After half an hour I drove back to my own house; the time was two-thirty and the girls would be getting home. Mrs. Mayberry had left, thank god. I took a look into Jack's room, but he wasn't there; he probably had been eavesdropping on me and Mrs. Mayberry and had had the good sense to get out of the house.
Going into the kitchen I poured myself a drink.
This is really the pit, I thought. It's all over town, and not only that, it's being circulated by the screwiest, craziest, nuttiest bunch of simps in the entire North American continent. Of all the people to get hold of the god damn thing. What do you suppose it says anyhow? I wondered. What did the asshole say? I called my attorney, Sam Cohen. After I had told him the situation he advised me to sit tight and wait until I had actually seen the document or whatever it's called. I thanked him and went and made myself another drink. Then I called Doctor Andrews. The receptionist said I couldn't hope to get through to him until four; he had a patient until then, and for me to call back. By now the girls had come home. I hung up and went outside, on to the patio, and watched the Rouen drake chasing the Muscovy around the pen. First he chased her up on to the feed can, and then she flew to the far end, on to the water trough. He ran after her and she then flew back.
At four-ten I was able to get hold of Doctor Andrews. He told me to take one of the Sparines he had given me and to wait until I actually saw the god damn story.
“By then even the farms out on the Point'11 know about me and Nathan,” I said.
In his usual fat-assed way he mumbled about keeping cool and taking a long-term view.
“That's what I'm doing, you hick analyst,” I told him. “You slob. My reputation in this town is going to be ruined. You never lived in a small town; it's easy enough for you to say, living in San Francisco. You can screw anybody you want and nobody gives a damn. Up here they're voting on you in the PTA before you have your pants zipped back up. My god, I have the Bluebirds, and the dance group—they'll stop sending their kids, and I won't be able to get my mail delivered, or the electricity—they won't sell me food at the Mayfair; I'll have to drive to Petaluma every time I want a loaf of bread—I won't even be able to buy gas for my car!”
Andrews told me I was getting worked up inordinately. Finally I told him to go to hell and hung up.
Anyhow, I thought, that's what analysts are for, to have steam blown off at them.
In a sense he's right. I am getting too excited.
At six o'clock, while the girls and I were eating dinner— Jack was still hiding out somewhere—the front door opened and Nat Anteil walked into the house.
“Where have you been?” I said, leaping up. “I've been trying to get hold of you all day.” And then I saw by the look on his face that he knew. “Can't we sue them?” I said. “For defamation of character or something?”
Nat said, “I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Wait,” I said. I led him out of the dining room and into the study; closing the door so the girls couldn't hear I said, “What is it?”
He said, “I was down in San Francisco, talking to your husband. Evidently Jack told him about us; anyhow he knows.”
“Jack told everybody,” I said. “He wrote it up and gave it to Claudia Hambro.”
“Charley and I had a long talk,” Nat said, but I interrupted him before he could go into one of his two-hour speeches.
“You have to go over to Claudia's and get it back,” I told him. “Tell her you'll give her a hundred bucks for it; that ought to get it out of her.” Going to the desk I got my checkbook out and sat down on the bed to write out a check. “Okay?” I said. “I'll leave it up to you. It's entirely in your hands; it's your responsibility.”
Nat said, “FU go do what I can.” He stood holding the check, however, not doing a damn thing.
“Go on,” I said. “Go get it. Or is this another of those degrading domestic errands that so offends you?”
“Your husband said that when he gets back up here he's going to kill you.”
I said, “Oh, the hell he is. I'll kill him. I'll buy a gun and shoot him. Go get that thing from Claudia, will you? Don't worry about Charley; he'll probably fall dead of a heart attack on the way home. He's been saying that for years. He came home one day when I sent him to buy me Tampax and practically killed me on the spot. It's the kind of solution that comes into the mind of a man like that; it's predictable, and when you've been married to him—”
By this time Nat had started out of the study, holding the check in his hand.
