Her Father's House (17 page)

He was halfway to the cottage steps when his attention was drawn to a woman crossing the barnyard on horseback. The sight was striking, the woman tall in the saddle, her reddish hair glinting below her hat brim, and the horse, a magnificent pinto, splashed with dark brown on a background of white. It took him a few seconds to recognize Kate Benson, and only seconds more for her to see him.

She was dismounting as he approached. “Your first night went well, Jim, I hope?”

“It couldn't have been better. And Laura's introduction to the play school couldn't have been better, either.”

“I'm so glad. I had an idea it would. Laura's a character, isn't she?”

“I'm afraid I don't know enough about children to tell.”

“Well, take my word, she is. Do you ride?”

“I used to be pretty good at it, but I haven't done it in years.”

“If you were good once, you haven't forgotten how. We have another horse for you, if you want. Come, I'll show you. He's in pasture, the one behind that row of chicken houses.”

A light chestnut Shetland pony with a wavy mane, not much larger than a very large dog, was grazing along with a tall, dark horse.

“The Shetland is Ricky's, of course. He's Rick's treasure. His name is Rabbit, but don't ask me why. This pinto is Elf, and the big one over there is Cappy.”

“A smooth high-stepper,” Jim said. “Cappy is an elegant Tennessee Walker, if I remember right.”

“Yes, he's handsome, isn't he? He's Clarence's horse, but Clarence doesn't ride anymore. He's had a few problems, and it's not good for him. We used to go up together every day into the hills, or sometimes just around the property. We'd squeeze in the time, no matter what. And now I have to go by myself.”

“Taking turns with the horses, I suppose, because they both need exercising?”

“Exactly. But I don't enjoy the big one as much. I'm not used to his canter. Still, he needs attention, so I do it. How do you feel about trying him?”

“I feel I'd like to, very much.”

“Good. I'll wait for you tomorrow morning after Laura goes to Jennie's.”

   

“We'll take it easy, since you haven't ridden in so long,” Kate proposed on the following day.

So they trotted a few miles around the perimeter of the property, which was far larger than Jim had imagined. He had expected a barrage of chatter along the way, but Kate was very quiet.

There was in fact a marked difference between yesterday's woman and today's. Something had happened. Perhaps trivial, perhaps not. But it was no business of his.

After a while they came to a halt, allowing the horses to drink at a small stream, and stood in silence. Even at this remove, the varied foliage was recognizable: white pine, dogwood that must have been a cloud early in the spring, azaleas, and rhododendrons that grew ten feet high, as Jim had noted in his travels through these hills.

“In the fall,” Kate said, suddenly breaking the silence, “the sumac turn orange-red, like flame. Clarence calls this ‘God's country.' ”

“Yes, God's country,” Jim repeated. A sense of the most intense thankfulness rose within him. In safety he had brought Laura this far, and even though he did not plan to remain in this particular place, it was a good omen. Surely the next lap of the journey would bring them to their final safety among these hills.

   

No matter what the course of the future, this little stretch of time would be remembered as an extraordinary calm. Even the weather was moderate. In the play group, Laura was flourishing, learning to share her toys as well as to defend her rights; she had developed a genuine laugh, and before his eyes she was beginning to change from a baby to a child. Every day Jim rode Cappy for a healthy hour, soothed by the sense of space and silence.

Apparently Kate Benson had changed her hour for the early-morning ride, but he had no idea why and he did not miss her. Rarely did he see either her or Clarence, so his first impression that they wanted to be friends must have been a mistake.

One day, he passed Clarence near the stable as he was coming back from his ride.

“You're doing Cappy a world of good,” Clarence said.

“He's doing me a world of good. We like each other. We almost talk to each other.”

“I know, I miss him, too. Maybe sometime I'll get back to riding again.”

It seemed to Jim that Clarence looked decidedly different, as if he had changed almost overnight. His healthy sunburn had turned to a sickly yellow; even the whites of his eyes and the brown irises seemed to be tinged with yellow.

“Looks as if you like it here, Jim. Didn't plan to stay three weeks, did you?”

