Beauty and the Brain (11 page)

Martin laughed. “We didn’t really meet a
bear cub, but it makes for a good story. We actually found the ball
under a pile of pine needles and being scolded by a squirrel.
There’s a lot to this nature stuff, isn’t there?”

Brenda laughed, glad no one had commented on
Colin’s pedantic little lecture. She was afraid the man was going
to be taken in severe dislike if he kept it up. “Indeed, there is.”
She brushed her hands together in a businesslike manner. “Okay, so
it’s now one to nothing, Indians.” She glanced over to the bench.
“You guys ready?”

Jerry Begay stood up, grabbed a baseball
bat, tugged his hat down, and walked to the plate. He looked mighty
serious about the game. She gave him a smile; he nodded and took
his stance. She gave a mental shrug. Some people took sports too
seriously.

Gilbert Drew squinted at the plate and the
man beside it, tugged the brim of his own cap like a real baseball
player, gave another comical windup, and let fly. Jerry swung and
missed.

“Strike one!” Brenda called. She glanced at
the bench to find Colin glowering at her. She glowered back, stuck
out her tongue, and then felt foolish.

Jerry didn’t flinch. He only repositioned
himself and awaited the next pitch. Gil lobbed it into the dirt a
foot in front of him this time. Both Jerry and Brenda had to jump
back to avoid getting hit on the bounce.

Brenda threw the ball back to Gil. She had a
good, strong arm and her aim was good, and she was proud of it. No
fainting lily, she. No, siree. She could bat and field with the
best of them. Again she glanced at. Colin Again he glared back, the
rat.

The third pitch went right smack over the
plate, and Jerry banged a hard line drive to center field. The
center fielder, a set designer named Wilbert Penny, couldn’t handle
it and hurt his hand trying. Then the right and left fielders
collided behind him, since neither was looking out for the other,
and the Indians had another home run.

After wincing in sympathy, Brenda couldn’t
help but laugh. What a bunch of clods. She applauded Jerry around
the bases and cheered him home. This was fun, in spite of some
sourpuss men she could mention.

They called the game complete after five
innings. Brenda figured it was a mercy since by that time the
Indians led eight to nothing. Colin had struck out once and homered
once. She didn’t know whether to be pleased or irked by his
relative ease with a bat and ball. She’d been kind of hoping he’d
be clumsy and awkward at the plate. Well, you couldn’t have
everything.

She was pleasantly tired, unpleasantly
sweaty, and very cheerful when she, Martin, Jerry, and Colin walked
back into the lodge to wash up for lunch. “Will you join us for
evening church services, Jerry?” she asked as they walked.

He gazed at her blankly, and she realized he
probably wanted nothing whatever to do with the white man’s church
but couldn’t figure out how to say so without being rude. Colin
huffed irritably, a habit he had when in her company, and which she
disliked intensely.

“You might find it interesting,” she said in
an attempt to cover her gaffe.

“No, thank you,” he said in that grumbly,
echoey voice of his.

“You know,” she said, seizing the
opportunity to extricate herself from a socially awkward situation,
“it’s too bad the pictures aren’t able to accommodate sound. You’ve
got a great voice.”

The look he gave her was almost as blank as
the one she’d received when she’d asked about church. She sighed,
wishing somebody else would step in here and save her from more
fumbling. She wasn’t generally this inept in social situations. She
wasn’t generally talking to Indians, either.

“It’s an interesting thing about voices,”
Colin said suddenly, surprising Brenda, who hadn’t even considered
the possibility of rescue from that source. “So many things go into
the tonal quality of a person’s voice.”

“Do they?” She hated that she was
interested, but she was interested in everything and couldn’t help
it. “Like what?”

“Oh, many things. Forgetting the physical
for a moment—after all, anything from a cleft palate to a bronchial
condition to a sore throat can affect the sounds that issue from a
mouth—I’ve found that people who live in atmospheres polluted by
smoke and chemical waste often have husky voices.”

“Ah,” Brenda said. “Like people who smoke
tobacco a lot. Their voices are often deep and raspy.”

