The Gift Shop

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “That was easy,” he said to his visitor. “I’m sorry you had to go to so much trouble. Well, no, I guess I’m not, either. We don’t get too many visiting ladies. Let me fix that cup of coffee? I can do that much in the kitchen. See, my cook …

  Dorinda seemed a little tense. “Oh, no,” she said, “you’re busy. Please don’t take the time, Mr. Mizer.” But she read his disappointment, evidently, because she relaxed just a little and looked around. “What a lovely place you have,” she said. “So spacious. Perhaps I could see a little bit of it, while Tony fetches me the pig?”

  “Why, sure,” Mike got up, relieved to be moving. “Be glad to show you around a little bit. I—uh—wish I could ask you to take a bite of lunch—”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “You are being very good to me, as it is.” She had risen, seeming glad to move, herself. Tony hadn’t moved at all.

  “Up,” said his father sharply. “Don’t you see the lady?”

  So Tony dragged himself up on his short little legs and his father said to the visitor, “Kinda tough putting his manners into him, all by myself.”

  “Why, he’s an adorable little boy,” said Dorinda, hitting wrong again. “Could you please bring me the little pig, dear?”

  “He’d be glad to,” said his father.

  “I’d be glad to, ma’am,” said the little boy. “But, Pa … what about Rocket?”

  “Oh, oh,” said his father.

  The head nurse said to Dr. Fairchild, “Are you quite sure this is necessary, Doctor? I really don’t know …”

  “Just take my word for it,” said Dick Fairchild.

  “I’ve put in a call for Dr. Perkins,” she said. “I’m afraid I had to do that.”

  “Glad you did. Maybe he can put some sense into her.”

  “But these men? Really—with guns, Doctor? The patients are going to be terribly concerned.”

  “I’m putting two of them outside her door, and one in the next room, watching out the window. Believe me, it’s necessary. Now, my father, Paul Fairchild, will be coming along, any minute now. He’s to be let in to talk to her.”

  “I don’t know. I wish Dr. Perkins …”

  “We’ve been looking for this woman all over the damn city and here she is practically under my nose. There’s something she is going to have to tell us, fanatic or not.”

  “She’s Dr. Perkins’ patient, Doctor.”

  “Well, get him here,” said Dr. Fairchild.

  “Show you something,” Mike Mizer had said to Dorinda, and she had let him lead her through the ranch house, the narrow way, and out on the veranda, where his own bright narrow valley could be seen rolling away pleasantly on either side, and briefly to the sharp hills, straight across.

  “Now there’s what we call the home corral,” said Mike, “and that’s Rocket. See him?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Dorinda shaded her eyes.

  “I’m selling him to a fellow. He’s going to be picked up in the morning. But right now, Miss Bowie, nobody’s going to cross the home corral.”

  The bull was angry at being where he was and alert to their presence. He was cutting up, some. Mike Mizer dwelt fondly on his prize, the fine creature, raging and romping there.

  “I don’t understand,” Dorinda said with faint exasperation. “It is a bull, isn’t it? What has that to do …”

  “Oh, well, see those rocks? Straight across? See where they go up, real steep? See the shadow, down a little bit to your left? Well, that’s Tony’s cave, that is. His own private personal cave.”

  “Oh?”

  “And that’s where he’s got the little old piggy bank stashed. Eh, Tony?”

  “That’s right, Pa.”

  “So you see, we can’t hardly go fetch it, until … lemmee see. We’ll be loading Rocket up real early tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s too late,” said Dorinda, not pleasantly at all. She pulled on sweetness like a veil. “Oh, couldn’t you … Perhaps my driver could go and get it.”

  “He better not try,” said Mike. “Rocket’s nothing to fool with, ma’am.”

  “But couldn’t he get down from the top, so that the animal couldn’t reach him?”

  “Doubt it,” Mike shook his head. “That’s a bad enough climb, without Rocket waiting on a fall.”

  “But this is … Surely,” she said, “there’s some way.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” said Mike, “when the help comes off the job at the gate, I guess we could shoo Rocket into the next corral.”

