by Peggy Webb
His knuckles turned white as he gripped the steering wheel and negotiated the sharp mountain curves. Ellen's face was everywhere he looked—in the waving branches of pine, in the majestic sweep of the mountains, in the lonesome stretches of the road. And he knew, as surely as he knew his own name, that he could never escape her. Though he put thousands of miles between them, she was forever emblazoned on his heart.
Chapter Ten
Dirk unstrapped his gun and tossed it onto the bed. Rubbing his forehead wearily, he crossed to the window. Everything looked the same. The Washington Monument was still there. The pigeons searching for crumbs on his windowsill were still there. The difference was not in his surroundings but in himself. His body was in Washington, D.C., but his heart was still in the mountains of North Carolina.
He smacked his fist against the windowsill, then turned and headed for the shower. It had been a long, tiring day. And it wasn't over yet. The summer of indulgence had taken its toll. He still had a hundred push-ups to do before the day was over.
He was halfway to the shower when the buzzer announced a visitor. He switched on the intercom.
"Open the door, you handsome rascal," Anthony Salinger's voice boomed over the intercom. "I have a fish story to tell."
Dirk chuckled. "Come on up, you scruffy old vagabond."
Within minutes Tony was stepping out of the security elevator and into Dirk's apartment. The old friends clasped hands and shoulders and grinned at each other.
Dirk's gaze swept over Tony's shock of thick hair, prematurely white, his pale blue eyes, set in a network of suntanned wrinkles, and his trim frame. "You're looking fit as a fiddle," he said.
Tony's shrewd blue eyes studied Dirk as he released his friend's hand. "Fit as a fiddle? Seems I've heard that expression before, but not in Washington, D.C." He crossed the room and straddled a straight-backed chair. "As a matter of fact, Ellen's Tennessee relatives use it."
He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pipe. Tamping tobacco into the bowl, he said casually, "I don't suppose you met Dr. Ellen Stanford?"
"I thought you came here to tell me a fish story." Dirk also straddled a chair, facing his longtime friend.
"Why don't you tell me a fish story?" Tony took a long draw on his pipe. "How was fishing in the mountains?"
"They weren't biting."
"Is that a fact?" Tony puffed contentedly on his pipe and looked around the room. His gaze focused on the tattered bear on the bedside table. It had been the first thing he had noticed when he walked into the room. "You must be losing your touch, friend, to spend all summer and not catch a thing." He swung his gaze back to Dirk.
Dirk chuckled. "You don't miss a thing, do you?"
"Never have. Never intend to." Tony took another draw on his pipe. "What the hell are you doing with Ellen's stuffed bear?"
"You've met him?" Dirk glanced at Ellen's childhood companion.
"Damn right. I met Ellen Stanford the day she moved to Beech Mountain. Helped her move. She's a hell of a woman."
"You'll get no argument from me on that point."
Dirk willed himself to remain relaxed in his chair. All this talk of Ellen was heightening his unrest. With Tony here, talking of Beech Mountain and Pooh Bear, her presence in the room was almost a palpable thing. He could hear her laughter, see the moonlight on her flaming hair, feel the warmth of her skin. It might have been only last night since he'd seen her, instead of last week.
Tony nodded toward the bear. "That's an important part of Ellen's past. She wouldn't have parted with it unless she had a good reason." His blue eyes seemed to pierce through Dirk's very soul.
"You always did have the tenacity of a bulldog," Dirk said.
"Where my friends are concerned," Tony agreed. "What happened on that mountain—besides you not catching any fish?"
"I met Ellen the first day. Rocinante's radiator went dry in front of the compound." Talking about it was easier than Dirk had imagined. As he looked at his friend he reflected that perhaps he needed to confide in someone. Perhaps talking about Ellen would make losing her easier to bear.
Tony laughed. "A convenient ploy, if I ever heard one. Are you sure you didn't already know about the gorgeous doctor and plan it that way?"
"If I had known about the gorgeous doctor and what she would do to me, I would have run down that mountain and never looked back. She's more dangerous than the Mafia."
"Ah-ha. She got to you, did she?"
