Julie

by Catherine Marshall

  He led us down the porch steps and along a narrow boardwalk to point out the cottages scattered through the woods. The first had mustard-yellow shutters and a sign over the front steps that read Sunflower. Margo caught my eye and guffawed. “Each house is named after a different flower,” she explained. “Where would you rather live? In a Pansy or a Delphinium?”

  Mr. Wilkinson chuckled. “Sounds a trifle coy, doesn’t it?”

  As he led us back toward the inn, our host was less talkative. “All this wealth bothers you, doesn’t it, Miss Wallace?”

  I took a deep breath, not aware that my inner feelings had come through so strongly. “Yes, it does. There are so many people right here in Alderton who don’t have enough to eat.” I told him about the long lines in front of the National Recovery Administration soup kitchen.

  The Englishman did not reply. Determined not to be a gushing schoolgirl, was I instead coming off as disagreeable? The whole day was turning out so strangely. Mr. Wilkinson was probably eager to get rid of us.

  He remained urbane and gracious, however, as we continued the tour. He told us that the original dam on the lake had been finished in 1854. Eight years later a big section of it had collapsed, fortunately at a time when the lake was only half full, so there’d been little flooding. The Pennsylvania Railroad had purchased the property in 1881, reinforced the dam, dug a channel to divert the overflow into a different stream, and built the original inn as a resort area for its executives.

  Then in 1926, the lake, the dam and some six hundred surrounding acres were sold to fifteen wealthy Pennsylvania industrialists, headed by Thomas McKeever, Sr. The Hunting and Fishing Club had had its official opening in the summer of 1927.

  The Englishman led us down an almost perpendicular path beside a spillway to the base of the dam, where little rivulets of seepage flowed into the creek bed.

  “If the dam broke once,” I asked, “how can you be sure it’s safe now?”

  “It’s inspected twice a month.” He looked at his watch. “Now, is there anything else I can show you young ladies?”

  A trace of formality had crept in. The tour was over. But at least, I thought, we were now young ladies, not girls. As the three of us scrambled back up the steep incline to the parking lot, I felt irked at myself. Mr. Wilkinson had been warm and friendly; I had been testy. What could I say to retrieve the situation?

  I drew a deep breath. “Mr. Wilkinson, you’ve been so kind to us. I’m sorry if I seemed—well, difficult. It’s just that I have strong convictions about certain things and they seem to spill out.”

  He gave me a searching look. “Don’t ever apologize for having strong convictions, Miss Wallace. We could use more of that here.”

  He turned to Margo. “I hope events conspire to bring you here to work again next summer.”

  He paused, reflecting. “It’s too splendid a day just to motor back to town. Feel free to roam the grounds.”

  “We’d like that,” I told him. “May we find a spot to spread out our picnic lunch?”

  The Englishman looked surprised. “Oh, indeed so! Quite. I’ll try to inform James, the grounds man”—the clipped accent took on a teasing note—“that you’re legitimate guests.”

  It was almost two o’clock and Margo and I were famished. Taking the picnic basket and a blanket out of the car, we headed back toward the dam. We skidded again down the hillside to the base of the immense structure and began walking along the creek formed by water discharged from the spillways on either side of the dam. On ahead the stream curved to the left in a channel that had obviously been widened and deepened by earth-moving machinery. For a hundred yards or so, the right-hand ridge of this man-made streambed was reinforced by a high concrete retaining wall.

  It was Margo who spotted the enchanting nook in a nearby wooded area. The gold and brown autumn foliage formed a canopy overhead, and the ground was covered with moss and bracken. “It’s like a little woodland room,” I enthused.

  I spread out the blanket while Margo unwrapped the sandwiches and poured root beer into collapsible tin cups. I took deep gulps of the crisp fall air. Perhaps here I could find some of the peace and joy that had eluded me all day.

  Margo was staring at me, a quizzical expression on her face. “You don’t care much for this place, do you, Julie?”

  “I thought I would. I’ve looked forward for weeks to coming. But there’s something about the atmosphere that’s depressing.”

  “What about Randolph Wilkinson?”

  “I like him. He’s very nice.”

