So Many Doors

by Oakley Hall

  “She’ll be company for me,” he continued, more reasonably. “A kind of nurse, and when I go she’ll have everything. Do you see now? I’m afraid I haven’t explained this very well.”

  Baird stared at him, shivering, his shirt twitching over his chest, his hands clenched until the knuckles seemed about to pierce the skin. He couldn’t think. He looked around the office with quick jerks of his head. His thoughts shamed and revolted him. In his mind he had seen V as he, her father, should not see her; she was printed there as Denton, her lover, might see her. And then it was wrong that Denton see her so, for Denton must somehow see her with his eyes, and he was seeing her with Denton’s. It was wrong, unnatural, evil, and he tried to shake the sight from his head as wildly he looked back at Denton.

  Denton’s head was lowered, his lips pursed, and he was gazing at Baird from under his heavy brows. All the confused nervousness seemed to have left him. “I’m a well-to-do man,” he said. “I imagine you know that.”

  Yes, Baird thought, and he thought of Cora, thinking that Cora would be happy to have V be comfortable, well-off, married to an educated man, but instead he saw Cora walking with young John Schuford, just back from Germany. He had seen them walking in the orchard, and he had followed so as to come upon them when they were not expecting him. But they had not even been surprised to see him. He remembered the things he had said that night to Cora; suddenly he realized the complete hell he had made for her.

  He squeezed his eyes painfully shut and shook his head again, trying to think: Denton has money. He can give V so much. If V marries this man and comes to live on this ranch I can see her often—better than having her marry and go away somewhere. But she was so young, and Denton was almost as old as he.

  “You’re too old,” he said hoarsely. “You’re too old for her.”

  Denton didn’t move. There was no expression on his face. He didn’t speak.

  “Have you said anything to—her?”

  Denton shook his head. Finally, he said, “I don’t know if she would consider it. Now, as you say, she’s too young. I thought after some college…In a few years…She’d have matured then, you see.” He leaned forward and looked at Baird keenly. “I can give her a lot. I have no relatives. There’s no one else I care for at all. If she married me she’d be a companion and nurse, she’d be near you, and when I go she’ll be able to do almost anything she wants to.”

  “I don’t know,” Baird said. “I don’t know what to say.” He had stopped trembling and he felt as though unsolvable problems were going to be solved for him. But he said, “Well, it’ll have to be up to her. But now she’s too young.”

  Denton nodded. “I’m not going to mention it to her. Maybe next year when she graduates from high school you’d better sound her out about going to college. She may not want to. If she doesn’t, I thought I’d ask her to marry me then.”

  “Yes,” Baird said slowly. “I suppose that would be the way. I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it a little. We can talk about it again.”

  “It sounds a little feudal, I know. I suppose I’m very selfish, but I know she likes me.”

  “Yes,” Baird said. “I think she does.” He watched Denton’s hand shake as he fitted another cigarette into his holder. Suddenly Baird felt superior to him; this man, educated, well-to-do, almost as old as he was, and to whom he had always thought himself inferior, wished to court his daughter. He almost laughed aloud. He got to his feet, and Denton rose with him, smiling.

  They shook hands and Baird squared his shoulders as he marched down the hall. The three boxes were stacked beside the door. As he cranked the truck and got behind the throbbing steering wheel, he saw Denton in the lighted doorway of the stone house, one hand clutching the edge of the door. He looked small and forlorn.

  5

  In the fall when V returned to the Priory she was permitted to come home every weekend. Evidently she was studying harder, and Baird realized it was because she wanted to be with Tony. “I want something to be mine,” she had said, and he would remember her saying it always. Tony belonged to her and she loved him because he was hers.

  Her affection for Tony disturbed him, and he wondered again if it would be right for her to marry Denton. But there was no one else for her, no way for V to meet anyone but the pimply faced high school boys he had seen. He could not bear to see her waste her life with one of these, for what could they offer her to compare with what Denton had to offer?

