If A Body

by George Worthing Yates

  Woar helped Katheren up from the bench. He was moody, miserable in defeat. He said, “You’re cold. You need something hot to drink. I’m sorry, Katheren, and I don’t blame you in the least.”

  In the warmth of the shack, she could hardly keep awake, though the coffee was strong and she drank two cups. The truck was bound for Buttes, to the north; and the sedan lived in La Junta. The young and sunburned surveyor was a little drunk, because a girl in Walsenburg, apparently, had firmly rejected his love.

  George’s chances of getting a lift for them at that time of night seemed hopeless. However, he began sounding out the woman who ran the place...

  Somehow, all the sleepless nights caught up with Katheren at once. She hardly remembers putting her head on the oil-cloth covered table where she found it when she woke up.

  3

  She remembers being lifted and helped out into the cold air. George made her a narrow bed on the floor of the station-wagon. She accepted it with gratitude.

  “Salt Lake City?”

  “Yes, my dear. Go to sleep.”

  The sodden surveyor and his disappointment in love sat in the front seat beside Woar, who drove. For a long time, Katheren swayed and bounced between Caligula and a tripod. She had a smelly blanket to pull about her, and a rain-coat wadded up under her head.

  It was in the early morning, in a cold, dark city she gathered was Pueblo, that they changed from the station-wagon to the cab of a huge diesel truck loaded with horses. From there on, she had to sleep sitting up, wedged between the driver and Woar, whose shoulder made an acceptable pillow. Nevertheless, she slept. The truck rumbled, the horses stamped, and the seat was hard, but Katheren slept.

  She was vaguely aware of a few stops, and the gradual change from darkness to daylight.

  Mercifully enough, she remained in that coma of exhaustion till the sun was well up in the sky and the green hills and mountains had gathered about her. Horribly seedy but able to cope with life, she sat up and took stock.

  They should be about a thousand miles from Los Angeles, she supposed. About seven hundred miles from the California State Line. If they took the train from Salt Lake City, they could make the coast in about a day.

  Once there, she could wire for money, revel in new clothes, baths, beds, and the exquisite luxury of staying in one place as long as she liked...

  The truck was making speed. It squawked its horn at a road-hog.

  The road-hog reluctantly made room and they passed.

  He was Milton J. Smalnick in the travel-stained Lagonda.

  “Can’t get hung up behind those babies,” the truck-driver said. “I keep up an average. Pull into Fe at two o’clock, right on the dot.”

  “Santa Fe?”

  “Yes, mam.”

  “Oh.”

  George looked out the window and sighed. After a long time, he cautiously turned his head enough to see how she was taking it.

  “I’m awfully sorry, Katheren. I’m awfully sorry.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “I couldn’t help myself. I hope you’ll—”

  “Forgive and forget, I suppose?”

  “Yes. It won’t happen again.”

  Katheren thought for a minute or so, and rejected a dozen remarks to say as unsuitable to the ears of a truck-driver. What could she do about it, except smile? She smiled, and said, “No. It better not.”

  Seventeen

  SANTA FE, capital of New Mexico, is an anachronism. It belongs to a gentler, gayer civilization, to a more heroic age. Katheren, at first sight of its streets and houses, thought it must be unreal, a gracious, heart-warming mistake...

  They pulled in at two, as scheduled, in time for the last act of the tragedy of Ruth Shanley.

  While they were coming in on College Street, the Lagonda whisked by and vanished up ahead. Either Smalnick was one of those emotional drivers who look upon being passed as a slur on their cars, Katheren thought, or he’d been held up by motor trouble on the way. Motor trouble, it proved later.

  The Beardsleys, Ruth and Nick?

  Woar found the cars parked diagonally across the Plaza from the Governor’s Palace. The wedding party, then, had put up at La Fonda.

  La Fonda, most attractive of all Harvey Houses, welcomed in Katheren without question—dirty face, dirty husband, lack of luggage and all. It welcomed her with a pleasant, rose-colored room complete with hand-carved bed and a saint’s picture in a lacy tin frame over the desk. And a bath.

