Beauty and the Brain

by Duncan, Alice

  “This is very distressing,” she said, beginning to gnaw on her knuckles. “Are you sure you can’t walk? We can’t stay here all night.” Although it sounded like a sort of romantic thing to do—except that, if anyone learned about it, nobody would ever believe they hadn’t done what Colin wanted to do.

  “Give me a minute,” he pleaded. “I’ll be all right in a minute.”

  Hmmm. Is that how these things worked? Brenda had never been this close to capitulation before, so she had no experience—and none of the women who’d talked to her about this sort of situation had ever refused to consummate the act. Fiddlesticks. “Very well. I’ll—ah—walk around the clearing for a second or two.”

  “Don’t get lost again.”

  That wasn’t kind of him. She decided not to say so. “I won’t.”

  She thought he nodded but didn’t lean close enough to be able to tell for sure. She didn’t dare; she feared he might take her leaning as some kind of seductive ploy on her part, and she didn’t want to tease the poor fellow any more tonight. She hadn’t intended to tease him in the first place.

  Which irked her. It wasn’t her fault men found her attractive. It wasn’t her fault men’s libidos—not to mention their egos—were such that they assumed any woman to be fair game. It was probably men’s uncontrolled sexual natures that had forced women into being creatures whom men believed were designed solely for their pleasure. This was why men liked to believe women incapable of serious thought: because if men acknowledged women’s equality of intellect, they would no longer be able to think of them as objects. Brutes. They were all brutes.

  She was becoming downright irritated by the time Colin at last struggled to his feet. “Better now?” she asked sarcastically and then could have bitten her tongue. She didn’t want to start another fight.

  “Yes. I think so.” She heard him take a deep breath. “Thank you for being understanding.”

  That was nice of him, especially when she’d lately been on the verge of kicking him with her heavy walking shoe. “You’re welcome.” Deciding that wasn’t enough, she went on to say, “Thank you for coming to find me.” No one else had thought to do so. Then again, she hadn’t called attention to the fact that she was going out for a walk; probably nobody else knew she was missing to begin with.

  “You’re welcome.”

  This conversation was leading nowhere in a hurry. With a sigh, Brenda said, “Shall we go back?”

  “Yes.”

  But not, it soon became evident to her, immediately. Colin pulled that torch thing out of his pocket and monkeyed with it for several minutes. Brenda, who was anxious to return to the lodge because tomorrow would be another full day of filming, restrained her impatience with something of an effort. When he finally got the blasted thing to send out a thin stream of light, she expelled a breath of relief.

  Needless to say, her show of impatience vexed him. He glared at her. “It will be much easier to find our way back if we have some light.” His voice was snippy.

  “I’m sure of it.” Hers was hard.

  A mood of deep depression had descended upon Brenda by the time they straggled back to the Cedar Crest Lodge. It was past midnight, and they had to awaken the night watchman to unlock the front doors for them. The fact that he did so with a broad smirk on his face did nothing to ease Brenda’s state of gloom.

  “This is for you.”

  Brenda felt ghastly the morning after her night in the woods with Colin. As ever, though, she put on a happy face, even though she was nearly asleep on her feet, her head ached, her eyes burned, and she wanted to sleep more than she wanted food, money, or sex with Colin.

  When Jerry Begay’s voice penetrated the fog in her brain, however, she perked up a trifle. She saw he was holding out the baseball he’d brought with his band to the Peerless lot. It was, evidently, a gift for her to remember them by.

  Brenda was delighted. “Oh! Thank you, Mr. Begay. How nice.”

  “That’s very nice of you, Jerry.”

  She wasn’t overjoyed when she heard Colin’s confirmation of her words. In point of fact, she felt like turning and hollering to him that she could speak for herself. She held in her temper and her hot words and merely smiled at Jerry.

  “You’re a good sport,” Jerry said simply. “You play baseball like a man.”

