Читать книгу Milk Route - Martha Ostenso - Страница 5

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It seemed even less credible when, their vacation over, they drove back home through a misty rain that shrouded the countryside. Where had the two weeks gone, with their warm and slumbrous autumn days, their cool nights burdened with stars above the mirroring lake? It was unbelievable that it had all been his, even for two short weeks, with Inga’s love to make it forever unforgettable.

It was nearing eleven o’clock when they finally arrived in Wahwahnissa Creek, drove past the El Rancho Cafe, on Sunway Boulevard, and came upon the orderly rows of houses that stood muffled to the roof-tops in the blanket of small-town sleep.

Inga’s head had been resting against Ben’s shoulder, while she was lost in a dream that could be shaped to no words. But tomorrow would dawn with its callous indifference to her and her love. There would begin again the routine of work in the Book Nook, and the nerve-racking bedlam of her sister Selma’s child-ridden household from which her small upstairs room provided scanty refuge. Selma would slop around all day in a greasy housecoat or in slacks, crooning over the baby—or the next-to-the-baby—and pitying Inga’s unmarried state. She would be none the less on the alert, however, for the fifteen dollars that Inga paid her every week for her board and room.

Inga turned her head slowly and stole a look past Ben’s shoulder. What was he thinking of now as he drove his car through the gentle rain? Was he merely lulled by the rhythm of the windshield wipers, half dreaming of something that set him apart from her by the width of a world? Would she ever come to know his man-thoughts, even when his blond head lay on a pillow close to her own?

They had left Sunway Boulevard at the corner of Mellow Avenue, where lived Selma and Julius Thole and their stridulous brood. The car slowed down.

“I suppose you’ve got to go in now,” Ben said gloomily.

She gave him a covert glance and saw his boyishly blunt profile twist in a rebellious grimace. “No—not yet!” she pleaded, and twined her fingers tightly through his on the steering wheel.

“What, then?” he asked, and brought the car to a halt beside the curb.

“I don’t know. I just don’t want to go in. I don’t want it to end—just yet.” She pressed her cheek against his shoulder again. “I want to keep you and me for a while—like this—before we give ourselves up to—to all the others. Tomorrow—”

“Looks like I’ve got a sentimental woman on my hands,” he remarked, and leaned over to kiss her.

She sat up suddenly. “Would you do something for me—if I coaxed you a little bit?”

“How should I know? I won’t promise anything, but I’m willing to listen.”

“For a long time I’ve wanted to go with you on your rounds and—”

“Drag you out of bed before dawn and drive you—”

“No, no. But we could drive around now for a little while and let me look at the houses.”

“Houses again!”

Last spring she had artlessly confided to him her relish in gazing at people’s darkened abodes at night. At first he had only been mildly amused, but when she mentioned it a second time he had experienced a sense of uneasiness. Although his imagination was less supple and unfettered than hers, the years he had spent on his route had given him a feeling of something incorruptible in the sanctity of houses. His intimacy with gardens, porches and doorways had imbued him with a kind of reverence for these externals even when—and perhaps because—they were so often and so heartlessly betrayed by the human lives they enclosed.

“Listen, small one,” he protested, “you know the old gag about inviting the postman to go for a walk, don’t you? It would take half the night to make the rounds, and I have to start out again by six in the morning.”

“We don’t have to go all the way,” Inga replied. “And I have a special reason for asking. When I’m back at work tomorrow, I can follow you—I can be with you when Adelberta Wilson calls up to ask if Sheila Panker has brought back Cass Timberlane yet.”

Ben heaved a great sigh and immediately put the car about and started back toward Sunway Boulevard. “Okay—we’ll call on old George Panker for a start.”

“We don’t have to call on them, silly!”

“We can slow down enough to give you a chance to feel psychic,” he retorted.

They were on Thorpe Avenue at last. Presently the car drifted slowly by a white-pillared colonial residence that was the show place of Wahwahnissa Creek. With its terraced lawns, its sculptured shrubbery, and its twin copper beeches on either side of a handsome wrought-iron gate, the property occupied half a block. All the shades were drawn, but there were fissures of light in the upstairs windows.

In the wet glow from a street lamp, Inga saw a glistening red leaf loiter down from one of the beeches.

“Did you see that red leaf, Gooben?” she asked. “It looked like a small hand with blood on it.”

“Put it in a poem, kid,” he answered cheerfully.

But he had seen the leaf, and he drove quickly on.