  He had forbidden himself to worry about how she would react when he spoke to her about college, or, if she rejected that, what she would do when Denton asked her to marry him. But as her graduation day approached he lay awake in bed at night, wondering; watching her gallop through the orchard on the shining copper horse, he wished he knew what was right and what would be best for her.

  In the spring he had other problems. He had dug into his precious savings to buy an adjoining sixteen acres of bottom land from one of Mark Schuford’s sons. He was not sure he could afford it, but it had been a forced sale and a good buy.

  There had been a grove on the land. The trees had been cut down long ago, but the stumps remained, and would have to be bulldozed out. He made arrangements to borrow Denton’s little D-4 tractor and bulldozer blade. Denton offered also to lend him a man to run it, but Baird refused, and the next day he went into Bakersfield to see about hiring an operator. The state was building a new highway south of Bakersfield; he had seen them grading and paving, and it was likely he would find some one there who knew of a cat skinner who wanted a job.

  From the highway he could see the clouds of dust that marked the trails of the earth-moving equipment, and there was an intense, overlying roar of Diesel engines, loud and popping as they strained, smooth and catarrhal when idling. He turned off the highway and onto a rutted road, jolting and slithering through the thick dust. He had to pull to one side as a huge dump truck pounded past him, black-stained and heaped with black, steaming asphalt.

  He passed a water truck and two motor graders working up on a levee, and then beside the road a bulldozer and a pick-up truck were drawn up together. Two men were bent over the bed of the pick-up, in which engine parts were spread. Baird pulled off the road behind them and got out. A cloud of dust caught up and settled over him, and he wiped his sweating, dusty face on the sleeve of his shirt. The cat skinner and the mechanic nodded to him. The cat skinner wore a sweat-soaked singlet and a striped cap, and his face and arms were burned black. The mechanic, in stiff, greasy overalls, squatted and hunted through his tool chest. He brought out a socket wrench and bent over the bed of the pick-up once more. Baird spat a mouthful of tobacco juice. “You run this machine?” he said to the operator.

  The other grinned and nodded. He didn’t look much over twenty—a snub-nosed boy with a streak of grease on his sweating forehead. “When it goes,” he said. “It’s got a bellyache, right now.”

  “I’m looking for one of you fellows wants to work for a couple weeks.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “Bulldozing. Knocking up stumps.”

  “Gee, I don’t know…Hey, Willie, you know anybody’d want a job dozing stumps?”

  “How about Jack?” the mechanic said, without looking up.

  “Oh, yeah. Hey, you know where this guy could get hold of him?”

  The mechanic grunted as he broke a nut loose with the wrench. “He’s got to go through your union anyway, don’t he?”

  “Oh, yeah. Listen, Mister, you go on down to the union hall or call up or something. Tell them what you got and say you want Jack Ward.”

  “It ought to be a nice change for him,” the mechanic said. “Knocking up stumps.” The cat skinner laughed.

  “Jack Ward,” Baird repeated. It was an easy name to remember. “Well, thank you,” he said.

  “Okay. He’s a good skinner and I don’t think he’s working right now. You ask for Jack.”

  “Thanks,” Baird said as he moved away. When he had turned the truc
k around he drove back to Bakersfield and left a call at the union hall for a bulldozer operator for the next morning at eight o’clock. He drew a map of how to get to his ranch on the back of the job slip, and had a notation made that he would like, if he was available, Jack Ward.

  6

  During the night it rained heavily and in the morning a thin drizzle still persisted. At eight o’clock Baird went out to stand on the brow of the hill above the new bottom land to wait for the cat skinner to show up.

  The edges of his slicker were cold and wet on his wrists and around his neck, and the slicker crackled as he walked up and down. Against his will he was worrying about V; she would be coming home from school at the end of the week, and he would have to speak to her then about college.

  He had told Denton that if she did not want to go to college, to wait until the end of summer to ask her to marry him. The end of summer—September…He walked slowly up and down. The rain had almost stopped. Below him the bottom was gray and liquid and he could see the dead stumps clinging tenaciously to the land, here and there a lonely green shoot spearing up from the dark wood.

