Camille was looking at her torn skirt and talking softly to Norma. "I always wanted to live on a hill," she said. "I love hills. I love to walk in hills."
"It's all right after you're rich and famous," Norma said firmly. "I know people in pictures that every chance they get, why, they go hunting and fishing and wear old clothes and smoke a pipe."
Camille was bringing Norma out. She had never in her whole life felt so excited and free. She could say anything she wanted. She giggled a little.
"It's nicer to wear old dirty clothes if you've got a closet full of nice fresh clean ones," she said. "Old clothes are the only kind I've got and I'm god-damned sick of it." She glanced at Camille to see how she'd react to such candor.
Camille nodded. "You aren't kidding, sister." Something very strong and sympathetic was growing up between these two. Mr. Pritchard tried to hear the conversation but he couldn't.
The ditches beside the highway ran full with water descending toward the valley. The heavy clouds were massing for a new attack.
"It's coming on to rain," Van Brunt said happily.
Juan grunted. "I had a brother-in-law kicked to death by a horse," he observed.
"Couldn't have used any sense," said Van Brunt. "Horse kicks a man, it's usually the man's fault."
"Killed him anyway," said Juan, and he settled into silence.
The bus was nearing the top of the grade and the turns were becoming tighter all the time.
"I was very much interested in our little talk this morning, Mr. Horton. It's a pleasure to talk with a man with some get-up and go. I'm always on the look-out for men like that for my organization."
"Thanks," said Ernest.
"We're having trouble right now with these returning veterans," said Mr. Pritchard. "Good men, you understand. And I think everything should be done for them--everything. But they've been out of the run. They're rusty. In business you've got to keep up every minute. A man that has kept up is twice as valuable as a man that has been out of the mill, so to speak." He looked at Ernest for approval. Instead he saw a kind of hard, satiric look come into Ernest's eyes.
"I see your point," Ernest said. "I was four years in the Army."
"Oh!" said Mr. Pritchard. "Oh, yes--you're not wearing your discharge button, I see."
"I've got a job," Ernest said.
Mr. Pritchard fumbled with his thoughts. He had made a bad mistake. He wondered what the thing was in Ernest's lapel button. It looked familiar. He should know. "Well, they're a fine bunch of boys," he said, "and I only hope we can put in an administration that will take care of them."
"Like after the last war?" Ernest asked. It was a double brush, and Mr. Pritchard began to wonder if he'd been right about Horton. There was a kind of a brutality about Horton. He had a kind of swagger and a headlong quality so many ex-soldiers had. The doctors said they would get over it just as soon as they lived a good normal life for a while. They were out of line. Something would have to be done.
"I'm the first one to come to the defense of our veterans," Mr. Pritchard said. He wished to God he could get off the subject. Ernest was looking at him with a slightly crooked smile that he was beginning to recognize in applicants for jobs. "I just thought I'd like to interview a man with your get-up and go," Mr. Pritchard said uneasily. "When I get back from my vacation I'd be very glad to have you call on me. We can always make room for a man who's got it."
"Well, sir," said Ernest, "I get very sick of running around the country all the time. I often thought I'd like to have a home and a wife and a couple of kids. That's the real way to live. Come home at night and lock the whole world outside, and a boy and a girl, maybe. This sleeping in hotels isn't living."
Mr. Pritchard nodded. "You're four-square right," he said, and he was very much relieved. "I'm just the right man to say that to. Twenty-one years married and I wouldn't have it any other way."
"You've been lucky," said Ernest. "Your wife's a fine-looking woman."
"And she's a fine woman," said Mr. Pritchard. "The most thoughtful person in the world. I often wonder what I'd do without her."
"I was married once," said Ernest. "My wife died." His face was sad.
"I'm sorry," said Mr. Pritchard. "And this may sound silly. Time does heal wounds. And maybe some day--well, I wouldn't give up hope."
"Oh, I don't."
"I didn't mean to pry into your affairs," said Mr. Pritchard, "but I've been thinking about your idea for those lapel slipcovers for a dark suit to convert into a tuxedo. If you're not tied up with anyone I thought we might--well, talk about doing a little business."