  In her present state of exhaustion, Brenda’s emotions were perilously close to the surface. That she’d managed to earn Jerry’s respect and make a friend of him touched her so deeply, she nearly cried. Having learned to be strong over the years—and knowing from Colin how little most Indians showed their emotions except in the bosoms of their families—she didn’t humiliate herself thus, but smiled and said, “May I give you something, too, Jerry? I’d like to.”

  He smiled. “Yes. Thank you.”

  She’d had no idea that Jerry would give her a gift, but she recalled reading that Indians—which tribes of Indians, she had no idea—valued tributes, so she’d prepared one for him already. She’d have asked Colin about it before offering it to Jerry but feared he’d only sneer at her. She wasn’t up to being sneered at this morning.

  Therefore, she’d decided to give Jerry a small music box she liked a lot. It played “Polly Wolly Doodle,” which she didn’t expect any self-respecting Navajo would understand, but she didn’t either, and the tune was lively, so she guessed it would do. Then, although it had felt like vanity at the time, she’d also decided to give Jerry a photograph of herself. Signing the photograph, “With fondest wishes to Jerry Begay, in memory of working in the pictures together. Brenda Fitzpatrick,” she hoped it, along with the music box, would be appropriate gifts and might convey a modicum of her appreciation of the band’s professionalism during the filming of their scenes.

  Now, as the Navajo band began climbing into the motorized trucks hired to return them to Los Angeles, where they’d take a train back to Arizona Territory, she realized she’d left her gifts inside the lodge. Frustrated with her carelessness, which had probably been a result of her state of exhaustion and unhappiness, she said, "Oh, dear, I’ll be back in just a little minute. I left the things on a table in the parlor.”

  Jerry nodded. She didn’t even look to see if Colin was still there when she turned to retrieve the gifts. To heck with Colin.

  It didn’t take her more than three minutes to accomplish her trip. When she got back to the truck, she stopped short when she saw Jerry and Colin chatting. Unless she was out of her mind, Colin was blushing! Now why should that be? Then Jerry saw her, she noted the twinkle in his eye, and she knew exactly why.

  Darn it to the earth and skies, Jerry Begay had deduced that Colin and she were attracted to each other. Perhaps he even knew they’d stayed out late in the woods together last night. Indians were supposed to know things like that, weren’t they? Obviously he’d said something to Colin about it, too. How embarrassing.

  Suppressing her impulse to turn tail and run back into the lodge, Brenda donned her most blasé, nonchalant, friendly pose. “I hope you will accept these small gifts, Mr. Begay. I sincerely appreciate your help in making this picture.”

  Jerry nodded. He seemed especially pleased with the music box, which he turned over and over in his big rough hands. Brenda showed him how to wind it up. “See? It plays music every time you open the lid as long as you keep it wound up. But don’t wind it too tightly, or the spring will break.”

  The Navajo nodded again. He peered at the photograph unsmilingly, and Brenda hoped she hadn’t violated some sort of cultural taboo by giving it to him. He said, “Thank you,” and she guessed she hadn’t.

  With one last handshake for Colin, Jerry climbed into the truck. Brenda heard the driver cranking away at the motor and the motor catch. The driver hurried up into the cab of the vehicle, the truck started down the mountainside, followed by the second truck, both vehicles taking the villains of Indian Love Song with them. She shook her head, thinking it really wasn’t fair to cast those good men as villains.
There was nothing to be done about it now.

  She stood there in the dust churned up by the trucks’ wheels, waving, until the trucks were out of sight. There were lots of farewells trailing after the band of Navajos, since Martin and the rest of the Indian Love Song cast and crew had come outside to see the Indians off.

  There was nothing the least bit villainous about those fellows. They’d been polite and quiet and gentlemanly in a way that had seemed utterly natural. Colin had told her that they were behaving as they always behaved. In other words, they’d never been anything but themselves, yet they’d made friends of the entire crew—although they were wildly competitive on the baseball field.

  It was an interesting phenomenon. Brenda, who had never, since her twelfth year, felt able to be herself, had also made friends of all with whom she worked. In her case, the result had been a lot more difficult to achieve.

