Vermilion
Page 28
She didn’t want to leave me, but again she obeyed and I heard her running along the ledge behind the Fire People. I looked around for any sort of weapon that would help me. There was nothing. Not a stick or a big-enough stone. And he was coming up now. I braced myself against the walls of rock with both hands. At least I had the advantage of gravity, and he had only emptiness behind him. He would need hands and feet to climb onto this ledge. And I would fight to stop him.
Suddenly I heard sounds at the far end of the slit that offered a way to freedom, and I was afraid that Marilla had turned back. But she was talking excitedly now—talking to someone else. I turned to warn her and saw that Rick was there beside her, coming toward me. In spite of the shock of enormous relief, I knew it wasn’t over.
Rick drew me gently out of the way and stood looking down. “It’s no use, Parker. You’re through now.”
Parker paid no attention. The very fact that there was nothing left for him to go back to must have kept him coming. As he neared the top, he reached out to grasp Rick’s leg, and Rick braced himself against the walls as I had done. What happened next seemed almost like slow motion. Rick shoved him away with his foot and Parker never tried to save himself. He let go of Rick and went backward into the air without a cry. The interval before he struck the ground seemed very long, and then the crash reverberated repeatedly. Parker lay still.
“Stay with Marilla,” Rick said, and climbed down. He knelt beside the man who lay at the foot of the cliff, and after a moment he looked up at us. “It’s over—he’s gone.”
Rick climbed back to our ledge and for a moment he stood with an arm about each of us, holding us tightly. It was getting darker fast, and we had to get away. The rescue team must wait until daylight to bring out Parker’s body.
As I squeezed through the narrow space behind the darkened head of the Shining One, I reached up gratefully to touch the rock—because all the gods were one. I never looked back into the clearing where I’d left Vermilion.
Much of what happened that night is a blur to me now. The sheriff came to Rick’s house, and so did Clara, weeping a little, and yet controlled. Marilla went to sleep in her own bed. Alice stayed with her.
When all the words had been spoken, and everyone had gone, Rick and I stood at the rail of the terrace, listening to the enormous silence. And to the buzz of night insects that was somehow a part of the silence. Out among the rocks a coyote wailed its lonely, almost human cry. A strange sense of belonging came over me. A part of my blood was speaking to the land, responding with a recognition that lay somewhere deep inside me. Someday soon I would go to Oraibi.
Once, a long time afterward, I dreamed that I heard Vermilion crying. But when I woke up I knew it was only a dream.
Acknowledgments
With special thanks to Marion Ramsbotham, June Kovacovich, and Beckie Laughman, for their kindness in driving me around; to Al and Pat Purchase, for letting me borrow their terrace and view, and bits of their house; to Kim LaBarbera, for helping to keep me straight on police detail; to Larry Brooks of Search and Rescue, who taught me about the red rock country; and to Kelsey Thompson, who showed me how beautiful Tlaquepaque can be by moonlight.
A Biography of Phyllis A. Whitney
Phyllis Ayame Whitney (1903–2008) was a prolific author of seventy-six adult and children’s novels. Over fifty million copies of her books were sold worldwide during the course of her sixty-year writing career, establishing her as one of the most successful mystery and romantic suspense writers of the twentieth century. Whitney’s dedication to the craft and quality of writing earned her three lifetime achievement awards and the title “The Queen of the American Gothics.”
Whitney was born in Yokohama, Japan, on September 9, 1903, to American parents, Mary Lillian (Lilly) Mandeville and Charles (Charlie) Whitney. Charles worked for an American shipping line. When Whitney was a child, her family moved to Manila in the Philippines, and eventually settled in Hankow, China.
Whitney began writing stories as a teenager but focused most of her artistic attention on her other passion: dance. When her father passed away in China in 1918, Whitney and her mother took a ten-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to America, and they settled in Berkley, California. Later they moved to San Antonio, Texas. Lilly continued to be an avid supporter of Whitney’s dancing, creating beautiful costumes for her performances. While in high school, her mother passed away, and Whitney moved in with her aunt in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from high school in 1924, Whitney turned her attention to writing, nabbing her first major publication in the Chicago Daily News. She made a small income from writing stories at the start of her career, and would eventually go on to publish around one hundred short stories in pulp magazines by the 1930s.
