Death of a Citizen

CHAPTER 7 -

MRS. Garcia was a plump, pretty woman who lived only a few blocks away, so that, except in bad weather or very late at night, she did not have to be driven home. I paid her, thanked her, saw her to the door, and stood in the doorway watching her walk along the concrete path to the gate in our front wall. Like many Santa Fe residences, ours is fortified against invasions of our privacy by six feet of adobe wall ten inches thick. After she'd gone, closing the gate behind her, it seemed very quiet.

I listened to Mrs. Garcia's receding footsteps and to the sound of a lone car going past outside the wall. There was no sound inside and no movement except for our large gray tomcat-named Tiger by the children despite a total lack of stripes-who made a quick, silent pass at the door, hoping to slip inside unnoticed. I closed the screen in his face, locked the door, and reached for the switch to turn out the yard lights. They could be controlled from the front door, the kitchen, the studio, and the garage, and they had cost a pretty sum to install. Beth could never understand why we'd had to spend the money. She'd never lived in such a way as to consider it a luxury, at night, to be able to hit a single switch and determine, at a glance, that there was no enemy inside the walls.

I let my hand fall from the switch without pressing it. Why should I make life easy for Tina and her friend? When I turned away, Beth was watching me from the arch of the hallway that led back to the children's bedrooms.

After a moment, she said, without mentioning the lights, "All present and accounted for. Where's the cat?" If not exiled at night, the beast will hide under the furniture until we've retired, and then jump in bed with one of the kids. They don't mind in the least, not even the baby, but it seems unsanitary.

"Tiger's all right. He's outside," I said.

She watched me cross the room to her without smiling or speaking. The light was soft on her upturned face. There's something very nice about a pretty woman at the end of a party evening when, you might say, she's well broken in. She no longer looks and smells like a new car just off the salesroom floor. Her nose is maybe just a little shiny now, her hair is no longer too smooth to caress or her lipstick too even to kiss, and her clothes

have imperceptibly begun to fit her body instead of fitting some mad flight of the designer's fancy. And in her mind, you can hope, she's begun to feel like a woman again, instead of like a self-conscious work of art.

I pulled her to me abruptly and kissed her hard, trying to forget Tina, trying not to wonder what Mac wanted with me after all these years. Whatever it was, it wouldn't be nice. It never had been. I heard Beth's breath catch at my roughness; then she laughed and threw her arms around my neck and kissed me back just as hard, playfully wanton, coming against me shamelessly and fitting her mouth to mine with deliberate disregard for whatever lipstick she had left. It was a game we sometimes played, pretending to be real wicked, uninhibited people.

"That's better," she whispered a little breathlessly. "You've been looking like a thunderstorm all evening. Now let me go and… Matt, don't!"

It was a game, and I was supposed to know the moment to take time out and let her escape to the bedroom and make a quick change into a pretty nightie, but I couldn't seem to make myself abide by the ground rules tonight. I heard her gasp with surprise and apprehension as I swung her around and let her down on the nearby sofa, following her down and lying against her. But her lips were soft and unresponsive now. Her breast was remote behind layers of clothing.

"Please, darling," she whispered, turning her face from me, "please, Matt, my dress..

There are times when a husband can't help remembering that he's a fairly large man and his wife's a relatively small girl and that if he really wants to… I put the thought aside. I mean, hell, you can't go around raping people you love and respect. I got up slowly and took out my handkerchief and scrubbed my mouth. I walked to the front door and stood looking out through the glass at the lighted yard, hearing her rise behind me and go quickly out of the room.

Presently I heard the bathroom door close. I turned and walked into the empty bedroom and started to pull off my tie, but changed my mind. My suitcase was already packed, standing by the foot of my bed. Like most old southwestern houses, ours was built with a complete lack of closet space and we've never quite made up the deficiency; in consequence, such things as camping clothes and equipment have to be stored out in the garage and studio. Part of what I needed had already been loaded in the pickup, the rest was ready and waiting for me. By morning I could be in Texas. Normally, I have a good New Mexican's aversion to that loudmouthed state and all its residents, but at the moment it seemed like a fine place to be.

I carried the suitcase to the kitchen door, deposited it there, and stepped down the hail to look in on the baby. Further down the hall there was Matt, Jr., aged eleven, and Warren, aged nine, but they were getting a little too big to get mushy about at night. But you never quite get used to the sight of your own babies, I guess; they always seem like a cross between a practical joke and a miracle from heaven. Our youngest, Betsy, sound asleep, had wispy blonde baby-hair and a square, pretty little face that was lengthening out now as she got her first teeth. She was not quite two. Her head still looked too big for her body, and her feet looked too small for anything human. I heard a sound behind me as I covered her up, and turned to face Beth.