  Of course, Indians, no matter of what tribe, were a conquered race. She supposed white men, who enjoyed feeling superior to everyone else on earth, now considered it politic to be gracious to them. She, on the other hand, was merely a freeborn white woman and remained an object that must be subjugated to the white man’s will.

  Boy, was she being melodramatic this morning. To counteract her mood, she turned to Martin once the trucks were out of sight, again ignoring Colin. “What’s up for today, Martin? Are we doing the reconciliation scene?”

  “That’s it,” Martin confirmed. He rubbed his hands with pleasure. “The picture’s almost in the can.”

  And then they’d all go home, and she’d never see Colin Peters again. Her eyes filled with tears so suddenly, she didn’t have time to stop them. She wiped them away immediately.

  Good heavens, she was a total wreck.

  She hadn’t wiped her eyes quickly enough to deceive Martin, who looked at her sharply. “Is anything the matter, Brenda? Are you not feeling well?”

  “Oh, no I’m fine. Just got some dust in my eye, that’s all.” She laughed. “Whew! Those trucks sure do kick if up, don’t they?”

  “Yes,” Martin said, still watching her with keen interest. “They sure do.”

  Thank heaven for Martin Tafft. He didn’t say another word, but smiled at her and strolled over to the set. She knew he knew something was wrong with her, but Martin never pried, bless him.

  Colin walked away without a word. Brenda’s heart felt as if it had been ripped out of her chest and trampled in the dust.

  The filming was almost over. Martin had told Colin that the whole picture would be wrapped up in another day or two. That meant he was going to have to work fast if he expected to get Brenda to succumb to his charms.

  Colin frowned. What charms? Obviously, he didn’t have a single charm to call his own if she had so little difficulty resisting him Dash it, his failure to lure Brenda into his bed had been the most dismal failure of his entire life up to now This morning, for instance, she wasn’t even willing to talk to him She hadn’t even offered him a “Good morning.”

  He hadn’t offered her one, either, he reminded himself.

  But that wasn’t odd. After all, he was known for failure to pay attention to anything but books. And even if he was beginning to notice the world around him a bit more than he used to do, he was still just another fellow working for Peerless. She was the big name here. She was the star of the event. He was a nothing. A zero. A big, fat, empty, blank spot on the face of the earth.

  That was no way to think. He had to buck up. While Colin had never been conceited about anything at all, much less his masculine prowess, he’d never felt like nothing before, either. His life had been spent as he’d wanted to spend it: in pursuit of knowledge. He was living exactly as he wanted to live.

  Except that he’d failed to conquer the one woman he’d ever really wanted. It was a lowering reflection. He sat on a stump in the shade, his eyes directed at the activity on the set, while his mind whirred in confusion.

  Dash it, she hadn’t reacted at all the way a female was supposed to react to the male’s mating ritual. She’d even told him she wanted more than a brief fling before she’d agree to a sexual union.

  The awful thought occurred to Colin that perhaps this was the way female humans were supposed to react to the male’s courtship rituals. Perhaps, the human species being what it was, the female had instincts that weren’t so well developed in most males Perhaps they instinctively sensed that, in order to raise their young properly—and young sprouts often resulted from mating—they had to manipulate males into a commitment lasting longer than one night. Gad, what a dismal thought.

  Or was it? Colin was squinting at the set construction, not really watching it, when a man cried out, startling him out of his muddled thoughts and making him pay attention.

  “Look out! I can’t keep my grip on it! Hold on, Carl!”

  The man who’d yelled had been balanced on the top rung of a tall ladder propped against a taller tree. He’d been holding one end of a huge wooden platform-like contraption. Colin couldn’t tell what it was from where he sat so he stood up, shaded his eyes, and watched, his heart pounding with suspense.

  A gasp came from the others watching the scene when the man lost his grip on the wooden thing. It fell from his hands, jolting him and making him lose his balance. He was barely able to cling to the ladder and to the limb of the tree against which the ladder was balanced. The ladder swayed perilously. Colin stared, appalled, still stunned and unable to react more cogently. Then his glance darted to the ground beneath the wooden thing.

