Portraits and Observations (56 page)

JAKE:
Eh?

TC:
It’s like an Edith Wharton novel.
The House of Mirth
—where ladies are forever lighting gentlemen’s cigars.

MRS. CONNOR
(defensively): That’s quite the custom here. My mother always lighted our father’s cigars. Even though she disliked the aroma. Isn’t that so, Addie?

ADDIE:
Yes, Marylee. Jake, would you like more coffee?

JAKE:
Sit still, Addie. I don’t want anything. It was a wonderful dinner, and it’s time for you to quiet down. Addie? How do you feel about the aroma?

ADDIE
(
almost
blushing): I’m very partial to the smell of a good cigar. If I smoked, I’d smoke cigars myself.

JAKE:
Addie, let’s go back to last Thanksgiving. When we were sitting around like we are now.

ADDIE:
And I showed you the coffin?

JAKE:
I want you to tell my friend your story. Just as you told it to me.

MRS. CONNOR
(pushing back her chair): Oh, please! Must we talk about that? Always! Always! I have nightmares.

ADDIE
(rising, placing an arm around her sister’s shoulder): That’s all right, Marylee. We won’t talk about it. We’ll move to the living room, and you can play the piano for us.

MRS. CONNOR:
It’s so
vile
. (Then, looking at me) I’m sure you think I’m a dreadful sissy. No doubt I am. In any event, I’ve had too much wine.

ADDIE:
Darling, what you need is a nap.

MRS. CONNOR:
A nap? Addie, how many times have I told you? I have
nightmares
. (Now, recovering) Of course. A nap. If you’ll excuse me.

ADDIE:
My story. Ho-hum.

I’m forty-four, I’ve never married, I’ve been around the world twice, I try to go to Europe every other summer; but it’s fair to say that except for a drunken sailor who went berserk and tried to rape me on a Swedish tramp steamer, nothing of a bizarre nature has ever happened to me until this year—the week before Thanksgiving.

My sister and I have a box at the post office; what they call a “drawer”—it’s not that we have such a lot of correspondence, but we subscribe to so many magazines. Anyway, on my way home from school I stopped to pick up the mail, and in our drawer there was a package, rather large but very light. It was wrapped in old wrinkled brown paper that looked as if it had been used before, and it was tied with old twine. The postmark was local and it was addressed to me. My name was precisely printed in thick black ink. Even before I opened it I thought: What kind of rubbish is this? Of course, you know all about the coffins?

TC:
I’ve seen one, yes.

ADDIE:
Well, I knew nothing about them. No one did. That was a secret between Jake and his agents.

Actually, I didn’t open the package until quite late that night. Because when I got home I found my sister at the bottom of the stairs; she’d fallen and sprained an ankle. The doctor came. There was so much commotion. I forgot about the package until after I’d gone to bed. I decided: Oh well, it can wait until tomorrow. I wish I’d abided by that decision; at least I wouldn’t have lost a night’s sleep.

Because. Because it was
shocking
. I once received an anonymous letter, a truly atrocious one—especially upsetting because, just between us, a good deal of what the writer wrote happened to be true. (Laughing, she replenished her glass) It wasn’t really the coffin that shocked me. It was the snapshot inside—a quite recent picture of me, taken on the steps outside the post office. It seemed such an intrusion, a theft—having one’s picture made when one is unaware of it. I can sympathize with those Africans who run away from cameras, fearing the photographer intends to steal their spirit. I was shocked, but not frightened. It was my sister who was frightened. When I showed her my little gift, she said: “You don’t suppose it has anything to do with that other business?” By “other business” she meant what’s been happening here the past five years—murders, accidents, suicides, whatever: it depends on whom you’re talking to.

I shrugged it off, put it in a category with the anonymous letter; but the more I thought about it—perhaps my sister had stumbled on to something. That package had not been sent to me by some jealous woman, a mere mischief-making ill-wisher. This was the work of a man. A man had whittled that coffin. A man with strong fingers had printed my name on that package. And the whole thing was meant as a threat. But why? I thought: Maybe Mr. Pepper will know.

I’d met Mr. Pepper. Jake. Actually, I had a crush on him.

JAKE:
Stick to the story.

ADDIE:
I am. I only used the story to lure you into my lair.

JAKE:
That’s not true.

ADDIE
(sadly, her voice in dull counterpoint to the canaries’ chirping serenades): No, it isn’t true. Because by the time I decided to speak to Jake, I had concluded that someone did indeed intend to kill me; and I had a fair notion who it was, even though the motive was so improbable. Trivial.

JAKE:
It’s neither improbable nor trivial. Not after you’ve studied the style of the beast.

ADDIE
(ignoring him; and impersonally, as if she were reciting the multiplication table to her students): Everybody knows everybody else. That’s what they say about small-town people. But it isn’t true. I’ve never met the parents of some of my pupils. I pass people every day who are virtual strangers. I’m a Baptist, our congregation isn’t all that large; but we have some members—well, I couldn’t tell you their names if you held a revolver to my head.

The point is: when I began to think about the people who had died, I realized I had known them all. Except the couple from Tulsa who were staying with Ed Baxter and his wife—

JAKE:
The Hogans.

ADDIE:
Yes. Well, they’re not part of this anyway. Bystanders—who got caught in an inferno. Literally.

Not that any of the victims were close friends—except, perhaps, Clem and Amy Anderson. I’d taught all their children in school.