"Well," said Ernest, "it's like I told you. Clothes manufacturers won't want something that will rule out some of their business. I just don't see the angle right now."
Mr. Pritchard said, "I forget whether you said you had applied for a patent."
"Well, no. I told you. I just registered the idea."
"How do you mean, registered?"
"Well, I wrote out a description and made some drawings and put it in an envelope and mailed it to myself, registered mail. That proves when I did it because that envelope is sealed."
"I see," said Mr. Pritchard, and he wondered whether such a method would have any standing in court. He didn't know. But it was always better to take the inventor in on a percentage. Only the really big fellows could afford to lift an invention whole. The big fellows could afford a long fight. They figured it was cheaper than cutting in an inventor and the figures proved they were right. But Mr. Pritchard's firm wasn't big enough and, besides, he always thought that generosity paid off.
"I've got an idea or two that might work out," he said. "Course, it'll take some organization. Now, suppose you and I could make a deal. This is just a supposition, you understand. I'd handle the organization and we would take a percentage of profit after expenses."
"But they don't want it," Ernest said. "I've asked around." Mr. Pritchard laid a hand on Ernest's knee. He had a hollow feeling that he ought to shut up, but he remembered the satiric look in Ernest's eyes and he wanted Ernest to admire him and to like him. He couldn't shut up.
"Suppose we formed a company and we protected the idea?" he said. "Patent it, I mean. Now we organize to manufacture this product, a national advertising campaign--"
"Just a moment," Ernest broke in.
But Mr. Pritchard was carried away. "Now suppose these layouts just happened to fall into the hands of, say, oh, Hart, Schaffner and Marx4 or some big manufacturer like that, or maybe the association. They'd get ahold of it by accident, of course. Well, maybe they'd like to buy us out."
Ernest began to look interested. "Buy the patent?"
"Buy not only the patent but the whole company."
"But if they bought the patent then they could kill it," Ernest said.
Mr. Pritchard's eyes were slitted and his pupils shone through his glasses and a little smile lay on the corners of his mouth. For the first time since she had got off the bus from San Ysidro he had forgotten Camille. "Look ahead a little further," he said. "When we sell and dissolve the company we only pay a capital gain tax on the profits."
"That's smart," said Ernest excitedly. "Yes, sir, that's very smart. That's blackmail and a very high-class blackmail. Yes, sir, nobody could touch us."
The smile vanished from Mr. Pritchard's mouth. "What do you mean, blackmail? We would intend to go ahead and manufacture. We could even order machinery."
"That's what I mean," said Ernest. "It's very high class. It's all wrapped up. You're a smart man."
Mr. Pritchard said, "I hope you don't think it's dishonest. I've been in business thirty-five years and I've climbed to the head of my company. I can be proud of my record."
"I'm not criticizing you," Ernest said. "I think you've got a very sound idea there. I'm for it, only--"
"Only what?" said Mr. Pritchard.
"I'm kind of low on dough," said Ernest, "and I'm gonna need a quick buck. Oh, well, I can borrow it, I guess."
"
What do you need money for? Maybe I could advance--"
"No," said Ernest, "I'll get it myself."
"Is it some new wrinkle you figured out?" Mr. Pritchard asked.
"Yes," said Ernest. "I gotta get this idea into the patent office by carrier pigeon."
"You don't think for one minute--"
"Of course not," said Ernest. "Certainly not. But I'm gonna be happier when that envelope gets to Washington alone."
Mr. Pritchard leaned back in his seat and smiled. The highway whirled and twisted ahead, and between two great abutments was the pass into the next valley.
"You'll be all right, son. I think we can do business. I don't want you to think I'd take advantage though. My record speaks for itself."
"Oh, I don't," said Ernest. "I don't." He looked secretly at Mr. Pritchard. "It's just that I've got a couple of very luscious dames in L.A. and I don't want to get in that apartment and forget everything." He saw the reaction he wanted.