  “You didn’t show it.”

  I munched on my sandwich moodily, wondering why suddenly I had become so outspoken. “I guess I don’t like the way wealthy people fling money around on silly things.”

  “He’s used to that. He comes from a wealthy family.”

  “What about your family, Margo?” I knew my friend led a lonely life at home. “Your mother—when did she die?”

  “Almost a year and a half ago. The end of my sophomore year.”

  “What happened, Margo?”

  “She was going to have a baby, but she had a miscarriage. And then she died. A traveling blood clot, they said.”

  As I cut an apple in two and gave Margo half, I tried to visualize what it would be like to have one’s mother there one day and gone—forever—the next. Despite the recent tensions, my parents had always been so—there.

  “You have no brothers or sisters?”

  “I did have a brother. He died when I was five. Now there’s just my father and me. We come and go. Dad gives me too much freedom, but he doesn’t have much choice. We live separate lives.”

  Our lunch finished, Margo lit a cigarette, then lay back on the bracken-covered ground. As I stretched out beside her, I wondered why in the short time we had been in Alderton I felt so attracted to Margo. One reason had to be her frankness about her own weaknesses and blunders. This drew me because my inclination was to protect myself and guard against the intensity of my feelings. Little chance that other people would understand the deep passion I could feel over this idea or that cause.

  Margo’s voice brought me back. “You should wear more makeup, Julie. A little eyebrow pencil would set off those lovely eyes of yours.”

  “I never thought about it.” I didn’t tell her that my parents had held out against even the palest shade of lipstick until recently, and were strongly against smoking. Nor did I say anything about my resolve to lose weight. I would just do it, not talk about it.

  We lay there for a few minutes until we both suddenly realized we were shivering. All at once the woodland cranny had a gloomy, foreboding feel. The bracken-covered undergrowth, which had seemed so inviting, now appeared to be littered with dying things intertwined with the snakelike roots of mountain grapevine.

  “Margo, let’s get out of here.”

  We snatched up the picnic things and retraced our steps up the rechanneled stream. At the base of the dam I looked up at the towering embankment, which was all but covered with saplings, shrubs, small pines. With the sun under a cloud, the dam suddenly took on a new shape—it was like the back of a dark, hairy, headless beast. I stared, shivered, closed my eyes. We began climbing quickly up the path beside the spillway.

  “Hey, you down there!”

  We jumped at the sound of the gruff masculine voice. A heavyset man in stained corduroy pants and a dark shirt stood rocking unsteadily on the roadway above us, holding a hunting rifle over one arm.

  “Didn’t ya see the No Trespassing signs? This is private property.”

  “Mr. Wilkinson invited us here,” I told him.

  “Don’t believe ya. Nobody told me nothing.”

  “Then go ask Mr. Wilkinson.”

  “I’ll ask nobody nothing. I’m the watchman here and my orders are to keep off all trespassers. And that means you. Now git—and don’t never come back.”

  Frightened now, we struggled, panting, up to the level of the lake. As we headed toward the park
ing lot, frustration over the whole day welled up inside me. Rashly, I turned and shouted at the watchman, “You’re drunk!”

  He raised his gun and fired. A branch splintered off a tree to our right.

  “Let’s get out of here—fast,” Margo gasped as we reached the parking lot.

  Quickly we jumped into the car, the engine roared to life, and we zoomed up the dirt road onto Route 143.

  On Sunday the Wallace cash situation was so desperate that Father called another family meeting to explain a new, stringent family budget: for the time being, no use of the Willys, no purchases of anything but basic food supplies.

  When I arrived at the Sentinel after school Monday, I could hear Dad’s voice and Miss Cruley’s through the thin partition of the Editor’s sanctum. Proofs for the week’s paper were spread out on what I grandly called my desk. This was a rickety wooden table against the side wall outside the Editor’s office. With it was a bent metal chair, which Dean Fleming had scrounged, along with the table, from the third-floor storage area. The prize feature of the table for me was that it had a drawer, too small for my schoolbooks but large enough to hold paper and writing tools.

  I was halfway down the first sheet when I realized that the conversation behind the closed door concerned me.

