12
MAXWELL GETS A SHOCK
For a week after Prue arrived back home, she was troubled with echoes of the exciting world of Los Angeles that she had experienced. Her parents noticed that she was quieter, but neither of them mentioned it. They knew she was worried about what she would do for a job and was dreading taking a minimum wage job at a fast-food place, which seemed to be all that was available.
On Monday morning she got a call that surprised her. “Hello, Prue. This is Kent.”
Instantly Prue’s heart felt a sudden impulse of gladness. “I thought you had gone back to Chicago.”
“I am going back, but I need to get the house cleaned up. I like to leave things neat. Could you come over and help me today?”
“Oh yes! I’ll be over by ten o’clock.”
She hung up and told her mother she was going to help Maxwell clean house. She was about to leave when she suddenly remembered she had promised Pearl and her daughter, Melody, that she would bring the portrait she had done of them. She had touched it up a little bit, and though not satisfied with it, knew she could do no more. Wrapping it and sticking it into an oversized shopping bag, she left the house and jumped into the old Pontiac. She stopped by Pearl’s house, but no one was there, and the front door was locked.
“I’d better not leave it on the steps. Someone might take it,” she said to herself. Going back to the car, she put it in the front seat, made her way to Kent Maxwell’s, and got out at once. One of the car windows was jammed in the open position, and she was afraid that the storm clouds that were coming in from the south might bring rain. Picking up the picture, she went inside the house and laid it right beside the front door.
“Prue, is that you?” Maxwell came from down the hall and put out his hand. When she took it, he said, “How was your trip to L.A.?”
“Oh, it was fun. I got to see a lot of things.”
Maxwell noticed that she looked listless, which was unusual for her. Some trouble, he thought. She’s just not herself. Aloud he said, “Well, let’s see if we can get this house cleaned up. My plane leaves tomorrow at one fifteen.”
Prue worked hard that morning cleaning the house, stopping at one o’clock to fix lunch. They sat down to eat it, and he said, “We’ll pack up all these groceries so you can take them home with you. I don’t think I can take them on the airplane.”
“All right.”
Kent leaned back in his chair and studied her. “What’s wrong, Prue?” he asked. “You look so sad.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. I just don’t know what to do with myself.”
“I think we get that way after we get something we’ve looked forward to for a long time. For you it was graduation. For years you looked forward to it, and now it’s over, and you feel sort of empty and don’t know what to do.”
“Why, that’s right! How did you know that?”
Kent lowered his head and studied the slice of pie in front of him. He did not answer for so long that she thought he did not intend to. Finally he said, “I’ve never told you about myself, have I?”
“No. You haven’t.”
“All my life I looked forward to having a home and a career. I got the career, but then I didn’t get the home.”
“What happened, Kent?”
“Before I went to Korea I married a young woman. While I was over there she found somebody else, and I guess—” He stopped abruptly and shook his head. “Not too original, is it?”
“I’m sorry, Kent.” Prue reached over and put her hand on his. “I really am, but you’ll find someone.”
Kent looked at her hand, feeling its warm pressure, lifted his eyes, and saw the genuine compassion in her face. “You’re a sweet girl, Prudence,” he said. He started to say more, then apparently changed his mind. “Now, let’s finish getting this house cleaned up, and then I’ll take you out and we’ll have a party celebrating the good things that are going to come to you.”
“All right.” Prue rose and began to clean the dishes. Kent left and walked down the hall. He turned to go up the stairs when an object caught his eye, a canvas shopping bag beside the front door. He turned with his limping gait, curious, and walked over, thinking it might be one of his paintings, but he did not remember putting it there. He picked it up, held it for a minute, then muttered, “Why, this must be Prue’s.” It was obviously a painting, and curiosity came to him. Glancing down the hall and not seeing Prue, he slipped the pad out of the bag and stood there staring at it in astonishment.
The painting was not perfect, but as he stared at it he felt the power, and the warmth, and the humanity of it. An Ozark woman and her daughter were smiling out at him, and in their faces he could see both the fear of the poverty that was reflected in the shack outlined behind them and the hope in the woman’s eyes for something better for her little girl.
For a long time Kent Maxwell stood there simply looking at the picture, his eyes soaking it in; then, taking it up, he turned and hobbled down the hall, his cane tapping on the floor. When he stepped inside the kitchen and Prue turned from the sink where she was washing dishes, he held up the painting and said, “Who did this, Prue?”
Prue turned slightly pale. She dropped her head and stared at the floor, and when she finally looked up there was fear in her eyes. “I–I did.”
“I thought it might be that way.” Kent stood there taking the girl’s features in and seeing the panic in her eyes. “You should have told me that you were an artist, Prue.”
“Oh, I’m no artist!”
“You’re wrong about that.” Kent looked at the picture and studied it for a long time, then he looked up and smiled. “I’ve had students who have studied for ten years that couldn’t do it this well. You’ve got something in you that God put there. Something that I couldn’t teach you.”
Prue was staring at the man with astonishment. Her lips were parted slightly, and she shook her head in disbelief. “I’ve never had a lesson in my life.”