"I'm going to be two days in Hollywood," Mr. Pritchard said. "Maybe we could talk a little business."
"Like in these dames' apartment?"
"Well, a man needs some kind of relaxation. I'm going to be at the Beverly Wilshire .5 You could call me there."
"I sure will," said Ernest. "What color dame you like best?"
"Don't misunderstand me," said Mr. Pritchard. "I like to sit and have a scotch and soda but I've got a position, you know. I don't want you to misunderstand."
"Oh, I don't," said Ernest. "I could maybe pick up the blonde ahead here, if you want."
"Don't be silly," said Mr. Pritchard.
Pimples had moved forward in the bus. On the underside of his jaw he felt an itching burn and he knew an eruption was forming. He sat down in the seat across from Mildred Pritchard. He didn't want to touch the new place but he was powerless over his hands. His right hand moved upward and his forefinger rubbed the lump under the chin. It was a very sore lump. This one was going to be a devil. He knew already what it would look like. He wanted to squeeze it, to scratch it, to rip it out. His nerves were on edge. He forced his hand into his coat pocket and clenched his fist there.
Mildred was staring vacantly out of the window.
"I wish I could go to Mexico," Pimples said.
Mildred looked around at him in surprise. Her glasses caught the light from his window and glared blindly at him.
Pimples swallowed. "I never been there," he said weakly.
"Neither have I," said Mildred.
"Yeah, but you're going."
She nodded. She didn't want to look at him because she couldn't keep her eyes from his eczema and that embarrassed him. "Maybe you can go soon," she said uneasily.
"Oh, I'll go," said Pimples. "I'll go everywhere. I'm a great traveler. I'd rather travel than anything. You get experience that way."
She nodded again and took off her glasses in protection against him. Now she couldn't see him so clearly.
"I thought maybe I'd be a missionary like Spencer Tracy and go to China and cure them of all those diseases.6 You ever been to China?"
"No," said Mildred. She was fascinated by his thinking.
Pimples took most of his ideas from moving pictures and the rest from the radio. "It's very poor people there in China," he said, "some of them so poor they just starve to death right outside your window if some missionary don't come along and help them. And if you help them, why, they love you, and let any Jap come around and make trouble and they stick a knife right in him." He nodded solemnly. "I think they're just as good as you and me," he said. "Spencer Tracy just came along and he cured them up and they loved him--and you know what he done? He found his own soul. And there was this girl and he didn't know whether he ought to marry her because she had a past. Of course, it came out it wasn't her fault and it wasn't even true, but this old dame told lies about her." Pimples' eyes glowed with pity and enthusiasm. "But Spencer Tracy didn't believe those lies and he lived in an old palace that had secret passages and tunnels and--well, then the Japs come."
"I saw the picture," Mildred said.
The bus went into second gear for the last climb. Now it was in the gap at the top and then it emerged and turned sharp left, and below was the valley gloomy with gray clouds, and the great loop of the San Ysidro River gleamed like dark steel under the glowering light. Juan eased the bus into high gear and began the descent.
CHAPTER 10
The San Ysidro River runs through the San Juan valley, turning and twisting until it discharges sluggishly into Black Rock Bay under the protection of Bat Point. The valley itself is long and not very wide, and the San Ysidro River, having not very far to run, makes the most of what distance it has by moving from one side of the level stretch to the other. Here it cuts under a cliff, against a mountain, and then it spreads thinly out on sand-banks. During a good part of the year there is no surface water at all, and the sandy bed grows full of willows which stretch their roots down toward underground water.
Rabbits and raccoons and small foxes and coyotes make their homes in the willows of the river bottom when the water is down. At the head of the valley to the north and east the river rises, not as one head, but in many little branches, so that the source on a map looks like a tree with small, leafless branches. The dry and stony hills with shoulders and gullies and canyons do not supply water to the river during all the year, but when the rains fall in the late winter and spring the rocky shoulders absorb a little of the water and cast the rest in black torrents to the little streams that tumble out of the creases, and the stream-lets combine and join larger creeks and the creeks come together at the northern end of the valley.
