Hunger and the Hate

by Dixon, H. Vernor

  “Yes. She pretends to be so innocent and helpless, and Steve, the poor fool, falls for it. The little conniver!”

  Dean thought, Oh-oh, here it comes. “Is that so?” he asked.

  “Like this morning. We were all supposed to go in the station wagon. But Betty managed to stall and stall and then it was time to pick you up and she still wasn’t ready. So she got Steve to tell me to run along and get you and they’d meet us at the ranch later. Very clever, I must say.”

  Dean blinked at her without understanding. “I don’t get it.”

  “Oh, it’s simple, really. Steve and I see each other so rarely and we spend such little time together, but she resents even that. So she maneuvered it so we’d travel in separate cars.” She paused, then said bitterly, “She just doesn’t like us to be together. I suppose it makes her feel like an outsider, which she certainly is.”

  Dean suggested mildly, “Maybe she just enjoys her husband’s company — alone.”

  “Oh, don’t be an ass. It’s jealousy, that’s all. Really, now, can you imagine a woman being jealous of her husband’s sister?”

  She fell into silence, brooding over it. Dean thought of the conversation with the Mitchells the night before and doubted that Betty was the jealous one. Obviously, there was considerable strain and tension between the two women. Poor Steve, he thought. It must be rough on him.

  Truly started up into the rolling foothills. The road wound about and into and out of canyons, climbing steadily farther up and into the hills. They left the main road and turned through a whitewashed arch into Davenport’s private dirt road. They climbed again for another half mile around the brow of a hill and came out on top in a lush meadow that was dotted with gnarled oak trees. From that eminence they could look out over the pool-table flatness of Salinas Valley and west to Monterey Bay and the ocean. It was a breath-taking view and Truly paused for a moment to drink it in, then drove on to the ranch at the edge of the meadow.

  It was known as Habeus Corpus Acres. Clyde even had his black Aberdeens branded with HCA. It tickled his sense of humor and gave him something to joke about with his guests and clients.

  There was a large barn shielded by a thick stand of eucalyptus trees, a milking shed, a tool shed, and various other utility sheds, and a number of corrals made of peeled eucalyptus logs. The stables were apart from the other buildings, a long row of a dozen stalls, painted red with white trim and a split-shake roof. Clyde owned only three Palominos, but on guest days he borrowed horses from neighboring ranchers and filled the stables and corrals. The ranch house itself was just beyond the stables, located where it had a clear sweep of the panoramic view. It was of typical California-Monterey style, built of large adobe bricks painted white, redwood posts and beams, and a red-tiled roof. It was in the form of an open rectangle built around a central patio that was dominated by a giant oak growing in the center. Under the tree were barbecue pits and ovens and grills and long redwood tables with narrow benches. Three Mexican servants were already busy at the tables and preparing the coals for the barbecue.

  Truly parked her car among a dozen other automobiles and she and Dean strolled into the patio. There were about thirty guests milling about, all in Western clothes, each with a tall pewter cup holding Clyde’s prized mint julep. Though he had never been near the state, Clyde claimed to have picked up the recipe in Virginia from an old Confederate colonel. He had really found it in a novel he had once read, but the recipe was right, and it was an excellent drink.

  Dean lost Truly almost at once. Clyde had no sooner greeted her than she was surrounded by a covey of women who had to tell her how sorry they were about her father’s death, but who also wasted no time launching forth into more interesting subjects. Then, when Steve and Betty arrived, she attached herself to them and wandered off to the stables. Dean was amused to notice that when all the riders were mounted, Truly was at Steve’s side in the front of the crowd and Betty was hopelessly involved with two women at the rear.

  Elsie Davenport led the parade of riders away from the ranch for their canter through the hills. She was a small woman weighing less than a hundred pounds who looked like a midget at her husband’s side. She was a homely woman with protruding eyes, a hawklike nose, and lips so thin they were hardly lips at all, but she had a trim little figure. She gave riding the credit for her slimness, and she rode all the time. She enjoyed especially the Sunday breakfast rides with a crowd of people behind her. It was the single spot of color in an otherwise drab life.

