Gay Place

by Billy Lee Brammer

  They were all on their feet, stumbling along, eyes fastened on the speck that was Earle Fielding, white-overalled against the blue sky. The speck grew larger; Fielding rolled over slowly and they could see he was nearly spread-eagled, holding the air on his outstretched arms and then turning again, as if searching for some agreeable position in an enormous feather bed.

  “It’s not going to open …” a girl cried out.

  “Sure it is,” Harris said. “He’s just waiting, giving us a little show. That’s the whole point of —”

  And then the chute billowed out, swelling to full bloom, brightly colored nylon flashing in the sun’s glare. Earle jerked crazily through one vast pendulum swing, arms reaching up for the lines, sailing with the wind. He did not appear to be coming down anywhere near the pasture.

  Roy looked back once again to see Ouida on the front steps, open-mouthed and undecided, and then he was running ahead of the others in yellowing, knee-high pasture grass, brushing past enormous sunflower stalks and occasional clumps of dwarfed mesquite. He paused once to get his bearings; Earle soared overhead, a thousand feet in the sky. Giffen drove past in the roadster, stopped and backed up. Roy climbed in, and they started off across country, bouncing over old wagon ruts. “Where is he …? Which way …?” Giffen was shouting. Roy watched the sky and gave directions. They reached the top of a small rise at the instant Earle came plunging down in a boulder-strewn space near the river, jerked puppetlike on the end of the lines. He bounced once and a second time; the chute began to collapse, caught the wind, then became entangled in a mesquite bush. Roy and George Giffen got out of the car and ran downhill toward the river. Earle lay twisted on his back, mud-smeared and grotesque, arms pulled above his head as if taken from behind by an invisible assailant. They bent over him.

  “God damn …” Giffen said, horrified.

  Earle’s eyes fluttered and a whisp of a groan escaped from his lips. He struggled to sit up.

  “Are you hurt?” Roy said. He poked around on Earle’s back, feeling idiotic.

  “All over,” Earle said, turning his head from side to side.

  The others arrived and circled round. Earle brightened noticeably. “How’d it look?” he said to them. “I thought I might try a figure eight, but I put off too goddam long.”

  “The wind …”

  “You missed that pasture …”

  “By about half a mile …”

  “I don’t think I could’ve hit it if I’d dropped straight down,” Fielding said. “Once we got up I couldn’t even see the pasture. I was all turned around.”

  They helped him up the hill and let him stretch out in the back seat of one of the cars. They started back toward the ranch.

  The Mexican laborer, down in a hollow sawing wood, looked up as the procession of cars passed by. He smiled, and on a crazy impulse waved his floppy hat. Although no one looked at him from the car windows, he shared a little of their excitement. He had stopped sawing wood to watch the parachute jump; it was the first time he had ever seen such a thing.

  Sixteen

  OUIDA WAITED ON THE front lawn. “Is he all right?” she yelled to them. She moved closer to see. Earle sat grinning in the back seat. Then he got out of the car, put his arm round his estranged wife and planted a long kiss on her mouth. She pulled away after a moment, astonished. He had been drinking inside before the jump without any noticeable change coming over him. Now he beamed his new confidence, as if crazy drunk. He sat down and rested under one of the oak trees.

  Ouida stood and watched after him until Rinemiller arrived. Alfred came over and talked with Earle for some time, discussing the jump and the peculiar characteristics of the light plane he had piloted. Ouida suggested that Earle go upstairs and bathe, but he continued to sit out under the trees, wearing the mud-smeared overalls like a battle dress.

  Willie and Cathryn went to play tennis. One of the men wandered around the grounds, waving the cardboard on which the tournament brackets had been drawn up, stressing the urgency of completing first-round matches before dark. Otherwise, he warned, the next day’s quarter finals would be a mess and there’d be little time for serious drinking.

  Roy told George Giffen to wait for him while he went to make a phone call. George walked over to the courts and watched Cathryn’s bosom bounce up and down.

  Roy completed his call and wandered down a dark hall toward the front of the house. He met Ouida emerging from the lavatory. She carried a damp towel.

