The Awakening

by Jude Deveraux

  Taylor looked up at J. Harker. “Invite the man to come here,” he said.

  “Here? To Kingman?” J. Harker’s face was getting red. He hated the concept of the government telling him how to run his ranch. It was his land, wasn’t it? And the pickers were free people, weren’t they? If they didn’t like what was going on, they could leave, yet the governor seemed to believe he had a right to tell J. Harker how to run his own ranch.

  “No,” Taylor said, “I mean, invite him here to this house.” Before Harker could protest, Taylor continued. “Think about it. He’s a poor college professor, makes perhaps twenty-five hundred, three thousand a year. I wonder if he’s ever seen a ranch like this or visited a house like this. Bring him here now, weeks before the pickers arrive, and let him see that we aren’t monsters, let him see—” He broke off to turn his gaze on Amanda, who had put her hand out for the jam jar. “No,” he said simply, and Amanda withdrew her hand guiltily.

  “A college professor?” J. Harker said. “Who’ll take care of the old guy? With the hops about ripe, I can’t spare a minute and I need you to—”

  “Amanda,” Taylor said, making Amanda start.

  She’d been only halfheartedly listening to the conversation since it didn’t pertain to her and now Taylor had caught her daydreaming.

  “Amanda will entertain him,” Taylor said. “She can discuss several different aspects of economics with him and, if she doesn’t know enough, he can teach her. She can also show him Kingman. You can do that, can’t you, Amanda?”

  Both Taylor and her father were staring at her with the intensity of hungry hawks watching a rabbit running across an open field. These were the two people she most wanted to please, but she knew she wasn’t very good with strangers. She didn’t meet too many people—rarely was meeting someone put on her schedule—and when she did, she didn’t have much to say to them. People didn’t seem to want to discuss what had made the Nile flood. They liked to talk of dances (something she’d never attended) and clothes (Taylor chose her clothes) and moving pictures (she’d never seen one) and baseball (never seen a game but she knew all the rules; she’d made 98 on that exam) and cars (she rarely went anywhere and then only with Taylor and a chauffeur, so she knew little about automobiles). No, she wasn’t good with strangers.

  “Amanda?” Taylor said louder.

  “Yes, I will try,” she said sincerely. Perhaps a college professor would be easier to talk to than other people.

  “Good,” Taylor said and seemed disappointed in her hesitancy. He glanced at the tall clock at the end of the dining room. “You are three minutes off schedule. Now go and study.”

  She rose immediately. “Yes, Taylor.” She glanced at her father. “Good morning,” she murmured before leaving the room.

  Alone in her room, she sat down at her little desk, opened a drawer and took out her notes on French irregular verbs. At ten A.M. she worked on her essay on Puritan ethics. Twice she miswrote a word and had to start over again. Taylor insisted that each of her papers be in perfect form, with no errors.

  At eleven A.M. Mrs. Gunston was waiting for her in a basement room. Amanda wore a blue serge gymnastic dress that reached only to mid-calf. Taylor had said this dress was necessary but he had designed a modest, long dress to be worn over it while Amanda walked down the back stairs—not the front stairs where she might be seen—to the basement.

  For thirty minutes, Mrs. Gunston put Amanda through a rigorous program using heavy Indian clubs and weighted pulleys attached to the wall.

  At 11:30, faint with hunger and fatigue, Amanda was allowed seventeen minutes in a tub full of cool water (Taylor said hot water aged a person’s skin). According to her usual schedules, then she had to dress, study for tomorrow’s exam and be at luncheon at one sharp.

  But today was different.

  When Mrs. Gunston appeared in Amanda’s room at 12:45 with a tray of food, Amanda was immediately concerned.

  “What has happened to Mr. Driscoll?” she asked, fearing that only death could make Taylor upset the schedule.

  “He is with your father,” Mrs. Gunston said, “and he has given you a new schedule.”

  With her eyes wide in wonder, Amanda took the new schedule.

  From 1:17 to 6:12 read the following: Veblen’s Instinct of Workmanship Hoxie’s Scientific Management Royce’s Philosophy of Loyalty Montgomery’s Labor and Social Problems

  6:00 P.M. Dress for dinner. Wear the blue chiffon with the pearls.

