With Option to Die

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  It was, Brinkley thought, most evil nonsense. But when there were shrill demands that Nagle be fired from the faculty Brinkley had been one of those who defended, not what Nagle said, but his right to say it. They also pointed out that Nagle had not said any of these things in his classes, which would have been a little difficult in any case, since he was an assistant professor of physics. A good many others on the faculty, including Associate Professor Faith Powers, who like Brinkley was a member of the English department, had joined in the defense of academic freedom. Brinkley himself had thought that freedom should be indivisible and hence no more the property of academicians than of anyone else, but had not stressed the point. He had quoted Voltaire—“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”—on several occasions and perhaps, he thought afterward, a little too frequently.

  The situation had been somewhat sticky, since Nagle had had tenure. Nagle himself had resolved it, to the surprise of everyone, by voluntary resignation, tendered in a letter to the trustees of the university. The letter had been long and somewhat rambling, and filled with denunciations of the Communist conspiracy which had led, expectedly, to the violation of his constitutional rights. He had sent copies of the letter to the newspapers, which edited to avoid libel.

  The resignation had been accepted with alacrity. Brinkley had almost forgotten the incident until he discovered that those who did not want him and Faith on the Board of Education, Town of Wellwood, had not.

  Brinkley had been only a little surprised by his rejection, having long known that gymnasiums are vital to education and that teachers are not. He had been unsurprised, also, when the best teachers of the North Wellwood schools resigned and went elsewhere.

  He had been surprised to discover that he was a “so-called liberal,” since he had always, like the rest of North Wellwood—and most of the rest of Westchester County—voted Republican. He had been surprised at the violence of feeling which seemed to underlie the entire, and so minor, issue of the school board. He had not supposed that the essential—and, on the whole, gentle—conservatism of the hamlet he had lived his life in was in any manner threatened or that anybody had cause to think it was.

  He felt that then, somehow, the mores of the community had begun to change. He supposed now, as he waited for Harry Washington to make up his mind and thought that Harry was taking his time about it, that the attitude of the town had not so much changed as intensified. What the people of the community had taken for granted was now, many of the people thought, threatened. The issues were suddenly, not altogether explicably, tensely drawn. Ralph Barnes’s sale of a big house in a good part of town to Thomas Peters, Negro, had beyond doubt, and beyond reason, created tension. And now this matter of—

  Harry came out onto the terrace and carried a tray. On the tray he carried the small martini pitcher and another chilling cocktail glass. He also carried an old-fashioned glass with brown liquid in it. Harry was a bourbon drinker, when he drank at all.

  He served Walter Brinkley, carefully, with no comment. He twisted fresh lemon peel over the fresh martini. He sat down with his own drink where he had sat before. But this time he did not sit on the edge of the tippy chair.

  “Has Peters had trouble before?” Brinkley asked him, remembering this time to avoid the over-politeness of the “mister.”

  “Not really trouble,” Harry said. “Oh, what you’d expect, I suppose. The man next door—there’s more than a hundred yards between them—has put his house up for sale. Peters’ mailbox was knocked over a couple of times. His wife thinks she has to wait longer than other people at the market, but that’s a thing we’re sensitive about—imaginative about. I’ve never had that trouble.” He paused and sipped from his glass. “Until the last few months, anyway,” he said. “And I may imagine it.”

  “Our mailbox has been knocked over,” Brinkley said.

  “Yes,” Harry said. “On Halloween. Neither time vandals went after Peters’ was Halloween. And the second time—that was only a couple of weeks ago, Doctor—they flattened it. As if they had run a truck over it.”

  “It’s the club, isn’t it?”

  “Part of it’s the club,” Harry said. “Most of it, I suppose. But there’s a different feeling here from what there used to be. You probably haven’t noticed it, with your book and all. We didn’t have the NAACP dinner this year. We lost money last year.”

