She supposed she oughtn’t to complain, really. Compared to a lot of women, she had it pretty good. Carol Sue’s husband knocked her around. Carol Sue denied it, but they all knew it was true, and Bobbie’s man jumped on anything that stood still for more than forty seconds, probably including the Schnauzer when he wasn’t rolling over, and Sandra’s spent all their money on Jack and smack. Half the time Sandra and the kids didn’t have enough to eat.
Ray wasn’t like that. He worked hard at the garage, so hard he never could get all the grease and the grime out from under his fingernails or that smell out of his hair, like the freeway at rush hour on a hot day. He
was
a good man, really. Sometimes she wished she could hate him; she thought that might make things easier, but she couldn’t. She hated herself for feeling so, so like she felt, which wasn’t the way a woman ought to feel about her husband, that much at least she knew. They didn’t have a lot, but the trailer was almost paid for and already he was talking about getting them a bigger one before too long, “a double wide, two bedrooms, get you a real kitchen for a change.”
She wasn’t exactly looking forward to that, though. She knew what “two bedrooms” meant. Time for kids. She knew he wanted them. Maybe she did too. She didn’t know. Wasn’t she already tied down enough, and the days running an hour or two shorter than they used to, working at the store, and doing everything around the house, washing and ironing and cleaning and cooking and the dishes, like one of those multiple-purpose appliances they advertise on late night TV—you screwed it on the bed and it took care of all the chores? Where was she going to fit a kid into that? For sure he wasn’t going to give up what he wanted, which was the NASCAR races on TV or a Dodgers game, or the NBA playoffs, and supper waiting for him when he got home, her waiting for him when he got into bed. Mac and cheese hot, legs open. She didn’t even have time to be tired.
In the trailer across the way, Amy lifted her hands and peeled the tee shirt over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were small and firm looking, half turned away from one another like they weren’t speaking. Linda found herself staring at them, unconscious of it until they were gone and Amy bent down, doing something at the sink.
She came back up again, her hair wet, reached for a towel and wrapped it around her head. For a moment, she looked straight ahead, through the window, as if she were staring at Linda. She couldn’t be, of course. Linda’s kitchen was dark, there wasn’t enough light to show her standing here at her own sink. Still, it gave Linda a funny, tingly kind of feeling, standing there staring at Amy’s bare breasts, and Amy staring right back at her.
The toilet flushed. She realized Ray had gotten up to go to the bathroom. How long had she been standing here, anyway? A while, must have been. Her beer wasn’t even cold anymore.
“Where’d you go to?” he called from the bedroom.
She hurried toward him, not wanting him to come out here, to see Amy like this. She wanted to keep that image fresh in her mind, unspoiled by what he would have to say about it.
“What were you doing out there in the dark?” he asked as she got into bed.
“Just standing, thinking,” she said. “I got to move the stock tomorrow, the old man wants everything changed around. He wants a lot from me, for what he pays.”
“I got a good mind what that old fart wants,” Ray said, and after a moment, “He hasn’t tried puttin’ the moves to you, has he?”
“Wilbur? Lord, he’d have a stroke if I showed him a tittie,” she said.
Now, where had that come from?
He laughed, and rolled onto his side again. “I expect you’re right,” he said.
She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about Amy next door. About that time Amy had asked her in. About what Amy would say if she just showed up at her door one day, came right up the cinder path and knocked on the screen door, one afternoon while Ray was at work. Said, “I was hoping we could have a cup of coffee, if you’re not too busy.”
Just to be neighborly.
Illusions
Delbert Mason was a successful man. And, in terms of Martin’s Falls, West Virginia, an important one, though he was not so great a fool that he failed to recognize that for what it meant. “A big fish in a little pond,” he sometimes reminded himself. Still, the firm he worked for was owned by a California outfit, and he had every expectation that in a year or so, three at the most, he would be able to take his place with the parent company in Los Angeles.
“General Manager,” he liked to tell himself, although he secretly thought maybe C.E.O.
