The Wooden Shepherdess

by Richard Hughes

  Turning the car in the driveway, he started for home at an easy cruising seventy—all this part of the route being free of serious bends and fairly empty. Indeed the Stutz was the fastest thing on the road: there wasn’t much, but whatever there was he passed it as if it were standing: even a Jordan Playboy—that open Bearcat went like a bird! Only a Mercer Raceabout gave him a moment of trouble; and that had a driver as young as himself behind its monocle screen who seemed just about to let go of the wheel altogether to have both arms for his girl.

  Sadie had started to sing in tune with the engine, as some women always do from the moment the engine starts; and even her adult and rather throaty contralto recalled that time his Bentley and he had driven Polly to Dorset, and Polly’s treble throughout had accompanied the Bentley’s sonorous bass. Polly was deemed to have caught a cold, so her Nanny had wrapped her in rugs and scarves like a pea in a pod; but her voice was clear as a lark’s.... Augustine glanced a little askance at the Sadie singing beside him now, in breeches and open shirt—so open her grimy underwear showed. The painted cupid’s-bow on her mouth was at odds with the natural line of her lips: the hairpins were popping out of her greasy hair as the wind of their speed took control and the nearer coil was uncoiling down to her shoulder.

  From her he glanced in the mirror. The Mercer had dropped out of sight, but a quarter mile back he descried a car that they certainly hadn’t passed: “What’s that behind us?” he asked.

  Sadie knelt up on the seat to look backwards over the folded top. “Gee!” said Sadie, “That’s no market model: a custom-built ‘special,’ I guess!” Then she added with bated breath: “It could be a supercharged Dusy....” and almost bowed at the name.

  A Duesenberg! Worthier metal—and something which even his Bearcat apparently hadn’t the legs of: still, he’d give them a race. What fun! He would set himself to hold them at bay till his New Blandford turning.... Elated, Augustine trod on the gas and started a Christmas carol. The needle crept up the seventies, speed foreshortened the curves in the road and it took all his skill to hold her on bends. Ecstasy sang in his blood: it was nearly a year since he’d sat at the wheel of anything fast.... But the Mystery came on apace. Sadie still knelt on the seat, looking back. As the distance between them lessened, its couple of yards of nose grew larger and clearer: Dusy “special” or not, this wasn’t no private citizen’s job—its windows were more like embrasures built for machine guns, and only a big-shot gangster would possibly use such a car—or else, if it fell in their hands.... She was sweating right to the roots of her eyebrows even before the siren started and “Christ!” she exclaimed, “C-c-cops!”

  Like a prick of a pin, her voice and the eerie wail of the siren together punctured Augustine’s ballooning elation: the singing blood in his veins turned to lead. Something out of his childhood raised a forgotten head and he even started to pray, but of course unconscious he did so. He glanced at the dashboard again: the needle had grudgingly flickered its way up to nearly eighty and stuck, for this was an uphill road: yet in spite of the extra weight it carried of bullet-proof plating that hotted-up Dusy behind came dreaming along at nearer ninety—and as for reaching the New Blandford turning, he hadn’t a hope!

  He counted they wouldn’t start shooting his wheels until they got close, with the end of the chase so certain; but only a minute at most was left to get off the high-road somehow.... Moreover they mightn’t be hunting alone, and suppose he rounded a curve and found they had blocked the road with a truck? With a sudden pang in his heart he thought about Russell’s brother and losing the only life he’d got for a nonsense and nearly gave in and drew up.... Indeed perhaps he’d have done so except that there, right ahead, was the back of Tony’s old Buick—snailing along with Tony and Russell himself.

  Swerving out to avoid them, he saw on the opposite side that old “NO automobiles” board on the edge of the woods which marked the track to the lake—to the lake alone.... Sadie by now couldn’t bear to look back: she was crouched in her seat facing forwards, expecting the shooting to start. Augustine braked so hard as he broadsided into the track that she banged her face on the screen and her nose began to bleed: “You’re dog-gone crazy!” she gasped through her rattling teeth, as the Bearcat bumped about on the washed-out trail: “There’s no road out!”

  Then they heard the scream of the Enemy’s tires as it skidded round Tony’s Buick that tried to get in its way and followed them into the woods.

