Vermilion

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  I told Alice that I’d be home shortly and said I was glad she would go after Rick. Then I sat down and looked at Clara.

  “We need to talk. I mean about what you say Sybil told you. There’s more, isn’t there?”

  She shifted papers absently on her desk, avoiding my eyes. “I don’t want to go through all that again. I shouldn’t have told the police what I did. Rick will never forgive me, and I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “You must know Sybil was lying, and that Rick was telling the truth?”

  Though she looked miserable, she was growing angry with me. “Stop it, Lindsay! Let it alone. The police can’t prove anything and Rick will be all right. I just needed more time to figure things out.”

  “I want to see him cleared—soon. And you can do that.”

  “I want to see him cleared too. But there’s nothing I mean to do about it now.”

  It was hopeless to try to cut through her defenses, and I had a growing feeling that I should get back to Rick’s, that perhaps I should never have left the house to come here.

  “Just think about it,” I said to Clara, and went out to Sybil’s car.

  When I reached the house, Marilla wasn’t there. Consuela said she hadn’t come home from school yet. There was nothing to feel uneasy about, but I phoned Orva at once. When I got no answer I began to worry, though silence probably meant that she had gone to pick Marilla up.

  Because I couldn’t sit and wait, I drove the short distance to Orva’s house. There was no answer when I rang the bell, and neither she nor Brian appeared to be home.

  Just as I returned to the car, she drove up. She had taken Marilla home from school and then gone into town on an errand. She didn’t know where Brian was. I didn’t stay to talk. The drum was suddenly, ominously silent—as though whatever was to happen had happened. And now Vermilion was beginning to chatter. I shut her out and drove quickly back to Rick’s. There I searched the main house and then the guesthouse, calling Marilla’s name, while Consuela trailed after me, alarmed by my behavior.

  I found nothing until I went into the bedroom, where Marilla had slept last night. There it waited for me—a folded sheet of paper on my pillow, with my name scrawled upon it, as though written in haste.

  I snatched it up and, as I read the note inside, my first feeling of relief faded. There were only a few words.

  Dear Lindsay:

  I have to go out to see the Fire People. If I go there I can help my dad. I’ll get a ride to the turn-off and hike in.

  Love,

  Marilla

  Vermilion was almost screeching in my ear. Go after her! Don’t let her be there alone. Go—go!

  I didn’t need her to prompt me.

  While I changed my shoes, I questioned Consuela. She hadn’t known that Marilla had come home from school, hadn’t seen her come or go. Which was perfectly possible if she’d come around by the outdoor path to the guesthouse.

  I explained carefully to Consuela where I was going, so that she could tell Rick the minute he got home. Then I picked up the keys for his truck, got in and backed it out. Not for a very long time had I been in this sort of vehicle. After a little fumbling I familiarized myself with the gear shift and drove down the hill and out along the highway toward the dirt road. Now I must find the right way in.

  I missed it the first time and had to turn back, but eventually I was bouncing along the rough road in low gear, watching for Marilla around every turn. I saw no jeeps out this late in the day, and the loneliness of the country touched me as it hadn’t when I’d come here with the others.

  At least the road seemed familiar now. When I reached the great beached whale of a rock I got out and left the truck. I could see the trail that led toward high red cliffs, and I began to run, trying not to trip on the rocky ground. I didn’t know what I was going to find but only that fear drove me on.

  Once through the stand of dead pines, I could see the rock barrier that hid the Fire People, and that thin, high crack in the rocks through which I must go. Once more I scrambled up through loose scree and stopped just below the opening. This time I shouted Marilla’s name as loudly as I could—and this time I had an answer.

  Her voice came back to me from inside, rising in a scream that repeated its terror in echoes. “Lindsay, go back! Don’t come here! Go back! Lindsay—!” She choked off her shouting and was silent.

  The silence frightened me even more. I stepped into the slanting gap in the rocks, once more pushing instinctively at the walls on either side, as though my feeble strength could hold back their terrible weight!

