The Ferguson Affair

chapter 23

I BOUGHT A CUP OF COFFEE and a piece of pie, for energy, in a restaurant on the main street. It was crowded with young people. The jukebox was playing rock-music for civilizations to decline by, man. The waitress who served me said yes, they had a business directory somewhere. She found it for me.

James Dotery was listed as the proprietor of the North End Variety Store. His residence was at the same address. I got directions from the waitress, tipped her fifty cents, which seemed to surprise her, and drove out that way.

The store was in one of those badly zoned areas which clog the approaches to so many cities and towns. Grocery and liquor stores and taverns were intermingled with motels and private houses. The buildings had an improvised air, though most of them were old enough to be dilapidated.

James Dotery’s store was on the ground floor of a two-story stucco shoebox. Its windows were sparsely furnished with warped hula hoops, packages of pins, fluorescent socks, plastic ice cubes containing flies, and other unlikely merchandise. A hand-lettered sign taped to the glass announced that everything was reduced twenty-five per cent.

There was a light on the second story. The door that led to it was standing partly open. Climbing the dark stairs, I felt a lift of excitement. You would have thought Holly May herself was waiting for me in an upstairs room.

The aproned woman who opened the apartment door came very near to sustaining the illusion. I didn’t have to ask her if she was Holly’s mother. She had the same facial structure and the same coloring except for her graying brown hair. She was very good-looking, and well-preserved for a woman of forty or more.

“Mrs. Dotery?”

“That’s me.”

I handed her my card. “My name is William Gunnarson.”

“If it’s Dotery you want, he ain’t home. You’ll probably find him down at the Bide-a-Wee.” She studied my card in a puzzled way. “I warn you, though, he hates insurance salesmen. Dotery hates anything that reminds him he ain’t gonna live forever like God Almighty.”

“I’m not a salesman of any kind, Mrs. Dotery. I’m a lawyer.”

“Yeah. I can see that for myself.” She held my card up to the light and laboriously spelled out the word “attorney.”

“I don’t read so good without my glasses.”

I doubted that she read any better with them. “I would like to talk to you husband later-”

“He’s down in the Bide-a-Wee lapping up liquor. We get a dollar or two ahead, and he goes off the wagon.”

“At the moment there are some questions I’d like to ask you. Have you ever heard of a Hilda Dotery?”

“You kidding? All she is is my oldest daughter.”

“How long is it since you’ve seen her?”

“Couple of weeks or three.” Then she remembered something, perhaps merely the fact that I was a lawyer. She seemed to be a simple-minded woman, and her feelings showed on her face. Her expression was one of dubious alertness, as if she was on an elevator going down to some unimaginable basement. “Is there a beef out on her?”

“Not that I know of. What kind of a beef do you have in mind?”

“Nothing special.” She retreated clumsily from her exposed position. “I just thought, you being a lawyer and all-I mean, I thought maybe there was a beef out on her.”

“No, but she is being looked for. Where did you see her two or three weeks ago?”

“Here, right here in the flat. She ran away, not that I blame her, five-six years ago. Then all of a sudden she turns up all dressed up in expensive clothes, wearing a ton of jewelry. You could have knocked me over with a sledge, like Dotery says.

“He jumped on her like a ton of bricks. He always hated her anyway, and he never likes to see anyone get ahead. He started to cut and pick at her with that sleering way of his, asked her what racket she was in that she could afford to dress like that.”

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t say. She put him off with some story about her being an actress, that she hit it rich in the movies like. But she didn’t tell him where the money come from. So where did the money come from? What is it they want her for?”

“Why do you take it for granted that she’s wanted?”

“You said you were looking for her, didn’t you?”

“That’s because I don’t know where she is.”

Her mind refused to be derailed from its track. “Besides, that wasn’t Woolworth jewelry, she didn’t get it out of cornflakes boxes. And I know darn well she didn’t earn it acting in the movies.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“I know Hilda, and she didn’t change in those years she was away. She always was a play actor and a liar, putting on airs, pretending to be something she wasn’t. What chance would a girl like that have to get into the movies?”

“They don’t hire people for their moral qualities, Mrs. Dotery. Prepare yourself for a shock.”

“She’s dead, eh?” the woman said dully.

“That I doubt. Your daughter really was a movie actress, doing pretty well until she retired to get married.”