  24

  The chase was now a slow-motion one down a zigzag slot between two walls of trees, with the going so rough that anything over fifteen miles an hour would buck you out of your seat and no earthly springs or axle could take it. It wasn’t a question of speed, it was simply up to your driving; and underslung Bearcats weren’t designed for this sort of thing. But the track snaked about through pinewoods and spruce so dense that at least you were now out of sight, however close the pursuers (who’d silenced their siren now, so you just couldn’t tell).

  Everywhere, hot smell of spruce with an overhead sun.... Augustine clung to the wheel like an organ-grinder’s monkey clings to the neck of his master; and Sadie hung on to the dashboard. Augustine’s mind worked fast, with a kind of frozen awareness that seemed not wholly his own and yet dictated the answers. If only the springs would hold, and the sump didn’t catch on a rock.... True, ahead there was no way out; but ahead at least lay that fork, with a fifty-fifty chance that the cops would follow the wrong one.... And yesterday’s cross-trail ought to be passable even for Stutzes: by lurking hidden in that while the cops—whichever the track they took—overshot, he could cross and then double back to the high road, greatly increasing his lead by the time they’d discovered and turned—if indeed they ever found somewhere to turn on a track so narrow and hemmed in by trees. So Augustine pressed on, and the pungent boughs lashed his cheeks as he swerved to avoid the worst of the potholes and rocks (as with less than ten inches clearance he had to). He passed the fork, drove along the shallow-end track, drove into that cross-trail and half-way along it, and stopped.

  The cops overshot him all right, but somehow they saw him and fired a revolver-burst as they passed. The shots went wild, yet nearer to heads than to tires and neither Augustine nor Sadie enjoyed it. Both of them ducked down almost too low to see out, while Augustine let in the clutch and they managed to lumber forward—moving as fast as they dared on alternate bare rock and cord-road, and thrashed both sides by the lurching trees. Their hearts were still in their mouths: for the cops hadn’t wasted time attempting to turn—they had gone in reverse and pursued them like that, tail first (though bucking about too wildly, now, for even a copper to shoot ... for the moment).

  Augustine was just about to debouch on the further track (in triumph, for now the Dusy must stop to turn) when they saw their way to the high-road blocked by Tony’s lumbering Buick: the cretin had followed that Duesenberg in. Thus they were properly cornered, with only one way to go: down the track which led to the dam and to only the dam....

  Already Augustine’s nerves were strained, and maybe this second stroke of ill-luck could have sent him a little lightheaded: he thought of the dam right ahead, and there came a flash of vision so vivid it hurt in which his mind’s eye saw—like watching an epic scene in a film—that knife-edge top of the dam with his yellow Bearcat driving across it. The top of the dam would be hardly as wide as his wheels, if indeed it was that wide: on one side the deepest part of the lake, on the other a sixty-foot drop to a horrid ravine so the slightest error or even a stone out of place.... If he screwed himself up to drive over that dam, would the Duesenberg dare to follow? His vision said no: it showed the intrepid Bearcat crossing alone, while everyone held their breath.... But he mustn’t take Sadie with him, this desperate crossing was much too dangerous: “Jump, girl!” he grunted through grinding teeth as they bumped and slithered downhill, half the time crabwise, scree flying right and left: “Jump out—I’m driving across it!”

  Yet Sadie sho
wed no sign of jumping: instead she crouched in her seat struck dumb, with incredulous face. “Drive across” that dam: had the guy gone crazy?

  Augustine had need of his eyes close-range not to run into trees or slide off the track altogether: moreover his mental picture was still so intense he’d have anyhow scarcely seen the actual dam as it came into view. Just as they reached the shore he jabbed her ribs with his elbow, “Wake up and jump, you bloody loon: I’m not taking you!”

  But still she sat tight, now surer than ever Augustine was out of his mind: for the guy had been there often before—he must know you couldn’t ride even a bicycle over this dam because of the overflow chute in the middle which cut right across it—a detail his “vision” had somehow left out; and even a Bearcat can’t take a water-jump....

  Twenty yards on to the concrete she suddenly came alive, yanked the wheel from his hands as the lesser evil and toppled them into the lake.

  As the car hit the surface a wall of water reared like a tidal wave and fell on the pair of them, forcing them down in their seats. So they sank with the car. But twelve-foot under the water the Bearcat gently lit on the slope of the dam and slowly began to roll; and somehow they floated clear.

