Beyond the Black Stump (35 page)

Aunt Claudia said, “What that poor girl went through! How ever can they think of such things?”

Stan laughed, and said, “There’s something about a
Western. It’s the horses, or somethin’. However much you can’t believe in it, it gets you just the same.”

Mr. Laird laughed, and said, “I guess it must be pretty unnerving to see your own picture stuck up all over town, five thousand reward, dead or alive.”

Mollie said casually, “My father had a price on his head once. Just like that.”

Stan coloured, and said nothing.

Mr. Laird said, “You say your father did?” He laughed.

She nodded. “Daddy and Uncle Tom both had a price on their heads. They were gunmen, you know—members of the Irish Republican Army, in the Troubles. Daddy’s always been a bit sore because Uncle Tom’s price was bigger than his—a thousand pounds for Uncle Tom and only five hundred for Daddy. There were pictures of them outside every police station in Southern Ireland, just like that. Dead or alive.”

Mr. Laird stared at her, the smile fading a little from his face. “Did the cops get them?”

She shook her head. “They got away to Australia. It was quite a long time ago, of course—about 1921. But they talk about it still, and how it felt to see the posters.”

Helen Laird said, “But what did they do, Mollie? They didn’t shoot people?”

The girl said, “Oh yes, they shot a lot of people. Black and Tans and British soldiers. It was in the Rebellion, you know. Just like a war, only nobody called it a war.”

Mr. Laird moistened his lips and forced a smile. “Was the price ever taken off? The price on their heads?”

The girl wrinkled her brows. “I really don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know if they’d still be in trouble if they went back to Ireland. They won’t ever go, of course.”

Aunt Claudia leaned forward earnestly. “You mean to set right there and tell us your own father could be tried for murder if he went back to Ireland?”

“I’m really not quite sure,” the girl said equably. “He won’t go, so it doesn’t matter much. At one time, in the Troubles, if he’d been caught he’d have been put up against a wall and shot right away. I believe it’s different now, though. All forgiven and forgotten.”

Aunt Claudia said, “I don’t suppose the mothers of the poor boys he killed will have forgotten.”

The girl coloured and was about to say something
impetuous, but Stan interposed quickly, “I guess it takes a long time for the feelings a war raises to cool down.”

Helen Laird said, “That’s right. Well, I’m going to bed. That was a real nice picture, Dad. I liked it a lot.” And the tension passed.

Next morning Mollie walked round to the Eberhart home, chatted for a time with Ruth, and brought back the sack of dirty diapers and put them through the washing machine. While she was so engaged Aunt Claudia went down to the town, shopping. Mollie hung out the diapers, busied herself about the house with Helen Laird, and wrote a short letter to her mother. The men came back to dinner as was their habit, and after the meal Stan said to Mollie, “I got to go over to Enterprise this afternoon. You like to come along for the ride, honey? It’s real pretty country out that way, ’n I won’t be more’n a few minutes there.”

She said, “I’d love to, Stan.”

They set out in the Ford. When they were ten miles from the town and driving up on to the foothills of the Wallowa range, he slowed the car, and said, “Mind if I say somethin’, Mollie?”

She said, “Of course not.”

“There’s quite a lot of talk going around the town,” he said.

“About me, Stan?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What are they saying? Stop the car a minute.”

He parked on the crest of a rise, with a view out over the wide, undulating, park-like countryside. “It’s nuthin’ very much,” he said. “Maybe you want to be a bit more careful what you say in front of folks.”

“What about?”

“About your coloured half-brothers and like that. And now it’s that your father was a gunman once.”

“Is that all over town?”

He nodded.

“Aunt Claudia?”

“I guess so,” he said unhappily. “It’s the way of folks to talk in a small place like this, honey. You can’t stop it. It’s just that I don’t want it to make you unhappy.”

She nodded sadly. “I did it on purpose, Stan.”

He stared at her. “On purpose?”

“Not the first time,” she said. “Not about the Countess
and her family. That sort of slipped out, when I was talking to your mother about Tony. But afterwards, Ruth told me that I’d made a great mistake in telling them I’d got the coloured in my family, and then we got to talking about things. She’s awfully nice, Stan.”

He smiled at her. “What did you talk about?”

