Two days before Christmas, however, James B. asked me for a word in private.
"Well?" I said, mystified.
"Miz Hooton," he said, "that Lee's no good."
"What do you mean, James B.?" I asked.
"She's no good, I tell you. She's been drinkin' your liquor again," said James B. Smith, whose loyalty to any one woman was a fleeting thing at best.
It might just have occurred to me that James B. was not totally sober himself while he was squealing on Lee, but I was so upset, what with Bill's family in the house, that I paid little attention.
"She . . . she seems perfectly all right to me," I said nervously. "But I'm glad you told me. I'll warn her again."
"You don't need to warn her," James B. said. "I got her fixed good. We'll kitch her at it this time."
"How do you mean?" I asked.
"Come with me, Miz Barbara, I'll show you."
He led me straight to the bathroom where I had hidden the liquor less than a day before. "Now look."
James B. had rigged up an elaborate booby trap. It involved a long piece of cord. At one end of it were twelve fifths of Scotch, strung together and placed on a high shelf. The other end of the cord was to be attached to the door knob, so that when anyone pulled open the door, the twelve Scotch bottles would be yanked off their shelf to crash onto the floor. "We'll kitch that no-good closet-drinker," James B. chuckled.
"Hey!" I said, "liquor is expensive—especially in New Mexico, and most especially Scotch. Why, that's almost a hundred dollars' worth!"
"That's why I picked it. Because if we kin kitch Lee breakin' all those bottles, then you and Mister Bill will make her pay for them and that's what's gonna cure her."
"Well . . ." I said uncertainly, "I'd much rather you used empty bottles, but if you think . . ." .
"Oh, I know this is gonna cure her, Miz Barbara," James B. said. At that point Mother Hooton and Betty were ready to brave the brisk out-of-doors and I went along with them, becoming so engrossed in conversation that I forgot all about James B.'s booby trap.
It was terribly late when Bill and I got to bed that night. As luck would have it, I got to our bathroom first and indulged not only in a good, long, hot soaking but also a Yuletide shampoo. Since my hair falls to my waist, this is no mean chore.
After I'd been in the tub for what seemed to me a very short time, Bill began yammering on the other side of the door. "Aren't you ever coming out of there, Barbara?"
"Eventually, dear," I said blissfully, admiring the new lengths to which my nails had grown once again with James B. and Lee doing all the drudgery.
"Well, when?"
"Well, when I finish, silly."
"Can't I get in there—for just a second?" Bill asked waspishly.
"No, you can't. The door's locked and I have no intention of getting out into the cold, just so you . . ."
"Oh, for . . ." Bill began ranting.
"Well, use another one, silly. What have we got twelve bathrooms for?"
I could hear his bare feet pattering impatiently out of the bedroom and into the darkened house. "Men," I began saying philosophically to myself, "really just little boys at . . . Oh, no!"
I lunged out of the tub like a walrus, wrapped a towel around me, unlocked the door, and raced hopelessly after him. "Bill!" I called, "don't use the bathroom in . . ." There was a crash that sounded like Armageddon and I knew that my warning had come too late.
The still Christmas air was blue with Bill's profanity as I flew through the house like the nymph errant, the bath towel fluttering immodestly behind me.
There stood Bill, up to his ankles in broken glass and ninety-some dollars' worth of Scotch whisky, and bellowing with anger and pain. His feet were quite badly cut and so, very shortly, were mine. He was all set to rage, footsore and bleeding, out to the quarters and fire both James B. and Lee right then and there. But he really couldn't have done it. It was, after all, nobody's fault but my own.
It was three o'clock before we got the mess cleaned up and the floor mopped, and from then until Twelfth night the whole house smelled like a distillery. Wounded, and thoroughly chastised by my husband, I wrote a thumping check to the liquor dealer for a new case of Scotch, which I kept right out in plain sight, despite the innocent Trumble children and Lee. By March the aroma of whisky had more or less been purged from that rarely used bathroom, but we always called the place Vat 69.
