Castleview (5 page)

Read Castleview Online

Authors: Gene Wolfe

BOOK: Castleview
6.54Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“Of course not,” Joy declared. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got quite a few Jewish friends.”
“Then I should inform you that we do not worship the God of your Jewish friends. He cares less even for us than for you.” Fee waited for her to object; when she did not, he continued, “A commission will, as I understand the matter, be paid your agency by the seller. You will share in that. In addition, we offer to pay a finder’s fee, directly to the individual who arranges the sale. To yourself, assuming you are that person.”
He paused again. Joy could feel him weighing her with his eyes, estimating her price.
He said, “We would pay you a finder’s fee of three thousand dollars.”
Joy smiled. “Isn’t it strange? I was showing a home that would be perfect for you just today.”
MARAUDERS
THE OLD doctor, Shields thought, had held some lofty ideas about art. His studio was long and by no means narrow, with six large windows. The brushes and the tubes of pigment were gone now; so were the easels and the artists—his daughters, presumably—who once had toiled before them, and perhaps received callers here. The paintings themselves were not.
Or at least there were a great many paintings and drawings in the room, and not a few photographs. Shields began to study them, and was still studying them when Roberts came in.
“Pretty various, aren’t they, Mr. Shields?” Clearly he had himself under control now.
Shields nodded. “At least I thought so at first.”
“Well, you look for yourself. Most see a castle—it’s what somebody’s told them they’re going to see, so they see it. Some see something more like a city—maybe it’s St. Louis, maybe some other place. And what some of ’em see, don’t even the Good Lord know. Look at that one there and tell me what it is—buildings, trees, or rocks?”
Shields said, “Suppose they’re all seeing something nobody has ever seen anyplace but here, a unique thing?”
Roberts was silent for a moment, stroking his jaw. “You do have some ideas, don’t you? Bet our winter sale’s going to be a whiz-bang.”
“I hope so.”
“What sort of thing would this be?”
“I don’t know,” Shields told him. “If I did, I’d be back at the dealership.”
“I guess so. Well, you saw it. What did you see?”
Shields shrugged. “I saw the castle of Castleview—let’s leave it at that. You’ve had a lot more time to look at these than I have, Bob. Have you come to any conclusions?”
“Only that people are seeing three or four different things and calling them the same thing. See the pinkish one over here? Got five points on it—towers, or whatever you want to call ‘em. Now look at this one. The towers aren’t pink any more; they’re black. Over on that one, they’re gray. The black one,” Roberts waggled a finger, “it’s got one, two, three, four, five, six of them. The gray one’s got three. Sure, things will change color with changes in the light, ’specially if they’re some ways away. But they don’t change their shapes.”
“Some things do,” Shields said.
“Clouds, maybe.”
“And cars. Airplanes.”
Roberts stared, then turned to look from picture to picture. The old house groaned in the silence, icy tears dropping from its eaves.
At length Roberts said, “You think it’s moving.”
“There’s a chart of sightings over here,” Shields told him, “you must have seen it. Most are east of town; but there are a lot that are almost due west, one north, one northwest, and so on. We’ve been saying it has towers. Imagine somebody back in the Middle Ages looking out to sea and catching sight of a big warship. He’d think he was seeing a floating castle, wouldn’t he? And he really wouldn’t be very far wrong.”
“The stacks and masts and so on, you mean.”
Shields nodded.
“And if it was headed right at him, he’d see just the one tower, ’cause all the rest would be behind that one. But if it was
sideways to him, he’d see three or four—however many stacks and whatnot it had.”
Shields nodded again. “Let’s look at the photos; paintings and drawings are pretty subjective. None of the photos are very clear—whatever it is doesn’t photograph well, it seems, and no one had a long enough lens—but all of them show something.” He pointed from picture to picture. “Three towers here, and three in the next one. Then that one shows five—one of them rather indistinct. The next shows three again, and the one after that four, with one a good deal wider than the other three. Would you mind going back to the desk now? It’s on our way out, anyway, and there’s something I want to show you.”
But Roberts was no longer listening to Shields. “Did you hear a sort of scraping just then?”
“No,” Shields said. “Did you?”
“Thought I did. Probably just a car going by. Sure, we can go back out to the desk. You want to make a call?”
Shields shook his head. As they passed the glass case that contained the Wells Fargo agent’s diary, he asked, “Have you got a transcription of that, Bob? I’d like to read it.”
“I can loan it to you. The keys ought to be in the desk.”
Shields hesitated. “All right. Thanks.” He thought that he, too, had heard something, though the stealthy sound (if it had been a sound at all) had come and gone so swiftly he could not be sure.
He had noticed a tape dispenser on the desk, and in one of the drawers he found what he had hoped for: blank paper. “Look here,” he said. Roberts watched as he rolled a sheet of paper into a cylinder, taped it, and stood it on end on the desk. In rapid succession he added four more, forming a rough circle.
“Crouch down, Bob.” Shields demonstrated, squatting on his heels. “Count them, and tell me how many you see. Not how many you know are there, but how many you can see.”
Roberts bent, his palms on his knees. “Five now. Only if I
move over a little, it’s only three, because two are behind two others. When I move back a little—you’re right—it looks like four. Only one’s thicker, because it’s really two, one peeking out behind another one.”
Somewhere nearby, glass broke with a crash as precipitate as an explosion.
 
