The Long Valley (19 page)

“You mean you won’t tell me?”

“I mean what I say.”

Then the doctor’s voice went on giving directions for treatment, rest, milk and a little whiskey. “Above all, be gentle,” he said. “Above everything, be gentle with her.”

Emalin’s voice trembled a little. “You would never—tell, doctor?”

“I’m your doctor,” he said softly. “Of course I won’t tell. I’ll send down some sedatives tonight.”

“Whiskey?” My eyes jerked open. There was the horrible Johnny Bear smiling around the room.

The men were silent, ashamed. Fat Carl looked at the floor. I turned apologetically to Alex, for I was really responsible. “I didn’t know he’d do that,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

I walked out the door and went to the dismal room at Mrs. Ratz’. I opened the window and looked out into that coiling, pulsing fog. Far off in the marsh I heard the Diesel engine start slowly and warm up. And after a while I heard the clang of the big bucket as it went to work on the ditch.

The next morning one of those series of accidents so common in construction landed on us. One of the new wires parted on the in-swing and dropped the bucket on one of the pontoons, sinking it and the works in eight feet of ditch water. When we sunk a dead man and got a line out to it to pull us from the water, the line parted and clipped the legs neatly off one of the deck hands. We bound the stumps and rushed him to Salinas. And then little accidents happened. A lever-man developed blood poisoning from a wire scratch. The cook finally justified my opinion by trying to sell a little can of marijuana to the engineer. Altogether there wasn’t much peace in the outfit. It was two weeks before we were going again with a new pontoon, a new deck hand and a new cook.

The new cook was a sly, dark, little long-nosed man, with a gift for subtle flattery.

My contact with the social life of Loma had gone to pot, but when the bucket was clanging into the mud again and the big old Diesel was chuttering away in the swamp I walked out to Alex Hartnell’s farm one night. Passing the Hawkins place, I peered in through one of the little wicket gates in the cypress hedge. The house was dark, more than dark because a low light glowed in one window. There was a gentle wind that night, blowing balls of fog like tumbleweeds along the ground. I walked in the clear a moment, and then was swallowed in a thick mist, and then was in the clear again. In the starlight I could see those big silver fog balls moving like elementals across the fields. I thought I heard a soft moaning in the Hawkins yard behind the hedge, and once when I came suddenly out of the fog I saw a dark figure hurrying along in the field, and I knew from the dragging footsteps that it was one of the Chinese field hands walking in sandals. The Chinese eat a great many things that have to be caught at night.

Alex came to the door when I knocked. He seemed glad to see me. His sister was away. I sat down by his stove and he brought out a bottle of that nice brandy. “I heard you were having some trouble,” he said.

I explained the difficulty. “It seems to come in series. The men have it figured out that accidents come in groups of three, five, seven and nine.”

Alex nodded. “I kind of feel that way myself.”

“How are the Hawkins sisters?” I asked. “I thought I heard someone crying as I went by.”

Alex seemed reluctant to talk about them, and at the same time eager to talk about them. “I stopped over about a week ago. Miss Amy isn’t feeling very well. I didn’t see her. I only saw Miss Emalin.” Then Alex broke out, “There’s something hanging over those people, something—”

“You almost seem to be related to them,” I said.

“Well, their father and my father were friends. We called the girls Aunt Amy and Aunt Emalin. They can’t do anything bad. It wouldn’t be good for any of us if the Hawkins sisters weren’t the Hawkins sisters.”

“The community conscience?” I asked.

“The safe thing,” he cried. “The place where a kid can get gingerbread. The place where a girl can get reassurance. They’re proud, but they believe in things we hope are true. And they live as though—well, as though honesty really is the best policy and charity really is its own reward. We need them.”

“I see.”

“But Miss Emalin is fighting something terrible and—I don’t think she’s going to win.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what I mean. But I’ve thought I should shoot Johnny Bear and throw him in the swamp. I’ve really thought about doing it.”

“It’s not his fault,” I argued. “He’s just a kind of recording and reproducing device, only you use a glass of whiskey instead of a nickel.”

