Murder in Little Egypt (7 page)

“Strip mine,” Dale said.

“That shovel must be five stories high,” Marian said.

“Biggest in the world, they say.”

“What are those fires?”

Here and there black metal pipes shot blue-orange flames into the gloom of the late, overcast afternoon, sending a weird, orange light against the sky. The pit, the great heaps of black slag, that outsized shovel, the flares—to Marian it was a peculiar and forbidding vision. She remembered Dante from high school. This was how she had imagined the
Inferno.

“They’re burning off the gas,” Dale said. “They have to do that.”

Marian said nothing more. She could only think what a strange place this was and that she would not enjoy being on this road alone at night.

Past Harrisburg, driving along Route 45 to Eldorado, Marian had the impression of descending, although the road seemed level. She began to feel closed in. The shabbiness of Eldorado’s downtown—not much to notice there; in the fading light it seemed almost a ghost town—weighed on her. In no time at all they were through it and pulling up in front of the Cavanesses’ on Maple Street.

“Here’s where I was born and raised,” Dale said. “Right in that house.”

“How nice,” Marian said. The trees were coming into leaf. The house looked well-kept, freshly painted white. Noma and Peck came out to greet them.

That evening Noma fixed a big dinner, pot roast and potatoes with gravy, homemade biscuits and rolls, peach cobbler made from Noma’s home-canned fruit. Grandmother and Grandfather Dale came over from next door with a maiden aunt and a great-aunt. When Marian realized that she was sitting in the middle of a sort of family compound, she felt like a foreigner. I would never in my life be able to fit into this scene, she thought. It was difficult for her to believe that she was only a hundred and fifty miles from St. Louis. This was a different world.

She did not wish to be or appear to be a snob. She was sure she could manage holidays here and occasional visits. But she did not fit in, and she felt ill at ease. Her clothes were too bright and stylish; she was wearing a green cashmere pullover and a matching green tweed skirt. Now that she had her own money, however little of it, she enjoyed spending it on herself and looking attractive. Here, she could see, were people who believed in saving for a rainy day and who probably would consider her eye for fashion a vanity.

Her rapid speech sounded sharp in her ears amid the southern drawls. She noticed that Dale’s accent was more southern than usual and that he was talking more loudly. Being home loosened him up.

Of all the relatives Marian liked Dale’s father and grandmother the best, as Dale had predicted. Grandmother Dale was hearty and warm, compared at least to the other women; Peck seemed a kindly gentleman. Dale had warned Marian about Noma. He had even said that he did not like his mother very much.

Marian thought Noma seemed nervous, and she could understand why. Noma was testing her out. Dale had told Marian that his mother had not liked Helen Jean at all, regarding her as selfish and no good for Dale. He had also told Marian about a telephone conversation Helen Jean had supposedly had with Noma about the time of the divorce, in which Helen Jean had said that the main reason she had married Dale in the first place was to have a way of getting out of Eldorado. Dale did not know whether to believe that Helen Jean had actually said that. Noma could well have made it up. It may have been, Marian considered, that Noma was simply the sort of mother to whom no woman was good enough for her son, but Marian did her best to be friendly. She did not have to lie about the cobbler; it was wonderful, and Marian said so, she hoped not too fulsomely. She had to be enthusiastic about something.

After dinner everyone gathered in the sitting room with their coffee. When conversation dragged, Peck told a couple of stories. He mentioned how well Dale had always done in school, not like the young man over in Rudement who had come home from Southern Illinois Normal one day and announced to his father that he was quitting school. The father invited the boy out to the barn.

“You see these here lines—” Peck paused to ask Marian whether she knew what lines were. She did not, so Peck explained that the lines were what you drove the horse with when you hitched him to the plow.

“Reins?” Marian said.

“Yes. So the boy’s father said, ‘Do you see these here lines? Well, if these lines and your ·ass hold out, I figure you’ll be back in school by tomorrow morning.’”