  6:30 P.M. Dinner: two steamed vegetables, broiled fish, skimmed milk, a one-inch piece of chocolate cake.

  7:30 P.M. Discuss what you have read

  9:30 P.M. Prepare for bed

  10:00 P.M. Bed

  Amanda looked up at Mrs. Gunston. “Chocolate cake?” she whispered.

  A maid walked in, set the four books on a table and left the room. Mrs. Gunston picked up one of them. “This man, this Dr. Montgomery, he wrote this one and he’s coming here. You’re to know something to talk to him about, so you better stop dreaming of cake and get to work.” She turned away with an officious bustle and left the room.

  Amanda sat absolutely rigid on a hard little chair and began to read the book by Dr. Henry Raine Montgomery first. At first it seemed such an odd book that she didn’t understand it. It was all about how the strikes of laborers were actually caused by the owners of the mines and factories and ranches.

  Amanda hadn’t thought much about the men who worked in the fields. Sometimes she’d look up from her book and see them, far away, looking like toys, moving about under the blistering sun, but she’d always looked down at her book again and never given them another thought.

  She read all afternoon, making her way through two of the books on the list, and by dinner time she felt confident she could discuss labor management with Taylor.

  She was unprepared for his anger. It seemed she’d read the books incorrectly. She was to read the books from the management’s point of view.

  “Have I taught you nothing?” Taylor had said to her in a cold voice.

  She was sent to her room without the chocolate cake and she was to write a long essay on why the books of Montgomery and the others were wrong.

  At midnight Amanda was still writing and she was coming to greatly dislike the name of Dr. Montgomery. He had turned her calm household upside down, made Taylor angry at her, cost her many hours extra work, and worst of all, cost her a slice of chocolate cake. If this was what his book did, what in the world was the man going to do?

  She smiled in weariness and told herself she was too fanciful. Dr. Montgomery was merely a poor, old college professor who knew nothing about the economics of the real world, only the economics of a paper world. She imagined a gray-haired man bent over a desk, a dusty pile of books around him, and she wondered if he’d ever seen a moving-picture show. Perhaps the two of them could go into Kingman and…She stopped that thought. Taylor said moving pictures were mind-deadening and people who went to them were lower-class buffoons, so of course this college professor wouldn’t want to do something so unworthwhile.

  She turned back to her essay and continued to write about how wrong Dr. Montgomery’s book was.

  Chapter Two

  It was the sixth day of the Los Angeles to Phoenix Harriman Derby and the two men in the Stutz were growing weary. What time there was for rest had been used for repairing the stripped-down racer. This morning they had hit mud, and the red racer—and the men—were now covered in dried, caked earth, only their lips clean, licked clean, and their eyes under their goggles not covered.

  It had been a grueling race, with the path of the race unmarked and the citizens of the towns on the course not warned of the approaching speeding cars. The towns that were forewarned were worse, because the people stood in the middle of the road awaiting the approach of the cars. They had never seen autos that could do sixty miles an hour and had no understanding of how fast that was. Many drivers had been given the choice of hitting a tree and dying, or hitti
ng the spectators and taking them along. Most chose the tree.

  Sometimes spectators were angry at the drivers or at autos in general and threw rocks at the drivers. Sometimes they tried to slap the driver on the back in congratulations. However they did it, spectators caused drivers to lose their lives.

  Hank Montgomery, the driver of the Stutz, was cautious as he slowed down to forty to enter the little cowtown on the Arizona border. Next to him, his mechanic, Joe Fisher, leaned forward and strained to see what was ahead. Nothing seemed to be moving, and then, just as they passed the first building on the edge of town, they saw the reason for the empty street. To their left, slammed into a building, was Barney Parker’s Metz. The dust hadn’t settled from the wreck, and Barney lolled against the seat looking more dead than alive.

  Hank downshifted and started to slow the Stutz when Joe yelled and pointed. An angry-looking group of citizens, clubs, sticks and rocks in hand, not to mention a few rifles and shotguns, were approaching Barney’s car, but when they heard Hank’s motor, they began to turn toward Hank’s Stutz.