“You're going to do it?” I said, following him. “Get it back? For me? For us?”
“Okay,” he said, in a weary voice, “I'll try.”
“Work your sexy charm on her,” I said. “Do you know her? Have you ever met her? Go home and get that marvelous rust-colored skiing sweater you had on that day I first met you—god, have you got an experience in store, meeting Claudia Hambro.” I followed him outdoors, to his car. “She's the most sensationally beautiful woman I've ever seen in my entire life. She looks like a jungle princess, with that mane of hair and those filed teeth.”
I told him how to find her house, and he drove off without saying anything further.
Feeling much more cheerful, I returned to the house. The girls were fooling around at the dinner table, sliding mounds of spinach back and forth at each other. I gave them a couple of swats with my hand and then reseated myself and lit a cigarette.
I'm smoking too much, I thought. I'll have to get Nat to help me cut down. He'd probably force me to stop entirely, once I gave him an inch. He probably thinks it's too expensive anyway.
Later on, since Jack had not put in an appearance, I cleared the table and got the girls to do the dishes. Seated in the living room in front of the fireplace, I began meditating about what Nat had said, the business about Charley.
Like hell he'll kill me, I thought. But maybe he will. I'll have to get the sheriff or something. Get somebody to come over and stick around.
I thought of calling Doctor Andrews at his home and asking him about Charley. In the past he had been able to predict what Charley was going to do; it was part of his field to know those things. How the hell could I tell? Maybe the heart attack had scared him so much he might actually do it.
The front door opened. For a moment I thought it was Nat, back with the document, but instead it was Jack, wearing his old army raincoat and hiking boots. Jumping up, I said, “God damn it, I don't mind you telling Charley, but why the hell did you have to tell the Inverness Park flying saucer group?”
He glanced down sheepishly and grinned in that idiotic way.
“What did you say in that nutty piece of writing?” I demanded. “Do you have a copy of it? Yes? No? Do you remember? You probably don't even remember what it said, you—” I couldn't think of any words to fit him. “Get out of here,” I said. “Get out of my house. Go on, get your stuff and go. Pile it in the car and I'll drive you down to San Francisco. I mean it.” By his reaction I saw that he didn't believe I was serious. “I wouldn't have you around here,” I told him. “You lunatic.”
In his creaky voice he said, “I have an open invitation from the Hambros to stay with them.”
“Then go stay with them!” I shouted. “And get that woman to pick up your crap; tell her to come drive you and it over there.” I grabbed up something—it felt like one of the children's toys—and threw it at him. I was so furious at him I was virtually out of my mind; if he could stay at the Hambros' we'd never get him out of town—he could stay there and give all the inside dope on us, write one telepathical paper after another, supply junk for an endless number of meetings. “And don't expect me to drive you over,” I yelled, running past him to open the door. “You get over there on your own power. And get all your crap out of here tonight.”
Still grinning his idiotic grin he sidled past me and out.
Without a word—after all, what could he say?—he shambled off down the driveway to the road and disappeared into the d
arkness beyond the cypress tress. I slammed the front door, and then I hurried through the house, to his room, and began gathering up all his crap.
At first I tried to lug it out front, to the driveway. But after a few trips I gave up. Why should I carry his stuff for him? Kill myself over a lot of rubbish—
Getting madder and madder, I threw it all together into the cardboard carton we had intended to use as a cage for the girls' guinea pig. Taking hold of one end, I dragged it out the back of his room, on to the field and over to the incinerator. And then I did something that at the time I knew was wrong. Getting the gallon jug of white gas which we used with the roto-tiller, I poured gas onto the carton, and, with my cigarette lighter, ignited it. In ten minutes the whole thing was nothing but glowing embers. Except for his collection of rocks, the whole thing had been burned up, and I for one was relieved. Now that I had done it I ceased feeling regret; I was glad.