In the meantime, he was content as the President here, and if the pond was small, he was surely the biggest and most enviable fish in it. The company provided him a house, which he fancied was the grandest in the town, and servants to run it for him. He had a car and a driver, and he was known and respected at the local country club, which was far nicer, really, than one might expect.
When he remembered how he had grown up, in a house not much more than a shanty in one of the meanest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, he could not help thinking he had done himself very well in his forty-six years on the planet. He reckoned he would be back in California, in a far grander neighborhood (he was thinking Beverly Hills) and high up on the corporate ladder, by the time he was fifty.
He was a widower, a barely remembered wife having died almost twenty years before. He had often since considered remarrying, but he had decided that would wait until he assumed his rightful place with the firm. He was in good health. Everyone said he was young for his years, and he felt sure that by the age of fifty he would still be able to live an active life. He had no doubt that he would find a suitable wife then. As for the present, he was honest enough with himself to admit that he somewhat selfishly liked his independence.
He entertained often, but even when he was alone for the evening, he always enjoyed a full dinner, served rather formally. His cook, a local woman, was quite good, and had gotten better since she found her efforts appreciated. He had a house-boy, half Chinese and, though he would never have said this to anyone else, as pretty as any woman. Chi Seng saw to all his wants, physical and otherwise, so that he need never bother himself with what he considered the awkward trappings of romance, nor the details of housekeeping. In short, he had everything that he could desire. Or, nearly everything, at least.
More than once he had thought about taking a vacation in Los Angeles. He missed certain things—the weather, especially. He hated the winters here, when everything was buried under snow and just getting around was difficult. But he had not gone back to the west coast since the day he left, when he had made a promise to himself that he would return an unqualified success. There were people he wanted to “show.”
He had been out to a restaurant this evening with some business associates and he had not only eaten a fine meal, but topped it off with more than a few drinks. Good Scotch beforehand, an old California Cabernet with dinner, and a good cognac afterward. He was feeling very mellow, and halfway home he decided to do something he rarely did. He told his driver he wanted to walk.
It was near the end of October, when sometimes it could be snowing already, but this year the weather was holding pleasant. A waxy moon slipped in and out of the clouds, like a fat lady playing hide and seek, and though the hour was not late, only a little before eleven, the town was quiet. He saw no one else as he ambled along, the car coasting slowly behind him in case he changed his mind. He did not get as much exercise as he should, and he thought this effort would be good for his waist, which had begun to bulge a bit more than pleased him. Not that he was fat, he wasn’t, and he was a tall man after all, six three in his stocking feet, so he could carry some flesh on his bones. Still, it never hurt to stretch one’s legs.
As he came near to the cemetery, he saw a hearse turn in between the gates, an ebony limousine close behind. They stopped a hundred feet or so down the drive, the red of their taillights piercing the night. It was decidedly late for a funeral service and besides, the town being a small one, he knew just about everything that went on in it, and he’d heard of no one dying in the last day or so.
Delbert paused. He was not one of those superstitious types who imagined ghosts and ghouls hovering about in such places. In fact, he rather enjoyed a cemetery. This was an old one, and large. His business sense told him it was foolish to let the cemetery stay where it was, occupying some of the most valuable property in the town, but another part of him found that rather amusing. When the city council had debated moving the graves to put up an office complex, he had come down rather forcefully against it. Of course, in view of his opposition, they had abandoned the idea.
On a whim, he walked through the open gates and strolled in the direction of the waiting cars. The place was neatly kept, the gravesites free from weeds. He made a mental note to find out the caretaker’s name and say a good word for him at the next council meeting.
As he went, he read some of the tombstones, clear enough in the intermittent moonlight. He saw the grave of someone he knew, Edwin Murdock—a good man, but he couldn’t hold his liquor. He’d died in a car accident not six months ago, but he’d been drunk as could be when it happened, so you could just as well say he drank himself to death. And here was someone who had once dared to cross swords with him over a political matter. And there lay the man whom he had replaced as President of the firm.