  “. . . never works,” Miss Cruley’s voice piped, “hiring members of one’s family. Nepotism can spoil any business.”

  Struggling not to listen, I consulted my list of proofreader’s marks. Soon I would have them memorized.

  “Nepotism is far too grand a word, Emily.” The Editor’s voice sounded tired. “The Sentinel is not Yoder Steel.”

  “Same principle. No difference between a small business and a large one. Everybody means well at the beginning. But then the boss starts making concessions because it’s his daughter or his brother or his cousin or his wife. Never works, I tell you.”

  “In theory,” I heard Father reply, “I couldn’t agree more. What I still haven’t communicated to you is that I have no choice here: there simply isn’t any money to hire outside help.”

  Here an idea apparently struck Dad. “Emily, you don’t think I’m paying the members of my family to work here, do you?”

  “How would I know? That was not discussed.”

  “Well, I’m not. We make it together as a family or we fail.” There was a short silence.

  “Well,” Miss Cruley concluded, “I’m sorry for you. Sorry for the paper.”

  My father’s voice lifted. “I do have some good news for you, Emily. Since I’m asking you to take on more responsibility, I’m raising your salary one dollar a week beginning next paycheck.”

  Another silence. Then, “I’m obliged to you for that. It’s hard to make ends meet nowadays. You’ll get your money’s worth.”

  “I’m sure I will,” Father responded. “I’m counting heavily on your experience and know-how. Just give us a chance, Emily.” A scraping of chairs and then Miss Cruley emerged and crossed to her desk with the merest nod at me. For an hour the three of us worked in silence, each at his own desk. I could hear every squeak of my father’s chair through the flimsy wall, the rattle of his papers, even the scratch of his pen. I had a sudden longing to confide in him about my Saturday experience at the Hunting and Fishing Club. As far back as I could remember, Dad’s masculine strength and the assurance of his loving concern about anything that troubled me had represented my whole security. His illness had changed that, shown me a man filled with doubts and unsteady emotions. What a devastating disease malaria was . . .

  Impulsively I rose, tapped on the door and opened it. “Dad, may I interrupt for just a minute?”

  “Sure, Julie. My thoughts aren’t coming too well anyhow.” He took off his reading glasses and placed them on his desk.

  “It’s about last Saturday. Something I haven’t told you—” Dad swiveled his chair around and leaned back. “Sit down, Julie. What’s on your mind?”

  “After Mr. Wilkinson showed us the grounds, Margo and I had a picnic lunch in the woods down below the dam. Dad, did you ever have a feeling inside that something’s wrong and you’re not sure what? Sort of like a warning?”

  “Yes-s, once in a while.”

  “Well, it was like that when we were at the dam.”

  “Be more specific, Julie.”

  “It’s just—not like I think a dam should look. All those things growing out if it.”

  “It’s an earthen dam, Julie. Wherever you’ve got earth, plants are going to grow.”

  “I suppose I thought all dams were made of stone blocks or concrete—something solid like that.”

  “Mercy, no! Matter of fact, the earthen dam is the classic kind. It’s only in the past fifty years that masonry and concrete have begun to replace them. My Uncle Whit taught me a lot about dams. He was an engineer, you know, the uncle I worked for, summers, as a teenager.”

  “What I don’t understand is how just piled-up dirt can hold back such a lot of water.”

  The Editor swiveled the chair and leaned forward. “Earthen dams can be surprisingly strong, especially when reinforced with puddle or masonry or—”

  “What’s puddle?”

  The Editor threw back his head and laughed. “Julie, you’ve got the tenacity of a bulldog. Puddle’s a gravel and clay mixture.”

  “Okay,” I admitted. “I know nothing about dams except that this one gives me a funny feeling.”

  Dad pulled his watch out of his vest pocket, looked at it and rose to his feet. “Your imagination is running wild again, Julie, but at least you’ve gotten me interested in the Kissawha construction. When I can afford to run the Willys again, I’ll drive up and take another look. Now I’ve got to go to Exley’s Drug Store and see Mike Dugan about an ad.”

