“To keep people from going into the mountains? Lots of luck. Who’d introduce laws like that?”
“I would.”
Susan switched the picnic basket from one arm to the other, as she thought Joe could do that. He could protect the mountains or make people pick up trash or do just about anything he set his mind to.
They reached the mine and set the picnic basket and beer on a round wooden structure that had once been a cable spool. The area was littered with the detritus of mining days—piles of machinery, discarded dynamite boxes, shacks that had fallen in and were no more than boards containing rusty nails, an ore bucket. The mine tipple sagged, its boards weathered to a rich brown, but it had not caved in.
“You’re not going inside?” Susan asked, alarmed.
“Too dangerous. You could fall down a hundred feet and never be found.”
Susan was relieved. If Joe had gone inside, she’d have had to follow to show she wasn’t chicken. She looked around then and found a cache of old bottles, some of them purple from the sun. She picked through the glass and pulled out two that weren’t broken. “Aren’t these pretty?” She felt a little foolish asking that because men—she thought of Joe as a man now—didn’t care about pretty things.
But Joe held up a bottle and nodded. “I always look for old bottles. My mom likes to keep them in the window.”
“She can have these,” Susan said, pleased that she had found something to give Joe. Maybe he’d be reminded of her each time he saw the sun shining through the purple glass.
He held up a glass jar that had a label on which something had been written in pencil. “I bet this was a still. There were plenty of them up here during Prohibition, dozens. Peggy’s grandfather had one, although she won’t admit it.”
“No lie?” Susan wished he hadn’t mentioned Peggy. She thought there ought to be a moratorium on mentioning Peggy that day.
Joe nodded. “Ask her, and see what she says.”
“No, thanks. I’ve seen her get mad before.”
“Who hasn’t? For all I know, her dad still makes moon. He sure drinks enough of it. What a jerk.”
Susan wanted to reply that Peggy probably drank it, too, but she held her tongue for fear Joe would think she was catty.
He lifted a pine branch that had fallen onto the ground and picked off the needles, while Susan turned her face to the dappled sunlight coming through the aspen trees, her eyes closed. There was just enough of a breeze to keep the sun from being too hot. She’d like to take off her shirt so that she could get a tan. She and Peggy did that sometimes when they were hiking in the back country, but of course, she couldn’t do it now, because Joe would think she was a tramp. Besides, Susan thought, she was so flat-chested that he’d be disappointed.
“So, you’re really going to DU?” Joe asked.
Thinking of the two of them together at school in Denver brought back her good mood. “My father wanted me to go east to a women’s college, but what fun would that be?” Susan asked, a little sleepy from the sun now. She wished she could put her head in Joe’s lap instead of on a log, and he’d run his hands through her hair. She opened her eyes, thinking if he were beside her, she could lean against him, but he sat some distance away, his legs crossed.
“I’ll tell you the best sororities. Heck, I could even tell you what guys to date.”
Susan shaded her eyes so that she could look at him. “I don’t think I need your help there.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’d probably have so many guys on your string, you wouldn’t even look at me.”
“I’d consider it. You might be a Big Man on Campus.”
“BMOCs always have pretty girls hanging around.”
Did he mean she was pretty? Susan couldn’t think how to respond, and Joe didn’t say any more, so she stood and said, “Let’s go look inside the mine shack.”
They walked over to a small building whose door was ajar. The steps had rotted through, and inside, the floor was buckled. Weeds grew up through the floorboards. Wires hung down from the ceiling, and an old shirt and a pair of overalls were pegged to the wall. A boot, its sole half off, lay on the floor under rusted springs that had fallen through a makeshift bed. A tiny cookstove that had been used for cooking as well as heating was still standing, although its stovepipe had crumpled and lay on the floor.
On impulse, Susan opened the oven door, which shrieked from disuse, and they discovered a pot inside filled with mummified beans. “Somebody expected to be home for supper, but he never came back.”
“He could have died in a cave-in or just walked off the job.”