  Harry was a past-president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Brinkley himself was a member but not, he feared now, a very attentive one. For almost as long as he could remember, the NAACP had given annual dinners in the community room of the Congregational Church. At them, Negroes and whites had eaten together, of expertly fried chicken. The intermingling had perhaps been not much more than a token. It had, at any rate, been that. Local purveyors had supplied frying chickens at cost and sometimes at less than cost.

  “I suppose,” Harry said, “it’s what they call the backlash. I—well, I hadn’t thought it would reach this far—to North Wellwood. To such a quiet little place. None of us had. Not that things were very good for us before, of course. Housing for one thing. But now there’s animus. Not open, yet. Or people are careful about it. They shoot from behind trees.”

  There was a bitterness in Harry Washington’s voice for a moment. Brinkley had never heard it before. Life had always seemed rather to amuse Harry Washington.

  “And,” Harry said, “from behind words. You’ve read this thing from what they call the Preservation Association? Or did you tear it up, Professor?”

  Brinkley disliked a littered desk and commonly tore up unread mail which he deduced he did not need to read. All mail addressed to “Boxholder” was so destroyed, unopened. So were letters addressed to “Walter Huntington Brinkley.” Brinkley had many years ago discarded his second name, feeling it made him sag in the middle, but it still appeared, in parenthesis, in Who’s Who in America. When the “Huntington” was included, Brinkley knew that the writer had used Who’s Who as a mailing list, presumably to offer for sale something which Brinkley did not want to buy. It was true he was sometimes impetuous. Once he had torn up his monthly retirement check, but Harry Washington, who kept an eye on such matters, had found the pieces and taped them back together.

  “I may have,” Brinkley said, with caution. “I don’t remember reading anything from a preservation association.”

  Harry was prepared. He took a folded sheet from the inner pocket of his white jacket and carried it to his employer. “Do YOU Want THIS Country Club?”

  Brinkley had left his reading glasses on his manuscript. He could read quite well without them, until he got a headache. He could read the communication from the North Wellwood Preservation Association without difficulty, although it was single-spaced. The style bothered him considerably, but he could read the words.

  He looked up when he had finished and looked at Harry Washington’s waiting face.

  “Traffic congestion is a bad thing,” Walter Brinkley said. “Litter is to be deplored. So is a weasel.”

  Harry Washington smiled at that. It was the first time Brinkley had seen Harry smile that day. Harry smiled readily, since a good many things amused him. This smile was brief.

  “There’s a poem I like,” Harry said. “By Robert Graves. About cats. Cats, he says, make their point by walking round it. It’s all right for cats. For humans, as you say—weaselly. Why don’t they come out with it?”

  “As you said, Harry. Because they want to hide. Don’t want to admit openly what they’re getting at. Do you know who they are?”

  Harry Washington shook his head. He said people had been guessing. He said, “They say there’s a pretty active chapter of the John Birch Society in the town.”

  “Birchites aren’t anti-Negro,” Brinkley said. “Not professedly, so far as I know. Just anti-twentieth century.”

  “They come in all kinds, from what I hear. People do, you know. All
kinds of people. Including my kind, Professor. Black power and take over with guns. And we are part of the twentieth century, Professor.”

  It was the same “we” Harry had used before.

  “There’s always a lunatic fringe, as they call it,” Harry Washington said. “I’d better go fix the eggs, Professor. Unless you’d like another drink?”

  He finished his own drink and stood up and waited.

  Walter Brinkley was tempted, unexpectedly. He felt disquiet; three martinis before lunch would dissolve disquiet. And me with it probably, Brinkley thought. Walter Brinkley said, “No,” to the waiting Harry Washington.

  Harry put empty glasses on the little tray and went to shir eggs and broil sausages and Brinkley sat in the shade, and in disquiet, and considered the change, the tension, which had come to the quiet community he was part of. He wished that Thomas Peters had bought his house somewhere else, and planned his club for another locality. It was, he thought, a weasel wish and that it was a very common one. New roads are needed, but not through my property. Equality is to be ardently desired, but not next door. Issues must be joined and, sometimes, sides taken. But preferably in the abstract.

