maybe that was why they were cordial and loyal towards the unpredictability of Arlene.
"Just you wait", advised Arlene, echoing the dialogue in a recent British movie.
And when they had got to their little lawn, they had had a most twirlingly magnificent time.
First, Arlene had put them through some rapid somersaults.
They had protested that that wasn't any surprise.
"Just you wait", said Arlene again, as though she were discovering the pleasantly tingling insinuations of that handy little sturdy statement.
"This is a warm-up".
"Is it anything like cooked-over oatmeal"?
asked one of the children.
"Not the least bit", Arlene snapped.
One of the many things that was so nice about her was that she always took your questions seriously, particularly your very, very serious questions.
Those were especially the ones that all other grownups laughed at loudest.
She would sometimes even get a little hard on you, she took you so seriously.
But not hard for very long.
Just long enough to make you feel important.
"Now", said Arlene, eventually, making them both sit in formation on a big root of a live oak, the sort of root that divided itself and made their bottoms sag down and feel comfortable.
"Now, we're going to be like what General Burnside and his horse make us think of".
The children looked at each other and sagged their bottoms down even more comfortably than ever.
Their curiosity went happily out of bounds.
Then, Arlene threw herself backwards and wiggled in a way that was just wonderful.
She held herself that way and turned her head towards them and laughed and winked.
"Imagine being able to laugh and wink when you're like the top part of that picture frame at home", one of them said.
They both laughed and winked back.
"I'm General Burnside's horse, upside down", Arlene said, sort of gaspingly, for her: even she had to breathe kind of funny when she was in that position.
She made General Burnside's horse's belly do so funny when it was upside down.
Then, she was back on her feet, winking and smiling that enormous smile (she had lots of wonderful big teeth that you never would have suspected she had when she was not smiling).
And she would wink and throw kisses.
They both tried to keep smiling and winking for a long time, but it made their lips and eyelids tremble.
But they kept on clapping for a long, long time.
"This time", Arlene said, and she even kept on wiggling a little bit while she was just talking, "you're going to tell me what I am and what I'm doing.
It all has something to do with General Burnside and his horse".
This time, it was so grand; they could tell exactly what it was.
It was General Burnside's horse running in a circle.
His legs shook, and the shaking went right on up his body through his hips to his shoulders.
"That's the General's horse", one of them cried out.
The other remarked, in a happy laughter, "That's a funny old horse".
The first one said, "He sure does shake.
He's old".
Then there was the General kissing his wife.
They had to be told that one.
But it was even funnier after they had been told.
Their father, when he came back from those many business trips, just bumped their mother on the forehead with his lips and asked if anybody had thought to mix the martinis and put them in the electric icebox.
But not General Burnside.
He was the funniest man.
He never could keep still, even when he didn't move his feet.
Then, they had to get up and be General Burnside.
Or his horse.
All they could think of was to run around in circles, kicking their legs out.
It wasn't very funny.
Then, they said General Burnside was going to jump over his horse's head; and they did some somersaults.
But that wasn't very funny, either.
"You ought to shake", Arlene advised them.
And Arlene showed them how to begin.
She also taught them to sing "I wish I could shimmy like my sister Kate".
That helped a lot.
They were clumsy, but they were beginning to catch on.
They also caught on a little bit on how to smile a lot without your lips trembling.
"Imagine you won't get your allowance if you're caught not smiling- or smiling with your lips trembling too much", Arlene suggested.
That helped a great deal.
## They were a little late in getting home.
"I'm sorry, Mrs Minks", Arlene said in a tone so low you could hardly hear it.
My mother constituted herself the voice of all of us.
"It's perfectly understandable, Arlene", my mother said in a friendly way.
"I suppose you all were playing and forgot"?
"Yes, ma'am", the children chorused heartily.
We couldn't help laughing.
The children rushed off to get rid of their sweaters; and Arlene began tapping the kitchen door open.
"Arlene's a good girl", my uncle remarked to us; but he said it too soon, for it came out just before the tap to which the door responded.
That tap had a slight bangish quality.
"She really is a dear little thing", my mother agreed.
Her upper lip lifted slightly.
She was biting into a small red radish; and that action always caused her to lift her lip from the sting of the thing.