We talked of some other things then, and after a while I walked back to Loma. It seemed to me that that fog was clinging to the cypress hedge of the Hawkins house, and it seemed to me that a lot of the fog balls were slowly moving in. I smiled as I walked along at the way a man’s thought can rearrange nature to fit his thoughts. There was no light in the house as I went by.

A nice steady routine settled on my work. The big bucket cut out the ditch ahead of it. The crew felt the trouble was over too, and that helped, and the new cook flattered the men so successfully that they would have eaten fried cement. The personality of a cook has a lot more to with the happiness of a dredger crew than his cooking has.

In the evening of the second day after my visit to Alex I walked down the wooden sidewalk trailing a streamer of fog behind me and went into the Buffalo Bar. Fat Carl moved toward me polishing a whiskey glass. I cried, “Whiskey,” before he had a chance to ask what it would be. I took my glass and went to one of the straight chairs. Alex was not there. Timothy Ratz was playing solitaire and having a phenomenal run of luck. He got it out four times in a row and had a drink each time. More and more men arrived. I don’t know what we would have done without the Buffalo Bar.

 

At about ten o’clock the news came. Thinking about such things afterwards, you never can remember quite what transpired. Someone comes in; a whisper starts; suddenly everyone knows what has happened, knows details. Miss Amy had committed suicide. Who brought in the story? I don’t know. She had hanged herself. There wasn’t much talk in the barroom about it. I could see the men were trying to get straight on it. It was a thing that didn’t fit into their schemes. They stood in groups, talking softly.

The swinging doors opened slowly and Johnny Bear crept in, his great hairy head rolling, and that idiot smile on his face. His square feet slid quietly over the floor. He looked about and chirruped, “Whiskey? Whiskey for Johnny?”

Now those men really wanted to know. They were ashamed of wanting to know, but their whole mental system required the knowledge. Fat Carl poured out a drink. Timothy Ratz put down his cards and stood up. Johnny Bear gulped the whiskey. I closed my eyes.

The doctor’s tone was harsh. “Where is she, Emalin?”

I’ve never heard a voice like that one that answered, cold control, layer and layer of control, but cold penetrated by the most awful heartbreak. It was a monotonous tone, emotionless, and yet the heartbreak got into the vibrations. “She’s in here, doctor.”

“H-m-m.” A long pause. “She was hanging a long time.”

“I don’t know how long, doctor.”

“Why did she do it, Emalin?”

The monotone again. “I don’t—know, doctor.”

A longer pause, and then, “H-m-m. Emalin, did you know she was going to have a baby?”

The chill voice cracked and a sigh came through. “Yes, doctor,” very softly.

“If that was why you didn’t find her for so long—No, Emalin, I didn’t mean that, poor dear.”

The control was back in Emalin’s voice. “Can you make out the certificate without mentioning—”

“Of course I can, sure I can. And I’ll speak to the undertaker, too. You needn’t worry.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

“I’ll go and telephone now. I won’t leave you here alone. Come into the other room, Emalin. I’m going to fix you a sedative....”

“Whiskey? Whiskey for Johnny?” I saw the smile and the rolling hairy head. Fat Carl poured out another glass. Johnny Bear drank it and then crept to the back of the room and crawled under a table and went to sleep.

No one spoke. The men moved up to the bar and laid down their coins silently. They looked bewildered, for a system had fallen. A few minutes later Alex came into the silent room. He walked quickly over to me. “You’ve heard?” he asked softly.

“Yes.”

“I’ve been afraid,” he cried. “I told you a couple of nights ago. I’ve been afraid.”

I said, “Did you know she was pregnant?”

Alex stiffened. He looked around the room and then back at me. “Johnny Bear?” he asked.

I nodded.

Alex ran his palm over his eyes. “I don’t believe it.” I was about to answer when I heard a little scuffle and looked to the back of the room. Johnny Bear crawled like a badger out of his hole and stood up and crept toward the bar.

“Whiskey?” He smiled expectantly at Fat Carl.

Then Alex stepped out and addressed the room. “Now you guys listen! This has gone far enough. I don’t want any more of it.” If he had expected opposition he was disappointed. I saw the men nodding to one another.

“Whiskey for Johnny?”

Alex turned on the idiot. “You ought to be ashamed. Miss Amy gave you food, and she gave you all the clothes you ever had.”

Johnny smiled at him. “Whiskey?”