Only Noma didn’t seem to think that was funny. Marian laughed, and she didn’t mind Peck’s using a slightly vulgar word in front of her. It seemed a kind of welcome. He told another story about a farmer over in Raleigh who had been paying too much attention to a sweet young thing who was the new schoolteacher. The schoolteacher complained to the farmer’s wife, who said that she would take care of the matter. Her husband wouldn’t be bothering the schoolteacher anymore. The next morning when the farmer was out in the cornfield, his wife brought him a jug of water, and she wouldn’t go back to the house until he had satisfied his marital obligations. She brought him another jug of water that afternoon, another one the next morning and the next afternoon, until pretty soon the poor old boy was hollering “No more water! No more water!” and he never did bother that schoolteacher again. That cornfield over in Raleigh had been famous ever since.

Marian took the front bedroom that night. Dale slept on a bed on the back porch. On Sunday morning Marian wriggled out of Noma’s invitation to go to church with her, and after breakfast Peck, Dale, and Marian took the two bird dogs out for a walk around town and into the woods. Everybody knew everybody in Eldorado, that was clear. On the way back they passed by the new hospital. Dale pointed out the cornerstone. It read simply Pearce Hospital now, no longer Pearce-Cavaness.

Marian said nothing. She reflected that perhaps Helen Jean had done Dale a big favor by leaving him. If she had stayed with him, he might have been stuck in Eldorado forever.

5

ONCE DURING THE NEXT YEAR MARIAN CAUGHT A GLIMPSE OF Dale’s temper. Peck and Noma, who had never before been farther from southern Illinois than St. Louis, came to New York to visit. Marian was based in the city as a stewardess for American Airlines; Dale drove up from Baltimore and stayed with his parents at their hotel. It was a pleasant few days, with plenty of sightseeing, including an excursion down to Williamsburg. Everyone was saying good-bye in front of the hotel, when Noma reached into her purse and produced a check for a hundred dollars and handed it to her son. Dale took it, mumbling thanks, when Noma said:

“Don’t go spending this on something foolish. Your father works hard for his money. You know how we have sacrificed for you. You know how important we think your education is. I don’t want you going and—”

“Goddamnit!” Dale shouted and tore the check to pieces in his teeth, spitting it out on the sidewalk. “Don’t talk to me! Just don’t ever talk to me!” He spat out the last few shreds of the check like poison.

Marian retreated down the block. She flinched as Dale screamed at Noma, waving his arms, his head thrust toward her in fury. Marian heard Peck and Noma trying to placate him. “Now, Dale, don’t be that way,” Peck pleaded. “Please don’t be that way,” Noma begged him.

Marian did understand how Dale felt. He was scratching out an existence then, well aware that he depended on checks from his parents, now that Helen Jean was gone, to supplement his meager salary: That Union Memorial was a prosperous hospital serving a relatively well-to-do clientele did not mean that it paid more than the usual minimum to interns. His nerves were raw from overwork. But she did think his reaction extreme. Noma could not help being preachy—that was how Marian saw her. She was compelled to make Dale feel guilty for taking the money. She was simply that kind of person, and you had to humor her. The thing to do was to pocket the check and keep quiet, paying Noma’s little interest charge in silence. Peck had learned how to handle her. Still, Marian could not blame Dale: Part of her admired him for standing up to his mother.

Dale was so strapped for money in Baltimore that he often resorted to selling his own blood at five dollars a pint. He was not alone in this—several of the poorer interns did it—but as in everything, Dale pushed himself to the limit. One evening after skipping dinner and selling two pints, he fainted in the hospital elevator. He had been up for thirty hours on one of the brutal shifts interns had to endure, and for once his willpower failed him.

Whatever extra money Dale had, he spent running up to New York to see Marian. She was making more than he, and she chipped in what she could. Once in a while they splurged, dinner out and drinks and music afterward at Birdland or Club 181, a place on lower Second Avenue they liked, where Dale could forget his work and be funny and a little wild.

When they were apart he sent love letters saying that he could see her dark hair and eyes before him, that thinking of her made the miserable room he was renting bearable, that he lived for the next time he could see her. Sometimes he included a verse from Omar Khayyám—

Ah, make the best of what we yet may spend,

Before we too into the Dust descend;

Dust unto Dust, and under Dust, to lie,

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sans End!