Also, she lived in continual fear of finding a white worm curled up in a neat, mean little heap at the white center of the radish.
She would try to see over the bulge of her cheeks and somewhat under her teeth to the place where she was biting.
It never worked, naturally; but it made her look unusual.
Also, when she had bitten off half of the small radish, she found the suspense unbearable; and she would snatch the finger-held half of the radish out to where she could inspect it.
One could hear a very faint, ladylike sigh of relief.
Actually, it was inaudible to anyone not expecting it.
But the warm joy of her brown eyes was open to the general public.
Later on, the children told her further about somersaulting.
"It must be awfully good for them.
And awfully kind of Arlene", she told us later.
"But do you know something curious"?
she added.
"I reached into that funny little pocket that is high up on my dress.
I have no notion why I reached.
And I found a radish.
Was it an omen?
I thought for a second.
But I would not pamper myself in that silly way.
I opened the window and threw the radish out".
Then, my mother blushed at this small lie; for she knew and we knew that it was cowardice that had made one more radish that night just too impossible a strain.
## Arlene became indispensable; nobody could have told why.
But she was.
It was in the air.
A friend of my father's came to dinner.
He was passing through town and phoned to say hello.
As a result, he was persuaded out to dinner.
As a matter of fact, this happened every four or five months.
Sometimes, he coincided with my father's being at home.
Sometimes, as at this juncture, he did not.
But he was always persuaded out.
he liked children, in a loathsome kind of way; the two youngest in our family always had to be brought in and put through tricks for his entertainment.
When he had left, I could never remember whether he had poked them in their middles, laughingly, with a thick index finger or whether he was merely so much the sort of person who did this that one assumed the action, not bothering to look.
The children loathed him, too.
This evening, they were pushed in from the breakfast room, with odds and ends of dessert distributed over them.
There had been some coconut in it, for I remember my mother's taking a quick glance at a stringy bit of this nut on the cheek of one of them and then putting down her radish with a shiver.
They were pushed gently into the room by Arlene- whose only part appearing were hands that crept quickly back around to the kitchen side of the door.
We had just sat down.
"Tell Mr Gorboduc what you're doing these days", my mother advised the children, ceremonially.
There was an air of revolt about the children- even irreverence for their own principles.
This could be told chiefly from a sort of head-tossing and prancing, a horselike balkiness of demeanor.
Possibly, the coconut-containing dessert had brought up bitter problems of administration.
But, at the beginning, this stayed just in the air.
"We go to the park with this nice lady", one of them said.
"We have good times".
This happy bulletin convulsed Mr Gorboduc.
"You do"?
he asked, between wheezes of laughter.
He was forced to wipe his eyes.
"You don't step on the flowers, do you?
Eh"?
One of the children maneuvered out of range of the poking index finger.
"No", he said.
"We don't".
Mr Gorboduc took a swig of his sherry.
He was so long thinking that my mother had time to inspect her sherry for dregs.
Usually, this was done when attention was diverted by someone else's long, boring story.
But this time she was nervous: she was open.
Mr Gorboduc was finally in command of his mind again.
"Tell me- what do you do at the park"?
he asked.
This was delivered in a forthright way, without coyness and over-pretended interest- an admirable way with children.
Only, unfortunately, he could not remove from his voice a nagging insinuation of the direct command.
This nettled the children into the revelation of exact truth, a sacrifice of their secret superiority over grown people, but a victory in the wide fields of perpetration and illegitimate accomplishment.
"We bump", one said; and the other went on to development of the idea.
"We grind, too", he said.
My mother was beside herself with curiosity.
"Say that again", she pleaded.
She laughed a little and tossed the dregs rakishly around in her glass.
"You what"?
She could see that Mr Gorboduc was intrigued; the hostess in her took over.
She was rollickingly happy.
"You what"?
My uncle looked at Mr Gorboduc.
He read Henry James and used to pretend profundity through eye-beamings at people.
Mr Gorboduc looked down.
He would not look up.
He was very funny about the whole thing.
PUERI AQUAM DE SILVAS AD AGRICOLAS PORTANT, a delightful vignette set in the unforgettable epoch of pre-Punic War Rome.
Marcellus, the hero, is beset from all sides by the problems of approaching manhood.
