Portraits and Observations (58 page)
Read Portraits and Observations Online
Authors: Truman Capote
TC:
You mean he won’t discuss the case?
JAKE
(halting in his pacing): It’s not that he won’t discuss the case. He simply behaves as though it doesn’t exist. I discuss it, but he never reacts. I showed him the Clem Anderson photographs: I hoped I could shock him into some response.
Some
comment. But he only looked back at the chessboard, made a move, and told me a dirty joke.
So Mr. Quinn and I have been playing our games within a game several afternoons a week for the last few months. In fact, I’m going there later today. And you—(cocking a finger in my direction) are going with me.
TC:
Am I welcome?
JAKE:
I called him this morning. All he asked was: Does he play chess?
TC:
I do. But I’d rather watch.
(A log collapsed, and its crackling drew my attention to the fireplace. I stared into the purring flames, and wondered why he had forbidden Addie to describe Quinn, tell me what he looked like. I tried to imagine him; I couldn’t. Rather, I remembered the passage from Mark Twain that Jake had read aloud: “Of all the creatures that were made, man is the most detestable … the only one, the solitary one, that possesses malice … he is the only creature that has a nasty mind.” Addie’s voice rescued me from my queasy reverie.)
ADDIE:
Oh, dear. It’s snowing again. But lightly. Just floating. (Then, as though the resumption of the snow had prompted thoughts of mortality, the evaporation of time) You know, it’s been almost
five months. That’s quite long for him. He usually doesn’t wait that long.
JAKE
(vexed): Addie, what is it now?
ADDIE:
My coffin. It’s been almost five months. And as I say, he doesn’t usually wait that long.
JAKE:
Addie! I’m here. Nothing is going to happen to you.
ADDIE:
Of course, Jake. I wonder about Oliver Jaeger. I wonder when he’ll receive his coffin. Just think, Oliver is the postmaster. He’ll be sorting the mail and—(Her voice was suddenly, startlingly quavery, vulnerable—wistful in a way that accentuated the canaries’ carefree songfest) Well, it won’t be very soon.
TC:
Why not?
ADDIE:
Because Quinn will have to fill my coffin first.
It was after five when we left, the air was still, free of snow, and shimmering with the embers of a sunset and the first pale radiance of a moonrise: a full moon rolling on the horizon like a round white wheel, or a mask, a white featureless menacing mask peering at us through our car windows. At the end of Main Street, just before the town turns into prairie, Jake pointed at a filling station: “That’s Tom Henry’s place. Tom Henry, Addie, Oliver Jaeger; out of the original River Committee, they’re the only three left. I said Tom Henry was a nut. And he is. But he’s a lucky nut. He voted against the others. That leaves him in the clear. No coffin for Tom Henry.”
TC:
A Coffin for Dimitrios
.
JAKE:
What say?
TC:
A book by Eric Ambler. A thriller.
JAKE:
Fiction? (I nodded; he grimaced) You really read that junk?
TC:
Graham Greene was a first-class writer. Until the Vatican grabbed him. After that, he never wrote anything as good as
Brighton Rock
. I like Agatha Christie, love her. And Raymond Chandler is a great stylist, a poet. Even if his plots are a mess.
JAKE:
Junk. Those guys are just daydreamers—squat at a typewriter and jerk themselves off, that’s all they do.
TC:
So no coffin for Tom Henry. How about Oliver Jaeger?
JAKE:
He’ll get his. One morning he’ll be shuffling around the post office, emptying out the incoming mail sacks, and there it will be, a brown box with his very own name printed on it. Forget the cousin stuff; forget that he’s been hanging halos over Bob Quinn’s head. Saint Bob isn’t going to let him off with a few Hail Marys. Not if I know Saint Bob. Chances are, he’s already used his whittling knife, made a little something, and popped Oliver Jaeger’s picture inside it—
(Jake’s voice jolted to a stop, and as though it were a correlated action, his foot hit the brake pedal: the car skidded, swerved, straightened; we drove on. I knew what had happened. He had remembered, as I was remembering, Addie’s pathetic complaint: “… Quinn will have to fill my coffin first.” I tried to hold my tongue; it rebelled.)
