The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  “It’s getting awfully late,” Day observed. “Shouldn’t we…don’t you think we ought to be getting out of here?”

  “I just wonder where that cellar hole is,” Diana said, looking around.

  “Maybe all the houses didn’t have cellars,” he said.

  “That’s a fortuitous explanation,” she said. “And gratuitous too.”

  “It’s too dark to search any more now,” he said. Then, as if in consolation, he added, “We could come back….”

  “When?” she wanted to know.

  “Well…” he scratched a mosquito bite on the back of his neck “…whenever you want to, I guess.”

  She turned her back to him for a last glance at the lovely mountain laurel. Without facing him, she asked, “Did you want to go back to New Jersey tonight?” She might have been alone, asking the question of the woods.

  “Well…” he stumbled, clearly uncomfortable, “I…I didn’t know what you had in mind. I guess so, yes. I thought we were just coming up here for the day, and now the day’s almost over. I…”

  She turned. “Let’s go find something to eat, and then we can talk about it. I’m famished.”

  Full dark settled on the woods before they reached her car. Hiking back up the Dudleytown Road in the dark was difficult; she tripped on rocks and stepped in mudholes up to her ankles. From a tree overhead an owl hooted like a horn out of hell and momentarily petrified her. Day, too, jumped, but then he laughed and told her what it was.

  The dark bulk of the car loomed in its glade like a welcome oasis. She was so glad to be back to it that after getting in she just sat for a moment relishing the comfort of the soft bucket seat and letting the cool evening air dry the sweat on her brow. She found a pack of cigarettes in the glove compartment and lighted one, and never had a cigarette tasted so good. If only she had a drink. She decided to find one as soon as possible. She started the car and drove quickly out of Dudleytown.

  In the village of Cornwall Bridge, everything was dark and closed; the Bonny Brook Motel did not seem to have any restaurant attached. She wondered where the nearest eatery was. If she had crossed the bridge, she would have found on the opposite bank of the Housatonic the “Elms Restaurant,” a small Coca-Cola-type roadside cafe where they could have had, if not drinks, a decent supper, but she did not know that, and would have to find some other place. She pulled up alongside an outdoor phone booth next to Monroe’s General Store, and consulted the yellow pages, looking under “Inns.” The first entry was “McDonough Motor Lodge, Cornwall Bridge.” Where was it? Had they passed it on Route 7, coming into the village? She believed they had, and drove out that way.

  It was a mile back down Route 7. She pulled into it and parked. The inn was a pretty, almost lavish place, converted from a colonial house, freshly painted red, and having the general appearance of an expensive country restaurant.

  “We can’t go in a place like that looking like this,” Day said.

  “Oh, why not? It’s Sunday night and nobody dresses up,” she said.

  “They’ll throw us out,” Day said. “Did you ever read about what happened to Justice Douglas of the Supreme Court and his friends when they tried to stop at that inn in Maryland after hiking in the rain?”

  “I don’t care, darn it,” she said. “I’m hungry and thirsty. I doubt if they have curb service, but maybe they could put up something to take out. Look, you just wait here and I’ll go see what I can see.”

  Diana got out of the car. She noticed that the motel units of the inn were in a separate row of red buildings topped with cupolas to look as if they had been converted from a carriage barn or stables. She went into the inn and found one room marked “Dining Room,” another marked “Bar”; she took the latter. There were only a few customers in the room, which was opulently decorated in colonial motifs with a militaristic aspect: guns and drums and wall decorations of soldiers and Indians. She caught sight of herself in a mirror: her stringy wet hair: she looked like a drowned Angora kitten. A man sitting at the bar began to stare at her. The bartender, or proprietor, or innkeeper, was nowhere in sight. She waited, as inconspicuously as possible, at one end of the bar. While she waited, she thought.

  Hunger and thirst often inspire one with desperate and even uncharacteristic stratagems. When a man finally appeared whom she took to be in charge, she asked him if they had any rooms.