“So she was telling us. I suppose,” she said with heavy irony, “she married a millionaire.”

“That’s right, Mrs. Dotery.”

“My God, you mean it’s true? She wasn’t lying?”

“Not about that.”

“Well, what do you know?” she said with a kind of awe. Her daughter had enacted the American dream: become a movie actress and married a millionaire.

Mrs. Dotery looked down at her body, the source of all these marvels, and rubbed her aproned hip in a congratulatory way. “She always was attractive to men, I’ll say that much for her. Dotery didn’t like it, but he was mainly jealous. He was jealous of all the girls when they got bigger-drove them all out of the house, one way or another. Just wait until I tell him this!”

There was an edge of malice in her joy, and a certain hollowness, too. She seemed to be trying to make the most of her good news before it turned out, as her news usually did, to be not so good after all.

“What brings you here, may I ask?” she said formally, as if a genteel question would force a lucky answer. “I mean you say she’s well-fixed and all, and she didn’t steal those jewels she was wearing. So how does the law come into it?”

“It’s a long story.” Not so very long, but I was tired of standing in the hallway, and I wanted a more intimate impression of Holly May’s background. “May I come in?”

“I guess you can come in. I warn you, the place is a mess. I’m always getting behind, trying to run the store in the daytime and do my housework at night.”

She backed into the apartment removing her apron, as if this might work a transformation in her or in the room. The room needed some drastic change. It was a pink wallboard box jammed with cheap furniture and cluttered with the detritus of hard living: torn newspapers, overflowing ash trays, clouded glasses. The central feature of the room was a television set. On top of it was a lamp with a porcelain base in the shape of a nude woman. Through broken Venetian blinds the neon sign of a bar across the street winked like a red peeping eye.

“Sit down.”

She cleared a chair which was covered with dirty laundry. Carrying it out of the room, she paused beside the television set and dusted the porcelain figure with her apron. I wondered what dream of beauty and freedom its red-tipped breasts represented to her mind.

The chair growled under my weight, and its springs tried to bite me. I heard water run in the next room, then the clink of a bottle. Mrs. Dotery came back carrying two glasses full of brown liquid.

“This calls for a drink. I hope you don’t mind cola. I never serve no hard stuff when I can help it. I never did. With young people growing up, I tried to set them a decent example, even if Dotery didn’t. At least one of the kids turned out okay, which is more than you can say for some families.”

She handed me my glass. I sensed that she was trying to postpone the inevitable moment when the good news turned bad. And I went along with her. “How many children do you have?”

She thought about this. “Five all told, four living. I hope they’re living.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Hilda, June, Frank, Renee, Jack. Frank was the middle one, the one that got himself killed in the accident. Hilda was fond of Frank, the same way she hated June. You know how the first one is with the second one. She almost broke down the other week when I told her Frank was dead in a wreck. He wasn’t even driving. I told her that’s what happens when a girl turns her back on her family the way she did. You try to come back, and they’re not there any more. The same thing happened with me and my family, when I-when I married Dotery, and we came out here to California to live.” She added without changing her tone: “It’s some life he led me, with his Chinchilla rabbits and his doughnut spas and his variety stores. And all the time lapping up the liquor.”

“What happened to your other children?”

“Renee and June took off, the same as Hilda did. June picked up with a salesman staying at the Star Motel. A nylon-stocking salesman, he came to the door, a man old enough to be her father. When Dotery found out about it, he beat her with a hammer handle, but that didn’t seem to stop her. The last I heard of her, she was selling stockings from door to door in Compton. That grieved me. June was the one I thought would turn out best, I always favored her. But if it had to be Hilda, it’s the will of Providence.”

“What about Renee?”

“Renee went away and got a job, soon as she was legal age. She’s working someplace around San Francisco. Waitress. I heard from her at Christmas, only she forgot to put the address on the envelope.”

“And Jack?”

“He’s my youngest, just sixteen. I guess his age is a blessing, considering he’s in Juvenile. The policeman told me if he was a little older they’d of sent him up to the pen for stealing that car he stole.”

It was a depressing rundown. Coming on top of Mrs. Haines and her immense evasions, it left me undecided whether to laugh in Mrs. Dotery’s face or weep into her cola. I asked myself what I was doing sixty miles from home probing among the ruins of lives that meant nothing to me. I amended the thought: lives that had meant nothing to me until now.

