Jack and Susan in 1933 (31 page)

“Oh my God!” cried Jack, staring at Susan in the bed. “Oh my God, who—”

“When did you take up flying?” Susan asked.

“What?”

“When did you learn to fly?” she repeated patiently.

“In the War?” Blossom asked sarcastically.

“No,” said Jack, mystified. “But my father flew in the War. And he taught me. Who tried to kill you?”

“Why didn't you ever tell me you knew how to fly a plane?” Susan asked then, coldly ignoring his question.

“Because the subject never came up,” said Jack, more and more mystified. “Why are you asking me these questions?”

Susan still didn't answer.

“Because someone tried to murder her with an airplane last night,” said Blossom, and looked at Jack with a look that was full of suspicious meaning.

“A biplane,” said Susan.

“
That
biplane,” said Blossom, pointing out the window with her shotgun.

Jack looked out the window as if to make certain Blossom was pointing to
his
plane rather than some other biplane that might be about the vicinity of the corral. Then he looked at Susan, who didn't contradict her cousin's extraordinary statement and who returned his gaze levelly and without apparent emotion. Then he looked at Blossom, who was patently waiting for some sort of reply.

“You were wondering—I suppose—if I was the one flying the plane as it was trying to murder Susan?”

“Something like that,” said Blossom.

“No,” said Jack. “It wasn't me.”

“Good,” said Susan cheerfully as she straightened out the covers. “I didn't really think it was.”

“You believe him?” asked Blossom.

“Of course,” said Susan. “Don't you?”

Blossom looked at Jack a long time.

“Yes,” she said at last, “I believe him. Or at any rate, the other one is such a liar that it makes me think I'd believe anything this one would say.”

“What other one?”

“Harmon,” Susan explained.

“You know Harmon?” he asked Blossom.

“I met him once,” said Blossom. “About ten minutes ago.”

Jack blinked. “Harmon is here?”

“He came to visit Barbara,” said Susan.

“
Barbara
is here?” said Jack, blinking harder.

“She brought these flowers,” said Susan, shoving Barbara's bouquet off the bed and onto the floor. “And Harmon brought these,” she said, tossing them on top of Barbara's.

“What is Barbara doing here?” said Jack.

“Fulfilling her residence requirement,” Blossom said, still a little sharply. She hadn't given Jack her entire trust yet, evidently.

“When I was in Reno,” Jack said, “I never left my hotel room for fear I'd run into her. I spent two days trying to find a woman named Blossom who ran a ranch north of Reno. I was on the telephone, talking to a lawyer, asking him, while the chambermaid was making my bed. The lawyer didn't know, but the chambermaid did.”

“That must have been Enid,” said Blossom. “Enid got into trouble a little while ago, and I did what I could to help her. Sweet girl.”

Jack nodded absently. “What is Harmon doing here?”

“Looking for Barbara, hoping she knew where I was,” said Susan. “He was looking for me so that I could forgive him, and go back to New York with him, and start our happy life all over again.”

Jack stared.

“Are you going to do it?”

Susan laughed. “You idiot. It's perfectly clear—to you, to me, to Barbara,
and
to Harmon, that you and I are in love with each other.”

Jack stared.

“I shouldn't have said that, I suppose,” Susan said, shaking her head at her own impetuousness.

“Yes, you should have,” Blossom interjected.

“But I'm tired, and my head hurts, and everything is
very
confused right now, and there's no point in being confused about
this
. So I'm right, am I not—you are in love with me, aren't you?”

“I am,” said Jack quickly. “Very much. I love you very much. I love you more than anything else in the world. And I didn't try to kill you last night.”

Blossom finally put the shotgun aside, standing it in the corner.

“And I love you, too,” said Susan briskly. Then, in case she had been too brisk, she added, “Desperately.”

Susan, Jack, and Blossom sighed a sigh in unison. At least
something
was clear.

There was a knock at the door.

Susan?

Harmon's voice.

Are you all right?

“Yes,” Susan called weakly.

May I come in?

“Not now, Harmon.” She thought quickly. “The doctor's with me.”

Is that the man who came in the plane?

“I sent for him!” Blossom called.

Doctor?

Blossom and Susan looked at Jack.

Jack fisted his hands, and then pressed them against either side of his neck. Then when he answered “Yes?” his voice sounded lower and hoarse.

Is my wife going to be all right?

“With rest, Mr. Dodge!” Jack called.

Let me speak to you before you go!

“Can do!” called Jack.

I'll be back!

Then his footsteps retreated from the door.

Jack sighed with relief. Harmon hadn't recognized his voice.

“Quick!” cried Blossom. She grabbed Jack and pushed him over to Susan's bedside so that his back was to the window.

“Bend over,” she commanded.

Jack leaned over as if he were examining Susan.

The precaution was well taken. A moment later there was a rap at the window, and Harmon appeared there. He waved in at Susan, who pretended to be breathing deeply for benefit of the examination.