  “Yes, we do,” he said pleasantly, looking her not in the eye but at the top of her wet hair. “Single or double?”

  She kept the ringless fingers of her left hand in her pocket to keep them out of sight and said, “Double.” For an instant she had wanted to say, “Two singles” but that would have seemed rather unusual.

  The man produced a card for her to fill out and sign. On impulse, she wrote “Mr. and Mrs. D.L. Montross.” She hoped that there weren’t any relatives or Montrosses still living in the neighborhood.

  “That your Porsche out there?” the man asked.

  “Yes it is,” she said.

  “Nice,” he said. “Very pretty.”

  “Is it possible,” she asked, “to have dinner in the rooms?” When the man looked up at her, she said, “You see, my husband and I have been out picking mountain laurel, and we got caught in the rain, and my husband twisted his ankle, and—”

  “Oh, certainly. Certainly,” the man said, and he handed her a key, and said, “that will be Unit 5. Just across the way there.”

  “Thank you,” she said and turned to go.

  The man stopped her. “Here’s a menu,” he said. “Just phone in whenever you like.”

  “Thank you,” she said again and returned to her car. She got in and backed it out of its parking place.

  “No curb service, huh?” Day said.

  “No,” she said and turned the car around to drive it close to Unit 5 of the motel wing on the other side of the lot.

  “Well, there’s bound to be a truck stop or something on down the highway,” Day said.

  “I’d rather eat here,” she said, pulling to a stop outside the doorway of Number 5, and hoping she wouldn’t have to do any explaining to Day, and hoping even more that he wouldn’t have any objections, or put up any argument, or have any scruples or whatever. If he got difficult, she told herself with a smile, she could always just put him to sleep with a few magic words.

  “What’s this?” Day said, as the car stopped, and she got out.

  “Our private dining room,” she said. “Come on. And just in case anybody’s looking, you’re supposed to have a twisted ankle, so limp, will you?”

  Day obligingly limped. She put the key into the lock and opened the door. It did not, unfortunately, look very much like a private dining room. It looked like a bedroom. There were twin beds, at least, amply separated. On the whole, the room was a very pleasant one; it was spacious and looked both comfortable and expensive, both of which it was.

  “Well well,” said Day, looking around. “Money will do anything, won’t it?”

  “That’s a boorish remark, sir,” she said. Then she sat on one of the beds and reached for the telephone. “The first thing I’m going to do,” she told him, “is have a drink. Do you want one?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’m so thirsty I could drink a barrel.”

  “Of what?” she said.

  “Pepsi Cola?” he said.

  “I’m going to have a big, double, frosty gin and tonic,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like one?”

  “Pepsi Cola is okay with me, if they have any,” he said.

  She picked up the phone and ordered one gin and tonic and one Pepsi Cola.

  Then there was the problem of dry clothes. Would it be fair of her to change, if he could not? Did she have anything he could wear? He was at least five inches taller than she, and, though thin, at least fifteen or twenty pounds heavier. Would anything fit him? Her raincoat, at least?

  “Would you bring in my luggage?” she asked. “No, I’m sorry, I forgot about your poor ankle, dear. I’ll get the
m.”

  “I’ll get them,” he said. “What’s supposed to be wrong with my poor ankle dear?”

  “You twisted it on our hike in the rain,” she said. “That’s why we have to eat in our room instead of the dining room.”

  “Oh, ow!” he said, rubbing his ankle. Then he took off his belt and began wrapping it carefully around the ankle in what seemed to be an official Boy Scout sprain-brace.

  She laughed. “That’s the wrong foot.”

  “Huh?” he said. “Did you have to specify which foot?” He laughed too, and wrapped the belt around the other ankle. “There,” he said. “That will hold it until you can get me to a doctor.” Then without levity he asked, “Did you tell them…did you have to say that I’m…you know, pretend that we’re…that…”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Montross,” she said. “Mountain laurel pickers.”

