Angle of Repose (59 page)

When she opened the casement, dust sifted from the deep sill. The outside air, hot even on the shaded north side, surged into her face. She called, and Oliver straightened, turning. “Where’s Ollie? Isn’t he with you? Where’s Mrs. Briscoe?”

He laid down the wrench he held and came up the slope as far as the garden fence. “What?”

“Where are Ollie and Mrs. Briscoe?”

“Down by the creek.”

“He was supposed to be working on his reading.”

“I know. I let him off.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do things like that. He needs to study.”

“I suppose.” He squinted up at her, blind in the sun. “I thought it was pretty hot.”

“It isn’t half as hot inside as it is out there. Don’t you stay out working, you’ll get sunstroke.”

For answer he lifted the dripping hat off his head and clapped it back on. “How you feeling?”

“All right. But I don’t want Ollie going down to the river with nobody more sensible than Mrs. Briscoe. What if they should run into a snake?”

“I expect Ollie’d kill it.”

“Did you remind him not to go swimming or wading?”

“Oh come on,” he said. “He’s dependable. Old Briscoe wanted him along, I expect she’s nervous without somebody. They’re just down in the canyon where it’s cooler.” Across fifty yards of sun-blasted gravel he squinted up at her. “You want me to go get ’em?”

“Oh, no. Just don’t let him stay too long.”

“You want La Briscoe?”

“Oh, what for!” she said, and shut the window. Through the dusty pane she saw Oliver stand for a minute, looking up at the house. Then he went back to the windmill, spun up another splash of water, and soused his hat again.

Her skin tingled as if that coolness had touched her own warm face and neck. She thought enviously of how chill the river would be to wading feet, and how tendrils of cool air would wander along the river as erratic and constant as the sounds of flowing. The canyon narrows would be dark and cool. Could she, with Oliver’s help, get down the hill and back? No. Unwise. After months of the most finicky caution she would be insane to risk her baby within a week of its birth.

But she crossed the room, wanting a sight of the river, and drew the curtains and looked down the sun-whitened slope. Under her eyes lay their life, with its constriction, its improvisations, its beauty and its transience. From the narrows the river poured white and broken into the mineral green of the pool, which smoothed it within fifty feet. At the bottom of the pool the water visibly bulged, walling against the rockslide, and twisted right to find a way through. Narrowing, slick as glass, it went under the bridge and into the slot below Arrow Rock and out of sight. Like something alive, wild, and shy, it burst from shadow into sun and slid snakelike into shadow again, ignoring the intrusions they had made on it: the Parson pulled up on the shingle, and on the far bank, in the little round flat over there, shed and haystack surrounded by pole corral. Their path led from the corral across the bottom, disappeared behind a jut of cliff, and reappeared just at the far end of the bridge.

Of all Oliver’s engineering ingenuities she liked the bridge least. It had frightened her pale to watch them build it, suspended above a furious spring runoff. When the wind blew, as it always did morning and evening on days as hot as this, the spider-webby thing kinked and swayed underfoot. Even on calm days it gave way alarmingly to a foot placed on it, and the water shot underneath at a dizzying speed. The single rope handrail struck her as too frail a support when she had to cross alone, and she had forbidden the children to go near it without an adult. The fact that Oliver, and before they left, Frank and Wiley too, slammed across it without touching the rope, and wheeled supplies across it on the wheelbarrow, did not persuade her it was safe. It always stopped her heart to see Betsy carried across on Oliver’s shoulders. Two days before, it had taken all of Oliver’s strength and patience to push and pull and drag fat gasping Mrs. Briscoe across, every thirty seconds prying loose her death-grip on the rope.

As still as a curve in a drawing, the bridge hung from cliff to cliff. Its image, complete even to hand-rope, floated on the smooth water above the tongue of the rapid. To her tranced eyes it seemed to sweep downstream, and yet it remained where it was. Her eyes went up and down the beach. Ollie and Mrs. Briscoe must be up in the narrows. In exasperation she thought, I could be having it right now, how would she know? What good would she be? Stuffs herself and makes herself sick the very first night, so that Nellie and I end up taking care of
her.
And now wanders off. Oh, how am I ever going to let that woman touch me or my baby?