  Dean had fully intended going along for the ride, but as he started for a horse Clyde grabbed his arm and told him, “You stay here with me. We got things to talk over, and when they all get back we won’t have time.”

  Dean was disappointed, but he smiled as he watched the others ride away. If anyone else had been around, he knew that Clyde would have said, “We ain’t agonna have time.”

  The two of them walked back to the patio, now empty of guests, and Dean dropped down in the sun-warmed grass. Clyde went into the house and came out with some champagne and brandy. He mixed a drink for Dean and joined him on the lawn with a mint julep in his own hand. He chewed at a blade of grass for a long while, gazing thoughtfully off into the distance.

  At length he turned his huge bulk sideways to lean on an elbow and told Dean, “I had a talk with Herman Metzner last night. He’s a worried man.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He thought he had things all wrapped up with Steve Moore, but now he’s worried again.”

  “Did he tell you anything?”

  “Sure. I’m his attorney, too. He told me about your offer and he told me about Steve’s.”

  “That’s why you invited Steve to be here today. Am I right?”

  Clyde frowned and looked uncomfortable, but admitted, “In a way. I did have some sort of idea of talking things over with him. Then I got thinking about it, and when I saw you drive in with the Moore gal I had the answer to the whole situation.”

  “What kind of answer?”

  “Well, let’s take first things first. That plant of Metzner’s has four tubes. That’s a lot to keep running. You can do it with your volume and Steve can do it. So can some of the others, but they have too many interests and too damned much dough wrapped up in ice plants and packing sheds. Even Steve is wrapped up the same way, though he’s willing to take a gamble on breaking loose and going all out for dry pack. But when you come right down to it, you’re the only man in the valley big enough and free enough to make the switch and take over without losing a dime.”

  “That’s what I told Herman. He wouldn’t listen. He went for Steve’s stupid idea.”

  “Sure. Because with Steve he’d still be in business. The way you’d take over would be with Metzner out in the cold. After all, Dean, be reasonable. Herman would like to come out of that deal with something in his pocket to show for it.”

  “The hell with him.”

  “Now, don’t think of it that way. I’ll tell you something. I’m violating the confidence of a client, you understand — ”

  “It won’t be the first time, and you wouldn’t be doing it now if there wasn’t something in it for you. Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  Clyde picked a fresh blade of grass to chew on and said, “Herman is afraid of the Moore outfit now that Freeman has walked out.”

  Dean burst out laughing. “By God, I should have thought of that.”

  “Sure. The whole deal hinged on the Moore profits taking care of Herman’s bank notes. But who knows what those profits are going to be, if any, with Freeman out and Steve trying to run things? So, naturally, now Herman is worried again. He’ll still go for the deal, but he isn’t liking it, not one bit. It isn’t likely that Steve will make the grade his first year in the business. He’ll be doing good if he just comes out with a whole skin. Maybe next year, or the year after that, O.K., he may make out all right, but for this year he isn’t about to come up with any surplus profits. Herman has to count on those profits. So
where does that leave him?”

  “Pretty shaky.”

  “O.K.” Clyde sat up, lifted his drink from the grass, and took a large swallow. He heaved a sigh of pleasure and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “O.K. Now we come to you. You can move in, and with your whole output going through that plant, regardless of profits, there’s no doubt the notes will be picked up as they fall due. You’ll have to beat the drum to sell so much dry pack on the market, but I don’t think you’d have any worries there.”

  “The whole business is swinging that way.”

  “I agree. So with you the plant is sound, the bank is happy, and it’s a going proposition. The only fly in the ointment is to get the thing away from Metzner. He won’t go for the deal you offered.”

  “He’ll have to. The bank won’t string along with him any more.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. With this Moore tie-up the bank will go along at least another two months. At the end of that time, of course, Metzner may go down the drain. Meanwhile, if you want it, you have to make a more sensible offer to the old boy. He’s willing to go for anything reasonable.”