“All sorts of things.” She paused. “About me being illegitimate, for one thing.”

“You didn’t have to tell her about that, hon.”

“I’m not ashamed of it,” she said. “It’s just one of those things you can’t do anything about, and so it’s no good worrying.” She paused. “Ruth asked if your mother knew that, and I said, not unless you told her. You haven’t told her, have you?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“She’s got to know, Stan. About that and all sorts of other things.”

“Why, honey? Why can’t you just leave that be?”

She turned in her seat to face him. “It’ld be deceiving her, and that’s not the right thing to do. Not when she’s been so kind to me. And besides that, Stan—it’ld all come out one day.”

“All what, honey?”

“All of everything,” she said sadly. “If we get married, Stan, your people must know everything about me.”

“I don’t get that,” he objected. “A person has some private things he don’t tell everyone.”

She smiled. “Not if they’re likely to be found out. It ’ld hurt your mother much more to learn I’m illegitimate after we’re married than if she learns it now.”

He could not gainsay that, but he said, “I don’t see how it could ever come out.”

“It’s bound to,” she said. “If we marry, Stan, you’re marrying into a family from the Lunatic. You can’t prevent your folks from meeting my father and mother, if ever they come here to see me.” She paused. “And they might quite easily do that, you know. They’ve got plenty of money.” She paused again. “When my father comes here, Stan,” she said mercilessly, “what will you do? Get in a couple of cases of overproof rum and entertain him at home, or take him down to Skid Row?”

There was a long silence. He could not think of anything to say.

“I’ve been thinking an awful lot about things since talking to Ruth,” she said at last. “A hundred years ago, when this place really was the Frontier, I think it must have been just like the Lunatic. There must have been a lot of people like my family scattered around, like Fortunate and like the Judge. I mean, right here in the Hazel district.” She sat looking out over the wide, smiling countryside, the undulating hills dotted with fir woods, the backdrop of the high mountains. “This place was first settled by tough pioneers, by people just like Daddy and Mummy, and Uncle Tom, and the Countess, and the Judge. Your people married Indian girls when there weren’t any white women, just like us. I bet your first schoolmasters were people like the Judge. But that’s all a hundred years ago, and you’ve forgotten all the rude stuff. If you could meet one of those people now, if one of them could come to Hazel, you wouldn’t want to have him in your house, or introduce him to your friends. And if it was a girl you wouldn’t want to marry her.” She paused. “I’m a kind of a Rip van Winkle, Stan, that’s come here from the Hazel of a hundred years ago, out of the past.”

He stirred uneasily. “That’s kind of exaggerating things,’ he said. “There’s a few adjustments to be made, hon, but there always are when people from another country marry.”

She nodded. “I know. But before we think of marrying, Stan, your people and Aunt Claudia—that’s everyone in Hazel—they must know all about me.”

“What do you want to tell them, honey?”

“About me being illegitimate, for a start. About Daddy and Uncle Tom swapping Mummy for a Mauser, to go on with. It’s all part of it.”

He stared at her, dumbfounded. “You couldn’t tell them that!”

“Why not? Better to tell them than to have them find out later on. It happened, and it’s all a part of
me.”
She paused. “After all, you and Chuck seem to have done much the same with Ruth, only you swapped her for a candy bar in the Piggy-Wiggy café.”

He was outraged. “Say, that wasn’t the same at all!”

“Not quite,” she admitted. “But, Stan, your people must know all about me before we ever think of getting married. All about my family and how we live, all about the Countess and the others, all about the Judge—everything. Your mother really ought: to come and stay at Laragh for a time.”

He recoiled from the idea. “Gee, honey, that wouldn’t do!”

There was a long pause. “I know,” she said at last. “You can’t put back the clock a hundred years.”

They sat in silence in the car together. The wide bitumen road stretched ahead of them over hills and valleys dotted with dark woods of conifers, a smiling, gracious country, one of the loveliest countrysides in the whole world. They sat in silence for over ten minutes, till the girl stirred. “I’m not going to marry you, Stan,” she said quietly.

He took her hand, “Why, honey?”