TC:
But that means—
JAKE:
Better turn on my headlights.
TC:
That means Addie is going to die.
JAKE:
Hell, no! I just knew you were going to say that! (He slapped a flattened palm against the steering wheel) I’ve built a wall around Addie. I gave her a .38 Detective Special, and taught her how to use it. She can put a bullet between a man’s eyes at a hundred yards. She’s learned enough karate to split a plank with one hand-chop. Addie’s smart; she won’t be tricked. And I’m here. I’m watching her. I’m watching Quinn, too. So are other people.
(Strong emotion, fears edging toward terror, can demolish the logic of even so logical a man as Jake Pepper—whose precautions had not saved Clem Anderson. I wasn’t prepared to argue the point with him, not in his present irrational humor; but why, since he assumed Oliver Jaeger was doomed, was he so certain Addie was not? That she would be spared? For if Quinn stayed true to his design, then absolutely he would have to dispatch Addie, remove her from the scene before he could start the last step of his task by addressing a package to his second cousin and staunch defender, the local postmaster.)
TC:
I know Addie’s been around the world. But I think it’s time she went again.
JAKE
(truculently): She can’t leave here. Not now.
TC:
Oh? She doesn’t strike me as suicidal.
JAKE:
Well, for one thing, school. School’s not out till June.
TC:
Jake! My God! How can you talk about
school
?
(Dim though the light was, I could discern his ashamed expression; at the same time, he jutted his jaw.)
JAKE:
We’ve discussed it. Talked about her and Marylee taking a long cruise. But she doesn’t want to go anywhere. She said: “The shark needs bait. If we’re going to hook the shark, then the bait has to be available.”
TC:
So Addie is a stakeout? A goat waiting for the tiger to pounce?
JAKE:
Hold on. I’m not sure I like the way you put that.
TC:
Then how would you put it?
JAKE:
(Silence)
TC:
(Silence)
JAKE:
Quinn has Addie in his thoughts, he does indeed. He means to keep his promise. And that’s when we’ll nail him: in the attempt. Catch him when the curtain is up and all the lights are on. There’s some risk, sure; but we have to take it. Because—well, to
be goddamned honest, it’s probably the only damn chance we’re gonna get.
(I leaned my head against the window: saw Addie’s pretty throat as she threw back her head and drank the dazzling red wine in one delicious swallow. I felt weak, feeble; and disgusted with Jake.)
TC:
I like Addie. She’s real; and yet there’s mystery. I wonder why she never married.
JAKE:
Keep this under your hat. Addie’s going to marry me.
TC
(my mental eye was still elsewhere; still, in fact, watching Addie drink her wine): When?
JAKE:
Next summer. When I get my vacation. We haven’t told anybody. Except Marylee. So now do you understand? Addie’s
safe;
I won’t let anything happen to her; I love her; I’m going to marry her.
(Next summer: a lifetime away. The full moon, higher, whiter now, and celebrated by coyotes, rolled across the snow-gleaming prairies. Clumps of cattle stood in the cold snowy fields, bunched together for warmth. Some stood in pairs. I noticed two spotted calves huddled side by side, lending each other comfort, protection: like Jake, like Addie.)
TC:
Well, congratulations. That’s wonderful. I know you’ll both be very happy.
Soon an impressive barbed-wire fence, like the high fences of a concentration camp, bordered both sides of the highway; it marked the beginnings of the B.Q. Ranch: ten thousand acres, or thereabouts. I lowered the window, and accepted a rush of icy air, sharp with the scent of new snow and old sweet hay. “Here we go,” said Jake as we left the highway and drove through wooden swung-open gates. At the entrance, our headlights caught a handsomely lettered
sign:
B.Q./Ranch R. H. Quinn/Proprietor
. A pair of crossed tomahawks was painted underneath the proprietor’s name; one wondered whether it was the ranch’s logo or the family crest. Either way, an ominous set of tomahawks seemed suitable.
