A Stranger in My Grave

by Margaret Millar

  Another picture, mounted on cardboard, showed Ada and Field­ing himself and a ranch hand he’d worked with near Albuquerque, a handsome dark-eyed young man called Curly. On spring days, when dust storms obscured the range and made work impossible, the three of them used to play pinochle together. Ada had been a good sport in those early times, full of fun and life, ready for any­thing. Having a child had changed her. It was a year of drought. During the months of Ada’s pregnancy more tears had come from her eyes than rain from the skies.

  He brought the suitcase out now and began unpacking its con­tents on the big round table under the green-shaded ceiling light.

  Muriel came in from the kitchen, the only other room in the apartment. She was a short, stout middle-aged woman with a hard mouth and eyes soft and round and pale green, like little mint patties with a licorice drop in the middle. She snorted at the sight of the open suitcase. “What do you want to go dragging out that old thing again for?”

  “Memories, my dear. Memories.”

  “Well, I’ve got a few memories myself, but I don’t go spreading them out in the middle of a table every couple of weeks.” She leaned over his shoulder to get a closer look at the picture taken at the ranch. “You look like you were a real lively bunch.”

  “We were, thirty years ago.”

  “Oh go on, you haven’t changed so much.”

  “Not as much as Curly anyway,” he said grimly. “I looked him up last time I went through Albuquerque, and I hardly recognized him. He was an old man already, and his hands were so crippled by arthritis he couldn’t even play pinochle anymore, let alone work cattle. We talked about old times for a while, and he said he’d drop in on me next time he came to Chicago. But we both knew he’d never make it.”

  “Well, don’t dwell on it,” Muriel said brusquely. “That’s the trouble with your poking around in the past like this—you get to dwelling on things. You mark my words, Stan Fielding. That old suitcase of yours is your worst enemy in this world. And if you were smart, you’d take it right down to the pier and chuck it in the briny with a farewell and amen.”

  “I don’t claim to be smart. I’m thirsty, though. Bring me out a beer like a good wife, will you? It’s a hot day.”

  “You’re not going to make it any cooler by lapping up beer,” she said. But she went out to the kitchen anyway, because she liked his reference to her being a good wife. They’d only been married for a month, and while she wasn’t passionately in love with him, he had many qualities she admired. He was kinder, in or out of his cups, than any man she’d ever known; he had a sense of humor and good manners and a fine head of hair and all his teeth. Above all, though, she appreciated his gift of gab. No mat­ter what anyone said, really educated people with brains, Stan could always top them. Muriel was proud to be the wife of a man who had an answer for everything even though it might be, and often was, wrong. Being wrong, in a classy way, was to Muriel every bit as good as being right.

  His easy manner of conversation had encouraged Muriel and emboldened her. From the taciturn and rather timid woman he’d met in Dallas she had developed into quite a loud and lively talker. She knew she had nothing to fear from him no matter what she said. He took all spoken words, including his own, with a grain of salt and a shrug. To written words his attitude was different. He believed absolutely everything he read, even flat contradictions, and when he received a letter, he treated it as if it were a message from a king, delivered via diplomatic pouch and much too special to be opened immediately. He always spent at least five minutes turning it over, examining it, holding it up to the light, before he finally slit the envelope.

  When Muriel returned with his beer, she found him hunched over one of the letters, looking tense and anxious, as if this were the first time he’d read it instead of the fiftieth.

  Most of the letters from Daisy he had read aloud to her, and she couldn’t understand his excitement over such dull stuff: The weather was warm. Or cold. The roses were out. Or in. Went to the dentist, the park, the beach, the museum, the movies . . . Probably a nice girl, this Daisy of his, Muriel thought, but not very interesting.

  “Stan.”

  “Eh?”

  “Here’s your beer.”

  “Thanks,” he said, but he didn’t reach for it immediately, as he usually did, and she knew this letter must be one of the bad ones he didn’t read aloud or talk about.

  “Stan, you won’t get the blues, will you? I hate when you get the blues. It’s lonesome for me. Bottoms up, eh?”

  “In a minute.”

  “Hey, I know. Why don’t you show me the picture of the guy that looked like Abraham Lincoln? He must have been a real card, that one. Tell me about him, Stan, about how you would have been Secretary of State, wearing a top hat and a cutaway—”

  “You’ve heard it before.”

  “Tell me again. I’d like a good laugh. It’s so hot in here I’d like a good laugh.”

  “So would I.”

  “What’s stopping us, then? We’ve got a lot to laugh about.”

  “Sure. I know.”

  “Don’t get the blues, Stan.”

  “Don’t worry.” He put the letter back in the envelope, wishing that he hadn’t reread it. It had been written a long time ago, and there was nothing he could do now to change things. There was nothing he could have done then either. What bothered him was that he hadn’t tried, hadn’t phoned her, written to her, gone to see her.

  “Come on, Stan. Bottoms up and mud in your eye, eh?”

  “Sure.” He drank the beer. It had a musky odor, as if it had been chilled and warmed too many times. He wondered if he had the same odor for the same reason. “You’re a good woman, Muriel.”

