by Edna Ferber
The driveway swarmed with cars and horses, they stretched down the road and spilled over into the weed-grown space in front of the old Main House half a mile distant. There was, for the accommodation of house guests, quite a fleet of cars shuttling back and forth between the Big House and the Main House, like a bus service.
It was midafternoon, Leslie had eaten almost nothing that day. She looked at the great double doors of the parlor beyond—the doors so constantly opening and closing to admit the intimate hundreds to the room they called the parlor where the little angry woman lay in state. And she tried not to think of the heat and of the night and of the next day. And she wished with all her heart that the huge house and the well-meaning hordes that swarmed within it and without it, and the hundreds who served it, would vanish into the desert distance and that she could be alone with that Jordan Benedict she had met in Virginia, away from the noise and clamor and uproar of the endless spaces of Texas.
She made her way to Bick standing there near the doorway with a group of men. She slid her arm through his; she thought, He looks ghastly it’s as if he had shrunk in his clothes.
“I’ve been talking to Uncle Bawley. He’s marvelous.”
“Yes. Uncle Bawley’s great guy.”
“Jordan, have you eaten anything?”
“Yes. I had some coffee.”
“Coffee! You can’t live on coffee. I haven’t had anything either. Won’t you come with me?”
Gently he took her hand from his arm, he shook his head. “One of the girls—Maudie Lou will go with you—Adarene—here’s Adarene, right here.” He turned back to the men.
And here was Adarene. “You look kind of funny,” said Adarene. “Are you all right?”
Leslie clutched her arm. “Adarene, would they think it was queer if I just went up to rest in my own room a few minutes?”
“Of course not.”
“Will you come with me?”
Guiltily they wormed their way through the crowded room, through the hall to the stairway up and down which people she never before had seen were purposefully tramping. It was like being in a museum on a free exhibition day. When she opened her own bedroom door would she find a score of strangers there, sprawled on chairs and bed?
“Here we are,” said Adarene, and turned the doorknob. The door was locked. The two women stared at each other.
“Who?” demanded Leslie fiercely. “Who is in there?” She pounded on the door with her fist, her feeling of outrage was the accumulation of days. There was no sound from within.
“Shall I peek through the keyhole?” asked Adarene.
“Keyhole! My own room!”
“It’s an enormous keyhole.”
“Well——” Leslie faltered, and glanced apprehensively over her shoulder down the length of the long hall. There was Lupe coming swiftly and soundlessly toward them. In her hand was the cumbersome key that fitted the massive door. Her dark eyes were lively and understanding, she jerked her head meaningfully toward the swarming crowd. The key grated in the lock, she flung the door open, her eyes darted about the room as though someone might have crept through the keyhole.
“Entre, señora.” She handed the key to Leslie and made a quick motion of the hand that advised locking the door from the inside. With another jerk of the head toward the babel below she vanished, closing the door behind her. The two women sensed that she waited a moment there outside until she heard the turn of the key.
“They’re the ones who’ll really mourn Luz,” Adarene said. “Did you hear them last night?”
“No. Hear what?”
“The Mexicans will have their own mourning ceremonies for her. Lew and I could hear them last night, long after midnight down in the barrios, playing the guitar and singing her favorite songs. For weeks they’ll be saying rosarios—evening prayers. And a lot of other mourning customs that are kind of weird, some of them.”
“Because she was a Benedict? A kind of feudal custom!”
“No, not altogether. She was hard on them but she understood them—the older generation anyway—they respected her. She was the leading mare—the madrina. Of course they never called her that, but they knew. They always know…. Why don’t you lie down and shut your eyes, rest a while? Maybe you can sleep.”
“Adarene, dear good Adarene.”
“Do you want Lupe to bring you a cup of tea?”
“Not now. Just to sit here away from the crowd.”