Well, you must. There’s no one else to be had.

Something moved just inside the corner of the cliff, beyond where the juniors’ tent used to stand. Moving to the extreme left of the window, she could see half of Mrs. Briscoe, sitting on half a rock inside the edge of shade. As she watched, the left hand lifted a flat bottle, bottle and lips met in a long kiss, the hand lowered the bottle and tucked it under the edge of the long skirt.

Oh my goodness.

In a fury she craned and peered. For a time Mrs. Briscoe leaned almost out of sight, as assuredly she thought she was. Then she leaned back, her face turned down and across the river. Her left hand rose in a hoo-hoo sort of wave. Susan’s eyes followed the gesture, and there was Ollie coming out onto the far end of the bridge.

She made a moaning sound and put her hands flat on the windowsill, watching as he edged out, testing the sway of the span. It seemed to her he filled his lungs with air. Paralyzed, cut off from him by glass and distance, she may or may not have screamed at him to stop, not to come on. But he came on, carefully inching along the planks, carrying a package of some sort under one arm. He stopped to get a better hold on the rail-rope; he shot an estimating glance across the hundred feet he still had to cross; he shoved the package more firmly under his arm. Below him his shadow paused, buglike, on the shadow bridge. Then it moved. And as it moved, shadow and bridge, bug and boy, began to sway.

Susan’s held breath was choking her. She forced it, clogged with harsh sound, out of her lungs. She saw the shaking sway of the cables communicate itself to Ollie’s knees. He grabbed for the rope with his left hand, the package fell straight down into the river, the lurch of the boy’s falling against the rope kicked the planks sideward, and there he hung across the rail rope with his legs desperately rigid to keep his feet against the planks.

Susan screamed, and screamed again, and was at the rear window tearing at the catch, screaming down toward the windmill, “The bridge! Ollie! The bridge!”

Oliver’s face turned, hung in the heat-shriveled air for half a breath. Then his wrench went flying and he was lunging down the slope in great leaps. She was back at the front window without knowing how she got there. Ollie, still hanging by his elbows across the rope, was just lifting his feet to let the walk swing back under him. He caught it with a knee, both knees. His face turned upward toward her. “Don’t move!” she cried to the glass. “Hold on!” and was outside.

Heat exploded in her face, the small bright terrible image her retina carried dissolved in a red blur. She put her hand against the wall, steadying herself, and felt a bright, distant pain. Someone’s arm-Nellie’s-was supporting her. Something small was whimpering and clamoring down on the ground. Her sight cleared and she saw Betsy. She moved her stinging hand and found that she had thrust it into the rosebush beside the door. “What is it?” Nellie was saying, and then her head snapped around as Oliver appeared, thundering down toward the river, and she saw it all. Oliver was shouting as he ran. On his knees, Ollie clung, patient and small above the curve of swift water.

Susan started down the path, was held back. “Let me go, Nellie!” Clumsily she braced and slid and stepped. The rocks she touched were as hot as stoves, the sun beating off the hillside blinded her, the little flowers of mallow stared up at her like coals. She had to watch the ground, for fear of slipping, but she stopped every few steps to watch Oliver and her son. Nellie, protesting and trying to hold her back, she shook off. Somehow she found herself holding Betsy by the hand.

Oliver plowed through the gravel and leaped up the path to the bridge head. He stooped, steadying the vibration out of the cables while he shouted something at Ollie. Then he started out onto the planks. He moved smoothly and swiftly. His weight sagged the walk, his motion shook Ollie where he clung. Down to the deepest part of the sag, then up. His arm went out, he had the boy hooked tight. For a second they were very still, as if resting.

“Oh, thank God!” Nellie said. She was crying and laughing, and she still clung to Susan’s arm. Susan pried loose her hand, and holding Betsy’s small wet paw she went on down the path. By the time she reached the shingle, they were off the bridge. Evaporating tears were very cold on her cheekbones. She said something gentle to Betsy, transferred her hand to Nellie’s, and held out her arms to Ollie. With one white look upward at his father, he came into them. She could not hold him against her naturally because of her great belly; she had to hold him against her hip. One hand was on his whitey-brown hair. Over the top of his head she looked at Oliver, red with exertion, his shirt wet, his eyes like blue stones. As if restoring the circulation of his hands, he hung them at his sides and shivered the arms from the shoulders.