The next day was the Smiths' day off. They went gaily off in their secondhand car, speaking rhapsodically about a bit of last-minute Christmas shopping and what a lovely dinner they were going to cook for us the next day.
"Now, remember," I said darkly, still smarting from my defeat of the night before.
"Oh, Miz Barbara," James B. said, hurt to the quick, "you don't think Lee an' I would let you down, do you?"
"Yes," I said flatly, "I do."
"Oh, Miz Hooton, we'll be home right after supper tonight to join in the carol singin' and see those dear little Trumble children."
" ' 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house . . .' " Lee began reciting as they drove away.
It was the night before Christmas, all right, and all through the house not a creature was stirring—least of all James B. and Lee. Nor was there any evidence of those wretches the next morning. Bill and I fell out of bed, cooked the breakfasts—and badly out of practice we were, too—and then started in on an ostentatiously elaborate dinner, which wouldn't have been nearly so elaborate if I'd had any inkling that we'd be cooking it ourselves.
Owing largely to the culinary genius of my husband, dinner got onto the table and was delicious as far as everybody but Bill was concerned. Bill, poor man, was summoned to the telephone just as soon as he'd carved the turkey. "Mister Bill," James B. wailed, "Lee ah' me is in trouble!"
This time they were stuck in Bernalillo, some fifty miles, away, without gas and without money. Bill had to fling down his napkin and set off on an empty stomach to rescue them once again. Statistics tell us that the suicide rate is highest at Christmastime. There is no mention of how popular murder is at that festive season, but Bill and I would have gladly swollen the ranks of killers right then and there.
James B. and Lee got back well after dark, with Bill seething in the station wagon. They were cold and hungry—having been without food for twenty-four hours—and full of contrition and apologies and explanations about the uselessness of their secondhand car. I was so angry I could hardly speak, and when Bill said to me, "They're a bad lot, Barbara. You never should have hired them," I slammed off to our room and had a good long sulk.
Everyone else left after the holidays. But James B. and Lee lingered on.
While James B. and Lee still worked like dogs out of shame over their most recent lapse, the lapses increased in both size and frequency so that Bill and I simply expected to have to go and bail them out every Thursday night or Friday morning. One Friday Lee showed up with a black eye. (James B.) The following Friday James B. had a shiner. (Lee.) Once, in teaching Lee how to drive their secondhand car, James B. managed to get the infernal machine stuck in the sand out in the Tesuque lands and they were gone for two days. Another night Lee called up from Albuquerque to tell us that they were once again in trouble. James B. was in jail.
Since it was after midnight and Albuquerque is a good seventy miles away, we told her that nothing would be done until the following morning, but Lee continued calling—every hour on the hour—and each time a little more intoxicated and a little more anguished.
That was the end, I was convinced. But when Bill went off to fire them it turned out not to be the end—just the time before the end. I don't know what strange hold James B. and Lee had over my husband, but he just never was quite able to kick them out. This occasion marked their hundredth "one more chance."
To make things still worse, we had absolutely no guests in the house. All the ski clubs that had been so devoted to Rancho del Monte in bygone years seemed to have taken up ches
s or needlework that winter—anyway, they weren't coming to the ranch. The deficit began mounting alarmingly and it felt for a time that we never would have any more guests. The snow came and the snow went and still there wasn't a soul in the house except for us. I was getting nervous and edgy and we were both getting fat from the rich treatment shown to us by James B. and Lee—whenever they were able.
Maxine and Gale Collins took to coming for one long week end each month (usually the week end following a major toot in the Smith family) but they were spending those long week ends inspecting houses, as they had become absolutely sold on Santa Fe as a place to live. Another couple who had stayed with us the summer before also fluttered in, fluttered out, found the home of their dreams, and fluttered away to pack up and move in. The Santa Fe realtors were getting richer and richer and the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce was getting happier and happier, but the Hootons were getting poorer and poorer, lonelier and lonelier, and it seemed that we were losing guests faster than we were winning them.
