Please Write for Details

by John D. MacDonald

On Saturday, the fifth of August, having arranged to borrow Colonel Hildebrandt’s old Dodge station wagon while he was off on a project requiring the services of Saltamontes—and bearing with them a Thermos jug and basket lunch prepared by Dotsy and Rosalinda, Harvey and Monica drove up into the mountains on the old free highway, found the turn that had been described to them, and drove a little way on an old dirt road that ended in a place of exceptional charm. The old forest was as dark and still as the illustrations for fairyland. Grass was soft and thick in sunlit glades and hummocks. The small clear lakes were nine thousand feet above the sea.

  They swam in ice water and came out gasping, their lips blue, to toast in the high hot sun. They ate in a private shady place. There was a special stillness about the whole world, a gothic hush at the edge of the dark forest. There was an end to talk. Then then, solemnly at first, and then with all restraints lost in furnace breath and bongo hearts, they made their first love, and made love again throughout the cathedral afternoon, the sun, through high leaves, making small coins of brightness on their bodies.

  After dark they drove slowly down the mountains through the rains. She sat close beside him, and her heart was full. There was a perfect communion in their silence which made talk a clumsy contact. It had been so perfect a reaffirmation of all they had said to each other that they felt an almost superstitious awe. The little doubts and fears and hesitations had endured for the first few moments, and been swept away forever.

  They moved slowly down toward the bowl of Cuernavaca, the round of her hip and the length of her thigh warm against him. The fringe of rain rebounding from the road was silver in the headlights. He wore golden armor from head to toe, and there was a silken riband in her colors fixed to his lance. Her midnight hair, when braided, would reach from tower window to the edge of the castle moat. On either side of the road were strewn the stiffening bodies of dragons bravely slain, and the gentle knight dwelt upon the sweet memories of his perfumed rewards.

  * * *

  Bitsy and Park arrived the next day, Sunday, at three in the afternoon, both a deep and startling bronze tan, smiling, happy, comfortably in love, slightly weary from the drive up from Acapulco, bearing small gifts. They told of Acapulco, of the sun and sand of the afternoon beach, the strolling girls selling hot boiled shrimp and icy beer, the vendors who would paddle up to you while you were swimming, pushing ahead of them small floating trays, the marlin and sail they had caught, the boys who dived from reckless heights for money, the moonlight on the Pacific, the prominent actress they had seen—hopelessly, helplessly drunk, the tourists aflame with sunburn and prickly heat, the night club and floor shows and the showoff boys and girls of the beaches.

  While Mary Jane packed everything, and Bitsy packed the things she had left behind, Mary Jane brought her up to date on the local scene.

  Then Mary Jane turned and looked squarely at her and said, “Are you really happy, Bits?” Bitsy’s yes was obviously heartfelt.

  “I’m glad.”

  Bitsy sat on her bed and lighted her cigarette and frowned at the huff of smoke she exhaled. “I know what you think of him. And what I thought of him. I’m not blind, Mary Jane.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “He’s sweet. And he’s fun. He needed somebody. He’s still not sure way down deep that I’m really here, that I won’t step aside when he leans a little bit. I’ve never been responsible for a thing in my whole life, Mary Jane. Not the little brother and sister. Nobody. I had only myself to take care of, and I didn’t do much of a job of that.”

  “Now, Bits …”

  “It’s true. I’m not great strong pillar or something. But now I’ve got to be. If I’m strong right now, I won’t have to be quite so strong later. And that will be good. And you know, I find that I like it. I want to be of use to him. I feel smug about being strong, learning how to be strong without his guessing that I’m going to slowly, carefully set him back on his own two feet. He’ll be a man again.”

  “Noble,” Mary Jane said. “Real noble, doll. Wipe his wittle nose and pat his wittle head. So he needs you. And you need to be needed. But aren’t you missing out on something marriage should be?”

  “What is that?”

  “Isn’t it a little dull, making love with a wittle helpless boy?”

  Bitsy gave her a startled look, and suddenly her mouth widened into a broad and bawdy grin that turned her back into the Bitsy of the good old days. “Darling,” she said, drawling the word, “his only troubles have been emotional and psychological. You happen to be looking at a very contented woman. I’m the kitty that lives in the creamery.” She yawned curling a pink tongue.

