Helen McCloy

by Minotaur Country

  “Forget it! At least, for the time being. In three or four years the whole thing may die down. Or somebody else may be accused of the murder. I’m only advising you this way for your own good.”

  Tash laughed. “Am I supposed to thank you?”

  “You don’t have to, but I hope you won’t tell Jeremy how I feel about this.”

  “Of course I shall tell Jeremy. We don’t have secrets from each other.”

  She did not tell him all the details of her conversation with Job for fear it would make him angry with Job. She merely said that Job wanted them to postpone their marriage until the spate of scurrilous letters had died down.

  Jeremy took this lightly. “Poor old Job! Always seeing lost elections under the bed. People who write letters like that are crackpots, like those people who still think the earth is flat. According to the last Gallup Poll, I’ve got a majority of voters in my camp already. I think we should be married as soon as the election is over. It was you who thought we should wait a year, but if Job or anyone else thinks I’m going to wait four or five years . . . Tash, you’re not listening!”

  “There’s so much malice in these letters,” she answered. “It’s beginning to frighten me.”

  Aside from this Tash was happy as she had never been happy before in her whole life. Working with Jeremy on the western speeches was not work now; it was play. Never before had she walked with such a light foot and a high heart. Never before had the scent of roses been so sweet or the sound of music so joyous or the sunshine so bright.

  Like most happy people she wanted others to be as happy as herself, and this made her more tolerant than she had ever been before. The sharp eye for other people’s failings which had once spiced her newspaper column was gone. Even poor Gordon Freese was invited to dinner at Fox Run one evening because she thought it would gratify him, as it obviously did.

  The Victorians had preached: Be good and you will be happy; but there is something in the opposite idea: Be happy and you will be good.

  Hilary was characteristically concerned about the clothes she and Tash would wear on the western trip. “Won’t our ordinary clothes do?”

  “Yours won’t, dear. You haven’t appeared in a single new thing since I first met you.”

  “What should I get?”

  “It will be suit weather out there at this time of year. You should get at least one new suit, very plain and very chic. Those rich western women will look like singes endimanchés.”

  “Overdressed? I should have thought the opposite.”

  “It’s an over-reaction to the Davy Crockett notions of the males out there. You must show them how eastern women combine severity with elegance.”

  “Won’t they mistake what you call severity for dowdiness if they’re not used to it?”

  “No. They may be hillbillies, but they’re still women. They’ll know chic when they see it, whether they know how to achieve it themselves or not. Get some good shoes and a small hat so they can see your face.”

  “Why any hat at all?”

  “You’ll be in an open car most of the time. You’ll need something to keep your hair in order. There will be a lot of formal occasions and hats are a part of formality.”

  “You do seem to have worked everything out to the minutest detail.”

  “It’s important. You’re not just a member of the staff anymore. They’ve all heard of you, and they probably all know you’re going to marry the Governor. The younger and smarter you look, the less likely they are to think of you as Lady MacBeth. A great deal is forgiven to the young and reasonably pretty, so put your best foot forward.”

  Somewhat reluctantly, Tash drew most of her savings out of the bank and went to the shop that Hilary called a boutique. The prices alarmed her, but she had to live up to Jeremy now, so she gritted her teeth and chose two suits, one light, one dark, with blouses and shoes and hats that went with them. She liked the light suit best, a short jacket and skirt of sheer wool in a subtle robin’s egg blue. The brown velvet collar made her eyes still more brown. The small hat, shaped like a crown, was brown velvet, too.

  “That’s the one to wear on special occasions,” said Hilary. “And, for God’s sake, no jewels and no furs.”

  “You wear mink all the time.”

  “That’s different. I’m an old woman, and it’s the only warm winter coat I’ve got. I can’t afford a new one of the same quality in any other material.”

  Carlos was the advance man for the trip, sent ahead of the Governor and his party by ten days so he could organize Jeremy’s reception by town and county officers and local district leaders. A tight schedule had to be set up so that all kinds of political clubs and civic associations would be given an opportunity to welcome the Governor.

  After five days, Carlos sent back a tentative itinerary for the Governor’s approval.

  They were to fly to the one jet port in the western counties, arriving August 9th, and then proceed in a fleet of cars with many stops along the way that would take them altogether until September 8th.

  “Carlos will have to change those dates,” said Job. “I’m meeting the Chairman of the National Committee in Washington on August ninth, hoping to get the President to speak at one of your meetings once the campaign really gets going in the east. I can’t and won’t postpone anything as important as that.”

  “Why don’t you meet us afterward then?” said Jeremy. “You could fly out west alone and get there August tenth or eleventh.”

  The program included luncheons and dinners in small cities and large towns, nights spent in private houses or country inns, and what Job called “whistle stops”—brief halts for ten-minute speeches in village halls or schools along the way from one town to another.

  Carlos described one of these whistle stops in a letter to Jeremy.

  “Not even a hamlet. Just a crossroads, with one building. When we get there, you’ll wonder why we’re stopping at all, so I’d better explain. It’s partly because that crossroads is the social center for about thirty big sheep ranchers who’ve been rooting for you all over the county, but it’s also because this is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my life, and I want you and Tash to see it, too.