  There seemed to be more loose sand on the floor of the crack as I went through, probably washed there by last night’s ferocious storm.

  Marilla didn’t cry out again, but the moment I stepped out of the far opening, I saw her, and a wave of relief filled me. She sat alone in the middle of that oval pocket in the rocks, the great figures of the Fire People rising behind her. Her arms were clasped about her small body and her shoulders were huddled protectively.

  “Are you hurt?” I called, starting toward her.

  She raised her head and stared at me with a strange helplessness, as though my coming had caused her to give up entirely.

  For the first time, I noticed that the afternoon was growing dusky and that the sky glowed with a red that was deeper than that of the rocks. The Fire People stood with their bright faces turned toward the sunset. The light wouldn’t last much longer, and I’d never find my way in the dark. I ran to where Marilla sat and took her hand. There was no time for explanations either way.

  “Come quickly. We must hurry and get out before it’s dark. On the way you can tell me why you came here.”

  My words seemed to give her sudden new hope, and she reached for my hand and pulled herself up. “Yes, we must hurry!” She was whispering now. “Maybe we can get out!”

  I didn’t know what was wrong, but I heard her terror and knew it was real. As we turned together and started toward the crack in the rock, a thundering boom came out of the sky, and the ground beneath us trembled. All around us the rocks reverberated with the sound, as though they might crash in upon us. This time there was no glimpse of a plane overhead, but I knew that one had flown across.

  In an instant the ground was still. I pulled Marilla by the hand. Now she resisted me. She stood rooted beside me as though she had lost the will to move.

  “It’s too late,” she said hopelessly, and her eyes were fixed upon a wall of rock opposite the Fire People.

  I looked up to see that a figure had emerged from what must have been a cave or crevice high in the rocks, and a man stood looking down at us. It was Parker Hale, dressed in Levi’s, plaid shirt, and scuffed shoes. No sight could have seemed more incongruous at that moment, and I stared up at him, not believing.

  “He brought me here,” Marilla whispered. “He made me write that note for you. He said you’d be sure to come after me. I’m sorry, Lindsay—I couldn’t help it.” She was crying, and I held her close against me.

  Out in the clearing behind Parker something began to whirl and dance, and I knew that Vermilion had broken free at last. My eyes were open, and I could see her. She had broken through all the barriers I’d raised, and she was there! I could even hear her voice.

  Run! Get away from him! He’s the one! Take Marilla and get away!

  With a strange irrelevance I saw that her hair was almost the color of certain rocks that my father had once promised to show me in Arizona.

  Only an instant had passed. There was still a chance for escape. Parker was high up on the rocky cliff, where he must have hidden when he heard me coming in. If we could get out ahead of him and run for the truck … Perhaps we could still move faster than he could …

  But even as we moved toward the passageway, a new whispery sound seemed to fill the tiny valley, growing in volume until it became a strange moaning, as though the great cliff cried out in pain.

  “Look!” Marilla cried.

  I
stopped beside her and saw that a new crack had opened in a rock already eroded further by last night’s cloudburst—waiting only for the slightest jar of the earth to tear it loose. As I stared in horror, rock broke away to fall in upon itself with a tremendous roar, sealing off what had once been the way out. A precarious balance that had prevailed for who knew how long, had ended as rock split away, closing off the entrance forever.

  Therer was no longer anywhere to run. Above us, Parker dug his heels into loose shale and rode it down in a small landslide of earth and stones, reaching our level all too quickly.

  Marilla whispered to me frantically. “He thinks you know.”

  And now I did know. Not the reasons, not the whys, but only that this harmless-seeming man had killed Jed, and then Sybil. And had already tried to kill me.

  “There’s another way out.” Marilla’s whisper was urgent. “It’s harder, but it’s behind us, up the rock.”

  “Then we’ll reach it,” I said under my breath. “Show me.”

  Once more, hope had revived, and she clasped my hand tightly. “It’s up there on the cliff behind the Fire People.”

