18-With Option to Die

by Lockridge, Richard

  “You killed?”

  “No. Not that we wanted to much. Except the hounds, of course. Start to kill, way things are, what with the mange and everything, what we’d end up by killing would be the hunt itself. This one went to earth. Old Grandpa was above that sort of thing.”

  “Father’s talked about him,” Lyle said. “He must be—have been—quite a fox.”

  “Made the hunt, that’s what Grandpa did,” James told the pretty girl in the light brown dress. “Your father and mother here, Lyle?”

  “Golfing,” Lyle Mercer said. “And Mother’s trying to get Father to use a cart. Poor old Timothy can’t get used to it. Hangs his head over the rail and looks wistful when they go off in the car.”

  “Good hunter, Timothy,” James said. “Your father want to sell him?”

  “No,” Lyle said. “At least he hasn’t mentioned it. Wants to keep him to remember the Van Brunt Hunt by, I suppose.”

  She looked around the crowded taproom of the Old Stone Inn, given over, that October noon, to the breakfast of the Van Brunt Hunt.

  She knew many of the men and women who drank their way from group to group and talked of horses and of foxes and—which came to her in bits and pieces, in word snatches—of poor Roger Spence, who had, once more, fallen off his horse. The fall had not damaged Spence perceptibly. He was swaying a little as he drank in a laughing group. He laughed with the others. But he often swayed a little at hunt breakfasts, which were not conducive to the maintenance of equilibrium. Roger Spence looked over people between himself and Lyle. He was tall enough to look over most.

  “If you’re going to put it in that paper of yours,” he said, from halfway down the long taproom, “I didn’t fall off the horse. The horse fell under me. Whatever these jokers tell you.”

  “The horse fell,” Lyle called back to him. “I’ll get it straight, Mr. Spence.”

  And, with finger above palm of hand, she made the gesture of writing a note about the falling of a horse from under Roger Spence, from under whom horses so frequently fell. Not that Roger Spence’s misadventure would be mentioned in the few sticks she would write of the hunt-club breakfast for the Van Brunt Citizen. It was not news when Spence fell off a horse. Further, this was not to be, in any real sense, a news story.

  “Just get the names, baby,” Bob Wallis had told her the afternoon before. “People like to see their names. Oh, if somebody rides his horse into the taproom, you might interview the horse.”

  She had learned, in the nearly four months she had been working on the Citizen—one has to start some place—that people like to see their names in newspapers. She had also learned the special meaning, in a parlance she must learn, of the word “stick.” A couple of inches of type, a stick was. “The annual breakfast of the Van Brunt Hunt was held Saturday at the Old Stone Inn. Among—”

  Thirty men and women in the long, low room. Perhaps forty. Harold, tending the bar which stretched across the far end, had two men helping him and needed them. Spares clutched out of the city by Mrs. Oliphant, on this busiest of autumn weekends—clutched, Lyle suspected, with considerable desperation. Saturday, October twelfth, Columbus Day, on top of everything. On top, most of all, of the pre-emption of the taproom from noon until two by the hunt club. When the roads were filled with thirsty leaf-lookers. But locals, not transient leaf-lookers, are the hard core for a country inn. Particularly, of course, locals who own—or sometimes rent—hunters so that they can ride across fields and jump stone fences in pursuit of foxes.

  Lyle, stowing names in her mind as she moved, person by person, toward the bar—as she smiled and greeted men and women she had, for the most part, known since she was a small girl—stowed also certain phrases. (Which, she realized, she probably would not use when she sat in front of a typewriter in the Citizen office.) “To a degree, the breakfast was a wake for a gray fox everyone calls ‘Grandpa,’ who for years has enjoyed being fruitlessly pursued by the Van Brunt Hunt Club.” No, she wouldn’t use that. Names. And the kinds of food on the long trestle table along one side of the taproom. And that many of the hunt had brought along their weekend guests. And, perhaps, that tweed jackets outnumbered pink coats on the men. But not, certainly, that too many of the women were wearing riding breeches they too completely filled.

  There were girls of her own age, and boys too, in the crowded room. But most there were older and, appreciably, thicker. People tend to thicken in proper relation to age and bank accounts. Good, or even passable, hunters cost money. A mature group, the hunt was becoming. For the most part, contemporaries, Lyle realized, of her parents, who in recent years had turned to the quieter exercise of golf. Poor, gray Timothy, turned out to pasture when he wanted to meet other horses and jump familiar fences.