  “You know how most rivers flow in valleys, so when you get a river view, you can’t get a close-up of mountain tops at the same time? Here, by some freak of nature, you have both. The river is right up there among the peaks of high mountains. You can hardly believe it even when you see it: five peaks soaring to the sky, cliffs plunging down a thousand feet or so to valleys below, and there, at the top, where it has no business to be, a river.

  “That view is so improbable, it’s unreal. You get an eerie feeling just looking at it. At the same time, you have a feeling of awe, as if the whole planet was unfolded and laid out at your feet. What people call an ‘airplane view.’ Didn’t Anatole France say, ‘My front door opens on the infinite’? That’s exactly the way you’d feel if you had a house in a place like that.”

  “These romantic Latins!” said Jeremy to Hilary. “Carlos has made that day’s schedule much too tight just to get this weird place in. You’ll have to cross it off the itinerary. If you don’t, we might be late for our last big meeting, the one at the new jet port in Boone City before we take off for home. That’s more important than any whistle stop, however picturesque.”

  Hilary drew a blue pencil through the “weird place.”

  “Carlos has done pretty well,” she said. “This is the only stop you’ve had to cross off his itinerary.”

  When Tash and Jeremy were alone together they spent some time discussing their first meetings, as lovers are apt to do.

  “From the first time we met we wanted each other,” said Jeremy. “Only we didn’t know it consciously at all. When Nature is bent on procreation she pushes us all around like pawns in a chess game, and the fascinating thing is that at the conscious level we always have perfectly good reasons for what we are doing that have nothing to do with proc
reation at all.

  “Why did I want you as a speech writer? Why did you accept immediately and give up your column to do so? It was the only way we could have got to know each other so quickly. Why did I kiss you the evening the strike was settled unless it was because I loved you? I only kissed Hilary to have an excuse for kissing you. I realized that at the time, and yet I thought both kisses were sexless.

  “What was the real reason you resigned? To break up our relationship? It was the very thing most likely to stimulate our relation, as you must have known unconsciously.

  “Why did I come to your rooms late the night of the fire when I could so easily have talked to you the next morning? Because I wanted you and didn’t realize it at the conscious level.

  “Each of us was in an intolerable situation. I was trying to go on loving a wife who didn’t love me. You were telling yourself that you would never fall in love because of what had happened to your parents. Something had to give. If it hadn’t been the fire, it would have been something else that brought everything to a head.”

  “What about people who don’t want children? Doesn’t Nature push them around?”

  “There aren’t any. Unconsciously, everybody wants children. That’s why we have over-population.”

  The night before they left for the west, Tash lay awake in his arms long after he had gone to sleep. This time at Fox Run had been so happy for her that she hated to think of leaving the place even for a little while.

  He stirred and opened his eyes. “Why are you awake?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He took her in his arms.

  “It’s like dying . . .” she whispered.

  And later he told her: “That’s what the French call it: la petite mort, the little death.”

  15

  THE MOMENT YOU stepped out of the plane you knew you were in high country. Wave after frozen wave of mountains ringed the mesa where the airport stood, brilliant in their autumn livery of scarlet and gold. There was a snap in the air, more like October than August, and it tasted clean as spring water.

  Jeremy looked up at a sky, brilliant as a blue flame, and then brought his gaze down to the funereal, black limousine provided for his use.

  “Mr. Mayor, it’s criminal to drive in a car like that on a day like this. Isn’t there an open car I could have?” Captain Wilkes sprang forward. “Governor, for reasons of security I asked for a closed car and—”

  “Stop right there, Wilkes. I came here to see people. In a big city, where crowds are large and anonymous, there’s some excuse for holding them at arm’s length, but not here in this country, where crowds are small and everybody knows everybody else.”

  The Mayor beamed. It was one of the most cherished illusions of the region that all city folk were quiet, treacherous, and violent, while all country people were, like country music, loud, honest, and peaceable.

  In a rich, west-country accent, the Mayor assured the Governor that they were all home folks here in Boone County, that they had all voted for Jeremy Playfair, that they were all sure tickled to death to have him with them on this beautiful autumn day, the kind of weather they had most of the year here, in God’s own country, and the last thing the Governor needed was a closed car. The Mayor’s good friend, the President of the Board of Aldermen, would be only too happy to provide the Governor with a convertible, so he could ride with the top down.

  Wilkes was not pleased. He insisted on driving the car himself, with Carlos beside him in the front seat and a motorcycle escort deployed around the car.

  Jeremy and the Mayor shared the back seat. The Mayor’s wife, Hilary, and Tash followed in a second car that was closed.

  That afternoon there was a reception at the Mayor’s house attended by apparently everyone of the slightest importance in the county. Tash had never seen so many mink shrugs and diamond earrings all at once. Hilary was right, as usual. The only way Tash could compete with these women was by wearing no jewels or furs at all.

  “I thought hillbillies were poor,” she said to Hilary. “Where does all the money come from?”