  “Oh then, please? Would you do that?”

  “Anything for a lady,” the rancher said gallantly. “Let me fix you some coffee while we’re waiting.”

  “How soon?”

  “Pretty soon,” he said soothingly. “Cooler in the house.”

  “But I’m afraid … I haven’t too much time.” She was very tense.

  “Well, I’ve thought of something else,” Mike said. “A good idea to be sure. So, Tony, suppose you go look around your room and you might just take a good look in the shed, while you’re at it. No use going to a lot of trouble, moving Rocket, if the piggy don’t happen to be in your cave, after all.”

  “Oh, please,” Dorinda said. “Do that. Will you, dear?”

  “O.K.” said Tony stoically.

  “Now you just rest your mind, ma’am,” said Mike. “Don’t you worry. You want that little pig? It’s yours. Our pleasure. That right, Tony?”

  “Sure, Pa.”

  “You’re very kind,” said Dorinda and let him lead her back into the house, as Tony scampered off across the bright space toward some outbuildings.

  Harry had made excellent time, considering that, once off the freeway, they had been winding, with inevitable uncertainty, on mountain roads, having to match the map and their choices very carefully, and stop to ask, besides. Still it wasn’t much after noon when they came to a gate, and a sign with two large M’s leaning away from each other like dancers.

  There were several men and one woman gathered there. There was a small concrete mixer and two dusty old cars and one station wagon, on the tailboard of which there seemed to have been set forth a picnic lunch. The gate proper was off its moorings, leaning on the fence. A narrow ditch, just inside the gate, was gaping open and seemed impassable.

  Harry called out the window and one of the men came forward. He was an Indian, in jeans. “Michael Mizer?” asked Harry.

  “This is his place, sure.” The Indian was cheerful.

  “Can we get through?”

  “Well …”

  “How far to walk?”

  “Mile and a half, maybe. To the house, you mean?”

  “If that’s where Mr. Mizer is.”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, it’s pretty important.”

  The man grinned, shrugged, turned, and shouted. They saw that the men were going to place some heavy planks across the ditch. Jean viewed this with alarm.

  “Say,” yelled Harry, “excuse me. Did—uh—anybody else show up, looking for Mr. Mizer?”

  “You mean the lady?”

  “Oh, oh,” said Harry under his breath. “That’s right,” he yelled.

  “Yeah, she’s still there,” the man said.

  “Anybody with her?”

  “Fella doing the driving, is all.”

  “Thanks. Sorry for the trouble.”

  “’s O.K.”

  There was no comment to make, so they waited silently until the planks were in place and then, gingerly proceeding, they negotiated the crossing. Now a private road went curling around a small lump on the land and began to go downward into the banana-shaped little valley that was neatly cut into rectangles by white fences, and they soon saw the house, brownish and blending, low and long.

  They saw the sleek blue car in the shade of a tall eucalyptus hedge. And a man at the wheel. He had on a felt hat.

  Then they saw the little boy in jeans, scampering. He stopped and looked.

  So Harry pulled off the narr
ow road and stopped. Jean got out and ran toward the child, who began to walk slowly to meet her.

  “Hi,” said Jean. “You’re the boy who brought the yellow pig. My name is Jean Cunliffe. I’m the one who sold it to you.”

  “Hi,” said the little boy.

  Harry came up behind Jean. “Hi,” he said, man-to-man.

  “Hi,” said Tony.

  There was paralysis in the sun.

  Over in the shade, the small man slipped out of the Continental and went toward the house.

  “Well,” said Jean flatly, “we’re here and we’ve found you. And I bet somebody else has already asked you for the pig. That’s what we want.”

  The little boy said, “Pa and me told her she could have it.”

  Harry turned to look at the house. “Vance went in, I think. We’d better go talk to the father. Maybe we can get him to be on our side.”

  “We promised her,” said the boy.

  “Sure,” said Harry, “and if you promised, then you promised. But we can’t let her get away with it, that’s all.”

  “For your information,” said Jean brightly, “we are the good guys. Has she broken it yet?”

  “She hasn’t got it, yet,” said Tony with a touch of mischief. “’Cause it’s in my cave.”