  She bathed. She scrubbed the dirty face and brushed her teeth and so on till she felt better. George, who had stayed downstairs, sent up a double dry martini. She found after it that she was able to look upon the man with tolerance and fair objectivity.

  She was even amused when she came downstairs and found him waiting for her. He was obviously at a loss what to expect from her, other than the worst.

  The wedding, she gathered, was about to take place immediately.

  Mae and Alden Beardsley, Ruth and Nick, were celebrating in the bar. They had been celebrating for some time. Alden’s face was ruddy, Mae’s twinkling dazzled. Alden whooped with loud delight at the Woars.

  Mae waved the marriage license like a flag, then passed it to the newcomers for them to marvel over.

  “It’s really going to happen, then?” asked Katheren.

  “I’d like to see them try to get out of it,” boomed Alden.

  He banged the bar till his curly hair danced, and roared with gusty laughter at everything he said.

  “We know where you can buy old shoes by the bale,” cried Mae, and winked and twinkled.

  “And rice,” her husband bellowed. “Mustn’t forget the rice. Maybe there’s rice pudding on the menu, eh?”

  The Tozers appeared bashfully in the doorway near the end of Woar’s round of drinks. Connie and her father wished the couple well, then stood aloof, as if they found the festivities embarrassing. Agatha, though, kissed the bride-to-be, a slightly misplaced smack between nose and eye.

  “We couldn’t miss this chance to wish you all the happiness in the world—and we brought you something. Nothing, really. Connie saw it in a shop in the Plaza and said, ‘Isn’t that cute? ..”

  Connie wrinkled her nose, conveying that she hadn’t said anything of the sort.

  The gift was a gimcrack bracelet strung with a battered penny and a shiny new one, a Mexican penny and a disc of blue stone. Ruth admired it gravely, a little puzzled by it.

  “You must wear it for luck,” insisted Agatha. “It’s what every bride has to have. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. Isn’t that clever?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll let us come to the ceremony, won’t you? We came this way on purpose not to miss it.”

  Alden announced, “Of course you’ll come! More the merrier. Make it a real big affair. We’re all going out to a little Indian chapel on the Taos road, where the minister said he’d be waiting at three. Fifteen minutes ago, that was. Then we’re coming back for the wedding breakfast—dinner it’ll really be, won’t it?—and that’s when the honeymoon begins. What happens then isn’t up to me, you’ll have to ask Nick about that.”

  Mae was insisting, “Ruth really must go up and change her clothes. We’ll leave in, say, ten minutes. Is that time enough, dear?”

  Ruth nodded, and obediently rose.

  She looked glowingly lovely, and Katheren remembers her so. From the drinks or the excitement, her usually pale cheeks had become warm and pink. The depths of her eyes seemed to be full of happiness. She kissed Nick.

  “Five’s enough,” she said. “Do you think I want to hold things up? Excuse me.”

  As she turned away, an inaudible voice seemed to speak to her, reminding her of her fear. There was a look of blank pain. Slowly the flush and the happiness died out. However, only Hazlitt Woar noticed the change, and when he started to follow her, Alden called him back.

  “Now, now, George! Where do you think you’re going?” />
  Ruth Shanley went upstairs alone.

  Then there was the usual spate of gabble, opinions of marrying weather, gasoline mileage, the state of the roads, and whether the Cathedral or the Art Museum was better worth half an hour of a tourist’s time.

  The Winter twins and Ray Kemp had fallen upon unlucky hours with some retread tires—that was why they wouldn’t make it in time for the wedding. Well, retreads are false economy...And Agatha was pursuing a line of inquiry about Smalnick—was he in Santa Fe? Had he left for Albuquerque yet? Still hot on the trail of that phantom career of Connie’s, Agatha drank two Manhattans without being aware of it. One of them happened to be Nick’s.

  Nick’s mind had gone upstairs with Ruth. He seemed hardly aware of what was happening about him.

  It was Nick who looked at his watch, pointed out that twenty minutes had passed.

  “Do you think she’s all right?”

  In five minutes more, Mae began to wonder too.

  “I’d better run up and see.”

