“Betsy has introduced me to her Pooh friends,” Jeanette said, “but I haven’t really been introduced to you yet. I’m afraid I was a little bit disoriented last night.”
“I’m Phil Ainsworth,” Phil said, stepping forward and holding out his hand. She hesitated, then shook it, smiling at him, and he wondered suddenly whether women from past centuries were in the habit of shaking hands at all.
“I’m Jeanette Saunders. I’d like to thank you for taking me in.”
“It’s my pleasure,” Phil said.
“This is an English muffin,” Betsy said to her, handing her the plate. “I had to tell her about granola bars, too. She knew about oatmeal, though.” She watched Jeanette eat half of the English muffin, then took the plate from her. “Good?” she asked.
“Wonderful,” Jeanette said.
They sat in silence for a time, and then Jeanette pointed toward the open window and the distant hills. “What do they call those hills?” she asked.
“The Peralta Hills,” Phil said.
“We called that higher one Robber’s Peak,” she said.
“We still do.”
“Can you see those big house-sized rocks on top, just to the right of the peak?” she asked.
“Yeah. They’re bigger than they look.”
“What do you call those? We called them Robber’s Lair.”
“Those are called Hermit’s Rocks now.”
“Hermit’s Rocks,” she said. “Do you know why?”
“There’s a cave notched out of the rock there, a little room. Supposedly a hermit lived there. He cut some of the stone away, squared out the cavern in one of the rocks.”
“I knew him. Paul Dubois. He was French. But he didn’t live there. Nobody lived there.”
“Okay. I’ve never seen any reference to his name. There’s not a lot of history written down about this area, actually. Just a few books, and most of them aren’t very good. Most of them sound like they were written by Sunday school teachers.”
“I’m a Sunday school teacher,” she said. “I was.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to insult Sunday school teachers.”
“I could tell you a tragedy about Paul Dubois. He actually lived in a cabin on the other side of Rattlesnake Hill. Do you still call it that, Rattlesnake Hill?”
“Yes. On maps it’s Rattlesnake Peak, but old-timers call it Rattlesnake Hill.”
“Old-timers,” she said, pausing afterward as if to think about the phrase. “Paul Dubois worked for the people whose ranch I lived on. He was a handsome man.”
“Was he?” Phil asked, suddenly conscious of the strangeness of the conversation. His late-night chat with the priest had prepared him for this kind of talk, but he still found it incredible.
“For a couple of summers he put out fence posts,” Jeanette said. “He died in a fall up in the rocks, actually. He was a good man, really. He tried to teach me French, but it didn’t stick. There was a tragedy connected to his death, actually—besides the death itself.”
Phil considered how to ask the questions that he had to ask. He would take the priest’s word for it that being too candid in his questioning wouldn’t make Jen any happier. “There was an object,” he said finally, “a glass object. I have to ask you about it, since it seems to be important to a number of people, and these people, apparently, think that you might possess it, that you might have … brought it along.”
“The blue crystal,” she said.
“That’s the one. I was told it was shaped like a dog lying down. There’s some idea, apparently, that you were carrying it when you went into the water that day.”
“Then whoever has that idea can look in the water for it. That’s what I would advise. They’re welcome to the blue glass dog. If I had ten glass dogs, they could have them all. And they’re welcome to the water, too. All of it, with my blessing.” She began to cry then, and Phil pretended to look out of the window. This was turning out to be awkward as hell; if he’d known how awkward it would be, he would have let the priest ask his own questions.
“You want it, too?” Jen asked after a moment.
“I don’t want your glass dog,” he said to Jen.
“Good,” she said. “You’re right not to want it.”
There was a long silence now. Betsy rearranged the things on the bedside table, then picked up Jen’s hand and slipped the hologram ring over one of her fingers. Jen smiled at her and regarded the ring. “Tell me something truthfully,” she said to Phil.
“All right.”
“Swear to it.”
“All right.”
“Are you a member of any secret societies?” She looked straight into his face, as if watching out for a lie.
“No,” he said, relieved. “I’m not a believer in secret societies, actually. I’m not even a member of any service clubs.”
“Service clubs?”
“Charitable organizations. I was making a joke. I’m sorry.”
She smiled at him. “It’s going to take me some time to catch up on jokes, I guess. Anyway, I shouldn’t have asked. You’re not the type. Are you familiar with something called the Societas Fraternia, though?”
“Yes, I’ve read a little about them. They fell apart sometime in the early 1920s I think. They lived in an old house in Placentia, which was torn down in the thirties. I have a photograph of it, actually, a newspaper photograph that was taken before it was leveled. Do you want to see it?”
“See it? No, I guess I don’t want to see it. The Societas no longer exists, then?”
“No. Not for … seventy-five years.”
Betsy got up now and headed across the room toward the door. “I’m going back down,” she said, nodding at Phil.
“Okay. Stick around close, all right?” She nodded again. “And I guess I don’t have to tell you to stay away from the well … ?”
“Don’t go anywhere near the well,” Jen said to her.
“I won’t. I’m not that dumb.”