  “I asked for that, didn’t I? Should I get married, Bits?”

  “Without delay. You’ll love it.”

  The two-car convoy left at nine-thirty on Monday morning, the seventh of August, Bitsy and Mary Jane in the Mercedes, followed by Park in the Ford wagon. When they turned the corner beyond the barracks, Gam and Barbara walked slowly back to the main gate.

  “And so we bid farewell to the happy couple,” Gam said sourly.

  “I think they’ll make it,” Barbara said. “I didn’t think so at first, but now they seem so … integrated. It’s almost a visible thing. I think if you met them in a large group, you’d sense they belonged together.”

  As they walked into the lobby, Gam said, “Attrition. Nine little Indians left. Eight, actually, with Klauss off on private adventures. This world isn’t going to end with a bang. This is the whimper department. I shall miss Miss Mary Jane. She is a top quality urchin, a blond and leggy gamin with superior defenses. Well, it looks like Miss Agnes is hustling up an eager group. Go join it, Barbara. I am going to go sit in a shady corner and eat worms.”

  On the Thursday after Park and the girls from Texas had departed, Colonel Hildebrandt rode Saltamontes over into some small and shaggy hills, not far off the Tepoztlán road to make sketches of a small sloping plateau where Zapata had ambushed a company of rurales, deploying his forces in such a manner that he had inflicted heavy punishment with the loss of but three men. It was a still and sullen day, more sultry than usual. Saltamontes cropped sparse grasses in the shade while the colonel worked. At noon the colonel ate the lunch he had brought. He worked through the hot glare of the afternoon and at four o’clock he packed up, swung up onto Saltamontes and started back toward the highway. He sat slouched in the saddle, his old campaign hat tilted forward, eyes squinted against the sun glare on the loose brown rocks. He was weary, and slightly dazed by the heat, and he let the old horse pick her own way at her own speed, reins slack in his brown hand.

  She stumbled and went down so suddenly he did not have time to leap clear. He was dazed by the impact. She gave a single scream of pain. She lifted her head, jabbing at the stony ground with one front hoof, and struggled violently for a time to get up, then rested her long head on the ground and began to sigh.

  When the colonel’s head cleared, he braced himself on a bruised elbow and inspected the situation. Saltamontes had fallen on her left side into a shallow cleft in the rock about three feet wide, two feet deep and a dozen feet long. She was firmly wedged there, her head down the gradual slope. His left leg, from the knee down, was pinned between her and the harsh edge of the cleft. He reached and caught the edge of the saddle and pulled himself up into a semi-sitting position. From that position he could see the horse’s front left leg, sickeningly smashed, the hoof twisted, a pink shard of bone projecting through the hide.

  He lay back again to think. They were in a shallow bowl. In no direction was his horizon more than a hundred yards away. His leg was beginning to hurt quite badly. After a little while he sat up again, braced his hands out behind him, planted his right foot against her back and pushed with all his might, hoping to shift her enough so that he could work his left leg out. But she was immovable. She began to struggle again, making a thin whimpering sound as she did so, but it seemed to the colonel that she only wedged herself more
firmly. He lay back again, shading his eyes with his hand.

  Damned old fool, he thought. Got yourself into it this time. Nobody will ever come by here by accident. Birds will pick you clean, and the rains will wash the bones down the gully. Horse bones and soldier bones. Both of you too damn old to be worth a damn. They tried hard to kill you in the two big wars and couldn’t do it, and now you have to go ahead and kill yourself in what looks like it could be on the unpleasant side.

  Class of ’15. Damn near everybody who stayed in and didn’t get killed made general officer. You got as far as chicken colonel. Your ideas were too strong. Kept talking instead of listening.

  He shaded his eyes and thought of the long years, of a dead wife and a dead son. And he felt there was a meaningless futility about his continued existence. The big project was without meaning. It was just busy-work, the meaningless details you assign your men in garrison to keep them occupied.

