“Hurry up, Doc,” the lean man gasped. “My stomach’s on fire.”
“There’s no hurry now,” Marcia said. “We have to allow time for the turpentine to react with the phosphorus. You don’t get this here anyway. Head for the bathroom and wait until I bring it to you. Quickly now!”
Ten minutes later, when Jed Harmon and Sergeant Cartwright entered the back door wearing sheepish expressions because they hadn’t a single fish with them, Marcia said, “We have a couple of visitors, but it’s nothing to get excited about. They’re patients of mine.”
She led them to the bathroom. The two gunmen were side-by-side on their knees, retching into the bathtub.
“Johnny Minor and George the Needle!” Sergeant Cartwright said in amazement. “Mark Flager’s top trigger men. What in the devil’s the matter with them?”
“They ate some of my spaghetti sauce after I’d laced it rather liberally with cayenne pepper.”
“That made them sick?” Jed asked with raised brows.
“Well, not exactly. It was more their imagination. They were under the impression that the can of rat poison you spread around in the woodshed had been emptied into the sauce.”
When both men stared at her, Marcia said, “They mistook me for a doctor of medicine. I didn’t bother to explain that I’m really a doctor of psychology.”
The People Across the Canyon
Margaret Millar
The first time the Bortons realized that someone had moved into the new house across the canyon was one night in May, when they saw the rectangular light of a television set shining in the picture window. Marion Borton knew it had to happen eventually, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept the idea of neighbors in a part of the country she and Paul had come to consider exclusively their own.
They had discovered the site, bought six acres, and built the house over the objections of the bank, which didn’t like to lend money on unimproved property, and of their friends who thought the Bortons were foolish to move so far out of town. Now other people were discovering the spot, and here and there through the eucalyptus trees and the live oaks, Marion could see half-finished houses.
But it was the house directly across the canyon that bothered her most; she had been dreading this moment ever since the site had been bulldozed the previous summer.
“There goes our privacy.” Marion went over and snapped off the television set, a sign to Paul that she had something on her mind which she wanted to transfer to his. The transference, intended to halve the problem, often merely doubled it.
“Well, let’s have it,” he said, trying to conceal his annoyance.
“Have what?”
“Stop kidding around. You don’t usually cut off Perry Mason in the middle of a sentence.”
“All I said was, there goes our privacy.”
“We have plenty left,” Paul said.
“You know how sounds carry across the canyon.”
“I don’t hear any sounds.”
“You will. They probably have ten or twelve children and a howling dog and a sports car.”
“A couple of children wouldn’t be so bad—at least Cathy would have someone to play with.”
Cathy was eight, in bed now, and ostensibly asleep, with the night light on and her bedroom door open just a crack.
“She has plenty of playmates at school,” Marion said, pulling the drapes across the window so that she wouldn’t have to look at the exasperating rectangle of light across the canyon. “Her teacher tells me Cathy gets along with everyone and never causes any trouble. You talk as if she’s deprived or something.”
“It would be nice if she had more interests, more children of her own age around.”
“A lot of things would be nice if. I’ve done my best.”
Paul knew it was true. He’d heard her issue dozens of weekend invitations to Cathy’s schoolmates. Few of them came to anything. The mothers offered various excuses: poison oak, snakes, mosquitoes in the creek at the bottom of the canyon, the distance of the house from town in case something happened and a doctor was needed in a hurry...these excuses, sincere and valid as they were, embittered Marion. “For heaven’s sake, you’d think we lived on the moon or in the middle of a jungle.”
“I guess a couple of children would be all right,” Marion said. “But please, no sports car.”
“I’m afraid that’s out of our hands.”
“Actually, they might even be quite nice people.”
“Why not? Most people are.”
Both Marion and Paul had the comfortable feeling that something had been settled, though neither was quite sure what. Paul went over and turned the television set back on. As he had suspected, it was the doorman who’d killed the nightclub owner with a baseball bat, not the blonde dancer or her young husband or the jealous singer.
It was the following Monday that Cathy started to run away.
Marion, ironing in the kitchen and watching a quiz program on the portable set Paul had given her for Christmas, heard the school bus groan to a stop at the top of the driveway.
She waited for the front door to open and Cathy to announce in her high thin voice, “I’m home, Mommy.”
The door didn’t open.
From the kitchen window Marion saw the yellow bus round the sharp curve of the hill like a circus cage full of wild captive children screaming for release.
She waited until the end of the program, trying to convince herself that another bus had been added to the route and would come along shortly, or that Cathy had decided to stop off at a friend’s house and would telephone any minute. But no other bus appeared, and the telephone remained silent.
Marion changed into her hiking boots and started off down the canyon, avoiding the scratchy clumps of chaparral and the creepers of poison oak that looked like loganberry vines.