“I know you’re not,” Phil said. “But I myself am going to say one more dumb thing before you go. Just in case you see anybody around the house or out in the grove or anything, come tell me. Don’t talk to strangers. And if there’s two boys hanging around out there, or if you see them down by the creek, come tell me about that, too. I$#8217;m not sure they’re as smart as you are.”
“Okay,” she said, and slipped out through the door, leaving it open behind her.
“What were we saying?” Phil asked.
“You were saying that the Societas was gone.” She sat back tiredly against the headboard and closed her eyes. “But I was wondering who it was that wanted the glass dog, if it wasn’t them. It was stolen from them, you know, from the Societas, with the idea of giving it to the mission priests at San Juan Capistrano.”
“Really? The priests wanted it, even back then?”
“Yes. And they weren’t the only ones.”
“Then I guess there’s no harm in telling you that the mission is still interested in it. This house has been used off and on as a rectory for local priests. For a few years it was owned by the church.”
She sat silently, looking out the window now.
“You know what’s funny?” she asked.
“What?”
“Paul Dubois, your hermit? I can picture his face quite clearly. I last saw him over a year ago, a few days before he died. He had actually been prospecting for silver up on the hill. There was a natural cavern in the rock, and he’d chipped it out with some idea of making a camp, you might say, that was out of the weather. Anyway, he was a living, breathing man, more real to me than you are. His life and my life were mixed up together. Not that we were lovers. But do you know what? He and May … he and your mother were lovers.”
Phil nodded.
“She bore his child. He died several months before. I don’t think he knew he had fathered a child. I guess I shouldn’t tell you all this, should I?”
“You should, actually. I’d like to k
now.”
“Now the world has completely forgotten Paul Dubois, hasn’t it? He’s barely even a memory. The man himself is gone, time out of mind. And May, too. You remember her, and … and maybe a few others, but things, people, simply vanish, don’t they? That’s hard, isn’t it? I think that’s hard.”
The question didn’t seem to him to want an answer, and he remained quiet, letting her talk as she gazed silently out the window for a moment. “I feel exactly like I’m alone in a small boat,” she said finally, “adrift in the middle of the ocean. That’s trite, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Phil said uneasily. “I guess it depends on what you mean by trite. Trite isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes it’s just the simple truth.”
She smiled at him now, then took off the plastic ring and set it onto the table again. “You’re really very kind,” she said. “And Betsy is wonderful. I think I’m just worn out right now, and when I get tired I start to feel poetic. That’s always time to stop talking, when you’re feeling poetic. It means you’re giddy.”
“I’ll let you rest.”
“I’ll get my bearings yet.”
He nodded, then turned to leave, then stopped again. “You know Betsy’s my niece?” he asked.
“I’ll bet that’s why she calls you Uncle Phil.”
“Almost certainly. I guess I should tell you, though, that her mother died recently, just a few days ago. She’s dealing with it pretty well, I think. I hope so, anyway. But I thought maybe you should know.”
“She told me,” Jen said to him. “She also told me that she likes it here. She said—how did she put it?—that this house is a golden house. A book she read once said that a golden house is a house with a shining heart.”
“Did she really say that?” asked Phil. He couldn’t help smiling now.
“Yes, she really did. I was glad to hear it, because I seem to have found my way here, haven’t I?” She settled back into the pillows now, and shut her eyes.
Phil went out through the door, closing it behind him, and headed downstairs. He felt like whistling, and it occurred to him that he was happier than he had been in years. Was it Betsy who made him happy? Or was it Jen? Right now it didn’t much matter to him. The house had life in it again, and the oppressive months of dark weather seemed to him to be clearing at last.
He heard the doorbell ring then, and he was suddenly certain that it was Elizabeth—so certain that he stopped on the stairs to think, to pull himself together. Hell, he thought, and went on down the stairs and into the living room. Betsy had disappeared. He looked out the window onto the porch, trying unsuccessfully not to be seen.
32
BETSY CLIMBED OUT through the window, onto the balcony and out into the tree. She made her way out to the trunk and down toward the ground, branch by branch, until she was at the place where she had hidden the box. She took it out of its hidey-hole and put it into her book bag, which she slung over her shoulder before climbing on down to the lower branches and dropping to the grass below. At the edge of the house, she stopped to look at the old water tower across the lawn. She had never been inside the tower before, although she had thought about it, and she saw now that there was no lock on the door. She wondered what was inside—old things, probably. It wouldn’t hurt anything if she looked around in there. Phil had told her to look, sort of.
She went back into the house finally, back up the stairs and along the hallway, peeking in through the door of Jen’s room. Jen’s eyes were shut, and maybe she was asleep, but Betsy stood there watching her anyway, because what she had to say couldn’t wait. Finally she tapped on the door molding.
“Come on in,” Jen said to her after a moment. “I thought you might come back. You left like you had some reason to leave.”
“I brought something to show you,” Betsy said, setting the box on the bedspread. She stepped across and looked out the window, at the tower, at Phil and the old man still talking in the driveway.