  They were drifting out into the patio garden, not too worried, not quite easy.

  Alden said, “I’ll never forget the day I married Mae—she was wearing a bustle and it busted. Say, if Ruth wants her bustle pumped up, I’m just the man—”

  That went uncomfortably flat.

  Mae disappeared into the elevator that goes up from a corner of the patio, and for several minutes they stared at the shut door—till it opened again when the cage came down empty.

  Another ten minutes went by. Nick lost what was left of his composure, accidentally set fire to a whole box of matches, cursed and began pacing the garden like a caged bison.

  “Listen, I’m going to call her room and see what’s up!”

  “Call the chapel, too,” Beardsley cried after him, “and tell the minister not to light the candles yet!”

  Beardsley then thought he’d better gas up his car and bring it round to the door. They couldn’t hold things up much longer.

  “I don’t get any answer,” murmured an anxious Nick when he came back from the phone. “I’ll run up and see if she’s in her room...”

  They all went up, all but Connie and Henry.

  They found Mae in the hall:

  “Her room’s locked,” she told them, “and there’s nobody in it. Anyhow, I knocked and couldn’t get an answer. I’ve been hunting everywhere, thinking perhaps—”

  “Perhaps what?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t imagine.”

  She was trying to conceal her nervousness.

  While the little group huddled there, knocking and listening with their ears to the panel for sounds, George drew the chambermaid out of the linen cupboard.

  “Did you see Mrs. Shanley go into her room?”

  Yes, she saw Mrs. Shanley go in. No, she didn’t see Mrs. Shanley come out. Anyone else go in or out? No, nobody else even came through the hall, except the little lady with the bright smile—Mrs. Beardsley. “Was there something wrong?”

  “You might take Mrs. Shanley some fresh towels,” Woar suggested, “and find out.”

  The chambermaid’s pass key unlocked the door, but heavy obstructions within kept it from opening. Nick and Woar used their shoulders.

  “Please go away!” implored a dry, hoarse whisper. “Please leave me alone!”

  In broad daylight, on a warm afternoon, Katheren shivered. That whisper—it was unforgettable.

  Poor Ruth, what had happened to her?

  She fought to keep them out, prayed for them to go away, cowered in abject terror when they had forced back the dresser and bed she had pushed up against the door. Why? There was no one in the room besides herself, nothing for her to hide, nothing for her to fear...

  Woar used the telephone. The switchboard clerk assured him there had been no outside calls to or from Ruth’s room, and only Nick’s one attempt, unanswered, from inside.

  Woar looked out from the high window into Shelby Street, a city street, dotted with strollers and shoppers, an ordinary reassuring street lined with parked cars and shops.

  And Ruth? She slumped in a chair. She gnawed at the corner of a handkerchief, but she wasn’t crying. She seemed able only to shake her head to the questions they asked her, and stare with fear-stricken eyes into nothingness.

  Mae pointed out, “See, she’s got on the dress she was going to wear for the wedding. She changed, anyhow. What do you suppose happened?”

  Then Nick herded them out into the hall:

  “Let me talk to her alone. Let me find out what it’s all about.”

  He shut the door and locked it, and they could hear his voice in a soothing monotone within.

  Mae beckoned them to her own room, a little way down the corridor. It was like waiting for the outcome of dangerous surgery—no one thought of anything but waiting.

  Save Katheren, possibly. She was thinking of the night in Indianapolis when a voice had called up Ruth, the voice of her husband, Rex Shanley.

  No question of a phone call now, or a note, or a visitor. She knew the terror hadn’t been so simple, so obvious.

  It was maddest nonsense, but—was that what had happened to Ruth alone in her room? Had she seen her dead husband, Rex Shanley?

  Leaning at the window, looking out (there was nothing else to do), Katheren could see Alden down below standing by his Chrysler, parked in a no-parking zone. The street lamps went on, and neon signs were beginning to light up all over the city. Someone ought to tell Alden to put his car away and come upstairs...

