Beyond This Point Are Monsters

Chapter Fifteen

As soon as Estivar stopped the station wagon, lights went on around the outside of the house as though Mrs. Osborne had been waiting for him in the dark with the relentless patience of a predator. Fog had rolled in from the sea and the merry-go-round wind chime above the courtyard door was still. The brass horses who’d pranced and galloped all afternoon to the sound of their own music stood silent now except for the moisture dripping off their hoofs onto the flagstones below.

“You came,” Mrs. Osborne said, sounding a little surprised that he’d kept his word.

“I usually obey orders, ma’am.”

“It wasn’t an order. Dear me, you’ve completely misunderstood the situation.”

In her blond wig and cherry-red velvet robe she looked as though she were going to a party or expecting one to come to her. Estivar didn’t feel like a party, either coming or going. The fog made him uneasy. It seemed to cut off the rest of the world and leave him alone in a small cold gray room with this woman he feared.

He said, “You sent for me.”

“Of course. I thought it was time you and I had a nice friendly chat. It might be our last... Now, don’t go imagining that I’m depressed or anything like that. I’m simply being realistic. Things do happen, you know. People go away, they die, they even become other people sometimes. Things happen,” she repeated. “Come in the house, won’t you?”

“All right.” He was glad to get out of the fog. At least the house was warm, the lamps were lit and there was a fire glowing gold and coral in the grate.

She sat down in one of the wing chairs flanking the fireplace, motioning him to take the other. There was a backgammon table between them. The dice were thrown and the black and white pieces arranged as if someone had walked out in the middle of a game. She and Robbie used to play backgammon, Estivar thought. She always let him win even if she had to cheat to do it, so that when he lost to Rufo or Cruz he was bewildered, he couldn’t understand the sudden failure of luck and skill together.

“You look nervous, Estivar,” she said. “And guilty. Do you have anything to feel guilty about?”

“Nothing that would be of interest to you, ma’am.”

“In your testimony this morning you made some unflattering references to my family. I don’t mind for myself. But you gave people the wrong impression of my son.”

“I didn’t mean to do that. I meant to give them the right impression.”

She either missed the irony or pretended to. “Whatever your intentions, the effect was the same — that my son was prejudiced, that he didn’t get along with his own foreman, let alone the migrant workers. It’s all on the record now and there’s only one way it can be removed.”

“What is that?”

“It would invalidate the whole hearing if Robert were to turn up alive.”

He thought of the blood in the mess hall, seeping between the cracks in the floorboards and soaking into the soft pinewood and standing in puddles as though it had dripped from a leaky roof. “Mrs. Osborne, he’s not going to—”

“Stop. I refuse to listen to you. What do you know about it, anyway?”

“Nothing,” he said, wishing it were true. “Nothing.”

She was staring down at the backgammon board, frowning, as if the game had begun again and it was her turn. “The police will be useless from now on. The hearing gives them the excuse they’ve been waiting for to drop the case completely. So it’s up to you and me.”

“How do I come into it, Mrs. Osborne?”

“You have a great many friends.”

“Some.”

“And relatives.”

“A few.”

“I wanted you to see that they get the message as soon as possible.”

“What message?”

“About the new reward. I decided to handle the details personally, without an intermediary like Mr. Ford.” Ford had, in fact, refused to be a party to it or even to discuss it with her. “It’s often occurred to me that the first reward was bungled. There were too many strings attached. This time I’ve offered to pay ten thousand dollars for any information at all concerning my son after he left the house that night.”

“You’re letting yourself in for a lot of trouble.”

“What have I got now? Do you think this isn’t trouble, not knowing whether your only child is dead or alive? But you wouldn’t understand. If something happened to Cruz, you’d still have Rufo and Felipe and Jaime and the twins. I had only Robert.” She went over to the cherrywood desk and opened one of the drawers. “I was looking through some old pictures tonight and found this... Do you remember?”

It was a color snapshot, enlarged and framed, of a tall towheaded smiling boy in his early teens. He held a spaniel pup hardly bigger than his own hand, and the pup, too, seemed to be smiling. The picture was of youngness, boyhood and puppyhood.

“I took it the day he brought Maxie home with him,” she said. “Neither Mr. Osborne nor I cared much for dogs, but Robert coaxed and made such a fuss we had to let him keep it. He adored Maxie. He thought he was the luckiest boy in the world to find a pup out on the road like that.”

“He didn’t find it on the road.”

“It must have fallen from a passing car.”

“Mrs. Bishop gave it to him.”

“Robert found the dog on the road,” she repeated, “and brought it to the house. Your memory isn’t improving with the years, Estivar.”

“No.” But he knew it wasn’t getting any worse either.

The scene remained sharp and clear in his mind. It was late afternoon and he’d started out for the ranch house to check some bills with Mr. Osborne. The sounds of quarreling struck his ears before he got as far as the garage.

