Guestward Ho!

by Patrick Dennis

  The Killer was sighted late one night skulking around the Pueblo Drive-In. A truck driver claimed to have seen him loping along the state highway near our ranch. A demented old woman up in one of the more decadent Spanish villages where everybody married first cousins, swore that she saw him slinking out of the church dragging something in his mouth—a child, possibly, although no kids were missing. Women, children, and anybody unarmed were warned not to stray too far from home for fear of encountering The Killer. There was talk about getting up a gigantic posse to beat the mountain lion out of his lair and finish him off before he finished off every man, woman, and child in the valley.

  After a few weeks of increasing publicity, I was getting a little bored with The Killer. Not so Bill. He was just itching to get out his little night cap and hunting costumes and go off—alone, if necessary—on the track of the cat.

  Then The Killer struck again.

  Bill and I were alone at the ranch when late one night our dog, Sandy—a big, ferocious-looking collie who is the image of Michael Wilding—commenced howling and baying in the frosty moonlight.

  "Thieves," I whispered to Bill.

  "The mountain lion," Bill said with great conviction. He snapped on the lights and dressed rapidly, then he got down his gun.

  "Bill," I said, "you're not going out there to shoot him alone. You can't! What if you should miss or only wound him? He could claw you to death. He could . . ." My frontiersman didn't wait to hear any more woman talk. He marched out through the kitchen, with me pattering behind him, and threw open the back door.

  That brave collie—watchdog extraordinary and protector of the ranch—shot into the kitchen, dashed through the house, and hid under our bed. There he stayed, whimpering the whole night through.

  I waited tensely for what seemed hours, expecting momentarily the crack of a rifle, the outraged roar of a wounded beast, and then a ghastly silence. But there was no sound until Bill came back.

  "W-what happened?" I asked, relieved to the point of tears that Bill hadn't been torn to shreds.

  "He got away again," Bill said.

  As we got back to bed, Sandy still remained beneath it, whimpering pitifully. "The Killer can't be too far away," Bill kept muttering. "Just listen to Sandy. Dogs always know when danger is near. They can smell it—sense it."

  "You just stay put," I said, turning out the light "Promise me you won't go back out at this hour of night." Hearing a dulcet snore, I didn't have to worry.

  The next morning Joe Vigil found him. The mountain lion was stretched out as dead as a doornail on our front terrace.

  "I'll be damned," said Bill, examining the poor beast for bullet wounds. There weren't any.

  "Looks like that poor old cat died of a heart attack," Joe chuckled.

  "Looks like he died of old age to me," I said.

  As he lay lifeless on the flagstones, the poor dead thing looked less like The Killer and more like a mangy, old, altered tomcat that had finally succumbed to a can of tainted salmon.

  Gray around the muzzle and practically toothless, the pathetic old beast had undoubtedly been on a strict diet of table scraps and very small dead animals for years. As for turning the pelt into a stole, mountain lion fur just isn't very attractive—his least of all. The Killer resembled nothing quite so much as a moth-eaten hearth rug about to be offered to the Salvation Army, and I was grateful he had chosen our terrace as an attractive place to live out his last moments.

  "So that's The Killer," Bill said sheepishly and went back to the house to drag Sandy out from under our bed.

  "He's a pretty old cat," Joe said with a grin,. "Twenty, thirty, maybe even forty years old."

  "Joe," I said, "that decrepit mountain lion has been living on his social security since before we were born—and you know it! But don't tell anyone. That would spoil all the fun the neighborhood has been having. We'll simply give him a decent Christian burial in a rather deepish grave and then announce to the whole valley that the Killer has been vanquished."

  14. James B. Smith rides again

  By late fall the ranch was empty of everyone but Bill and me. The cook, his wife, his kids, his dogs, his cat had moved on to sunnier climes, which suited us fine since it meant two fewer checks to write every week and seven fewer mouths to feed, counting the menagerie. Every day I apprehensively made little jottings in the deficit book, but I wasn't really worried much about money. We'd had a good summer and we were expecting a good winter of skiers just as soon as the snows hit the mountains. The lull between seasons gave us a welcome chance to rest, to spend some time with each other, to catch up on reading and letters and minor repairs and on a modest but brisk social life with our newly found New Mexican friends.

