Kaaterskill Falls (41 page)

“But we’re only here until tomorrow morning,” Isaiah says. “We have commitments at home.”

“But it’s all a question of how we play it,” Victoria continues. “You know, my old dad used to say to me when I was a young girl, don’t fix on the first young man who comes your way, not the first one in your sights. You have to look at the competition. He used to say, Victoria, you’ve got to play the field.”

Isaiah and Rachel sit there across her desk with their tired, anxious faces. The pair of them, worrying in their sober clothes. They want to take care of the purchase-and-sale agreement. They want to set the closing date. Rachel’s broad gold wedding ring shines on her slender hand. Her parents never gave her this kind of advice. She has not, nor has Isaiah, ever felt the slightest inclination to play the field.

Meanwhile, in his Kaaterskill office, Judge Taylor is fielding calls. Sometimes he tells his secretary to put them through and sometimes he does not. Victoria Schermerhorn has already called several times threatening that this is his last chance. If he would raise his bid five thousand, to forty-five, then he wouldn’t lose the lake. If he would do that, she can promise he will still be in the running. Taylor listens to her go on and says as little as possible. He is not interested in a bidding war. He shrugs off Victoria’s attempts to keep the fire of competition alive. At last she calls him and says, “Look, the sellers are in my office now. They want to sign with King and I’m going to let them. We’re going to sign the purchase-and-sale agreement right now.”

“You go right ahead,” Judge Taylor tells Victoria in his quiet voice. His voice is thin and colorless, dry and mean as a martini. He puts down the phone carefully and then at last he gets up from his desk. He asks the young woman in the waiting room to come with him down the street and they walk together to Michael King’s office. The young woman is Candy Walker.

“Now, don’t worry about a thing,” Taylor tells Candy.

“I’m not worried,” she says.

Taylor holds the door open for her as they enter King’s offices.

“I’m sorry, Mr. King is in conference right now,” the receptionist tells them, but they walk on in.

Michael King looks up from his desk. He is speechless for a moment. Then he gets up and closes the door. “What are you trying to pull?” he asks Taylor. “What is she doing here?”

“Well, it’s like this,” Taylor says. “I would like to buy the lakefront property Victoria Schermerhorn’s got listed, and I thought, as you would like to buy it, too, I would speak to you about it directly.”

“I’m not interested in speaking to you about anything,” King says.

“I was hoping you would be,” Taylor says, “because the sale of the thing is dragging on. I have great respect for Victoria, but I thought perhaps she was doing a little more than necessary trying to auction off the place. I’ve never been one for bidding or bargaining, I guess you know that, and I’ve always been open in my dealings. So I’ve come to put my cards on the table, as it were, and say, I would like very much to buy the lakefront, as it belonged to my family for many years. You know I used to go fishing there when I was a boy.”

“But my bid was accepted,” King says, trying to keep cool.

“Yes, I suppose it was,” says Taylor. “But I thought I’d stop in to see if I could persuade you to change your mind.”

King looks at Candy Walker. She stands next to Judge Taylor in a corduroy skirt and blouse, and above all shines her long fine hair, gold, brushed over her shoulders. She opens her round mouth and her voice is round too, and sweet, with the slightest quaver in it, like caramel.

“Michael King, so help me, if you take away the judge’s land I am going to stand up personally at the town meeting in April and I’m going to say that you, nobody else but you, are the father of my son Billy Walker, Junior. I’m going to get up to that microphone and say it, loud and clear.”

“No, you won’t,” King says.

Candy flushes. She comes closer to him, and leans in, and she says it emphatically, in short breaths, “I—most—certainly—
will”

“You won’t,” King says, “because it’s not true. Your child could have had ten different fathers.”

She raises her hand as if to slap him, but she doesn’t. She says instead, “Billy Walker, Junior, had one father, and it was you.” She pauses a moment and then says quickly, “And when I get up there I’m going up with my Bible and I’m going to swear on it, and they
will believe me. What’ll you swear on? Who in this whole town is going to believe you? I’m going to go up there, and I—”

“But I hope it never comes to that,” says Judge Taylor. “I don’t want it, I know you don’t want it, Michael.”

“You’re threatening me with this if I don’t withdraw my offer,” King says.

“I’m not threatening you with anything,” says Taylor.

“Go to hell,” King says to the judge.

“I hope you’ll think about this,” says Taylor.

King does think about it. He can’t help it. His visitors gone, he sits alone in the office. He has two black Rolodexes on his desk, and he begins spinning them, first one and then the other, so that the cards whiz by alphabetically. The cards whiz around and around, too fast to read. Of course, he can defy Taylor. He can go ahead with the purchase and sale. But he knows Taylor well enough to see there will be damage. King feels anger welling up inside of him. For a moment he is so angry that he doesn’t care. He will get a lawyer. He will sue Taylor and Candy both for trying to blackmail him, planning to libel him. But he knows that the problem remains. The damage will be done.

He thinks about Jackie, and about Heather. They wouldn’t believe the things Candy says about him. Jackie would never believe him to be the father of Candy Walker’s child. She would stand by him. But, of course, she did not know him then, and she never knew Candy. The people in town, the ones who hate him anyway, ready to believe the worst, would jump on her story and talk and talk about it. And his friends? What would they think? The Rubins, the Butlers. Being old-timers, part of the place, their reaction would be more complicated. They would stand by him in the end, though it might cool things between them for a while. The respect they have might dampen a little. In the end, of course, they would stand by him. They might be loyal more for Jackie’s sake than his. The place is too small. The people too close together, all alike at bottom, armed with the same prejudices, sharing and exchanging the same gossip, a public library of hearsay. Jackie would believe him, but she would be pelted on all sides. His enemies would mock her, but the worst might be,
their friends would pity her. And as for Heather—on the bus, and at school—he can’t help thinking about it. Children being what they are, so cruel to one another.