  Agatha, reluctantly admitting she’d better not sit around all day, had wrenched herself by the sheer strength of her will from the pleasure of waiting to find out what had stalled the wedding. Mother, father and daughter Tozer had climbed into the Nash and driven away—still pursuing Milton Smalnick and glory.

  And the pale blue of the Beardsleys’ room, like Katheren’s except for its color, gradually deepened, and the shadows grew darker, and Mae moved restlessly about, turning on the lights.

  All of which seemed unreal and remote. In the next room, there was reality. In the next room Nick and Ruth were striving with a ghost, like the jealous ghost in the Spanish legend, an implacable Rex Shanley. Well, it was up to Nick. It depended on his strength, his sympathy and love. And his luck. The struggle was private; nobody could do anything to help.

  What outcome did George expect? He showed not even interest. He languished in one of his moods of profound lassitude—or saintly patience.

  A door slammed in the corridor, echoing. Woar uncrossed his legs, put away his pipe without apparent haste, but nevertheless beat Mae and Katheren across the room. Ruth’s door, it had been. No need asking about the wedding. That was off for good. A look at Nick Leeds told them so, abundantly.

  He stood facing the door, legs braced apart and his face contorted with inexpressible anger. He hurled something against the panel, by way of a parting curse.

  The thing jingled and fell to the floor. It was Agatha’s gift, the silly bracelet, something old, something new...

  Nick was blind. He never saw the three faces in the Beardsleys’ doorway. He lunged for the stairs, flinging his legs out in fierce strides, swinging his arms as if fighting away invisible adversaries.

  Mae, in an odd little voice, said, “Can’t you stop him, George?”

  “I” and Woar looked unutterably surprised. “Stop him? How could anyone stop him now?”

  3

  Ruth sat on the bed. Her face was drawn and masklike. She made helpless gestures and said, “I couldn’t help it. He’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Just gone. Gone for good. That’s all.”

  And that was all—all she could tell them, at any rate. Beardsley came rushing up, appalled and out of breath.

  “Did you see him? Couldn’t you stop him?” Mae asked, impatiently. The questions were silly, the answers self-evident: yes and no respectively.

  “What the hell’s happening here, anyway?” Beardsley demanded. “
The crazy fool almost knocked me down. Can’t marry Ruth, through with women forever, quitting his job and taking his mother where they’ll never see anybody they ever knew in their lives. What goes on, I’d like to know!”

  Mae couldn’t tell him any more than Katheren, but she had an irrepressible flair for giving orders:

  “Are you going to let those children split up like that—just on account of a silly lovers’ quarrel? Get in your car, Alden! Go after him! Bring him back here! What are you standing there for, staring at me?”

  “But listen to reason, Mae—he took out in that Mercury like a rabbit! I couldn’t catch up—”

  “Which road did he take?”

  “That way—west.”

  “He’ll be in Albuquerque, like as not. Alden Beardsley, if you don’t hurry up, I’ll start after him myself.” Alden hurried up, and started on an absolutely empty journey to Albuquerque, sixty-two miles away. He was gone three hours. He returned empty handed. However:

  When he was gone, Mae suddenly remembered, “The minister’s still waiting! If somebody doesn’t tell him it’s off—”

  “Do that, by all means,” Woar told her briskly. He started slapping Ruth’s face and shaking her.

  “Find her a doctor while you’re about it,” he added. “She’s about to go off the deep end, I’m afraid.”

  Mae went downstairs, the doctor came up. He advised a sedative and plenty of rest.

  “Mrs. Shanley,” he told them, “is suffering from nervous shock. Death in the family or something?”

  “Deaths,” said George. “Plural. Thanks. Good-by.” When the doctor went away, Ruth lay listless on the bed, her face screwed up for weeping yet dry and tearless. George used the moments before Mae returned again to tell Katheren privately, “She doesn’t deserve all this, you understand?”

  Katheren nodded. She had, in fact, endured Ruth’s heartbreaking eyes about as long as her own emotional arrangements could stand.

  “Very well. You can help. See to it that Mae has dinner with us downstairs. When I get up from the table, keep Mae otherwise engaged, will you? I want an hour alone with Ruth—an hour alone, and undisturbed. It’s extremely important.”