  It was on a cold, clear November afternoon that James B. Smith again entered our kitchen and our lives. Bill had, made a rare trip into Albuquerque for heavy supplies and I was postponing lunch until his return. As soon as I heard the station wagon coming up the drive I went to the kitchen, lit the gas under the soup, fixed my face, and stood in the doorway with a radiant smile. But the smile soon faded when I saw luggage being unloaded. "Guests!" I said, "and nothing but soup and sandwiches for lunch." Then it changed into a fearful frown when I recognized our former cook, James B. Smith, accompanied by a strange woman.

  But James B. Smith hadn't seen me as yet and I was planning to do everything within my power to postpone that meeting for as long as possible. James B. was too busy dancing attendance on his lady friend to notice me. "Right in here, honey," he called. "This is the cook's private residence and you an' me'll have it for our own honeymoon cottage!" With that, he skittered off in the direction of one of the outbuildings, a very large woman lurching along behind him.

  "William Hooton," I said as Bill came into the house, "I would like a word with you."

  "Yes, dear?" Bill said with that guilty look.

  "What, if you please, is that wretched, lazy old drunkard, James B. Smith, doing here? And who is the female with him?"

  "Oh. That's Mrs. Smith," Bill said casually.

  "That isn't the same Mrs. Smith I saw last summer," I said accusingly.

  "True, my dear, James B. has divorced and since remarried," Bill said glibly.

  "And?"

  "And what, Barbara?"

  "And just what in the hell are they doing put here?" I snapped.

  "Oh, that. Well, I was in Albuquerque and walking along that street—you know, the one near the bus station—and whom do you suppose I saw?"

  "Mabel Dodge Luhan," I said.

  "No, stupid," Bill said, avoiding my gaze. "James B. and Lee."

  "Who's Lee?" I asked.

  "That's the present incumbent. Mrs. Smith, that is to say."

  "And?"

  "Well, Barbara, you know I've always felt kind of bad, firing poor old James B. in a fit of temper and all that. He was a fine cook and quite a decent guy, really, and he didn't do anything so terrible . . ."

  "Oh, no, darling. He just smashed a few vases, got the whole household up in the middle of the night for a piano recital, terrorized Nan and Sue, had a crying jag over how much he adored the last Mrs. Smith, and . . ."

  "Well, anyhow, Barbara, James B. fell all over me and told me how happy he'd been out here and how much he liked you—he said you were the nicest, most attractive woman he'd ever worked for . . ." .

  "Can it, Bill. Get on with the story."

  "Well, there isn't much more to tell. You know we'll have all that skiing crowd piling in here right after Christmas and good cooks—especially good couples—are hard to come by and James B. swore he'd reformed completely and that Lee was a wonder around the house and, well, to make a long story short . . ."

  "And to make my short life shorter, you hired them?"

  "In a word, yes. But I made it crystal clear to him that if either one of them made a single slip they'd be out."

  Dubious as I was about James B. Smith's complete rehabilitation, I accepted their presence in the house and set
tled down to enjoy life while awaiting the snow and the skiers—and did we live!

  Bill and I took to arising around ten in the mornings. In our robes we'd saunter out to a spotless living room to find a huge fire roaring. As we languidly sank into matching rose-colored chairs, James B. and Lee would come cheerfully and quietly in, bearing our breakfast trays, which were all gussied up with real linen and bud vases. Lee, too, loved lovely things. Our breakfasts were so leisurely that it was generally lunchtime when we were finished. We had become avid riders during the crisp, clear autumn and we often lunched in the saddle. And what lunches! They were exquisitely prepared by James B. and artistically packed by Lee.

  Evenings found us again at the warm fireside with cold martinis and elegant little suppers borne in on even more gorgeous trays of Lee's contrivance. Good books of Lee's choosing were at hand and there was usually Bach on the record player. Lee liked Bach. She also liked Mozart and Scarlatti. Lee thought that Beethoven was "common," that all of Brahms and most of Handel were "fun," and that most of the moderns were "fugitive, transient, and unproven." Of course, I knew James B. was an old music lover from way back, but I was rather stunned by Lee's intellectual depths and by some of her pronouncements.

