I opened my eyes. Jennie was standing next to my bed, looking down at me. When she saw my eyes open, she smiled. "Hello, Jonas."
"I was sleeping," I said, like a child just waking from a nap. "I was dreaming something foolish. I was dreaming I was hundreds of years old."
"It was a happy dream, then. I’m glad. Happy dreams will help you get well faster."
I raised myself up on one elbow and the pulleys squeaked as I reached for the cigarettes on the table next to the bed. Quickly she fluffed the pillows and moved them in behind me to support my back. I dragged on the cigarette. The smoke drove the sleep from my brain.
"In another few weeks, they'll have the cast off your leg and you can go home."
"I hope so, Jennie," I said.
Suddenly, I realized she wasn't wearing her hospital white. "This is the first time I've seen you in a black veil, Jennie. Is it something special?"
"No, Jonas. This is what I always wear, except when I'm on duty in the hospital."
"Then this is your day off?"
"There are no days off in the service of Our Saviour," she said simply. "No, Jonas, I've come to say good-by."
"Good-by? But I don't understand. You said it would be a few weeks before I— "
"I'm going away, Jonas."
I stared up at her stupidly. "Going away?"
"Yes, Jonas," she said quietly. "I’ve only been here at Mercy Hospital until I could get transportation to the Philippines. We're rebuilding a hospital there that was destroyed in the war. Now I am free to leave, by plane."
"But you can't, Jennie," I said. "You can't leave the people you know, the language you speak. You'll be a stranger there, you'll be alone."
Her fingers touched the crucifix hanging from the black leather cincture beneath her garment. A quiet look of calm deepened in her gray eyes. "I am never alone," she said simply. "He is always with me."
"You don't have to, Jennie," I said. I took the pamphlet that I'd found on the table by my bed and opened it. "You've only made a temporary profession. You can resign any time you want. There's still a three-year probationary period before you take your final vows. You don't belong here, Jennie. It's only because you were hurt and angry. You're much too young and beautiful to hide your life away behind a black veil."
She still did not answer.
"Don't you understand what I’m saying, Jennie? I want you to come back where you belong."
She closed her eyes slowly and when she opened them, they were misted with tears. But when she spoke, her voice was steady with the sureness of her knowledge and faith. "It's you who don't understand, Jonas," she said. "I have no place to which I desire to return, for it is here, in His house, that I belong."
I started to speak but she raised her hand gently. "You think I came to Him out of hurt and anger? You're wrong," she said quietly. "One does not run from life to God, one runs to God for life. All my years I sought Him, without knowing what I was seeking. The love I found out there was a mere mockery of what I knew love could be; the charity I gave was but the smallest fraction of the charity in me to give; the mercy I showed was nothing compared with His mercy within me. Here, in His house and in His work, I have found a greater love than any I have ever known. Through His love, I have found security and contentment and happiness, in accordance with His divine will."
She paused for a moment, looking down at the crucifix in her fingers. When she looked up again, her eyes were clear and untroubled. "Is there anything in this world, Jonas, that can offer more than God?"
I didn't answer.
Slowly she held out her left hand toward me. I looked down and saw the heavy silver ring on her third finger. "He has invited me into His house," she said softly, "and I have taken His ring to wear so that I may dwell in His glory forever."
I took her hand and pressed my lips to the ring. I felt her fingers brush my hair lightly, then she moved to the foot of my bed, where she turned to look at me. "I shall think of you often, my friend," she said gently. "And I shall pray for you."
I was silent as I ground my cigarette out. There was a beauty in Jennie's eyes that had never been there before. "Thank you, Sister," I said quietly.
Without another word, she turned and went out the door. I stared down at the foot of the bed where she had stood, but now even the ghost of her was gone.
I turned my face into the pillow and cried.
7
I left the hospital early in September. I was sitting in the wheel chair, watching Robair pack the last of my things into the valise, when the door opened. "Hi, Junior."
"Nevada! What are you doing way down here?"
"Came to carry you home."
I laughed. Funny how you can go along for years hardly thinking about someone, then all of a sudden be so glad to see him. "You didn't have to do that," I said. "Robair could have managed all right."
"I asked him to come up, Mr. Jonas. I figured it would be like old times. It gets mighty lonely out there at the ranch with nothing to do."
"An' I figured I could use a vacation," Nevada said. "The war's over an' the show's closed down for the winter. And there's nothin' Martha likes better than to do a little invalidin'. She's down there now, gittin' things ready for us."
I looked at the two of them and grinned. "It's a put-up job, huh?"
"That's right," Nevada said. He came over behind the wheel chair. "Ready?"
Robair closed the valise and snapped it shut. "All set, Mr. Nevada."
"Let's go, then," Nevada said, and started the wheel chair through the door.
"We have to stop off at Burbank," I said, looking back at him. "Mac has a flock of papers for me to sign." I might be laid up, but business went on.
Buzz Dalton had an ICA charter waiting for us at the San Diego airport. We were at Burbank by two o'clock that afternoon. McAllister got up and came around his desk when they wheeled me into his office. "You know, this is the first time I can remember seeing you sit down."