Briskly Adarene said, “Anyway, it’s given you a chance to meet the State of Texas. Ordinarily it would have taken a newcomer weeks and months and years. They’re all here—large and small. Old Texas and new Texas. The cotton rich and the rotten rich and the big rich. Cattle, and the new oil crowd, and wheat and the Hermoso and Houston and Dallas big business bunch.”
“I wish I knew half of what you know,” Leslie said. “It would be better for Jordan.”
“You were pretty vivacious over there talking to Uncle Bawley, weren’t you?”
“I didn’t realize.”
“You’re on exhibition. Uncle Bawley’s never been known to talk as long as that to any woman. He’s woman-shy.”
“I didn’t mean to be disrespectful to—to Luz. He was enormously interesting.”
“Luz was a bitch and a holy terror and kind of crazy, too. Everybody knows that. But she was Luz Benedict, Madama.”
“There’s so much I don’t understand.”
“You’d have to be born here—around 1836.”
“Adarene, are you happy here?”
“I wouldn’t be happy living anywhere else. I’ve tried it. Texas is in my blood. I don’t rightly know what it is—a kind of terrific vitality and movement.”
“I get the feeling that they’re playing wild West like kids in the back yard.”
“Maybe. Some of the time. But it really still is the wild West—a good deal of it, with an overlay of automobiles and Bar-B-Que shacks and new houses with Greek columns and those new skyscrapers that my Lucius and Gabe Target and his crowd are running up. Skyscrapers out on the prairie where there’s a million miles to spread out.”
Leslie walked to the window and glanced out between the jalousies and closed her eyes and came back and sat at the edge of the bed. She smoothed the coverlet a bit with her hand, a little aimless gesture. Then she lay back and pressed her forearm over her eyes.
“I’m kind of scared.”
“No wonder. You’ve had quite a week. But you’ll get used to it. It’s the ranch that’s got you scared. I don’t know why Bick keeps on living here the year round. I won’t do it. We’re ranchers too, you know. Everybody’s got a ranch, big or little. But I won’t live on it. It’s all different. Or maybe I am. Even the cows are different. I’m not thirty but I can remember the Longhorns. Not many, but some. Now they’re stocking grey velvet oriental monsters with slanting eyes and humps on their backs. Scare you. Scare anybody.”
“Oh, Adarene——” Leslie began. There was a smart knock at the door. A series of them with determined knuckles. Leslie sat up, she smoothed her hair. The two women exchanged glances, Adarene’s finger went to her lips.
Leslie stood up. “Maybe it’s Jordan…. Who is it?” Aloud.
“Girls! Girls, can I come in?” Vashti.
“Damn!” said Adarene, under her breath; her eyebrows went up in rueful inquiry. Leslie nodded. And there, when the great key had been turned, was Vashti bouncing in with the over-eager uncertain look of a little girl who tags along unwanted by her playmates. Round red eager she glanced from Leslie to Adarene. “I saw you go up and then when you didn’t come down I thought, well, they didn’t just go to the lou all this while maybe there’s something the matter is anything the matter?”
“Thank you, Vashti,” Leslie said. “Nothing’s wrong. I just felt I had to rest a minute.”
Vashti threw her washed-blue eyes ceilingward in an effort at mental concentration. “Let’s see now. How long is it since you and Bick were married? Wedding trip and all. Month,
anyway—isn’t it?”
“No,” Leslie said. “I mean, yes, it’s a month. But I’m tired because of what’s happened, and so many people to meet.”
“I guess,” Vashti offered then, “you’ll be glad when this is all over.”
Adarene Morey took charge. “Vashti, stop talking like a dope. Do people usually like to keep a funeral going on around the house!”
Vashti moved around the room humming gently to herself which was a habit she had—Leslie was later to learn—when she had a bit of gossip to impart. She meandered to the broad expanse of the dresser with its silver and crystal and scent and silk. She sniffed at the stopper of a fragrant flask of perfume, her head on one side like a wary plump bird, her eyes glancing corner-wise at Leslie.
“I guess Jett Rink will be too,” she observed airily. “Glad.”