“Or maybe a woman left it here. She might have been the one who died.” She might have died in childbirth. Susan suddenly remembered her grandmother. She thought how awful it would be, dying when your life had barely begun, leaving behind a husband like Joe and a baby for him to raise. “I feel like an intruder, like we walked in on ghosts.” She went outside and sat on a log in the sun, its warmth taking away the chill of the shack.
Joe brought the picnic basket and the beer and sat down beside her, and they ate the lunch, throwing bits of sandwich and cinnamon bun to a striped chipmunk that perched on a boulder across from them. A black-and-white camp robber flew down from the branch of a pine tree and pecked at a crumb, then flew off.
“I’d miss this if I ever left Colorado,” Joe said, picking up a rock and tossing it at a bucket whose bottom had rusted out.
“You’d leave?” Susan felt a sort of panic. She’d never thought about Joe living anyplace but Georgetown.
“I’m not planning to. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. It’s my home. But who knows? Would you live here?”
Susan nodded. “It’s my home, too, even though I live in Chicago most of the year. I love Georgetown. There’s a foreverness to this place, to the Bride’s House.”
“I know what you mean.” Susan waited for Joe to say more, but he stood and reached out his hand. “Come on. Let’s see if we can find any candlesticks.” He helped Susan rise and led her through the piles of machinery and waste rock. Joe looked into an ore cart that lay on its side, poking the rubble with a stick. A mouse ran out, and he shouted, “Careful. There are living things in here.”
“Yuck,” Susan said, thinking she should have shrieked and grasped onto Joe, as Peggy would have done, but it was too late now. She walked a little away and spotted something in a boulder field. “I found one of those old leather hardhats,” she called, and reached for it. Then she stopped. A rattlesnake that had been sunning itself on the rocks began to slither toward her. In a moment it would curl, and shaking the rattles on its tail, it would lunge at her, sinking its fangs into her leg or arm, even her chest or neck. She knew she should jump back, should run, but instead, looking into the snake’s eyes, she froze, unable to take even a step. “Joe,” she called in a high voice.
Joe turned and frowned at Susan for a second. Then he saw the snake, and in an instant, he was beside her. He grabbed the rattler by the tail. Then he pulled back his arm and popped the snake like a whip. The snake’s head snapped off, landing in the dirt not far from Susan, and Joe yelled, “Don’t touch it. There’s venom in the fangs.”
He put his arms around her, holding her up, making Susan feel safe. She looked over his shoulder at the head of the snake. Its eye stared unblinking at her like a living thing, and she gulped air. Joe patted her back and said, “It’s okay. You’re all right. The snake’s dead.” Susan began to shiver, holding on to Joe, afraid he would let her go, but he led her to a rock and made her sit down. He glanced around, searching for other snakes.
“You saved my life,” Susan said. She balled up the tail of her shirt with her hand.
Joe frowned and looked at his hands. “You’d have been okay.”
“No, really. You popped off its head,” she whispered in awe. “How did you know to do that?”
“I don’t know. I just did it.”
“That’ll teach him.”
 
; Joe laughed. “You want to see the rest of him? You know, a little like getting back on a horse after it’s thrown you?”
Susan didn’t, but she forced herself to stand up, and holding on to Joe’s arm, she went to where the snake’s body lay and peered down at it. The snake was stretched out and looked alive, because at first, she couldn’t see that the head was gone. She stared for a long time at the body, which looked like a tree branch, then turned and put her face against Joe’s chest, closing her eyes, as he held her again. She wanted to stay there all day.
“It’s an old snake. You can tell from all the rattles,” Joe said. Then he asked, “Do you want them?”
“The rattles? You mean cut them off?”
“Why not? He doesn’t need them.” Joe took out his pocket knife and leaned over the snake, but Susan stopped him. “Let me,” she said. She was not sure just why she should cut the rattles, but it seemed to her that she, not Joe, should do it. Whatever the reason, she squatted down beside the snake, taking the rattles in one hand and lopping them off with the knife she held in the other. She shook the rattles, and they gave off a dead sound. They felt dead, too, no longer menacing, and she wrapped them in waxed paper from the lunch and placed them in the picnic basket. “I’ll have to remember to take them out before I get home. Mrs. Warren would have a fit if she found them there.”