Jack placed his hand on her breast as if listening to her heartbeat through a stethoscope.

Blossom pointedly drew the shade down over the window.

“I really don't understand what is going on here,” said Jack.

Susan removed his hand from her breast. “Neither do I. But maybe together we'll be able to figure it out. There are a number of questions I need to ask you.”

“Later,” said Blossom. “We have to get him out of here before your husband sees him. Or your wife sees you.” She grinned at Jack. “A piece of work, that one.”

Jack blushed. “I don't want to go anywhere. I think I'd better stay here and protect Susan.”

“
I'll
protect Susan,” said Blossom. “I think you'd better stay hidden for the time being. If they've got secrets, then it's probably a good idea if we have a secret, too. You're ours.”

“If I don't stay here, what am I supposed to do?” Jack asked.

“You have to take care of Scotty and Zelda,” Susan laughed.

“Exactly,” said Blossom. “We also have to get rid of that plane.”

“But—” Jack protested.

“Time for buts later,” said Blossom.

“Susan—”

“Later,” Susan agreed. “You trust Blossom the way I trust you.”

Jack sighed. He turned to Blossom. “Tell me what to do.”

“Are you rich?” Colleen asked him.

“Ah—not very,” said Jack. First-time flyers were generally terrified. This young woman had no fear in her voice or countenance. She intertwined her fingers and cracked her knuckles.

First-time flyers who were not frightened into paralysis were invariably absorbed by the novel spectacle of viewing familiar landscapes from a different vantage point.

Colleen seemed to care for nothing but certain details of Jack's life.

“But your wife is rich?”

“Barbara? Ah, yes, she is. Quite rich.”

“Your wife could use a poke in the chops,” Colleen remarked. “Head that way,” she pointed, off to the right. They were flying low over the desert, going west from the ranch. “Have you ever given her one?”

“A poke in the chops?”

“Yes.”

“Not intentionally,” said Jack. “But once at a dance at the country club, I slipped on—”

“Who spoiled her?” asked Colleen, no longer interested since the lick in the chops that Jack once gave Barbara had been unintentional. “You or her father?”

“Ah, her father.”

“You mean she came that way, and you still married her?” Before Jack could frame a response to that remark, either to satisfy Colleen or himself, Colleen pointed again. “It's just over this rise. So look sharp.”

A few minutes after Harmon had left, Blossom had gone to the main building, calling Harmon and Barbara into the dining room on the spurious excuse of asking what Susan's favorite foods were so that the invalid might be indulged. While these two were occupied, Colleen and Jack ran to the plane, and Jack quickly took off.

It was Colleen's job to show Jack a place where the plane might be hidden.

She guided him to a little plateau in the Virginia Mountains—the ugly range of peaks directly across the narrow desert from Mt. Bright. It was invisible from any place near the Excelsior Ranch.

The plateau was so tiny, Jack wondered whether he would be able to land safely. He circled three times before he had the courage to make the attempt.

Unconcerned, Colleen continued to ask him personal questions. Finally, Jack realized that Colleen had cast herself in the role of prospective mother-in-law and wanted to make certain that Susan would have a suitable mate in John Austin Beaumont. When he'd figured that out, it became a pleasure to respond to the inquiries.

“Who do you think is more beautiful—your wife or Susan?”

“Susan, unquestionably. If I'd met Susan before I'd met Barbara, Barbara would not have had a chance with me.”

Colleen liked that answer. “And now you wished you
had
met Susan first.”

“No,” said Jack, “because I love her even more now, having been married to someone like Barbara.” That was not exactly the truth, however. In precise honesty, he wished he'd never seen Barbara's face. But somehow Colleen, in appearance a young woman of consuming sensibility, had inspired him with a kind of romanticism. Also, he liked very much to hear someone talk of his love for Susan, and Susan's love for him, as the happy fact that it was.

Colleen sighed a deep romantic sigh, and the plane landed a good five feet before a precipice that dropped a couple of hundred feet onto another, lower plateau of jagged rocks.

Jack and Colleen climbed out of the plane.

Jack peered over the precipice at the treacherous rocks below. He thought of his marriage to Barbara.

He looked up at the cloudless sky, and the sun that burned in it, bright and hot and white and unflawed. He thought of being married to Susan.

He turned away from the precipice. “Have
you
ever fallen in love, Colleen?” he asked in the generousness of his good feeling.

Colleen drew herself up tall. “True gentlemen don't make personal remarks,” said Colleen huffily, and turned sharply away.

D
ESPITE HER NEW
opinion that Jack was a creature undeserving of consideration, Colleen led him down from the plateau, a journey that was neither easy nor readily apparent. It involved, in fact, a good deal of scrambling and sliding and creeping and fearing for his life.

Finally they reached the desert floor, and Colleen, still huffy, led him a few hundred feet along the base of the mountain.