“Perhaps I should introduce myself,” Ann said. “I’m Ann Schindler.”
One of the young women walked briskly around the end of the sofa, hand extended. “Lisa Solomon—wonderful to meet you! I’m afraid that we’re closed for the season,” (the other young women giggled) “but I’ll be very happy to tell you anything you want to know about Meadow Grass. Is your daughter between the ages of fourteen and twenty?”
Ann nodded. “Yes, but I—I don’t know, maybe we could. You see, we’re moving here, moving to Castleview, and I—”
The three young women shouted in unison,
“A townee!”
“Her name’s Mercedes,” Ann finished weakly, accepting the outstretched hand. “I’m afraid—I really shouldn’t say this—that we named her after the automobile.”
The three young women attained hysteria.
“We really shouldn’t have. But that was Willie’s favorite car back then—though it isn’t any more, of course—and the man who named it, named it after his daughter.” She turned to the rider. “You know, I don’t think you and I ever met—properly, I mean. I’m Ann Schindler.”
He took her hand and nodded. “Wrangler Dunstan, ma’am. I hate to leave so quick, but I ought to get his saddle off Buck and get him bedded down. You want to see our barn, Miss Lisa or one of the girls can show you.”
When he had gone out, Lisa Solomon smiled. “You’ll have to excuse Wrangler—he’s terribly shy. Won’t you sit down?”
Ann nodded. “Over by the fire, if that’s all right with you.”
“Certainly. Do you know, I read just today that open fires don’t actually heat a building? It seems they draw in more cold
air than they warm; just think of all those ignorant people who froze themselves to death, and never realized it, for thousands of years. Would you like something hot? We don’t allow alcohol, but one of the girls could make tea or cocoa.”
“Tea, please.”
They were crowding around. The blonde said, “I’m Sissy—I’ll do it.”
“And this is Lucie d’Carabas. Lucie’s from France.”
“Normandie,”
a raven-haired young woman sketched a curtsy.
“And Sancha Balanka, from Rio.”
The darkest of the three smiled shyly.
“Sissy’s from Cleveland,” Lisa added. “Her name’s really Cecilia Stevenson.”
Ann said, “I’m not sure I understand. If you’re closed—”
Sancha told her softly, “My parents are in Europe, you see. They are delayed. They—”
From the other end of the room, Sissy called, “Nobody wants us, Mrs. Schindler. So since we haven’t got anyplace to go, we stay here.”
Lisa said, “That’s not true, Sissy,” in the tone of one who has repeated the same words many times. To Ann she explained, “These are girls whose parents haven’t been able to come for them yet. We—Wrangler and I—live here year-round, so we’re
in loco parentis.”
Sissy added, “For extra money. I put the kettle on. Tea and cheesecake in half a minute.”
“Thank you.” Ann dropped into the leather armchair behind her. “Won’t all of you sit down?”
Lisa pulled up another leather chair for herself. “That’s right, for extra money—which we need quite badly. You didn’t really come to talk about sending Mercedes here next summer, did you?”
Ann shook her head.
“But conceivably you will, so I may as well be honest with you. We’re underfinanced, and we’ve had problems this year.”
Sancha muttered something evil-sounding under her breath.
“Two horses have been killed, and now somebody’s sabotaged our jeep. It’s hoodlums from town, I suppose.”
Ann said, “So that’s why he was out at night with a gun.”
“Yes. Things seem to happen in bad weather, mostly. That doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s the way it’s been. Lately Wrangler hardly sleeps at all when the weather’s nasty.”
“Wrangler’s not his real name, is it?” Ann asked.
The young women giggled, and the older young woman looked at them with such humorless severity that Ann realized she was hardly more than a girl herself. “No. It’s a perfectly nice, perfectly