Later in the evening I heard a car out front. Presently Jack opened the front door. “Where's my stuff?” he said. “I only see a little out front.”
I had seated myself in the big easy chair, facing him. “I burned it all,” I said. “I threw it in the incinerator, the whole god damn mess.”
He stared at me with that asinine expression on his face, that giggle. “You did?” he said.
“Why aren't you leaving?” I said. “What's keeping you here?”
After fidgeting around, he wandered out, leaving the front door open. I saw him gather the junk that I had put out front into Claudia's car. And then Claudia backed down the driveway to the road.
Wow, I thought. Well, that's that.
I got the bottle of bourbon from the cupboard in the kitchen and carried it and a glass and the tray of ice cubes into the living room and put them down beside the big chair. For a time I sat drinking and feeling better and better. At least I had gotten my asshole brother out of the house, and that was something. I could get Nathan to help me in a lot of ways that Jack had helped. The girls would miss him, but again Nat would take his place.
And then I began thinking about Nat and Claudia Hambro, and I stopped feeling better and felt worse. Was he over at their house? Was everybody over there, my brother and Nat both? House guests of the Hambros?
No doubt Claudia Hambro was ten times as attractive as I. And Nat had never seen her before. Her magnetic personality—her ability to influence people; look at how she had gotten the upper hand with me, and Nat was far weaker a person than I. Not only that, it had always been evident that he was the kind of man that a woman can easily deal with. I saw that from the start. If an ordinary-looking woman like me, with only average intelligence and charm, could get such a reaction from him, what would Claudia get?
Thinking that, I began to drink as never before. After a while I lost count. All I could think of was Nat and Claudia Hambro, and then it all became mixed in with Charley coming back and killing me, possibly killing the girls … I saw Charley coming in the front door with the jar of smoked oysters for me again, and I found myself getting up out of my chair and going toward him, reaching for the oysters and being so glad that he had brought me a present.
He really will kill me, I realized. This time when he comes in the door he won't hit me; he'll kill me.
I got up from the chair and told the girls to put themselves to bed. Then I went into the utility room, bumping into the washer and drier as I did so, and got the little ax that I used to cut up kindling. Going into my bedroom I locked the door and all windows and sat there on the bed with the ax on my lap.
I was still sitting there when I heard a man come in the front door. Is that him? I thought. Is that Charley or Jack or Nat? He couldn't get out of the hospital tonight; he's not supposed to get out until the day after tomorrow. And Jack hasn't got a car. Didn't I hear a car? Going to the window I tried to see on to the driveway, but a cypress tree blocked my view.
“Fay?” a man's voice called from somewhere in the house.
“I'm in here,” I said.
Presently the man came to the door. “You in there, Fay?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
He tried the door and discovered that it was locked. “It's me,” he said. “Nat Anteil.”
I got up, then, and unlocked the door.
When he saw the ax he said, “What's wrong?” As he took it out of my hands he saw the empty bourbon bottle; I had carried it into the bedroom with me and finished it. “Good god,” he said, putting his arms around me.
“Don't you hug me,” I said. “Go hug Claudia Hambro.” With all my strength I shoved him away. “How was she?” I said. “A real good lay?”
He took me by the shoulder and half-led, half-pushed me into the kitchen. There, he seated me at the table and put on the kettle of water.
“Go to hell,” I said. “I don't want any coffee. Caffeine gives me nocturnal palpitations.”
“Then I'll fix you some Sanka,” he said, getting down the jar of instant Sanka.
“That nothing coffee,” I said. But I let him fix me a cup of it anyhow.
16
At one in the afternoon his wife was to pick him up at the front entrance of the hospital and drive him home. But the night before, he telephoned Bill Jaffers, the shop foreman at his plant in Petaluma, and told him to come by the hospital with a pick-up truck at nine in the morning. He explained to Jaffers that his wife was too nervous to take the responsibility of driving him home.