I laughed. "Make the most of it. The doctors say I’ll be moving around as good as new in a couple of weeks."
"Well, meanwhile, I'm going to take advantage of it. Push him around behind the desk, fellows. I've got the pen ready."
It was almost four o'clock when I'd signed the last of a stack of documents. I looked up wearily. "So what else is new?"
Mac looked at me. He walked over to a table against the wall. "This is," he said, and took the cover off something that looked like a radio with a window in it.
"What is it?"
"It's the first product of the Cord Electronics Company," he said proudly. "We knocked it out in the converted radar division. It's a television set."
"Television?" I asked.
"Pictures broadcast through the air like radio," he said. "It's picked up on that screen, like home movies."
"Oh, that's the thing that Dumont was kicking around before the war. It doesn't work."
"Does now," Mac said. "It's the next big thing. All the radio and electronics companies are going into it. RCA, Columbia, Emerson, IT&T, GE, Philco. All of them. Want to see how it works?"
"Sure."
He walked over and picked up the phone. "Get me the lab." He covered the mouthpiece. "I'll have them put something on," he said.
A moment later, he went over to the set and turned a knob. A light flashed behind the window, then settled into a series of circles and lines. Gradually, letters came into view.
CORD ELECTRONICS PRESENTS
Suddenly, the card was replaced by a picture, a Western scene with a man riding a horse toward the camera. The camera dollied in real close on the face and I saw it was Nevada. I recognized the scene, too. It was the chase scene from The Renegade. For five minutes, we watched the scene in silence.
"Well, I’ll be damned," Nevada said, when it was over.
I looked across at Robair. There was an expression of rapt wonder on his face. He looked at me. "There's what I call a miracle, Mr. Jonas," he said softly. "Now I can watch a
movie in my own home without goin' to sit in no nigger heaven."
"So that's why they all want to buy my old pictures," Nevada said.
I looked up at him. "What do you mean?"
"You know those ninety-odd pictures we made and I own now?"
I nodded.
"People been after me to sell 'em. Offered me good money for 'em, too. Five thousand dollars each."
I stared at him. "One thing I learned in the picture business," I said. "Never sell outright what you can get a percentage on."
"You mean rent it to 'em like I do to a theater?"
"That's right," I said. "I know those broadcasting companies. If they'll buy it for five, they plan to make fifty out of it."
"I'm no good at big deals like that," Nevada said. "Would you be willin' to handle it for me, Mac?"
"I don't know, Nevada. I'm no agent."
"Go ahead and do it, Mac," I said. "Remember what you told me about making a point where it counts?"
He smiled suddenly. "O.K., Nevada."
Suddenly, I was tired. I slumped back in my chair. Robair was at my side instantly. "You all right, Mr. Jonas?"
"I’m just tired," I said.
"Maybe you better stay at the apartment tonight. We can go on out to the ranch in the morning."
I looked at Robair. The idea of getting into a bed was very appealing. My ass was sore from the wheel chair.
"I'll order a car," Mac said, picking up the phone. "You can drop me at the studio on your way into town. I've got some work to finish up there."
My mind kept working all the time we rode toward the studio. When the car stopped at the gates, suddenly everything was clear to me.
"We'll have to do something about a replacement for Bonner," Mac said, getting out. "It isn't good business having a lawyer run a studio. I don't know anything about motion pictures."
I stared at him thoughtfully. He was right, of course. But then, who did? Only David, and he was gone. I didn't care any more. There were no pictures left in me, no one I wanted to place up there on the screen for all the world to see. And back in the office I'd just left, there was a little box with a picture window and soon it would be in every home. Rich or poor. That little box was really going to chew up film, like the theaters had never been able to. But I still didn't care.
Even when I was a kid, when I was through with a toy, I was through with it. And I'd never go back to it. "Sell the theaters," I whispered to Mac.
"What?" he shouted, as if he couldn't believe his ears. "They're the only end of this business that's making any money."
"Sell the theaters," I repeated. "In ten years, no one will want to come to them, anyway. At least, not the way they have up to now. Not when they can see movies right in their own home."
Mac stared at me. "And what do you want me to do about the studio?" he asked, a tinge of sarcasm coming into his voice. "Sell that, too?"
"Yes," I said quietly. "But not now. Ten years from now, maybe. When the people who are making pictures for that little box are squeezed and hungry for space. Sell it then."
"What will we do with it in the meantime? Let it rot while we pay taxes on it?"
"No," I said. "Turn it into a rental studio like the old Goldwyn lot. If we break even or lose a little, I won't complain."
He stared at me. "You really mean it?"
"I mean it," I said, looking away from him up at the roof over the stages. For the first time, I really saw it. It was black and ugly with tar. "Mac, see that roof?"
He turned and looked, squinting against the setting sun.
"Before you do anything else," I said softly, "have them paint it white."
I pulled my head back into the car. Nevada looked at me strangely. His voice was almost sad. "Nothing's changed, has it, Junior?"
"No," I said wearily. "Nothing's changed."
8
I sat on the porch, squinting out into the afternoon sun. Nevada came out of the house behind me and dropped into a chair. He pulled a plug out of his pocket and biting off a hunk, put the plug back. Then from his other pocket, he took a piece of wood and a penknife and began to whittle.