The story opens on the eve of his fifty-third birthday, as he prepares for the two weeks of festivities that are to follow.
Suddenly, a messenger arrives and, just before collapsing dead at his feet, informs him that the Saracens have invaded Silesia, the home province of his affianced.
He at once cancels the celebrations and, buckling on his scimitar, stumbles blindly from the house, where he is hit and killed by a passing oxcart.
THE ALBANY CIVIC OPERA's presentation of Spumoni's immortal Il Sevigli del Spegititgninino, with guest contralto Hattie Sforzt.
An unusual, if not extraordinary, rendering of the classic myth that involves the rescue of Prometheus from the rock by the US Cavalry was given last week in the warehouse of the Albany Leather Conduit Company amid cheers of "Hubba hubba" and "Yalagaloo pip pip"!
After a "busy" overture, the curtain rises on a farm scene- the Ranavan Valley in northern Maine.
A dead armadillo, the sole occupant of the stage, symbolizes the crisis and destruction of the Old Order.
Old Order, acted and atonally sung by Grunnfeu Arapacis, the lovely Serbantian import, then entered and delivered the well-known invocation to the god Phineoppus, whereupon the stage is quite unexpectedly visited by a company of wandering Gorshek priests, symbolizing Love, Lust, Prudence and General Motors, respectively.
According to the myth, Old Order then vanishes at stage left and reappears at extreme stage right, but director Shuz skillfully sidesteps the rather gooshey problem of stage effects by simply having Miss Arapacis walk across the stage.
The night we saw it, a rather unpleasant situation arose when the soloist refused to approach the armadillo, complaining- in ad-lib- that "it smelled".
We caught the early train to New York.
THE DHARMA DICTIONARY, a list of highly unusual terms used in connection with Eurasian proto-senility cults.
It's somewhat off the beaten track, to be sure, but therein lies its variety and charm.
For example, probably very few people know that the word "visrhanik" that is bantered about so much today stems from the verb "bouanahsha": to salivate.
Likewise, and equally fascinating, is the news that such unlikely synonyms as "pratakku", "sweathruna", and the tongue-twister "nnuolapertar-it-vuh-karti-biri-pitknoumen" all originated in the same village in Bathar-on-Walli Province and are all used to express sentiments concerning British "imperialism".
The terms are fairly safe to use on this side of the ocean, but before you start spouting them to your date, it might be best to find out if he was a member of Major Pockmanster's Delhi Regiment, since resentment toward the natives was reportedly very high in that outfit.
THE BREEZE AND CHANCELLOR NEITZBOHR, a movie melodrama that concerns the attempts of a West German politician to woo a plaster cast of the Apollo Belvedere.
As you have doubtless guessed already, the plot is plastered with Freudian, Jungian, and Meinckian theory.
For example, when the film is only four minutes old, Neitzbohr refers to a small, Victorian piano stool as "Wilhelmina", and we are thereupon subjected to a flashback that informs us that this very piano stool was once used by an epileptic governess whose name, of course, was Doris (the English equivalent, when passed through middle-Gaelic derivations, of Wilhelmina).
For the remainder of the movie, Chancellor Neitzbohr proceeds to lash the piano stool with a slat from a Venetian blind that used to hang in the pre-war Reichstag.
In this manner, he seeks to expunge from his own soul the guilt pangs caused by his personal assaults against the English at Dunkirk.
As we find out at the end, it is not the stool (symbolizing Doris, therefore the English) that he is punishing but the piece of Venetian blind.
And, when the slat finally shatters, we see him count the fragments, all the while muttering, "He loves me, he loves me not".
After a few tortuous moments of wondering who "he" is, the camera pans across the room to the plaster statue, and we realize that Neitzbohr is trying to redeem himself in the eyes of a mute piece of sculpture.
The effect, needless to say, is almost terrifying, and though at times a bit obscure, the film is certainly a much-needed catharsis for the "repressed" movie-goer.
THE MUSIC OF BINI SALFININISTAS, CAPITAL LP 63711-R, one of the rare recordings of this titanic, yet unsung, composer.
Those persons who were lucky enough to see and hear the performance of his work at the Brest-Silevniov Festival in August, 1916, will certainly welcome his return to public notice; and it is not unlikely that, even as the great Bach lay dormant for so many years, so has the erudite, ingenious SalFininistas passed through his "purgatory" of neglect.
