Beyond the Black Stump (31 page)

“What ’ld I do if I wasn’t doing this?” he asked. “Sit and listen to the radio?”

She took the iron from him. “Go out and earn some money,” she said. “Go out and have a drink—anything. But give me that shirt.”

He surrendered. “I got enough money,” he said. “I wouldn’t have if I sat in the saloon drinking.” He paused. “You know what?” he enquired. “Mom and I were wondering if you’d like it if we got in a few cans of beer. Junior told us that you drink beer back at home.”

She smiled at him. “That’s awfully sweet of you, Mr. Laird,” she said. “I do drink it at home, but I’m perfectly all right without it. I’d rather do what other people do.”

“I guess I’ll get in a few cans anyway,” he said.

She spread the shirt out on the ironing board. “Don’t do
that just for me,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to drink alone. Besides, it ’ld look funny if Helen went into the Safeway and asked for half a dozen cans of beer to carry home down the street.”

“I wouldn’t ask her to do that,” he said seriously. “I guess I’ll get Jake Feldman to bring them along to the office in a parcel and shove them in the trunk of the Mercury. Then I’d take them out in the basement and put them right up in the pantry, at the back.”

He grinned at her boyishly. “I’d kinda like to have an empty can to stand on Claudia’s windowsill among the flower pots, so people ’ld see it from the sidewalk, and think she’d been drinking beer.”

She laughed at him. “You are a baby! I won’t be any party to it.”

For the first few days after they arrived in Hazel, Stanton devoted himself to her, took her driving round the countryside, introduced her to friends and acquaintances. Gradually, however, the work claimed him and he began to spend more time down at the business, and in a sense she was glad of it. Her job was to get to know Hazel as a resident and as a wife-to-be, not as a visitor to be escorted round, and this she could hardly do with Stanton at her side. It was better for her to spend her time in shopping and in housework with Helen Laird all day and to go with Stanton to the movies in the evenings, or drive out to some mountain stream or lake with him to fish at the weekends.

She was touched by the fact that the Lairds, staunch Presbyterians, made it easy for her to go to Mass. She went early in the morning on the first Sunday and returned in time for breakfast, and fell into the habit of going at that time each week. The Lairds, she found, were regular churchgoers in the winter when there wasn’t any fishing, attending the morning service at the Presbyterian Church. In the summer Helen Laird was the only member of the family who showed up regularly at church. The men went fishing, and Mollie went with them.

The outboard motor boat was there upon its trailer, just as Stan had told her. They took it up one weekend to Wallowa Lake and she braved the cold water, incredibly cold to her after Australia, to try water-skiing on a board first of all. She tried water-skis once or twice but never mastered them, mostly because she found the water and the
wind so cold that she could only bear it for a little time. “I think you’ve got to be about fourteen years old for this,” she said.

Stan laughed. “I guess that’s right. It’s better down in Florida, ’n places like that.”

He taught her to fish for trout with a spinning rod in the swift waters of the Hazel River, or to troll for them in the lake behind the boat, and she caught a few small fish with great glee. These were the amusements of the weekend; in the week they used to go together to the outdoor drive-in movies in the Ford sedan which he had acquired through the firm, sitting together very close in the love scenes. Sometimes they would spend an evening at home looking at the television, and though this held the attention of the Laird family and provided a topic of conversation with the neighbours next day, the girl from Australia found little interest in it and came to regard it as a somewhat trivial way of spending an evening. However, she did it with the rest.

She found that The Frontier was a very real thing to Oregonians. Chatting to Sam Rapke in his hardware store one day after buying a new can-opener for Helen, he said, “I guess you find things kinda rugged here after Australia. Of course, this country ain’t been settled for so long, and we’ve quite a ways to go before we catch up with the Eastern States. My Granddad, he came over with the first settlers, way back in 1859. Hazel was a frontier town then, and I guess it’s one still.” She looked out through the door at Main Street while he rambled on and saw the paved road with the traffic lights, the air-conditioned movie theatre, the big cars parked, the gas station, the drugstore on the corner, its window full of electric razors, cameras, and hot-water bags. She said politely, “I guess that’s right.”

Making orange bread with Claudia one day, the older woman said, “Of course, way over in the Eastern States I reckon folks don’t cook at home the way we do. The Frontier was just forest country eighty years ago. My mother used to say when she was a girl the flour used to come in sacks by ox cart right from Omaha on the Missouri River through Nebraska and Wyoming, and it took three months to get here. Women had to learn to cook in those days and not waste things, ’n that’s why we do it still. Over in the
Eastern States I guess you just go out and buy orange bread any time you want.”

“It’s pretty much like that with us still,” the girl said. “Our flour comes from Geraldton by truck—that’s about eight hundred miles.”

Auntie Claudia stared at her. “But you get bread delivered?”

Mollie shook her head. “We live in the country, quite a way from any town.”

The explanation satisfied the older woman. “Folks here living upon ranches, they have to come into town to buy stuff, too.”

