by Gil Meynier
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Publisher’s Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
STRANGER AT THE DOOR
GIL MEYNIER
Stranger at the Door was originally published in 1948 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 4
1 5
2 9
3 13
4 19
5 27
6 34
7 39
8 48
9 55
10 63
11 69
12 76
13 83
14 90
15 99
16 112
17 124
18 133
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 141
1
THE sign on the porch said: Beware of the dog. Dorry was afraid of dogs. She had looked for one as she opened the sidewalk gate in front of the brown, adobe house. The hip-high gate of cast-iron lacework had given her a little trouble. She had put down her suitcase and with both hands had tried to find the latch. It was a hot day in Tucson and the iron gate was burning to the touch. Everything was hot. The sidewalk was a griddle under her thin-soled shoes. The sun, in a cloudless sky, was pursuing her with sharp needles that stung her neck and arms and bare legs. She felt a hot, searing lump of despair in her throat as she struggled with the gate. She had finally worked the simple latch and now she stood on the porch looking for a bell to ring.
It was hot on the porch, but the sun was no longer beating down directly on her shoulders as it had all morning while she trudged through the strange desert town, lugging her suitcase, looking for a room. The heat, trapped beneath the roofed porch, felt heavy.
This had to be it. All the other failures did not count. She would pretend she was starting new and this was the first house. And the answer would be yes. This would be a good-luck sign and the beginning of a whole series of good-luck happenings.
The gray paint of the sagging wooden porch was broken up into small curling flakes upon which the heat and the sun had long ceased to have any effect. Rough, bleached wood showed in spots. At both ends of the porch were clusters of cast-out, retired furniture; chairs, tables, old iceboxes, dusty, brittle and weathered. The old metal sign said: Beware of the dog. Sudden fear shot a new tightness through Dorry’s tired shoulders and, not finding a bell to ring, she hurriedly knocked on the screen door.
It was not a successful knock. The screen rattled against the door frame and she was sure no one would hear her. She opened the screen and rapped directly on the door. While she waited she let the screen rest against her back and dragged her suitcase to the side of the door where it would give her some protection.
As she waited, the feeling of hope ebbed away and a new tide of feeling brought the dull conviction that, here, too, the answer would be no room. As an offering to good luck she refrained from knocking again. Really not so much as an offering to good luck as in fear of irritating whoever would answer the door.
No sound came from inside the house. She listened intently and she was so conscious of quietness that the sudden crackle of noise from one end of the porch startled her and almost made her scream.
A man was standing there, among the old furniture, looking at her. He was a young man, with pale blue eyes. He wore a faded blue shirt, washed-out and faded denim pants. There was an indoors paleness and softness about him. His brown hair showed the furrows of the comb and had a stiff, moist, caked look. And he was just standing there, looking at her.
Dorry’s throat ached with dryness and she felt that if she spoke her voice would come out in a squeak. He spoke first.
“Looking for something?” he said.
“Is there a room?” she asked.
Dorry was not looking her prettiest. The ringlets in her light blond hair were tight and meticulous. The waves that showed below her little hat were too close together and had the frizziness of unsuccessful, cheap permanents. There was no grace in the way her clothes fitted too tightly on her. The gaudy pin on her lapel was a leftover from a long-gone party dress.
Still looking at her, the young man came over to her and picked up her suitcase.
“Come in,” he said as he opened the door.
Dorry smiled. She couldn’t help smiling. His picking up her suitcase and asking her to come in were sudden good-luck signs.
It was cool and dark in the house. Dorry stood in a great hall and the young man called: “Ma...” There was no answer. As if he had expected no answer, he opened a door to the left of the entrance and entered a front bedroom. Dorry followed him. It was a large room, much larger than any room Dorry had ever lived in. It had four windows, two oversized dressers, an armchair and a bulky double bed with an old-fashioned quilt.
“Will this do you?”
It was not so cool as when they had first entered the house, The room felt oppressively stuffy with the windows shut. Now that her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, she could see that the inside of the house was in better shape than the dilapidated exterior had suggested. It was a wonderful room. Two of the windows showed the mountains in the distance.
“Oh, it’s a wonderful room!” said Dorry. “How much. .
“Twenty-five,” said the young man. “You’d better pay me now.”
And only twenty-five dollars. Dorry felt a surge of gratitude choking her. She fumbled in her handbag and paid the money.
“What’s your name?” the young man asked.
“Dorry...Blassett.”
“I’m Joe.”
When Joe left the room she stood still for a moment and felt that she would never have to cry again unless it was from happiness.