"Damn right." Dirk gazed into the empty space behind Tony's head, his eyes focused backward in time. "Damn right," he repeated softly, almost to himself, although he didn't believe it for a minute. His affair with Ellen was an experience that he wouldn't trade for a lifetime of contented solitude. "I made the mistake of falling in love."
"Then where the hell is Ellen?" Tony exploded. "What are you doing in D.C. with nothing but a raggedy teddy bear?"
Dirk's jaw clenched. "Don't you think I'd give all the gold in Fort Knox to have her here with me? Dammit, Tony, you know why she's not here."
"No. Tell me."
"What kind of life would any woman have with me?" He sprang from his chair and began to pace the room restlessly. "Never knowing where I am and whether I'll return." He swung around and glared fiercely at his friend. "Not to mention her work. She's committed to her research on Beech Mountain."
"Did you ever think of becoming a lawyer?" Tony asked dryly. "You almost convinced me."
Dirk smiled, thinking of Uncle Vester and Aunt Lollie. "I was a lawyer once."
"What?"
"Never mind." He propped one leg on a chair and looked down at Tony. "There's too much risk, Tony."
"Love is always a risk, Dirk." Removing his pipe, Tony held the bowl and pointed the stem for emphasis. "You're afraid."
"I fear nothing."
"Nothing except forming a bond that may not last." He jabbed the pipe in the air as he talked. "You're afraid to love. Dirk; afraid it will be snatched away just as it was in your childhood. It's time to put orphanages behind you and put down roots."
"That's pretty heavy stuff for an old gadabout bachelor," Dirk said, grinning. But he felt a peculiar twinge, as if Tony had pinched a nerve of truth.
"We old gadabouts see more than you think we do." Tony blew a smoke ring into the air and squinted up at it. "Have you forgotten the story you told me?"
"In Spain?"
He smiled. "You do remember!"
Dirk's own smile grew thin at the edges. "I was about three sheets to the wind. Anyhow, that has nothing to do with Ellen."
But Tony had pried open the door to his past, and the childhood memory came flooding back. He had been eight years old and a foster home had finally been found for him. For the first time in his life he had parents—Sam Dryden, a logger from Maine, and his stalwart wife, Erma. During the six months he was with them, he had felt a growing sense of love and security.
And then bad things had started to happen. Sam was crippled in a logging accident and lost his job. Erma's health began to fail. As they struggled to cope with life, the little orphan boy became a liability, another mouth to feed. The family bonding was lost in tension and frustration. Finally survival dictated giving up the foster son. When he was sent back to the orphanage, he had believed that it was all somehow his fault. It was a feeling that stayed with him for years, and it had solidified his belief that love didn't last.
His face twisted with remembered pain. "That was a long time ago, Tony."
"But not so long ago that it can't play hell with your future." Tony took a thoughtful draw on his pipe. "It's time to make peace with the past, Dirk. You're not a mischievous little boy being shuffled off to another orphanage. You're not that little kid anymore who cried because he couldn't have a dog and kept a stiff upper lip when he was shipped away from his friends. Love is waiting on Beech Mountain. Go back and grab it."
"Your armchair psychology won't work with me."
Tony smiled. "Why don't we continue this disc
ussion over a bottle of wine and a mess of fish?"
Dirk clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Done."
o0o
Dirk reached over the bedside table and picked up Ellen's tattered bear. The room was empty except for the two of them, but Tony's presence could still be felt in the aroma of pipe tobacco that hung in the air.
He traced the bear's permanent grin with one finger. "He could be right, you know." He set the bear back on the table and opened the top drawer. The folded paper rattled as he lifted it toward the light and opened it. There was no need to read the words again, he thought. He knew them by heart. From the time he had left Ellen beside Gigi's summer enclosure and found the bear on the backseat of his car, the words in that note had been emblazoned on his mind:
Dirk,
Since I can't come with you, I'm sending a good friend to take my place. Pooh Bear is tattered from an overdose of loving, and he doesn't talk much, but he is still a good listener. Perhaps he can even fill the lonesome places in your heart.