  “Oil. Whether it’s Middle East or Southwest, oil just loves a backwoods community where it can upset all ecological and economic patterns. Did you ever hear of anybody finding an oil well in Manhattan or Paris?”

  In the receiving line, the Governor shook more than five thousand hands. Most of them had the good sense to move on quickly, but there were, as always, a few who held up the line in order to tell the Governor that they had once met his great uncle, or that they didn’t agree with his last speech about regulating the sale of weed killers.

  When this happened, Carlos allowed just one question or comment, and then, as soon as Jeremy had responded, eased the exhibitionist along with a smile so that the line was not clogged for any length of time.

  When, at last, the receiving line came to an end, Jeremy tried to cross the room to Tash, but his way was barred by a solid hedge of the loyal and the curious. A governor cannot push his way through a crowd. Fortunately, an A.D.C. can. Indeed that’s what he’s for. Carlos was there immediately, facing Jeremy but walking backward, glancing over his shoulder to avoid collision, and so clearing a path where Jeremy could move without either hindrance or embarrassment.

  Tash heard a girl in the crowd say: “I am never going to wash that hand again!”

  This she reported to Hilary. “Do they think an elected politician has the King’s Touch?”

  “Probably.” Hilary frowned. “I don’t like this atavistic Golden Bough stuff. We all know what happens to sacred kings in the end.”

  Job flew in by commercial jet the next day, just in time for a chamber of commerce luncheon at the county seat.

  Tash was the first to spot him, standing alone in a doorway of the big hotel ballroom, for once hesitant and almost shy. As soon as others recognized him, he got a rousing welcome and became the hero of the occasion.

  To Tash, the incident seemed a little contrived. Had the Washington trip really been necessary? Or was the whole thing a device for making a dramatic entrance?

  During the next weeks they were lavishly entertained in private houses by hospitable strangers. The pace was so demanding that it was a relief to spend their last night out west at a mountain inn, where there were no other guests by arrangement, and they no longer felt they were on parade.

  Jeremy and Tash ordered breakfast on a stone terrace with a view of the whole mountain range.

  When the waiter left them alone together, he kissed her quickly. “I love you, Tash.”

  “Someone might come along.”

  “Who cares?” He was kissing her less quickly when Carlos walked out on the terrace with a newspaper clipping in one hand.

  Jeremy waved it away. “Not before breakfast!”

  “I’m sorry, but I think you should see this now.”

  “For or against us?”

  “Against. It’s in the local rag this morning and it’s a honey! Real, old-fashioned, frontier journalism.” Jeremy began to read while Tash looked over his shoulder.

  It was an editorial article headed:

  OUR WHIZ KID GOVERNOR

  This morning we have in our midst a brash, young governor who represents all that is effete and decadent in the devious Eastern Establishment of this state.

  We opposed him during the last election when he captured his high office by using questionable electioneering practices. Nothing he has done since has changed our view of him. Jeremy Playfair is immature, irresponsible, frivolous, and totally unfit for any public office higher than that of assistant dog-catcher.

  His reckless attempt to meddle in foreign affairs by breaking the dock strike and resuming trade relations with the treacherous Reds in Barlovento may plunge the whole country into a Caribbean war at any moment.

  The bill he has just signed abolishing capital punishment leaves honest citizens with no defense against skyrocketing crime.

  We must find a way to get rid of this arrogant young man b
efore he has time to do any more harm to our beloved state and our great country.

  Turn the rascal out!

  NOW!

  “Quite a mess of words!” Jeremy grinned. “Brash, effete, devious, decadent, questionable, immature, irresponsible, frivolous, unfit, reckless, arrogant. Have I left any out?”

  “Don’t just laugh, Jerry!” The faint trace of Spanish accent became more marked when Carlos was upset. “This is serious.”

  “How can you expect me to take a thing like that seriously? That’s not an editorial. That’s just graffiti. They’ll be scrawling on the walls next: Jeremy Playfair, go home!”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Tash. “All the people we’ve met have been so nice to us.”

  “You haven’t met the people who write such editorials,” said Carlos. “Or the people who read such editorials.”

  “I still can’t take it seriously,” said Jeremy. “I’ve had worse things said about me a thousand times.”

  “No, you haven’t,” retorted Carlos. That they should call you bad names like ‘decadent’ is nothing. I agree. But that line at the end: We must find a way to get rid of this arrogant young man. . . . It reminds me of another line: Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? Wilkes doesn’t like it either. He wants you to go in a closed car today.”

  “Oh, Jerry, please do!” said Tash.

  “Afraid they’ll start throwing rotten eggs at me? I’ve always used open cars in my campaigns, and I’m not going to stop now because of one crank editorial. Who owns this newspaper?”

  “I forget the man’s name, but he’s mysteriously rich and there are stories he has underground connections with the Family back East.”

  “And I thought we’d get away from that sort of thing out here.” Jeremy sighed.

  “It’s monstrous!” cried Tash.

  “What did you expect? Hic draconis.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Dragon Land. The words written in the unexplored spaces on medieval maps. No matter how far we travel today, we are still in Minotaur Country, where anything can happen.”