But now, under the guidance of the contemporary composer Marc Schlek, Jr, a major revival is under way.
As he leads the Neurenschatz Skolkau Orchestra, Schlek gives a tremendously inspired performance of both the Baslot and Rattzhenfuut concertos, including the controversial Tschilwyk cadenza, which was included at the conductor's insistence.
A major portion of the credit should also go to flautist Haumd for his rendering of the almost impossible "Indianapolis" movement in the Baslot.
Not only was Haumd's intonation and phrasing without flaw, but he seemed to take every tonal eccentricity in stride.
For example, to move (as the score requires) from the lowest F-major register up to a barely audible N minor in four seconds, not skipping, at the same time, even one of the 407 fingerings, seems a feat too absurd to consider, and it is to the flautist's credit that he remained silent throughout the passage.
We would have preferred, however, to have had the rest of the orchestra refrain from laughing at this and other spots on the recording, since it mars an otherwise sober, if not lofty, performance.
As Broadway itself becomes increasingly weighted down by trite, heavy-handed, commercially successful musicals and inspirational problem dramas, the American theatre is going through an inexorable renaissance in that nebulous area known as "off-Broadway".
For the last two years, this frontier of the arts has produced a number of so-called "non-dramas" which have left indelible, bittersweet impressions on the psyche of this veteran theatregoer.
The latest and, significantly, greatest fruit of this theatrical vine is The, an adaptation of Basho's classic frog-haiku by Roger Entwhistle, a former University of Maryland chemistry instructor.
Although the play does show a certain structural amateurishness (there are eleven acts varying in length from twenty-five seconds to an hour and a half), the statement it makes concerning the ceaseless yearning and searching of youth is profound and worthy of our attention.
The action centers about a group of outspoken and offbeat students sitting around a table in a cafeteria and their collective and ultimately fruitless search for a cup of hot coffee.
They are relentlessly rebuffed on all sides by a waitress, the police, and an intruding government tutor.
The innocence that they tried to conceal at the beginning is clearly destroyed forever when one of them, asking for a piece of lemon-meringue pie, gets a plate of English muffins instead.
Leaving the theatre after the performance, I had a flash of intuition that life, after all (as Rilke said), is just a search for the nonexistent cup of hot coffee, and that this unpretentious, moving, clever, bitter slice of life was the greatest thing to happen to the American theatre since Brooks Atkinson retired.
Aging but still precocious, French feline enfant terrible Francoisette Lagoon has succeeded in shocking jaded old Paris again, this time with a sexy ballet scenario called The Lascivious Interlude, the story of a nymphomaniac trip-hammer operator who falls hopelessly in love with a middle-aged steam shovel.
A biting, pithy parable of the all-pervading hollowness of modern life, the piece has been set by Mlle Lagoon to a sumptuous score (a single motif played over and over by four thousand French horns) by existentialist hot-shot Jean-Paul Sartre.
Petite, lovely Yvette Chadroe plays the nymphomaniac engagingly.
Ever since Bambi, and, more recently, Born Free, there have been a lot of books about animals, but few compare with Max Fink's wry, understated, charming, and immensely readable My Friend, the Quizzical Salamander.
Done in the modern style of a "confession", Fink tells in exquisite detail how he came to know, and, more important, love his mother's pet salamander, Alicia.
It is not an entirely happy book, as Mrs Fink soon becomes jealous of Alicia and, in retaliation, refuses to continue to scrape the algae off her glass.
Max, in a fit of despair, takes Alicia and runs off for two marvelous weeks in Burbank (Fink calls it "the most wonderful and lovely fourteen days in my whole life"), at the end of which Alicia tragically contracts Parkinson's disease and dies.
This brief resume hardly does the book justice, but I heartily recommend it to all those who are engages with the major problems of our time.
Opera in the Grand Tradition, along with mah-jongg, seems to be staging a well-deserved comeback.
In this country, the two guiding lights are, without doubt, Felix Fing and Anna Pulova.