Sipping the cola, lukewarm now, and watching Mrs. Dotery’s passive face across the rim of the glass, I had a sense of the largeness of the earth spinning in light and darkness, and what it meant to bring children into life. Something moved like an earthquake in a part of my mind so deep I hadn’t known it existed. It was an unspoken prayer for Bill Gunnarson, Jr.

“May I use your telephone, Mrs. Dotery?”

“Don’t have one up here. There’s one down in the store if it’s important.” She hesitated, and took the plunge. “You were going to tell me about Hilda.”

“Yes. She’s dropped out of sight, under suspicious circumstances. Her husband is deeply concerned about her. I represent him, by the way.”

“How do you mean, suspicious circumstances? Has she done something wrong, after all?”

“That’s not impossible. But it’s possible she hasn’t. She seems to be mixed up with a man named Harry or Henry Haines.”

“You mean to tell me she’s still messing with him!” A red flush surged up from her neck almost to her eyes.

“It looks very much like it. You know Haines, do you?”

“Know him? I should say so. He was the one that got her started.”

“Doing what?”

“All the things a girl shouldn’t do. I remember that first night she came home with liquor on her breath-a girl of fifteen-sixteen, so woozy she couldn’t walk straight. ‘Have you been lapping up liquor?’ I said to her. She denied it and denied it. Then Dotery came in roaring drunk and started in on her. They had a terrible scrap. He would of beat her bloody, but I went and got the butcher knife and told him to lay off of her. ‘Lay off of her,’ I said to him, ‘if you want to go on living.’ He saw I meant it, and he laid off of her.

“But it was too late, we had no control after that. Dotery he blamed me for being too soft. But I dunno, you can’t beat a girl to death. Or lock her up in her room. She would of jumped out the window anyway, that’s how wild she was. Drinking and tearing around in cars and shoplifting in the stores and probably worse. And Harry Haines was the one that got her started.”

“So they’ve been running together for quite a few years?”

“I did my best to nip it in the bud. They were in some show together at the high school, and he used to come in the doughnut spa. That was when we had the doughnuts, and Hilda and June waited on customers after school. June saw them smooching in the kitchen, and drinking vanilla extract out of pint bottles. The next time he come in, I was laying in wait. I tell you I sent him packing. And I told Hilda he was poison for her, poison for any girl. I know that lofty look that some of them have. They think that nothing’s good enough for them. They’ll take what they can from any girl and leave her empty-handed.” She seemed to speak with the bitterness of personal experience.

“Have you seen Haines recently?”

“Haven’t seen him for years. The last I heard of him they sent him off to Preston, where he belonged. They picked up Hilda, too-apparently he snitched on her-but they didn’t send her away. She went away on her own a year or two later, and that was that. Till she turned up here last month.”

“Did she mention Haines?”

“Not in my hearing. She talked a blue streak about this rich oilman husband of hers, but neither of us believed her. She seemed to be kind of flying, know what I mean? What sort of a fellow is he?”

“He seems to be a pretty good man, and a very successful one. But she likes Haines better.”

“She always was stuck on him. Sometimes I think a woman only needs two things to make her happy-a hatchet and a chopping block. She lays her head down on the block and gets somebody in pants to chop it off with the hatchet and then she’s satisfied.”

“Why did Hilda finally come home?”

“Show off her glad rags, I guess. She was disappointed none of the others were with us any more. There always used to be rivalry between the sisters. Seiberling rivalry. And, like I said, she wanted to see Frank. She got real upset when I told her Frank was dead. I thought for a while there she was blowing her top, crying and storming around and blaming us for things we never done. Frank wasn’t even driving that car, it was another boy name of Ralph Spindle.”

“Did Hilda have emotional problems?”

“How do you mean, emotional?”

“You said that she was flying, on the point of blowing her top. Was that a new development in her?”

“No. I wisht it was. She always had a terrible temper, back to when she was a little girl. Mostly she kept it hid pretty good, but then it would flare out. Frank was the only one she got along with. She never got along with the other girls. Like when June snitched on her that time in the doughnut shop, Hilda picked up a pan of grease and was gonna throw it in her little sister’s face. Boiling grease, you know how hot it gets, lucky I got there to stop her. The lady from downtown said she was severely adjusted.”

“Maladjusted?”

