The Fiend

by Margaret Millar

  From the window she could see, too, the rows of tama­risks planted to break the wind and protect the reservoir from blowing sand. To the east was the dry riverbed and to the west the fields of tomatoes, already harvested. The fields were alive with small birds. They swooped between the rows of plants, fluttered among the yellowing leaves, pecked at the rotting remains of fruit and searched the ground for fallen seeds and insects. Estivar could identify every one of them. He called them by their Mexican names, which made them all seem foreign and exotic to Devon until she found out that many of them were birds she’d known back home. The chupamirto was just a hum­mingbird, the cardelina a goldfinch, the golondrina a swallow.

  Other things which had familiar names were not famil­iar at all. To Devon, born and brought up on the East Coast, rain was what spoiled a picnic or a trip to the zoo, not something people measured in tenths of inches like misers with molten gold. And a river had always been a permanent thing, like the Hudson or the Delaware or the Potomac. The river she watched now from her bedroom window was bone-dry most of the year, yet sometimes it turned into a rampaging torrent strong enough to carry a truck downstream. There were few bridges. It was gener­ally assumed that when it rained hard, people would have sense enough to stay home or stick to the main highway; and when it was dry, they simply drove or walked across the riverbed as if it were a special road, untaxed and maintenance-free.

  The far side of the river marked the boundary line of the next ranch, which belonged to Leo Bishop. When Rob­ert brought her home as his bride a year and a half ago, Leo Bishop was the first neighbor she’d met. Robert asked her to be especially nice to him because he’d lost his wife suddenly and tragically during the winter. Devon had done her best, but there were still times when he seemed as foreign to her as any of the alambres.

  Devon showered and began to dress. The clothes she was to wear had been hanging ready for a week. She had driven into San Diego to meet Robert’s mother and Rob­ert’s mother had picked the outfit, a brown sharkskin suit a shade lighter than Devon’s hair and a shade darker than her tanned skin. It made her look as though she and the suit had come out of the same dye vat, but she didn’t argue with the choice. Brown seemed as good a color as any for a young woman about to become a widow on a sunny day in autumn.

  She went down the back stairs that led directly into the kitchen.

  Dulzura was at the stove, stirring something in a skillet with her left hand and fanning herself with her right. She was not yet thirty years old, but her youth, like the stool she sat on, was camouflaged by folds of fat.

  She said, without looking around, “I’m making some scrambled eggs to go with the chorizo.”

  “I’ll just have orange juice and coffee, thanks.”

  “Mr. Osborne used to be crazy about chorizo, he had a real Mexican stomach... You should anyway try the eggs. See how nice they look.”

  Devon glanced briefly at the moist yellow mass rusted with chili powder and turned away. “They look very nice.”

  “But you don’t like.”

  “Not this morning.”

  “No Mrs. Osborne, no little dog, I will have to eat everything myself. Obalz.”

  It was Dulzura’s favorite expression and for a long time Devon had assumed it was a Spanish word indicating dis­pleasure. She’d finally asked the foreman, Estivar, about it.

  “There is no such word in my language,” Estivar said.

  “But it must mean something, Dulzura uses it all the time.”

  “Oh, it means something all right, you can bet on that.”

  “I see. It’s English.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Dulzura was one of Estivar’s so-called cousins. He had great numbers of them. If they spoke English, he claimed they were from the San Diego or Los Angeles branch of the family; if they spoke only Spanish, they were from the Sonora branch, or the Sinaloa or Jalisco or Chihuahua, whichever word suited his fancy if not the facts. At times of peak employment Estivar’s cousins swarmed over the valley like an army of occupation. They planted, cul­tivated, irrigated; they pruned, thinned, stripped, sprayed; they picked, sorted, baled, boxed and bunched. Then suddenly they would disappear, as if the earth from which such an abundance of produce had been taken had absorbed the workers themselves like fertilizer.

  Dulzura scraped the eggs out of the skillet into a bowl. “His mother on the phone, she said I better wear stock­ings. I only got the pair I’m saving for my brother’s wed­ding.”

  “You can wear them more than once, surely.”

