“I put both of ’em up,” Frank said. “I never forgit.”
*
Outside Frank saw the young man, dressed up Los Angeles style, standing beside his Mercedes. How did a young punk like that get to earn a car only rich people could afford?
“We’re closed,” Frank said.
“I saw the lights inside,” the young man said. “I figured someone was around.”
“We’re eatin’ dinner,” Frank said and turned to go in.
The young man followed Frank. “I’m sorry. I’ve been on the road from L.A. all day and didn’t check the gas gauge. I’m near empty. This is a helluva road to get stuck on.”
“You can’t follow me into the house,” Frank said.
“I’ll give you five bucks over what the pump says if you’ll fill it.”
Frank turned to look at the young man’s desperate face. He liked to see people scared like that. Owning a Mercedes was no protection against running out of gas if you’re an idiot. The guy was actually peeling off a five-dollar bill and holding it out to Frank. The hand holding the five-dollar bill looked like it was manicured. Jesus, these Los Angeles people were something.
Frank took the bill. “You fill it,” he said to the young man, pointing at the gas pump.
“I don’t know how.”
He seemed embarrassed.
The Mercedes took nearly twenty gallons.
When Frank looked up, his father was standing at the door. “Everything okay?”
“Okay, Dad. Be back in a minute.”
The young man handed Frank an American Express card. “I hope that’s okay. Any motels coming up on this road?”
“Where you headed for?”
“Carmel.”
Frank looked at the name on the charge card: Jacob Fetterman. He shoulda guessed.
“Gotta check your name in the credit book,” Frank said. “Be a minute.”
Inside everyone looked up from the table. “He gave me five bucks extra to pump him some gas.”
They watched Frank head for the phone. He dialed a number he knew from memory. “Can I speak to Clete?”
After a moment, Frank said, “I’m sure he’ll talk to me even if he’s very busy. Tell him it’s Frank down at the gas station.”
It seemed to take forever. Finally the woman who’d answered the phone said, “Just a minute.”
“Please, hurry,” Frank said.
Then he heard Clete, breathless, saying, “What’s up, kid?”
“Oh hi, Clete,” Frank said. “I’ve got another one for you down at the gas station. Jacob Fetterman. Want me to send him up or can you come down for him?”
11
Clete knew George Whittaker had it in for him ever since Clete had knocked on the door of George’s room and opened it too soon to find George furtively stashing something away in his desk. He’s getting at me, thought Clete, by giving Charlotte a hard time about her little bit of AWOL. He’s locked her up,
which is like punishing me.
This time he waited till George said, “Come in.”
“Hi, boss,” Clete said. “Guess what? That kid at the gas station has got another one. I told you it paid to pay attention to the kid. Will you give him an interview?”
“Mr. Clifford says they have to be twenty-one.”
“There’s one favor you could do for me,” Clete said.
“Like?”
“How about letting Charlotte go? She won’t do it again.”
Whittaker glared scornfully at Clete. “You’ve got nerve asking favors with Henry Brown on the loose.”
“What about Charlotte? You can’t leave her locked in her room like she was one of them.”
“I can do anything I please in Cliffhaven,” Whittaker said.
Clete stared straight at the lower right drawer of Whittaker’s desk. He knew Whittaker was smart enough to get the message.
“Well,” Clete said after a moment, “if you can do anything, I’d just as soon you let her out because you’re punishing me, too, and I haven’t done a thing. Mr. Clifford likes me real special, you know that. He wouldn’t want me being punished for some little thing she did.” What he wanted to do was get Charlotte into the privacy of his room, beat her for trying to get to that San Diego dude, then fuck her, then beat her, then fuck her again, that’s what.
“You let your new couple get away,” Whittaker said.
“I was distracted by those goons hanging onto Charlotte. You’d have been upset, boss, if it was your girl they were manhandling.”
George Whittaker felt the sting. Nobody before Clete had ever dared refer to the fact that he didn’t have a girl at Cliffhaven or anywhere else. He’d just have to have Clete killed accidentally. That was it.
“Okay, Clete,” he said. “I’ll let her out. But you talk to her the way I know you can so she won’t ever try that again, right?”
“I sure will, boss,” Clete said.
“Now get your ass down to the gas station. And don’t lose this one, you hear?”
Getting onto his scooter, Clete was very pleased with himself for having sneaked into Whittaker’s room to see what he was embarrassed about in that lower right-hand drawer. He had copied some of the pages from the diary and read them to Mr. Clifford over the phone. Mr. Clifford had seemed very grateful.
“Clete,” he had said, “you are one of the most loyal people
I
have ever met. Some day you might have
a
much more important job at Cliffhaven. In the meantime, watch out for George these next few days just in case he suspects. He’s an awfully vengeful man.”
*
There comes a time
,
thought
Henry, trudging up the road with Margaret ahead of the six trusties,
when one must take a chance with life.
He remembered that January, years ago, when the boy had fallen through the ice at Echo Lake. Four men had seen the accident. Two had hung back for fear of falling through themselves. Henry and the other, much younger man had run out over the ice, slipping, stumbling. The boy’s head was still above water, and he remembered thinking
Risk a life to save a life
just as the other man yelled, “You stay here!” and plunged into the icy water and, swimming, pushed the boy toward Henry till he could grab the trembling arms and pull the boy onto the ice. The other man lifted himself out on his strong arms and said to him, who had done nothing, “Thanks, mister. Sorry I yelled. I thought you were going to dive in, too, and there’da been nobody to haul the kid in.” The man, he learned later from the newspaper report, was a volunteer fireman, used to reacting fast in emergencies. Why hadn’t he told the other man to stay put and dived in for the boy? Was it cowardice? What of the two men who had remained on the shore? Would they have watched the boy drown from a distance, afraid for their own safety? Or had they merely hesitated on seeing two others rush to the boy’s aid? There were those who would never risk their lives, a decision carried through life like armorplate against the possible touch of love. And at the other extreme all those volunteer firemen all over America, welcoming the danger of being at risk for strangers on a moment’s notice, like boys, thinking themselves immune from death, playing at war. And in between? Everyone else, calculating the odds, as he was doing now, thinking of the six trusties behind him, each armed with a club. Yes, he would fight any one of them bare-handed, try to twist the club out of his hands. He would have beaten the man with his own club, anything to be free of this place. But six of them were not odds, they were certain defeat. Was there not a value in resisting anyway, showing these cretins who worked for the enemy that a Jew can fight back? Or was it authority and government ordering him to obey, the face of the state trooper calling him kike, that had sapped from him the necessary iota of insane will needed to lunge into battle against a half dozen adversaries in the hope of somehow getting away?