“I know. It shows in some of the things I see, but they are things that can be learned. But the life, the vigor, and the vitality of what you’ve done here. Prue, you’ve got to come with me to Chicago.”
“What?”
“I can get you a scholarship at the institute where I teach. You have relatives there, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. But you can’t be serious, Kent. I’ve never gotten good grades.”
“That doesn’t matter. Do you have any more paintings?”
“Oh yes. I’ve got lots of them.”
“Where are they?”
“At home in my room.”
“What do your parents think about your painting?”
“Oh, they don’t know about it. They know I draw and paint a little, but I never show them anything very much.”
“Come on. We’re going to see them right now.”
Prue never remembered much of the interview with her parents. She took Maxwell to her home, and he simply took over. When Prue took him to her room and unlocked the armoire, he almost shouldered her aside and began to pull the paintings and drawings out. “Help me arrange these around the room where I can look at them all!” he commanded, and soon her room was filled with paintings, and her mother and father who had come in were staring at them, amazed.
“Why, we didn’t know you could paint like this, Prue!” Dent said with reproach. “How come you never told us?”
“I didn’t think they were that good, and besides—” She could not finish, for the paintings had been her private life, and she felt ashamed at having kept this away from her parents.
Kent understood, however, and said gently, “It’s all right, Prue. I know a little bit about that. Sometimes we just can’t share things with others.” He turned to Violet and Dent and said, “You know I teach at the Institute of Art in Chicago. You can check on my credentials, but I want to tell you that in all my years of teaching I’ve never had a student with the promise that Prudence has. With a few years of hard study, she
could be a great success in the world of painting. I can get her a scholarship so that it wouldn’t cost anything except her living expenses, and I understand you have relatives there, so she wouldn’t be alone.”
The conference did not last long. Dent and Violet listened to Maxwell as he explained what it would mean—Prue leaving home, going to the big city, and studying hard for at least two years. His eyes were alight, and his excitement was obvious.
Finally Dent looked at Violet, and some unspoken communication passed between them. Dent walked over and put his arm around his daughter. “I don’t know about all this, Prue. What do you think? Do you want to go?”
Prudence stood there, a thousand thoughts going through her mind, but it was as if a door had opened. After a long silence she said, “I’ve never been able to do anything too well, and I’ve been worried about what I was going to do. All my friends are going to college or going to take jobs, and I felt so left out.” She turned to Violet and said, “Mom, I want to do this, but only if you and Dad say it’s all right.”
Violet felt tears rise in her eyes, and pride. “If Mr. Maxwell says you have a talent, and you want to go, then I think God is opening the door to you.”
They moved to the living room, where Maxwell outlined the program and then after a time said, “You talk it over with your parents, Prue. If you want to go, I can cancel my flight and get a later one. We could go together. You’d have time to call your relatives in Chicago. I hope you do it—you have a great talent, and you need to share it with the world.”
Late that night, after a long talk with her parents, Prue sat down and began a letter. Her hands were trembling and she had to stop once, for although she was not a weepy girl, the suddenness of it, and the enormity of it, swept her.
Dear Mark, I’m going to Chicago…. and I’m going to become a painter studying under Mr. Maxwell…
She signed the letter, folded it, put it into an envelope, and put the stamp on it; then she rose, walked over, and looked out the window. It was dark outside, but a sickle moon was throwing its light down upon the earth. She looked at the outline of the mountains and thought about her life, and then her shoulders began to tremble again. The tears came and she whispered, “Maybe I can be somebody!”
Part 3
THE FACE OF WAR
(1967–1968)
13
THE STAR
Mark Stevens was not favorably impressed with Las Vegas. He had arrived two days before he planned to spring his surprise on Elvis Presley and spent most of his time walking through the glittering casinos that had made the city a mecca for suckers. “You see one casino, you’ve seen them all,” he muttered to himself as he walked down the long aisles of slot machines, pausing from time to time to stare at the faces of those who were frantic to lose their money. Although most of the eyes of the players were glazed with an identical stupor, he saw little similarity between the players. Some who plugged their coins into the one-armed bandits were very young; more than one, he suspected, were below the legal age to be in the gambling palace. Many of them were older people, faces lined with years of hard work. Others were middle-aged, probably working people; still others looked wealthy.
He paused beside one machine and watched a woman with an inexpensive-looking print dress thumb coin after coin into the slot. Examining her face carefully, Mark tried to detect some joy but could find nothing but a sense of desperation. She was a heavyset woman of some thirty years of age, he judged, and her brown eyes were tinged with a combination of hope and despair. Each time the wheels rolled in front of her eyes and came to a clicking stop, she heaved a sigh, then plugged another coin into the slot. Finally she hit some fortunate combination, and the coins poured in a cascade of jangling silver into the receptacle provided for them. Mark expected to see her cry for joy, but she simply scooped them up, put them into a canvas bag she wore at her side, and continued to play with the same sense of futility.