Adarene Morey stood up. “Let’s go down now, girls. If you feel rested, Leslie.”
“What has Jett Rink to do with it?” Leslie asked, though instinct told her not to.
Vashti now assumed the air of an aggrieved little girl. “Well, I just meant what they’re saying downstairs, the men and all.”
“Vashti Hake!” Adarene said in sharp warning.
“Snyth,” retorted Vashti in correction.
“All right. Hake or Snyth,” Adarene went on, dropping into Texas patois in her indignation, “you’ve got no call to go eyeballing around picking up gossip don’t concern you.”
“I didn’t pick it up. Mott told me.” She melted in a fatuous smile. “That’s the nicest thing about being married to Mott Snyth. He knows all the talk around, first off.”
“I’ll bet!” said Adarene with vigor.
“Adarene Morey, if you mean because Mott used to be a cow hand before he married me and cow hands are the talkingest men there is——”
“No, Vashti, I didn’t mean anything like that. Pinky Snyth is no worse than all the other Texas men when it comes to gossiping.”
Leslie felt there had been about enough of this. “Will you two please tell me what you’re talking about!”
“We-e-e-ll,” Vashti began, with dreadful relish, “they’re saying around it was Jett got Miss Luz to try riding My Mistake in the first place and it was him said he bet she could put on a hoop skirt like her grammaw and rope anything running in a roundup, and why didn’t she do it and ride out just to show you——”
“Me!”
“Well, I’m just saying what they said he said, I don’t know. So sure enough what does Luz do but go up to the attic trunks and get out that hoop skirt and a big old Western saddle with a horn like a hitching post. And the minute that horse felt that saddle and glimpsed that hoop skirt he was like possessed it took three to hold him and she hardly’d climbed on Mott said when he was off like a bat out of hell—that’s what Mott said—and they’re saying around that after Bick shot the horse that killed Luz, why, Gill noticed there was a kind of funny-looking spit, like, around the horse’s mouth——”
“Gill?”
“The vet. The head vet. Gill Dace.”
“Oh yes. Yes.”
“So he noticed there was a funny-looking spit, like, around his mouth and so he made some tests in the lab and sure enough somebody must have given him something hopped him up, Gill said it was enough to hop up a whole herd of drought-starved Longhorns, let alone one horse.”
Adarene Morey attempted to stay the flood. “That’s just a lot of stable talk, I don’t believe a word of it, anyway Jett Rink wouldn’t dare.”
She thought Leslie looked very odd, feeling around like that for the edge of the chair behind her before sinking down on it.
“He would so. He and Luz hated each other like poison and then when Cora told Luz about her and Jett, why, Luz said she’d turn them both off the ranch, you know the way she wanted to run everybody’s business her own way and seemed she couldn’t bear for anyone to get married, even if they had to, like Cora, look at the way she behaved about you and Bick——”
Leslie stood up very tall and straight. “Thanks so much for coming up with me, it was sweet of you. I’m going down now. Are you coming?”
“Sure,” Vashti agreed briskly. “I just came up to see if I could help. The boys are saying Bick gave Jett ten minutes to get off the ranch and they say he’s going to take that piece of land away from him he gave him that time old Rink turned up missing, but he can’t do that because Jett was smart, he’s got it down on paper it’s his. They started a terrible fist fight only if Gill and those hadn’t pulled them apart.”
Leslie was moving toward the door, she proceeded rather grandly, giving the effect of wearing a long train which definitely was not in evidence. The key turned with a great clunk. She opened the door, “Petra!” she called above the din below. “Lupe!” She felt very strange and light in this new world of sound and movement and violence. It’s because I’ve eaten nothing I suppose, she thought.
Aloud she said, “Vashti, when you were a little girl did they ever smack you good and hard?”
“My yes.”
“Not hard enough,” said Leslie.