So at eight-thirty he got out of his hospital bed, put on his clothes—his tie and white shirt and suit and shined black oxfords—made sure he had all his possessions in his suitcase, paid his bill at the business office of the hospital, and then sat outside on the steps waiting for Jaffers. The day was cool and bright, with no fog.
Finally the plant's pick-up truck appeared and parked. Jaffers, a big dark-haired man in his early thirties, stepped out and up to Charly Hume.
“Hey, you're looking almost well,” he said. He began picking up the pile of possessions stacked beside Charley and putting them into the bed of the truck.
“I feel okay,” Charley said, standing up. He felt weak and sick to his stomach, and he waited for Jaffers to help him into the cab.
Soon they were driving through downtown San Francisco, toward the Golden Gate Bridge. As always, traffic was heavy.
“Take your time,” he told Jaffers. As he figured it Fay would leave the house about eleven. He did not want to get there before she left, so that gave them two hours. “Don't go tear-assing around curves like you do when you're on company time, wearing out rubber that doesn't cost you anything to replace.” He felt despondent and leaned against the door to gaze out at the cars and houses and streets. “Anyhow, I have to stop along the way and buy some things,” he said.
“What do you have to get?” Jaffers said.
“None of your business,” Charley said. “I'll get it.”
Sometime later they parked in the shopping district of one of the surburban Marin towns. Leaving Jaffers he got out of the truck and walked down the street and around the corner to a large hardware store that he knew. There he bought a .22 revolver and two cartons of bullets. At home he had a number of guns, both rifles and pistols, but beyond any doubt Fay would have gotten them hidden. He had the clerk wrap the revolver and ammunition in such a way that no one could tell what it might be, and then he paid cash and left the store. Presently he was back in the truck, with the parcel on his lap.
As they drove on, Jaffers said, “Bet that's for your wife.”
“You're not kidding,” Charley said.
“That's quite some wife you have,” Jaffers said.
Charley said, “You're not just-a-whistling Dixie.”
In Fairfax they stopped at a drive-in and had something to eat. Jaffers ate two hamburgers and a vanilla milkshake, but he himself had only a bowl of soup.
As they drove up the Sir Francis Drake highway, through the park, Jaffers said, “This is sure beautiful country. We used to come up here all the
time, up around Inverness, and fish. We used to catch salmon and bass.” He went on to describe the fishing equipment that he liked. Charley half-listened. “So the way I feel about spinners,” Jaffers concluded, “is that it's fine for, say, surf fishing, but for stream fishing I don't see the use. And Jesus, the good ones can cost you ninety-five bucks, just for the spinner alone.”
“That's for sure,” Charley murmured.
The time, when they reached Drake's Landing, was eleven-ten. She must have left, he decided. But as the truck reached the cypress lane that preceded his house he saw, between the trees, the flash of sunlight on the hood of the Buick. God damn her, he thought. She had not left.
“Go on by,” he said to Jaffers.
“What do you mean?” Jaffers said, slowing the truck and starting to turn into the driveway.
With ferocity, he said, “Keep going, you fink. Keep driving. Don't go in the driveway.”
Bewildered, Jaffers brought the truck back on to the road and kept on. Peering back, Charley saw the front door of the house standing open. Evidently she was almost ready to leave.
“I don't get it,” Jaffers said. He had apparently put together the sight of the Buick in the driveway and Charley's desire to go on and not stop. “Doesn't she know I picked you up? Christ's sake, don't you want to stop her before she leaves?”
“You mind your business or you're fired,” Charley said. “You want to be out of a job? So help me god, I'll fire you; I'll write you out two weeks' notice right now.”
“Okay,” Jaffers said. “But it's a hell of a thing to let her drive all the way down to Frisco and all the way back for nothing.” He became moodily silent, continuing to drive.
“Park here,” Charley said, when they reached the top of a rise. “Get over on the shoulder. No, turn the truck around.”