  “What would that be?”

  “I have a hunch that if you pay him fifty grand in cash and let him retain a twenty-per-cent interest in the plant, he’ll go for it.” He paused, then added dryly, “That, of course, is in addition to the five per cent you’ll give me for handling the deal.”

  Dean started to burn, but there was nothing he could do about it. Clyde was not talking things over, nor was he feeling him out. He and Metzner had clearly thrashed the whole thing out the night before. The package was wrapped up and waiting to be delivered. And there would be no bargaining over it. When Clyde Davenport went into a deal, he always cut it down to its fundamentals, and there was never anything left to argue about. It was either accept it or forget it.

  Dean glared at him. “You really are a prize son-of-a-bitch. You got about as much right to that five per cent as one of your own cow hands. Metzner’s a fool. If he had come straight to me there wouldn’t be a cut for you in this.”

  Clyde chortled with hearty laughter. “You know me, boy. Now, then, do I talk it over with Herman?”

  Dean stretched out on his back, clasped his hands behind his head, and thought it over. If he waited for Metzner to get hurt, he might get a better deal. On the other hand, if Steve could take care of the notes, he might not get another chance at it. The main thing was to cut out the Moore outfit. That could be done right now if he acted.

  “O.K.,” he said. “Have Herman in your office tomorrow afternoon and work it out with him. Don’t pull me in on any of it until you have it all on paper. You’re going to work for that five per cent, you bastard.”

  Clyde looked away to hide a sudden gleam of triumph in his eyes and Dean guessed at the rest of the truth. Metzner, too, was probably giving him 5 per cent of the total out of his interests to swing the deal for him. Neither one needed the man, but now that he was in there was no way to get rid of him. Clyde would wind up with 10 per cent of the business for doing virtually nothing. Dean accepted it, there was no help for it, but he wondered how he could get even.

  They talked over various details until it was almost time for the riders to return; then Clyde got busy with his helpers about the barbecue pits. He wore a white chef’s cap perched high on his head and an apron wrapped around his barrel-like middle with the printed words: “Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.” Clyde presided over his grills and griddles as happy as a small boy making mud pies in the back yard.

  Dean helped one of the Mexicans roll out a barrel of cold beer, then stood out in front of the ranch house to watch the riders coming in. He saw that Betty Moore had somehow managed to ride with her husband, or at least to finish the ride with him. Truly was the last one in. She stepped down from her saddle, slapped the horse into a corral, and walked fast through the meadow grass toward the patio. She turned when she saw Dean and stopped before him. Her gray eyes were smoldering with anger and her skin was oddly pale.

  Dean asked, “Have a good ride?”

  She glanced toward Steve and Betty, walking in the middle of the crowd toward the patio, then back at Dean. “It was all right. A bit childish, though. Put a middle-aged man on a horse and he seems to think he’s Roy Rogers. They bore me.”

  “I guess we all have that streak. Most people take it out watching Western movies. But here we can really play at it. I kind of like it, at times. Until I start thinking.”

  “Of what?”

  “When I was fifteen years old I was a fence rider for the Delaney spread down at King City. I thought it was great, for a while. I rolled my own cigarettes and slept on the ground at night and cooked my meals over a small fire like an Indian. I was just a kid and it was fun. Then it got to be a job.” He rolled up his sleeves and showed her dozens of tiny white scars on his forearms. “Barbed wire,” he explained, rolling his sleeves down again. “You don’t know how vicious that stuff is until you have to work with it on cattle fences. Every time you turn your back, it whips out and rips you somewhere. I have these scars all over me. It was really a job.”

  The anger faded a bit and she appeared interested. “Then you really worked at being a cowboy.”

  “For a little over a year, yeah. I got to hate the job, but the depression was still on and I had to stick with it. Thirty-five bucks a month and found. And, of course, horses. God,” he chuckled, “don’t ever get me going on horses! You know that famous painting of the battlefield with a horse standing by the side of his fallen rider?”

  She smiled and nodded. “I’ve seen it.”