“Oh, Ollie,” Susan said,
“why
did you do such a thing? Why did you cross by yourself? You know you’re forbidden to.”

He said nothing.

“He’s safe,” Oliver said. “That’s what matters.”

But she was all to pieces, and her agitation came out as blame. “Have you learned a lesson?” she said to Ollie’s double crown. “Has it
taught
you something? Next time I might not be looking out the window . . .”

Then she remembered what else she had seen out the window. Her head turned, and there was Mrs. Briscoe, who must have stood in her tracks during the whole excitement, just starting toward them. Susan took Ollie by his thin shoulders and shook him. “What was it she sent you for? She did send you, didn’t she?”

He looked away, he said nothing. She shook him hard enough to rattle his teeth, furious at the stubborn wordlessness that was so exactly like his father’s. “Didn’t she!”

Held away and forced to glance up, he said, “Yes ma’am.”

“Why? What for?”

“Sue . . .” Oliver said.

She ignored him. “What for?”

“She’d left something on the other side. She was afraid to go get it herself.”

“That package you were carrying.”

“Yes. I . . . It
slipped,
Mother! When the bridge wobbled it just slipped and fell in the river, I couldn’t hang onto it. I could have come across easy except for the package. It kept slipping.”

“No you couldn’t. Don’t even begin to think you could. What was in the package?”

“Sue, can’t this wait?” Oliver said. “Let’s get you out of the sun.”

“What was it?”
Susan said. “Was it a bottle?”

She cut her eyes aside to watch Mrs. Briscoe plowing through the gravel. She had sweated half-moons under her gingham arms, and her face, at a hundred yards away, was already fixing itself in an expression she obviously hoped was agitated concern.

“What kind of a bottle?” Ollie said. He was staring at her. So was Oliver. Nellie held Betsy off to one side.

“A whiskey bottle?”

“I don’t know,” Ollie said. “It wasn’t big. I could carry it easy, only it kept slipping.”

“Where was it? Where did she tell you to look for it?”

“On the poles over the shed door.”

“Yes,” Susan said, and straightened up. “Not exactly left by accident.” She pressed down on Ollie’s shoulders. “You shouldn’t have gone. You knew better. But it isn’t really your fault. It’s that . . .”

Bunion footed, wearing her look of a supposedly house-broken dog which is called upon to explain a puddle on the floor, Mrs. Briscoe labored toward them. Susan turned her back squarely and met Oliver’s eyes.

“Is that it?” he said “How’d you get onto it?”

“I saw her. She’s got another bottle buried down there on the beach. I saw her drinking from it.” She turned Ollie toward the house. “Come along. I don’t want to speak to her. You’ll have to take her back, Oliver.”

“Then who do we get?”

“I’d rather have nobody.”

“You can’t have nobody. It might take five or six hours to get the doctor out here.”

“Mrs. Olpen will come in an emergency.”

“She couldn’t stay. She’s got five of her own to look after.”

“Please!” she said, and pushed Ollie ahead of her up the path. The sun was like thunder on her head. Her hair, when she put up her hand, felt hot enough to smoke.

Oliver had her by the arm. “Nellie,” he said, “could I ask you . . . No, I’ll tell her myself as soon as we get Mrs. Ward to bed.”

“Don’t waste ten minutes,” Susan said. “I want you to clear the canyon of her.”

She shut her lips, she turned herself inward. All the way up the hill she was thinking of the difference between this coming childbirth and the first, in the comfortable cottage at New Almaden, with Lizzie and Marian Prouse and Oliver all building a protective cushion around her and the doctor only an hour away at Guadalupe; and the second, in her old room in Milton, where she could hear Bessie’s step in the hall and see her mother’s face look in the door every time she sighed or coughed. That time Oliver had been missing, already chasing his dream. Each child marked a decline in the security of their life. Now she would have her third child in a canyon cave, unattended, or attended by a rough-handed settler’s wife. Meanwhile, her children ran daily through dangers that turned her cold even on that flaming hillside, and were only kept from becoming as crude as their background by the constant efforts of Nellie and herself.