  “Not if I have to kneel when I swear on the Bible.”

  “Nobody kneels in a courtroom.” Devon had never been in a courtroom but she spoke with conviction be­cause she knew Dulzura was watching for any sign of uncertainty, her eyes dark and moist as ripe olives. “The women will be wearing stockings, and all the men coats and ties.”

  “Even Estivar and Mr. Bishop?”

  “Yes.”

  The phone began ringing again and Devon went down the hall to answer on the extension in the study.

  The study had been Robert’s room. For a long time it had remained, like his car in the garage, exactly the way he left it. It was too painful for Devon to go inside or even to pass the closed door. Now the room was altered. As soon as the date for the hearing had been set, Devon began packing Robert’s things in cardboard cartons, planning to store them in the attic—his tennis rackets and the trophies he’d won, his collection of silver coins, the maps of places he’d wanted to go, the books he’d intended to read.

  Devon had cried so hard over the task that Dulzura began crying too, and they wailed together like a couple of old Irishwomen at a wake. After it was over and Devon could see again out of her swollen eyes, she took a marking pencil and printed Salvation Army on each of the cartons. Estivar was carrying the last of them into the front hall when Robert’s mother arrived from the city, as she some­times did, without warning.

  Devon expected Mrs. Osborne to be disturbed by the sight of the cartons or at least to argue about their disposi­tion. Instead, Mrs. Osborne calmly offered to deliver them to the Salvation Army herself. She even helped Estivar load the trunk of her car and the back seat. She was half a head taller than Estivar and almost as strong, and the two of them worked together quickly and efficiently and in silence as though they’d been partners on many such jobs in the past. Mrs. Osborne was seated behind the wheel ready to leave when she turned to Devon and said in her soft, firm voice: “Robert always intended to clean up his study. He’ll be glad we saved him the trouble.”

  Devon closed the door of the study and picked up the phone. “Yes?”

  “Why didn’t you call me back, Devon?”

  “There was no hurry. It’s still very early.”

  “I’m well aware of it. I spent the night watching the clock.”

  “I’m sorry you couldn’t sleep.”

  “I didn’t want to,” Mrs. Osborne said. “I was trying to reason things out, to decide whether this is the right step to take.”

  “We must take it. Mr. Ford and the other lawyers told you that.”

  “I don’t necessarily have to believe what people tell me.”

  “Mr. Ford is an expert.”

  “On legal matters, yes. But where Robert is concerned, I am the expert. And what you’re going to do today is wrong. You should have refused to sign the papers. Per­haps it’s still not too late. You could call Ford and ask him to arrange a postponement because you need more time to think.”

  “I’ve had a whole year to think. Nothing has changed.”

  “But it could, it might. Any day now the phone might ring or there’ll be a knock at the door and there he’ll be, good as new. Maybe he was kidnapped and is being held captive somewhere across the border. Or he had a blow on the head the night he disappeared and he�
�s suffering from amnesia. Or—”

  Devon held the telephone away from her ear. She didn’t want to hear any more of the maybes Mrs. Osborne had dreamed up during the long nights and elaborated on during the long days.

  “Devon? Devon.” It was the closest thing to a scream Mrs. Osborne ever permitted herself except when she was alone. “Are you listening to me?”

  “The hearing will be held today. I can’t stop it now and wouldn’t if I could.”

  “But what if—”

  “There isn’t going to be a knocking at the door or a ringing of the phone. There isn’t going to be anything.”

  “It’s cruel, Devon, it’s cruel to destroy someone’s hope like this.”

  “It would be crueler to encourage you to wait for some­thing that can’t happen.”

  “Can’t? That’s a strong word. Even Ford doesn’t say can’t. Miracles are happening every day. Look at the organ transplants they’re doing all over the country. Suppose Robert was found dying and they gave his heart to some­one else. That would be better than nothing, wouldn’t it?—knowing his heart was alive—wouldn’t it?”

  Mrs. Osborne went on, repeating the same things she’d been saying throughout the year, not even bothering any more to make it seem new by altering a word here, a phrase there.