  There was a knock at the door, and a blonde waitress brought in a tray with their drinks. Day turned away from her and limped toward the bathroom. Diana searched her purse for change to tip the waitress, but decided to wait and put it on the larger tip for dinner.

  The waitress put the tray down and took out her order book. “Are you ready to order dinner?” she asked.

  “We just got here,” Diana said. “I’ll phone it in.”

  “Certainly,” the waitress said, and went away.

  Diana sipped her gin and tonic, lighted a cigarette, and studied the menu. She heard the toilet flush in the bathroom, and in another minute Day came out, and, still limping, went out the front door. He returned carrying both of her suitcases. “You want all that other junk brought in, too?” he asked.

  “What other junk?” she asked.

  “There’s a box of books, and some pictures and stuff…”

  “Oh, that’s just from cleaning out my room at the college,” she said. “Never mind that.”

  Day sat down across from her, on the other bed, and while she studied the menu he seemed to study the back side of the menu. Suddenly he said, “Well damn.”

  She looked up from the menu, astonished to hear his first cuss word. “Damn what?”

  He jerked the menu out of her hands and turned it over, showing her the reverse side. “Look,” he said. “Just look.”

  On the back of the menu was a map, a black and white spider web of roads and trails and streams. Upon the map was printed: “Dudleytown, 1747–1920.” Beneath that in large letters was:

  LEGEND OF DUDLEYTOWN

  followed by four paragraphs of text, with faulty punctuation and syntax:

  Supposedly doomed from its beginning, Dudleytown, located in Cornwall today consists of cellar foundations barely seen through forest growth. In its time Dudleytown supplied charcoal for the Salisbury Iron works a booming industry in the early 1800’s. The settlers were hard-bitter Puritan people who toiled ceaselessly at their charcoal pits. With the coming of improved Iron making techniques, Dudleytown days were numbered, but, it has been said that for more than economic factors were responsible for the death of the town.

  The Dudleys were a family of no little importance in England. The beginning of the 16th century, they had recurring periods of bad luck in which English Monarchs beheaded them. For the next 125 years misfortune plagued the inhabitants of the doomed town. The last American Dudley went mad and disease and famine depleted the population. When Horace Greely failed to win the Presidency the cause was rumored to be his Dudleytown bride.

  In 1901 the town was deserted and the area was called Owlsburg by the people of Cornwall because of it’s haunting sounds. The road leading to it is called Dark Entry.

  Today houses fringe its borders and hikers report nothing menacing inside it. If the Dudley curse is finally dead, or if it ever existed at all is a matter of question—some people disclaim talks of ghosts and the Dudleys doom, but the fact is that as yet nobody has tested it. Some surprises might be in store for the man who lives on the ground Abiel Dudley trod before him.

  “Makes it look like the local tourist attraction, doesn’t it?” Day remarked.

  Diana nodded. It was a shock, and a revelation for her, to see that the town which they had “discovered” after so much trouble was already discovered and exposed to anybody looking at the menu of a local inn. It dampened her enthusiasm. She could take the dampness of the rain but not this. Day as well seemed disappointed, and she found herself apologizing, “But we didn’t see any tourists or hikers.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “Because of the rain. But on clear days, you probably have to stand in line and buy a ticket.”

  “Oh, I doubt it,” she said. “We didn’t see any footprints or any sign of anybody having been there.”

  “The rain too,” he said, “would have washed any footprints away.”

  “Well,” she said, feeling somewhat exasperated, “shall we just forget the whole thing?” It was a rhetorical question and he did not make any reply. She reopened the menu and handed it to him. “Here,” she said, “we might as well salvage something out of this. What do you want to eat?”

  As he studied the menu, his eyebrows raised, probably at the prices. At length, he said, “I believe I’ll have the roast beef.”

  “You had roast beef for lunch,” she reminded him.

  “You’re right, I did, didn’t I?’ he said. “Well, hmmm. I guess I’ll take the veal scallopini.”

  “I will too, then,” she said. “Shall we have a wine? Or do you prefer Pepsi Cola?”

