by Gil Brewer
VERNE called at ten. Petra spoke with him a few moments, then turned to me in the hallway. “He wants to talk to you, Alex.”
The old woman was eating breakfast in the kitchen.
“All right,” I said. I took the receiver from her hand. She didn’t move from beside me, pressed against me. Her hand smoothed my back. She smiled, then moved away.
“Alex! How’s everything?”
I was startled at the tone of his voice. He seemed full of life, very different from the way he’d been when he’d left.
“Fine,” I said. “Everything’s fine. Only I wish to God you were here.”
“That’s what I’m calling about. Sorry to hell and gone, but I won’t be able to make it till sometime Saturday.”
Saturday! This was Wednesday. No, Tuesday. Not until Saturday. Petra was standing down the hall, nodding at me. She wore a black skirt, a tight white blouse, and a yellow ribbon in her hair. As I stared at her, she tucked the blouse more securely into the waist of her skirt, smoothed it out.
“I’m sorry, old man,” Verne said. “But that’s the way it is. Things are bad down here. I had a minor strike on my hands, had to increase wages. Got ten truckloads of lumber not fit to build an outhouse with. Had to return that. Found out my head man was knocking down. Had to fire him and hire another, and the government’s got some damned new clause …”
“Cripes,” I said. Then I realized this was my chance. My chance to leave and to explain at the same time. It would be bad enough that way, but it would be lots easier than staying and standing what might come. I looked straight at Petra and showed her my teeth. She sensed something. “Look, Verne,” I said. “It’s great here and everything, but why don’t I go on back home and wait till you get things—”
He interrupted sharply. His voice seemed snappy, full of power, aggressive. “Wouldn’t hear of it. Don’t suggest it again. If anything, you’re going to stay over longer!”
Petra was watching me. At first her eyes had narrowed, but now she saw my face fall and she smiled again.
I knew I couldn’t insist. I felt I couldn’t. I didn’t want to make him suspicious in any way. So now I was thinking like that.
“All right, Verne. Get home as soon as you can. We haven’t even got drunk together yet.”
“Yeah. Well, I’ve got to scram now, Alex. Keep the ball rolling. You get Petra to show you around.”
“Sure, I will.”
“How’s Mother?”
“Fine. She’s fine.”
“Say. I forgot to pay Jenny and the cook. Will you tell Petra we owe them two weeks?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks. See you Saturday.”
He was gone. The line was dead.
“You see, Alex?” Petra said. “You wouldn’t leave now, anyway, would you—really?”
• • •
We drove around the far side of the lake, a good twenty-five miles, ate lunch at a drive-in near Canyonville, and came up the near side of the lake.
We didn’t talk much. The old woman perched as usual in the center of the rear seat. She gabbled about the scenery until it began to get me down. But just being beside Petra, watching her from the corner of my eye, and listening to the stirring tones of her voice kept me still.
“I forgot to tell you,” I said. “Verne told me to tell you to pay Jenny and the cook two weeks’ pay.”
She didn’t look at me. “Yes. All right. See, we’ll park here a while. I’ll take you down and show you the lake.”
There were pines, and a glen that fed shallowly across the road, but showed great depth on the hillside. The lake flashed blue in the sun beyond the treetops.
“All right.”
Petra turned and shouted to the old woman, “I’m going to show Mr. Bland the lake. We’ll only be a minute.”
The old woman moved her mouth in what looked like some kind of secret smile.
Petra’s chin trembled. She opened the door on her side, ran around the car and down the slope into the trees. She ran toward the lake. Her skirt furled around her legs and her legs flashed in the early-afternoon sunlight.
She vanished into the shadows of the trees, whirled, and called, “Come on, slowpoke!”
“Be right with you.” I turned to the old woman. “Excuse me,” I said. “We won’t be a moment.” I had forgotten that she was deaf. She didn’t hear me. She was watching the darker shadow of the woods where Petra had disappeared.