  Two clocks at opposite ends of the house began sound­ing the hour: the grandfather clock in the living room, and in the kitchen the cuckoo clock Dulzura kept on the wall above the stove. Dulzura claimed it was a present from her husband, but nobody believed she ever had a husband, let alone one that gave her presents. The grandfather clock belonged to Mrs. Osborne. Carved at the base were the words meant to accompany its chimes:

  God Is With You,

  Doubt Him Never,

  While The Hours

  Leave Forever.

  When Mrs. Osborne moved out of the ranch house to let Devon and Robert occupy it alone, she’d taken along her antique cherrywood desk and mahogany piano, her silver tea service and collection of English bone china, but she left the clock behind. She no longer believed that God was with her and she didn’t want to be reminded that the hours left forever.

  Seven o’clock.

  The Mexican workers were coming out of the bunk- house and out of the old wooden building, formerly a barn, that was now equipped as a mess hall. Quickly and quietly they piled into the back of the big truck that would drop them off in whatever fields were ready for harvesting. There was little in their lives except hard work, and the food that made work possible.

  At noon they would sit in the bleachers built by Es­tivar’s sons beside the reservoir and eat their lunch in the shade of the tamarisks. At five they would have tortillas and beans in the mess hall and by nine-thirty all the bunk- house lights would be out. The hours that left forever were good riddance.

  Agnes Osborne was still talking. Between the time Devon had stopped listening and the time she started again, Mrs. Osborne had somehow reconciled herself to the fact that the hearing would be held as scheduled, beginning at ten o’clock. “It will probably be better if we met right in the courtroom so we won’t miss each other. Do you remember the number?”

  “Five.”

  “Will you be bringing your own car into town?”

  “Leo Bishop asked me to ride with him.”

  “And you accepted?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’d better call and tell him you’ve changed your mind. Today of all days you don’t want to start people gossiping about you and Leo.”

  “There’s nothing to gossip about.”

  “If you’re too nervous to drive yourself, come with Estivar in the station wagon. Oh, and make sure Dulzura wears hose, will you?”

  “Why? Dulzura’s not on trial. We’re not on trial.”

  “Don’t be naive,” Mrs. Osborne said harshly. “Of course we’re on trial, all of us. Ford tried to keep every­thing as quiet as possible, naturally, but witnesses had to be subpoenaed and many people had to be given legal notice of the time and place of the hearing, so it’s not exactly a secret. It won’t be exactly a picnic, either. Sign­ing a piece of paper is one thing, it’s quite another to get up in a courtroom and relive those terrible days in public. But it’s your decision, you’re Robert’s wife.”

  “I’m not his wife,” Devon said. “I’m his widow.”

  THE COMPLETE WORKS OF MARGARET MILLAR

  Available as individual ebooks or in a special seven-volume collector’s set

  Volume I

  The Paul Prye Mysteries

  The Invisible Worm (1941)

  The Weak-Eyed Bat (1942)

  The Devil Loves Me (1942)

  Inspector Sands Mysteries

  Wall of Eyes (1943)

  The Iron Gates [Taste of Fears] (1945)

  Volume II

  Fire Will Freeze (1944)

  Experiment in Springtime (1947)

  The Cannibal Heart (1949)

  Do Evil in Return (1950)

  Rose’s Last Summer (1952)

  Volume III

  Vanish in an Instant (1952)

  Wives and Lovers (1954)

  Beast in View (1955)

  An Air That Kills (1957)

  The Listening Walls (1959)

  Volume IV

  A Stranger in My Grave (1960)

  How Like an Angel (1962)

  The Fiend (1964)

  Beyond This Point Are Monsters (1970)

  Volume V

  Tom Aragon Novels

  Ask for Me Tomorrow (1976)

  The Murder of Miranda (1979)

  Mermaid (1982)

  Volume VI

  Banshee (1983)

  Spider Webs (1986)

  The Couple Next Door: Collected Short Mysteries (2004)

  It’s All in the Family (1948) (semi-autobiographical children’s novel)

  Volume VII

  The Birds and the Beasts Were There (1968) (memoir)

  For more information visit www.syndicatebooks.com

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