“Three weeks. Where's the time gone? It can't be—”

“Will be, this Tuesday.”

Jim shook his head. “I guess I stopped counting. All this peace and ease—I'm a kid in a toy store, or a candy store.”

A tired smile crossed the other man's face and vanished.

“Are you all right, Clarence? You seem tired today.”

Clarence shrugged. “Look around at the bustle. It's a hubbub on this farm, enough to make a man tired.”

“Are we staying too long, Clarence? Tell me the truth. Do you need the cottage for anything and don't want to tell me to clear out?”

“No, no. Well, the truth is, we were talking, Kate and I, about how you said you were hunting for a job, and we wondered about that. It's not our business, but we were wondering about you and the baby, how long you would stay.”

You block things out, things you don't want to face, just as you block out bad memories . . .

“You're right, Clarence. I'm taking too long. I ought to get down to business.”

“Oh, I didn't mean that,” Clarence protested. “Forget I said it. You just do what's best for you. I didn't mean you should either stay or go. I was only wondering.”

A few minutes later, Jim was in the car on his way to the newspaper stand in town. Buying a local paper, he realized that he had never noticed the New York journals and magazines on the top shelf.

“Do you sell much of this stuff here?” he asked.

“Only to a couple of teachers at the high school. Can't for the life of me fathom why they're interested in all this, but they are, so I order a few copies.”

When he had scanned the sections where he might find the news he had neglected during these lovely days in never-never land, he was both relieved at finding nothing and angry at himself for the careless neglect. And then because of this abrupt anxiety attack, he bought three newspapers from outlying towns, went to the car, and read through all the help-wanted advertisements. Only one seemed to offer a possibility, a post as office supervisor in what sounded like a prosperous shirt factory in what sounded like a prosperous town. Of course, he knew nothing about shirt making, but an office was an office; it meant correspondence, records of wages, employment, and taxes. When he thought of the complicated puzzles he had unraveled at home and overseas, he certainly should be able to manage those.

Accordingly, the next day he asked Jennie please to keep Laura through the late afternoon in case he should be delayed, since the round trip amounted to sixty miles, and the length of the interview was unknown.

Once he was down out of sight of the hills and on the highway, the heat began to rise. It will be an early summer, he thought. Perhaps it was normal for this part of the country? The car's air conditioner languished into a faint, warm breeze; clouds made a dreary landscape more dreary, so that Jim had to work at keeping his spirits lively. Upon entering the town, he had to work even harder. All was old, neither quaint nor with any charm of history, but merely old and grim, a town left over from an industrial age that was about to die. It even smells dreary, he thought as he parked and walked the streets. His heart sank. This town was one of those places in which you wouldn't want to grow up. Someday it would change, but not soon enough for Laura.

Nevertheless, on the theory that you must hear the whole story before you judge, he went straight to the factory and presented himself, there to answer the questions and relate the story that was becoming easier with every telling. His wife had died, he had a young child, he had left his insurance job in Philadelphia, and he was well qualified.

As it turned out, the interviewers thought so, too. He could not help but think when they told him the salary, which was not really bad at all, that they would never believe the amount of his last year's income tax.

All right, if he had to, he would make do. Wealth was not what he was seeking now, although wealth was very enjoyable indeed. There was no real wealth back at the Benson farm, and yet it was heavenly to wake up there every morning. But the Benson farm did not belong to him.

So he asked a few practical questions. What were the rents here? Could he get a small house with a yard, or could he afford a nice apartment, perhaps close to a park, on this pay? And was there any good day care that they could recommend? One of the women in the office made a kind suggestion. If Jim would come back on Saturday, she would be glad to take him around, show him places where he might live comfortably, and make an arrangement for day care. So with his decision to accept almost made—unless of course an offer far more attractive should abruptly pop out of the air—he departed.

Driving back by another route through the town and passing a few tree-lined streets that looked more cheerful, he told himself that if the return trip on Saturday should end successfully, it might not be a bad undertaking after all. Thus did his mood veer from high to low, and from low back to high. One thing he did know: the vacation was over.