  Both heads were well under cover among a tangle of boughs at the edge of the lake when the Dusy appeared at the top of the scree. It didn’t come down. Two rather grimlooking, under-sized types jumped out. Their pistols were in their hands. They ran down on to the dam, and scanned the water for swimmers. None were in sight....

  They stared at a floating map. They stared at the eddies and patches of oil and bubbles that hid the Bearcat resting below on its side; and one of them crossed himself with his pistol.

  25

  On their way back with Tony and Russell, while Tony’s Buick lolloped along and the two drowned rats in the back seat dried in the sun they held a council of war. Like as not (was the gist of what Sadie said) that this was the end of the whole affair: that no one would bother to drag the lake—and be damned to whoever’s water-supply this was—or even to raise the wreck: for this sort of minor incident happened each day of the week. But Tony and Russell were not so sure this had happened by chance: it looked like somebody got their knife in the New Blandford crowd. That Trooper....

  “But what about Bella’s brother?” Augustine asked: for Augustine couldn’t take quite so lightly the loss of that Second-Vice-President (Sales)’s beautiful Stutz, and the rod in pickle for Erroll.

  “Shucks!” said Sadie: “You don’t imagine he told his boss when he swiped his Stutz? No, Sir! They’ll figure on thieves: Erroll won’t even be fired, if he keeps his trap shut and Monday at eight in the morning he’s back on the job by rail.” When Augustine still looked unconvinced, she added: “Boy! The folks we have to worry about ain’t Erroll, it’s us.”

  For Sadie admitted to just one fly in the ointment: their faces were known to that couple of cops who at present thought they were dead, but suppose that later they saw them around? “Then you better grow new faces,” said Russell over his shoulder: “And don’t be seen in the county until you done it, for everyone’s sake.”

  “Yeah, take a powder!” said Tony, and sounded his horn at an ancient Chevvy that shimmied all over the road.

  “For the public good,” said Russell, “as well as your own.”

  “But where can we go?” asked Augustine.

  “Plenty of places,” said Russell. “The country’s big. Massachusetts. Vermont—or why not Quebec? It’s a chance to see the world.”

  “Yeah, Quebec—cross over the border for Chrissake!” said Tony. “A darned sight safer.... Jeeze!”—and he nearly shied into the ditch as a truck overtook, for his steering-gear was apt to do more than you asked it.

  “‘Oh God, Oh Montreal!’” Russell quoted. “French Canada.... Doubtless you’re fully conversant with eighteenth-century French?” he inquired of Augustine: “The unspoiled tongue of Voltaire?”

  “Yeah, ‘Potates frites’!” said Sadie: “‘Chiens chauds’—Bill-of-fares I seen it.”

  Tony chuckled. “Better take along your own steaks. Boy, what those Frenchmen up there use for eats isn’t nobody’s business.”

  “Frogs,” said Russell. “And probably snakes. Squirrels. They’re all half-Indian.”

  But suddenly Tony waxed nostalgic. It seemed that he’d spent the whole of one summer up there in the north, on the Saguenay River.... “Logging. Oh boy, that’s the life!—Jee-ee-eeze....” For now his steering-wheel had started a wobble so frantic he had to let go altogether until it had righted itself. “Russ! What say me and you string along?”

  “Ride up all four of us?”

  “That’s it. Just a two-three days, me and you. Maybe tomorrow?”

  “O.K. by me,” said Russell.

  “But ...” said Augustine, for now the time had arrived when he’d got to come (partially) clean. In a tragedy-voice he told them all crossing of frontiers was out where he was concerned: for his passport was lost.

  Russell guffawed. “Say, that’s rich!”

  Once again Tony let go of the wheel altogether, but this time to slap it: “Boy! Get a load of that! Guy can’t go Canada.... Why? ‘Lost me passport!’” he mimicked. “Bonehead, where do you think you are at, now?—Yurrup?”

  “You mean it won’t have to be shown at the frontier?” Augustine asked, incredulous.

  “Frontier’s an ugly word,” said Russell: “We call it the border.”

  But Sadie looked serious. “Guy’s got a point: Immigrant Quotas and all that boloney. Without his American visa they could act mean when it come to letting him back.”

  “But going I won’t need to show one?”

  “Listen, kid!” counselled the prudent Sadie: “No: better you stop the right side of the border or else you might get stuck up there on the wrong side.”

  “But they won’t ask for anything driving up there?” Augustine persisted.