  “Get out of here!” Joe shouted.

  There were angry, armed people in front and in back of Hank and buildings on both sides. He could slam the car into gear, floor the accelerator and plow into the people, or he could—

  Hank did some of the fastest thinking he’d ever done, and some amazingly quick turning of the heavy steering wheel. He turned down an alley even as Joe yelled at him not to. If the alley was a dead end, they were done for. This was obviously one of those sleepy towns that wanted to stay that way and they resented autos tearing through their streets at all hours, scaring horses and making even the sidewalks unsafe. If they ever caught up with this race driver, Hank might not live to tell about it.

  There was a light at the end of the alley. It opened into a fenced yard where a woman stood feeding her chickens—or had been feeding them, because now she was paralyzed at the sight of a filthy auto traveling at a breathtaking speed coming through her fence.

  Both Hank and Joe ducked in unison from long practice as the fence hit the front of the car. When the men came up, they were attacked by squawking, flying chickens. Hank knocked one chicken off his lap then leaned out to brush two off the hood. Joe lifted a chicken from the floorboard and tossed it out.

  After they got through the other side of the fence, Hank slowed down and turned to look back. The farm lady was shaking her fist at them as her chickens flew everywhere and behind her came running a group of outraged citizens.

  “Are you crazy?” Joe yelled over the roar of the motor as Hank turned the car back toward the town. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I’m going to see if I can get Barney,” Hank yelled back.

  “No, you—” Joe yelled, then slammed back against the seat as Hank took off. Who was he to argue? He was only the mechanic while Hank was the owner and driver. What did it matter that it was his neck too? Hank did what he wanted.

  Joe held on to the side of the car as Hank revved up the car to forty, fifty, sixty. Joe saw the turn that led back toward the road where Barney’s car was wrecked and he prayed Hank wouldn’t try to take the corner at—

  Joe knew he aged twenty years on that turn as Hank took it at seventy miles an hour, barely missing the boardwalk on the far side. Joe smelled rubber and cursed as Hank pulled on the brake as he approached Barney’s Metz.

  “Get the gun!” Hank yelled.

  Joe obeyed as he reached for the pistol that Hank kept lashed to the floorboard but he knew that his hands were shaking too hard to use the thing.

  There were only three citizens standing near Barney, who was now limping out of his car. His mechanic had quit on him two days before. Barney was dazed, but as he saw Hank and Joe, then saw a furious mob turning the corner behind them, he knew what was going on. Without a backward glance to his destroyed car, he jumped into Joe’s lap as Hank sped ahead.

  It was difficult trying to get around the little town, driving over prairie-dog holes, dodging cactus, stopping to open and close gates. Joe complained about Barney’s weight while Barney bragged about how he would have beaten them except that he swerved to miss a dog and rammed into the side of the building.

  Joe was thinking Barney wasn’t so bad after all.

  “Damned animal bones are hell on tires,” Barney said.

  Joe and Hank exchanged looks, and an hour later, about six miles outside another little town, Hank stopped the car and told Barney to get out.

  “You can’t leave me here!” Barney said. “I’ll die of thirst.”

  “Only if you’ve forgotten how to walk,” Hank said as he put the car in gear and started moving.

  Joe leaned back and sighed. “Never felt so light in my life. Where to now, boss?”

  “To the finish line!”

  Hank Montgomery won the Harriman Derby and flicked mud off of himself as he walked to the platform and accepted the three-foot-tall silver trophy from the mayor of Phoenix.

  Joe stood at the bottom of the stairs waiting for him. They had been racing for eight days, with no sleep to speak of, and all Joe wanted was a bath and a bed. “You did get us rooms here, didn’t you?” he asked wearily between people congratulating them.

  “I got you a suite and me the top floor of the Brown,” Hank said, grinning.

  “Top—?” Joe began, then stopped. Sometimes he forgot that Hank was loaded, but then he guessed that was a pretty good compliment to pay to someone. Hank didn’t act like a rich guy—nor did he act like a college teacher.