I looked at him. He was wearing a pair of faded blue levis. A sweat-stained old buckskin shirt, that had seen better days, clung to his deep chest and broad shoulders and he had a red-and-white kerchief tied around his neck to catch the perspiration. Except for his white hair, he looked as I always remembered him when I was a boy, his hands quick and brown and strong.
He looked up at me out of his light eyes. "Two lost arts," he said.
"What?"
"Chewin' an' whittlin'," he said.
I didn't answer.
He looked down at the piece of wood in his hands. "Many's the evenin' I spent on the porch with your pa, chewin' an' whittlin'."
"Yeah?"
He turned and let fly a stream of tobacco juice over the porch rail into the dust below. He turned back to me. "I recall one night," he said. "Your pa an' me, we were settin' here, just like now. It'd been a real bitcheroo of a day. One of them scorchers that make your balls feel like they're drownin' in their own sweat. Suddenly he looks up at me an' says, 'Nevada, anything should happen to me, you look after my boy, hear? Jonas is a good boy. Sometimes his ass gets too much for his britches but he's a good boy an' he's got the makin's in him to be a better man than his daddy, someday. I love that boy, Nevada. He's all I got.' "
"He never told me that," I said, looking at Nevada. "Not ever. Not once!"
Nevada's eyes flashed up at me. "Men like your daddy ain't given much to talkin' about things like that."
I laughed. "He not only didn't talk it," I said. "He never showed it. He was always chewing on my ass for one thing or another."
Nevada's eyes bore straight into mine. "He was always there whenever you were in trouble. He might have hollered but he never turned you down."
"He married my girl away from me," I said bitterly.
"Maybe it was for your own good. Maybe it was because he knew she never really was for you."
I let that one go. "Why are you telling me this now?" I asked.
I couldn't read those Indian eyes of his. "Because your father asked me once to look after you. I made one mistake already. I seen how smart you was in business, I figured you to be growed up. But you wasn't. An' I wouldn' like to fail a man like your father twice."
We sat there in silence for a few minutes, then Martha came out with my tea. She told Nevada to spit out the chaw and stop dirtying up the porch. He looked at me almost shyly, got up and went down to get rid of the chaw behind the bushes.
We heard a car turn up our road as he came back to the porch. "I wonder who that is?" Martha asked.
"Maybe it's the doctor," I said. Old Doc Hanley was supposed to come out and check me over once a week.
By that time, the car was in the driveway and I knew who it was. I got to my feet, leaning on my cane, as Monica and Jo-Ann approached us. "Hello," I called.
They'd come back to California to close up their apartment, Monica explained, and since she wanted to talk to me about Amos, they'd stopped off in Reno on their way back to New York. Their train wasn't due to leave until seven o'clock.
I saw Martha glance meaningfully at Nevada when she heard that. Nevada got to his feet and looked at Jo-Ann. "I've got a gentle bay horse out in the corral that's just dyin' for some young lady like you to ride her."
Jo-Ann looked up at him worshipfully. You could tell she'd been to the movies from the way she looked at him. He was a real live hero. "I don't know," she said doubtfully. "I’ve never really ridden a horse before."
"I can teach you. It's easy, easier than fallin' off a log."
"But she's not dressed for riding," Monica said.
She wasn't. Not in that pretty flowered dress that made her look so much like her mother. Martha spoke up quickly. "I got a pair of dungarees that shrunk down to half my size. They'll fit her."
I don't know whose dungarees they were but one thing was for
sure. They'd never been Martha's. Not the way they clung to Jo-Ann's fourteen-year-old hips, tight and flat with just the suggestion of the curves to come. Jo-Ann's dark hair was pulled back straight from her head in a pony tail and there was something curiously familiar about the way she looked. I couldn't quite figure out what it was.
I watched her run out the door after Nevada and turned to Monica. She was smiling at me. I returned her smile. "She's growing up," I said. "She's going to be a pretty girl."
"One day they're children, the next they're young ladies. They grow up too fast."
I nodded. We were alone now and an awkward silence came down between us. I reached for a cigarette and looked at her. "I want to tell you about Amos."
It was near six o'clock when I finished telling her about what happened. There were no tears in her eyes, though her face was sad and thoughtful. "I can't cry for him, Jonas," she said, looking at me. "Because I've already cried too many times because of him. Do you understand?"
I nodded.
"He did so many things that were wrong all his life. I’m glad that at last he did one thing right."
"He did a very brave thing. I always thought he hated me."
"He did," she said quickly. "He saw in you everything that he wasn't. Quick, successful, rich. He hated your guts. I guess at the end he realized how foolish that was and how much harm he'd already done you, so he tried to make it right."
I looked at her. "What wrong did he do me? There was nothing but business between us."
She gave me a peculiar look. "You can't see it yet?"
"No."
"Then I guess you never will," she said and walked out onto the porch.
We could hear Jo-Ann's shout of laughter as she rode the big bay around the corral. She was doing pretty good for a beginner. I looked down at Monica. "She takes to it like she was born to the saddle."
JC1 The Carpetbaggers Page 72