Six eyes took on the size of salad plates. Square salad plates.
“Big fine for that,” Mrs. Feeley whispered.
“Confiscate the Cadillac,” Miss Tinkham said. “But just look where we ‘fetched up,’ as Tooner Schooner would say.” She waved her hand at the remains of a spooky Charles Addams-type huge mansion in rough-hewn stone the color of raw calf liver. Turrets, towers, cupolas, pergolas, fretwork, beadwork, stained glass, and grillwork encrusted the exterior like warts on a rhinocerous.
“Built by someone with the mind of a child in a penny candyshop: ‘I’ll have one of this, and this, and this, and this.’ It’s monstrous,” Miss Tinkham said. “I expect Mary Petty’s maid to emerge any minute, except that this mansion has not seen even a feather duster for lo! these many years.”
Mrs. Feeley looked blank for a minute until Mrs. Rasmussen reminded her: “That ol’ lady standin’ in front o’ the fireplace warmin’ her cummer-see-yammy…outa them ol’ books at home.”
Miss Tinkham nodded in approval at the reference to the ten-year-old collection of New Yorkers Mrs. Feeley’s niece-in-law, Katy, had given her.
“Sure tony, ain’t it?” Mrs. Feeley said.
“Wasn’t it!” Miss Tinkham agreed.
“How we gonna get back?” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Them license plates…”
“More ways o’ killin’ a cat than chokin’ it to death with sweet butter,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Let’s get out an’ take a look long as we’re here.”
Miss Tinkham noted gaps in part of the slate roof and the many windowpanes broken out by vandals.
“Some of the wrought iron has been ripped off and carried away.” She gestured to the battered two and a half stories.
“Junk dealers,” Mrs. Feeley grunted, knowing the breed. “Couldn’t cart him off, though.” She smacked a cast-iron stag on the rump. His concrete block had held up against the assaults of all comers. “Them yearns is pretty,” she pointed to the graceful urns in which indestructible Wandering Jew and hen-and-chickens still flourished.
“Once they had a conservatory.” Miss Tinkham noticed the glassed porch with a shapely dome. “And the lath house seems in fair shape. Quite an outlay…I wonder why it has never sold?”
“Let’s see can we find the corners,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. Poultry houses and rabbit pens covered nearly an acre of ground. Carriage house, barn, tool shed, and storage rooms were all made of the same red stone. The ladies trudged behind the solid Dane searching for fence posts and property lines, no easy job in the wild tangle of growth that surrounded them.
“Sink in leaf mold to your knees.” Mrs. Feeley sounded awed. “Good dirt for growin’ things. Must be near three acres.”
Outside of the jungle walls, the dull roar of cars on the freeway could be heard distantly.
“But they don’t seem to bother none,” Mrs. Rasmussen marveled.
“Below the level of consciousness,” Miss Tinkham said, “but let one race his motor at the junction we just left, or come in this driveway!”
“Don’t seem like it’s rightly in this world.” Mrs. Feeley sat down on the solid rock steps. The porch behind her was of wood, and perilous. Holes as big as a washtub gaped in it.
“Yessir,” Mrs. Feeley said when Mrs. Rasmussen came back with three beers, “I can give you the history o’ this place by heart, sight unseen. The world passed it by, that’s what! Them little roads we come in on was the main hardtop oncet. This was a show place them days. Now them superhighways done sliced it off inta a little island, all on its own. Hard to git to, hard to git off.”
“It has a basement,” Miss Tinkham said, peeping through the narrow windows just above the ground. “Wouldn’t that be grand in case they dropped the bomb? A marvelous fall-out shelter!”
Mrs. Rasmussen had climbed up on the porch and cleaned off a hole to look through the dirt-encrusted window. She put both hands up to her eyes to shade them. “Hey! Lookit. They’s a pump in there by that zink!”
Miss Tinkham crawled up beside her. “Not since I left Ohio,” she whispered. “At my grandmother’s farm! It means only one thing: there’s a well underneath it.”
“Aw, a p’latial place like this’d have runnin’ water,” Mrs. Feeley said.
“Of course,” Miss Tinkham agreed, “but really wealthy people always want their own pure well water for drinking. Look at the enormous coal range, Mrs. Rasmussen. It has a water heater attached to it.”