Fing, a lean, chiseled, impeccable gentleman of the old school who was once mistaken on the street for Sir Cedric Hardwicke, is responsible for the rediscovery of Verdi's earliest, most raucous opera, Nabisco, a sumptuous bout-de-souffle with a haunting leitmotiv that struck me as being highly reminiscent of the Mudugno version of "Volare".
Miss Pulova has a voice that Maria Callas once described as "like chipping teeth with a screw driver", and her round, opalescent face becomes fascinatingly reflective of the emotions demanded by the role of Rosalie.
The Champs Elysees is literally littered this summer with the prostrate bodies of France's beat-up beatnik jeunes filles.
Cause of all this commotion: squat, pug-nosed, balding, hopelessly ugly Jean-Pierre Bravado, a Bogartian figure, who plays a sadistic, amoral, philosophic Tasti-Freeze salesman in old New-Waver Fredrico de Mille Rossilini's endlessly provocative film, A Sour Sponge.
Bravado has been alternately described as "a symbol of the new grandeur of France and myself" (De Gaulle) and "a decadent, disgusting slob"!
(Norman Mailer), but no one can deny that the screen crackles with electricity whenever he is on it.
Soaring to stardom along with him, Margo Felicity Brighetti, a luscious and curvaceously beguiling Italian starlet, turns in a creditable performance as an airplane mechanic.
The battle of the drib-drool continues, but most of New York's knowing sophisticates of Abstract Expressionism are stamping their feet impatiently in expectation of V (for Vindication) Day, September first, when Augustus Quasimodo's first one-man show opens at the Guggenheim.
We have heard that after seeing Mr Quasimodo's work it will be virtually impossible to deny the artistic validity and importance of the whole abstract movement.
And it is thought by many who think about such things that Quasimodo is the logical culmination of a school that started with Monet, progressed through Kandinsky and the cubist Picasso, and blossomed just recently in Pollock and De Kooning.
Quasimodo defines his own art as "the search for what is not there".
"I paint the nothing", he said once to Franz Kline and myself, "the nothing that is behind the something, the inexpressible, unpaintable 'tick' in the unconscious, the 'spirit' of the moment resting forever, suspended like a huge balloon, in non-time".
It is his relentlessness and unwaivering adherence to this revolutionary artistic philosophy that has enabled him to paint such pictures as "The Invasion of Cuba".
In this work, his use of non-color is startling and skillful.
The sweep of space, the delicate counterbalance of the white masses, the over-all completeness and unity, the originality and imagination, all entitle it to be called an authentic masterpiece.
I asked Quasimodo recently how he accomplished this, and he replied that he had painted his model "a beautiful shade of red and then had her breathe on the canvas", which was his typical tongue-in-cheek way of chiding me for my lack of sensitivity.
DEAR SIRS: LET ME BEGIN by clearing up any possible misconception in your minds, wherever you are.
The collective by which I address you in the title above is neither patronizing nor jocose but an exact industrial term in use among professional thieves.
It is, I am reliably given to understand, the technical argot for those who engage in your particular branch of the boost; ie, burglars who rob while the tenants are absent, in contrast to hot-slough prowlers, those who work while the occupants are home.
Since the latter obviously require an audacity you do not possess, you may perhaps suppose that I am taunting you as socially inferior.
Far from it; I merely draw an etymological distinction, hoping that specialists and busy people like you will welcome such precision in a layman.
Above all, disabuse yourselves of any thought that I propose to vent moral indignation at your rifling my residence, to whimper over the loss of a few objets d'art, or to shame you into rectitude.
My object, rather, is to alert you to an aspect or two of the affair that could have the gravest implications for you, far beyond the legal sanctions society might inflict.
You have unwittingly set in motion forces so malign, so vindictive, that it would be downright inhumane of me not to warn you about them.
Quite candidly, fellows, I wouldn't be in your shoes for all the rice in China.
As you've doubtless forgotten the circumstances in the press of more recent depredations, permit me to recapitulate them briefly.
Sometime on Saturday evening, August 22nd, while my family and I were dining at the Hostaria dell' Orso, in Rome, you jimmied a window of our home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and let yourselves into the premises.
Hastening to the attic, the temperature of which was easily hotter than the Gold Coast, you proceeded to mask the windows with a fancy wool coverlet, some khaki pants, and the like, and to ransack the innumerable boxes and barrels stored there.