  “Iced tea,” he said.

  She phoned in the order. For herself she ordered a half-bottle of Antinori Classico, a Chianti.

  Then she opened one of her suitcases. She announced, “I’m going to shower and change into something dry.”

  She took a quick shower and put on one of her better summer dresses. For such a fancy dinner, even in your room, you ought to dress. Especially if your dinner companion is a poor teetotaling Boy Scout who has nothing to dress in. When she came out of the bathroom, she plugged in her hair dryer and put the net over her head. Then she reached over and took her London Fog raincoat out of the suitcase and tossed it to him. “Here,” she said. “See if this fits. You ought to get out of those wet clothes.”

  Thirteen

  A Rapport of Sorts Is Reached

  It was an excellent dinner, if a peculiar one. Day would not come out of the bathroom until the waitress and her cart were gone. Then, when he did appear, Diana tried hard not to laugh. Several inches of wrist protruded out of the sleeves of the raincoat, and he had to hold his breath to keep the front buttons from popping. Then he had to be careful how he sat, because he had nothing on underneath.

  They ate leisurely, but did not talk much. Diana remarked that her wine was a superb one, and wouldn’t he like to sample just a sip of it? He did, but did not seem to appreciate it very highly.

  At one point, he confessed, “I drank a beer, once.”

  “A whole bottle?” Diana said in pretended awe. “Did you pass out?”

  He frowned at her. “My parents drink,” he said. “But in New Jersey, you know, the legal age is twenty-one.”

  “I see,” she said. Boy Scouts take a pledge to be honest and trustworthy and all that. And Methodists take The Pledge, period. Probably Daniel Lyam Montross had been a drunkard, and was paying the price for it in his present incarnation.

  “I took some speed once, too,” he boasted.

  “Really?” she said. “Well, that’s something I’ve never tried.”

  “I didn’t like it, though,” he said.

  “I hear it’s sometimes quite unpleasant,” she said.

  “Yes. I’ll bet you’ve smoked pot, haven’t you?”

  “On occasion.”

  “Is that much fun?”

  “I’m not sure ‘fun’ is the word. I didn’t particularly like it, but on the other hand it didn’t seem to do much for me.”

  “I was offered some, once,” he admitted, “but I don’t smoke.”

  “I doubt you missed anything,�
�� she said.

  So went the tenor of their table talk. When they were finished eating—or rather, after Day finished his dessert, strawberry shortcake, which she did not have—she asked if he would care to find out if there was anything interesting on television. He turned the set on, and they watched the last twenty minutes of a variety show—acrobats, a talking dog, a weightlifter and two singers—then the eleven o’clock news and weather report. Clearing tomorrow.

  A late movie came on, but Diana turned the set off. “Let’s just talk,” she said. The gin and wine she’d had were making her feel very sociable.

  “Okay,” he said. “What about?”

  She sat on her bed, her back propped against the pillows and headboard. She lighted a cigarette, and after blowing out the match she looked at him and asked him, “Who are you?”

  “Me?” he said. “I’m Day Whittacker. Who are you?”

  “Diana Stoving,” she said. “I just graduated from Sarah Lawrence and I don’t know what to do. And I’m nearly twenty-two.”

  “I just graduated from East Passaic High School,” he said, “and I don’t know what to do either, although there’re lots of things I could be doing and should be doing but won’t because I can’t. I’m nearly nineteen.”

  “How do you do?”

  “Fine, thank you, so far, I guess. And you?”

  “When I was a little girl,” she said, “just three years old, my grandfather, whom I had never met before, abducted me.” Diana realized that the gin and the wine had made her just a little giddy. “He never harmed me,” she said, and realized that her eyes were wet, “but they had to kill him to get me back.”

  Day did not say anything, although his face was full of compassion. Diana knew that the only way she could keep the tears from leaving her eyes and rolling down her cheeks was to laugh, so she laughed, as hard as she could, and then said, still laughing, “So now I’ve abducted him. Isn’t that priceless?”