I went on down, following Petra’s course. It was very cool. As I neared the water the air was still cooler and I could smell the water. It was a spring-fed lake, Petra had told me, and very clear and cold. Very fine for swimming if you like fresh, clear, icy water.
“It’s a little late for swimming, isn’t it?” I’d said.
“It’s always whatever you make it.”
I went into the trees along the glen with the stream of water from the glen running over black slate to my right. I came out on the shore of the lake. It was about a mile and a half wide. The larger of the three hills on the other side looked like some huge green monster, like a buffalo, perhaps, hunched over, asleep.
I didn’t see Petra at first. Then she called to me from nearby, “Hurry, Alex. Hurry!”
She was standing naked on the shore of the lake.
I stood still for a long moment because I couldn’t move and couldn’t think. The sun shone on her back over the tops of the trees.
She faced me.
“Come here, Alex.”
I took two steps, halted. “The old woman!” I said. “She’ll—Petra!”
I stepped back as she ran gingerly toward me over the pebbled shore. Her hair streamed back on both sides of her head and she was beautiful, too damned beautiful. Her beauty struck me very hard without release.
“Petra!” The old woman’s voice reached us from the highway, just beyond the trees.
“Oh, God!” Petra said.
I turned and ran back to the car. I stumbled and slipped over the water-black slate in the glen and once went in clear to my knee. Scrambling up the slight rise onto the highway, I reached the car. I looked back but Petra wasn’t in sight. I’d never forget the way she had looked standing there on the shore of the lake with the sun gleaming like liquid gold on her white skin and her black hair flowing around her shoulders and throat like a dense, fiery fog.
Standing there by the car, I heard splashing sounds beyond the pines and other trees surrounding the lake. And standing there I cursed the old woman silently. Then I cursed her aloud, knowing she couldn’t hear. I cursed her until I could think of nothing else to say. Then I climbed inside the car. The old woman was still watching the patch of shadowed woods where Petra had vanished.
Pretty soon Petra came back to the car. She was breathing hard. “Wasn’t it fine!” she said.
“Yes.”
I looked at her, my hand brushed her leg. Her skirt was damp. Her hair was damp. She’d been in the water.
“I went for a swim,” she said. “You should have, Alex.” She turned to the old woman and shouted, “I went for a swim. Don’t you wish you could go swimming, Mother?”
The old woman didn’t answer.
• • •
The days flicked by like the shadow from a sundial’s finger as you glance at it from hour to hour. Petra put me through hell and there was no way to combat it.
If we were near the old woman, she lured me with eyes of promise and surreptitious caresses. But the instant we were alone it was all I could do to hold her in my arms.
“You want me now, don’t you?”
“I’ll have you.”
“Stop. Here she comes.”
“Petra, let’s go someplace.”
“We can’t leave Mother alone. She’d try to follow. She’s suspicious now. She’s saying awful things to me.”
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—Saturday. It was the longest day, Saturday. And it was that day I realized I hadn’t written Madge, nor had I mailed the other letter I had
written. I went to the mailbox on the front of the house. Above it in brass scroll I read the number 13; 13 French Street. How many times had I addressed letters here?
There were three letters from Madge. I took them upstairs and laid them on the desk in my room, unopened.
The old woman was everywhere. She had become a shadow. She carried the cane always now and she hardly ever spoke in my hearing.
I wanted Petra now. I didn’t understand what she was doing, why she was acting this way, when she said she loved me. She told me that all the time. “I love you, Alex,” her lips and her hands speaking too, but when we were alone she became an eel.
I couldn’t sleep. I suddenly realized the decanter of whisky in Verne’s study was empty. On Saturday morning it was full again. I hadn’t seen Jenny or the cook since the day I’d come. I asked Petra.
“I gave them some time off.”
I knew I was a little out of my head now, and I looked forward to Verne’s home-coming sometimes with distaste, but always a little later with the last bit of hope within me.