Henry, he chastised himself, you think too much and do too little.
He looked at Margaret, just ahead of him to the right, her hips moving in the upward climb. She reminded him, strangely, of seeing a locomotive moving slowly out of a station, its wheels and levers moving its weight mechanically. She must be terribly tired, as he was, from the long scramble through the brush. Neither of them was used to this kind of physical test. From time to rare time he had thought of Margaret as a physical being. Beneath her skin, the sensitive and lovely envelope, were strong muscles on a skeleton, an alimentary tract puckered at each end, functional, similar to other bodies, except in this case belonging to the totality called Margaret and imbued with the mind and character and charm that individuated her and brought to her physical being his love for all of her. She had borne not only Stanley and Ruth but him in the comfort of her arms during a quarter of a century of nights, this other person who was half of whatever they constituted together. He had never stopped loving her.
Right now that thought was subverting his attention. He needed to concentrate on breaking away. If escape was possible, was it possible for them both, or did it mean that he might stand a better chance if he escaped alone? He would, of course, come back with help to release her and the others, but would these Cliffhaven people in the meantime revenge themselves against her? Or would they refrain because as a Gentile she was not the object of their special venom? Or would they attack her with zeal because she was a defector married to a Jew?
You see, Henry thought, I am thinking Jewish thoughts—on the one hand, on the other hand—when I should be acting, as a Gentile would, as a
sabra
would.
He heard the motor scooter before he saw its single light come around the bend, recognized Clete, who slowed down, extended his legs from the sides to balance himself as the scooter stopped. What a fool to expect a smile of friendly recognition from Clete, who merely nodded at him and at Margaret as if their capture was foredoomed. Clete exchanged a word with one of the trusties, then twisting the accelerator on the handlebar, went sailing behind his headlight down the road they had just exhausted themselves climbing.
*
Frank Fowler’s assembled family had overheard his phone call to Clete. As he passed through the dining room, he saw them look up from their meal with what he took to be interest.
None of them had the guts to do what he did.
“Don’t get yourself in trouble, Frank,” his mother said.
Frank stopped. “With who?”
“You hush your smartass mouth,” his father said. “Our family’s been here near on fifty years. Whatever those new resort people do is none of our business.”
“Bullshit,” Frank said.
“Who are you saying bullshit to?” his father said, standing.
“Not to no one, just to what was said about our business. Ain’t our sales way up since Cliffhaven started? I gotta go.”
“Finish your dinner,” his mother said, motioning her husband to sit back down.
Frank went outside.
What a bunch of liars his family was. Long before Cliffhaven was up there they’d talked about the L.A. Jews, and the Frisco Jews, and the New York Jews. They knew. They just had no guts to do anything about anything.
“Here’s your card, mister,” he said to Fetterman. “I called Cliffhaven for you, and they said they could put you up.”
“You mean the place just here?” Fetterman asked, glancing at the Cliffhaven sign past the gas station.
“Yeah, it’s real neat.”
“Expensive?” asked Fetterman.
What’s a rich Yid worried about that for?
“I guess they’ll take your credit card,” Frank said.
“But is it expensive?” Fetterman asked. He saw Frank glance at his Mercedes. “I know what you’re thinking,” said Fetterman with a smile. “It’s my old man’s.”
Sure. How many’s he got
?
“My old man’s in the hospital,” Fetterman went on, trying to be friendly. “Cancer. He lets me use the car.”
Frank was relieved to hear the motor scooter and a moment later see its headlight turn off the Cliffhaven road. “Hi Clete,” he yelled eagerly.
Clete nodded to Frank. Coldly, Frank thought. But Clete gushed at Fetterman.
“Welcome to Cliffhaven, Mr. Fetterman,” he said, extending his hand. “The sign says reservations only, but we have a spare room this evening, and Mr. Fowler here thought you’d welcome a stopping place for the night since you’ve come all the way from L.A.”
Frank liked the “Mr. Fowler.” He forced himself to listen carefully to Clete’s pitch. Maybe he’d get a chance to do that someday.
“Yes, indeed. My name’s Steve Clete and I’m your guide. I’ll just hook up my scooter to your car with this gizmo and we’ll be on the way.”
“Just a moment,” Fetterman said. “How much is it a night?”
I hope he’s not going to make a break for it, thought Frank, after all the trouble I’ve taken.
“Just sixty for a single,” Clete said, “and that includes breakfast. It’s a three-star restaurant, you know. You have a credit card?”
Fetterman nodded.
“No problem. Want me to drive your car up? The road’s kind of tricky at night.”
“All right,” Fetterman said, getting in on the passenger side. “Key’s in the ignition.”
“Hey, Frank,” Clete said, holding the driver’s door open. “Can you get the chain?”
Frank nodded, ran ahead as Clete started the car up. When they got to the gate, Frank had already lowered the chain, and when they passed over it, Frank put it back up. Clete waved to Frank. That boy was okay.