Jack and Susan in 1933 (25 page)

“You have nerve,” said Barbara, “I'll give you that.”

“You're divorcing Jack?” said Susan.

“I certainly didn't come to Reno to see you,” returned Barbara.

“I didn't seduce Jack, you know. Any more than I murdered Marcellus.”

“It still makes me ill to hear you call my father by his first name,” Barbara remarked parenthetically. Then she said, “But you don't deny that you're in love with my husband, or that he has somehow been so stupid, so blind, and so pathetically idiotic that he imagines that he's in love with you.”

“I am in love with him,” said Susan, “but if he knows it, he didn't hear it from me. And though I'd very much like to think he's in love with me, he's never told me he is. And most of all, I'd like to think that when I'm divorced from Harmon, and Jack's divorced from you, he and I will—”

“I don't think that will happen,” said Barbara.

Susan only smiled.

“There won't be time,” said Barbara.

“No?”

“You'll be in jail by then.”

“These accusations are boring, Barbara. You know very well I didn't kill your father.”

“Evidence says you did,” said Barbara smugly.

“What evidence?”

“A pair of wire cutters found in your bedroom at the Quarry. And a page torn from the car manual—the page showing the location of the brake cables. Oh, they were well hidden, but the police were very thorough. For once.”

Susan blinked and stared at Barbara.

“The police are searching for you right now,” said Barbara. “And of course, my civic duty impels me to telephone them instantly and tell them where they can find you. Have you a nickel I can borrow for the phone?”

Susan said nothing, only stared.

“No nickel? Oh well, I'll reverse the charges.” She rose.

Susan remained seated. “Someone put those things there—the wire cutters and the page from the book. I didn't—”

“These denials are very boring, Susan. I'm glad I won't be forced to listen to them much longer.” Barbara sailed out of the Owl Club in her satin and ermine.

Susan went to Olita and said that she didn't think she could sing again that evening after all. Her throat was sore. But she promised she'd return the following night.

She gathered up Scotty and Zelda and returned to the boardinghouse.

Bertha Pocket stopped her at the door and gave her a telegram. Susan hurried up to her room and ripped it open. The telegram read:

IMPERATIVE THAT YOU IMMEDIATELY SEE THE BLOSSOMS IN THE NEVADA DESERT STOP LEAVE NO FORWARDING ADDRESS STOP TELL NO ONE STOP TRUST ME STOP DESTROY THIS STOP

JAB

Susan trusted Jack.

She tore the telegram to shreds and placed the fragments in her pocketbook. She packed her bags and changed her clothes. She put on an old tweed skirt and a sweater that was much too large for her. She picked out a hat with a wide brim and put it on top of her suitcase. Then she turned out the lights in her room, seated herself on the edge of the bed, and waited.

The house grew quiet. Now and then she'd hear a door slam, or footsteps on the stairs, or the ringing of the telephone in the parlor, or some broken shrill laughter. But finally, about three o'clock, there was only silence.

Susan waited another half-hour. Then, leaving the rest of the week's rent in cash on her bed, she took her bags and crept downstairs. Scotty and Zelda followed in meek and careful silence.

Susan walked to the bus station and sat in the all-night coffee shop for two hours, her face turned away from the window beside her, staring down into a cup of coffee that had long grown cold.

At six-thirty she took the first bus that was going north.

Since receiving Jack's telegram, she had neither seen nor spoken to anyone.

T
HE BUS TOOK
Susan as far as Black Springs, a town so small and empty and desolate, she began to think that perhaps Reno wasn't the most boring place in the world.

She walked out of the bus station and stood on the dusty, hot street. She asked an old man climbing into the cab of a truck whose doors were hung on with baling wire if he would take her to Pyramid, about twenty miles away, for two dollars.

He stared at her.

“Three dollars,” Susan said.

“Who do I have to kill when we get there?” he asked.

Three dollars in Black Springs was evidently a greater sum than it was either in Manhattan or Reno.

The ride was bumpy and hot, and Susan was reluctant to answer the old man's questions about her identity, her past, or her purpose. He finally concluded, “Well, maybe
you're
going to Pyramid to murder somebody.”

“Please don't say that,” she sighed.

Scotty and Zelda ran around in the back of the truck until the heat of the sun exhausted them, and then they burrowed their way into a loose bale of hay there. An hour later the old man pulled the truck up to a small general store in Pyramid—this seemed to be the principal building in the entire place. For a few moments Susan was frantic, thinking the dogs had spilled out of the back. But when she called, they burrowed their way out of the hay again, and hung their heads as if they'd done something terribly wrong.

“Best-trained dogs I
ever
saw,” said the old man. Then he turned to Susan. “Sure you don't need me to take you any farther?”

Susan declined. He was the curious type, and Susan didn't want to disclose her destination.

He drove off. Susan and her two dogs were alone in Pyramid, a town so small and empty and desolate it made Black Springs look as exciting as Reno. It was on the shore of Pyramid Lake, a large body of salty water that looked as if it had no business being in the middle of the desert, and, in compensation for its geographical effrontery, had made itself as unappealing as a lake can be. The water had a faint but distinctly noxious odor, the surface looked black and oily, and no matter where you looked on its surface, something dead and rotted suddenly bobbed to the surface.

Leaving Scotty and Zelda on the shore of the lake, with strict instructions neither to go into the water nor to eat anything they came across, Susan went into the general store.

It was one of those places that carried everything you'd need if you were being hunted down for a murder you didn't commit and anticipated spending eighteen months in a mountainous desert wilderness.

But Susan hadn't come to that point quite yet.

All she needed now was someone to drive her on to her cousin Blossom's ranch, five miles away.

