The Harder They Fall

by Doreen Owens Malek

  “Then stay away from me!” she flung at him and ran into the hall, dashing for her bedroom as if it were a safe haven. She slammed the door and locked it, putting her back against it as if she expected him to break it down.

  Nothing happened. She listened, her heart pounding, for any indications of movement, but the only thing she heard was her own ragged breathing.

  Finally she lay down on her bed and waited for her heartbeat to return to normal.

  It took a long time.

  * * * *

  Chris remained in the living room, pouring himself another drink and then slumping disconsolately on the sofa.

  Why did he feel like such a heel? He hadn’t attempted rape, for God’s sake. She had certainly consented to what he was doing; she had kissed him as if she were discovering passion for the first time and he had an uneasy feeling that she was. The only thing his “experiment” had proved was that he wanted her as desperately as he ever had, even more now that he had actually felt her eager, untutored response.

  Was it possible that he was wrong about her? The thought kept surfacing, annoying him with its insistence, but he dismissed it once more with a vengeance. So what if Martin had been her only previous sexual experience? That did nothing to prove she hadn’t been using his brother to solve her problems. In fact it made the whole scenario worse: she’d been planning to marry a man for whom she felt no desire, entering into a bloodless pact for mercenary reasons. She was just what he had always supposed and he’d better do exactly what she said and stay far away from her.

  Because the next time he might not be able to stop.

  * * * *

  “So you’re not talking to him?” Maria de Salvo said, folding the last towel on top of the stack and handing the bundle to Helene.

  “Who?” Helene said, putting the linens in the closet and shutting the door.

  “Who do you think?” Maria said disgustedly. “Chris, that’s who. The silence around here the last few days has been deafening.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him. Or about him.”

  “So you’re just going to let this go on indefinitely?”

  “Maria,” she said, sighing, “every conversation I have with him degenerates into a fight. What am I supposed to do?”

  “You might try giving him a break.”

  Helene turned and faced her. “You, too?” she said dryly.

  “What do you mean?” Maria said.

  “Martin was always telling me to give Chris a break. He was constantly making excuses for his brother.”

  “Perhaps because he knew more about Chris than you do,” Maria said quietly.

  “And you know it also?” Helene asked.

  “I know where he came from,” Maria replied.

  “So do I.”

  Maria shook her head. “You haven’t seen it. You can’t imagine where or with whom he lived.”

  “What does that have to do with his behavior toward me?” Helene asked angrily. She was getting tired of listening to reasonable people defend what she considered to be unreasonable behavior.

  “A lot, I think. My guess is he doesn’t trust women too much.”

  “Why?”

  Maria ran her tongue over her lips. “Did Martin tell you about Chris’ mother?”

  “He said... he implied that she was an alcoholic.”

  Maria nodded. “More than that, I’m afraid.”

  “What?”

  “A fallen woman, you might say.”

  Helene stared at her, appalled. “A prostitute?”

  Maria shrugged. “Not formally, she didn’t work in a brothel. But she did go with men for gifts and money.”

  “I thought... Chris said she used to be a maid here,” Helene murmured, still trying to absorb it.

  “She was, in the beginning. She was working in the house after Mr. Martin’s mother died. Mr. Murdock, he was alone, and she was young and pretty.”

  “I get the picture,” Helene said. “But why didn’t she tell him about the child?”

  “She discovered she was pregnant while Mr. Murdock was away on a long business trip. When he came back from it he was married.”

  “Oh.”

  “She was proud, you know?” Maria said.

  Helene nodded. Having met the son, she could bet his mother was proud.

  “She just went back to her people and had the baby. At first she took jobs, went from one thing to another, but there were always men and not the best kind...pretty soon they gave her things. She had a child to support and she took what she could get.”

  Helene looked away. It was all too easy to imagine.

  “By the time Mr. Murdock divorced the second wife Chris was ten and his mother was well on her way down the wrong road. She took to the bottle and it killed her slowly. Can you imagine what it was like for the boy? This is a small town. Everybody knew his mother went with the migrants on payday, the traveling salesmen, the soldiers from the fort up north, anybody who had the price of a good time or a bauble to leave behind with her.”

  Helene was silent. She remembered Chris’ remark about the empty chair on Father’s Day at school. Apparently that had been far from the worst of it.

  “And Chris stayed with her all those years?” she asked.

  “He was only fifteen when she died,” Maria replied.

  “And then he found out who his father was.”

  “Yes. She never told Mr. Murdock because she was afraid he’d take Chris away from her. I guess she felt there was no reason to keep it quiet once she was gone and she wanted Chris to have his inheritance.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  “My older sister was a friend of the Quintanas, Chris’ mother’s family.”

  “I really wish I had known all of this earlier,” Helene said thoughtfully.

  “You can understand why Martin didn’t tell you.”

  “Of course, but Chris can be so impossible...a little background would have helped to explain him.”

  “I thought so.”

  “And that’s why you’re telling me now?”

  Maria thought for a moment. “I want you to be patient with him,” she finally said. “He has feelings for you.”