  So he explained. He pointed. They saw the brown field and the dark, fierce body, rampant on it. The bull was snorting and tossing his head.

  “It’s in your cave, eh?” said Harry. “And your cave is over there, and you’re sure, eh?” (Harry’s prophetic soul could sometimes be a nuisance.)

  “Oh, sure, I’m sure,” said the boy. “Pa told me to go look around, but he just wants to talk to her, some more.” He kicked at the ground with his small boot. His thumbs were tucked into the top of his jeans. His brown little face was still and wise.

  Harry said, “How about down that rock? You ever get to your cave that way?”

  “No, sir. My pa says it’s dangerous.”

  “Which is one of the good things about your cave, eh?” said Harry with understanding. “Still, you could do it?”

  “Well …” The boy looked up at the tall man. “Pa says don’t try.”

  “You know, I think I’ll try,” said Harry, “large and clumsy as I am.”

  “Oh, Harry.” Jean didn’t like the look of that beast.

  “All right,” said Harry, “talk is talk and brains are brains and deviosity is deviosity but there comes a time, you just gotta go. Our friend here, he knows that. Say, how do I get around to the top of that rock? There must be a way.”

  It had to be from the top because the whole base of the small cliff lay within the field where the bull was running.

  “There’s a way,” said the boy, gazing up at Harry. “It’s not steep, on the other side.”

  “O.K.” said Harry. “I’m going to go and steal the yellow pig. But not from you, you know. You gave it to the lady. You promised, so it is hers, right now. Have I got that straight?”

  “That’s right.” The boy’s eyes were bright.

  “O.K. Now, we happen to know that she doesn’t want the pig. She wants what’s in it. But what’s in it happens to belong to Harry Fairchild. And that’s who I am.”

  “Harry, if you should fall …” Jean wasn’t enjoying this.

  “I’ve thought of that, myself,” said Harry. “That animal doesn’t look much like Ferdinand.”

  “Oh, he’d toss you,” said the boy, rather merrily.

  “I’ll bet he would. But not if I don’t fall.”

  “I guess not.” The boy was studying Harry closely.

  Harry wasn’t crazy about his project. “What’s the plan,” he asked, “your Pa has, for getting the pig for the lady?”

  “Oh, Pa says when the men come back, he’ll have them turn Rocket into the next corral.”

  “I see. We-ell, what with one thing and another, I don’t think I’ll wait. Jean,”—he had her arm tight—“watch from here. Try and make a diversion, if that gets to seem like a good idea. I’ve got a head start, which I am going to lose, if I don’t get going.”

  So Harry let go of her, and went racing along the white fence until he came to the place where another fence went off at a right angle and enclosed the bull. He climbed over.

  The animal raced beside him, twenty feet away, beyond a fence but breathing fire. Harry was no matador. No track man, either. It was very hot. The sun beat down. The ground was rough. His shoes were slippery. His suit felt cumbersome. Cloth stuck to his limbs. But Harry ran.

  It was no time to be clever. It was time to take your physical advantage while you had it. With every scissoring of his legs he became, in fact, in time, in space, closer to the yellow pig than “they” were. Very simple, really.

  Jean, standing in the fierce sunlight, in her Irish wool, felt nervously chilly. She turned to look at the ranch house.

  Tony said suddenly, “Pa’s not going to like it. This is my Pa’s place. It’s not yours.”

  “I know,” she said, “I know.” She searched his face. But there was nothing to say to this child. He wasn’t Sally Jo. Or Deirdre, either. What could she say that would bring him to the side of thieves and strangers and trespassers, no matter how charming? This boy, according to his lights, which were clear and bright, was discounting the pleasure he had taken in Harry Fairchild, and sticking to his primary good and loving loyalty. He went (and who could say he must not?) scampering toward the house to tell his father.

  Miss Emaline lay rigid. Dr. Perkins stood beside the head of the bed. Paul Fairchild stood at the foot. He said, “Please let me take my little girl. I’m asking, I’m begging.”