  “Sheer propaganda. I never saw a horse yet that wouldn’t desert his rider at the drop of a hat. They’ll kick you in the head if you aren’t looking and bite your fingers off if you are. They’ll shy at practically anything, they get frightened over things that wouldn’t bother a mongrel dog, and they’re so dumb you can teach more tricks to almost any animal living than you can to a horse. But there’s one good thing about that. A man a tenth of a horse’s size can master the beast. If a horse had any brains he’d kill any man who got anywhere near him. Maybe that would have been a good thing. We’d probably have had automobiles much sooner.”

  “So that’s why you stayed here. You don’t like to ride.”

  “That wasn’t it. I had some business to talk over with Clyde.”

  “Oh.”

  She stood there with him in the grass, while the guests were assembling at the tables, her eyes fixed on Betty and Steve as they helped themselves at the beer barrel. She was again angry and Dean was curious.

  “Trouble?” he asked.

  She flashed him an irritated glance and snapped, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  She started walking toward the barbecue pit and Dean followed. Clyde yelled at them, “Come and get it, folks. These vittles are simply dyin’ to be et. Fall to and help yourself. Ain’t ho standin’ on ceremony around here.” He roared with laughter and nudged a Mexican helper with his elbow and the Mexican smiled shyly, but with embarrassment.

  Dean and Truly found an open space on a bench directly across from Steve and Betty. The Mexicans were putting platters on the tables heaped with fried eggs, baked potatoes, bacon, buckwheat cakes, cooked green tomatoes, and barbecued chops and slices of ham. Elsie brought out hot rolls and biscuits from the house kitchen, with honey and jams and jellies. Country-style coffeepots were placed along the tables and before each plate were old-fashioned coffee mugs. Mugs of beer were passed up and down the tables from hand to hand, rarely ever full when they reached the person for whom they were destined. Dean smiled. There was no lettuce in sight, and yet everyone in the patio, in some manner or other, made his living from lettuce.

  Dean listened to the conversations swirling about him and occasionally took part, but his attention was focused on a more immediate tableau, what he thought of as the Moore triangle. Steve seemed unaware of any tension between his wife and his sister. Dean noticed that Be
tty and Truly, however, were in a world of their own, far removed from the hilarity in the sun-flooded patio. He could almost feel the waves of dislike that ebbed back and forth between them.

  At one point Truly leaned over the table and remarked smilingly to her sister-in-law, “You should ride more often, darling. Or was that fall accidental?”

  Betty bit her lip and brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry about that. I’m not really used to the Western saddle.”

  “But, my dear, it’s like a rocking chair. Even a child can stay in it. Poor Steve. He really thought you were hurt.”

  Betty lowered a hand to rub her hip and said, “I was.”

  “Oh, nonsense. You’re too small to be hurt by a fall. You know, that has always amazed me, why men as tall as Steve marry such little women. One would think they’d prefer women that really are women. Perhaps, though, the clinging-vine type has a certain appeal to big men.”

  Betty’s face colored as she said, “I’ve never considered myself the clinging-vine type.”

  “Well, naturally, my dear, I didn’t mean it that way — exactly.”

  Dean also noticed that it was Truly that kept Steve’s plate full. She would pass him a bowl with the remark, “You do like these melon rinds so,” or she would put more bacon on his plate and say smilingly, “You were always so fond of bacon.” Betty was excluded, as if she could have no possible idea of what her husband’s likes or dislikes might be.

  Toward the end of the meal, Truly glanced down the table toward one of the women and said to Betty, “That Mrs. Wright’s hair is such a terribly mousy shade. Don’t you think?”

  Betty frowned and shrugged. “I guess she likes it that way.”

  Truly leaned back and appraised Betty’s hair, as if seeing it for the first time. “But, now that I think of it, it’s a bit like yours. Remarkable. You should really do something about it, darling.”

  Steve turned about with a grin and asked, “Do something about what?”

  Betty replied sweetly, “Truly thinks I should change my hair.”