Jack and Susan in 1933

by McDowell, Michael

  Jack blushed. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I think I’d better stay here and protect Susan.”

  “I’ll protect Susan,” said Blossom. “I think you’d better stay hidden for the time being. If they’ve got secrets, then it’s probably a good idea if we have a secret, too. You’re ours.”

  “If I don’t stay here, what am I supposed to do?” Jack asked.

  “You have to take care of Scotty and Zelda,” Susan laughed.

  “Exactly,” said Blossom. “We also have to get rid of that plane.”

  “But—” Jack protested.

  “Time for buts later,” said Blossom.

  “Susan—”

  “Later,” Susan agreed. “You trust Blossom the way I trust you.”

  Jack sighed. He turned to Blossom. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Are you rich?” Colleen asked him.

  “Ah—not very,” said Jack. First-time flyers were generally terrified. This young woman had no fear in her voice or countenance. She intertwined her fingers and cracked her knuckles.

  First-time flyers who were not frightened into paralysis were invariably absorbed by the novel spectacle of viewing familiar landscapes from a different vantage point.

  Colleen seemed to care for nothing but certain details of Jack’s life.

  “But your wife is rich?”

  “Barbara? Ah, yes, she is. Quite rich.”

  “Your wife could use a poke in the chops,” Colleen remarked. “Head that way,” she pointed, off to the right. They were flying low over the desert, going west from the ranch. “Have you ever given her one?”

  “A poke in the chops?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not intentionally,” said Jack. “But once at a dance at the country club, I slipped on—”

  “Who spoiled her?” asked Colleen, no longer interested since the lick in the chops that Jack once gave Barbara had been unintentional. “You or her father?”

  “Ah, her father.”

  “You mean she came that way, and you still married her?” Before Jack could frame a response to that remark, either to satisfy Colleen or himself, Colleen pointed again. “It’s just over this rise. So look sharp.”

  A few minutes after Harmon had left, Blossom had gone to the main building, calling Harmon and Barbara into the dining room on the spurious excuse of asking what Susan’s favorite foods were so that the invalid might be indulged. While these two were occupied, Colleen and Jack ran to the plane, and Jack quickly took off.

  It was Colleen’s job to show Jack a place where the plane might be hidden.

  She guided him to a little plateau in the Virginia Mountains—the ugly range of peaks directly across the narrow desert from Mt. Bright. It was invisible from any place near the Excelsior Ranch.

  The plateau was so tiny, Jack wondered whether he would be able to land safely. He circled three times before he had the courage to make the attempt.

  Unconcerned, Colleen continued to ask him personal questions. Finally, Jack realized that Colleen had cast herself in the role of prospective mother-in-law and wanted to make certain that Susan would have a suitable mate in John Austin Beaumont. When he’d figured that out, it became a pleasure to respond to the inquiries.

  “Who do you think is more beautiful—your wife or Susan?”

  “Susan, unquestionably. If I’d met Susan before I’d met Barbara, Barbara would not have had a chance with me.”

  Colleen liked that answer. “And now you wished you had met Susan first.”

  “No,” said Jack, “because I love her even more now, having been married to someone like Barbara.” That was not exactly the truth, however. In precise honesty, he wished he’d never seen Barbara’s face. But somehow Colleen, in appearance a young woman of consuming sensibility, had inspired him with a kind of romanticism. Also, he liked very much to hear someone talk of his love for Susan, and Susan’s love for him, as the happy fact that it was.

  Colleen sighed a deep romantic sigh, and the plane landed a good five feet before a precipice that dropped a couple of hundred feet onto another, lower plateau of jagged rocks.

  Jack and Colleen climbed out of the plane.

  Jack peered over the precipice at the treacherous rocks below. He thought of his marriage to Barbara.

  He looked up at the cloudless sky, and the sun that burned in it, bright and hot and white and unflawed. He thought of being married to Susan.

  He turned away from the precipice. “Have you ever fallen in love, Colleen?” he asked in the generousness of his good feeling.