Like a lot of other women, I'm a gregarious soul and I start going a bit stir-crazy left all alone with nothing but one husband and two drunks to keep me company for three months in a row. Conversely, when I've been up to my eyeballs in guests for three months I get that won't-they-ever-go-home feeling. It's either a feast or famine with me, while Bill can always adjust himself to any situation and come through grinning. I didn't know what was the matter with me at the time—I do now; it was idleness, boredom, and fear of the poorhouse—but I was getting the nipsy-darts holed up in that lonely ranch house with , only the deficit as my constant companion.
And then suddenly there were guests. About ten assorted people showed up for no particular reason at all; and in addition we were expecting a charming New England family named Cromwell who had been sent to us by our Santa Fe friends Helen and Barry Atwater. The Atwaters are a wonderful couple. Barry is one of those rarities—the really good painter who enjoys his success while he's alive. He mostly paints biggish local landscapes in a style that is workmanlike but still imaginative and refreshing and in colors so soft and beautiful you want to wear them, decorate rooms with them, eat them. (As this otherwise lighthearted book goes to press, it is my unhappy task to report the death of Barry Atwater on January 15, 1956.) Helen is a designer, and she is one of those tall, casual, handsome women who can reach into a dark closet, fish out an old pair of dungarees and one of her husband's paint-splattered shirts, and put them on in a way that makes you think that the masterminds of Paris have been planning that very outfit for the past six months. We knew that anybody sent to us by Helen and Barry would be pretty special and we wanted everything to be especially nice.
The Cromwells drove in with their little girls, were given their rooms, and then decided to go out on horseback right away. Since it was to be a big riding party, and since there were young children along, Bill and I both decided to ride out with them. It was late when we came back. I charged through the kitchen on my way to the tub and smelled chicken frying. It smelled great. "Good old James B.," I said to myself. "He may have his failings, but he can always rise to the occasion."
By a quarter past six I was looking as chic as I ever would and Bill was a vision, of sorts, in one of those tacky little shoestring ties men out West insist upon wearing. The Atwaters had just driven in, not only to dine, but to talk over old times with the Cromwells. As things turned out, they had ample opportunity to discuss every trivial event from that evening right back to the First Crusade before dinner was served, but I didn't know that as I said in my airiest hostess voice, "If you'll just excuse me for a second, I'll see how things are going in the kitchen."
The sight I saw nearly floored me. There was fried chicken and nothing else but fried chicken. No hot canapés, no rolls, no vegetables, no potatoes, no salad, no dessert—just fried chicken, and a mountain of it, growing cold and greasy at the side of the stove. James B. Smith was so drunk he could barely lift his head. Lee was hardly better.
That evening I was seething. "Bill," I said with a wan little smile and what I hoped was a convincingly casual tone, "will you please see that everybody has another drink and then come out here, dear?"
"What the hell's going on out here?" Bill roared when he came in, in a tone that must have carried not only to our guests but to Denver.
"Oh, Mister Bill," James B. moaned, "I'm sick. I'm dying. I'm having a heart attack."
"He's drunk," I snapped.
"Oh, no, Miz Barbara. It's my heart. The ole ticker. I'm a goner."
"You're a guzzler and a double-crosser, damn you!" I growled. But I wasn't certain. For all I knew he way having a heart attack as well as an impromptu spree, and I didn't want a dead cook on my hands.
"Get to bed," Bill said coldly.
"Dinner," I announced, smiling idiotically through the kitchen door, "will be just a little late—about an hour, in fact."
Bill and I set to in a frenzy to get some kind of food onto the table. No time, by then, to prepare all the complicated little treats the menu called for, such as hollandaise sauce and grated Gruyere cheese and meringues. What had been originally planned to be a well-balanced, elegant dinner was rapidly turning into one of those grubby catch-as-catch-can meals that bachelors throw together after a tough day at the office.