“Exactly. I don’t know enough about it to
explain the phenomenon, but I suspect smoke and other pollutants
aren’t healthy and most likely affect one’s lungs adversely.”

“I’m sure they are and do.”

“Jerry, on the other hand, lives in an
atmosphere almost one hundred percent pure.” He nodded to Jerry,
who nodded back. “And, while Navajos smoke pipes during certain of
their rituals, they aren’t as apt to be heavy smokers as city white
people.”

Jerry nodded again and made a gesture with
his right hand, which Brenda, who had studied gestures as part of
her job, had never seen before. It was a kind of chopping
movement.

“The air in Arizona Territory is dry and hot
and so clean it can make one’s lungs hurt for the first few days
one is breathing it,” Colin continued. The gestures used by these
two men in communication intrigued Brenda. Now if it had been
Martin making the movement, he’d probably have clapped Jerry on the
back.

But Martin was a whole, integrated human
being, complete with heart, soul, and mind. His emotions were open,
his gestures generous and spontaneous. He wasn’t merely an
ambulatory brain, like some people. She sniffed.

Then she took herself to task for being a
snob. Colin, although he’d had to be dragged reluctantly into it,
had actually played a game today. What’s more, he’d comported
himself pretty well. She had no idea if he’d enjoyed himself,
although she allowed that, while he hadn’t complained, he hadn’t
jumped up and down or laughed a lot, either. Or at all,
actually.

The old poop.

By this time they’d entered the lodge, and
the small party broke up. Brenda skipped up the stairs, trying for
all she was worth to maintain her perkiness in spite of her
bedraggled condition. She had an image to uphold. Halfway up, she
turned and waved to the gentlemen. “See you guys at lunch.”

“See you then,” Martin said, smiling at her
with what she knew was genuine friendship. She really liked
Martin.

Jerry said, “Good afternoon, Miss
Fitzpatrick,” and sounded like a royal duke bidding a peasant good
day. His formality tickled her.

She looked at Colin. He looked back and made
a sound she couldn’t identify She shook her head, turned, and
headed to her room. There she bathed and changed her clothes and
headed to the dining room, ravenous.

Brenda had mixed feelings about religion. On
the one hand, she believed in God. On the other hand, she’d grown
up in New York City and had seen what she considered terrible
injustices being perpetrated under the very noses of the high
clergy of several different denominations, and none of them seemed
to give a rap. She believed that if a guy overtly proclaimed his
Christianity, he darned well ought to live as if he meant it.

She’d seen with her own eyes the
magnificence of many of the churches in her native city,
magnificence that must have cost millions of dollars. And, in the
same church family, hundreds of parishioners starved to death or
died of diseases fostered by poverty and filth. One of the richest
churches in New York City owned the vilest slum properties she’d
ever seen and could scarcely make herself think about.

She did think about it, though, and she
gave. Although she’d never considered herself as belonging to one
particular church or denomination, she gave as much money as she
could to charities supporting the needy If it weren’t for
astounding good luck, she might have been needy herself, and she
knew it.

Therefore, when she got dressed to attend
evening services at the small chapel about two hundred yards down
the road from the Cedar Crest Lodge, she did so for the sake of her
image and not because she felt any particular desire to participate
in the service. She also wanted to see if Colin would join
them.

He did. She thought she was more pleased
than not, although she decided to withhold judgment until the
service had concluded. She hoped the congregation would be asked to
sing hymns, because she wanted to hear his voice. In truth, she
wanted to know everything there was to know about him, even though
she knew her desire to be foolish.

She told herself that another reason she
should be glad he was going to church with her and Martin was that
it would give her one more opportunity to conquer his aversion to
her. Darn him anyway. He had no right to hold her in aversion.

This evening she’d taken special care with
her toilette. She was going to make Colin Peters pay attention to
her, whether he wanted to or not. She had dressed appropriately for
church, in a lavender pinstriped tailored suit. Its long, fitted
jacket complemented her figure quite well, and the narrow pleated
skirt and straw hat with dyed ostrich feathers set off her fair
complexion—a little sunburned now and dotted with a sprinkle of
freckles—to perfection.