  “Lovely party, isn’t it?” she said to Mrs. Arnold Bracken, who had gray hair cut short and who was reported often to ride off at angles and jump fences not in the hounds’ line of pursuit, presumably because the fences were there.

  “Where are those parents of yours, girl?” Mrs. Bracken asked her, rather sternly. On being told where Lytton and Grace Mercer probably were, which probably was on the ninth green, working their way toward lunch on the country-club terrace, Mrs. Bracken said, “The poor dears. Such a pity,” and then, “They tell me you’re working on the Citizen.” She said this with the inflection of one who rather hopes to be contradicted.

  “A cub,” Lyle said. “The smallest, newest of cubs. Is Mr. Bracken here?”

  “Was,” Ruth Bracken said. “Haven’t looked under the tables recently. Where’s your drink, girl?”

  “On my way for it,” Lyle said and started on her way. (Among those at the breakfast, Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Bracken, Mr. and Mrs. Marvin James and their daughter Estelle; the Leslie Sondermans. Dr. and Mrs. Frederic—always remember without the “k”—Sinclair. Charles—)

  She reached the bar, and Harold, who looked harried, said, “Yes, Miss Mercer?” to which she said, “Gin and tonic, Harold.”

  “Sure you’re eighteen?” Harold asked her.

  Harold had been tending bar at the Old Stone Inn since the days Lyle had been limited to Shirley Temples. Serving them, he had said, “Don’t let them catch up with you, young lady. Pretty powerful, way I make them.”

  “I’m quite sure,” Lyle said to him now. “But plenty of tonic, please.”

  “And a twist?”

  “Please,” Lyle said, and carried her drink away from the bar, which was more than a good many were doing. (Mr. and Mrs. Philip Curtis, Mrs. Helen Shephard. Remember “a,” not “e.” Miss Helen Finley. Inspector and Mrs. M. L. Heimrich. Not, she thought, members of the hunt. Guests? The Armstrongs. Mr. and Mrs. John Alden. Of course, the Inspector was Marian Alden’s uncle. Mr. and Mrs.—)

  “Know our host, don’t you, Lyle?” somebody said behind her, and she turned and looked up at Sam Jackson. She had a long way up to look. Sam Jackson was a long man. He was also one of her father’s close friends, in spite of being a Democrat. Lytton Mercer was a tolerant man, granting friends their foibles.

  Lyle said, “Hello, Sam. Host?”

  The man who stood beside Sam Jackson was almost of Jackson’s height. He was almost as slim; he wore riding breeches, which Jackson did not. He wore a brown tweed jacket.

  “Paul Wainright,” Jackson said and moved a thumb to indicate the man beside him. “His party. Very generous man, Wainright is.”

  It was somewhat puzzling. The hunt breakfasts had always been a communal charge on members of the hunt. A fixed price, all-inclusive, was set by Mrs. Oliphant; hunt members contributed pro-rata, ginger-ale drinkers as much as sturdier types, nibblers of watercress no less than consumers of rare roast beef. Writing a check for his share, Lyle’s father frequently said, “Ouch!”

  “Your party?” Lyle asked the tall man who was named Wainright and who had a long brown face and blue eyes and crisp gray hair. He was one of those in the room Lyle had never seen before. She groped in her memory. People named Wainright had—a
year or so ago?—bought the old Kynes place on Long Hill Road.

  “By way,” Wainright said to her, “of being an initiation fee. Not asked for, you know. Token of appreciation, you might call it. Everybody’s been most cordial, Miss—” he paused for a name.

  “Lyle Mercer,” Jackson said. “Reporter for our new newspaper. Also a member of the hunt. Anyway, her father is. Lytton Mercer. Doesn’t ride much any more. Golf type, Lyt’s turned out to be.”

  Somewhat unexpectedly, Wainright extended a square brown hand toward Lyle. She took it and he said, “Miss Mercer,” which was accurate and, on the whole, friendly. He then said, “Going to write us up?”

  “Local events,” Lyle said. “One of the things a weekly is for, the editor thinks. Paul Wainright and—is Mrs. Wainright here?”