  Miss Emaline’s mouth kept a tight hold on silence. How did she know he was who he said he was? When she was well, and the evil man was dead, then she would take quiet, sensible steps. But not now.

  “You don’t know the problems,” he said, “or the power of the ones who are after her. Please let me take care of her. I am a very wealthy man, Miss Hanks. I’ve hired many many people, just to take care. Please? Tell me where she is?”

  “Daddy,” said Dick in warning. He was at the other side of the bed. He wasn’t liking his father’s look.

  Dr. Perkins said, “I can’t have her harassed, gentlemen.”

  “You do know, Miss Hanks,” said the governor, who stood beside his brother, “that the execution of Max Kootz is set for Wednesday morning?”

  Miss Emaline’s eyes flashed. Of course, she knew that!

  So the governor said to her, “I can understand that you feel obliged to protect her, and that you are not sure, you don’t know, you dare not believe, that we only want to protect her, too.”

  She thought, he’s a smooth one.

  “Surely you can tell us this much,” the governor went on. “Can anyone else find out where the child is?”

  “No,” she said, loosening her mouth for the first time. “No. No. No.”

  “But you won’t trust me?” said the old man.

  “I trust in the Lord,” she said. “I have prayed and I have been answered.”

  (Oh, they could torture her and she wouldn’t tell too soon. The evil man must die and go to hell; then would her bonds loosen, her penance be done.)

  (It was also true that Miss Emaline had never had so many handsome worldly men around a bed of hers, before.)

  She said, “Doctor, will you tell them to come back on Wednesday?”

  “Wednesday, gentlemen,” her doctor said.

  Meanwhile, back at the ranch house, Vance had come sidling through the screen door. “Miss Bowie.”

  “Yes, Vance?”

  “Fairchild and the girl.” He jerked his head.

  “What’s that?” said Mike, pleasantly.

  Dorinda turned to her host and said, “Mr. Mizer, you say you are selling that animal to someone? Would you let me buy him, please?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, ma’am.” Mike was startled.

  “I’ll buy him from you, at whatever pr
ice you say.”

  “Look, Miss, I’m very sorry …”

  “I’ll pay you double.”

  “I—uh—promised him to this fellow.” (She couldn’t think …!)

  “But I’ll pay you more,” she insisted, “and right now.”

  (She did think he’d break his word, for money!)

  “Then, you see,” she smiled, daintily, “we can kill him, can’t we? And cross the field?”

  Now Mike Mizer’s insides turned all the way over. What the hell kind of woman was this? He said, “I don’t think you understand, ma’am. That’s a fine bull, and he’s promised, and my friend is counting on him.”

  “But I must,” she cried, “have that pig. Right now. There’s so little time. What difference does it make to you?”

  “You don’t find an animal like that on a tree, ma’am. I took a lot of pains with him. And I think you must be a little crazy. Rocket’s not going to be killed. I’ll tell you that.”

  Dorinda had a small gun in her right hand. “Yes, he is,” she said. “Sit still. Vance?”

  Vance had a handgun too.

  The rancher leaned back and smiled broadly. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “What is this? A Western? What are you going to do with those little tin toys, may I ask? Shoot Rocket!” He laughed at them.

  Dorinda said, “Vance, I saw a gun case. That way. Go find something you can use to kill that animal. And then go kill him. And go get the pig. And if anything gets in your way, you know what to do. I can’t fool around anymore. I’ll keep this one quiet.”

  Vance went obediently into another room.

  Mike Mizer was grinning, even wider. “I guess you’ve been telling me a story, Miss,” he said. “What is in that Pig?”

  “No matter to you.”

  “Watch it,” he teased. “That silly little gadget might go off. Make you jump.”

  “It might,” she said, and Mike suddenly wasn’t so sure it might not.

  “Good shot, are you?” Mike had seen the shadow on the screen of the door. “Watch it!” he said, speaking louder. “Steady.” Then he wheedled, “Don’t be a damn fool, ma’am, if you’ll pardon the expression. You’re not going to hurt me. Or Rocket, either. What are you going to do when half a dozen of my hired hands show up? Shoot them all? Help’s around.”