Shaking his head in wonder, Mark moved on and finally came to the huge room that featured all sorts of enticements for people to lose their money at a more rapid rate than the slots. He moved from table to table and for the next two hours talked to as many people as would give him the time. Few of them were ready to do this, however. They had come to gamble, not to give interviews to a reporter.
He hovered at the back of a crowd watching a small, well-dressed man with a good tan as he bucked the roulette wheel. The player had a large stack of chips in front of him, but after an hour they were all gone. He stood up and muttered, “Well, that’s it,” under his breath, then turned and shoved his way through the crowd. Mark followed the man, who went to the bar and sat down; seeing the seat next to him was empty, Mark plopped down beside him. He listened as the man ordered a drink in a shaky voice, and he himself ordered a Coke. The man drank the double Scotch down and sat there clenching the glass tightly.
“No luck today?” Mark asked. He scarcely expected an answer, but the man turned his head and said bitterly, “I’ve lost everything! What am I going to tell my wife?”
“Where you from?” Mark asked, hoping to get the man talking. He could see that there was a sense of bitterness, frustration, and fear etched in the man’s eyes, and the lips were pale and trembling as he answered.
“Denver,” he muttered. “I’m in the wholesale hardware business.” He turned quickly, hailed the bartender, and ordered another double Scotch. When it came before him, he drained it down as if it were tap water. Bracing his shoulders against the shock of the alcohol, he bowed his head and did not speak.
“Sometimes it’s not such a good idea to come to these places,” Mark said gently.
For a moment the man was silent, and Mark saw that his shoulders were trembling; then he saw, when the man turned to him, that there were tears in his eyes. “I’ve got a good wife and three kids, and I had a good business, but I got hooked on gambling. I’ve lost everything—the house, both cars, all my savings. This was the last of it. I came here to make a big killing and pay everything off, and I swore and promised God I’d never come back again—but now it’s all gone.”
Mark wanted to say something to comfort him. “Never too late to quit a thing like this,” he murmured. “If I were you, I think I’d just go home, tell my wife what happened, and ask her to forgive me; then I’d never bet a penny on anything for the rest of my life.”
“You think I haven’t done that?” The voice was bitter, sharp, and terse. Pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket, the man wiped his face, then stood up, and without another word to Mark walked stiffly across the room, shouldering people aside. He disappeared, and Mark stood up, a sense of disbelief in his mind over what he had just seen. He looked over the room that was swarming with people and thought, They’re all alike. Come to make a big killing, and most of them don’t do it. Don’t they know that the only way this kind of a place stays open is to set the odds so the house wins? He moved out of the casino, taking a breath of fresh air, for there was a staleness and an odor of death in the place to him. He had planned to write an article on the casinos and what made people throw their hard-earned money away, but now he wondered about it. That fellow could have read a hundred stories telling about the evils of gambling. Probably has, but it didn’t stop him. I wonder what makes human beings do foolish things like this?
Feeling like Secret Agent 007 in a way, Mark Stevens examined himself in the mirror, straightened the white collar of his shirt, and ran his hands along the sides of the uniform sleeve. He stared in the mirror and laughed aloud. “You’re a fool for trying this! You’ll never get away with it!” But the challenge stirred him, and he left his room and made his way to the hotel where he had discovered Elvis Presley was due to hold a champagne breakfast for a few select guests. Ever since Mark heard that Elvis was going to marry Priscilla Beaulieu, a scheme had been formulating in his mind. Elvis was big news, and anything he did, no matter how mundane, was good for snaring readers. As he piled up the information about the champagne bre
akfast, Mark had beat his brains trying to figure a way to get in on it. He knew, of course, that the breakfast would be more closely guarded than the United Nations, but there was no chance, whatsoever, that the guards would admit anyone who even looked like they might be a reporter.
Late one night, an idea had come to Mark. Why don’t I disguise myself as a waiter, slip in, and do a little waiting? It had been a fruitful idea. He had learned quite a bit as an investigative reporter and had discovered that the Williamson Corporation would cater the affair. It took a little effort, but he managed to find one of the waiters who would be serving, and had, without seeming to do so, wheedled out of him the name of the company that provided the uniforms for Williamson people. It had not been too difficult to go to that place, pretend to be a waiter, and get a uniform. He had also discovered the timing of the breakfast and the dining room where it would be held. So, now as he gave himself a final look in the mirror, he muttered, “All they can do is throw me out!”; then he left his hotel room.
He moved down the street in a waiter’s uniform, attracting no attention whatsoever. When he reached the Featherstone Hotel he entered by the service entrance, and by keeping his eyes open and making no more than two or three false entries, found a group of men all wearing the same uniform he had on. He had arrived just in time, for they were all carrying silver trays loaded with food and alcoholic drinks of all sorts. No one paid the slightest attention to him, so he simply picked up a tray from the table and joined himself to the line that was moving out of the service room.
The line proceeded down a short corridor where the elevator waited. Mark got on, and the fellow next to him winked and said, “This is something, gettin’ to see the King, ain’t it now?”
Dawn of a New Day Page 14