  “Names in the paper,” Wainright said. “No, as a matter of fact. One of her headaches, I’m afraid. Been looking forward to it all week, too. This piece of yours, Miss Mercer. Don’t need to say I’m—call it ‘throwing’ the party, is there?”

  “If you’d rather I didn’t—”

  “Nonsense,” Sam Jackson said. “Everybody knows it anyway. And appreciates it.”

  “All the same,” Wainright said, “Wouldn’t want it to look as if my wife and I were trying to buy—”

  “Don’t,” Sam Jackson said, “be a horse’s ass.”

  Paul Wainright shrugged square shoulders to that and smiled at both of them. He had, Lyle thought, a pleasant smile.

  “Mention it if you want to,” Wainright said. “All for freedom of the press.” He looked away from Lyle and from Jackson, closing a subject. He said, “Roast beef looks good,” opening a new one.

  It did, Lyle thought. So did the turkey, and shiny pans over gently burning alcohol probably held bubbling kidneys in sauce and the curried shrimp for which the Old Stone Inn was, locally, famous. And, as usual, chicken à la king. And people were beginning to drift toward the trestle table and the man in a chef’s hat behind it. Another weekend import from the city, Lyle thought of the chef.

  “Get you something?” Wainright said, returning to her. She shook her head; lifted slightly her still almost-full glass. “Circulate,” Lyle said. “Make a little list.” She tapped her forehead, indicating where she kept her little list.

  Wainright nodded and looked at Sam Jackson, who shook his head.

  “Can’t let it go to waste,” Wainright said, and went off among people toward the buffet.

  “Bought the Kynes place last spring,” Jackson said. “Seems an all-right sort. Rides well. So does his wife, come to that. Hiya, Marv.”

  Marvin James carried a glass. He waggled it at Sam Jackson.

  “Been talking about old Grandpa,” James said. “Miss the old boy. Harry Peterson thinks could be the mange got him.”

  “It’s got a lot of them, they say,” Jackson said. “Infectious as hell, apparently. And—”

  Lyle carried her drink away and smiled and nodded and made friendly sounds and added to her list of those among the present. She explained that her mother and father were playing golf. She said, “It’s been so long I’d probably fall off at the first fence.” She said, “I promise, Mr. Spence. I already promised.” She said, “Yes, a little rice with it, please,” to the man who wore the chef’s cap. She said, “Everything’s delicious, Mrs. Oliphant,” when the proprietor of the Old Stone Inn popped in briefly from the main dining room, looking harried. “Off the road in droves,” Mrs. Oliphant said. “Already we’re out of roast beef.”

  Lyle said, “Hi, Susan,” to Susan Heimrich and, “I didn’t know you two hunted.”

  “Just hangers-on,” Susan said. “With the Aldens. And Merton’s making gestures. Inspector gestures. Meaning he wants to go home.”

  At a little before two, Lyle put her empty glass down on a table by the side exit of the taproom and went out into the parking lot. Somebody had put a Lincoln with New York City plates at an angle between the lines so that it almost imprisoned her Volks. She wriggled the Volks out and edged into traffic on Van Brunt Avenue, which is also NY-11 F, and waited in a line of cars for the light to change at The Corners. Finally, it did, and the line crept. It changed again, against her, when she was two cars from it. She waited again. She crossed Elm Street, which is also NY-109, and signaled and pulled off to the right and parked behind the low white building which housed the Van Brunt Citizen. It was a new building. The Citizen was a new newspaper. Until two years before, the residents of Van Brunt had made do with the Cold Harbor News and, of course the New York Times.

  There was nobody in the Citizen’s editorial room, which did not surprise Lyle Mercer. There would be nobody in the business office, either. The composing room and the press room would be similarly empty. Over weekends, the Citizen hibernated. But the door of Robert Wallis’s office was open and Wallis was at his desk. Spread on the desk was a copy of last week’s Citizen. As she passed his open door, Wallis did not look up from the newspaper. What he did do was, abruptly, raise both hands above his head, fists clenched. He said, “God damn it to hell.” He spoke loudly into empty space.