What you were looking for (unless you make a hobby of collecting old tennis rackets and fly screens) eludes me, but to judge from phonograph records scattered about a fumed-oak Victrola, you danced two tangos and a paso doble, which must have been fairly enervating in that milieu.
You then descended one story, glommed a television set from the music room- the only constructive feature of your visit, by the way- and, returning to the ground floor, entered the master bedroom.
From the curio cabinet on its south wall and the bureaus beneath, you abstracted seventeen ivory, metal, wood, and stone sculptures of Oriental and African origin, two snuffboxes, and a jade-handled magnifying glass.
Rummaging through a stack of drawers nearby, you unearthed an antique French chess set in ivory and sandalwood, which, along with two box Kodaks, you added to your haul.
Then, having wrapped the lot in an afghan my dog customarily slept on, you lammed out the front door, considerately leaving it open for neighbors to discover.
So much for the tiresome facts, as familiar to you, I'm sure, as to the constables and state troopers who followed in your wake.
The foregoing, aided by several clues I'll withhold to keep you on your toes, will pursue you with a tenacity worthy of Inspector Javert, but before they close in, gird yourselves, I repeat, for a vengeance infinitely more pitiless.
Fourteen of the sculptures you took posses properties of a most curious and terrifying nature, as you will observe when your limbs begin to wither and your hair falls out in patches.
In time, these minor manifestations will multiply and effloresce, riddling you with frambesia, the king's evil, sheep rot, and clonic spasm, until your very existence becomes a burden and you cry out for release.
All this, though, is simply a prelude, a curtain-raiser, for what ensues, and I doubt whether any Occidental could accurately forecast it.
If, however, it would help to intensify your anguish, I can delimit the powers of a few of the divinities you've affronted and describe the punishment they meted out in one analogous instance.
Hold on tight.
First of all, the six figures of the Buddha you heisted- four Siamese heads, a black obsidian statuette in the earth-touching position, and a large brass figure of the Dying Buddha on a teakwood base.
Now, you probably share the widespread Western belief that the Lord Buddha is the most compassionate of the gods, much more so than Jehovah and Allah and the rest.
'Fess up- don't you?
Well, ordinarily he is, except (as the Wheel of the Law specifies) toward impious folk who steal, disturb, or maltreat the Presence.
Very peculiar retribution indeed seems to overtake such jokers.
Eight or ten years ago, a couple of French hoods stole a priceless Khmer head from the Musee Guimet, in Paris, and a week later crawled into the Salpetriere with unmistakable symptoms of leprosy.
Hell's own amount of chaulmoogra oil did nothing to alleviate their torment; they expired amid indescribable fantods, imploring the Blessed One to forgive their desecration.
Any reputable French interne can supply you with a dozen similar instances, and I'll presently recount a case out of my own personal experience, but, for the moment, let's resume our catalogue.
Whether the pair of Sudanese ivory carvings you lifted really possess the juju to turn your livers to lead, as a dealer in Khartoum assured me, I am not competent to say.
Likewise the ivory Chinese female figure known as a "doctor lady" (provenance Honan); a friend of mine removing her from the curio cabinet for inspection was felled as if by a hammer, but he had previously drunk a quantity of applejack.
The three Indian brass deities, though- Ganessa, Siva, and Krishna- are an altogether different cup of tea.
They hail from Travancore, a state in the subcontinent where Kali, the goddess of death, is worshiped.
Have you ever heard of thuggee?
Nuf sed **h. But it is the wooden sculpture from Bali, the one representing two men with their heads bent backward and their bodies interlaced by a fish, that I particularly call to your attention.
Oddly enough, this is an amulet against housebreakers, presented to the mem and me by a local rajah in 1949.
Inscribed around its base is a charm in Balinese, a dialect I take it you don't comprehend.
Neither do I, but the Tjokorda Agoeng was good enough to translate, and I'll do as much for you.
Whosoever violates our rooftree, the legend states, can expect maximal sorrow.
The teeth will rain from his mouth like pebbles, his wife will make him cocu with fishmongers, and a trolley car will grow in his stomach.
Furthermore- and this, to me, strikes an especially warming note- it shall avail the vandals naught to throw away or dispose of their loot.
