Gift of the Golden Mountain (18 page)

She held the cup to her lips and let the steam rise to fog her vision. He sat across from her at the table, and watched as she took a first, tentative sip.

     "What's this about you and Hayes Diehl?"

     "Is that why you got me up? To ask about Hayes?" She glared at him for a long moment. "If that's it, I can set your mind at ease real fast. We went to a basketball game once, to lunch once, and to see a Woody Allen movie once. That was three weeks ago, and I have not heard from him since. Now that I've made my full report, may I please have permission to go back to bed?"

     He grabbed her hand. "Hold on, hold on," he said, "I didn't mean to set you off, and I didn't mean to make you mad. I was the one who introduced you to Hayes, remember? I have some problems with his family—his mother drinks like a fish, and his old man is dour as hell. They're quite a pair. And Andy is a hell raiser like you've never seen. Hayes is the only normal one in that family."

     "Then why the cross-examination?" she demanded.

     "What cross-examination? I only asked what was going on between you, that's all."

     May ran her hands through her hair. "To answer your question then, nothing is going on between us."

     "Okay," Sam said, as if to accept an apology. "What I need to talk about is my schedule. I'm having problems—classes require a certain minimum, and I'm cutting that very close. My work hours at the chem lab are set, and I can't get around them. The thing is, I can't garden after dark so that means the housework has to be done at night or very early in the morning, and that is messing up my shooting schedule."

     "What shooting schedule?"

     "My own," he answered. "If I'm going to make it as a photographer, I need to shoot as much as possible. That means using the early morning light, and it also means being free to photograph whenever the occasion arises—the demonstrations for instance, and all the things that are going on in San Francisco now in the Haight, the hippie kids."

     "Make it?" she repeated.

     "Become a professional photographer, make a living at it."

     "That's what you want? You're sure?"

     "I've been at it for six months. I'm good, I know that. But to answer your question: Yes, I'm as sure as I've ever been of anything."

     The dense gray of the dawn had become a soft pewter, and it caught the determination in his face. May reached across the table to touch his hand.

     "So what can I do . . . short of getting up at five in the morning?"

     "I don't know," he answered, "help me figure out how to juggle everything. And I have to get my own photo equipment, cameras and lenses. I can't keep using Faith's, and besides, hers is out of date. I can't drop out of school, and I can't get another job because I don't have time to do the ones I've got."

     "Maybe if we get someone else to do the house and garden?"

     "Then how do I pay for the cottage?"

     She hesitated. "You don't, Sam. Listen, we've all lived here together for more than a year now, and you've done twice as much work as you needed to, you really have. As far as I'm concerned— and I know Karin agrees with this—you've got a nice fat credit built up, and I think you should cash it in now. The cottage is yours. Maybe you could find someone to garden for us, and we'll hire someone to clean the house."

     "I don't know."

     "Why not?" she asked. "When you start making big bucks as a photographer, you can pay rent."

     He hesitated. "Are you sure?"

     "Yes I'm sure, especially if it means you don't get me up at the crack of dawn again."

     He managed to combine a groan with a grin, and they sat in silence for a time, the coffee aggravating the dull ache of sleeplessness May felt in her stomach.

     Sam broke the silence. "Now all I have to do is figure out how to get my equipment."

     She looked out of the window; it was light, soon the sun would flood in, the kitchen would be bright and full of air. Now it seemed marble cold.

     "I could make you a loan," she offered carefully.

     He said nothing.

     "I'm sorry," she added quickly, "I didn't mean to offend . . ."

     "You didn't," he cut her off, and then he repeated purposefully: "You didn't."

     "Does that mean . . ." she began.

     "It means I'll think about it," he answered.

     "One more thing," he said as she got up to go back to bed, "I've got myself into something of a corner, and I'm hoping you and Karin will help me out."

     What more? she thought, but she said, "What's that?"

     He stood, shoved his hands in his pockets and began to pace. "My parents have been after me to bring you and Karin down
to the house for what my Mother calls a tea party. I know how busy you both are, and I didn't think you'd be till that wild about spending an afternoon at my folks'. I've been putting them off for months, and they keep after me. Somehow, a couple of weeks back, I guess I agreed to a date . . . and then I forgot about it. Mother called to remind me yesterday. She's been baking for a week, and it seems to have become something of a big deal for them . . . for Mother and Pop."

     "When?" May asked.

     He raised his eyebrows and shrugged: "Today."

     "Oh Sam," she said, leaning her head against the wall and closing her eyes. "I am so tired and I've got this paper to do, and if we go it means I'll be up all night again . . ."

     But she knew, even as she said it, that they would go. She climbed the stairs slowly, pulling herself up by the bannister, the bitter taste of coffee and disappointment in her mouth.

     She went back to bed but she could not sleep. She was chilled, the sheets were cold, all the warmth had left them. She closed her eyes but there was no drowsiness left in her, only an empty weariness. Hayes moved into her thoughts, she ran the memory through her mind one more time, as she might a loop of film, searching for some new meaning in his words, going over them again as if they held some secret code, some message she had not been able to decipher.

     Throughout the movie she had been conscious of him, distracted by his closeness, by the touch of his sweater against her arm, by the sound of his laughter. She had to make herself pay attention, she was impatient for the film to be over, she wanted to be alone with him.

     They walked across campus, pausing in front of the campanile, stopping to sit on a bench under the plane trees. It was early still, and unusually warm. Knots of students passed on the paths by the library, the sounds of their voices drifting in short, cheerful bursts.