“It wouldn’t work,” she said. “There’s too much between us. You know it just as well as I do, if you’re honest with yourself. I like you terribly, but if I married you we’d both be unhappy. It’s no good going on and kidding yourself that it’ll all come good, when it’s like that.”

“I don’t see it that way, hon,” he said. “Honest, I don’t. There’ll be adjustments to be made on both sides, like there always are when folks get married from different countries.”

She shook her head. “It’s more than that, much more. I don’t think I could stand it here, Stan, for one thing. It’s not that I don’t like Hazel. It’s a lovely little town, and a kind one. It’s got everything a normal girl could want, for making a home in. But I suppose I’m not a normal girl myself. I think it would just kill me to live here.”

“Tell me why,” he said gently. “I want to understand.”

“Everything’s been done here, for one thing,” she said slowly. “Where I come from, everything is still to do. I know you’ll say that there are still roads to be paved, that you can only get two channels on the television when you ought to be able to get six, and that you can go thirty miles in one direction without seeing a gas station. There’s more to do than that back in the Lunatic. I’d like to go back and have a hand in doing it.”

“I see that,” he said. “Sometimes I kind of feel that way myself. But you only live once, and there’s no call to spend your whole life in those sort of places. I guess that’s not the real reason, hon. It’s the talk around town, really, isn’t it?”

“A bit,” she said. “I think one could get used to that. It’s new to me to have everyone in town, all the neighbours, knowing everything you do, because at Laragh we’ve got no town and no neighbours. But I think one would get used to that, and even get to like it in the end. It makes Hazel a
community. There’s some things I don’t like, of course. If I had kids I’d rather that the Judge taught them than send them to the grade school here, or to the High.”

He recoiled. “Gee, honey—that’s saying somethin’!”

She said simply, “He’s a better teacher, Stan, than anyone in Hazel. But I couldn’t expect anybody here to look at things the way I do, any more than I could expect them to see any good in Dad or Ma. I’d have to tell your people all about my family before we thought of marrying, and that seems to mean telling all Hazel. I don’t suppose I’d ever live it down.”

“You would, hon.”

“It ’ld take a good long time …”

They sat in silence for a little while. “I’m not going to marry you, Stan,” she said at last. “That’s definite, because it simply wouldn’t work. I’m going back home to the Lunatic. I’ll never regret coming here with you, and seeing all this. If you’ll have me, I’d like to come back for a visit now and then. Maybe in my lifetime I’ll see some of what you’ve done here re-created in Australia—I hope I shall. But I’m not going to marry you.”

He said, “You don’t want to decide a thing like that so quickly, hon. Let’s take a little time, ’n think it over.”

She shook her head. “I’ve been thinking it over, without knowing it, for quite a time. I shan’t change my mind.” She paused, and then she said, “There is one other thing I’d like to say now, while we’re talking. May I say it, Stan?”

“Go ahead.”

She said, “I think you ought to marry Ruth one day, after I’ve gone away and all this has died down. I think that’s the right thing for you to do. And I believe you know it yourself.”

They sat in silence for several minutes, staring at the sunlit road ahead of them. Then he turned to her, smiling. “I guess when a guy’s girl starts cracking up another woman, then it’s kind of final.”

She nodded, but there were tears in her eyes. “I guess this is it, Stan,” she said. A tear escaped, and rolled down her cheek.

He drew her to him, and wiped it away with his handkerchief. “I’d say we better think this over a bit longer,” he said gently.

She withdrew from him. “I don’t know why I’m crying,”
she said. “It’s just silliness. Go on, and drive me some where, Stan. Go on to Enterprise.”

She had recovered her composure by the time they got to the small town. She got out and walked around while he went into the sub-agent’s garage to talk about the grader that had to go on to the client’s tractor; by the time he rejoined her she was herself again. She stopped in the main street to talk to him, finding it easier to do so on the sidewalk in full sight of other people. “I don’t want to talk to anyone this evening, Stan,” she said. “I’d rather get a good night’s sleep before we do. Tomorrow I’ll tell your mother that I’m going home, and I think I’d like to tell Ruth, too—tell her myself. Would you start seeing about airline reservations for me in the morning?”

He said, “If that’s really how you want it, hon. But maybe you’ll feel better in the morning. About everything.”

She shook her head. “I shan’t, Stan. This is it.”