In 1925, Whitney married George A. Garner, and nine years later gave birth to their daughter, Georgia. During this time, she also worked in the children’s room in the Chicago Public Library (1942–1946) and at the Philadelphia Inquirer (1947–1948).
After the release of her first novel, A Place for Ann (1941), a career story for girls, Whitney turned her eye toward publishing full-time, taking a job as the children’s book editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and releasing three more novels in the next three years, including A Star for Ginny. She also began teaching juvenile fiction writing courses at Northwestern University. Whitney began her career writing young adult novels and first found success in the adult market with the 1943 publication of Red Is for Murder, also known by the alternative title The Red Carnelian.
In 1946, Whitney moved to Staten Island, New York, and taught juvenile fiction writing at New York University. She divorced in 1948 and married her second husband, Lovell F. Jahnke, in 1950. They lived on Staten Island for twenty years before relocating to Northern New Jersey. Whitney traveled around the world, visiting every single setting of her novels, with the exception of Newport, Rhode Island, due to a health emergency. She would exhaustively research the land, culture, and history, making it a custom to write from the viewpoint of an American visiting these exotic locations for the first time. She imbued the cultural, physical, and emotional facets of each country to transport her readers to places they’ve never been.
Whitney wrote one to two books a year with grand commercial success, and by the mid-1960s, she had published thirty-seven novels. She had reached international acclaim, leading Time magazine to hail her as “one of the best genre writers.” Her work was especially popular in Britain and throughout Europe.
Whitney won the Edgar Award for Mystery of the Haunted Pool (1961) and Mystery of the Hidden Hand (1964), and was shortlisted three more times for Secret of the Tiger’s Eye (1962), Secret of the Missing Footprint (1971), and Mystery of the Scowling Boy (1974). She received three lifetime achievement awards: the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985, the Agatha in 1989, and the lifetime achievement award from the Society of Midland Authors in 1995.
Whitney continued writing throughout the rest of her life, still traveling to the locations for each of her novels until she was ninety-four years old. She released her final novel, the touching and thrilling Amethyst Dreams, in 1997. Whitney was working on her autobiography at the time of her passing at the age of 104. She left behind a vibrant catalog of seventy-six titles that continue to inspire, setting an unparalleled precedent for mystery writing.
A young Whitney playing with her doll in Japan.
Whitney with her family in Japan, where they lived for approximately six years. From left: Lillian (Lilly) Whitney, Charles (Charlie) Whitney, Phyllis Whitney, and Philip (Whitney’s half-brother).
Thirteen-year-old Whitney dancing in the Philippines.
Twenty-one-year-old Whitney at her graduation from McKinley High School in 1924.
Whitney worked at the World’s Fair in Chicago, Illinois, in 1933. She was pregnant with her daughter, Georgia, at the time.
Frederick Nelson Litten, Whitney’s mentor in writing and teaching, in Chicago, 1935.
Whitney’s first publicity photo for A Place for Ann, 1941.
Whitney, forty-eight, in her first study in Fort Hill Circle at her Staten Island house, where she lived with second husband Lovell Jahnke, 1951.
Whitney at sixty-nine years old with Jahnke in their home in Hope, New Jersey, 1972. Behind them hangs a Japanese embroidery made by Whitney’s mother.
Whitney at seventy-one years of age with Pat Myer, her long time editor, and Mable Houvenagle, her sister-in-law, at her house on Chapel Ave in Brookhaven, Long Island, New York, 1974. After her husband died in 1973, she lived close to her daughter, Georgia, on Long Island.
Whitney at eighty-one years old on a helicopter ride over Maui, Hawaii, to research the backdrop for her novel Silversword, 1984.
Whitney giving her acceptance speech for her Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985.
Whitney rode in a hot-air balloon in 1988 to use the experience for her novel Rainbow in the Mist.
Whitney ascending in the hot-air balloon, 1988.
Whitney in her study in Virginia in 1996 at ninety-three years old, looking over her “Awards Corner,” which included three Edgars, the Agatha, and the Society of Midland Authors Award.
Whitney at ninety-six years old with her family in her house in Virgina, 1999. From left: Michael Jahnke (grandson), Georgia Pearson (daughter), Matthew Celentano (great-grandson), Whitney, and Danny Celentano (great-grandson).
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1981 by Phyllis A. Whitney
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4390-8
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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