  Now it was Russell’s turn to look incredulous: “Visiting Canada? Riding with free-born American citizens willing to swear you’re British, and Canada British soil?”

  “Cripes!” said Tony: “The guys up at Rouses Point aren’t so crazy as have me halt this old jalopy, so she could die in her tracks and block the whole road.”

  Lord! All the weeks that Augustine had taken for granted he couldn’t escape from the country without that passport stolen in France, when all he’d apparently got to do was to drive to the border and cross it to British soil! It couldn’t be true.... As for coming back, he nearly told them that once he got out of their sacred United States they wouldn’t see him for dust; but refrained, as it sounded rude.

  Instead, when the other suggested starting tomorrow at dawn he merely agreed without comment.

  That morning Ree slept on and on. When she didn’t appear at breakfast her mother suggested a touch of the sun, and dosed her.

  Today being Sunday her father was home, but she didn’t get up till noon and refused her dinner and wandered off to the store for a comforting Coca-cola just as Tony’s Buick arrived with Augustine and Sadie inside it behind—looking rather the worse for wear.

  When the story was told, Augustine and Sadie were heroes (Augustine at least enjoyed it: he’d never had reason to feel like a hero before): and only Erroll looked glum. For Erroll would have to leave for the Depot at once to be back on time by rail.

  26

  No one might bother maybe to raise the Stutz, but the whisky was far too precious to waste. So just before midnight a diving party set out. They were all of them boys, and it had to be done at once to be first in the field. They doused their lights at the “NO automobiles ...” board for fear they’d be seen and followed and drove to the fork by the light of the moon, then prudently hid their Fords in the cross-trail, scrambling down the rest of the way to the dam on foot.

  The moon was full, and its glare so bright that it even showed color—at least, a few strong colors glowed like the runes on the underwing of a moth in all this gen
eral murk-and-silver. The woods were black, but the lake with its scatter of stars was almost blue; and the dam was a bar of the palest brass. They undressed; and their naked bodies were white where their clothes or swimsuits had been, but mahogany-dark where these ended at faces and legs and arms.

  The distant hills looked hardly solid at all: a bank of cloud in the west looked solider far than the hills.

  Augustine and Russell and Tony were with them in spite of intending so early a start: Augustine, to show them the place where the Stutz had drowned. This he thought he knew; but he didn’t it seemed, for by night all distances looked so different. Finally everyone stood in a line all together, ten feet apart, and dived as a team; and Russell it was who surfaced at last with a whoop.

  Finding the wreck was one thing, but salvage another. The wreck lay fully twenty feet down; and even the classiest divers didn’t seem used to depths. Only Augustine himself in the end, whose diving was far from classy, was able enough at holding his breath (he’d practiced it long before learning to swim, as a child in his bath). Under the water, the Stutz had rolled on its side; and by luck the lid of the rumble had opened. But twenty or more feet down the pressure hurt his ears and he worked in a panicky frenzy: his head as well as his lungs seemed bursting, the water that forced itself up his nose felt more like a knife—like having one’s adenoids out without anesthetic. Sadie however had stowed the jars so snug that neither was broken; and finally one by one he managed to surface with both.

  Meanwhile that bank of cloud had risen a bit: it was brownish black below, though its top still glittered with moon like those turbulent floes of Danube ice he remembered, and glimmered with distant lightning.

  Clearly Augustine needed as well as had earned a drink: on that they were all agreed—and as well, could do with a drink themselves. But the spot was a trifle exposed, if anyone came (for rumor travels like fire, and soon every son-of-a-gun for miles around would be diving): therefore they put on only their shoes, and trooped back into the edge of the woods with their clothes tucked under their arms. Thank God by now the mosquito season was over! They found a clearing, and squatting round in a naked ring on the carpet of needles and leaves they uncorked a jar and passed it from hand to hand. Gurgling, smacking of lips.... Nothing so formal of course as toasting Augustine’s achievement, and yet their esteem came through.... They were far too engrossed for chatter, and looked with their almost invisible blacked-out (sun-burnt) faces and limbs—thought Augustine—some savage tribe with a bizarre tribal design of tattooing nearly as odd as the mandrill’s. Absurd as they looked, Augustine was moved by a quite unexpected wave of affection: he found himself really minding the fact that after tonight whatever his future held it wouldn’t be them.