  “One more thing before you go, Dad. I can quit school and work here full-time if you need me.”

  My father’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. He shook his head firmly, patted me on the shoulder, and hurried out the door.

  For another hour I concentrated on my proofreading. I had just started on the advertisements when I heard the front door open. Looking up, I was stunned to see Randolph Wilkinson.

  Hastening to straighten up my pile of proofs, my hand knocked over the inkwell. Clumsy oaf, I chided myself as I reached for old newsprint to sop up the spilled ink. Mr. Wilkinson exchanged a few words with Miss Cruley, then headed for my work table. The proofs were ink-spotted and my hands were a mess.

  He paused in front of me, his hazel eyes pleasant, his reddish-blond hair windblown. Then he stuck out his hand. “Hallo, Julie.”

  My pulse was racing and I felt ridiculous. “Mr. Wilkinson, I can’t shake hands with you. Mine is covered with ink.”

  A smile crossed his face. “Proves you’re a real newspaper reporter.”

  I sighed. “I wish it did. What it really proves is that I’m a clumsy proofreader.”

  His eyes studied me. “And an honest proofreader too.”

  Again I felt the warmth creeping up my cheeks. Why couldn’t I be relaxed, witty, composed? “My father will be back shortly,” I told him, trying to steer the conversation into other channels. “It isn’t your father I came to see, Julie.

  “Did you and your friend enjoy your stroll around the Club last Saturday?”

  How much should I tell him? “We had a very nice picnic, thank you.”

  The Englishman’s penetrating gaze held mine. “Was everything really all right?”

  “Nearly everything. Your grounds man wasn’t glad to see us.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Oh—asked us to leave.”

  “I’m so sorry. James can be churlish. I rang him up when I got back to the inn to tell him we had guests on the grounds, but his phone didn’t answer. Julie, did James do anything, other than ask you and Miss Palmer to leave?”

  I felt trapped. No matter how nasty the watchman had been, I hesitated to get him in trouble. But I wasn’t going to lie about it. “I think he had been dr
inking. He fired his gun. Off into the woods. Just wanted to scare us, I think.”

  “I thought so! I could have sworn I heard a shot. James isn’t good for anything when he’s been tippling. Which is most of the time. He’s got to be sacked.”

  “Please, Mr. Wilkinson, not because of us.”

  “Yes, Julie. Because of you and the other incidents that are bound to follow if we keep him.”

  His manner grew formal. “On behalf of the Club, I offer my apologies, Miss Wallace. Please tell Miss Palmer too. I hope this hasn’t spoilt the place for you both.” He paused. “I’m leaving for England, as you know, but I’ll return the middle of March. I hope you’ll come back and see us in the spring.”

  “Thank you,” I managed to murmur.

  With a sigh, I wondered if I would ever learn to be poised with a man like Randolph Wilkinson.

  Or even Graham Gillin.

  I had been startled in school earlier that week when Graham stopped me in the hall and asked if I would like to go to the movies with him this coming Saturday.

  “Well, I guess so, Graham. I mean, thank you—yes.”

  He seemed amused at my confusion and I was furious with myself. Why did I have to act so dumb? Graham Gillin was fullback on the high school football team; he was big; strong and good-looking, with blond crew-cut hair, popular with both girls and boys.

  At seven-thirty Saturday night he picked me up in his bright green Dodge roadster. Inwardly I rejoiced that I had lost five pounds since coming to Alderton.

  The Palace Theater was a hangout for high school students on weekend nights. It had a balcony where the older kids flocked because smoking was allowed there and couples could neck a little, if they weren’t too obvious.

  The movie was It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Graham had led me to the top of the balcony. No sooner were we seated than he placed an arm over the back of my seat. When the picture began, I forgot everything else. Clark Gable became Randolph Wilkinson. There was no physical resemblance, but the same sophistication, the same charm—things I’d never before encountered off the screen. I of course became Claudette Colbert. Never had I so lost myself in a movie, especially the scene on the bus when the cold, haughty Colbert awakes after a nap to find herself snuggled in the arms of Clark Gable. When the movie was over, I found that I had moved close to Graham Gillin and was clutching his hand.