Foxfire (12 page)

The old man smiled; he put one hand on Dart's arm, the other on Mablett's. “Now look, boys—you're both good men,” he said gently. “I'm lucky to have you. I know you can get along. You got to listen to each other a bit more, but Dart—remember he's your boss...” the thin voice paused. Amanda, watching, saw Dart give himself a shake. He looked down at Mr. Tyson with affection not unmixed with indulgence. “Yes, sir,” he said, “I know that.”

“And Lute”—continued Tyson turning—“when you got mad just now you said some pretty rough things to Dart, I'm sure you didn't mean 'em.”

Mablett mumbled something inarticulate, and Tyson's hands dropped from their arms; he staggered backwards towards his chair. In the old days I'd have made 'em shake hands, he thought, I'd have made 'em pull together some how but I'm too tired....Too tired for fights....

The dining room billowed and darkened around him, the nagging ache in his left arm speared up into his chest. He slumped gasping into the chair. “You got your ampules with you?” he heard the doctor's sharp voice and felt fingers fumbling in his breast pocket. Then he smelled the pungence of the broken ampule in his nostrils, the pain receded, the lights came back into the dining room. “I'm all right,” he said irritably, pushing Hugh away. “Plenty of life in the old dog yet.”

“Sure,” said Hugh shrugging. “Cardiacs live forever if they take care of themselves. You better go home to bed now, your Filipino's here with the car.”

Mr. Tyson's attack at least provided respite from the embarrassment of the earlier scene. Amanda stammered the usual courtesies: “Thank you so much ... delicious food...” to a clammily unresponsive Mrs. Mablett. She and Dart escaped, to find Hugh outside on the road waiting for them. He had been helping Tyson into the car. The three of them started walking up Creek Street.

“Showdown,” remarked Hugh. “Victory for noble young mine foreman. Except you damn near killed the general manager in the process.”

“Either that or kill three miners,” said Dart. “That timbering's rotten.”

“So I gather. You made your point. You think maybe dear Luther's going to love you better now and tremble with delight at all your opinions?”

“No. But he may be more careful for a while.”

Hugh hiccoughed, and said, “Christ, I sure need another drink. Well, you at least provided some entertainment at last at one of those God-awful Lodestone parties. And I'll bet they're having fun now—” He jerked his head back toward the Mablett house. “Indignation meeting.”

“But surely somebody'll be on Dart's side,” cried Amanda quickly. “They've got to be, because he's right.”

Both men had almost forgotten her. They paused now and stared at her. She looked very pretty in the starlight, her anxious eyes raised to Dart's face. He took her hand and tucked it through his arm. “Poor baby, you had quite an evening!”

“Awful,” she agreed, trying to laugh. “But, Dart,
somebody'll
be on your side ... that little Jones man with the glasses, the chief engineer, isn't he? He looked nice.”

“Maybe,” said Dart soothingly. “But Jones doesn't get underground much, he's run ragged assaying, surveying, mapdrawing. Anyway, Mablett's his boss, too, you know.”

“Dart's a newcomer, my dear,” said Hugh, “and has established himself as a purveyor of unpleasant facts. That he may be right, will not make him popular as well.”

“Nor do I give a damn,” said Dart. He lifted his face to the sky, in an unconscious gesture.

No, he doesn't give a damn, she thought, but I do. Her heart grew thick and heavy in her breast and she dropped her gaze to the dark pebbly road. Unpopularity hurt. How could you live amongst people who did not like you or admire you. Even before the quarrel in all that gathering tonight, there had not been one friendly face, except Tessie Rubrick's. And then later, during the flustered leave-takings, Tessie had looked confused and uncertain. But Tessie's husband was a shift boss at the mine. No doubt she was afraid to take sides. They were all afraid except Dart. Afraid of what? Of disapproval from the herd, of insecurity—Oh, I wish ... I wish...

“Medical Center,” said Hugh turning at the hospital path. “Come on in. I've got some rotgut left. You both need a swig.”

“Sure do,” said Dart. “But I'll pick it up later when I get down from the mine. Give Andy a drink and then send her home.”