  Slowly we stepped backward, not daring to run and spur Parker into movement. He saw and shook his head as he came toward us.

  “There’s nowhere for you to go, Lindsay. I never wanted to hurt you in the beginning. I tried to scare you off by throwing a rock at you on the terrace that night. Just as I threw an egg at Sybil at her meeting, and left that note on her windshield. You should have run when I cut up that blue cloth and left it for you to find. But you kept right on threatening me! Neither you nor Sybil had any respect for what I could do.”

  Step by step backward … we musn’t stumble.

  He kept on, almost apologetic now, as though he must make me understand the reason for my own death. Only now there was Marilla—and we had to escape.

  “In the beginning it was only Sybil I hated. Next to Jed. When I married Clara I didn’t know how closely she was connected to one of Jed’s daughters. Not that it would have made any difference. I had no idea then that Sybil had seen me that night leaving Jed’s room. She didn’t know who I was. But when I moved to Sedona she recognized me and sprang the whole thing, turning the screws. Power over others—that’s the only thing that made her count with herself. It wasn’t you I was after, Lindsay—not in the beginning.”

  I could tell that he’d been drinking again, though not enough to make him helpless—only enough to give him a dangerous courage. Yet, in some strange way, he really was sorry. That was the awful thing—that evil men never knew they were evil. Or evil women—like Sybil.

  He’d slowed his approach and we ventured another two steps backward.

  “When I tell you to,” I said softly to Marilla, “you must run and get out.”

  “I won’t leave you,” she whispered.

  “You must! I can’t move as fast as you can, and you know the way. Get out and bring someone to help.”

  Help would never come in time for me, but Marilla might escape. She pressed my fingers, and I knew she would obey.

  Parker rambled on, releasing his own rage—and a strange sort of grief—in words. “I had a close call that time when you almost caught me in the shop. I’d come for Jed’s sculpture, and I just got out in time. I took it straight to Rick’s and left it for Sybil to find. Then I managed to get home just after Rick called Clara and told her the shop had been broken into. So I went into town with her. But that’s when she began to wonder about me, and I knew it was nearly over.”

  He broke off, and I sensed the source of his grief—he had already lost Clara. He was staring at me with a queer defiance.

  “Where’s your Vermilion now, Lindsay? Marilla said you were going to ask her. Remember when I wrote her name in the dust for you? I’d been waiting for you, though you never guessed that I was hiding in that closet. With Jed’s cane right there with me!”

  In her own indirect way, perhaps Vermilion had tried to warn me about him when she’d said “eggnog” at the hospital. Because it was Parker who had brought that thermos to me—and one suspicious part of me that was Vermilion had picked up on something. Only she was outside of me now.

  I could have told him she was there behind him, shimmering and dancing, shining in the sunset light, with her hair on fire … a crazy figure of mist that I’d projected from my own mind. I didn’t need her any more. In this terrible moment of danger I was whole within myself and I could let her go. Whatever had to be faced, I would depend only on me. With a strange clarity, I realized with a new intensity that she really had been the hating, jealous part of me, useful whenever I was threatened. Now I’d learned something about loving, and I could let her go. Love for Rick, for Marilla, for Alice. Even a strange forgiveness that might allow me to love my father again. Even forgiveness for myself?

  Once more we retreated, though slowly, trying not to startle Parker.

  Marilla whispered. “My mother knew about the other way out. She was trying to get away from him that day. It’s just behind us now—the cliff.”

  I spoke to Parker as calmly as though nothing desperate was happening. “I don’t understand what you had against my father. What possible reason—?”

  “That’s what your sister Sybil wanted to know. I was a fool to let it slip that I’d lived in Jerome a long time ago. That’s why she went there. She’d known about Mrs. Jessup through Jed, so she went to her—and hit pay dirt. That’s why she asked the question of old Mrs. Jessup that you and Brian never thought to ask.”

  “Did you know Jed in Jerome?”