I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I knew something was going to happen. I was slowly losing all control. Propinquity, whatever, I could not combat it. I wanted her. The gods could have thrown me women from on high, of all shapes and sizes, and they wouldn’t have meant a thing. Only Petra.
When I thought of Madge, it was like another day, another year, a bygone something that had never occurred. Chicago was someplace without existence. Only Petra.
Save when my conscience ate at me. That was when I started for the bottle. Not much. Only a bit. Just enough to stave off the sudden touch of the knife edge of despair.
Once I tore Petra’s blouse off. Once I fastened my fingers in her hair and told her I wouldn’t let her get away.
“I’ll scream, Alex. She’s only in the next room. I’ll scream!”
And, of course, she would have screamed, I think. I thought so then. We did not leave the house after Wednesday. The old woman wanted to take rides. Petra refused.
She seemed to be trying to work Verne’s mother into a rage, also.
She was succeeding. No matter what I said now, she would only smile and say, “Wait, my friend.”
I felt cowardly. I told myself I should take her.
I didn’t. I waited. And I couldn’t stand being alone any more. I searched her out wherever she was. I was in love with her. As much in love as a man can get.
“I think you’re weak, Alex. You’ll never leave now, and you can’t leave, of course.”
“No. I won’t leave now.” I looked at her. “I don’t want to hurt you, Petra. But I’m going to.”
“It’s only been a few days. You said so yourself.”
“It’s been too long. Something’s happened inside me.”
“You must want me as much as I want you.”
I grabbed her close and breathed the warmth of her hair, felt her hot red lips, and most of the time I was with her, I didn’t know what I was saying. I watched her like a cat, and the old woman watched us both.
• • •
Verne came home at six o’clock on Saturday evening.
He was a changed man. He showed vitality, and some of the color had returned to his face. He would never be the man I had once known, but he didn’t look wrecked now. He showed energy. His eyes were bright.
“Things went good?” I asked.
“Terrible, Alex. I only came home because you were here. Got to leave again Sunday night.”
A kind of hot rage of triumphant satisfaction hit me.
We went into the living room and Petra fixed drinks. She smiled at me from behind his back and touched me whenever she passed. I wanted to hit her, smash her. But I knew I wouldn’t. To me she was becoming a woman who had been denied the things she wanted; a woman of great life and laughter who had been cooped up here, where she didn’t want to be. Some of this feeling gradually died as I talked with Verne.
“The whisky’s good,” he said. “I want a lot of it tonight. And a good dinner.”
“I’m going to fix it myself,” Petra said. “Steak. You like that?”
“How come?” Verne asked. He seemed slightly suspicious, and his eyes looked queer.
I said, “Petra gave Jenny and the cook some time off.”
“Oh,” he said. “Why, Petra? Did you pay them?”
“I paid them Monday morning.”
“They haven’t been here since?”
“No.” She became defiant; her eyes darkened. “If you must know, Verne, I fired them. Both of them.”
He said nothing. But from that moment on I watched him sag again. Inside of an hour he was a shell again, gray-faced and forlorn.
I tried to talk with him after we ate.
“I’m bushed,” he said finally. “We’ll make a day of it tomorrow.”
Tomorrow …
He went to bed, a tired, unhappy man.
“Why did you fire the help?” I asked Petra. We were in the hallway.
She put her arms around my waist. “Why do you think?” she said.
Tomorrow …
Chapter Ten
VERNE wasn’t up yet at ten-thirty Sunday morning. I had spent another night thinking of Petra. After breakfast I went into his study and began hitting his bottle of whisky. I got a little drunk, I think.
“Alex, come here. She’s out in the kitchen.”
Petra stood in the study doorway. She wore white rayon shorts and a flimsy halter and her red sandals.
“You’ve been drinking,” she said softly as I took her in my arms. “He’s leaving tonight.”
“Did he come near you last night?”
She laughed. “No. Goodness, no.”