He got out his tricks. I heard the sing-song nasal language that sounded like Chinese. Alex looked relieved.

And then the other voice, slow, hesitant, repeating the words without nasal quality.

Alex sprang so quickly that I didn’t see him move. His fist splatted into Johnny Bear’s smiling mouth. “I told you there was enough of it,” he shouted.

Johnny Bear recovered his balance. His lips were split and bleeding, but the smile was still there. He moved slowly and without effort. His arms enfolded Alex as the tentacles of an anemone enfold a crab. Alex bent backward. Then I jumped and grabbed one of the arms and wrenched at it, and could not tear it loose. Fat Carl came rolling over the counter with a bung-starter in his hand. And he beat the matted head until the arms relaxed and Johnny Bear crumpled. I caught Alex and helped him to a chair. “Are you hurt?”

He tried to get his breath. “My back’s wrenched, I guess,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”

“Got your Ford outside? I’ll drive you home.”

Neither of us looked at the Hawkins place as we went by. I didn’t lift my eyes off the road. I got Alex to his own dark house and helped him to bed and poured a hot brandy into him. He hadn’t spoken all the way home. But after he was propped in the bed he demanded, “You don’t think anyone noticed, do you? I caught him in time, didn’t I?”

“What are you talking about? I don’t know yet why you hit him.”

“Well, listen,” he said. “I’ll have to stay close for a little while with this back. If you hear anyone say anything, you stop it, won’t you? Don’t let them say it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He looked into my eyes for a moment. “I guess I can trust you,” he said. “That second voice—that was Miss Amy.”

This happened a number of years ago in Monterey County, in central California. The Canon del Castillo is one of those valleys in the Santa Lucia range which lie between its many spurs and ridges. From the main Canon del Castillo a number of little arroyos cut back into the mountains, oak-wooded canyons, heavily brushed with poison oak and sage. At the head of the canyon there stands a tremendous stone castle, buttressed and towered like those strongholds the Crusaders put up in the path of their conquests. Only a close visit to the castle shows it to be a strange accident of time and water and erosion working on soft, stratified sandstone. In the distance the ruined battlements, the gates, the towers, even the arrow slits, require little imagination to make out.

Below the castle, on the nearly level floor of the canyon, stand the old ranch house, a weathered and mossy barn and a warped feeding-shed for cattle. The house is deserted; the doors, swinging on rusted hinges, squeal and bang on nights when the wind courses down from the castle. Not many people visit the house. Sometimes a crowd of boys tramp through the rooms, peering into empty closets and loudly defying the ghosts they deny.

Jim Moore, who owns the land, does not like to have people about the house. He rides up from his new house, farther down the valley, and chases the boys away. He has put “No Trespassing” signs on his fences to keep curious and morbid people out. Sometimes he thinks of burning the old house down, but then a strange and powerful relation with the swinging doors, the blind and desolate windows, forbids the destruction. If he should burn the house he would destroy a great and important piece of his life. He knows that when he goes to town with his plump and still pretty wife, people turn and look at his retreating back with awe and some admiration.

 

 

Jim Moore was born in the old house and grew up in it. He knew every grained and weathered board of the barn, every smooth, worn manger-rack. His mother and father were both dead when he was thirty. He celebrated his majority by raising a beard. He sold the pigs and decided never to have any more. At last he bought a fine Guernsey bull to improve his stock, and he began to go to Monterey on Saturday nights, to get drunk and to talk with the noisy girls of the Three Star.

Within a year Jim Moore married Jelka Šepié, a Jugo-Slav girl, daughter of a heavy and patient farmer of Pine Canyon. Jim was not proud of her foreign family, of her many brothers and sisters and cousins, but he delighted in her beauty. Jelka had eyes as large and questioning as a doe’s eyes. Her nose was thin and sharply faceted, and her lips were deep and soft. Jelka’s skin always startled Jim, for between night and night he forgot how beautiful it was. She was so smooth and quiet and gentle, such a good housekeeper, that Jim often thought with disgust of her father’s advice on the wedding day. The old man, bleary and bloated with festival beer, elbowed Jim in the ribs and grinned suggestively, so that his little dark eyes almost disappeared behind puffed and wrinkled lids.