“I never seen one like that.” Mrs. Rasmussen’s eyes glowed. “How many rooms you guess this thing might hold?”
“Fifteen to twenty, counting the little turret rooms and cupolas,” Miss Tinkham said.
“If I’d a just thought to bring my little baby crowbar,” Mrs. Feeley said, “handy as a pocket in a shirt, that thing is. We coulda jimmied a window an’ got in for a good look.”
“Ah-ah! That’s breaking and entering,” Miss Tinkham laughed.
“I like it here,” Mrs. Rasmussen said flatly.
“Who’s got it in charge?” Mrs. Feeley demanded.
“Don’t get your hopes too high,” Miss Tinkham said. “It does have something that calls to us,” she mused. “There must be some terribly serious reason why it has been allowed to go to wrack and ruin like this. I am not denying that it would be ideal for us…our Rancho Limón Escondido…the hidden lemon! But it’s far too impressive and elegant for what we could pay. They would never let us have it, even if we knew who owned it.” The quick dusk seemed to fall darker and thicker in the shadow of the gloomy rock pile. A large rat scurried out of the house and Mrs. Feeley emitted a piercing yell. “Big as a fox terrier! Did you see ’im?”
“Perhaps we had better…” Miss Tinkham gathered up the flaring skirts of her turquoise blue squaw dress and made for the car.
“I ain’t gonna worry,” Mrs. Rasmussen said, “‘bout the house, leastways. If it’s for us, it’ll be for us, an’ nothin’ can’t stop it. But if it ain’t for us, it means we’ll find somethin’ better. What I’m worried about is them car license.”
To recover the face lost over the rat, Mrs. Feeley felt called upon to bluster a little. “Nothin’ that a little mud won’t fix,” she said, picking up a large slate shingle lying on the ground. “On’y…they ain’t no mud.” She looked around for a second, saw no pond nor fish pool. “Ain’t even no water! But I can fix that!”
She grinned and stepped behind a big palm tree. In a minute she was back with the tile covered with mud. Quickly and expertly she daubed over the outmoded license plates, front and back. Then she broke a branch from a sagebush and pushed the forked end down over the front plate in a most naturalistic and convincing manner. Anyone would swear that the ladies had been out looking for plants in the back country and had got their plates splattered.
“Drive slow an’ keep to the back streets, dear.” She climbed into the car and addressed the house, but not until she had furnished her companions in the front seat with an icy beer. “Stay where yer at, dearie…we’ll be back.”
Miss Tinkham gurgled happily into her beer can: “We might as well begin at the top! There’s always more room there—and a rich pipe dream doesn’t cost a cent more than a poor one.” Mrs. Rasmussen switched on the lights of the car and said a swift silent prayer to whatever gods there might be, to help her back the car out of that long, rutty lane. “Because,” she said, “there sure as hell ain’t no place to turn round in!”
“You’re absolutely wonderful,” Miss Tinkham said. “The only person I’ve ever known who could drive as well backward as she could forward.” The car was dragging on the ruts and grating horribly. “You’re like the Fililu bird, you don’t care where you’re going, you just want to see where you’ve been.” She hoped to distract Mrs. Rasmussen from the terrible job of steering the car over all those roots and stumps. “I had a friend who was forced to learn to fly a plane because she could never learn to back a car. You don’t have to back a plane…Stop!” Miss Tinkham shrieked and Mrs. Rasmusse
n took her so literally that she almost threw them all through the windshield.
“What’d I do wrong?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“You did everything right! Where’s my torch?” Miss Tinkham rummaged in her reticule and dashed from the car with the flashlight in her hand. Through the underbrush and Spanish daggers she charged heedless of spines and thorns.
“Elmo Gates,” she shouted. “Elmo Gates.”
“When them brainy ones snaps—” Mrs. Feeley shook her head.
Before Mrs. Rasmussen could agree, Miss Tinkham was back in the car reaching for her notebook to write down an important number: “Elmo Gates, Attorney at Law, has it in charge. I have his address and phone number in La Mesa.”
“Yeah,” Mrs. Feeley passed a beer can across to each of her friends in the front seat, “when them brainy ones snaps, somethin’s got to give!”