My hands strayed along her hips; I held her tightly against me. Then she whirled away and ran up the stairs. I knew this was it. I started after her, the whisky pounding in my head. It was all right now. I’d found an escape. I would tell Verne the truth, tell him I was in love with his wife. That she no longer wanted him. It had to be that way.
She moved into her room along the upstairs hallway. I followed, and closed the door. The windows were open and a cool breeze blew in, billowing the curtains.
As she looked at me, something like fright came into her eyes. “Go ahead and scream,” I said, as I came up to her. The whisky swarmed in my blood.
“I don’t want to scream, Alex. Alex!”
Reaching out, I ripped the halter away from her breasts, baring them. She backed away, tripped on the leather couch, and sat down. I pulled her up against me. At first she tried to yank away, twisting in my arms. Then abruptly she was with me, helping me. We went wild.
“You see!” she gasped. “The waiting. It’s best!”
Her lips were against mine she was talking around a kiss, and I didn’t hear the door open, I heard nothing, wanted to hear nothing until the old woman said, “I caught you! I knew I would!”
We sprang apart. Petra didn’t try to cover her breasts.
“I’m going to tell my son,” the old woman said in her dry voice. “Harlot—sinners!” She came farther into the room, and shook her cane in the air. I wondered crazily how she managed to hold such a heavy cane in her vine-like arm.
“No, you won’t!” Petra whispered. She rushed from my side across the room.
I watched, rooted to the floor—feet sunk in the thick, soft rug.
Petra grabbed the old woman by the front of her dress and they scrambled at each other. Verne’s mother beat at Petra with the cane, her sly face twisted, eager. They tore at each other before the open casement window, then the old woman’s body sprawled out toward the screen.
“Damn you, damn you!” Petra whispered savagely, striking at her again.
Verne’s mother moaned and moaned. The cane fell, drummed against the rug. I moved then, fast, but I moved too late.
“Catch her!” I said. Petra’s moving figure was between me and the old woman. The screen ripped, sang out. I heard Petra’s breath indrawn
on a gasp. A dry noise, almost like wind in an alley, reached us, followed by a faint thud.
Petra whirled and leaned against the window, wide-eyed, her breasts heaving. “Alex!” she said. “Alex!”
I grabbed her arm, hurled her across the room, looked out and down through the torn hole in the screen. The screen was rusted, old. Verne’s mother was sprawled out in a mass of gray on the flagstones of the patio, two stories below.
A quiet wind rustled in the curtains.
“She’s surely dead,” I said.
As I turned, Petra began to scream. She screamed three times. Then she stopped and looked at me.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and … tomorrow.
Chapter Eleven
“WHAT’S the matter?” It was Verne. I heard him running down the hall, his bare feet pounding.
“Quick,” I said to Petra. “Cover yourself!” I started for the door. Verne burst into the room in his pajamas, white ones. I whirled toward Petra. She was on the other side of her unmade bed with a flame-colored robe wrapped about her.
“What’s the matter?” Verne repeated. “Who screamed?” His hair was mussed, his face haggard.
I started to say something, but Petra interrupted.
She pointed toward the window. “I was just getting up when she came in,” she lied. Her hands went to her head. “Oh, God, Verne! She reeled against the window. Alex beat you here.”
“What? What window? Who?” He stepped farther into the room and his mother’s cane rolled beneath his foot. He stared at it, slowly awakening. His gaze moved to the window to his left, to the torn screen. He leaped over, stuck his head through the rent. I saw his shoulders shake.
Petra looked at me with genuine fright in her eyes.
Verne kept on looking down at the patio.
Petra said, “She just went all of a sudden, Verne. She just fell, she just reeled toward the window. I don’t know what she wanted. She didn’t say anything. She just—she just—she just—”
It was a great act. She sat on the bed and began sobbing uncontrollably.
Verne turned slowly, stared at me, then at Petra. He suddenly ran from the room. I heard his feet pounding on the stairs.
Petra wheeled on the bed. “Go with him, Alex!” she whispered. “Hurry! It will look bad if you don’t!”