So it is that in the late spring, when the hills have digested as much rain as they can, a heavy storm may swell the San Ysidro River to a raging flood in a very few hours. Then the foamy yellow water cuts at the banks and great hunks of farmland cave into the river. Then the bodies of cows and sheep go tumbling and rolling in the yellow flood. It is an unstable and precocious river; dead during part of the year and deadly during another part.
In the middle of the valley, which is on a direct line between Rebel Corners and San Juan de la Cruz, the river makes a great loop, ranging from side to side of the level valley, casting its coil against the mountain on the eastern edge and moving away to cross the fields and farmlands. In the old times the road followed the loop of the river and crawled up the side of the hill to avoid crossing. But with the coming of engineers and steel and concrete, two bridges had been thrown over the river, and these cut out twelve miles of the San Ysidro's playfulness.
They were wooden bridges, backed and suspended by steel rods, and each one was supported in the middle and at the ends by concrete piers. The wood was painted dark red and the iron was dark with rust. On the river side of each bridge backwaters of piles and braided, mattressed willow deflected the water toward the spans and kept the gnawing current from undermining the bridgeheads.
These bridges were not very old, but they had been built at a time when the tax rate was not only low, but much of it uncollectable because of what was called "hard times." The county engineer had found it necessary to build within a budget that allowed only the simplest construction. His timber should have been heavier and his struts more numerous, but he had to build a bridge within a certain cost and he did. And every year the farmers of the middle valley watched the river with cynical apprehension. They knew that some time there would be a quick and overwhelming flood that would take the bridges out. Every year they petitioned the county to replace the wooden bridges, but there weren't enough votes in the rural section to make the petitions mandatory. The large towns, which had not only the votes but the taxable assets, got the improvements. People were not moving to the medium-rich farmlands. A good service-station corner in San Juan had a higher assessed valuation than a hundred acres of grainland in the valley. The farmers knew that it was only a question of time before the bridges were destroyed and then, they said, the county would god-damned well
come to its senses.
A hundred yards from the first bridge toward Rebel Corners there was a little general store on the highway. It stocked the groceries, the tires, the hardware a man bought on Saturday afternoon or when he didn't have time to drive either to San Juan de la Cruz or to San Ysidro over the range. This was Breed's General Store. And of late years it had, as did all country stores, added gas pumps and a stock of automobile accessories.
Mr. and Mrs. Breed were unofficial custodians of the bridge, and at flood time their phone rang constantly and they supplied information about the river's rise. They were used to this. Their one great fear was that some day the bridge would go out and the new one might be a quarter of a mile down the river, and then they would have to move their store or build a new one near the new bridge.
At least half of their trade nowadays was in soft drinks, sandwiches, gasoline, and candy bought by travelers on the highway. Even the bus between Rebel Corners and San Juan invariably stopped there. It brought express packages, and the passengers drank soft drinks. Juan Chicoy and the Breeds were old and good friends.
And now the river was up, and not only up, but, as Mr. Breed said to his wife, "there's a backwash cutting in under the piles above the bridge, and if it cuts a channel in back, there goes your ball game." He had made half a dozen trips to the bridgehead since daylight. This was a bad one and Mr. Breed knew it. Thin-lipped and unshaven, he had stood on the bridge at eight o'clock this morning and watched the tumbling yellow water laced with yellow foam and dotted with uprooted scrub oak and cottonwood. And he had seen a few planks of planed lumber come twisting down, and then a piece of roof with shingles still on, and then the drowned, bobbing body of McElroy's black Angus bull, square and short-legged. As it went under the bridge it rolled over on its back, and Breed could see the wild upturned eyes and the flapping tongue. It made Breed sick to his stomach.
Everyone knew McElroy's barn was too close to the bank and that bull cost eighteen hundred dollars. McElroy didn't have that kind of money to throw away. He didn't see any of the rest of the herd come down, but the bull would be enough. Mac had put a lot of faith in that bull.