Читать книгу The Lonesome Quarter - Richard Wormser - Страница 11

SHE’D SEEN plenty of deserts in her life, this one wasn’t as bad as the Mohave or the Colorado, or the Coachella where she and Kenny had taken first money for team-roping once. It wasn’t as big, and she’d like to bet it didn’t ever get as hot. But it was real, honest-to-God lonely. There weren’t even signboards put up to tell you about air-conditioned motels and restaurants ahead. There wasn’t a damn thing, after you passed that state highway place, except for a little board shack with a coke sign and a single gas pump. Probably these hicks hadn’t even heard of ethyl gas . . .

Ahead, the tree-covered mountains came right down to the floor of the desert, and ten miles before you were in the town you could see it, on a little green shelf just above the desert, with mountains running right up on either side. Ten miles wasn’t long, even in this heap; they bumped into town over the railroad that must have used some other part of the desert to get across, and here they were.

Later on, maybe, she’d see something in this place where she planned to spend the rest of her life, but now it looked like any other hick town. Lonnie stopped the car in front of a chain store and went on in, telling her he had a couple of things to get. She didn’t go along because the big lug had a grin that meant he was getting a surprise for her.

When he crossed the pavement no less than three lady shoppers turned to look after him. But he’d never know it. Not because he was a hick, but because he was that kind of guy.

He came back, put a cardboard box in the back with the kids, and climbed in, grinning. “Always get a few groceries here,” he said. “The store up at Salal Flats is higher, and there’s a lot they don’t have.” But he wouldn’t tell her what he’d bought for her.

They ground on up out of town, most of the time having to go into second on the curves, and now it was all that thin-brushed red-bark pine that Lon had called—she couldn’t remember, some kind of pine tree. Some of them had the lines on the bark running straight up and down instead of in blotches. She pointed. “That’s a big pine, Lonnie.”

“Doggone, sister, you’re ignorant. That’s a incense cedar. The ponderosas are the ones got that shaggy bark.”

“Guess I’m just plain dumb, Lonnie. Only—does it make much difference? I mean, I don’t need another merit badge.”

He said, “Well—you make a fence post out of pine, and it’ll rot. Or, say, you want to make a bridge, and your stringers are cedar, a truck’d break through.”

Lonnie looked so solemn giving her this advice, she couldn’t keep from laughing. Then, when he gave her the solemn owlish look he used sometimes—like a professor finding a new kind of bug—she laughed all the louder. Then he said one of those things that always made her end up feeling better inside than she had ever felt with anyone else.

“Well, Vera Mae, they’s so damned many things you know I don’t, I gotta show off once in a while, so you won’t be ashamed of me.”

She had promised herself she was going to be completely honest with this guy and see how it felt. She couldn’t remember ever being that in her life before. “Ashamed of you? Brother! Lonnie, do you know when you went into the Safeway, three dames gave you the eye?”

“Aw, cut it out, Vera Mae, or I’ll be gettin’ red in the face. Never did meet such a gal for putting it on a fellow!” He raised a hand and pointed. “We’re almost home.”

Alongside the road was a big wooden sign, shield-shaped, and fancifully carved. It said, “Entering Bearclaw National Forest,” and some more stuff too small for her to read in time. “Salal Flats is the first ranger district,” he said. “Red Rock starts about five miles past our place.”

Coming back from Fresno one time, she and Duke and Kenny and some of the gang had gone through Yosemite. She couldn’t remember anybody living there; in fact they’d talked about good pasture going to waste . . .

“You mean we live in a park, Lonnie? How’d you work that?”

“Not a park,” he said. “A national forest. It’s different . . . ”

She put on her party voice. “I know. Like pine and cedars.”

He rewarded her with a laugh. “I’ll get Tommy to tell you about it. He’s the district ranger. We’ll eat lunch at his house.”

“Oh. Did you call him up from the store?”

Lon said, “Don’t have to call him up. Old Tommy and I are real friends.”

“Well, stop some place so I can fix up a little. I don’t want your friends to think you married something you found in a junk yard.”

“Just the way you are,” he said, “you’re about as pretty as has ever come over the ridge. Maybe a little prettier.”

The nice feeling came again, but there was a little fear. “Tommy married?”

“Sure,” Lon said. “Married a gal named Dot, for Dorothy. They met in college, been married ever since. Fine gal. There ain’t many college girls would put up with living up here; the last ranger we had, his wife ran away on him.”