beautiful
name, but for some reason he’s embarrassed by it, so we call him Wrangler. I could tell you what his real name is, but the girls would tease him to death, so I’d better not. He’s really a wonderful guy, and he’s worked his head off for this place.”
Ann said, “He pointed a gun at me.”
“Sissy, go make the tea—I can hear the kettle whistling from out here. Mrs. Schindler, I’m awfully sorry about that. Where were you?”
“When he pointed the gun? At the gate. I’d turned off Old Penton Road.”
Lisa nodded. “We’ve had problems down that way, and it’s not our main entrance. The main gate is on Sixty-eight, about two miles after it leaves the interstate.”
Sancha murmured, “There have been much, much bad troubles. Twice they start fires, when it was more dry.”
“That’s right,” Lisa said. “And Wrangler’s scared to death they’re going to burn the barn. He’s got smoke alarms all over it, and when he sleeps, he sleeps in there with a gun and a fire extinguisher.”
Sissy came in with a teapot, teacups, a sugar bowl, a milk jug, and a thick slice of cheesecake on a big tray. Sancha and the other young woman—Ann had already forgotten her name—found a small table and set it in front of the fire.
“I’ll pour,” Sissy announced. “Mrs. Schindler, one lump or two? Do you like milk? We don’t have any lemons.”
“No sugar, please,” Ann told her. “Just milk. Lisa—Ms. Solomon—can’t whoever owns this place help you? Hire guards or something?”
“We’re the owners,” Lisa said. “And no, we can’t. We’re doing all we can already.”
“You and Wrangler?” Ann accepted a blue willow-pattern cup from Sissy.
“It belonged to an elderly lady named Sylvia Baxter,” Lisa explained. “She was an old dear and quite a sharp businesswoman, but it never made much money for her. I was head counselor, and Wrangler saw to the horses; he’s related to the Baxters somehow. At the time that Miss Baxter passed away, the camp owed us both a good deal in back wages, so she willed it to us in lieu of all debts. We were delighted—the land alone’s worth at least forty thousand. But we’ve lost those horses, as I told you, and had a lot of damage. I had to sell my Cherokee—” She broke off to take a cup from Sissy.
Ann drank from her own. The tea was fragrant and flowery, enormously warming and comforting.
“But you don’t want to hear our problems. And if you were ever going to send your daughter here, you’re not going to now. I sincerely apologize for Wrangler, and no doubt he’s apologized for himself already. But it was late and dark, and we’ve had a great deal of trouble, and you were on our land. Now what can I do for you to make up for it?”
“I’m not certain. How many horses do you have?”
“Right now? Twenty-one. There are stalls for thirty.”
Sissy said, “Can I show them to her? I want to make sure Lady’s okay.”
“If she wants to see them,” Lisa said. “Do you? Wrangler mentioned it, I think. What for?”
“Because I—we, my husband, our daughter, and I—saw a man on horseback tonight. I thought it had been Wrangler at
first, but it wasn’t. It was a much bigger man, on a bigger horse.”
Lisa nodded. “I see.”
“Besides, Wrangler wouldn’t walk a horse out into the road in front of a car. I really can’t explain it, but I talked to him a bit, and he isn’t that sort of man—he doesn’t have that kind of arrogance.”
Sissy nodded. “You’re right. He wouldn’t do anything that might get a horse hurt unless there was a good reason for it.”

Other books

Stolen Love by Carolyn Jewel
A Lady Undone by Máire Claremont
Everyone Dies by Michael McGarrity
A Kind of Magic by Shanna Swendson
Shadows in Bronze by Lindsey Davis
Retief and the Rascals by Keith Laumer
The Total Package by Stephanie Evanovich