  “Violently negative ones,” Helene said morosely. “He absolutely despises me.”

  “Not so,” Maria said, shaking her head. “That’s what he wants you to think.”

  “You’re wrong, Maria.”

  Maria folded her arms resolutely. “You listen to me—I know him better than anybody. I have been working here since he first came to this house. He’s trying to drive you away to protect himself.”

  “From what?”

  “From you, his feelings for you. I saw what he felt, even back when Mr. Martin was alive.”

  Helene was incredulous.

  Maria nodded. “Believe me on this. When you were here last June he was like a trapped animal. And now he is the same. He paced at night like a caged lion when you were sick.”

  At Helene’s look of astonishment Maria added, “I was here, I heard it.” She folded Helene’s blue nightgown and handed it to her. “Don’t you have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “I’ll go with you and show you where Chris lived. Would you like to see it?”

  “Very much,” Helene said quietly.

  Dr. Stern refilled Helene’s prescription for mega-vitamins and told her to get plenty of rest. Maria was reading a magazine in the waiting room when Helene emerged from the office.

  “What did he say?” Maria asked.

  Helene told her.

  “Chris will demand a report when I get back,” Maria said, as they walked out to the parking lot.

  “How do you know?”

  “He always asks me about you. When he comes in from the ranch at night it’s the first thing he does.”

  “Maybe he thinks I’m stealing the silverware.”

  “He’s concerned about you.”

  “Then why does
n’t he ask me himself?” Helene inquired despairingly. “He acts like I’m invisible and then checks on me behind my back. It’s insane.”

  They got into Maria’s car and Maria drove south from the office complex, past the strip mall and onto Main Street, which led to the old section of town. Once they crossed the tracks bisecting the industrial area they entered a part of town Helene had never seen. Dingy factories, some of them abandoned, and shabby row houses slumped toward one another in an attitude of resignation, their sloping roofs missing tarpaper tiles and their front porches sagging with the weight of disappointment and poverty. The streets were littered with rubbish, beer cans and broken toys abandoned by the skinny, dirty children chasing one another through scrubby empty lots sparkling with broken glass. Maria punched the door locks as they passed a gang of toughs drinking on a street corner and Helene shivered, glad that it was broad daylight.

  “Here it is,” Maria said quietly, slowing as they passed a wood frame two-story building, its paint faded and peeling past the point of color identification. Its side was propped against a filthy brick structure next to it, which was boarded up but still sported a rusted metal sign that proclaimed Tyson Chemicals. The porch of the house was crumbling; slats from its splintered latticework were lying about on the cracked pavement and an entire step was missing. A plastic tricycle, its rear wheel dangling crazily, was overturned in a patch of weeds to the left of the front walk.

  “This is where Chris lived?” Helene asked, swallowing.

  “Yes. It was not quite as bad then. The neighborhood has degenerated a bit more since, but I’m sure this gives you an idea of what his childhood was like.”

  “He went from this to the Homestead?” Helene asked.

  Maria nodded.

  “That must have been quite a shock.”

  “I sometimes think he hasn’t recovered from it yet,” Maria answered, turning at the corner and heading back toward the shopping district, gunning the motor slightly.

  “All right,” Helene said, gazing out the window at their improving surroundings . “I understand that he had a tough life before he found his father and was accepted into the Murdock family. But why does he have to take it out on me?”

  “Because he wants you, maybe more than anything else he’s wanted in his life, but he’s afraid to want—don’t you see that? He spent the early part of his life never getting what he wanted. And to make matters worse, when he met you, Helene, you belonged to his brother.”

  “Martin is dead,” Helene said dully.

  “Yes, but think of the guilt involved! His brother, who took him in and helped him and accepted him as a member of the family—he’s going to take that brother’s girl? Not likely. Even now, it’s eating at him all the time. I can see it.”

  “Has he said any of this to you?”

  “Of course not. Talking is not his thing.”

  “Tell me about it,” Helene said dryly. She looked over at the older woman. “Maria, I know you mean well, but I think you’re dead wrong about his feelings for me. He treats me like a pariah—he hasn’t spoken to me since... well, a good while. He seems very determined to pretend I don’t exist.”

  “He’s lonely,” Maria said.

  “I can see why.”

  “I’ve watched women pursuing him for years,” Maria said, “ever since he came to the ranch, in fact. That Ginny Porter and a pack of others before her. He can’t trust anybody enough to form a relationship. You’ve come the closest.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Helene said, rolling her eyes.

  “He asked you to marry him, didn’t he?”

  “He did that for the baby!” Helene retorted.

  “He did that for himself,” Maria replied, slowing up for a red light. “I’m not saying he isn’t interested in the child, but it was also the perfect excuse to bring you here.”

  “Why are you telling me all this now?” Helene asked, still unconvinced.

  “I can see what’s happening between the two of you and I’m so afraid that you’ll give up on him and leave,” Maria replied.

  Helene said nothing. She had certainly been thinking about it.

  “Look,” Maria said, giving the car gas when the light turned green, “the rodeo is Saturday. Were you planning to go?”

  “I didn’t think Chris would want me there,” Helene replied quietly, shrugging.