But it’s good enough for me, all right. I’m not a college girl like Mrs. Dot for Dorothy. Who no doubt runs the local branch of the Ladies’ Aid and Feminine Hygiene Society and—from the way Lonnie is shifting around on the seat—can decide once and for all if Lonnie can go on being married to me, or whether he has to throw me back like a fish. I sure hope I make out.

They topped a little ridge and slid down into a valley, and then Lon stopped the car where another sign like the first said, “Salal Flats Public Camp, Bearclaw National Forest.” There was a big “U.S.” in the center of the shield, and “Forest Service” under it. Back in the trees were some tables and rock stoves, it was real pretty.

“You can fix up here,” Lonnie said. “There’s a ladies’ room and running water and all.”

She heard herself saying, “So you think I better do something to myself before I’m good enough for your college friends!”

Then she was ashamed because he was drawling, “It was your idea, Vera Mae.”

She reached over and kissed him, and said, “Why, honey, how wonderful, we’ve gotten past our first fight already.” When he smiled, she felt all right again, but even so she combed her hair and washed the kids’ faces and put on a new face and retied June’s hair ribbon before she loaded back into the truck. This time she made June sit between them on the seat and Mike ride alone in the back. Somehow she figured it wasn’t so important if Dot for Dorothy saw him after his new maw had let his face get dirty . . .

It certainly would be hard to get lost in this country. Here came another of those big signs, telling you that the Salal Flats Ranger Station was five hundred yards away, and damned if it wasn’t.

Lon rattled the truck over a cattleguard, paying no attention to a sign that indicated that public parking was outside. Another sign said the office was to the left; he turned right and stopped alongside one of the uniformly tobacco-brown painted buildings; this one was a little larger than the rest, and there was civilian-looking porch furniture.

The kids jumped out almost before he had stopped and went streaking down a hill toward a big garage where some men were working around a red-painted fire engine—which Lonnie would probably bawl her out for calling a fire engine.

Her husband got out and waited for her to join him. Then they went up on the porch, and Lon knocked on the door, and again she got the idea that this was a kind of a ceremony.

A man’s voice inside called out, “Come in,” and before she could stop him, Lon opened the door and pushed her in, by her elbow.

A long-legged fellow about Lon’s age was sprawled on the floor, fiddling with a radio that he’d taken out of its mahogany case. He looked up with one eye, and said, “Oh, Lon. Wondered where you’d been keep—” and then saw Vera Mae and jumped to his feet. He stood there, brushing dust off his green pants and khaki shirt; he also wore a green tie and a bronze badge like the big signs.

Lon stammered and stuttered something, but Vera Mae wasn’t listening; the badge had made her react in a way she hated. Badges were worn by cops and deputies, by truant officers and fire inspectors, by guys at state borders who looked at you twice and suggested a little trip out behind the station; and when you turned them down got mean and made you take all the hay out of your trailer so they could inspect it for bugs. Badges were worn by guys who were respectful to people who had houses and regular salaries and money in the bank, but were hell on people who lived by traveling, who didn’t pay taxes any place, who maybe separated the local marks from some of their money once in a while.

Badges were worn by guys who came and got Kenny in the middle of the night and would have taken you along on general principles if you hadn’t—

Lonnie was saying, “Oh, hell, Tommy, what I’m trying to say is, Vera Mae is Mrs. Verdoux; we got married this morning!”

Tommy let out a whoop and yelled, “Dot!” Then he flung his long arms around Vera Mae and gave her a kiss on the cheek and a hug. She could feel his badge through her blouse. But this was Lonnie’s friend.

He was still hanging on to her when a woman’s voice said, “Well—Lonnie—”

Tommy took one long arm from around Vera Mae and swung around to face the kitchen door.

The girl who was standing there was taller than Vera Mae, and thinner; she was about as thin a girl as was necessary. Her short-sleeved khaki shirt didn’t bulge, and her levi pants hardly did, either. She had black hair—one lock of which was hanging down over her eyes kind of damp—and no make-up on.

And she didn’t take her eyes off her husband’s arm around Vera Mae while Lon repeated that he was married, that this was his wife. Then she said, “Well, congratulations, both of you. I’ve got to see about the soup,” and disappeared back through the swinging door.

The two men seemed to realize that they’d done things all wrong. She was almost sorry for them as they stood there and looked at each other. Tommy said, “I was just trying to fix Dot’s radio, Lon. Know anything about them?”

“Hardly at all,” Lon said. “But I could hold things for you—”

Vera Mae forced back a laugh. They looked just like kids that had caught a nice mouse and given it to their teacher for a present. She said, “Maybe I can help with that soup,” and as she started after Dot for Dorothy, saw their faces brighten. As her back turned, they sat down on the floor with the radio.