Ellen
He studied the paper for a long time, then he began to smile. It was a slow smile that started at the corner of his mouth and spread upward to his eyes. By the time he had carefully refolded the note and put it in the drawer, his whole face was alight with the smile of discovery.
o0o
"I don't know which one is worse, you or Gigi," Ruth Ann grumbled to Ellen. "Both of you have been moping around here for two weeks."
Ellen carefully placed her pencil on top of her notes. It seemed that she did everything with care these days, as if any hurried movement would cause her to shatter.
"Is this going to be a conference or a lecture?" she asked.
"It's time for a lecture." Ruth Ann patted her Mamie Eisenhower bangs although they needed no attention. "Either forget about that man or go after him."
"Go after him?"
"You heard me. Go after him. If you ask me, he's nothing but trouble." She paused and gave Ellen a sly smile. "Although I must say that he had his good points, one of them being his kindness to Gigi. Not every man is kind to animals. That shows a good heart."
Ellen pressed her hands to her temples as if she were trying to push Dirk from her mind. But it didn't work. Nothing worked. She would still feel his presence on this mountain, whether he stayed away two weeks or two months or two years. When Dirk had left in Rocinante, he had carried more than Pooh Bear: He had carried her heart.
She shoved her chair aside and stood up. "Of course, he has a good heart," she all but yelled. "I couldn't love a man who didn't. But he's gone. The affair is over and done with." She paced the small conference room as she talked. "Every affair has its rules, Ruth Ann. We played by the rules."
She jerked her chair back to the table and sat down.
"You've always played by the rules, haven't you?" Ruth Ann asked quietly.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that you've prided yourself on being a career woman, different from all the other Stanford women, and yet every year you return to Tennessee. You go in search of those very rules that you tell yourself you've left behind."
"If you're talking about marriage and preserving the family name, you can forget it. That was never important to me until I met Dirk, and now he's gone. Whether I'm bound by the codes of my ancestors is a moot point."
"I look like a fine one to talk, Ellen, with my sad spinster shoes and my narrow spinster ways, but there are two things I know: You can never escape your past and you can never escape love. I know; I tried."
Ellen covered Ruth Ann's hands in quick sympathy. "I didn't know."
"It was a long time ago. The details don't matter now. The important thing is that I see you making the same mistakes I did. You have that same damn stiff-necked pride, that abide-by-the-rules-if-it- kills-you attitude that made me the old sourpuss that I am."
Ellen protested. "You're not—"
"Yes, I am. An old tight-lipped crow who saw Dirk as a threat to the secure, safe life we have on this mountain. But I also have a heart, dried up as it may be." She gave a bitter laugh. "I love you, Ellen, and I don't like to see you hurting. If you love Dirk, go after him."
She fiddled with her glasses and patted her hair to cover the sudden moisture in her eyes. "There. I've had my say."
"Thank you, Ruth Ann, for caring." Ellen patted the wrinkled hand. "Dirk's going was not my idea; it was his. Commitment has to work both ways. Besides, I don't even know where he is. I couldn't go after him if I wanted to." She reached blindly for her notes. "Let's get on with this conference."
"I'm ready when you are. But don't you think you'd better put down that banana and pick up your notebook?"
Ellen stared at the piece of fruit in her hands. "One of us needs a vacation," she said.
o0o
First the notes began to arrive. Thinking of you. Dirk. Postmarked Washington, D.C. This city has no grapes. No signature, just a New York City postmark. A rose for remembrance. Again no signature. A West German postmark and an envelope full of dried rose petals. Ellen's hopes soared.
And then her friends began acting funny. Tony paid an unexpected visit at the same time that Rachelle appeared at the compound with a cat- swallowed-the-canary grin.
Ellen looked up to see them both standing in her office doorway. "Well, hello, you two. What a pleasant surprise."
"Just popped in to see how the work's coming," Tony said. "That's all you do lately. Work."
"Me, too," Rachelle chimed in. "Just popped in, I mean. I'm afraid you're working too hard. It's about time for you to take a vacation."
Ellen propped her hands on her hips. "What is this? A conspiracy? I took a vacation early this summer."