  “I thought I’d at least wash that muck off Earle’s face,” she said.

  He stared at the towel; he gaped at Ouida; she moved closer and touched his own perspiring forehead with the towel. He was conscious of the profusion of dartweeds and cocklebur that had got lodged inside his trousers during the run across the field. He shifted slightly, scratching his leg. She gave him a great open-mouthed kiss, held on for a minute and then stepped away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, holding the towel up against his face. She was close to him again; their hips nearly touching; her eyes all soft and wise with understanding; she kissed him again and held the wet cloth to his face. She kept kissing and drawing back a few inches, looking at him and resuming the kiss, her face coming at him, turned to one side and then another. It was like a movie love scene by Hitchcock: all that soft talk going on, mouth to mouth …

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I hadn’t any business …”

  “I didn’t know you’d called … That goddam Ellen never …”

  “Oh, Roy, I was just so jealous, and everything seemed hopeless, I …” Her hair was gardenia-scented and her fresh mouth tasted of expensive whiskey.

  “Things all mixed up …” he said.

  “I know … Isn’t it —”

  “I should have come on out here last night.”

  “God, I wish you had! If you’d only … So ridiculous … I was furious ’cause you didn’t and you were mad at me for being so demanding and we each took it out on the other …”

  “I should have driven out.”

  “I’ve really no right to pry into your personal life. I shouldn’t care who you’re going to bed with. It’s just that girl I can’t stand. Anyone else …”

  “To bed? No, I …”

  “Anyone else I don’t think would set me off like it did. God, I’m sorry, dearest … We’re really so much alike, let’s declare a truce. Would you promise me you won’t have anything more to do with her?”

  “Sure, I — There’s never … not last night at least … been anything betwee — Not since, Jesus really there —”

  “Oh, promise will you, Roy? It’s terrible, what these things do. I hadn’t intended, but last night, after that call, I couldn’t help it … If you’d heard what she said on the phone. I let Alfred make love to me, pretending at first it was you and then beginning to like it and knowing it was him and liking it because it was the worst thing I could think of …”

  “Rinemiller? My God, you —”

  “He came out last night. That’s why I called. Hoping to get you to come help. He was practically in a state of caterwaul, and pretty soon, after that phone call, I was the same way. Oh Roy, I …”

  “Rinemiller? He was here … last night?”

  “Yes … It was awful …”

  She kissed him again. They were very close in the hallway; piano music had resumed in the main part of the house, and through the windows they could hear the fellow with the tournament card calling off the names of first-round contestants. Her mouth searched his face; the back of her blouse had grown damp against his hand, and the hallway steamed a little.

  “I’ll be here again in just a minute,” she said. “Will you wait? Right here? I’ll take this to Earle and be right back. There’s a small bedroom down the other end of this hall. No one knows about it. I’ll take you down there and we’ll lock ourselves in. The hell with all these others … We’ll never have to come out …”

  He stood there gasping for an answer. She kissed him
once more and then headed toward the front of the house. He stood in the dark for a short time, his face and neck gone sticky with perspiration. He went into the washroom and drew another towel across the flesh under his collar. Then he walked toward the rear of the house to make his phone call. On the grounds in the back, near the courts, he found Giffen.

  “Let’s go for a ride in your Alfa,” he said.

  Giffen was delighted. He got quickly to his feet and looked around for the car, sighting it at the side of the house.

  “I want somebody else to hear your story,” Roy said.

  “Listen — I don’t want to get in any trouble …”

  “This way,” Roy said, “you can be sure of keeping out of trouble.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Don’t you want to go visit the Governor?”

  “Sure … I always wanted … but …”

  “He wants to hear this story,” Roy said. “Old Arthur — him and me, we’re great friends. He’s got a place out here, just up the river, and he wants to talk to you, George.”