When, at her request, the airline agreed to transfer Marian to Washington, D.C., she moved there to be closer to Dale, flying Convairs and DC-6’s on what they called the milk run to Philadelphia, Boston and back. She loved the travel and being on her own. In Washington she shared an apartment with two other stewardesses, one of whom quickly became engaged to a young advertising man from St. Louis who was often at the apartment for one of the frequent bashes the girls liked to throw. They were evicted from one building after a party became too noisy for too long. Marian acquired the nickname Skipper or Skip, which seemed to fit her fun-loving nature. Dale drove over from Baltimore often to see her, partying all night and heading back to Union Memorial in time for the morning shift.

When Marian visited Dale on her days off, they bought fresh crabs at the wharf and took them to share with a couple of nurses whom Dale had befriended. Marian would toss the crabs into a big pot with plenty of pepper, spread newspapers over the nurses’ kitchen table, and they would all eat the crabs and com on the cob right off the paper and drink cold beer. With a record on the machine everything was simple and nobody was ever in a bad mood.

One long weekend Dale said that he had heard about a place in the Maryland countryside called Candlewood Lake.

“We could drive out there and spend a couple of days,” he said. “I hear they have boats.”

“Where will we stay?”

“I don’t know. We’ll find some place. Don’t worry. I’ll just say we’re married.”

When they reached the lake on a warm afternoon in late spring it was beautiful. They drove around for a while in the Plymouth, not quite sure how to go about getting a room. It was exciting feeling illegal.

Dale spotted a line of cabins by the lake shore. He pulled up beside one that had a hand-painted sign on it saying office, vacancy. A big old dog drowsed in the sun on the cabin’s steps.

“What’re you going to say?” Marian asked.

“I don’t know. First thing, I’m going to say hello to that dog. Leave it to me.”

Dale got out and went over to the dog, hunkering down and talking to him, scratching his ears. A man who was a lot older than the dog opened the office door and watched for a minute as the dog rolled over to get his belly scratched. Dale looked up and said that he’d like to rent a cabin for a couple of days for himself and his wife.

“Sure,” the man said.

“Fine dog you got here.”

“He’s a good one. You can take Number Four. It’s got a toilet works. Everything you want.”

Marian told Dale she was positive they didn’t look married. You could tell when people were married, couldn’t you? She was sure that the only reason the man had rented them the cabin was because Dale had been so good with that dog.

“Maybe so,” Dale said. “We always had dogs.”

“I know. It’s because you’re a country boy and because you look so All-American.”

“Come on.”

“But you do! You’re my All-American boy.”

“I am?”

“Sure you are. You’re my own Jack Armstrong.”

“Okay. But does Jack Armstrong go on a weekend with somebody he’s not married to?”

“Once in a while. If they’re engaged. We are engaged, aren’t we?”

“I guess we must be. We better be,” Dale said, laughing.

They bought some beer and cheese and crackers and had the best time doing nothing but making love and floating around in a rowboat. Dale, who was very fair, took too much sun one afternoon, and Marian had to nurse him, but nothing spoiled their time at Candlewood Lake. At night they sat on the shore feeling the breeze and listening to the water.

One of Dale’s supervising physicians at Union Memorial, an internist, invited him to stay in Baltimore, offering him a place in an already successful practice. It was quite a vote of confidence in a new intern. Dale considered the position, and Marian urged him to go ahead and accept it. She had come to love the East and could not understand when, after not much deliberation, Dale refused what would have assured a fast start in his profession. He would not discuss the matter with her. He said that he had already decided to complete further interning at St. Louis Maternity Hospital. She did not argue with him. She could see that he had his mind made up. She figured that he must know what he was doing.

They returned to St. Louis and were married on October 3, 1952, in the Webster Hills Methodist Church, where Marian’s aunt and uncle were members. Truman Yard gave Marian away. She wore a long gown of ivory satin trimmed with Chantilly lace, Dale white tie and tails. Her brother, Bill, served as one of the ushers, and the two nurses from Baltimore flew out to be bridesmaids. Peck and Noma and friends of Dale’s from medical school and from southern Illinois were among the more than a hundred guests.