  She adored the New Yorker, liked Punch—but found it "special"—and didn't mind Harper's or the Atlantic Monthly. Lee felt that Life was vulgar and the women's magazines were "hopelessly unsophisticated." She sneered at two thirds of our library but deigned to read some of our deeper volumes.

  I found her quite a stimulating conversationalist and talked to her by the hour as she did the pressing. (Yes, can you believe it? Lee thought that commercial laundries were just too rough and tumble, so she washed my every blouse and slip and pressed them as they have never been done before or since.) I wondered how an intelligent and educated woman like Lee could have ever wound up in the servants' house at a dump like ours with a jerk like James B. Our idyl lasted just three weeks, until I began to find out why.

  One afternoon Lee came to me and said, "Miz Hooton, James B. and I thought boeuf Bourguignon would be nice to give your friends for dinner tonight. Could I have two cups of red wine for it? Burgundy if you have it, but no special year."

  "Certainly, Lee," I said, thrilled at the prospect. "Take a whole bottle and use as much as you like." I opened the liquor closet and handed her a bottle. Then I went out for a ride, came back rather late, dressed, and did nothing more than check on the centerpiece—one that wasn't quite up to Lee's usual high standards and needed a bit of rearranging. James B. and Lee had spoiled me so during the past three weeks that I didn't even bother to look into the kitchen. Had I done so, I would have been unpleasantly surprised, but not nearly as surprised as I was when our dinner guests were seated at the table.

  Just after our dinner guests had been seated, Lee came weaving in from the kitchen, rocking and rolling from left to right, as scalding boeuf Bourguignon sloshed over the sides of the casserole. She plunked the serving dish down in front of me with a thud, almost toppled over into it, recovered her balance, and then gingerly made her way back to the kitchen, skidding precariously over some of the spilled meal. Just as the kitchen door swung closed behind her there was an ear-splitting crash, the source of which I didn't dare to investigate. I couldn't smell a whiff of wine in the boeuf Bourguignon, but I certainly could smell it on Lee as she made her unsteady way in with the rolls—burned to the color, size, and consistency of bituminous coal.

  The dinner, which our friends insincerely and politely oh-ed and ah-ed over, was perfectly foul. Lee was even farther gone when she reeled in with the salad. A ravaged dessert was served by James B., who was in little better condition, "Lee's had a sinking spell, Miz Hooton," he whispered aromatically into my ear, thus surrounding my head and shoulders with an almost visible haze of alcohol, She'd had a sinking spell, all right, and our whole dinner party was sunk.

  Lee was a secret tippler—grape or grain, it made no nevermind—who sometimes let the secret spill. Mated, as she was, with James B., they made a formidable couple. "You hired them, Bill," I said icily to him that night, "now it's up to you to fire them."

  "Now, Barbara," Bill said, "remember, the house is your responsibility. The agreement was that I would see to the . . ."

  "There was never any agreement of any kind," said I, "and I wasn't consulted either time you brought that sodden old James B. Smith out to the ranch. Now either they go or I go. Take your choice."

  The next morning I stayed haughtily in bed and was a little taken aback to find a tray, more resplendent than ever before, brought right to the bedside by Lee, who looked terribly ill but who was bearing up admirably.

  Bill was gone for a long time; when he came back he had that mission-accomplished look that might have fooled others but didn't fool me.

  "Well," I said, "when are they going?"

  "Tomorrow, of course," Bill said, avoiding my eye.

  "Why tomorrow?"

  "Why, because that's their day off, Barbara. You know that."

  "Bill. It was my distinct understanding that from this moment forward, James B. and Lee were to have three hundred and sixty-five days off per year. Now, what did you tell them?"

  "Well, you know James B. is a lovable guy and Lee is bright and neat and . . ."

  "And alcoholic . . ."

  "Well, that's what we talked about, Barbara—the drinking."

  "And what did you tell them, dear?"

  "I told them that as far as I was concerned they could get falling-down drunk on their days off, but that they weren't to drink on the job any more."

  I threw a pillow at him and went back to sleep.