She found Cathy sitting in the middle of the little bridge across the creek that Paul had made out of two fallen eucalyptus trees. Cathy’s short plump legs hung over the logs until they almost touched the water. She was absolutely motionless, her face hidden by a straw curtain of hair. Then a single frog croaked a warning of Marion’s presence, and Cathy responded to the sound as if she was more intimate with nature than adults were, and more alert to its subtle communications of danger.
She stood up quickly, brushing off the back of her dress and drawing aside the curtain of hair to reveal eyes as blue as the periwinkles that hugged the banks of the creek.
“Cathy.”
“I was only counting waterbugs while I was waiting. Forty-one.”
“Waiting for what?”
“The ten or twelve children, and the dog.”
“What ten or twelve chil—” Marion stopped. “I see. You were listening the other night when we thought you were asleep.”
“I wasn’t listening,” Cathy said righteously. “My ears were hearing.”
Marion restrained a smile. “Then I wish you’d tell those ears of yours to hear properly. I didn’t say the new neighbors have ten or twelve children, I said they might have. Actually, it’s very unlikely. Not many families are that big these days.”
“Do you have to be old to have a big family?”
“Well, you certainly can’t be very young.”
“I bet people with big families have station wagons so they have room for all the children?”
“The lucky ones do.”
Cathy stared down at the thin flow of water carrying fat little minnows down to the sea. Finally she said, “They’re too young, and their car is too small.”
In spite of her aversion to having new neighbors, Marion felt a quickening of interest. “Have you seen them?”
But the little girl seemed deaf, lost in a water world of minnows and dragonflies and tadpoles.
“I asked you a question, Cathy. Did you see the people who just moved in?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before you came. Their name is Smith.”
�
��How do you know that?”
“I went up to the house to look at things and they said, hello, little girl, what’s your name? And I said, Cathy, what’s yours? And they said Smith. Then they drove off in the little car.”
“You’re not supposed to go poking around other people’s houses,” Marion said brusquely. “And while we’re at it, you’re not supposed to go anywhere after school without first telling me where you’re going and when you’ll be back. You know that perfectly well. Now why didn’t you come in and report to me after you got off the school bus?”
“I didn’t want to.”
“That’s not a satisfactory answer.”
Satisfactory or not, it was the only answer Cathy had. She looked at her mother in silence, then she turned and darted back up the hill to her own house.
After a time Marion followed her, exasperated and a little confused. She hated to punish the child, but she knew she couldn’t ignore the matter entirely—it was much too serious. While she gave Cathy her graham crackers and orange juice, she told her, reasonably and kindly, that she would have to stay in her room the following day after school by way of learning a lesson.
That night, after Cathy had been tucked in bed, Marion related the incident to Paul. He seemed to take a less serious view of it than Marion, a fact of which the listening child became well aware.
“I’m glad she’s getting acquainted with the new people,” Paul said. “It shows a certain degree of poise I didn’t think she had. She’s always been so shy.”
“You’re surely not condoning her running off without telling me?”
“She didn’t run far. All kids do things like that once in a while.”
“We don’t want to spoil her.”
“Cathy’s always been so obedient I think she has us spoiled. Who knows, she might even teach us a thing or two about going out and making new friends.” He realized, from past experience, that this was a very touchy subject. Marion had her house, her garden, her television sets; she didn’t seem to want any more of the world than these, and she resented any implication that they were not enough. To ward off an argument he added, “You’ve done a good job with Cathy. Stop worrying...Smith, their name is?”
“Yes.”
“Actually, I think it’s an excellent sign that Cathy’s getting acquainted.”
At three the next afternoon the yellow circus cage arrived, released one captive, and rumbled on its way.
“I’m home, Mommy.”
“Good girl.”
Marion felt guilty at the sight of her: the child had been cooped up in school all day, the weather was so warm and lovely and besides, Paul hadn’t thought the incident of the previous afternoon too important.
“I know what,” Marion suggested, “let’s you and I go down to the creek and count waterbugs.”
The offer was a sacrifice for Marion because her favorite quiz program was on, and she liked to answer the questions along with the contestants. “How about that?”
Cathy knew all about the quiz program; she’d seen it a hundred times, had watched the moving mouths claim her mother’s eyes and ears and mind. “I counted the waterbugs yesterday.”
“Well, minnows, then.”
“You’ll scare them away.”
“Oh, will I?” Marion laughed self-consciously, rather relieved that Cathy had refused her offer and was clearly and definitely a little guilty about the relief. “Don’t you scare them?”
“No. They think I’m another minnow because they’re used to me.”
“Maybe they could get used to me, too.”
“I don’t think so.”
When Cathy went off down the canyon by herself Marion realized, in a vaguely disturbing way, that the child had politely but firmly rejected her mother’s company. It wasn’t until dinner time that she found out the reason why.
“The Smiths,” Cathy said, “have an Austin-Healey.” Cathy, like most girls, had never shown any interest in cars, and her glib use of the name moved her parents to laughter.
The laughter encouraged Cathy to elaborate. “An Austin-Healey makes a lot of noise—like Daddy’s lawn mower.”