Either Mrs. Osborne hadn’t had a chance to close the windows and doors as she usually did or else she no longer cared who listened and what was overheard.

“He’s to return it to her,” Osborne said. “Right now.”

“Why?”

“The dog’s obviously pure-bred and maybe pedigreed. She might have paid a hundred dollars for it, or more.”

“She thinks Robbie is a fine boy and she’s only showing her appreciation.”

“You always take his side, don’t you?”

“He’s my son.”

“He’s mine too. But no one would ever guess it, you’ve made such a softie out of him. He’s fifteen. When I was fifteen I was earning my own living, I had a couple of girl friends—”

“Are you saying in all seriousness that you want Robert to grow up like you?”

“What’s the matter with me?”

“If you have plenty of time I’ll tell you.”

Then the piano started — “March of the Toreadors,” “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” the pieces she played best and loudest. When Estivar returned to his own house he found Robbie sitting on the front porch with the pup cradled in his arms. For such a young dog it was very quiet and sober, as if it sensed that its presence was causing trouble.

The boy said, “Are they fighting?”

“Yes.”

“The Bishops never fight.”

“How do you know that?”

“She told me. She’s very nice. We both like animals a lot.”

“Robbie, look. You’re getting to be a big boy now and—”

“That’s what she said.”

The fighting went on intermittently for weeks. To the extent that it was possible, Estivar avoided the ranch house. So did Robbie. He rose long before dawn to get his chores done early and then he went roaming around the countryside with the pup at his heels. He came back from one of these excursions with the story that his father had fallen off the tractor and was lying unconscious in a field. Mr. Osborne died five days later. He had a big funeral but no mourners...

“It doesn’t matter now where he got the dog,” Estivar said. “It was a long time ago.”

“And your memory has failed.”

“If you say so, Mrs. Osborne.”

She replaced the picture of the boy and pup in the desk drawer, handling it with care, as though it were still a negative that would vanish in the light.

“He was always doing things like that,” she said, “rescuing birds that had fallen out of nests, bringing home lost dogs. That will be the worst part, really.”

“What will?”

“When he comes back, telling him Maxie is dead. I dread that, I dread it terribly. I don’t suppose you’d tell him for me, would you, Estivar?”

“Listen to me—”

“I’d consider it a personal favor.”

For a minute the silence in the room was so complete that Estivar could hear the fog falling from the eaves. “All right,” he said at last. “When he comes back I’ll tell him Maxie is dead.”

“Thank you. That’s a load off my mind.”

“You must try now to think of your own future, Mrs. Osborne.”

“Oh, I am. In fact, I’ve been making plans for a trip to the Orient.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Robert’s always loved Chinese food. And of course he won’t want to go back to the ranch. You can hardly blame him. He was stuck there for so many years. It’s time for him to see more of life, new countries, different people.”

“You’re forgetting his wife.”

“He has no wife. She gave away his things. That’s just like a divorce. In the eyes of God it is a divorce. She repudiated him, she gave away nearly everything he owned, even his glasses. It was pure luck I was able to rescue them.”

She went over to the picture window and stood facing it, though the drapes were drawn and there was nothing to see. Estivar noticed that one of the drapes had wrinkles and soil marks in the middle, as if it had been pushed aside dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times so that she could look out at the street. The sheer futility of it moved him to anger, compelled him to argue with her.

“You’ve always been a very practical woman,” he said.

“If that’s a compliment, thanks.”

“What do you think happened the night Robert disappeared, Mrs. Osborne?”

“Many things could have happened.”

“But which of them did, in your opinion?”

“My private opinion, not to be repeated to anyone?”

“Your private opinion, not to be repeated.”

She turned from the window to face him. “I think they had a fight, he and Devon, and he simply walked out on her.”

“That doesn’t fit in with the testimony.”

“What’s testimony? It’s only people talking. And people lie, they lie to protect themselves or to make themselves look good or for money or for any of fifty other reasons. The presence of a judge and a Bible doesn’t make much difference.”

“You were in court this morning, Mrs. Osborne.”

“Of course I was. You saw me.”

“Then you heard Robert’s wife testify that when he left the house that night he was wearing his contact lenses, which were later found broken on the floor of the mess hall.”

“I heard her.”

“She also stated that Robert’s prescription sunglasses were still in the glove compartment of his car.”

“Yes.”

“And you have the horn-rimmed glasses he usually wore.”

“Yes.”

“So you must know that Robert didn’t walk out on his wife. He couldn’t have gone anywhere without glasses of some kind.”

A flush rose up from her neck, staining her whole face scarlet until even her eyes were bloodshot. “You’re on her side.”

“No.”

“You’re against me.”

“I’m not. If you’ll just—”

“Get out of my house.”

“All right.”

Neither of them spoke again. The only sound in the room was a log shifting in the grate as though it had been kicked.