“You're going to the mine anyway?” she said, her hand tightening on his arm. “Oh, darling, must you?”

“I'm afraid so—I've got to change those orders in case Mablett should happen to forget. I want to talk to some of the men on the graveyard, anyway.” He patted her shoulder and strode rapidly up the road.

“Graveyard?” she repeated watching him disappear into the night.

Hugh chuckled. “Graveyard is a shift, my girl, from midnight on. You needn't sound so tragic about it. Come on in.”

She followed him slowly into the hospital waiting room. A figure in crumpled white unfolded from the rattan sofa.

“What's that,” Amanda said, startled out of her depression.

Hugh made a sound in his throat and pulled the light chain. “That's my nurse!”

Maria, who had been asleep, returned Amanda's stare with interest, while she languidly coiled up the long, shining black hair, which had tumbled around her shoulders, and pinned on her cap. Something new, Doc bringing girls here at night, and she didn't like it. He'd had a snootful, all right—but not real drunk yet.

“Stand up for Chris-sake,” said Hugh. “This is Mrs. Dartland.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Maria, not moving. As if the whole of Lodestone hadn't seen her trotting around with her nose in the air, and her pearls and her yellow hair, as if everyone hadn't been gabbing about the mine foreman's wife from New York. “What's she doing here? She sick?”

“Oh, shut up,” said Hugh. “What did you do with my bottle—drink it?”

“You locked it in the drug cupboard.”

“So I did. Any calls? Not that you'd hear them.”

Maria shrugged and stood up. “Well, I didn't hear none.”

“Sit down, Andy—” said Hugh. “I'll get you a drink.”

Amanda, who had been watching this colloquy in considerable amazement, sat down. She was not experienced enough to guess the actual situation, she saw only in Maria's insolence yet more baseless enmity. This enmity Hugh partly dissipated in the dispensary, where Maria had followed him. “You want I should go home now, I guess ... now you got her,” said the girl through her teeth, watching him pour shots into white enamel cups. “Maybe she's why you ain't been very loving in a while.”

Hugh drained his cup and snorted. “Good God, no! What a mind you've got, never rises above the umbilicus. You can stay until I pass out. Go wait in my room.”

Maria's brow cleared. She put her arms around his neck. He shoved her away. “God, you stink, and I'm not so drunk yet I don't mind. Go take a bath.” He pushed her towards his quarters off the kitchen, and returned to the waiting room bearing the enamel cups. Amanda had discovered Susan in a box in a corner with her three pups and she was down on her knees crooning to them.

“My patient,” said Hugh pointing to the dog. “She paid for this refreshment.” He handed Amanda the cup. Amanda got up, caught by the bitterness of his tone, by the ugly twist to his mouth under the straw-colored little mustache. He's not friendly either, she thought, but he's at least someone I can talk to. She sipped from her cup and acrid fire ran down her throat and up into her brain. She sipped again.

“Hugh—” she said, “I'm scared. I feel lost. Nothing, nobody is like anything I've ever known.”

“Well, you haven't known much,” he said lighting himself a cigarette. “You've lived on cushions.”

“Why must Dart hate so, be so unyielding? I know he's right but why can't he bend a little, compromise, coax them along?”

“For one thing he's not an appeaser, and for another he's part Indian.”

She winced, and he regarded her with a malicious satisfaction. “You knew that when you married him. Don't you love him?”

“Oh, I do. I do. More than anything in the world....”

“Well, then, stop beefing. Dart's a better man than you or me. D'ju want another drink?” He stood up swaying a little. She shook her head. “Well, I do. Run along home.”

Loneliness swept over her, released by the drink. “Home,” she said...“Oh, why do we have to be so—
poor?”

He paused by the sill, holding on to the lintel. “Yes, that's what Viola thought—” he muttered, “but
she
never said it.”

Amanda, lost in her own maze, stared at him uncomprehending.

A
S DART
strode up the mine road that night he thought about Amanda. He was more sensitive to her discouragement than she realized. He had not stopped at their home to pick up the car because there was plenty of time to reach the mine before the men came off night shift, and always he preferred to walk. Especially to walk alone through the star-flooded night.