Brenda, who had managed to learn just about
everything there was to know about how to enhance her appearance,
did not despair of those freckles, although she knew fashion told
women that elegance eschewed them. Any proper woman should,
according to popular wisdom, try to eliminate freckles with bleach
or powder or whatever else it took. She knew, however, because
she’d honed her skills of observation to razor sharpness over the
years, that those few freckles could serve to fascinate.

Any man she’d meet would look at her and see
beauty and refinement. When he looked more closely, he’d see
freckles, and they’d set him to wondering.

Let him wonder, the pigheaded highbrow.
She’d get him.

She decided she didn’t need a parasol, but
she put on her best kid gloves. Then she took up her Bible. She
carried it with her always when she traveled, because it had been
given to her by her paternal grandmother, whom she’d loved deeply,
and having it reminded her of her family. She didn’t read it often,
but every now and then she dove into it, and even enjoyed some of
it as long as she didn’t get stuck in long lists of begats.

She preferred the Psalms. And the Song of
Solomon. For a moment, she considered the possibility that Solomon
had looked like Colin. Without the eyeglasses. She expected Solomon
had been a dark-haired man with that same olive complexion and
similar piercing, brown eyes. Perhaps Solomon, being a king and
possessing good vision, would have had a slightly more imperious
cast to his expression, although Colin could be pretty darned
imperious when he wanted to be. She sighed and told herself not to
think about Colin. Or the Song of Solomon; she’d allowed her
thoughts to dwell on lusty matters too much today already.

Imagine, wanting to attack Colin Peters and
kiss him senseless. Why, if she kept this up, she wouldn’t know
herself anymore.

Because she’d learned long ago how to make
an entrance, she waited until all the men in her entourage were
gathered in the lobby at the foot of the stairs before she
descended. She kept her satisfaction, which was considerable,
contained when she heard conversation cease and all eyes turned to
gaze upon her. She paid particular attention to Colin, whose eyes
opened wide, then thinned as his lips pinched together.

Which wasn’t precisely the reaction she’d
been hoping for, but at least it was a reaction. Darn him, why
couldn’t he be as predictable as all the other male animals in the
world? Still and all, she knew her role and played it.

It had taken Brenda great care, thoughtful
planning, and intricate execution to achieve the reputation she now
enjoyed. In every venue she’d ever appeared, she was regarded not
merely with respect and admiration for her beauty and skill as an
actress, but with honest sympathy and congeniality, as well. Not
for her the reputation as a prima donna who threw temperament
around like confetti and who used people like cleaning rags. She
appreciated her audiences too much to treat them badly, and she
wanted them to like her.

Therefore, while she made every effort to
play up her natural good looks, she then invariably went out, of
her way to act natural, as if she were the girl next door. She’d
discovered some time ago that the discrepancy between her
appearance and her behavior charmed people. Especially men, who
were simple but vain creatures. No man would admit to having been
captivated by a woman’s devices. Heck, no. Men liked to believe
they were the captivators.

Fat chance. Most of the men Brenda knew,
with a few exceptions like Martin Tafft, were obtuse and conceited
and difficult to take seriously.

Unfortunately for her, Colin Peters was not
at all obtuse, seemed to possess little or no conceit, and she
found herself taking him far too seriously. She wasn’t easily
defeated, though, and she was going to keep working on him.

She wondered if she should have lost her
temper at him this morning. Too late now, but she did wonder. In
fact, she’d wondered about it all through her bath and luncheon and
afternoon in the parlor as she attempted to read Gwen Wister’s
The Virginian
. It was a great book, but Brenda couldn’t keep
her mind on it.

She reached the bottom of the stairs,
grinned heartily and held her hand out to Martin. “All ready?”

“We’re ready.” Martin didn’t go so far as to
wink at her, but he gave her an answering grin.

Good old Martin. He knew all about her
designs and devices; they’d discussed them. What’s more, he
approved of them and of her, and she liked him for it “How far away
is this chapel? I think we should walk.”