  Colleen drew herself up tall. “True gentlemen don’t make personal remarks,” said Colleen huffily, and turned sharply away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  DESPITE HER NEW opinion that Jack was a creature undeserving of consideration, Colleen led him down from the plateau, a journey that was neither easy nor readily apparent. It involved, in fact, a good deal of scrambling and sliding and creeping and fearing for his life.

  Finally they reached the desert floor, and Colleen, still huffy, led him a few hundred feet along the base of the mountain.

  “Is this the way to the cabin?” Jack asked.

  Colleen glared at him over her shoulder, as if to say, Of course not, you fool. Aloud she said, “Thought you must be rich.”

  “Why is that?” asked Jack.

  “’Cause no girl’d fall in love with you on account of your looks.”

  “Colleen,” someone cried, “you lie. You lie like a cheap Brussels rug.”

  Suddenly before them was a thin young man with yellow hair. He held the reins of three horses.

  “I’m Wesley, Mr. Beaumont,” said the young man, who, on closer inspection, wasn’t so young. But his hair was very yellow. “I know everything, so you don’t have to be reticent around me. Don’t worry about Colleen,” he said in a confidential but loud tone, “everything ruffles this bird’s feathers.”

  He handed a pair of reins to Jack.

  “I’ve never been on a horse,” said Jack.

  “Um-humh,” said Colleen, as if her worst opinions of Jack had been confirmed.

  “Help him on, Colleen. There’s nothing to worry about, Mr. Beaumont. We don’t have very far to go, and Coral is gentle as a lamb.”

  “’Cept when there’s a plane after her,” said Colleen under her breath. “And I wish there was one comin’ now.”

  The sun was high and hot overhead. The horse was hard and smelly beneath. Jack felt as if he were straddling a railway arch during a prolonged earthquake. It might be better if Susan didn’t want children, since after this ride he wasn’t certain it would be possible.

  When Wesley pushed open the cabin door, Scotty and Zelda hurtled out and didn’t come back until Jack had had a couple of minutes to look the place over.

  Then they looked up at him as if to say, What have you done with Susan?

  “Susan had a little accident,” Jack explained to the dogs. “But she’ll be fine, and she’s sent me to look after you and keep you company.”

  Wesley and Colleen exchanged a glance.

  “Do you think they took all that in?” Wesley asked.

  Scotty and Zelda trotted over to Jack and dropped down on their haunches on either side of him, as if to say, Of course we understood him.

  “One of us’ll be out with food and news every day,” said Colleen.

  “Food and news,” said Wesley with a radiant smile. “It’ll probably be me that comes. Don’t get much masculine company around this place, and I’m due for a little conversation on the subjects that can’t be broached around the fairer sex.”

  “Go on, Wes,” snorted Colleen. “Get five women together, and you’d think you was in a sailors’ bar an hour after the ship come in. I was raised by a widower uncle with five boys, and the whole lot of ’em worked on the railroad, but I never heard such filth before I came here.”

  Jack tried to get the two of them to tell him everything they knew—about the attempt on Susan’s life, about Ba
rbara’s presence at the ranch, about Harmon’s arrival, about everything that had been said, or done, or hinted at. Neither would satisfy him.

  “From us, it’d be gossip,” said Wesley. “Talk to Blossom. Or talk to Susan. For they know more’n either Colleen or me.”

  With that, they were off.

  A week before, Jack had woken up in a bed on the fourth floor of an apartment building that looked out on East Sixty-eighth Street in Manhattan, the most crowded island in the history of the world. He’d shaved with a razor that worked by electric current. Over the radio he’d heard about a massacre in Madrid that had taken place only hours before. He’d damned the clamor of morning traffic. He’d complained to a neighbor that the elevator was always stuck on another floor when you called it. He’d cursed himself for choosing the slowest of two dozen lines of ticket buyers at Grand Central Station, and in his frustration he counted two hundred sixteen travelers who got their tickets before he did.