For him now, the heavy stillness of the desert mountains shimmered into life with a hundred intimate welcomes. The limestone cliffs far to the west reflected light, and the Teddy Bear chollas glowed like phosphorescence along the margins of their fuzz of spines. The paloverdes, tender-green even at night, waved and murmured in the wind; the little brittle bush, ghost-gray along the roadside, sent forth its incense perfume against the sharper smell of the creosotes; and the giant saguaros, their majestic arms uplifted to the sky in eternal invocation, repeated the solemn note of welcome from the dim mountains behind.

His spirit expanded into awareness, and with each exhilarating breath he drew in strength from this country of his birth. It was the stern and mystic land of his Indian forebears, the Apaches, and further back than that to the Ancient Ones who had called the Arizona mountains home, even before the Apaches came.

That Amanda felt none of this, he knew. Here, for her as yet, there was no message. She had no shield against the buzzing swarm of small discomforts, or the clashings of divergent personalities from which he could so easily escape. She was still a spoiled and charming child, striving to gild the raw stuff of life with romantic illusion, yearning for the fairy tale. He loved her, she had sensitivity and humor, and she was a warmly responsive mate. He did not regret their marriage. He had never in his life regretted a decision once taken. He had known, as she had not, the risks involved in their marriage and he was prepared to be patient with her flounderings, with her initial recoil from a tough and alien environment, from the tough and alien streak in himself. But she must also make her own way and find her own life apart from him, for he despised dependence as much as his nature demanded solitude at times.

Calise Cunningham might help, he thought suddenly. He had entered the ghost town and he turned from the road up the shattered trail towards the great silent mansion. He saw a thin strip of light between the velvet portieres in her ground-floor window. As he mounted the broken steps, he heard the rippling of a piano, and a low clear voice singing. He hesitated, his hand on the silver knocker until the song stopped. There was silence after his knock, then the door opened a crack.

“It's Dartland,” he said quickly, “I just wanted to see you for a moment. May I come in?”

“Oh, it's you,” she said, and opened the door. “Come in.”

She was dressed in a neat black wool which hung loose about her slender body. This was the type of dress in which he had always seen her, except the once he had brought Hugh there. Her thick white hair was coiled into a black net on the nape of her neck. Tonight there was no perfume, rouge, or jewels. Except for her grace of movement and the carriage of her head, she looked her full age.

She surveyed Dart with her calm dispassionate eyes, then silently led the way into her living room. It was not large, it had been only an ante chamber in the original house, and aside from the velvet portieres which shrouded the windows and a wall of bookcases, it was starkly furnished. There was a table and two straight chairs, some fiber matting on the floor, and the piano, nothing else. But on the table there stood an Indian bowl full of desert broom—a common bush Dart had seen a thousand times, but in this bare room it sprang to feathery pearl and olive beauty.

“What is it you want, Dart?” she asked, sitting down on the piano stool and smiling a little.

He hesitated, caught from the impulse which had sent him there by the strength of the impression she always made on him. Bare as the room was, it repeated the same note of order and peace which emanated from her. A crystalline force, almost tangible. She is like a silver bell, he thought.

“I wanted your help—” he said at last.

Calise raised her eyebrows. “Help from a crazy old woman who sees ghosts?”

“You see more than ghosts,” he said slowly. “I think you see into the true spirit behind things—behind people. I think you have suffered much, and understand much.”

She looked at him steadily, the inward, withdrawn look in her wise, dark eyes. “I have suffered and I have prayed. Often now I am happy, for God answers me—in music, in my books, in the mountains.”

“Yes,” he said. “You've found happiness where so few could ... It's...”

She nodded. “You're troubled about your wife,” she said, “I see it now. You are strong and she has not yet learned to be. She is very young.”

“If you'd let her come up here and see you. Talk to her. She needs a friend.”

Calise laughed then. A warm gay sound. “Ah, Dart, you choose strange friends for your little bride. Do you know what I was playing when you came?” He shook his head. "
Don Giovanni.
‘II Mio Tesoro'—Listen!”