Little by little, as the weeks went by, the Frontier began to get her down. She made a trip or two with the Laird family on horseback up into the mountain reserve, and quickly realised the virtues of the western saddle on the steep mountain trails. She learned the use of chaps to keep the legs dry when riding in an uncertain climate, and once or twice she saw a rider with a six-shooter belted at the waist, and was properly impressed. But when she commented upon it, she was told that it was carried from habit and for an occasional shot at a cougar, a mountain lion which preyed upon young calves. It was patently obvious to her that there were no bad men or hostile Indians around Hazel for loyal ranchers to defend themselves against by force of arms. If there were any bad men the local motorcycle cops looked after them, and as for Indians, she found that they lived in reservations at the expense of the taxpayer, and were paid a few dollars now and then to dress up in their ancient glory to walk in parades that glorified The Frontier, while the tourists photographed.

Little by little she developed a distaste for Western movies and T.V.

She walked round once or twice with Mr. Laird to visit with Dan Eberhart, and to inspect the building that he was converting from a garage into a home for Ruth and her four children. She liked Mr. Eberhart, as indeed she liked most people that she met in Hazel, a grey-haired, somewhat worried little man who ran a small sawmill and was reputed to drink whisky in the privacy of his home. She watched the building to completion and with Helen Laird went round to help him with the curtains, his wife being away with Ruth. The family were due to arrive back in the first
week of September, and Helen Laird and Mollie spent a busy week before their arrival machining curtain material and going round to put them up and to see how they looked.

“I guess you folks made it look real pretty,” said Mr. Eberhart one evening, surveying their labours. “It looked kind of mean before, but now it certainly looks homey. Ruth and Aimée will be mighty pleased.”

As Ruth’s arrival drew near, Stanton Laird became vaguely concerned. He had never told Mollie of his teen-age escapade, preferring to forget it, but now he felt uneasily that some explanation might one day be necessary. It was all over now, and half forgotten in the dim past, of no concern to anybody, yet there was no denying that Chuck’s first-born son was getting to look very like himself. He did not think it likely that Mollie would notice it or that anyone would call her attention to the likeness, yet it was indisputably there, and it was something that she should know about before they married. He did not want to marry under any false pretences, and one day it would be necessary for him to tell her all about it. Yet he shrank from doing so because there never seemed to be a very good opportunity, and as the time of Ruth’s return drew near he grew thoughtful and depressed.

Early in September Mollie got a letter from David Cope. She had heard once or twice from her mother, rather stilted, laborious letters that did not conceal the effort of the writing or the affection that lay behind them, but which gave her very little news. She found the letter from the English boy more informative. It ran:

The girl from Australia treasured this letter, though she did not answer it for some time. It seemed disloyal to be carrying on a correspondence with David Cope when she was virtually engaged to Stanton Laird. Yet the letter brought a breath of the wide spaces that she had grown up in, and that she was beginning to miss. She did not show this letter to anybody because there were some things that could not be explained. She could never hope to make Helen Laird or Claudia understand about the Judge, or her father’s way with rum, or Fortunate, or David’s deplorable remark about the yellow girl. There were some things that she would never be able to talk freely about to her new relations in Hazel, kind and affectionate though they were. There were some things in her background that they would never understand.

She kept the letter to herself, and read it once or twice a day in private. It was lovely to get news from home.

Ruth arrived back in Hazel a few days later, with her mother and the four children. The car had been sold and they came wearily and economically by train from Texas, a three-day journey through El Paso to Los Angeles and so up through San Francisco to Portland and to Hazel. They arrived early one afternoon and Helen Laird went down with Claudia to meet them at the depot and assist them home to the new cottage in the back yard of the Eberhart home. They returned later with a depressing tale of two worn, haggard women and four weary, fretful children, all in urgent need of rest and kindness in the haven that was Hazel.

“They’re just plumb tired out, all of them,” Aunt Claudia said. “It’s quite a ways to come by railroad in this weather, and it must be mighty hot still down south. I’m going to set right down now and make four fruit pies. I just can’t imagine they’ll be wanting to do any cooking for a day or two.”

“I guess I’ll make a kettle of soup that she can give the baby,” Helen Laird said thoughtfully. “Potato soup, with some of the chicken stock. I’ll take it over in the morning and see if I can do the shopping for them while they get themselves settled.”

Mollie said, “Is there anything I can do, Helen?”

The older woman turned to the girl. “She brought back a whole sack of dirty diapers. I know she’d appreciate it if
somebody would put those through the washing machine, ’n hang them out.”

The girl nodded. “I’ll go round and get them right away.”

She walked out in the warm September sunshine and round the corner of the shaded street, and up two blocks to the Eberhart home. She walked round to the back and in at the back door, as they were used to doing. In the kitchen she ran into a strange woman, a tired woman of twenty-nine or thirty with white scars on her forehead and one cheek, cooking up some baby food over the stove.