Innocently, quite unruffled, Vashti prattled on. “Even now, sick as he is, times I think Pa’d like to slap me if he could, Pa’s always bossing everybody around, he’s always after Mott, saying Pinky do this way, Pinky do that way, just like Luz does—used to do…. It’s sure going to be nice for you, Leslie, having the run of this big house and nobody to boss you around…. Ooh, look, they’s hardly anybody in the dining room now, it must be getting late, I’m kind of hungry myself. It’s funny, funerals make you hungry, I guess it’s feeling so bad and worked up and all…”
But Leslie was not listening. She put her hand on Adarene Morey’s arm. “Listen. Get hold of Lupe, will you? She’ll be here in a minute, she’s always materializing here in the upper hall. Tell her—here’s the key—to bring here to my bedroom some cold chicken and a bowl of fresh fruit and a pot of hot coffee and some bourbon and ice and a quart of champagne—and if they haven’t any champagne in this big damned arsenal I’ll scream my head off.”
“They have, honey.”
“I’ll be back. I’m going to get Jordan.”
Downstairs she found him exactly as she had left him, a strangely shrunken giant surrounded by other giants who seemed to have gained in height and breadth in the half hour that had elapsed since last she saw them.
As always the men now assumed different faces as they turned toward her, a woman; the faces they would put on for conversation with a child.
“Well, Miz Benedict, you’re holding up mighty well and so is old Bick here. It’s sad occasions like this and how you stand up to ’em shows what a person’s made of….”
She heard them, she replied only with that agreeable grimace which, very early in her Washington and Virginia social life, she had learned would pass for conversation in a pinch. She came close to Bick, she spoke very low in his ear. “Come with me, dear.”
He shook his head. “No. I’m all right.”
She faced the men. “Jordan is exhausted. He hasn’t slept or eaten. I’m trying to have him rest before the evening—uh—” she had almost said the evening session—“before the evening.” Appealingly she looked up into those big tan faces. “I feel quite faint myself—but that doesn’t matter.”
They rallied with a boom. “That’s right, Bick, you go ’long. You got to think of yourself and the little girl here…. Times like this it’s the ones are left behind got to keep up their stren’th and carry on. Now you mind the Misuz and go ’long, now.”
Toward the hall, toward the stairway, her hand on his arm. In the hall melee they encountered Uncle Bawley battling his way toward the open outer door. “Uncle Bawley! Where are you going?”
“See you all tomorrow.” He dabbed at his eyes.
“But dinner. Have you had dinner?”
“I’m eating with Dietz over to the line house.”
“Jordan’s going upstairs to rest just a little while. You’ll
be back this evening?” She wished Jordan would say something.
Uncle Bawley shook his head, the teardrops flew right and left. “Crowds aggravate it. Anyway, I turn in at eight.”
“Eight!”
“Up at four. See you tomorrow, Bick.” He strode off. They were ascending the stairs when he came up behind them, he grasped Bick’s arm, he jerked a thumb toward Leslie, he looked into Bick’s face. “This girl is an unexceptional,” he said earnestly. Was off down the stairs and out of the door.
Lupe had been partially efficient for once; the bowl of fruit was there, the bourbon, a bottle of champagne in a nest of ice.
“What’s this?” Bick asked testily.
“This, darling, is what’s known as food and drink, and the rest of it will be along in a minute. I hope.”
The great brass sun was descending now in the vast tin sky, she opened the jalousies a little, she wished she could open the door so that the Gulf wind would meet the draft that funneled through the house, and at least move the air with a semblance of coolness.
Bick stumbled into the bathroom as Petra flung open the bedroom door without knocking. Petra and Lupe carried trays, there was no table laid, Leslie cleared a space on the desk-table. She saw with utter dismay that the chicken she had envisaged as a platter of delicate cold slices in a nest of crisp green was a vast hot boiled fowl with gobbets of yellow fat marbling its skin, its huge thighs turned upward, steaming. There was a bowl of hot mashed potatoes and a wet greenish mass that looked like boiled beet tops. These bowls she picked up, one in each hand, and gave them to Petra and Lupe. “Take them. Take them away.”