  There was, too evidently, not to be anything abstract about the North Wellwood Country Club, particularly if people were going to start shooting at Thomas Peters from, as Harry suggested, behind trees.

  While he waited for Harry to come out again and tell him that his lunch was served, Brinkley ran through his mind what he knew about Peters. He had met Peters only once, at a rather large and somewhat ostentatiously unsegregated party, and talked to him only briefly. It had been difficult to talk to Peters that afternoon because so many gathered around to prove to everyone that they drew no color lines. Peters, Brinkley thought, had been wryly amused, probably in part because he was used to it.

  Knowing Peters by reputation was another matter. He was prominent as an attorney, practicing in New York and frequently in Washington. He had been active in civil rights cases; had often represented the American Civil Liberties Union when it intervened as amicus curiae. He also, a little unexpectedly, had an extensive practice as a corporation lawyer. When he had purchased, from Ralph Barnes, a big house in a good part of North Wellwood, the Sentinel had made a front-page story of it, noting the arrival of a “distinguished new resident.” But, of course, Clayton Foster was always a man to stick his neck out.

  He probably, Brinkley thought, will stick his neck out on this. I hope not into a noose. Publishing a small-town weekly can be a precarious occupation.

  As, evidently, could the promotion, as head of the corporation, of a country club which was not only a traffic menace and a source of “litter” but interracial. That was the point the Preservation Association had weaseled its way around.

  In Westchester County, State of New York, it would, Brinkley thought, be quite a point. He doubted if it was one which had ever been raised before and, summoned, went in to eat shirred eggs and sausages.

  The eggs were, as always, precisely as he liked them. They were the first things—except the martinis—which, on that bright May day, had been.

  * As recounted in Accent on Murder.

  III

  The Maples Inn stretched itself along Main Street, across from the Congregational Church. It was the white spire of the Congregational Church which one first saw on looking down into the gentle valley in which the hamlet of North Wellwood nestled among its trees. The inn was close to the street, which had once, Ann thought, been a narrow road, a dusty road or a muddy road. Beside the door of the inn there was a small sign, fixed to ancient clapboard. AN INN SINCE 1792 the sign read.

  Ann had followed the bright blue Mercedes to the inn—followed it along Hayride Lane in the big, by comparison sluggish, station wagon and had honked acknowledgment when Faith Powers gestured toward her own house; had followed it as it jogged into South Lane and right-turned, the lights favoring, on Main Street. She had followed it into the parking lot of the Maples Inn.

  She had not expected to do any of these things. She had expected to have a solitary drink and a sandwich in the kitchen. She had been taken under a brisk, small wing.

  Ann had offered Faith Powers a second glass of Dubonnet and, with that refused, suggested she make them sandwiches. She was told that she had enough to do without having a guest for lunch the moment she arrived. She was told that Faith Powers had a better idea.

  “You’ll have to go into the village to market anyway, I expect,” Faith said when a sandwich was offered. “Unless you brought things with you? To feed him with.”

  Ann had planned to market.

  “Then we’ll have a bite at the inn,” Faith told her. “Sally Lambert’s got a quite good chef. Then I’ll guide you to the supermarket I use. It’s in a back street, rather.”

  “Only,” Ann said, “there are things I ought …”

  She was told she had done enough for one day, and that not everything could be done in one day. She had, Faith told her, driven up from New York and lugged things into the house and probably made up beds and …

  “You’ll be better for a break,” Faith told her, and Faith was firm. Not authoritative, but firm. She had been asked to welcome; she intended to welcome. When she had something to do, Ann thought, Faith Powers put herself briskly into it.

  Ann had felt no need to be guided or protected. Nor had she supposed that North Wellwood would be, for herself and Eric, more than a quiet place to spend the summer while they continued to learn about each other. A retreat for two; that was what it was to be—was to have been. Certainly the proposed country club, interracial or not, would have nothing to do with them. They would live detached. The tempest, and it was clear from what Faith told her over their first drink that there was a tempest in this apparently tranquil teacup, would blow around them, leaving them unbuffeted.