After an early breakfast and no lunch, he was hungry, and at the edge of town, approaching the highway, he stopped at a luncheonette, got hold of somebody's abandoned newspaper, and read it while he ate a sandwich. There often wasn't much news in these local papers, mostly sports and politics as you might expect, although now and then on a feature page, they printed an unusual human interest anecdote.

My God! My God!

The coffee spoon fell clattering on the table. The cup tipped, leaving a brown stain that circled and dropped onto Jim's knees.

A man named Wolfe in West Virginia was suing the state for false arrest. Traveling with a two-year-old girl in the backseat of his car, he had been stopped, brought to the station house, and held there for five hours until his wife, by telephone, had assured them that he was only taking their child to visit his parents for the day. It seemed, so went the account, that he had been mistaken for another man named Wolfe in New York City, who really had kidnapped his child. Arthur Storm, a spokesman for the child's mother, Lillian Buzley, was quoted as saying that “Donald Wolfe is sure to be found. He is probably hiding out in some rural area. He originally came from one, and it is likely that he has returned to a country town where he can find employment. But he should have no doubt that wherever he may be, we will find him, and it won't take very long, either. We will ferret him out.”

For several minutes, Jim sat there staring at the page. He had lost the power in his legs. He had lost the power to cope with this new reality. Arthur Storm . . . retired chairman of Regulex Amalgamated . . . Matisse . . . Picasso . . . power . . . detectives . . .

He should have no doubt that we will find him.

Why had he told those people just now that he was traveling with his two-year-old girl? He had to get back to her without losing a moment. And stumbling to his feet, he put down a ten-dollar bill, left without waiting for change, and ran to the car.

He wanted to speed, yet fearing the risk of a ticket, he did not dare to. So it was midafternoon before he drove down the redbrick main street that, by its relative familiarity and in spite of his agony, gave him a vague feeling of ease. The only thing he had to do there before his retreat to the farm was to buy a few more newspapers.

“Mr. Fuller! Still here? I thought you'd be in Memphis or Atlanta or someplace by now.”

Behind Jim stood Dr. Scofield, buying a magazine. This was the wrong time to get involved with anybody as jovial as the doctor. Once in his friendly clutches, it was almost impossible to get away.

“No, I'm still here,” he said pleasantly, “but leaving soon.”

“I still think of that young lady of yours. Throws up, feels better, and has the nerve to ask me for candy. Remember? Hard to resist those blue eyes, isn't it?”

“You bet. But I resist. Stern father, you know.”

“You don't look stern. Say, you must get along very well with Kate and Clarence to be staying so long. They're a nice pair, those two. I've known Clarence since he was a kid.”

Each having tucked his paper and magazine under an arm, they were proceeding toward Jim's parked car. But when they reached it, Scofield was still talking, and there was no way short of rudeness to stop him.

“It's a pity that they're having so much trouble.”

Trouble, thought Jim. At the present moment, Doctor, I'm the wrong man to be sympathizing with anybody's troubles.

But the doctor, resting his shoulder against the car, apparently had more to say. “They're an interesting pair, don't you think? She doesn't always care to show it, but Kate is a brain. He's an innocent dreamer, a hard worker, but he can't manage anything. He's too gentle and gullible for this modern world. So it's all on Kate's shoulders, a heavy, heavy burden.”

One might say that this was mere trivial gossip, the result maybe of living in a place where nothing of much greater importance ever happened. And probably that was true. Or possibly, it was the result of a genuine concern.

Still Scofield held him, although Jim wanted to walk around to the other side of the car and drive away. “Clarence is a born farmer, and he should have stayed one, like his father, instead of trying to develop himself into the CEO of some enormous corporation. Why, he's spent a small fortune on that place, about everything he owned, I guess, so now he's in debt all over town. Owes the bank, owes everybody, poor fellow. People have been patient because they've known the family forever, but there's a limit to patience. In fact, I've heard the limit now is sixty days, and then the place goes to foreclosure. You didn't know?”