  “Come with me,” Maria said. “I’ll pick you up and we’ll go together, okay?”

  “What about your husband?”

  “He has to work.”

  “I’ll go, if you don’t tell Chris that we’re planning to attend,” Helene said.

  “He knows I’ll be there. I always go.”

  “Then don’t say anything about me.”

  “All right,” Maria answered. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  “That’s the way I want it,” Helene said, and settled back against the seat as Maria headed out of town toward the ranch.

  * * * *

  Martin had once said that September was the most beautiful month of the year in southern Wyoming and the day of the rodeo convinced Helene that he was right. The sun was bright, still retaining a shimmer of summer’s heat, and the sky was a deep, cloudless blue, the color of gem topaz. The air was clean and fragrant and to Helene the pollution of the eastern cities she knew seemed far away. She and Maria parked in the crowded grass lot on the outskirts of the fairgrounds and then walked with the rest of the crowd to the grandstand, passing under huge banners that read “Twenty-fifth Annual Tri-County Rodeo.” Food and soft drink stands lined their path and the smells of hot dogs and barbecue and cotton candy mixed with the gamy odor of the animals stamping in the stalls nearby. They took their seats on a lower rung of the ascending wooden tiers and gazed down into the arena, where a clown was entertaining the onlookers, capering on the sawdust covered floor while the participants prepared for the main events.

  Helene had never been to a rodeo before and she was fascinated. The immense Brahma bulls, the bucking broncos, the courageous—foolhardy?—men who rode them, had her leaning forward eagerly in her seat. The caller who described the events under a canopy high up in the grandstand spoke so fast and in such specialized lingo that she could hardly follow what was going on, but the visual spectacle was enough to keep her riveted. After a break during which the clown entertained again and the crowd got up to visit the concessions, Maria tapped Helene’s arm.

  “Chris’ event is coming now,” she said.

  “Is that Chris?” Helene asked, craning her neck at the rider who was ready in the stall, mounted, restraining his restive horse with gloved hands.

  Maria shook her head and pointed. “He’s up last,” she said.

  Helene turned to see Chris, outfitted in chaps and jingling spurs, his hat shoved far back on his head with a red neckerchief tied at his throat, pacing in the packed dirt at the back of the stall. He was a study in concentration, hands on hips, staring at the ground.

  “Look!” Maria said.

  Helene turned back to the show as a calf was released into the arena and seconds later a man burst forth from the stall, riding at top speed after it. With a coil of rope in his upraised hand, holding the reins with the other, he waited for the right second and then began to spin the lasso. As the calf dodged and spun, the cowboy released the rope with split-second timing and it whistled through the air, slipping around the animal as neatly as a pinball drops into a slot. The calf fell and the man was off the horse almost at the same moment, pinning it and wrapping its legs, then leaping up with his hands held high to show he was done. The crowd erupted into enthusiastic applause and the caller announced his time.

  “Pretty good,” Maria said judiciously. “Chris is going to have a hard time defending his title.”

  Several other men competed and then Helene heard “champion” and “Murdock” in the midst of the caller’s babble, before his voice was swallowed up in a burst of thunderous screaming and clapping.

&nbs
p; “There he is,” Maria yelled triumphantly over the noise.

  Helene watched as he tipped his hat at his reception, then replaced it on his head, settling back onto his horse and gathering the reins into his left hand. His rope was already looped over his shoulder and Helene felt the anticipation gathering around her as the crowd fell into an expectant hush.

  Chris nodded and the calf burst from its stall onto the floor of the arena. Chris followed at lightning speed and the whole thing was over almost before Helene could comprehend it. She blinked and Chris was standing, the trussed calf at his feet, his arms thrust victoriously into the air. The people in the stands rose in one body and screamed their approval. She dimly heard the announcer caroling “winner and still champion” before the rest was drowned in a roar.

  “Is this why you brought me here?” Helene yelled archly to Maria, who was chuckling wickedly.

  “Aren’t you impressed?” she yelled back.

  Helene grinned and nodded.

  They both watched as Chris walked to the center of the ring and swept his hat off his head, bowing deeply to the crowd.

  “What a ham,” Maria mouthed to Helene and they both laughed.

  Chris’ horse was led over to him and he mounted it easily, trotting slowly around the arena, his hat held aloft, his smile wide enough to be spotted from where Helene sat.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Victory lap,” Maria replied.

  “I’ve never seen him look happier,” Helene said wistfully as the crowd noise abated.

  “That’s why I brought you here,” Maria replied, shooting her a sidelong glance.

  Chris was just heading back to the stall when a sudden series of loud popping noises erupted outside the corral fence, almost at his horse’s feet. The horse reared and plunged and Chris, who had been holding the reins loosely with one hand, flew off the horse’s back and landed at an awkward angle, face down in the dirt.

  There was a piercing scream and then a stunned silence as the clown and several of the wranglers rushed over to the sprawled figure on the ground.

  “What is it?” Helene cried frantically.

  “Some stupid kid with firecrackers,” Maria replied angrily. “He scared the horse.”