But I knew the others: George and Amelia Roberts, the Baxters, Dr. Parsons. I knew them rather well. And for only one reason. (She gazed into her wine, observed its ruby flickerings, like a gypsy consulting clouded crystal, ghostly glass) The river. (She raised the wineglass to her lips, and again drained it in one long luxuriously
effortless gulp) Have you seen the river? Not yet? Well, now is not the time of year. But in the summer it is very nice. By far the prettiest thing around here. We call it Blue River; it is blue—not Caribbean blue, but very clear all the same and with a sandy bottom and deep quiet pools for swimming. It originates in those mountains to the north and flows through the plains and ranches; it’s our main source of irrigation, and it has two tributaries—much smaller rivers, one called Big Brother and the other Little Brother.

The trouble started because of these tributaries. Many ranchers, who were dependent on them, felt that a diversion should be created in Blue River to enlarge Big Brother and Little Brother. Naturally, the ranchers whose property was nourished by the main river were against this proposition. None more so than Bob Quinn, owner of the B.Q. Ranch, through which the widest and deepest stretches of Blue River travels.

JAKE
(spitting into the fire): Robert Hawley Quinn, Esquire.

ADDIE:
It was a quarrel that had been simmering for decades. Everyone knew that strengthening the two tributaries, even at the expense of Blue River (in terms of power and sheer beauty), was the fair and logical thing to do. But the Quinn family, and others among the rich Blue River ranchers, had always, through various tricks, prevented any action from being taken.

Then we had two years of drought, and that brought the situation to a head. The ranchers whose survival depended upon Big Brother and Little Brother were raising holy hell. The drought had hit them hard; they’d lost a lot of cattle, and now they were out full-force demanding their share of Blue River.

Finally the town council voted to appoint a special committee to settle the matter. I have no idea how the members of the committee were chosen. Certainly I had no particular qualification; I remember old Judge Hatfield—he’s retired now, living in Arizona—
phoned me and asked if I would serve; that’s all there was to it. We had our first meeting in the Council Room at the courthouse, January 1970. The other members of the committee were Clem Anderson, George and Amelia Roberts, Dr. Parsons, the Baxters, Tom Henry, and Oliver Jaeger—

JAKE
(to me): Jaeger. He’s the postmaster. A crazy sonofabitch.

ADDIE:
He’s not really crazy. You only say that because—

JAKE:
Because he’s really crazy.

TC:
Who’s Tom Henry?

JAKE:
Another nut. Nuttier than Oliver Jaeger. He owns a filling station.

ADDIE:
Yes, there were nine of us. We met once a week for about two months. Both sides, those for and those against, sent in experts to testify. Many of the ranchers appeared themselves—to talk to us, to present their own case.

But not Mr. Quinn. Not Bob Quinn—we never heard a word from him, even though, as the owner of the B.Q. Ranch, he stood to lose the most if we voted to divert “his” river. I figured: He’s too high and mighty to bother with us and our silly little committee; Bob Quinn, he’s been busy talking to the governor, the congressmen, the senators; he thinks he’s got all those boys in his hip pocket. So whatever we might decide didn’t matter. His big-shot buddies would veto it.

But that’s not how it turned out. We voted to divert Blue River at exactly the point where it entered Quinn’s property; of course, that
didn’t leave him without a river—he just wouldn’t have the hog’s share he’d always had before.

The decision would have been unanimous if Tom Henry hadn’t gone against us. You’re right, Jake. Tom Henry
is
a nut. So the vote stood eight to one. And it proved such a popular decision, a verdict that really harmed no one and benefited many, there wasn’t much Quinn’s political cronies could do about it, not if they wanted to stay in office.

A few days after the vote I ran into Bob Quinn at the post office. He made a tremendous point of tipping his hat, smiling, asking after my welfare. Not that I expected him to spit on me; still, I’d never met with so much courtesy from him before. One would never have supposed he was resentful. Resentful? Insane!

TC:
What does he look like—Mr. Quinn?

JAKE:
Don’t tell him!

ADDIE:
Why not?

JAKE:
Just because.

Eh?

TC:
Now it’s a Jane Austen novel. In her novels, sexy gentlemen are always warming their fannies at fireplaces.

ADDIE
(laughing): Oh, Jake, it’s true! It’s true!

JAKE:
I never read female literature. Never have. Never will.

ADDIE:
Just for that, I’m going to open another bottle of wine, and drink it all myself.

JAKE:
Yes, I know. Having heard what you have, you’re thinking: Well, now the case is solved. Mr. Quinn did it.

That’s what I thought. Last year, after Addie told me what she told you, I lit out of here like a bear with a bumblebee up his ass. I drove straight to the city. Thanksgiving or no Thanksgiving, that very night we had a meeting of the whole Bureau. I laid it on the line: this is the motive, this is the guy. Nobody said boo!—except the chief, and he said: “Slow down, Pepper. The man you’re accusing is no flyweight. And where’s your case? This is all speculation. Guesswork.” Everybody agreed with him. Said: “Where’s the evidence?”

I was so mad I was shouting; I said: “What the hell do you think I’m here for? We’ve all got to pull together and build the evidence. I know Quinn did it.” The chief said: “Well, I’d be careful who you said that to. Christ, you could get us all fired.”

ADDIE:
That next day, when he came back here, I wish I’d taken Jake’s picture. In the line of duty I’ve had to paddle many boys, but none of them ever looked as sad as you, Jake.