I said, "Shouldn't she have a sleeper on?" When you've nothing whatever to say to your wife as man to woman, you can always fall back on acting like a parent.

"There aren't any; she wet the last pair," Beth said. "Mrs. Garcia washed it out, but it isn't dry yet."

I said, "I think I'll throw my gear into the truck and take off. I can be halfway to San Antonio by morning."

She hesitated. "Should you? After all those Martinis?" This wasn't, I suspected, exactly what she wanted to say, but it was what came out.

"I'll take it easy. If I get sleepy, I can always pull off the road and take a nap in back." It wasn't precisely what I wanted to say, either, but we seemed to have lost the knack of accurate communication.

We looked at each other for a moment. She was wearing something filmy and pale blue with a negligee of the same stuff, and she looked like an angel, but the moment was past, and I could work up no real interest in nylon angels, not even when I kissed her lightly on the lips.

"So long," I said. "I'll call you tomorrow night if I can, but don't worry if you don't hear from me. I may be camping out."

"Matt…" she said, and then, quickly, "never mind. Just drive carefully. And send some cards to the boys; they love to get mail from you."

Crossing the rear patio in the glare of the lights, I unlocked and pushed wide the big gates that open into the alley that runs alongside our property. In Santa Fe, you're apt to find alleys anywhere. Before we bought the place, the studio was rented as a separate apartment, and the tenant, who didn't have garage privileges, parked his car in the alley. I carried the suitcase into the garage and threw it into the bed of the pickup, which is covered by a metal canopy with small windows at front and sides and a door facing aft. Upon the door, for all following drivers to see, my oldest son had pasted a sticker reading: DON'T LAUGH, IT'S PAID FOR.

I opened the garage doors, drove out into the alley, closed up the garage, returned to the truck, and backed it in through the big gate and up to the studio door. Leaving the motor running to warm it up thoroughly, I went into the studio, which is an L-shaped building at the rear corner of the lot, with thick adobe walls like the main house. One wing of the L serves me as a kind of sitting and reading room, with a studio couch that becomes a bed in emergencies. Around the corner are my files and typewriter. The little cubicle next to the bathroom, which used to be the apartment kitchen, is now my darkroom.

I changed into jeans, a wool shirt, wool socks, and a pair of the light-colored, low-heeled, pull-on boots with the rough side of the leather showing that are sometimes known locally as fruit-boots, being the preferred footgear of a few gentlemen whose virility is subject to question. The appellation is doubtless unfair to a lot of very masculine engineers, not to mention, I hope, one writer-photographer. Dressed, I hauled my bedroll out to the truck, and then loaded the camera cases, as well as the little tripod for the Leicas and the big tripod for the 5x7 view camera. This last I probably wouldn't use once in three thousand miles, but it sometimes came in handy, and driving alone I had plenty of room.

Having been a newspaper photographer before the war puts me in the pleasant position of being able to work both sides of the street. I planned to use the projected trip first for an illustrated article, after which I'd turn around and put the material into a book of fiction.

I wasn't thinking about much of anything, now, except getting packed and away before something happened to stop me. I looked around to see what I'd forgotten, and went around the corner to my desk and reached for my keys to unlock the drawer that held the short-barreled Colt Woodsman.22. I might be a peaceful citizen now, but the little automatic pistol had been my traveling companion too long to be left behind. Starting to put the key into the lock, I saw that the drawer was already open a quarter of an inch.

I stood looking at it for perhaps a minute. Then I put the keys away and pulled the drawer fully open. There was, of course, no longer any pistol inside.

Standing there, I pivoted slowly, searching the room with my eyes. Nothing else seemed to've changed since I'd left the place that afternoon. The other guns were still undisturbed in their locked wall rack. I took a step to the side so that I could look back into the sitting and-reading area. This, too, seemed unchanged. There were the usual sheaves of yellow copy paper cluttering up the furniture: I'd spent the day kicking around some story ideas I thought might fit what I expected to see in Texas. There was a Manila envelope on the arm of my big reading chair. The place is always lousy with those, too, but it occurred to me now that I hadn't seen this particular one before.

I walked over and picked it up. It was unlabeled and unmarked. I pulled out the contents: a stapled-together manuscript of about twenty-five pages. At the top of the first painfully neat page was the title and the author's name: MOUNTAIN FLOWER, by Barbara Herrera.

I laid down the manuscript, and walked over to the darkroom door, turned on the light, and looked inside. She wasn't there. I found her in the bathroom. She was sitting in the tub, which was empty of water but filled instead, with the voluminous pleated skirt and frothy petticoats of her white fiesta costume. Her brown eyes, wide open and oddly dull, stared unblinkingly at the chromium faucet handles on the tiled wall before her. She was quite dead.