Joe raised an eyebrow.
“Of course, I could always leave them.” And they both laughed, Joe because of the joke, Susan because she was relieved. She hoped that when she thought of this day with Joe, she’d recall the sun and the scent of wild roses instead of the snake. But she wouldn’t. She had wanted it to be a day to remember, and it was, but in a horrible way.
“I can’t believe that I couldn’t even move,” Susan said, as they started back down the trail toward the truck, Joe staying close behind her. “I was transfixed.”
“I thought you were brave.”
“Yeah, like the time I went halfway up that pine tree in front of the Bride’s House and couldn’t get down.” She shouldn’t have brought that up. It was one more thing that would make Joe think she was stupid.
“You went halfway up. That’s farther than I’d gone, and Peggy never made it more than four or five branches. I really do think you’re brave. What other girl would touch a dead snake? You actually cut off its rattles. That’s pretty impressive.”
Susan turned around, gripping a branch of an aspen tree, because the slope was steep. “I really was scared.”
“Yeah, but you faced it.” He paused and said, “I don’t know what I’d have done if it’d bitten you. I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you.” He stared at her for a long time, and Susan shivered again, this time at Joe’s words, not the snake.
He opened the passenger door of the truck, and took her arm to help her on to the running board. But then he stopped. “Hey,” he said. When Susan turned around, he kissed her. She’d waited almost half of her life for that moment, had dreamed of being in the moonlight with Joe when he took her in his arms. This was not what she had imagined; it was better. She loved that Joe had kissed her there in the mountains with the sun shimmering off the aspen leaves. She closed her eyes and kissed him back. Then Joe pulled away a little and smiled at her, running his finger down the bridge of her nose. He kissed her again, then let her go, put the picnic basket into the back of the truck, and climbed into the driver’s side. “You okay?” he asked, waiting for her answer before he turned on the engine. Susan nodded, too happy to say anything.
They drove back down the trail and turned onto the highway, not talking. Joe hummed a little. Susan couldn’t look at him, because she felt giddy. She thought about the kisses, but her mind kept going back to the snake. She envisioned it again, not only stretched out on the rocky ground but coiled, striking, and by the time they reached Georgetown, she’d begun shaking again and couldn’t stop. “You’re in shock,” Joe said. “Come on. I’ll help you.” He half dragged, half lifted Susan out of the truck, and picking her up, he carried her to the porch, then banged on the screen with his elbow and called, “Mrs. Curry.” Pearl rushed into the foyer from the office, Charlie behind her. “She almost got snake bit, biggest rattler I ever saw,” Joe said, although Susan knew it wasn’t. “She’s in shock.”
“The rattles are in the picnic basket, in waxed paper,” Susan told her mother, her voice high and out of control.
Joe carried Susan upstairs to her bedroom and set her on the bed. Then he returned to the foyer, where Charlie stood, the picnic basket at his feet and a wad of waxed paper in his hand. The old man held up the rattles. “That was some snake. We’ll put these in the cabinet with the ore specimens. Some of them came from snakes, too.” He chuckled.
Upstairs, Pearl sat down in a chair beside Susan as the girl stared at the shadows on the wall made by the sun coming through the blinds. She stared at them a long time before she closed her eyes. She shivered under the quilts her mother had piled on the bed, and at last, she went to sleep. When Susan awoke, her mother was still sitting beside her. On the dressing table was a vase of wildflowers. “Joe brought them,” Pearl told the girl. “He said to tell you he wanted you to have something better than snake rattles to remember your day.”
But she already did. She had the memory of Joe’s kisses.