  “Oh, can that now,” she said with an embarrassed and pleased little laugh. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  “No? Don’t bet on it.”

  “I think you’re swell. I did right from that first night I saw you.”

  “Then you’re dead wrong. Stone cold dead wrong.”

  “Oh, Stan, don’t.”

  “There comes a time when every man must evaluate his own life.”

  “Why pick a time like this, a nice sunny Saturday morning when we could hop on a bus and go out to the zoo? Why don’t we do that, eh, go out to the zoo?”

  “No,” he said heavily. “Let the monkeys come and look at me if they want a good laugh.”

  The fear in her eyes was turning into bitterness, and her mouth looked as though it had been tightened by a pair of pliers. “So you got the blues, you got them after all.”

  He didn’t seem to hear. “I let her down. I always let her down. Even last Monday I walked out on her. I shouldn’t have walked out on her like that without an apology or an explanation. I’m a coward, a bum. That’s what Pinata called me, a bum.”

  “You told me that before. You told me all about it. Now why don’t you forget it? If you ask me, he had his nerve. He may be a bigger bum than you are for all you know.”

  “So now you’re calling me a bum, too.”

  “No, honest, I didn’t mean it like the way it sounded. I only—”

  “You should have meant it. It’s true.”

  She reached down suddenly and pounded her fist on the table. “Why don’t you keep that damned suitcase locked up the way it ought to be?”

  He looked at her with a kind of sorrowful affection. “You really shouldn’t scream like that, Muriel.”

  “And why not? I’ve got things to scream about, why shouldn’t I scream?”

  “Because it doesn’t become a lady. ‘The Devil hath not, in all his quiver’s choice, an arrow for the heart like a sweet voice.’ Remember that.”

  “You’ve got an answer for everything, haven’t you, even if you got to pinch it from the Bible.”

  “Lord By
ron, not the Bible.”

  “Stan, put the suitcase away, will you?” She picked up the chain leash from the floor and held it out to him. “Let’s lock everything up and put the suitcase under the bed again and pretend you never opened it, how about that? I’ll help you.”

  “No. I can do it myself.”

  “Do it, then. Do it.”

  “All right.” He began replacing everything in the battered suit­case, the photographs and letters and clippings, the petrified wood and circus cane and box made of porcupine quills. “I’m fifty-three,” he said abruptly.

  “Well, I know. I must say you don’t look it, though. You’ve got a fine head of hair. I bet there’s many a man not forty yet who envies—”

  “Fifty-three. And this is all I have to show for all those years. Not much, is it?”

  “As much as most.”

  “No, Muriel, don’t try to be kind. I’ve had too much kindness given to me in my life, too many allowances and excuses made for me. I don’t deserve a good girl like Daisy. And then to think I walked out on her, didn’t even stay to say hello or to see how she looked after all these years. She used to be such a pretty little girl with those big innocent blue eyes and a smile so shy and sweet—”

  “I know,” Muriel said shortly. “You told me. Now, have you got everything back in here? I’ll close it up for you.”

  “Any decent father stays with his children even if he doesn’t get along very well with his wife. Children, they’re our only hope of immortality.”

  “Well, I’m fixed then. I’ve got two hopes of immortality chas­ing cows back in Texas.”

  “When my time comes, I won’t completely die, because part of me will keep on living in Daisy.” He wiped a little moisture from his eyes because it was so sad thinking of his own death, far sad­der than thinking of anyone else’s.

  “If you’re such a bum,” Muriel said, “how come you want part of you to stay alive in Daisy?”

  “Ah, you wouldn’t understand, Muriel. You’re not a man.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’ve noticed it. How about you notice it a lit­tle more often?”

  Fielding winced. Muriel was a well-meaning woman, but her earthiness could be embarrassing, even destructive at times. When he was on a delicate train of thought, such as this one, it was a great shock to find himself suddenly derailed by the sound waves of Muriel’s powerful voice.

  To cushion the shock, he opened another bottle of beer while Muriel pushed the suitcase back under the bed.

  “There,” she said with satisfaction, and made a gesture of wip­ing her hands, like a doctor who has just stitched up an especially bad wound. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

  “Things are not that simple.”

  “They’re not as complicated as you make out, Stan Fielding. If they were, we might as well all go jump in the ocean. Say, how about that? Why don’t we go down to the beach and sit in the sand and watch the people? That always gives you a laugh, Stan, watching people.”

  “Not today. I don’t feel like it.”

  “You just going to stay here and brood?”

  “A little brooding may be exactly what I need. Maybe I haven’t brooded enough in my lifetime. Whenever I became depressed, I simply packed up and moved on. I ran away, just as I ran away from Daisy. I shouldn’t have done that, Muriel. I shouldn’t have done it.”

  “Stop crying over spilled milk,” she said harshly. “Every drunk I’ve ever known, that’s their trouble. Bawling over things they done and then having to get tanked up to forget they done them and then going ahead and doing them all over again.”

  “Well,” he said, blinking, “you’re quite a psychologist, Muriel. That’s an interesting theory.”