  “Well, I’m going to bed. You comin’?”

  “In a while,” Hank said, removing his leather cap and doing his best to neaten hair that was dark blond when it didn’t have five or so pounds of mud in it.

  Joe followed Hank’s eyes to a very pretty young woman standing by the edge of the crowd. “You’re going to get into trouble,” Joe warned, then shrugged. What Hank Montgomery did was his own business. He paid Joe well and he shared the winner’s purse with him, and that’s all Joe wanted. He turned and made his way through the crowd.

  Dr. Henry Montgomery gathered his papers and books, slipped them into the heavy leather satchel and left the classroom. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man and his dark brown suit fit him perfectly, showing off the muscular body he had developed through years of exercise. Very few of his colleagues and, he hoped, none of his students, knew his background. To them he was an economics professor with excellent credentials who gave difficult tests and expected a great deal from his students. Some of the other teachers didn’t like his ideas on labor and worried that he might anger some of the richer alumni, but since Dr. Montgomery remained quiet and wasn’t involved in any scandals, they accepted him. They did not know of the wealth in his family or that during his holidays he raced automobiles, nor did they guess there was another side to Dr. Montgomery.

  Hank walked the mile and a half to his house, a pretty little brick building set at the end of a quiet dirt lane, heavy shade trees towering over it and everywhere lush greenery growing beautifully in the California sun. Hank smiled as he saw the house, as he was looking forward to its tranquillity and the hovering, maternal care of his housekeeper, Mrs. Soames. He had student essays to read and grade and he was working on his second book about labor and management.

  As soon as he opened the door, Mrs. Soames came rushing into the room, a heavy cloud of powdered scent hovering about her, her face bursting with smiles—as was the rest of her bursting. Mrs. Soames was an excellent cook but she “tasted” the dishes a little too often.

  “You’re home,” she said happily, then held out a letter to him. “It’s from those people up north, the ones the governor wants you to take care of.”

  “That’s not what he said,” Hank began. “He—” Hank stopped because it was no use explaining again to her what his job was to be. He opened the letter while Mrs. Soames stood there and watched, knowing it was no use asking her to leave.

  He frowned when he finished reading.
“It seems the Cauldens want me to come and stay with them. They want me to be their guest until after the hops are in.”

  “They’re up to something,” Mrs. Soames said suspiciously.

  Hank rubbed the back of his neck. “Probably just want me to get to know them and like them. I’m not likely to take the laborers’ side if I’m staying in the luxurious quarters of the management.”

  “So, are you planning to stay with them?”

  He put the letter down on a table. “I think I’ll decline their gracious offer. I need to do some extra work with a few students anyway, so I’ll stay here until just a few days before the workers are due to arrive to pick the hops.”

  “Good!” Mrs. Soames said firmly. “Now you sit there and rest. I’ve fixed you a nice dinner.”

  He watched her hurry out, then poured himself a large whiskey, removed his jacket and sat down to read the evening newspaper.

  Mrs. Soames, in the kitchen, wasn’t nearly as calm as Hank was. She slammed pie dough down on the table and attacked it with a rolling pin. Too many people took advantage of her Dr. Hank. They seemed to think he could do everything at once. They thought he could teach those ungrateful students of his, be the Executive Secretary of whatever-his-title-was, race his cars—the only fun he had—and, in his spare time, prevent labor strikes. It was more than one man should be asked to do.

  But Dr. Hank believed in helping people less fortunate than himself and he would risk his life to help them. And didn’t she know that to be true! Six years ago she was married and living in Maine with the odious man who had been her husband for nearly twenty years. He drank; he beat her. She bore scars from his abuse but no one would help her get away from him. Her family said she was his wife for better or worse and she just happened to get only the worse. They were sorry to see her wounds but there was nothing they could do to help her. The police wouldn’t help; the hospital where she spent a week once when he’d nearly killed her gave her back to him. She ran away from him three times, even managed to get two hundred miles away once, but he always found her again. She had almost given up hope until Dr. Montgomery, driving by in one of his motorcars, happened to see the old man strike Mrs. Soames.