  The next day was the Smiths' day off and they obeyed Bill's command to the letter. They got falling-down drunk. But before or during that process, they also put a down payment on an ancient used car and were found in the car, both unconscious, by the police. "Mister Bill," James B. wailed over the telephone that midnight, "Lee an' me is in trouble."

  Bill had to dress, drive into town, bail them out, and pay the large fee for towing their car out of the ditch and into the police yards. Still, they remained on our payroll. Actually, James B. and Lee would have been far better off if we had given them neither salary (every cent of which was squandered on their car payments, repairs, towing fees, police fines, and demon rum), nor time off (every minute of which was spent getting into fights, accidents, their cups, and jail). But the state Labor Board would never have understood our thought processes had we tried anything so drastic. It got so that we expected a major lapse every Thursday, and James B. and Lee rarely disappointed us. Bill had only to put on his pajamas of a Thursday night for the telephone to ring and for James B. to wail, "Mister Bill, Lee an' me is in trouble!"

  Quite selfishly speaking, though, the two of them were so contrite after each lapse and after each of Bill's nocturnal interruptions and paternal lectures that they worked more diligently than ever. Lee eventually took to doing all the washing and ironing, out of sheer shame, while James B. added to the cooking all chores around the corral, trips to the dump, and any other odd jobs that came up. At least they weren't lapsing on our time and alcohol, and as James B. and Lee grew more and more contrite our work grew more and more nonexistent, our meals more and more breath-taking, and our figures more and more rounded.

  Christmas was coming our way and so was a large shipment of guests—not just regular paying guests but, worse, family.

  Having survived my mother's grand tour of inspection, we now had to prepare for the once-over from Bill's people—and a lot more of them—who had been every bit as skeptical about the venture as my own parents.

  There's something about Christmas that I simply adore—the bustle and hustle, the smuggling of packages from one hiding place to another (once I hid a present for Bill with such diabolical cleverness that it was Easter before I found it), the smells of good things cooking and fir trees and wreaths, the cards coming and going. Well, I just love it.

  Since
there's never been even a hint of in-law trouble on either side of our family, I was dying to see all the assorted Hootons and Trumbles and Brummitts and have the biggest Christmas ever. I wanted the house looking its beautiful best, the food tasting its delicious best, and the routine running its efficient best. For the first time in my life I'd been able to go out into the hills, see the tree I liked the most, say, "That one, Bill," and have it installed in the living room. Our tree was a beauty, twelve feet tall and perfectly shaped. We'd gone all-out on ornaments and the house was looking like one of those model home affairs by the time the holiday-makers started piling in.

  Still, I was a little nervous. Bill as the disciplinarian hadn't proved too effective with our household treasures so I decided to take matters in my own hands and appeal to the good natures of James B. and Lee. "Now, please," I said gently, "remember that we have a houseful of people, and it is Christmas, and there's a lot of work to be done. We all want this to be a merry Christmas, now don't we?"

  "Oh yes, Miz Barbara," they said, bobbing their heads in unison.

  "So if either one of you feels the temptation to get . . . well, to have a few drinks, or if either of you feels that the other is beginning to weaken, I want you to come to me and we'll see if we can't fight down the temptation—or at least postpone it until Mister Bill's family has gone. Now, doesn't that seem fair?"

  "Oh, yes indeedy!" Lee said.

  "Oh, that's jes' grand, Miz Barbara," James B. caroled. "You'll be such a help to us!"

  Feeling like the singlehanded saver of souls, I went to join my sister-in-law, Betty Trumble, at making artistic Christmas cookies.

  Christmas is a time not only for family, but for friends to drop in at all hours for a visit and a cup of Christmas cheer, and we had plenty of bottles of Christmas cheer on hand—so many, in fact, that storing them all became a problem. So, after putting one bottle of everything in the liquor cabinet, I stashed away the extras in the bathroom of a vacant bedroom beyond the office. I had a couple of reasons for doing this, 1)1 didn't want the ranch to look like a package store in front of the Trumble children at Christmastime; and 2) It seemed wiser to remove temptation far out of the reach of James B. and Lee, even after we had come to our perfect understanding. So I chose this bathroom as a cool, convenient cache—out of the way, but handy in case we needed the liquor cabinet replenished, and also as the last place in the world where James B. or Lee might think of looking, since that part of the house was officially closed.