  Good God. His brother George stood, directly underneath that gigantic slab of wood, staring up at the man on the ladder. Another man, poised on the edge of an outbuilding’s roof, clutched the other end of the slab in both hands, but only barely.

  “I can’t hold on to it, either!” the man on the roof cried out in dismay. “Look out below! It’s going to crash!”

  “George!” Colin roared. “Run!”

  To Colin’s horror, George turned to look at him instead of taking his advice. Colin waved his arms frantically in an effort to get his brother to run from underneath that heavy board. For what seemed like hours, George looked from Colin to the man struggling with the board, before he recognized his own danger, turned, and started sprinting to safety.

  It was too late. Colin’s face screwed up into a grimace of consternation and his hands flew to his head, even as he took off running toward George.

  The giant board hurtled through the air. As Colin watched, he could have sworn the blasted thing had a mind of its own. It was probably his own fright for George making him think the board aimed at his brother, even going so far as to turn end over end, thereby zeroing in more directly on George.

  The board struck with a sickening thunk. George dropped like a stone to the hard earth. It seemed to Colin that the world stopped spinning on its axis for a second. The sound of the board hitting George and then the earth smote his ears, and then there was a moment of absolute silence. Then all hell broke loose.

  “George!” a woman screamed. Colin’s brain registered Brenda’s voice.

  “George!” Colin bellowed, terrified on his brother’s behalf.

  “Good God!” From out of nowhere, Martin raced onto the set.

  Others streamed over to George from all sides. The man on the ladder made his shaky way down. The man on the roof, his mouth having fallen open into a horrified O, stared at the chaos beneath him in patent distress.

  Colin got to his brother first. George lay face-down on the ground, the infamous board weighing him down. With a strength he hadn’t known he possessed, Colin upended the gigantic slab of wood and heaved it away from his brother’s motionless body. Falling to his knees in the dirt, he reached for George.

  “Be careful. Better not move him yet.”

  It was Brenda. Colin turned to yell at her to shut up before he realized she was only being sensible. He passed a hand over his face and fought panic “Right. Better check for broken bones first.”

/>   “And concussion.”

  Brenda knelt in the dirt, too, her concentration completely on George, not giving a thought to the beautiful blue silk day dress she wore. She bent close to George’s face. “George?” she said gently. “George? Can you hear me?”

  No answer. Colin’s heart went cold.

  She glanced up, worry plain on her face. “Martin, please get the lodge’s doctor out here quickly.”

  “Right.” Martin didn’t bother to check George’s condition for himself, but wheeled around and sprinted like a deer to the lodge. Fortunately, the Cedar Crest had a doctor on staff. Most luxury resorts did these days.

  “George?” This time it was Colin trying to determine his brother’s state of consciousness. “Can you hear me?”

  No answer.

  He looked across George’s inert form to find Brenda staring back at him He shook his head. Her lips pressed together tightly. He feared for a moment that she might cry, but she was made of sterner stuff than that. He ought to have known her better by this time.

  She licked her lips. “I’ve had a little experience with this sort of thing. Let me check him over.”

  Colin wanted to protest, but he couldn’t pry his tongue from the roof of his mouth where it seemed to be stuck. So he watched instead as Brenda first of all checked George’s breathing by holding a leaf before his nostrils.

  The leaf fluttered, and she looked up and gave Colin a brief, strained smile “He’s still alive.” As tenderly as if she were dealing with a. hurt child—which, to all intent and purposes, she was, dash it—she checked his pulse. Her smile looked more natural when she reported the results. “His pulse is strong and steady.”

  Colin’s breath left him in a whoosh, and he feared for a second that he might pass out. It was probably only his masculine pride that saved him. He’d be dashed if he’d faint in front of Brenda and a motion-picture crew. After she’d determined George’s status as a still-viable human being, she very tenderly palpated his limbs, being particularly careful with his back. “You never know about these things,” she muttered. “I couldn’t see clearly, but it looked as if the board hit him on the shoulder. I think it missed his head.”