"A trip to a family reunion is not a vacation," Rachelle said. "I mean a real vacation. Somewhere like Tahiti or Barbados or the Yukon."
"The Yukon!" Ellen laughed.
"The fishing's good up there," Tony said.
"I don't fish." Ellen removed her lab coat and hung it carefully on the coat rack. "All right, you two. What's going on?"
"Nothing," Rachelle said.
"Not a thing," Tony said.
Ellen didn't believe either one of them. "Since you're both here, why don't we have a cup of tea?" She gave them a beautiful smile. Perhaps she could coax it out of them over the teapot.
"What a great idea," Tony said.
"Super," Rachelle said. "You make the most fabulous tea."
Ellen laughed again. Even for Rachelle, that remark was out of character. "Tea is tea. Since when has mine been wonderful?" She poured fresh water into her teapot and plugged it in.
Rachelle shrugged. "You know me. Everything is wonderful these days. You should see the new ski instructor who's come to town. He has the most fabulous biceps this side of a Mr. America pageant. And those lips! Lord, you should see his lips." Rachelle sat down abruptly. "By the way, have you heard from Dirk?"
Was the question idle curiosity or previous knowledge? Ellen wondered.
"I've had a note or two." She saw the look Tony and Rachelle exchanged. Pretending not to notice, she dropped teabags into three stoneware cups and poured the hot water. "One lump or two?" she asked Rachelle.
"The Yukon is probably nice this time of year," Rachelle said, overlooking the question of sugar.
"Great fishing," Tony said. "Beautiful scenery. Snow-capped mountains and rivers. A great place to go on vacation." He pulled up a chair beside Rachelle. "What did he say?"
Ellen dumped sugar into their teacups and pretended ignorance. "Who?"
"Dirk." Tony and Rachelle said the name simultaneously.
"When?" Ellen was beginning to enjoy watching the significant glances they were exchanging.
"In the notes," Rachelle prodded.
"Oh, this and that." Ellen stirred her tea. She could be maddening when she wanted to, and she decided this was the time to exercise that ability.
"Ruth Ann could fill in for you, you know," Rachelle said.
"Fill in fo
r what?" Ellen asked.
"In case you decide to take a vacation," Tony said. "I could pop in every now and then to see that everything is all right. I'll still be in Dir—" He stopped and corrected himself in midsentence. "I'll be in my cabin."
Ellen lowered her cup carefully. It was a miracle that she didn't pour the whole scalding brew down the front of her dress. "What did you say?" she asked Tony.
"I’ll pop in—"
"No. After that." She stared at him. "You said that you would still be in Dirk's cabin."
Tony took a great interest in his neglected tea. He stared into its murky depths for a full half minute, trying to think of a suitable reply.
Rachelle jumped into the conversational void. "That just shows how much you need a vacation. You've started hearing things."
Ellen suppressed a giggle as Tony gave Rachelle a thank-goodness-for-lying-friends look. They were definitely up to something, but they would never admit it. She decided to give them a break. "Your tea's getting cold."
Her conspiring friends grabbed their teacups as if they were lifeboats in a storm at sea.
"I've never seen Beech Mountain look so gorgeous this time of year," Rachelle said.
"Yes," Tony agreed, "the weather's beautiful."
Ellen smiled. She knew a conversational deadend when she heard it. "Let's talk about the weather," she said, and figured their combined sigh of relief could be heard halfway down Beech Mountain.
o0o
The letters continued to come. They were all unsigned and all postmarked from various cities in West Germany. The chicken coop here is stale compared to the one in Banner Elk. That one made her laugh. I never see red hair in the moonlight that I don't think of you. That one made her cry. Eggs have lost their savor. That one put a zing into her step for the rest of the day.
She carefully folded each letter and put it in the top drawer of her dresser. At the end of each day she would get them all out and reread them. She was alternately elated and saddened that Dirk had broken all the rules. Her elation stemmed from hope and her sadness stemmed from the reminders. There should be no reminders of dead summer affairs, she thought. Letters only prolonged the agony of forgetting.