CHAPTER 15
IN THE FALL, SUSAN REGISTERED at the University of Denver. But Joe Bullock wasn’t there. He had transferred to a school in California. In late August, he’d come by the Bride’s House to tell her. Susan had fixed iced tea, and they sat in the gazebo, across from each other on stone benches, Joe with his hands between his knees, looking at the floor. “I got a scholarship, and I want to go to law school there later on. I’m really sorry. I was going to show you around. But you’ll like DU anyway. I can still fix you up with one or two of my fraternity brothers.”
“Why would I want second best?” Susan asked, trying to sound lighthearted, although the truth was that she was crushed. She’d had such great plans. The two of them would go to football games and dances together, to fraternity and sorority exchanges. They’d get pinned and then engaged. Maybe they’d marry after Joe graduated. She’d had no business dreaming such dreams, of course, because there’d been nothing more between them than a few kisses. But that hadn’t stopped her. And now she was faced with how foolish she’d been in basing her future on Joe. She smiled at him, said she was disappointed but wished him well, all the time digging her nails into the palms of her hands, making little half-moon indentations in her flesh. Then she asked, “Did you just find out?”
Joe hung his head. “I’ve known since June. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.”
Susan looked at him sharply. “You should have. You should have told me.” She couldn’t say more for fear Joe would know she’d picked a college just because of him.
“You mad?” he asked, and she shook her head, although she was. After he left, she went upstairs to her room in the Bride’s House, angry at Joe for going to California, sure that she was only a summer diversion and he didn’t care about her, and stared at herself in the mirror, muttering, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
The next month, back in Chicago, Susan packed her clothes and college gear, and she and Frank drove to Denver in a new cream-colored Mercury convertible that he had purchased for her. She registered for classes, wore the stupid little freshman beanie for a week, and pledged Pi Beta Phi. And to her surprise, she loved the university. Still, she was disappointed and very much annoyed that Joe was not there.
Just a few weeks after school started, Susan met Peter Fanshaw, met him on the Colfax streetcar, of all places, since it had stormed that morning and she wasn’t used to driving her car on ice. So she’d taken the streetcar to her friend’s house where they were planning to study for an exam.
Susan glanced sideways at Peter, because he was that handsome in his air force blues—honey-colored hair and eyes as velvety brown as a fawn’s, tall, well-built, stocky, a lit
tle like Joe Bullock. Susan thought later on that it might have been his resemblance to Joe that attracted her. She watched him again out of the corner of her eye as she stood up at her stop, wishing she could ride a little farther. Susan didn’t notice that her billfold had slipped out of the pocket of her polo coat onto the seat, and only after she was gone did Peter, who was seated across the aisle, discover it. He called to the driver to stop, then jumped off the trolley, running after her, splashing the slush of the snowstorm onto his uniform, calling, “Miss, wait!” and holding the billfold high in the air.
“Oh my gosh! It’s got all my money. I’d have had to walk home,” Susan said. She wanted to offer the airman a reward, but she was conscious that she might offend him, might depreciate his act of gallantry, so instead, she said, “The least I can do is give you carfare back to the base, since you’re going to have to pay to get back onto the streetcar.”
When Peter refused, Susan astonished herself by saying she would buy him a Coke, and they went into a drugstore whose front was a sleek mix of glass and black and green tile. They sat on stools at a soda fountain and looked into the mirror in front of them, looked through the places where the day’s special was written in black crayon (“tuna salad sandwich with pickle chips 25 cents,”) just below the six flavors of ice cream (“cones 5 cents, double-decker cones 10 cents,”) and a list of ice cream concoctions (“try our Black-and-White Sundae 15 cents”). Susan sneaked glances at Peter through the word “sandwich,” and he stared frankly at her, grinning every time he caught her eye. She noticed then that his teeth were even and white but that a front tooth was chipped.
It wasn’t a date. Girls knew better than to be picked up, especially by military men. Her Pi Phi sisters would have been appalled at Susan’s audacity. But he’d returned her billfold with all her money in it, so she could trust him, couldn’t she? And they were right there in public where anybody could see them. Besides, she wasn’t dating anyone, certainly not Joe Bullock, who’d made it clear that he cared so little about her that he had gone off to California.
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