“What’s in it?” Jen asked.
“An inkwell. It was my grandma’s inkwell.”
Jen took it from her. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she opened the box and sat looking at the inkwell. “This was May’s?”
“Uh-huh,” Betsy said. “She gave it to my mom in a different box, but I had to leave her box behind at home. My mom said it was a memory box, and that the inkwell was a well of memories. It’s a special inkwell, because it didn’t need any ink. Take it out, if you want to. It was a secret between my mom and me.”
“Can I hold it?”
“If you want to. But do you know what?”
“What?”
“I know something about you.”
“Your grandma told you something?”
She shook her head. “Something in this inkwell. There’s a memory that’s in it, like my Grandma said. Like a story.”
Jen looked at her, as if waiting for more. “Tell me what you know about me,” she said.
“That my grandma had a baby once.”
“Oh, that,” Jen said, smiling faintly at her now. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, I guess. So that’s not hard to know, is it? I knew that, and I didn’t even have an inkwell.”
“I don’t mean that. I know that you were there, when the baby came. You were sitting in a chair by the window, asleep. And there was this old woman helping. And the window was open so that the wind blew into the room. I think it was in the morning. And it was summer, because the wind was warm. … I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s all right,” Jen whispered. “I’m just surprised, is all. What else? What else do you know about that?”
Betsy shook her head. “I think something was wrong. I think something happened with the baby.”
“How do you know this?”
“It’s in the inkwell. Did something happen?”
Jen nodded silently.
“I thought it did. It was something with the baby?”
“Yes. But the baby wasn’t … wrong. It was healthy—a boy.”
“What happened to him?”
“Your mother couldn’t keep him. The baby’s father wasn’t … he was dead. So the baby was given to strangers.”
“Was the baby happy?”
“I don’t know,” Jen said. “That was a long time ago, to be sure. I like to believe he was happy, though, for May’s sake. For his own sake, too, of course.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and then Betsy said, “Go ahead and take it if you want to. I trust you.” She let the box lie open in her hand, and Jen looked at the inkwell inside.
“Take it?”
“Hold it. In your hand, if you want to. You’ll see.”
Betsy held out the box, and Jen took the inkwell out of it, shutting her eyes when the glass touched her skin.
“Close your hand over it.”
“Like this,” Jen whispered, and shut her hand. She shuddered then, and gasped a breath in through her mouth.
“If you don’t want it,” Betsy said, “just drop it on the bed. I’ll pick it up for you.”
33
MRS. DARWIN HAD managed seventy-five miles an hour across west Texas into New Mexico on Highway 40, heading away from Albuquerque now, nearly into Gallup, where she would turn up Route 666 toward Mesa Verde. She had stopped earlier to buy a piece of black Santa Clara pottery from a trading post. It had cost her three hundred dollars, an extravagance for her nowadays, but she was pretty sure that she had gotten a good price. And anyway, she had a little mad money from the estate sale, and there was nothing wrong with giving yourself a little treat when you deserved it. She rolled the window down, although the evening air was cool. It would be downright cold before she got into Mesa Verde, if she got into Mesa Verde, which might easily be closed due to weather and the season. It was cold enough to snow. There were patches of black ice on the roads, and the sky was cloudy and threatening. If she didn’t make it into Mesa Verde, she would drive back into Shiprock for the night and
then head west in the morning.
She had always loved the southwest desert, the colors of the mesas, the long highways, the place names: Cimarron, Taos, Magdelena. … The names were all the right color, somehow; they had the right smell. She and her husband had stayed overnight in Truth Or Consequences, down off Highway 25 on the Rio Grande, just because of the name of the place. That had been a long time ago, but she could still remember the cafe where they had eaten breakfast in town, how the waitress had called the oatmeal “mush” and how they had always called it mush from that point on—for the short years that the two of them had enjoyed together.
She saw a road sign for Tohatchi now and considered pulling over for a bite to eat, but instead she opened a paper bag on the seat and got out a banana, along with a fat-free Fig Newton bar. There was something too sad about eating alone on the road—too many memories in roadside diners. It was better just to nibble. You could keep moving that way.
She and Al had put some miles on their Pontiac back in the old days. He had retired from aerospace with enough of a pension for her to retire from nursing, too, and for the few years before his death they had made a dozen road trips, somewhere different every spring and summer. On weekends, though, they would tool that old Pontiac out into the southwest desert and stop at roadside trading posts. Now and then they’d pick up a piece of jewelry—a belt buckle or a bolo tie for Al, or a pair of earrings for her—and occasionally, when they could afford it, a blanket or a piece of pottery and once a squash-blossom necklace. If they had known what would happen to the price of pottery and blankets and turquoise, they’d have put more energy and money into buying them. She had a Two Gray Hills blanket worth a couple of thousand dollars that they’d paid about two hundred for … but two hundred was a lot of money in those days, and all this wishing was just hindsight.
There were some things that you had to let slide, and other things that you did something about. And this second kind of thing, if you waited on it, would become hindsight too, and then you would live with regret.
The Rainy Season Page 17