Dorry had come to Tucson because...well, she had two ways of explaining it. To people like the girl on the train who was joining her boy friend on the Coast, Dorry said she was joining her boy friend in Arizona. The other explanation, for conversation purposes, was that she wanted to see the country. She felt miserable inside after giving either of those explanations—particularly the one about seeing the country—because they were such lies. She didn’t want to see the country. She didn’t want to see any country. She wanted to be inside a house, somewhere, sometimes looking out of the kitchen window, but generally busy, doing housework, waiting for that fellow to come home. He would hug her in the living room as he came in, the bright, clean living room, and they would never have to look outside. She looked her best in a housedress and, at times, with her hair wrapped up in a towel when she was doing the dusting and the sweeping, she could see in the mirror that it was all right for her husband to think that she was beautiful. But the husband part and the boy-friend part were lies, too. All she had was a deep ache when her heart felt too full and then, suddenly, felt too empty.
The real reason...well, after all the things that had happened and, because she hadn’t wanted to make trouble for her family, she had run away. She had not run away; she had gone away, deliberately, but desperately. And now she was in Tucson. She would wait until he came for her. She didn’t want to think about the real,
real reason because she had told so many stories that, sometimes, she could not tell the unrealities from the truth. She just wanted to cling to the idea that he would come for her.
This was a good place to wait. This was a good room. She had walked up to the house, paid the money and the room was hers. It had been easy. Things had turned for the lucky.
Dorry took off her shoes. They had left red welts on her feet. The worn rug which she had not noticed at first felt coarse and harsh. She sat on the bed and opened her suitcase to get her slippers. She took off her hat, hesitated; then, remembering that the room was hers, she took off her dress and, in her slip, sat in the deep armchair and suddenly felt very tired and depressed. Waiting was beginning now. And the paying for all the lies was beginning now. It was best not to think about it. Then, slowly, all the things that were lies would fade away and everything would be fine again. In the meantime she would get a job.
Now that she had been in the house for a while the coolness had completely worn off. The feeling of coolness had come from its being a few degrees less hot inside than it was outside. She thought she might faint if she did not get some air. Her slip felt soaking wet against her back. She went to one of the windows and raised it. A blow of hot air struck her. She stood in it for a few minutes. She had never experienced anything like it. It was like a hot-water bath. Only it was dry. It was more like stepping into a shower that had just been used by someone who used very hot water. Only it was dry. When she closed the window she noticed that her slip was no longer wet against her back. She looked at it in the mirror over one of the dressers. It was crinkly where it had been wet from perspiration, but now it was dry.
When she had been sitting in the armchair again for a few minutes she felt the moisture coming back. She took off her slip and stretched herself out on the bed. She thought of undressing completely and getting into a nightgown but it was still broad daylight and it did not seem right.
On the warm bed, in the quiet, dull heat of the room, she fell asleep, relaxing heavily at last after four bad nights on the train.
She was asleep when Joe walked across the yard, carrying a couple of slats to the old woman who, with hammer and nails, was mending the fence at the edge of the property.
2
THE house stood on a large corner space of hard, naked, sandy ground sparsely spotted with desert growth. Beyond her fences, to the north and to the east, smaller, more modern houses had sprung up in neat rows behind green lawns and flower beds. Mrs. Fredenham couldn’t understand it.
When her husband had picked this spot to build their home there had been desert all around. There had been no streets, just a dirt road that wound through the cactus and mesquite to the Fredenhams’. The paved streets and the other houses had happened since her husband died. She had thought that all the land around belonged to them, but she had been called downtown several times to sign papers, and every time, a new house had sprung up in the neighborhood.
She guessed that if they had homesteaded there others had a right to settle there, too.
Within the fenced area nothing had changed. The old house with its thick adobe walls and its redwood shingles was standing up well and the little tin shacks and lean-tos at the back of the yard were still useful. They’d last a long time yet.
“Was that one of your friends?” said Mrs. Fredenham as Joe handed her a slat for the fence.
“Yeah. Her name is Dorry. Nice girl,” said Joe.
“I’m glad,” said Mrs. Fredenham.
The old woman pushed herself up from the spot where she had been kneeling. She didn’t look at Joe as she spoke. Her eyes seemed to be looking for something in the distance. Even when she was indoors she looked out of the windows, and although there were streets and houses, an entire city around her, she still looked toward the horizon as in the long years when there had been nothing but desert around her doorstep.
“I’m glad,” she repeated.
She was tall and heavy. She wore a long skirt of dark cotton and high-topped shoes. An old leather jacket hung from her shoulders in stiff pleats. Her white hair rippled softly in the hot breeze except where it was done up in a tight bun, and its whiteness, in the sunlight, made her strong, calm face look darker and more weather-worn.
She moved over a few steps and knelt down again to add another nail to her fence.
Joe looked at her for a while. Then he walked toward the back of the house.
He was whistling a tuneless tangle of sounds to himself when he came upon Mayhew. Mayhew, under an old straw hat, his sleeves rolled up, was seated on a plank in the midst of a small patch of vegetable garden. He was pulling up brittle weeds and watching a meager stream of water slowly wiggle through the parched furrows and be absorbed by the hopeless, dry ground.