  So if it ended right here, best to make sure it was as comfortable as possible. Too damned undignified to die of heat and thirst, raving and gibbering like a maniac.

  He parted his fingers and squinted up at the blue glare of the sky and saw the slow circling of the buzzards. He was the focal point of the circle, and he wondered how they had gathered so fast. A dozen of them. By tomorrow noon they’d be standing just out of reach, watching him. He worked his pocket knife out and opened the large blade. So do you cut your throat now or later?

  He looked at the birds again and suddenly had a feeling of outrage, of vast indignation. He sat up again and set his jaw hard and looked around him. He picked up the open knife and inched to his left until, with a long straining reach, he could catch the cheek strap in his left hand. He planned the motions in advance, then hauled back on the cheek strap, pulling the horse’s head up and back into position for the quick, deep, strong and merciful slash of the blade across the soft throat. Blood rushed thick down the funnel of rock, soaking quickly into the sand and the cracks. The horse died with a prolonged and gentle spasm. Immediately he felt more alone. Saltamontes had been a living entity, a thing that shared pain and fright.

  He sawed through the girths and pushed the saddle aside. And then, with the little four-inch blade, he began to cut the body of the horse away from his imprisoned leg. It was dusk before he had freed his leg. His hands were cramped with exhaustion. He had paused many times to sharpen the blade on the stones. It had been a sickening task. He backed away a half dozen feet and rested. He examined his leg in the fading light. The edges of stone had deeply gouged the tough old shank. The ankle was badly puffed. Bracing himself against pain, he rotated the ankle and prodded the puffed tissues until he was reasonably certain there was no break. He doubted his ability to crawl back to the highway. He could not put his weight on that leg. He hesitated a moment before he cut the partially completed canvas out of the stretcher. He cut the tough fabric into strips, bound his foot and ankle as tightly as he could, and worked his foot back into the blood-sodden shoe. When he tried again, he found that he could endure putting his weight on the foot. He put his painting equipment and the saddle at the base of a scrubby tree, settled his campaign hat in place, and began to walk northwest. A hundred yards from the scene of the fall, he cut a stout walking stick from a dead tree. After dark it was difficult to walk on the rough terrain. He fell heavily several times. Each time he would curse, gather his strength and get up again. He reached the Tepoztlán road and turned left. In a few moments he heard a vehicle behind him and turned and saw it was a lighted bus coming from Tepoztlán. He stepped into the middle of the highway and stood waving his stick. He did not move. The bus came to a shuddering halt a few feet from him. He hobbled to the door and told the driver in his clumsy forceful Spanish where he wanted to be taken. He climbed aboard the bus. Two dozen pair of dark awed eyes stared at the charnel specter as he paused in the aisle. They saw the scuffs and bruises and tears from his falls. They saw the spattering of blood, the caking of blood to the elbows. They looked at the tough old face and the uncompromising eyes.

  “Buenas tardes!” he brayed at them in his great hollow voice.

  “Buenas tardes, señor,” they said in their soft voices.

  They made room for him to sit. The bus deviated from its normal route to let him off at the main gate of El Hutchinson. The driver made no attempt to collect a fare. The bus had been silent ever since he had boarded it. The moment they drove away from the hotel, everyone began to talk at once.

  By Monday, the fourteenth of August, the colonel pronounced himself perfectly capable of driving his car back to the States. He did not look at all well. All attempts to dissuade him failed. He would leave the next morning.

  On Monday evening Barbara went to Colonel Hildebrandt’s room before dinner. He had just finished his packing.

  “Colonel,” she said, “would you do me a big favor?”

  “Of course, of course.”

  “I’d like to ride with you. You have room and … I could share the expenses and the driving. It would be a big help to me. I understand you’re going to Washington.”

  “Get this leg looked at. Doesn’t feel right to me.”

  “Could you take me along?”

  He frowned at her. “Long trip in an old car, my dear.”

  “I know. But it would be a great favor to me. Please.”

  “Won’t look right, you know. Not very proper.”

  “When we get rooms at a motel, you could register me as your daughter, I suppose, if you think it would look better. Please, Colonel.”