Someone could indeed take her there, Susan learned, for ten dollars.

She started to protest, then realized that the alternative to this abject bilking was to walk the distance. She made a feeble objection to the price, however, just because she imagined everyone did, and she did not want to be remembered by any eccentricity of behavior.

She had to wait two hours for the woman's son to come back with the truck. The vehicle had no doors, and no seat beside the driver's, so Susan was forced to jounce around in the rusty, filthy truck bed with Scotty and Zelda. She and the dogs coughed in the dust and exhaust fumes.

Being a fugitive had very little to recommend it, Susan decided. In fact, the only thing that could be said in favor of her flight was that it fortuitously coincided with her residency requirement for a divorce from Harmon.

The thought suddenly occurred to Susan's sun-baked brain that she might well be riding through land that she herself owned, and she looked around with more interest. This desert was drier, hotter, emptier, and less inviting than she had ever imagined, even when told it couldn't be sold for the price of the negligible taxes on it. Just the sort of land that she
would
own, she decided.

Finally the truck neared the ranch, which was nestled in a flat stretch of land between two jagged spurs of a desolate-looking mountain. It looked, actually, as if a conscious act of God had been required to prevent the Excelsior Ranch from being buried beneath a landslide of rock from above. It was noon, but every building in the ranch was in deep shadow. Cooler, perhaps, than what she'd just been driven through, but rather like a sickroom in the tropics with all the shades drawn. Not exactly a cheerful shadiness.

The Indian let Susan off at the gate, and she had hardly gotten her bags off the back, and gathered up Scotty and Zelda, before he drove off again. She had wanted him to wait until she had at least made certain that Blossom was still running the ranch, and this idea seemed the pinnacle of prudence a moment later, when a woman ran screeching out of the largest building on the property, screaming, “You criminal!” and firing off both barrels of a shotgun by way of exclamation points.

Susan's heart sank, thinking that she'd been discovered here and would be arrested even before she'd had the chance to wash the dust from her face.

But then it became clear—when the woman with the shotgun fired not at Susan or her dogs, but at the fast-retreating truck—that the opprobrium of criminal had been delivered not to her but to the Indian in the doorless vehicle.

“How much did those thieving McAlpines charge you?” she demanded suddenly of Susan.

“Ten dollars.”

“I've shot both doors off that Indian's truck. Next time I'll get him, and when I've done that, I'm going to pick off his mother.”

“Are you Blossom?” said Susan, who'd never met her cousin.

“I am. Blossom Mayback. And you should have let me pick you up in Reno. I go in twice a week, at the least. I wasn't expecting you till tomorrow.”

Susan realized Blossom assumed she was one of the divorcées who'd made reservations on the ranch.

“No, you weren't expecting me at all,” said Susan.

Blossom was a tall, thin, angular woman, about forty. She wore men's jeans, boots, and a patched blue shirt. There was a family resemblance, and on the whole, Blossom Mayback looked about like what Susan had always imagined her brother would look like if she'd had one.

“Well, there's always room for one more,” said Blossom, and scooped up both Scotty and Zelda, and rubbed their noses against her cheeks.

“I'm Susan,” said Susan. “Susan Bright. Your cousin.”

Blossom stopped and stared at Susan. Pressed against Blossom's cheeks, the dogs were absolutely still and silent, as if they feared that this peculiar maneuver might yet turn into a new sort of punishment.

“Then I don't have to welcome you,” said Blossom with something strange in her voice—repressed anger, disappointment, fear. “Since you own this place.”

Susan realized suddenly what her cousin was thinking.

“Oh no, no, I'm not here to take over, or anything like that—”

Blossom said nothing.

“I'm here to ask for your help.”

That was the right note to have struck. Blossom wasn't the sort to like asking for favors, or to be indebted, but she was always ready to do someone else a good turn. Blossom was even more pleased when she didn't get recompense for this largess. Susan knew this by instinct. Her own mother had been that way.

“Are you in trouble?”

“Yes,” said Susan. “Fairly serious trouble, if you want the truth.”

“Well then, you've come to the right place,” said Blossom, “but let's get you inside before these two perish of the sun.”

The Excelsior Ranch, née Dirt Hole Farm, consisted of one principal building with an office for Blossom, fourteen chambers for overweight women in the process of divorcing their husbands, a dining room, and three baths. The low old-fashioned kitchen was entirely separate, and was presided over by a fat Indian woman and her fat seven-year-old son. A new building, well off to the side, had two bedchambers and a bath. One of the chambers was occupied by Wesley Goff, a rather anemic-looking, yellow-haired man from Worcester, Massachusetts, who was designated the ranch overseer. Wesley looked the type to be much more at home as a fitter on the fifth floor of Macy's than he did in this remote desert area of Nevada. And in fact, most of the heavy work at the ranch was done by Colleen, a brawny young woman with flaming orange hair and a perpetually burned skin. Colleen shared the larger chamber with Blossom, and neither woman seemed much to mind the inconvenience. In yet another building were the twin Indian sisters who did the cleaning, spoke only to each other, and seemed to have nothing to do with anyone but themselves. There were stables with a dozen horses, most of them as tame as Scotty and Zelda. An old storage house had been turned into a gymnasium. Here, with the most rudimentary of athletic equipment, Colleen put the divorcées through their paces. “Shed weight while you shed a mate,” Blossom said to Susan, “that's what I tell 'em.”

Blossom installed Susan in her best room, and after Susan had bathed and changed her clothes, she invited her cousin in. Susan sat on the edge of the bed, and Blossom leaned against the windowframe. Outside was the corral where three pale fat women rode around and around in a circle, while Wesley stood in the middle and gossiped with Colleen.