     She had expected him to ask her back to his apartment. She had wanted it, her whole body ached for him, but sitting on the bench in the evening warmth she knew it was not going to happen. She felt a stab of disappointment.

     "Sam said you'd been in the Peace Corps . . ." she began, not to let a silence fall between them.

     "Sam said," he repeated, making it sound like a question.

     "I suppose we should talk about that—about Sam, I mean."

     "Why?" he asked.

     "I don't know why," she answered, and she didn't. She did not want to talk about Sam, she wanted to talk about him. About them. "Why did you join the Peace Corps?"

     "Good question. In fact, it turned out to be the Big Q." He sat forward, and spread his hands as if to study them: "I joined the Peace Corps because I believed that John Kennedy had pressed some golden button, and I was excited that it had happened in my generation, and I guess I was convinced that I had something to give." He stopped, turned to grin. "I didn't stay convinced very long. I had been in Africa about two months when I finally figured out what I was doing there . . . what most of us were doing there. It was a grand adventure, going into this impoverished Third World and exuding all this wonderful good will, showing them how righteous we were in the USA . . . Except, most of us didn't know how to do the things they needed us to do. There weren't many carpenters or plumbers or engineers among us. About the only thing we were qualified to do was to teach and spread good will. And in the end, for a lot of us—myself included—it was a relatively safe way to test ourselves, a helluva lot better than the old-fashioned way, war being a chancier business all around.

     "The Africans were amazingly patient with us . . . with me, particularly, because I managed to get sick enough to require being shipped out for treatment. Africans who get the same vicious amoebic critter swimming around in their bloodstreams aren't nearly as lucky. But then, they weren't members of the shining
generation." The self-mockery in his voice made her want to touch him but she did not.

     "I'm talking too much," he said.

     She answered, "I'm listening. What happened after Africa?"

     "Are you sure you want to hear this?" he asked, and when she said yes, he waited awhile, as if trying to decide. "Okay, I'll give you the abbreviated version. I went south after that. It seemed straightforward enough—voter registration. I could measure my effectiveness through the numbers of people I signed up to vote. In the end, those results were mixed, too."

     "When the black civil rights workers decided to go it alone?" she asked, and he nodded.

     "That brings us up to date—Berkeley and the antiwar movement."

     "And Robert Kennedy."

     He said nothing for a time. A silence settled on them. The light from the standard reached them obliquely. It seemed to May that they existed in a shadow world that was separate, closed off. He sat forward. She wanted to put her hand, palm down, to feel the small of his back through the rough wool of his sweater, but she stifled the urge.

     It was Hayes who broke the silence: "I spent a day in the library reading about your father," he began.

     "Why?" she asked, puzzled.

     "Because I knew his name—old lefties and new radicals still speak of him in hushed tones—but I never really knew much about him, what he'd done. And I thought knowing something about him might tell me something about you."

     She waited.

     "He seemed to know, your father I mean—what he was doing, what his place in the world was. I have been trying to make some sense of it all—where I've been, what it's all about. My batting average isn't terrific. I've been blundering around, trying to figure out some reasonable way with nothing much working."

     He shifted to face her, allowing his hand to rest on the back of the bench almost, but not quite, touching her shoulder. He tried to shift the subject, tried to get her to talk about her father, her own past, but she could answer only superficially. She did not want to talk about herself, she wanted to talk about them.

     As if reading her mind he said, quietly, "I'm a little bit afraid of you, May Reade."

     She looked at him, incredulous. "Why?"

     "Why?" he repeated, laughing a little, trying to shrug it off. "Because you are formidable. Because you're Porter Reade's kid. Because . . ." He stood, ready to go, to end the talk, end the evening. She remained seated on the bench, staring up at him.

     "Why?" she repeated, standing abruptly so that she almost bumped into him. Without thinking, she lifted her face and kissed him, pressing her lips lightly against his at first, until he put his arms around her and pulled her in, holding her to him for a long, hard moment.

     "That's why," he said, as if short of breath.

     Lying in bed, playing the memory one more time, it occurred to her that they had never gotten around to talking about Sam.

May insisted they take the Jaguar and that Sam drive so she could sleep on the way to his parents' house. She could tell by the way he caressed the wood paneling he was pleased. She put the seat back as far as she could, and dozed off to the Beatles singing "Nowhere Man."

     Sam's parents had been listening for the car because his mother came out to meet them, smiling and laughing. His father stood on the small porch of the bungalow, as if not quite certain where he should be, but smiling too. May took the rosebush they had brought as a gift. He said "Thank you, thank you," and fondled the leaves with a gnarled old hand.

     "It's a 'Sutter's Gold,' Pop," Sam told him, "yellows, shaded oranges."

     "I see," the old man said, then smiling shyly he looked at May and added, "and here we have
R. chinensis."
Mrs. Nakamura burst into laughter and explained: "That's the Latin for the old-fashioned China Rose, my dear—the source for all the very best roses—and you must take it as a compliment." Her enthusiasm washed over them all. She seated them in her immaculate little parlor, where a table had been laid with a dozen dishes of sweets and an elaborate tea service which, May guessed, was used only on special occasions.

     "What a beautiful tea set," Karin said.

     "It was in my husband's family for very long time, his father's grandfather, and before that even . . ." Sam's mother explained, pouring from the old pot with its panoply of willow trees and birds. "When the war came, and we had to leave everything, you know, had to sell in two days, that was all, we could only take what we could carry, no more, and we had to leave Father's tea set." She laughed then, as if embarrassed at introducing such a serious note.