“Looks like it’s gonna be Elmo Gates givin’ a good, cheap rent,” Mrs. Rasmussen said as she finally reached the longed-for strip of pavement. “Sure nice to be drivin’ forwards ’stead o’ backwards, though like Miss Tinkham says, it really don’t make much difference to me. Lessee,” she paused and looked at the signs, “San Diego. Thattaway. Eight miles.”
Chapter 2
“WE SHOULDA took that feller’s address that wants the parkin’ lot,” Mrs. Feeley said as she wiped off a string of sauerkraut that dangled from her mouth. “We coulda give him the lease tonight.”
“Would that be wise, before we know whether we can get The Mansion or not?” Miss Tinkham said.
“Even a blind man runnin’ for his life could see we’re dead set on havin’ it. Wonder what would happen did we just move in an’ make whoever owns it put us out?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“Squatters’ rights.” Miss Tinkham smiled, thinking of some of her own earlier pre-emptions. “It’s a good title in some states. Has nuisance value, if nothing else.”
Mrs. Rasmussen looked at her shiny electric stove and her refrigerator with love. They were beautiful, but she’d enjoy the coal range too. It was cozy. She scraped the remainder of the sauerkraut cooked with browned onions and comino seed into a casserole and placed two large knackwurst on top of it. “Ol’-Timer will be starved whenever he does get here.”
A roaring noise filled the yard. The three ladies ran to the door of their double bus-house.
“We don’t park no bulldozers or cement mixers in here.” Mrs. Feeley waved off a swarthy man who shut off the motor and climbed down out of the seat of an immense red truck with a closed-in driver’s cab, complete with curtains and a venetian blind in the back window.
“Are you trying to break the sound barrier with that juggernaut?” Miss Tinkham said.
“Talk English, lady. ’Cause I sure can’t get much outa him.” Old-Timer got down rather sheepishly from the cab of the truck. “He’s actin’ like he’s wantin’ to buy it, near as I can make out.”
“What for?” Mrs. Feeley asked.
Old-Timer produced a sign and hung it on the door handle: “ALL KINE HAULING. CHEEP.”
He handed Mrs. Rasmussen a slip of pink paper. He had learned long ago to turn all funds into the kitty in charge of the chancellor of the exchequer.
“It’s a check from Slim at the corner store. Ten dollars,” she said.
“What’s it for?” Mrs. Feeley asked.
Old-Timer reached back in the truck and pulled out a bucket of clams.
“He helped me hitch on a big house-trailer to the cab an’ we hauled it to L.A. Then we drove to Pismo Beach to dig clams. He sold a whole bunch of ’em to the store instead o’ takin’ pay for the work,” the owner of the truck said.
Old-Timer was opening a clam with his pocketknife, but before he could complete the job, the clam decided to disgorge some sand and sea water into his eye. The ladies giggled and Old-Timer went back to the truck wiping his eye with the red bandanna.
“So you want to go into the haulin’ business?” Mrs. Feeley said, following him.
He nodded, raised the hood and went poking deep into the innards of the big truck.
“Whyn’t you get one o’ them banana wagons? Something like a bus we could all ride in, ’stead o’ this tar boiler?”
Old-Timer started the motor and pressed down on the accelerator, producing a roar like Judgment Day.
“Yeah. I know.” Mrs. Feeley grimaced. “Power! Power drunk, that’s what you are. Long as anything’s noisy, it’s gotta have power. How much you want for it?” she asked the owner.
He had frizzy-grizzle hair, combed up from the sides over his bald head, where the ends were wrapped into a neat little knot the size of a quarter, firmly held in place by a bobby-pin.
“Eight hunnert dollars,” he said.
Mrs. Feeley shrieked.
“If we had that much money, we’d buy the Santa Fee Railroad! You crazy?”
“We need a truck like we need prohibition,” Miss Tinkham said.
“Don’t even know if it’ll run. Betcha it drinks gas an’ eats oil,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“I wasn’t wantin’ to sell,” the man grunted. “Them tires is brand new. Threads ain’t even wore off yet. Cost me a lot when I got it secondhand. Anybody could see he’s fell in love with it…that’s the only reason I even set a price on it.” He opened the door to get in the cab. His skim-milk eyes touched the bridge of his nose.
Old-Timer sadly chewed the ends of his mustache.