I was livid with rage and so was Bill. Lee, I think, was thoroughly frightened and tried to pull herself together enough to peel a few potatoes, but she was too far gone in alcohol to do much more than cut her hand so severely that we had to drop everything and administer first aid.
"I wish you'd cut your bloody throat instead," Bill hissed at her. "Now get out of here and sleep it off!" So there we were—just the two of us—an irascible Darby and Joan rushing hysterically around the kitchen, bumping into each other, snapping and snarling while fifteen guests waited patiently in the lounge and while the fried chicken burned to tough, charred, shrunken, tasteless little pellets.
At nine dinner was served. The Cromwells' little girls were so heavy-eyed with sleep that they had to be led to the table and propped up in their chairs. I was so ashamed as I set each plate down that I could have wept.
And I did weep when I tried to cut into the fried chicken. James B., in his stupor, had used stewing hens, each so sinewy that even cremation had failed to render them tender. A lousy time was had by all.
"Now, Bill," I said after the last guest had departed, smiling bravely and telling us what a delicious dinner it had been over pangs of hunger. "It's entirely up to you. At twelve noon tomorrow either the Smiths will be out of here or I will. Take your choice."
The Smiths went. But even their departure carried with it a certain raffish air of drama.
Bill went out and fired them good and proper, but being a considerate employer—did I say considerate? Bill was a martyr—he followed them into town and escorted them both to our doctor's office. When two hours passed and Bill still hadn't returned, I began to develop qualms of conscience. What if I had sent a dying man out into the cold? When another hour went by, I telephoned the doctor.
"James B. Smith is a sick man, all right, Barbara," the doctor said jovially. "But it's not his heart. He has the heart of a bull."
"What is it, then?" I asked.
"Acute alcoholism and malnutrition and his wife is very little better. But all they need is to go on the wagon for a long, long time, take heroic doses of vitamins, and eat. You and Bill ought to be able to straighten them out in about three months' time."
"No, we ought not, thank you," I said and hung up.
Just then a rusty, wheezing old car chugged up the driveway and a woman got out accompanied by two tough-looking men. Somehow they just didn't have the air of holiday-makers out for a jolly fortnight of ranching. The woman looked slightly familiar, but I couldn't quite think where or when I had seen her before.
"Y-yes?" I said.
"I want to see James B. Smith," the woman said darkly.
"Well, I'm awfully sorry," I said, "but James
B. Smith doesn't work here any longer. He and his wife have just left and . . ."
"I am his wife," she said.
Then I realized that she was the woman who had been on the Santa Fe bus the first time James B. Smith left our employ.
“Oh! Oh, really!" I spluttered. "I understood—that is, I was led to believe, I mean . . . Well, aren't you and James B. divorced?" This was one of those social encounters for which Mother had never prepared me.
"No, we ain't divorced. That no-good old lush divorced his first wife to marry me, an' I got the certiffy-kit right here," she said, rummaging around in her purse.
Just then I was saved by the telephone bell. "Excuse me," I said, grateful for the interruption.
"Hello," I said, closing the door between the other Mrs. Smith and me.
"Miz Barbara," James B. wailed sepulchrally from the other end of the wire, "Lee an' me is in trouble."
"You certainly are," I said frigidly. From somewhere in the background I could hear a band blaring out "In the Mood."
"Yes ma'am. I got a coronary thrombosis an' I'm in a oxygen tent."
"That's the first oxygen tent I've ever heard of with a built-in juke box, James B."
"Oh, Miz Barbara, Lee an' me may not see you for a long time."
"I can wait," I said. I was beginning to enjoy myself with James B. for the first time.
"So I wondered if you could loan me two hundred dollars . . ."
"For lawyers' fees?" I asked.
"What's that, Miz Barbara?"
"I said, James B., you'll probably need every penny you can lay hands on to beat the bigamy rap—or maybe even' trigamy, if there is such a word—that's facing you."
Guestward Ho! Page 18