The road was narrow, and lined with leafless trees, dark except for a rare glitter of animal-eyes among the silhouetted branches. We crossed a wooden bridge that rumbled under our weight, and I heard the sound of water, deep-toned liquid tumblings, and I knew it must be Blue River, but I couldn’t see it, for it was hidden by trees and snowdrifts; as we continued along the road, the sound followed, for the river was running beside us, occasionally eerily quiet, then abruptly bubbling with the broken music of waterfalls, cascades.
The road widened. Sprinklings of electric light pierced the trees. A beautiful boy, a child with bouncing yellow hair and riding a horse bareback, waved at us. We passed a row of bungalows, lamplit and vibrating with the racket of television voices: the homes of ranch hands. Ahead, standing in distinguished isolation, was the main house, Mr. Quinn’s house. It was a large white clapboard two-storied structure with a covered veranda running its full length; it seemed abandoned, for all the windows were dark.
Jake honked the car horn. At once, like a fanfare of welcoming trumpets, a blaze of floodlights swept the veranda; lamps boomed in downstairs windows. The front door opened; a man stepped out and waited to greet us.
My first introduction to the owner of the B.Q. Ranch failed to resolve the question of why Jake had not wanted Addie to describe him to me. Although he wasn’t a man who would pass unnoticed, his appearance was not excessively unusual; and yet the sight of him startled me:
I knew Mr. Quinn
. I was positive, I would have sworn on my own heartbeat that somehow, and undoubtedly long
ago, I had encountered Robert Hawley Quinn, and that together we had, in fact, shared an alarming experience, an adventure so disturbing, memory had kindly submerged it.
He sported expensive high-heel boots, but even without them the man measured over six feet, and if he had stood straight, instead of assuming a stooped, slope-shouldered posture, he would have presented a fine tall figure. He had long simianlike arms; the hands dangled to his knees, and the fingers were long, capable, oddly aristocratic. I recalled a Rachmaninoff concert; Rachmaninoff’s hands were like Quinn’s. Quinn’s face was broad but gaunt, hollow-cheeked, weather-coarsened—the face of a medieval peasant, the man behind the plow with all the woes of the world lashed to his back. But Quinn was no dumb, sadly burdened peasant. He wore thin wire-rimmed glasses, and these professorial spectacles, and the gray eyes looming behind their thick lenses, betrayed him: his eyes were alert, suspicious, intelligent, merry with malice, complacently superior. He had a hospitable, fraudulently genial laugh and voice. But he was not a fraud. He was an idealist, an achiever; he set himself tasks, and his tasks were his cross, his religion, his identity; no, not a fraud—a fanatic; and presently, while we were still gathered on the veranda, my sunken memory surfaced: I remembered where and in what form I had met Mr. Quinn before.
He extended one of his long hands toward Jake; his other hand plowed through a rough white-and-gray mane worn pioneer-style—a length not popular with his fellow ranchers: men who looked as though they visited the barber every Saturday for a close clip and a talcum shampoo. Tufts of gray hair sprouted from his nostrils and his ears. I noticed his belt buckle; it was decorated with two crossed tomahawks made of gold and red enamel.
QUINN:
Hey, Jake. I told Juanita, I said honey, that rascal’s gonna chicken out. Account of the snow.
JAKE:
You call this
snow
?
QUINN:
Just pullin’ your leg, Jake. (To me) You oughta see the snow we do get! Back in 1952 we had a whole week when the only way I could get out of the house was to climb through the attic window. Lost seven hundred head of cattle, all my Santa Gertrudis. Ha ha! Oh, I tell you that was a time. Well, sir, you play chess?
TC:
Rather the way I speak French.
Un peu
.
QUINN
(cackling, slapping his thighs with spurious mirth): Yeah, I know. You’re the city slicker come to skin us country boys. I’ll bet you could play me and Jake at the same time and beat us blindfolded.