  He had found another, Lyle thought, and went past the open door to a typewriter desk in a corner. She was seldom in the office on Saturdays, but she knew Robert Wallis, editor and publisher, always was. Everybody knew he always was. Others might golf or play tennis on Saturdays and Sundays; they might jump horses over stone fences. Robert Wallis hunted typos. He crouched over his desk and read line by line through the newspaper which had gone to the Van Brunt News Store, and to shops in Cold Harbor and Yorktown Heights and into the mail the Thursday before. He found typos and shook fists and gritted teeth at them. On Saturdays, Robert Wallis did penance for irretrievable errors.

  2

  Lyle rolled copy paper into her typewriter and lifted her hands to the keys and then put them down again because she was, instead of thinking about the hunt breakfast, wondering about Robert Wallis. He was, she thought, an odd man. It was a sunny October day and the leaves were turning in the bright air. The maples were yellow and red and blazed in the sun. All the hills around the hamlet of Van Brunt, above the Hudson in Putnam County, leaped with color. And the editor-publisher of the Van Brunt Citizen crouched over a desk and scraped last week’s edition for errors which could never be corrected.

  She knew very little about him. Two years ago he had appeared, more or less out of nowhere, and bought the low white building which James Purvis, who owned the garage across the street, had put up on the site of the former fire station—the fire station which had burned down several years before and could not sound its own siren for help. Purvis had built the two-story white building and put up a sign which read: “Stores and Offices for Rent.” And a man named Wallis had bought the building before any of the stores and offices were rented and had had partitions taken out and a newspaper moved in.

  “Probably paid through the nose for it, if I know Purvis,” Lyle’s father had said, and added that he did know Purvis. “Can’t say I see Van Brunt’s need for a weekly newspaper.” But six months later he was saying, with indignation, that the post office had fallen flat on its face again, with no Citizen in the mailbox on Friday, and was driving to the Center to pick up a copy at the Van Brunt News Store. “No use waiting until Saturday to see what young Wallis has got to say for himself and about the town.”

  Bob Wallis was not, from where Lyle Mercer sat—at the moment before an unresponsive typewriter—particularly young. In the middle thirties, at a guess, and not looking less. A man with short black hair which grew to a point on his forehead and a habit of walking with his head thrust forward; a spare man of six feet or so, who looked as if he might play tennis. But who didn’t play tennis, although he had joined the country club. Now and then he did swim in the club pool, but there was always something impatient about his swimming.

  A few facts she did know about the man from outside who had started a weekly newspaper in the town of Van Brunt and made a go of it. He had worked
on an afternoon newspaper in New York and had been city editor when the paper, which had been moldering for some years, collapsed under him and the rest of the staff. He had been married and his wife had died—died a year or so before he started his paper in Van Brunt. He had said that to somebody who had been curious. He had joined the Lions Club, but when they had speakers at their lunches he usually sent somebody else to cover them. He hated typographical errors.

  It was not much to know about a man for whom one had worked from late June until this Columbus Day Saturday in October.

  The idea of working on the Citizen had come to her suddenly, about a week after she had been graduated from Radcliffe. She had not planned to look for a job; she had planned a summer of tennis and golf and swimming at the club; had planned a summer of playing. And after a week she had decided that that was not going to be enough.

  She had told her mother and father so one warm evening as the three of them sat on a shady terrace outside the big house and sipped long drinks and listented to music, with grave intervals of news, which trickled through an open doorway. It was WQXR music, which the elder Mercers preferred.

  “I,” Lyle said, “am going to try to get a job on the Citizen.”

  “What do you think, Lytton?” Grace said. There was doubt in her voice.

  “That it’s for the girl to decide,” Lytton Mercer said. “Also, that it’s better if she works here instead of in the city. If she’s going to work somewhere. Air’s bad in the city. City’s full of muggers.”

  Lytton Mercer was senior vice president of a bank in the city, and in the summer months he went in three days a week. In the winter, he went to the city from Monday through Thursday. He had no desire to be president of the bank. A Mercer, it went without saying—certainly without saying by Lytton Mercer—had no need to be.

  It had been on a Saturday that Lyle had, so suddenly, made up her mind to try to get a job on the Van Brunt Citizen. The following Monday she had driven the several miles from the big white house on High Road, where High Road ended in a turnaround circle above the Hudson River, to The Corners, where a newspaper had replaced a fire station. The Citizen had two front doors, one to the editorial rooms and the other to the business office, where job printing could be arranged and advertisements placed and subscriptions accepted.