Without looking at him, Mayhew said:
“Another friend of yours?”
Joe did not stop whistling. Looking down on the pink, humorous face of the elderly weed-puller, Joe thought it would be very satisfying to cut this Mayhew’s throat. Without answering him, Joe went into the house.
He stopped at Dorry’s door and listened. Then he settled himself in a rocking chair at the edge of the living room from where he could keep track of everybody.
He liked to know where everybody was. Mrs. Fred at her fences, Mayhew at his afternoon gardening, the new girl in her room. In an hour or so Mrs. Jard would come home, through the back door. Mrs. Jard wasn’t much. Just an old cleaning woman. He would like to throw her out some day.
Joe twisted slightly in his rocking chair and reached under the cushion. It was still there—a government envelope with the check Mrs. Jard received every month. It wasn’t a big check. Joe had often wondered what it was for. He had not yet figured any way of cashing it for himself, but when it came he kept it under the cushion for a few days in case he should think of something. Anyway, he liked to see the old girl fret and worry over it.
Slowly rocking himself, Joe went over his fingernails, cleaning them carefully with the end tooth of his pocket-comb.
It would be a long time until dark.
It felt oppressively stuffy in the house.
Mrs. Jard was the first to come in. She came in through the kitchen. She unwrapped the bulky parcel she had been carrying and placed its contents in the icebox. After looking on the hall table to see if her check had arrived, she went to her room.
She turned on the light, pulled the heavy drapes that separated her room from the hallway and sat down to take off her shoes.
Originally there had been three rooms on the left side of the house: the large front bedroom, in which Dorry lay sleeping, the large back bedroom, now partitioned off into the two rooms occupied by Mayhew and Joe, and a good-sized study closed off from the hall by the great velvet curtains. A partition had been put up in the study, parallel to the windows, making it into a small room which was Mrs. Fred’s room, and a windowless alcove which was where Mrs. Jard slept. There was enough air because the heavy velvet drapes did not quite reach to the floor and Mrs. Fred left her door open. Mrs. Fred had to walk through the alcove to go to her room but Mrs. Jard did not mind.
It was nice of Mrs. Fredenham to put Mrs. Jard up. She made it seem as if it were a matter of no importance, but it was nice of her just the same. Where else could Mrs. Jard go when she found tenants for her little house with the farm acreage on River Road! All their lives the Fredenhams had been generous people. The Jards had never been so happy as when they worked for the Fredenhams in the early years of their homesteading, in this very house, out on the desert.
Mrs. Jard thought of this as she took off her shoes. She had walked all the way down to the little house on River Road and part way back to the bus line. It looked as if the tenants were not going to make a go of it. She could tell. The only way they could pay the rent was in produce and eggs. Every week or so Mrs. Jard went down there and came back not too heavily laden with eggs and vegetables.
Mrs. Jard’s feet were giving her trouble. When she b
ought her black cotton stockings in the correct size for her feet they bound her above the knees and interfered with the circulation. If she bought them large enough for the circulation, they wadded in her shoes and made her feet uncomfortable. Most of the misery seemed to settle in the arch of the right foot. Someone had told her that this was because she favored the corn on her left foot and, in doing so, placed too much weight on her right foot. People have ways of figuring out things like that. But when you’re heavy, you’re heavy, and the feet are the first to go.
She had gone to flesh. It always astonished her when she dressed or when she bathed, that symmetry, which is a pleasing feature of the human body, no longer existed in her own body. Her legs were no longer alike. Not that she expected them to remain firm and youthful, but the flesh she had put on had not distributed itself evenly and her knees and thighs and calves were no longer mates. Not that she cared. An old woman did not have to worry about things like that. But it was interesting. The right side of her stomach protruded more than the left side and her right bosom was now very noticeably larger than the other. It had always been a little larger. She laughed when she thought of it. Mr. Jard had been a wonderful, devoted man. He used to say that if she lived to be a hundred she would still look like a colleen. The dark hair, the blue eyes and the short nose is what did it. It was amazing how her hair had remained thick and black. And here she was in her sixties. “Take a nap, you old colleen,” she said to herself, “and stop being so vain.”
But she did not take a nap. She thought about the professor. She always worried about him. He was a nice old soul. Every morning at seven, except Sundays, she went to his house, a few blocks away, let herself in the back door and washed the breakfast dishes from the day before. She made fresh coffee and hot cereal and laid it out on a corner of the kitchen table for him.
By seven-twenty she was through. On Saturdays she spent the whole morning straightening out his house. What worried her was that if anything should happen to him it might be some time before he was found. Suppose it happened some morning after breakfast. Well, the next day she would come in and prepare another breakfast and it would not be until the day after that she would find the food untouched.