  Two things moved her to say she was tempted by the thought of leisurely—but not too leisurely—lunch at the Maples Inn. One was that she was more tired than she had realized before she had sat down to her drink. The other thing was, quite simply, curiosity. It was part of her trade as an interviewer for the network to be curious.

  “The inn is usually busy for lunch on Mondays,” Faith told her. “So many places close on Mondays. You’ll meet quite a few of your new neighbors, I expect.”

  “I don’t imagine we’ll—”

  She stopped because Faith Powers was smiling at her and at the same time shaking her head.

  “Communities like this are sponges,” Faith Powers said. “They suck you in. And they can squeeze you out, Mrs. Martin. This one squeezed Lucile and Ralph out, in a way. They didn’t tell you that, did they?”

  “No.”

  “I gathered that from Lucile. They’ve talked it over, apparently. Had second thoughts. Probably it won’t come to concern you and your husband. But—Shall we go and have lunch?”

  Ann moved the station wagon so the bright blue Mercedes could spurt past it. She followed the spurting sports car to the parking lot of the Maples Inn, which was reasonably full, and pulled in beside it. They walked around the corner of the long, low building. A two-story building, probably with low ceilings, certainly with small windows, tight against winters of long ago. It had been recently painted and was very white with the early afternoon sun on it. Under this new coat of white, Ann thought, generations of paint are encrusted.

  The entrance hall of the Maples Inn was a low-ceilinged oblong, with a flight of stairs rising from the end of it, with a doorway on either sidewall at the bottom of the stairs. A tall, thin woman with gray hair pulled tightly back stood between the doorways. The sound of voices, and apparently of a good many voices, came through both doorways. A smile dented the long face of the gray-haired woman as Ann and Faith Powers went into the entrance hall.

  ”’Morning, Sally,” Faith said. “Brought you a new customer. Mrs. Martin. This is Sally Lambert, Mrs. Martin. Mr. and Mrs. Martin have taken the Barnes place for the summer.”

  “
I heard they had,” Sally Lambert said, and then, to Ann, “I do hope you’ll like it here, Mrs. Martin.”

  She had a dry voice and spoke quickly.

  Ann was sure she would like it there.

  Mrs. Lambert led them through one of the doorways into a long, again low-ceilinged, room with most of one side of it a fireplace. There was a table set for four across from the fireplace and Mrs. Lambert stopped in front of it and said, “Tony.” A waiter in a waiter’s black jacket, wearing a waiter’s black bow tie, came through a doorway which connected the long room with a corridor bar and pulled the table out so they could sit behind it and said, “Good morning, Mrs. Powers. Ma’am.”

  “This is Mrs. Martin, Tony,” Faith Powers said. “I want you to take care of her. We’re both having Dubonnet on the—” She paused and looked at Ann, who nodded. “Rocks. And tell Adam we want the blond kind.”

  To which the waiter said, “Mrs. Martin” and “I’ll tell him, Mrs. Powers” and took two outside place settings off the table and carried them away.

  There were tables at the end of the room and, beyond the entrance to the bar corridor, others along the side opposite the fireplace, which was enormous and blackened and looked as if fires had burned in it for many years.

  “This is the original part,” Faith Powers said. “Built before the Revolution. Nobody knows when exactly. The Bennington place it was then. There are still a good many Benningtons around these parts. The other wing is quite new, by comparison. Around 1800, Mrs. Lambert thinks. Somebody carved a date in one of the beams and—”

  Somewhat abruptly she quit speaking, although Ann had listened, turning to face her. Now Faith Powers looked beyond Ann toward the end of the room and her white eyebrows drew a little together. There was intentness on her round, pink face. Her blue eyes narrowed.

  Ann turned and looked in the direction her companion looked.

  There were two tables at the end of the long room, and two men were sitting at each. Of the two at whom Faith seemed to be looking most intently, one was narrow-shouldered and dark-haired. His face was long and his nose narrow and emphatic. The other man, younger and considerably wider, had a square face and a cleft chin and wide-set blue eyes under a rather low forehead. His hair was a blond brush.