The cycle of disaster starts the moment they touch any belonging of ours, and dogs them unto the forty-fifth generation.
Sort of remorseless, isn't it?
Still, there it is.
Now, you no doubt regard the preceding as pap; you're tooling around full of gage in your hot rods, gorging yourselves on pizza and playing pinball in the taverns and generally behaving like U^bermenschen.
In that case, listen to what befell another wisenheimer who tangled with our joss.
A couple of years back, I occupied a Village apartment whose outer staircase contained the type of niche called a "coffin turn".
In it was a stone Tibetan Buddha I had picked up in Bombay, and occasionally, to make merit, my wife and I garlanded it with flowers or laid a few pennies in its lap.
After a while, we became aware that the money was disappearing as fast as we replenished it.
Our suspicions eventually centered, by the process of elimination, on a grocer's boy, a thoroughly bad hat, who delivered cartons to the people overhead.
The more I probed into this young man's activities and character, the less savory I found him.
I learned, for example, that he made a practice of yapping at dogs he encountered and, in winter, of sprinkling salt on the icy pavement to scarify their feet.
His energy was prodigious; sometimes he would be up before dawn, clad as a garbage collector and hurling pails into areaways to exasperate us, and thereafter would hurry to the Bronx Zoo to grimace at the lions and press cigar butts against their paws.
Evenings, he was frequently to be seen at restaurants like Enrico + Paglieri's or Peter's Backyard drunkenly donning ladies' hats and singing "O Sole Mio".
In short, and to borrow an arboreal phrase, slash timber.
Well, the odious little toad went along chivying animals and humans who couldn't retaliate, and in due course, as was inevitable, overreached himself.
One morning, we discovered not only that the pennies were missing from the idol but that a cigarette had been stubbed out in its lap.
"Now he's bought it", said my wife contentedly.
"No divinity will hold still for that.
He's really asking for it".
And how right she was.
The next time we saw him, he was a changed person; he had aged thirty years, and his face, the color of tallow, was crisscrossed with wrinkles, as though it had been wrapped in chicken wire.
Some sort of nemesis was haunting his footsteps, he told us in a quavering voice- either an ape specter or Abe Spector, a process-server, we couldn't determine which.
His eyes had the same dreadful rigid stare as Dr Grimesby Roylott's when he was found before his open safe wearing the speckled band.
The grocery the youth worked for soon tired of his depressing effect on customers, most of whom were sufficiently neurotic without the threat of incubi, and let him go.
The beautiful, the satisfying part of his disintegration, however, was the masterly way the Buddha polished him off.
Reduced to beggary, he at last got a job as office boy to a television producer.
His hubris, deficiency of taste, and sadism carried him straightaway to the top.
He evolved programs that plumbed new depths of bathos and besmirched whole networks, and quickly superseded his boss.
Not long ago, I rode down with him in an elevator in Radio City; he was talking to himself thirteen to the dozen and smoking two cigars at once, clearly a man in extremis.
"See that guy"?
the operator asked pityingly.
"I wouldn't be in his shoes for all the rice in China.
There's some kind of a nemesis haunting his footsteps".
However one looks at it, therefore, I'd say that your horoscope for this autumn is the reverse of rosy.
The inventory you acquired from me isn't going to be easy to move; you can't very well sidle up to people on the street and ask if they want to buy a hot Bodhisattva.
Additionally, since you're going to be hors de combat pretty soon with sprue, yaws, Delhi boil, the Granville wilt, liver fluke, bilharziasis, and a host of other complications of the hex you've aroused, you mustn't expect to be lionized socially.
My advice, if you live long enough to continue your vocation, is that the next time you're attracted by the exotic, pass it up- it's nothing but a headache.
As you can count on me to do the same.
compassionately yours, S J PERELMAN THE DOORS of the D train slid shut, and as I dropped into a seat and, exhaling, looked up across the aisle, the whole aviary in my head burst into song.
She was a living doll and no mistake- the blue-black bang, the wide cheekbones, olive-flushed, that betrayed the Cherokee strain in her Midwestern lineage, and the mouth whose only fault, in the novelist's carping phrase, was that the lower lip was a trifle too voluptuous.
From what I was able to gauge in a swift, greedy glance, the figure inside the coral-colored boucle dress was stupefying.