  He heard the roar of an automobile mounting the hill, and then a topless yellow roadster shot around the corner of the house and pulled to a stop beside him. Jill ran out of the shed, barking furiously. The cat skinner opened the door and heaved himself out; a tall, thick-shouldered youth with black hair plastered down over his head. His dungarees were soaked dark.

  “Damn wet,” he said, wiping his face on the sleeve of his jacket.

  “You were supposed to be here at eight.”

  “Sorry.” He looked at Baird boldly. “Car conked in the rain.”

  “You can put your machine in the shed,” Baird said. “This ought to let up after a little.”

  “It’s not going to get any wetter’n it is,” the operator said. He had a broad face set with eyes that slanted curiously upward, and he stood with his legs braced wide apart and his arms held out from his sides. Grimacing, he shook his arms and body and pulled at his jacket where the wet cloth stuck to his chest. He was just at the age, Baird saw, where a boy becomes a man, and he was a big man. Suddenly Baird distrusted him.

  “Those the stumps?”

  “Yes. There’s about ten acres of them.”

  “That the cat? What is it, for Christ’s sake, a D-4?”

  “Don’t you think it’ll do the job?”

  “Oh, sure. But that’s little boy’s work.” The operator turned and grinned at him. It was an honest grin, and Baird’s distrust faded.

  “I think we’ll have to shoot some,” he said. “Leave those till last, unless they get in your way. I’ll get some powder tomorrow.”

  The operator nodded and gazed down at the stumps, running his fingers through his wet hair. “Got a chain?”

  “There’s one in the shed. There’s a new cable in the shed, too. You’ll have to string it; the one on the cat’s broke. You Jack Ward?”

  “Yeah.” He grinned again, showing wide white teeth, and extended a wet hand to Baird. “Baird, it said on the job slip.”

  “I’ll expect you to work hard, Ward. You can start up on my time, but shut down on your own. Eight to twelve and one to six.”

  “Fair enough,” Ward said. Baird watched him saunter off toward the bulldozer, and then went to tell Juan to go and help him with the cable.

  Baird unobtrusively watched Ward for a few days. He told himself he was doing this to make sure Ward worked faithfully from eight to six, but he knew it was also because he loved to watch the cat skinner work. He was good at his job. He had the operation of pulling the stumps down to a minimum of time and effort; first he hit a stump with the blade raised, to tip it and break the roots, and then on the second pass he would pry it loose by hooking the blade under the lifted edge, raising the blade and easing the cat forward at the same time, until the stump toppled free. On hot days he worked part of the time with his shirt off, and the muscles rippled on his broad flat back, which was burned a dark red.

  He found himself watching the cat skinner whenever he could get away from his own work; watching him from the shade of the shed, or going down to help him dynamite a stubborn stump, talking to him when there was no need. But there was something strong that drew him to Ward. He liked to watch him not only when he was running the cat, but when he sat against a stump to eat his lunch, or sauntered up the hill to the pump to fill his water bag, or walked more slowly to the car at night after he had shut down the tractor, carrying his lunch pail and slapping his cap against his thigh and whistling cheerfully. He recognized Ward as being of his own particular class and kind, but somehow lifted beyond it by a sense of power over blind mechanical power immensely greater than Ward himself. It was casual and taken for granted, that feeling of thousands of hours of dust and sweat and deafening noise, but in those hours an accumulated sureness and capability he himself could never possess. But he could feel it vicariously, and he came to watch Ward with silent absorption, whenever he could take the time.

  V came home that weekend. Baird put on his black suit and polished his boots and drove in to the graduation exercises, and afterward brought her home. When he had carried her suitcases in from the truck they sat on her bed and looked at the diploma together. It was a black leather folder lined with red satin, and in the folder was an oblong of heavy paper that bore her name, a beribboned gold seal and three signatures. When he handed it back she stood it proudly on the dresser next to the framed picture Denton had taken of her on Tony. Suddenly she cried, “Through! Through! Through!” and pulled the black neckerchief from around her neck and hurled it into the closet.