  That was seven days ago.

  Now he found himself in a cabin without electricity, running water, or improvements of any kind. That cabin was located at the innermost reach of a narrow canyon dug deep into the sides of a dark mountain, in one of the remoter parts of a state that itself was fabled for being the end of the world.

  His wife was less than two miles away, and didn’t know of his presence.

  His boss was less than two miles away, and had no idea he was there.

  The woman he loved was less than two miles away, but she couldn’t get to him because she was in bed, trying to recover from an attempt on her life.

  And all Jack knew about any of this was that it was his job to take care of Scotty and Zelda.

  It wasn’t a particularly complicated or onerous duty.

  He filled two bowls with the dogs’ stew that was warming on the fire. When they’d eaten that, he filled the bowls with water. Then he let them out again for a few minutes, and when one of them scratched lightly at the door, he let them back in again.

  He lay on the bed and coaxed them up onto his lap. He gently tweaked their ears, something they seemed to like very much, and he talked to them about Susan.

  He fell asleep and didn’t wake till Zelda began to breathe hotly into his ear. He tried to push her away, but she came back.

  Finally he sat up, grabbed Zelda, and planted her firmly on the floor. The fire in the hearth had nearly died out. It was only embers, but by that feeble light he could see Scotty by the door.

  “Oh, need to go outside again?” he asked, and got up. He went to the door and pushed it open, but neither Scotty nor Zelda made any move to leave the cabin.

  “Well, if you didn’t want to go out, why did you wake me up?”

  Because someone’s coming, was his next thought, for now he could hear the slow clop clop clop of hooves on the stony ground.

  He checked his watch. Two A.M.

  He hoped it was Blossom, with good news.

  It seemed more likely that it was Blossom with bad news. Or that it was Barbara or Harmon, whose arrival would only constitute ill tidings. It might even be whoever had tried to kill Susan the night before, at just about this hour, returning to finish that job, or else to start a new one out, with Jack as victim.

  The visitor was none of those.

  It was Susan.

  “Oh my God,” he cried, running out to help her down from the horse, “what are you doing out of bed?”

  “I had to see you,” she said, drawing in her breath painfully.

  He wasn’t actually helping her to get down so much as he was putting her in danger of breaking her ankle, which was caught in the stirrup.

  “Please,” she said. “I can get down by myself.” After taking a deep breath, she did exactly that. “But if you’ll bring out a bucket of water…”

  “If you’re thirsty,” he cried, “come inside the cabin.”

  “A bucket of water for the horse,” said Susan.

  He rushed to do her bidding. When he came back, he found she’d tied the horse to a stake in the ground and was feeding him quarters of an apple as a treat.

  Scotty and Zelda patiently waited to be acknowledged. Susan tried to bend over to them, but pain stopped her. Jack instantly snatched the dogs up and held them out to be caressed.

  “Did Mr. Beaumont take good care of you?” she asked them.

  They wagged their tails, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief. He half feared he’d done something wrong with them, in the way bachelors are reluctant to pick up a fragile infant.

  “Now let me take care of you,” Jack said. She nodded acquiescence. He led her into the cabin and laid her down on the bed. He placed every pillow in the cabin beneath her head, then he folded two blankets and shoved them under the pillows.

  “Anything to eat? Anything to drink?” he begged.

  “No. I can’t stay long, and there are a number of things we have to talk about, and think about.”

  “Yes, there are. And the first one is, I love you.”

  “You told me that before. I believed you then. Though I don’t actually much mind hearing it again.”

  “I love you. And I want to marry you.”

  “Oh dear,” said Susan. “This time around I was hoping for a little more romantic proposal than I got from Harmon, but that’s all right.”

  Jack started down on his knees for the romantic proposal, but she stopped him. “If you’re down there, I can’t see you, and besides, it’s too late, I’ve already accepted. Though I don’t know how much good that will do either of us. We both have to get divorces first.”