  Giffen was not yet convinced. He thought about Cathryn’s bosom and the crazy afternoon he’d spent with the lobbyist and bending down to kiss the Archbishop’s hand the week before — all this, the sinful emotions and the righteous ones, nagged at his sense of order. He decided, finally, to go with Roy to see the Governor in the hope that Fenstemaker might in some way relieve him of responsibility. Roy had said earlier he should have told the priest. But what was the point of telling a priest you’d just done the right thing?

  They climbed into the roadster and sped toward the main highway.

  Seventeen

  HE HAD CALLED FENSTEMAKER’S country place, but he had not thought to talk personally with the Governor. Now he wondered if it had been a mistake. Barging in like this might only cause confusion, and further agitate George Giffen. And perhaps Rinemiller had been right — right for the wrong reasons, thinking only of himself, but a source of sound advice nonetheless. Why should he have presumed? It was really none of his business. Let George carry his burden round with him until he had told enough people so that the story was absorbed by the local folklore, became a part of the public domain. Let Fenstemaker find out on his own good time. He wondered how all this should concern Roy Sherwood.

  The little roadster ground up the hills; Giffen kept his eyes on the road, looking unhappy. Roy wished he had thought to talk the matter over with Willie.

  The Governor’s country mansion, a hideous Gothic-cum-Federalist affair, stuck out on the terraced hillside. Giffen stared in wonder; to his innocent gaze the gaucherie signified only wealth, vast power, a way of life unrevealed. For Roy it was merely an eyesore. The grotesque, the absurd, the bizarre — he’d grown up on it, new-rich vulgarity leavening his environment so completely that the conception itself had become a tired cliché, no more tormenting to his senses than the crude wink of an old streetwalker.

  His vision of real wealth, affluence — the abundant Life — was conditioned on a level of experience entirely remote from his own. It had nothing to do with pigeon shoots, parachute jumps, twenty-five-year-old whiskey or replicas of rambling summer houses seen at Newport. Even the private railroad car — his grandfather’s — still parked alongside the cattle ramp on a spur near home — had no part in shaping his own touchstones of opulence. He thought about this as Giffen steered the roadster through the front gate of the Governor’s property. He thought back, attempting to lend a single identifying symbol to the idea, and finally he hit on it … laughed aloud … wondering what primrosed image of bearskin rugs and cerise Cadillacs clouded Rinemiller’s mind … For Roy it had been simply a radio program in his youth, a harmless interval of exotica falling between the Metropolitan Opera and the special overseas broadcasts from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu. Tortured Saturday afternoons, he remembered, in Fort Stockton. Just off the El Paso highway and the bald slopes of the mountains. You’ll know you’re there by the sound of the spluttering radio … He had dreamed of creamy-complexioned women in short skirts and fur hats, stepping out of prewar Packard convertibles, enormously chic in the shade of monogrammed roadhouse canopies … He moved his lips, repeating the words aloud:

  “… From Frank Daly’s Meadowbrook, just off the Pompton Turnpike (was it Merritt Parkway?) near Little Old New York we bring you the music of Charlie Barnett and his …”

  Giffen stared at him in astonishment.

  “What’d you say, Roy?”

  They were parked in an open space near the main entrance to the house. There was music coming from inside and from loudspeakers nesting in the trees, the sounds blending to produce a notably unpleasant effect of mismated stereophonics.

  “Let’s go see old Arthur,” Roy said.

  They left the roadster and headed up the front steps. Roy peered through the blinds: two secretaries labored over electric typewriters, strangely empurpled in the fluorescent glare. He turned and walked round the side of the house, Giffen at his heels. They did not see Fenstemaker right off — not until they were nearly directly upon him. He lay floating on a brightly colored air mattress at the far end of the pool, the breeze stirring lambent blue eddies against his large arms. He lay face down, big nose nearly touching the water. He wore khaki swim shorts; a checkered golf cap was pulled down almost to where the ears joined the skull. There was even, Roy noted, a buckle on the back of the cap.

  They stepped up on the blue marble surface and walked round to the other side, coming to a stop a few feet away from where the Governor lay. He still did not seem aware of their presence.

  “Afternoon,” Roy said.