  Baird pointed to the two boxes he had put on her bed that morning. In them were gabardine riding pants and a pair of fancy Texas boots—her graduation presents. He saw her flush as she pulled the boots out of the tissue paper. Quickly she kicked off her school shoes and pulled the boots on over her black cotton stockings.

  “Oh, they’re pretty,” she whispered, tracing a finger over the tooled designs in the leather. “Butterflies.” She looked up at him, smiling with her lips pressed together. “Thank you, Papa!”

  “If they don’t fit I can take them back, honey.”

  “They fit fine. They’re beautiful. They’re just what I always wanted.” She had cut her hair to shoulder length and the blonde hair parted cleanly up the back of her head as she leaned forward, inspecting the boots. He realized with a start that she was an attractive girl. She had her mother’s good features, her mother’s mouth and eyes, hair blonder than his had been, and the rather short, thick, Baird nose. There were spots of color on her cheeks as, smiling, she ran her hands over the boots.

  “Did you get better grades this term, honey?”

  “Better. Three Bs and a C.” She took the pants from their box and brushed the material against her cheek. “I got a D in geometry, though.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “I’m sorry, Papa.”

  “I think you sat in class and dreamed you were out riding Tony.”

  Silently V rose and held the riding pants up to her waist, looking down at them with her lips pursed. Baird said, “Well, I don’t guess you’ll ever have much use for geometry, anyway. You can always ride Tony.”

  He saw her cheeks redden. She glanced at him out of the corners of her eyes and the corner of her mouth jerked up. She looked down again at the pants she was holding to her waist. “They’re awfully nice,” she said. “Thanks, Papa.” And when she looked up at him he saw that she was crying.

  He wondered why. Then he knew; the outfit he had bought her didn’t compare with the one Denton had tried to give her. He felt the smile that had been warm inside him freeze as she put the pants on the bed and stooped to open her suitcases. He would speak to her about college now. He had to tell her Denton wanted to send her to college. He would do it at supper. Abruptly he got up and went to sit on the porch.

  At the supper table he tucked his napkin into his belt and sipped hi
s milk, waiting for V. She had been riding Tony and she was in her room combing her hair. When she came out her hair was tied back with a blue ribbon; she was wearing her riding pants and boots, and the chocolate-colored cowboy shirt he had given her for her birthday.

  When he had finished eating he crossed his knife and fork on his plate and pushed the plate away. V was cutting open the center of her tamale. “Glad to be through school, honey?” he asked.

  She smiled and nodded. He watched her take an olive pit from her mouth and put it back on her plate. He cleared his throat.

  “Well,” he said. “What do you think you’ll do now?”

  Her eyes grew round and serious and she held her fork poised over her plate, looking up at him. He said quickly, “Would you like to go to college, V?”

  “We can’t afford it, Papa.”

  “Well…” he said, and stopped, and then he sighed and said, “See here; Mr. Denton’s offered to pay your way through college. If you want to go.” He waited for her to speak, and when she did not, said in a lower voice, “If you want to go.”

  “Oh,” V said.

  “You could go up to Berkeley. Or to Fresno, if you wanted to come home weekends.”

  “I don’t know,” V said. She picked at the food on her plate. Baird could feel his heart beating. He put his hand across the table and took hers in it. He felt her hand tense and she looked down.

  “V, you’ll have to decide. He’s offered to do it. He asked me to ask you.” He paused. “I guess if it wasn’t for the depression I could send you myself. But I guess—I guess I haven’t been a very good father to you,” he said.

  He felt awkward, holding her hand. He released it and she dropped it quickly into her lap. When she spoke her voice was little and young and she did not meet his eyes. “You have too been a good father,” she said, and he felt she meant the words sincerely. But he knew they were not true. He felt old and lonely and worried, more removed from her than he had ever been.