He doesn’t think about himself, only about them, his family. He himself would deny it ever happened. He would get a lawyer to show that Candy is a liar. But he worries he can’t stop the talk. The stories would circulate, despite what any lawyer could say or any judge could find. And poor Jackie, to have to live with that.

“Michael, what’s wrong?” Jackie asks him that night at dinner. “You’re so quiet.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he tells her, and he looks at her across the table where she sits with her shining brown hair and big brown eyes, and he asks her about her day, and Heather about her homework.

But at night he dreams. He dreams of the floodlit gym at the high school filled to capacity and strung with red, white, and blue bunting, the decorations bought by the selectmen for the Bicentennial. The three mayors are sitting there in chairs on the gym floor, official in their suits: the mayor of Bear Mountain, the mayor of Kendall Falls, and the mayor of Kaaterskill. The gym is packed up to the rafters far above the basketball hoops. Pink-cheeked kids in their quilted parkas, the parents chatting above their heads, the old gentlemen and ladies escorted to the front benches. Hamilton, Kendall, the old-timers of the town. Up top, the burly lift operators from Bear Mountain, and the slim young ski instructors.

“One, two, three,” the mayor of Kaaterskill tests the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Kaaterskill High marching band.”

The band plays, the anthem is sung. The mayor announces, “Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome a man prominent in the development of Kaaterskill, a man running for his second term as selectman. Michael King!”

And he rises from his seat and stands before them all on the golden varnished floor. There are a thousand people under the basketball lights, the scoreboard shining. But when he opens his mouth he cannot be heard. The microphone is not working, and though he tries to raise his voice he cannot make a sound.

It is Candy Walker whose words rise up and float over the public
address system. Her melt-away voice fills the gymnasium. Standing in the center of the polished wood floor, she keeps one arm around Billy Walker, Jr., and she clutches her Bible in her other hand.

And Candy says, “This man is not developing Kaaterskill. This man is ruining it, and he came here from the city to ruin us all. I know about it personally. He almost caused the breakup of my wedding to Bill Walker, my late husband, and no one knows, hardly, but Michael King—he is the father of my child, Billy!”

“You don’t have a shred of evidence,” King shouts, but no one can hear him. No matter how he screams, no one hears a word he says. They are all against him, rising in the bleachers, hissing. They are starting up against him, pouring onto the gym floor, and in vain the three mayors try to keep them back. Everyone is rising. Stan Knowlton and Curtis. Hamilton, and old man Kendall, Candy’s father, with his long shotgun.

“Michael,” Jackie says to him.

“What? What is it?”

“You’re mumbling in your sleep,” she says. “You’re very funny.”

Jackie pulls up the blanket and closes her eyes, but Michael lies there, aggravated, too tense to fall asleep again.

T
HE
next morning in Victoria Schermerhorn’s office, Isaiah and Rachel review the terms of the purchase and sale. “The closing date,” Victoria says.

“As soon as possible,” says Rachel.

“Well, now let me see, we have to allow for the bank’s appraisers and the mortgage approval and the … let’s see, six weeks from today would put us at May thirtieth, but it would be better to do it on a Monday…. Good morning,” she says, over their heads. “
Judge
Taylor, what an unexpected pleasure. I didn’t expect to see you, of all people, coming through these doors.”

Isaiah and Rachel turn around and look at the judge. They take in his dark suit and neatly combed white hair.

“Have you come to raise your bid?” Victoria Schermerhorn asks him.

“Well, no, I’m afraid I haven’t,” says Taylor.

Victoria knits her brow and waits a moment.

“I’ve spoken to Michael King,” the judge says. “He has had some second thoughts.”

“What do you mean, second thoughts?” Victoria asks sharply.

“Just what I said,” says Taylor.

“And what, I wonder, did you say to him?” Victoria asks. She is furious that he spoke to King behind her back.

Taylor doesn’t answer.

“Excuse me,” Victoria says to her clients. She ushers Taylor into her back office. Isaiah and Rachel are left with the purchase-and-sale agreement, its legal-sized pages flopping in their hands.

“We’ll see,” Victoria mutters to Taylor at her desk as she dials King’s number. “We’ll see whether you can get away with this or not.”

In the outer office, Isaiah and Rachel wait uncomfortably. They look at their watches. Long minutes pass, until at last Victoria reappears, looking rather flustered and angry. Taylor follows her, looking exactly as he did when he came in.

“Cold feet,” Victoria Schermerhorn tells them. “He’ll do it. I know he’ll execute it, but he says that he needs time.”

“We don’t have time,” Rachel says. “We really don’t.” Jeremy will be coming up in the afternoon with his movers to make estimates. He is planning to start the packing this week and move all the books to his apartment in the city. Rachel and Isaiah must finish this business. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but this morning. They need to sell the land and give the money from the sale to Jeremy. It doesn’t matter to them, five thousand here, five thousand there. They want somehow to preserve the Rav’s library, to prevent it from being sold and scattered.

“He asked for a few days,” Victoria Schermerhorn says.

“No, we don’t have the time,” says Isaiah.

“I can see you’re in a hurry,” Judge Taylor tells them. “And I’m still willing to offer forty if you’ll take it.”

“Forty.” Schermerhorn spits out the price contemptuously.

“The offer stands,” says Taylor, “and I’m ready to sign now.”