  “I never knew him. I left before he came. I never saw him before the time I went to his room in Vegas. You’re right, of course, if you’ve guessed. I cooked the food for that dinner Jed gave. Not much of a dinner, but I had to do what I was told in those days. I never meant to kill him. I only wanted to talk to him, tell him what I thought of him. Maybe see him suffer a little. And then he laughed at me.”

  Marilla clutched at me from behind, and I whispered to her, “Go! Go now!”

  For just a second her hand tightened on my jacket. Then she fled toward the base of the rock columns and I could hear her scrambling up.

  “Hey!” Parker shouted. “Don’t go up there—you’ll fall!”

  He was starting after her, and I blocked his way. “You don’t want Marilla. Let her go.”

  “She’s not going anywhere. You saw what happened to the passage. I’ve been all the way around this place, and there was only one way out. We’re all here together, and everything’s going to be settled. Oh, I won’t hurt the little girl—she doesn’t matter now.”

  “Rick’s coming,” I said. “He knows where we are.”

  “And he can’t get in!”

  I dared not think about that, and I asked the question that would give me all the answers. “What did Sybil want to find out from Mrs. Jessup?”

  Parker smiled at me almost pleasantly and came a step closer. “She asked Mrs. Jessup if she knew me.”

  I wondered if I could turn and try to climb up behind the Fire People. I couldn’t hear Marilla now, so she must have reached the ledge. I took another step backward, and felt the ground beginning to slope upward.

  “Tell me the rest, Parker,” I said. I was close now, but I dared not turn to look up. Already the space around me was bathed in a twilight glow from which the pink was fading.

  Parker seemed almost pleased to tell me. “The old woman must have exploded when Sybil mentioned my name. She knew me all right. She never approved when I married her daughter. She thought I was nothing but a drunk. And she thought I’d ruined her daughter’s life and got her sent to prison—for something I did. Though nobody was ever sure. Sometimes I’m not even sure myself. They were all against me. I loved my little daughter when she was a baby. Celia was all I had for a while. But they kept me away from her. When she grew older, they told her I was dead. I couldn’t blame her for disowning me and taking another name. Then I found her in San Franci
sco and we started to be friends. Until Jed came along and turned her head around. She was going off with him that day in his car. Only she never got to wherever they were going.”

  He broke off, choking on his own anger and remembered grief. All of it was perfectly and dreadfully clear now. Sad and tragic and terrible.

  He looked almost eager for me to understand. “You can’ see how it was, Lindsay. I never meant any of this, but I’ve never had any luck. Clara was my one chance. And now I’ve lost her too. She knows. She even tried to give me some time by lying about Rick. But she’s through with me now. So what happens doesn’t matter. If you hadn’t come here everything would have been fine—beautiful. In spite of Sybil. I could have shut her up and gone on. But you came, and you’re Jed’s daughter. He’s tried to get back at me through you. You opened everything up. You destroyed—and you have to be stopped.”

  I dared not wait a moment longer. I whirled to run for the base of the cliff and began scrambling up the slanting mound of scree at its foot. I clung desperately with my fingers, my toes, while sandy rubble slid beneath me. When I looked up I could see the narrow ledge that sliced through the rock behind the Fire People. Marilla was there, holding out her hand.

  “Come up, Lindsay! Hurry, hurry!”

  Parker did not move. When I glanced down, I saw that he stood at the foot of the slope watching me in grim amusement.

  “It’s no use, Lindsay,” he told me. “Sybil tried that too. I made it look as though her head struck one of those rocks as she fell, though I had this wrench in my jacket. Like I do now. Too bad I had to drop some stuff that time when I pulled the wrench out—that key of Jed’s that I took from him in Vegas, so it would look like robbery. You never guessed, did you? I was too smart for all of you.”

  Another few inches and I was up. Marilla helped pull me onto the ledge and we stood looking down at Parker.

  “We can get out this way,” Marilla pointed back.

  If I followed her, Parker would come after us. This was a better place to make a stand. “You go,” I told her. “Do as I tell you. Get away!”