  Fenstemaker opened one eye and squinted in the sun. “Goddam,” he said. He reached down at his side, fumbled with a pair of dark glasses, and set them on his nose. He paddled over to the bank and slid his big body across from mattress to marble. Then he looked up at them again, sitting with his feet dangling in the water.

  “You should’ve let me know you were comin’ out,” he said. “Planned a barbecue or somethin’ …”

  “You know George Giffen?”

  “Sure … Sure I know George …” Fenstemaker extended a great freckled hand. Giffen grabbed it and said something incomprehensible.

  “Get ya’ll a drink?”

  They shook their heads. Roy lit a cigarette and looked over the grounds. Giffen maintained the semi-crouch position he had assumed when bending down to shake hands with the Governor. Roy dragged a canvas chair to the bank of the pool and sat down. Then, with as little prefatory comment as possible, he made George repeat his story. As George droned on, Fenstemaker lowered himself in and out of the water, gasping happily as if being immersed in steam. He did not seem really interested in the story, although he did appear vaguely pleased about something when Giffen was finished.

  “Would you repeat all this in court?” he said suddenly.

  Giffen stammered for a moment. “… If you think it’s the right thing to do,” he said.

  “Got no choice,” the Governor said. “I’m gonna call the District Attorney in just a few minutes. Could you stay here and talk to him if he comes out tonight? Stay and have dinner with me?”

  An ecstatic grin spread across Giffen’s face. “Yessir,” he said. “… Sure I will if you think it’s the right —”

  “I’m about ready to see that son of a bitch is put away. With George’s testimony, I think it’ll be a cinch … You told him hell no — that right? You’re the key to this whole business, George, you got to realize that …”

  “That right?” George said. He gazed at Fenstemaker with unquestioned devotion.

  “Sure as hell is … People damn fortunate to have a man like you in the Legislature. Gonna look tremendous to the folks back in your district, too. Gonna work out perfect all the way. It’s a goddam bird’s nest on the ground …”

  They talked some more. Roy insisted that he had to get back, and agreed to drive the roadster. Fenstemaker said he would bring Giffen into town next mor
ning in the limousine. George would spend the night and they could have a good long talk. “You mind having to miss your party over there at the Fielding place?” he said. George shook his head …

  “Whatever you say, Governor …”

  “That so?” Fenstemaker said, vastly pleased. “Well then why don’t you walk right up that little rock path there and tap on those glass doors and tell one of my girls to bring us something to drink … Scotch all right? Roy? … Tell ’em Scotch and one of those fizz bottles and a pitcher of water … And tell ’em to put some different music on that phonograph …”

  George stood in front of them, moving his head up and down; he turned and walked quickly toward the house. The Governor pulled off his dark glasses and began talking rapidly to Roy:

  “How’d you get him out here? Have any trouble?”

  “No … Willie got the story first. I just —”

  “I was worried. Goddam I was worried. I been out here all afternoon wonderin’ what in hell I ought to do. Ain’t that somethin’? An honest man. I’d have thought Rinemiller would succeed in sellin’ him the wrong load of cotton. You must’ve got to him before —”

  “You knew about all this. How —”

  “I got my sources,” the Governor said.

  “But how’d you know he talked with Rinemiller?”

  “ ’Cause Rinemiller called that fella early this afternoon. From the Fielding place …”

  “How’d you —”

  “Well now I don’t tap lines, and I don’t tape-record conversations — but I’ll sure as hell listen in on one. Hell! I’ve had a suite in that hotel for years. Half the help there owe their jobs to me. Including the switchboard operator.”

  Fenstemaker lay in a hammock and pulled the golf cap down over his eyes; he curled his lips slightly and sucked on a tooth.

  “What’d he tell him?” Roy said. “What was the phone call about? You say Alfred called in to town?”

  “He called to throw a scare into that lobbyist. Told him Giffen was goin’ around tellin’ people he’d been offered a bribe. But that he’d managed to shut him up … And now he was ready to shake him down for George’s share — and more. He chewed the fella good and proper, apparently. Scared hell out of him. I don’t think the lobbyist was just playin’ along, either. Didn’t sound like it.”