“Sure be a help on the place,” Mrs. Rasmussen said softly. “’Course I know we ain’t got it yet, an’ them tax bills comin’ double today…that’s why I didn’t fix nothin’ but kraut an’ weenie wursht for supper. Gotta cut to the bone.”
“We couldn’t pay cash.” Miss Tinkham knew where the tax money was: wrapped in foil and taped to the back of a holy picture of Saint Anthony. She knew how much money was in the foil and that it was not enough for the piratical demands of the blood-sucking tax collector, let alone a red mammoth truck. She looked at Old-Timer speculatively. He leaned pensively against the object of his desire. The owner of the truck had discovered the Cadillac.
“She run?”
“Like a filly,” Mrs. Feeley said. “We been out all over today…run like a clock.”
“I might could take it in on the truck.”
Mrs. Feeley looked at Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Rasmussen.
“We couldn’t sell it,” Miss Tinkham said. “It was a gift.”
“How do we know your truck ain’t got a busted block?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“Lady, I don’t want to sell. But if I did, an’ if I was buyin’…an’ this feller said it was clean, I’d take it. He knows ’em inside an’ out.”
Mrs. Feeley nodded pensively: “After things got so easy, when these bus-houses was built for us, Ol’-Timer used to take that Cadillac apart and put it back together every day out in the driveway, just to have somethin’ to do. Then, when the cost o’ livin’ went up four dollars a case, he had to go to work for the Sore Heel Gang, pickin’ up papers an’ trash in the park. That ain’t no life for a man.”
“He could earn good if he had this,” the owner said.
“It might be a bargain at that,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “We wouldn’t have to buy them license plates for the Cadillac did we have this. This’n’s already gottem.”
“That’s for true, but we ain’t got the money,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Gotta make the payment on the bus-houses to the boys, too. We still owe that there mortgage.”
“Ain’t you gonna get any money?” the man asked. “I could let you have it on time.”
“You don’ know us. How’d you know we wouldn’t skip the country?”
“Own this place, don’t you? Heard you beefin’ ’bout taxes. You ain’t gonna run off while you’re livin’ with this roof under your head.”
“We gotta talk it over,” Mrs. Feeley said. The three huddled a moment, then Mrs. Rasmussen went into the kitchen and dished up two plates of supper. She beckoned the two men into the kitchen.
“Ain’t but one wursht apiece, but it’s better’n a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.” She set a breadboard with a loaf of homemade rye bread on the table, with the knife on the board beside it. “Fill in the far corners with this,” she said. “An’ don’t cut none off till you need it, ’cause it dries out.”
Old-Timer set the bucket of clams in the refrigerator and came back with two beers. The visitor looked embarrassedly at his filthy hands.
“Use the zink,” Mrs. Rasmussen ordered. Her heart got the best of her thrift and she set out some cold roast pork to fill in. The truck owner held his fork in a firm banjo grip and was sawing away on the knackwurst as she went out to join her friends.
Mrs. Feeley and Miss Tinkham were just coming back up the driveway. “We stepped down to hold a word o’ prayer with Slim.” They had two six-packs of beer.
“He sold his truck last week,” Miss Tinkham said. “Cheaper to hire hauling done than to pay a driver and all the truck expenses.”
“He’d be glad to let Ol’-Timer haul some for him,” Mrs. Feeley said.
“And the front part of the truck can be used for hauling all kinds of trailers without even using the back. Perhaps Old-Timer could make a career hauling house-trailers to summer resorts in Maine or Florida. It is a bright, bright future for him,” Miss Tinkham said.
“Tell you what,” Mrs. Rasmussen said thoughtfully. “Let’s make him let us try it out ’fore we decide. Maybe the man from the Mansion would see us in it, an’ anybody that had THAT is bound to be somebody!”
“Teamsters Local 542, here we come!” Miss Tinkham laughed. “A fire-breathing modern-day dragon would be impressive indeed! No antiquated limousine for us, but of course we could never part with it for sentimental reasons.”
“You know,” Mrs. Rasmussen murmured, “if we was to drive his truck out to the place tomorrow, I wouldn’t have to go through that nervious attention like yesterday, worryin’ about them license plates. That was a bad feelin’ an’ I was iss-cared the whole time.”
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