In a sense, you could say he had beaten them all, hadn’t he? They were dead and he was alive. He smiled and puffed out his chest like a pigeon. There was no question about it, it wasn’t all luck, either. He was a clever man, he didn’t mind admitting that to himself. In the long run, that was what mattered. A man made his own luck, as he saw it.
The moon succumbed to the clouds, and it grew all at once darker. He approached the cars. The interior of the limousine was all shadow, and he could see no one inside it, but the rear of the hearse was open now and two men dressed in somber black stood on either side of it, as if waiting for someone. “Who is this service for?” Delbert asked them.
They did not even look at him. Delbert saw a casket in the rear of the vehicle, deeply polished mahogany with railings of gleaming brass. A pale light flickered off to his right, and glancing in that direction, he saw an open grave and beside it an old-fashioned lantern, it’s flame dancing in the nighttime breeze. As he stared, a clod of dirt sailed over the brim of the opening. Someone was inside, still digging the grave.
He tried to think whom it could be for. Mrs. Alyson lived two houses away from him and he knew her child was sick, but he would surely have heard of it if the child had died. His cook liked her gossip, and whatever she heard she shared with the houseboy, who quickly passed it on to him. Anyway, this was not a child’s grave. It was clearly for a man, a big man. And the casket in the hearse was a large one too.
He spoke to the two men again and this time they looked at him in some confusion. One of them began to speak in a language he didn’t recognize.
He tried speaking to them in English, but they no more understood him than he had them. It was shameful, really, that people could come to this country to live and work and not bother to learn the language. They shouldn’t have been hired, in his opinion. Maybe he would visit the local mortuary to make his feelings known.
Abruptly, the two men turned away from him as if he weren’t there. Delbert wanted to say something more, but what was the point, when they couldn’t understand him? Raindrops had begun to fall, timorously at first and then with more gusto. He wished now he had not strolled into the cemetery, and though dignity prevented his running, he walked quickly back toward the gates. His driver had parked and waited outside. Delbert got into the car. His mood had gone sour and when he said, “Take me home,” his voice was rather cross. The rain came down in torrents.
The moment he got home, he called for the houseboy. The first thing he asked him was, “Who’s died?” Chi Seng knew everything that happened in town. But he shook his head and looked blank. “I hear of no one,” he said.
He had begun to unbutton his neat white tunic, supposing that his services would be required, as they were most evenings, but Delbert was not in the mood. That business at the graveyard bothered him. He knew that Chi Seng spoke several languages, and he ordered him to go to the cemetery and find out who was being buried.
The boy was back in half an hour, and he brought the caretaker of the cemetery with him. The caretaker had obviously been roused from his sleep. His hair was tousled and his shirt mis-buttoned, and he was drenched from the rain. He looked nervous, as well he might, to be summoned to the home of the town’s most prominent citizen this late in the evening.
“I want to know whose graveside service that was,” Delbert said when the man was brought in, but the man only looked at him stupidly.
“There’s no service tonight,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly midnight, sir.”
Delbert was about to curse him. “Damn it, I was there,” was on the tip of his tongue, but he saw the caretaker and the houseboy exchange glances with one another.
He wondered if some mischief were afoot. He was no fool, you didn’t get to where he was without making an enemy or two, and although he thought the houseboy was loyal to him, you could never be altogether sure with foreigners.
“All right. Get out of here, both of you,” he said aloud with an imperious wave of his hand.
When they were gone, he fixed himself a Scotch and soda. He was sweating. He wiped his brow with his handkerchief. Maybe he’d had a hallucination, he thought. But no, damn it, he had seen the hearse with his own eyes, and the casket inside, and the open grave waiting, with that funny old-fashioned lantern flickering beside it.
He looked at the clock. It was not quite midnight. Rain or no rain, on a Saturday night the bar at the country club would still be busy. He rang for his driver and ordered the car brought around again. When they drove past the cemetery, he looked long and hard in that direction. The gates were closed. The water streaming over the windows made it difficult to see, but it appeared that the cars were gone, and there was no hint of light in the direction where he thought he had seen the lantern and the open grave.