  “Well … if you want to come along, you’re welcome. Be a little easier having somebody do some of the driving, I guess. Understand, I don’t want to fadiddle around here until noon, young woman. You be packed and ready to leave by eight sharp.”

  “Thanks a lot, Colonel. I’ll go pack.”

  She went and repored her success to the others. “I certainly will feel a hundred per cent better,” Hildabeth said. “I was sure he wouldn’t take you. Stubborn old fool. Now you keep him from getting overtired, and if he doesn’t act right, you stop wherever you are and make sure he sees a doctor.”

  Barbara and the colonel left at eight on Tuesday morning.

  The survivors continued. Gil and Jeanie. Hildabeth and Dotsy. Monica and Harvey. Agnes and Gam. Paul Klauss was seldom seen. Miles Drummond rented a room down in town to move into when school ended, a room that would suffice until he could move back into his own little house.

  Miles had imagined that the Workshop, even in its shrunken form, would continue right up until the last day of August, but it did not work out that way. Gil and Jeanie decided that they wanted to see San Miguel de Allende, and so they left on Friday, the twenty-fifth. On Monday, the twenty-eighth, after a lot of confused scheduling, Agnes Partridge Keeley left, taking Monica and Harvey as far as Mexico City where they had obtained reservations on the same flight. Hildabeth and Dotsy left the next day in the pink-and-blue Buick, having made an arrangement with Gam to take him as far as Texas. Miles Drummond, Fidelio, Rosalinda and Margarita waved until they were out of sight and then went back through the main gate into the compound in front of the hotel where the red bus stood lonely in the morning sun.

  Rosalinda snuffled and said, “The very last, señor. Now they have all departed. This is a sad time.”

  “The Señor Ball, he is the very last,” Margarita said loyally.

  There was a dreary echoing emptiness about the hotel. On that day Miles made the final arrangements to close the Cuernavaca Summer Workshop. He arranged for disposition of the small amount of excess supplies. He paid off the small staff, giving each one a little bit more than was due, even Alberto.

  After consideration of all factors, he told Felipe Cedro that he would not need him any longer. Felipe had been sullen and insubordinate of late. Miles realized he had always been a bit afraid of the man. But Felipe’s black scowl did not alarm him at all now. He felt relief at being at last free of him. And Fidelio was delighted to be employed
as Señor Drummond’s personal servant. In the late afternoon Fidelio loaded Miles’s belongings into the red bus and moved them down to the room Miles had rented.

  It troubled Miles that Paul Klauss’s possessions were still in the hotel, in his padlocked room. It offended his sense of order. He wanted the school to be terminated cleanly and completely. He had arranged that on the first day of September he would meet with the representative of the owners of the hotel and, after an inspection of the premises, turn over the keys. Also, on that day, he would return the red bus to its owner. He was annoyed that such efficiency should be compromised by the carelessness of Paul Klauss.

  On the morning of the last day of August, Margarita Esponjar slipped away from the household tasks assigned her by her mother, and wandered over to the hotel in the hope that she might see Señor Ball once more. Such a shy and pretty man. Such a strange and timid man, who wept easily.

  When she walked through the main gate she saw that the big front door was ajar, and a taxi waiting. She ceased strolling and trotted toward the front door. When she was ten feet away, Felipe came out. He was carrying a suitcase which she recognized at once as belonging to Señor Ball. He was moving quickly and furtively.

  “You are stealing from Señor Ball!” she cried. She tried to wrest the suitcase from him but he cursed her and gave her such a mighty push that she trotted backward and sat down suddenly in the dust. As she scrambled to her feet, the taxi turned out through the main gate. She watched it go, and then she went into the hotel and went to the room of Señor Ball. The things Felipe had thought not worth stealing were scattered on the floor. All the beautiful clothing was gone. Señor Ball was on the floor, on his side, sleeping. There was a great ugly lump on his pretty forehead, right at the hair line, and a trickle of blood that ran down into his delicate, blond eyebrow. With a great, clear cry of concern and love and pity, Margarita dropped to her knees beside him, picked up his limp hand and kissed it, pressed it tenderly to her cheek and looked down at him with brimming eyes.