  “Nobody needs a fancy degree to figure it, just eyes and ears like I’ve got. And like you’ve got, too, if you’d use them.” She came over to him, rather shyly, and put her hands on his shoul­ders. “Come on, Stan. Let’s go to the beach and watch the peo­ple. How about trying to find that place where everybody’s building up their muscles? We could take a bus.”

  “No, Muriel. I’m sorry. I have other things to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m going back to San Félice to see Daisy.”

  She didn’t speak for a minute. She just backed away from him and sat down on the bed, looking bewildered. “What do you want to do that for, Stan?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “Why don’t you take me along? I could see you didn’t get into any trouble like you did last time over that waitress.”

  When he returned to Los Angeles on Monday night, he’d told her all about his encounter with Nita and Nita’s husband in the bar. To diminish the importance of the incident, in his own mind and hers, he’d made quite a funny story of it, and they’d both had a good laugh. But Muriel’s laughter hadn’t been too genuine: sup­pose the girl’s husband had been bigger and meaner? Suppose, and it often happened this way, that the girl Nita had suddenly decided to take her husband’s side against Stan? Suppose no one had called the police? Suppose . . . “Stan,” she said, “take me along to look out for you.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t ask you to introduce me to Daisy, if that’s what you’re thinking. I wouldn’t dream of asking such a thing, her being so high class and everything. I could keep out of sight, Stan. I just want to be there to look out for you, see?”

  “We haven’t the money for bus fare.”

  “I could borrow some. The old lady in the apartment across the hall—I know she’s got some hidden away. And she likes me, Stan; she says I look exactly like her younger sister that got put away last year. I don’t think she’d mind lending me a little money on account of the resemblance, just enough for bus fare. How about it, Stan?”

  “No. Stay away from the old lady. She’s poison.”

  “All right, then, maybe we could hitchhike?”

  He gathered from her hesitance and tone that she had never done any hitchhiking, and the thought of it scared her almost as much as the thought of his going to San Félice without her and getting into trouble. “No, Muriel, hitchhiking isn’t for ladies.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. “You just don’t want me along, that’s it. You’re afraid I might interfere if you decided to pick up some cheap waitress in a—”

  “I didn’t pick up anyone.” Fielding’s tone was all the sharper and more positive because he was lying. He’d gone deliberately into the café with the idea of finding the girl, but no one sus­pected this (except Muriel, who suspected everything), least of all the girl herself. Nothing had worked out as he planned, because the husband had walked in before he had a chance to ask her any questions or even to find out for sure if it was the right girl. “I was trying to protect a young woman who was being assaulted.”

  “How come you can protect everyone but yourself? The whole damn world you can protect, except Stan Fielding, who needs it worse than—”

  “Now, Muriel, don’t go on.” He went over to the bed and sat down beside her. “Put your head on my shoulder, that’s my girl. Now listen. I have a certain matter to take care of in San Félice. I won’t be away long, no later than tomorrow night if things go well.”

  “What things? And why shouldn’t they?”

  “Daisy and Jim might be away for the weekend or something like that. In that case I won’t be back until Monday night. But don’t worry about me. In spite of your low opinion of my pow­ers of self-protection, I can take care of myself.”

  “Sure you can. When you’re sober.”

  “I intend to stay sober.” No matter how many hundreds of times he had said this in his life, he still managed to put so much conviction into it that he believed himself. “This time, not one drink. Unless, of course, it would look conspicuous if I refused, and then I would
take one—I repeat, one—and nurse it along.”

  She pressed her head hard against his shoulder as if she were trying to imprint on him by sheer force an image of herself which would go along with him on the trip, as her substitute, to protect him while he was protecting everyone else.

  “Stan.”

  “Yes, my love.”

  “Don’t get tanked up.”

  “I said I wouldn’t, didn’t I? No drinks, except maybe one to avoid looking conspicuous.”

  “Like for instance?”

  “Suppose Daisy invites me to the house and opens a bottle of champagne to celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?” With her head against his shoulder she couldn’t see the sudden grimness of his face. “What’s there to celebrate, Stan?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”

  “Then why should she open the bottle of champagne?”

  “She won’t.”

  “Then why did you say—”

  “Please be quiet, Muriel.”

  “But—”

  “There’ll be no celebration, no champagne. I was just dream­ing for a minute, see? People dream, even people like me, who should know better.”

  “There’s no harm in a little dreaming now and then,” Muriel said softly, stroking the back of his neck. “Say, you need a hair­cut, Stan. Could we spare the money for a haircut?”

  “No.”

  “Well, wait right there while I go get my sewing scissors. Out on the ranch I always cut my kids’ hair, there being nobody else to do it.” She stood up, smoothing her dress down over her hips. “There was never any complaints either, once I got a little practiced.”

  “No, Muriel. Please—”

  “It’ll only take a minute. You want to look presentable, don’t you, if you’re going to that fancy house of hers? Remember that letter she wrote telling you her change of address? She described the whole house. It sounded just like a palace. You wouldn’t want to go to a place like that needing a haircut, would you?”