She burst into the kitchen saying, “Honey, I didn’t mean to pop into you like—” but her hostess wasn’t there. There was a pot of soup on the stove, all right; but no Dot stirring it. Idly, she lifted the lid of the pan and took the spoon off the drainboard to stir the brown liquid. Barley and celery and squares of carrots came swirling up, and the smell was lovely, and she realized that they hadn’t eaten since six that morning, and that it was almost three now. She took a spoonful of the soup up, and it tasted as good as it smelled.

A current of air behind her told her she was being watched. She gulped the rest of the spoonful hurriedly and laid the spoon down on the drainboard. Dot was standing by the other door, watching her.

Vera Mae said, “I’m sorry. I came out here to apologize to you for bouncing in the way we did, and then the soup smelled so good—”

Dot’s eyes were cool, but she said, “It doesn’t matter.” She picked up the spoon and tasted the soup herself, and then put the spoon down, not on the drainboard the way Vera Mae had done, but hanging over the edge to drip into the sink.

“You get the cheese out of the icebox and slice it,” Dot said. “If you want to help.”

“Of course,” Vera Mae said.

Dot said, “I’m having soup and Waldorf salad and toasted cheese sandwiches.”

“All right,” Vera Mae said. “I’m not a great hand at cooking, but toasted cheese sandwiches I can manage. Doggone good thing you didn’t tell me just to whip up a Waldorf salad.”

Dot’s hands were busy with a big knife at the breadboard, chopping up parsley. She slid the green dust on her knife and into the soup. “You’ll have to learn,” she said. “We always make the salads.”

Vera Mae, being competent with packaged cheese and soft oleo and sliced bread, looked up. “We?”

Dot got a salad bowl out of the icebox, already filled with things. She started throwing in nuts and sliced apples. “The Forest Service gals always bring the salads to the PTA,” she said. “The ladies from up at the hatchery make the cakes, and the independent girls bring all the rest of the junk. You know, Mother Trellis and the other ranchers, and Helen Clinto, though she really should be in with us, because Clint’s Department of Agriculture, just like the Forest Service.”

Vera Mae felt uncertain. But this was the wife of Lonnie’s best friend, and she was being a lot nicer than Vera Mae would have been in the same circumstance. Least a girl could do was be nice right back at her. “Thanks for asking me to join your group, but I better stay with the independent gals till I get to cook better. Don’t want to drag your reputation down.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Dot said. “I’ll show you how to make all kinds of salads. I feel kind of responsible, with Tommy the only regular forester on the district. Down at Firtree, where he was assistant, there were four of us, and the older wives wouldn’t let me go around with the guards’ wives, but thank God I never let that get started here. The ranger before Tommy was an old-timer, and they say his wife was a regular snob.”

Vera Mae said, “I’d feel more at home with the ranchers’ wives.”

Dot had finished throwing peeled and cut-up apples into her salad, was adding mayonnaise. From some place back in her childhood, Vera Mae suddenly remembered how you made homemade mayonnaise; Dot was using bought stuff. It made her feel better, but the look that Dot was giving her took that away at once.

“Well, I guess you could,” Dot said. “After all, Lonnie does own that sagebrush quarter where he lives. But everybody’s always thought of Lonnie as a Forest Service man. He’s just about top guard, and if the stingy old Service ever gives Tommy any money, I’d bet Lon’d be the first man he put on permanently.”

Vera Mae had never been known for her quiet temper. She got a grip on it with both hands, and said, “Lonnie and I are planning on ranching it, most of the time.”

Dot said, “Oh, honey, it’s not much of a place . . . Joan told me—”

Vera Mae said, “I don’t know anything about Joan, except she had two damned nice kids, and a nice husband. And she’s dead. But I know about the ranch, if I haven’t seen it yet. I know we can make a living on it. And the way I know is, Lonnie told me.”

Dot had forgotten the salad. “How long have you known Lonnie?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Vera Mae said.

“But it does,” Dot said. “Lonnie’s sweet, but he isn’t a trained man. Tommy’s an expert in land management, and he says—”

Vera Mae interrupted her. She felt awful tired. “Let’s put the lunch on, Dot. I’m sorry I got into a fight with you, and you married to Lon’s best friend.”

“I can put the lunch on myself,” Dot said. “Go talk to the men.”

Vera Mae waited, but Dot didn’t add, “It’s the only thing you’re good for.” She wasn’t that corny.