  “But you said you weren’t going back to Harmon,” Jack protested.

  “I’m not,” said Susan. “Even if you weren’t in the picture, I’d divorce Harmon. But Barbara says that you and she intend to remain married.”

  “I’m astonished,” said Jack. “I checked in Reno. She’s filed papers.”

  Susan thought for a moment. “She lied about that, then. I suppose she also lied about the police arresting the woman who murdered Marcellus.”

  “What woman?” asked Jack, wide-eyed.

  “Barbara said an anarchist friend of Richard Grace’s…” Susan didn’t even bother to finish the implausible tale. She shook her head sadly. “So I suppose I’m still wanted by the police.”

  “Nothing you tell me makes any sense,” said Jack. “Why do the police want you?”

  Susan stared at him. “For Marcellus’s murder. The police searched the Quarry, and in my bedroom there they found wire cutters and a page from an instruction manual for the touring car, so now they obviously think I murdered him. Someone planted that evidence, of course.”

  “No,” said Jack, contradicting her. “No one planted that evidence, because there wasn’t any evidence to plant. The police never searched the Quarry. They don’t suspect you of anything. At least not of last Friday, which is when I telephoned them.”

  “Then why did you send me the telegram, telling me to leave Reno?”

  “Because I didn’t want MacIsaac to find you. He got your address from the Graces, and was coming out here to find you—and kill you, I think.”

  It was Susan’s turn to be mystified. “Why does MacIsaac want to kill me?”

  “Because he’s the one who murdered Marcellus.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No. But I think he did.”

  “So Barbara lied both about the evidence and about the real murderer being found.”

  “Apparently,” said Jack. “No, not apparently. She did lie about it.”

  “Why did she lie, though? And even if MacIsaac murdered Marcellus, why is he trying to kill me? Was he the pilot of that plane last night?”

  “He could have been, I suppose. I rented it in Reno, and the owner said that someone had taken it only the day before.”

  “Maybe he flew up here to visit the Dirt Hole,” Susan suggested.

  “The Dirt Hole?”

  More explanations. For half an hour more, the two went through
everything that had happened since they’d last seen each other, everything they’d feared, and everything they now suspected. They came to the conclusion, in itself simple enough, that everyone was lying.

  But this conclusion provided no answers for all the other mysteries surrounding Jack and Susan.

  Susan lay on the bed, half sitting up against the pile of blankets and pillows. Jack sat cross-legged on the floor, where it was easiest for her to see him.

  “What now?” Jack had to ask at last.

  “What now?” Susan echoed. “I sneak back to the ranch, and hope no one sees me. Tomorrow I play loving invalid, and I say very sweetly to Barbara, ‘How is Jack? I’m so glad you two are going to remain together. Please give him my regards.’”

  Then they both laughed. And then were silent.

  Then Jack said again, “I love you.”

  “I love you,” said Susan.

  “I’d love to—”

  “We can’t,” said Susan hurriedly, apologetically. “I didn’t do anything to deserve this divorce. I know it’s terrible of me, but I want to keep it that way.”

  Jack was silent.

  “Aren’t you going to make an attempt to talk me out of my resolution?” Susan asked at last.

  “No,” replied Jack miserably. “Unfortunately, I feel exactly the same.”

  They were silent a few more moments, then Susan said suddenly, “But I really do want to…”

  “Don’t let’s talk about it anymore,” said Jack hurriedly. “While you’re playing invalid, what should I do?”

  Susan evidently had something in mind, but she hesitated to say it.

  “Go on,” Jack prompted her. “If it will help, I’ll do it.”

  “You might visit the mine and see if you can find out what MacIsaac was doing in there.”

  “Of course,” said Jack. “I should have thought of that. Why did you hesitate to suggest it?”

  “Because I hate the place. I hate places that are dark and enclosed and where I might get stuck and—”

  “I hate high places,” said Jack. “That’s why my father made me learn to fly a plane. But dark places don’t bother me. I used to love exploring caves.”