“I don’t think the company would appreciate a commercial from you, young lady,” Paul said. “Are the Smiths all moved in?”
“Oh, yes. I helped them.”
“Is that a fact? And how did you help them?”
“I sang two songs. And then we danced and danced.”
Paul looked half-pleased, half-puzzled. It wasn’t like Cathy to perform willingly in front of people. During the last Christmas concert at school, she’d left the stage in tears and hidden in the cloak room... Well, maybe her shyness was only a phase, and she was finally getting over it.
“They must be very nice people,” he said, “to take time out from getting settled in a new house to play games with a little girl.”
Cathy shook her head. “It wasn’t games. It was real dancing—like on Ed Sullivan.”
“As good as that, eh?” Paul said, smiling. “Tell me about it.”
“Mrs. Smith is a nightclub dancer.”
Paul’s smile faded, and a pulse began to beat in his left temple like a small misplaced heart. “Oh? You’re sure about that, Cathy?”
“Yes.”
“And what does Mr. Smith do?”
“He’s a baseball player.”
“You mean that’s what he does for a living?” Marion asked. “He doesn’t work in an office like Daddy?”
“No, he just plays baseball. He always wears a baseball cap.”
“I see. What position does he play on the team?” Paul’s voice was low.
Cathy looked blank.
“Everybody on a ball team has a special thing to do. What does Mr. Smith do?”
“He’s a batter.”
“A batter, eh? Well, that’s nice. Did he tell you this?”
“Yes.”
“Cathy,” Paul said, “I know you wouldn’t deliberately lie to me, but sometimes you get your facts a little mixed up.”
He went on in this vein for some time but Cathy’s story remained unshaken: Mrs. Smith was a nightclub dancer, Mr. Smith a professional baseball player, they loved children, and they never watched television.
“That, at least, must be a lie,” Marion said to Paul later when she saw the rectangular light of the television set shining in the Smiths’ picture window. “As for the rest of it, there isn’t a night club within fifty miles, or a professional ball club within two hundred.”
“She probably misunderstood. It’s quite possible that at one time Mrs. Smith was a dancer of sorts and that he played a little baseball.”
Cathy, in bed and teetering dizzily on the brink of sleep, wondered if she should tell her parents about the Smiths’ child—the one who didn’t go to school.
She didn’t tell them; Marion found out for herself the next morning after Paul and Cathy had gone. When she pulled back the drapes in the living room and opened the windows, she heard the sharp slam of a screen door from across the canyon and saw a small child come out on the patio of the new house. At that distance she couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl. Whichever it was, the child was quiet and well behaved; only the occasional slam of the door shook the warm, windless day.
The presence of the child, and the fact that Cathy hadn’t mentioned it, gnawed at Marion’s mind all day. She questioned Cathy about it as soon as she came home.
“You didn’t tell me the Smiths have a child.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know why not.”
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“Girl.”
“How old?”
Cathy thought it over carefully, frowning up at the ceiling. “About ten.”
“Doesn’t she go to school?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t want to.”
“That’s not a very good reason.”
“It is her
reason,” Cathy said flatly. “Can I go out to play now?”
“I’m not sure you should. You look a little feverish. Come here and let me feel your forehead.”
Cathy’s forehead was cool and moist, but her cheeks and the bridge of her nose were very pink, almost as if she’d been sunburned.
“You’d better stay inside,” Marion said, “and watch some cartoons.”
“I don’t like cartoons.”
“You used to.”
“I like real people.”
She means the Smiths, of course, Marion thought as her mouth tightened. “People who dance and play baseball all the time?”
If the sarcasm had any effect on Cathy, she didn’t show it. After waiting until Marion had become engrossed in her quiz program, Cathy lined up all her dolls in her room and gave a concert for them, to thunderous applause.
“Where are your old Navy binoculars?” Marion asked Paul when she was getting ready for bed.
“Oh, somewhere in the sea chest, I imagine. Why?”
“I want them.”
“Not thinking of spying on the neighbors, are you?”
“I’m thinking of just that,” Marion said grimly.
The next morning, as soon as she saw the Smith child come out on the patio, Marion went downstairs to the storage room to search through the sea chest. She located the binoculars and was in the act of dusting them off when the telephone started to ring in the living room. She hurried upstairs and said breathlessly, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Borton?”
“Yes.”
“This is Miss Park speaking, Cathy’s teacher.”
Marion had met Miss Park several times at P.T.A. meetings and report-card conferences. She was a large, ruddy-faced, and unfailingly cheerful young woman—the kind, as Paul said, you wouldn’t want to live with, but who’d be nice to have around in an emergency. “How are you, Miss Park?”
“Oh, fine, thank you, Mrs. Borton. I meant to call you yesterday but things were a bit out of hand around here, and I knew there was no great hurry to check on Cathy; she’s such a well-behaved little girl.”
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