“Maladjusted, severely maladjusted. They said Hilda was going through like a storm, and maybe she’d outgrow it and maybe she wouldn’t. I guess she must of, eh? You don’t get to be a movie actress without plenty on the ball. Did she make many movies? We don’t go to the movies since we got TV.”

“I’ve never seen her on the screen, either. I think just one or two of her pictures were released before she retired.”

“It’s a young age for a girl to retire,” she said dubiously.

“How old is Hilda?”

“Let’s see, I was eighteen when I had her. That was some of your teen-age storm like they were talking about. I’m forty-three now. That would make her, let’s see-” She tried to count on her fingers and lost track.

“Twenty-five.”

She nodded. “Yeah. You got a good head for figures. Dotery has, too, if he’d only use it. He could have been a lawyer, with his brains. No disrespect intended, Jim really is a smart man. That’s one of the reasons he couldn’t stand the kids. They were all dumb, like me. I guess you couldn’t say that Hilda was dumb, but it sure looked like it for a while the way she handled herself.” Her mental detour converged with her original line of thought. “I still think twenty-five is a young age to retire. Or did they fire her?”

“No. I’ve talked to her agent. They’re eager to get her back.”

“You mean she’s really good?”

“She has what they need, apparently. But they don’t have what she needs.” Whatever that is or was.

“Hilda always was a good-looking girl,” her mother said. “You ever see her?”

“Not in the flesh.”

“I got some pictures of her someplace. I’ll see if I can find them.”

Before I could remonstrate, she had left the room, moving eagerly, as if it might still be not too late to put salt on the tail of the ruby-breasted dream.

A man in a sports shirt came in from the hallway without knocking. At first glance he was handsome and young. Then I saw the muddy blur in his eyes, the gray dusting his wavy blond hair, the smile like a fishhook caught in one corner of his mouth.

“I didn’t know we had visitors.”

“Just the one. And I’m not exactly a visitor. I’m here on business.”

Business was a bad word. He said with hushed fury: “Get something straight-I do the business for this family. I handle the money. What you been trying to sell the wife behind my back?”

I stood up, into the zone of his breath. It was as foul as his temper.

“Gold bricks,” I said. “She decided to take a dozen.”

“Wise guy, eh?” Teetering on his heels, he reconnoitered me from a safe distance. “I want to know what you’re doing in this flat.”

“Your wife knows what I’m doing here. Ask her.”

“Where is she?” He looked wildly around the room, then heard the rustling noise she was making on the other side of the wall. He rushed through the door like a rescuer or invader.

There was a muffled interchange, and then his voice rose uncontrolled in a queer, high, continuous yammering. “Once a dumbhead always a dumbhead what you think you’re doing giving away the family secrets make him pay for them if the husband’s wellheeled let him put up some money you goddam fool.”

“I didn’t think of it.”

“I’ll do the thinking you let me do the thinking you take my orders that way we’ll get somewhere what you think you’re doing giving him pictures these people pay money for pictures you sell ’em information so much a word I’ve had experience in these matters the girl’s worth money alive or dead you don’t just give it away.”

“Hush now, Jim, he’ll hear you.”

“Let him hear let him realize he isn’t dealing with country bumpkins I’m no booby even if you are you lousy deadhead dragging me down all my life I could of gone to college made something of myself but you had to make me get married I carried you twenty-five years like a body on my back and now when one of the house apes looks like paying off for all the money we spent on her education you want to give it away for free what’d he do butter you up a little tell you you still had a figure you bloated hag?”

“You mustn’t talk like that,” she said behind the wall. “You ought to have more pride.”

“Pride for what I live in a hole with a hag and every time I turn my back you throw away another opportunity I should feel thankful no doubt but I say you’re the one you hag you should get down on your knees and thank me for putting up with you you hag.”

The sound of a slap came through the wallboard, followed by the woman’s grunt of pain. I went through the door into the kitchen, where they were facing each other. An old carton spilling papers and pictures stood on the drainboard beside them.

The woman had her hand to her cheek, but it was Dotery who began to sob.

“Forgive me Kate I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s all right, I’m not hurt. I know things never worked out for you. I’m sorry.”

She put her arms around him. His face went like a child’s to her breasts. She stroked his dusty gray hair and looked at me serenely from a standpoint beyond grief.

“You shouldn’t lap up so much liquor,” she said. “It isn’t good for you, Jim. Now go to bed like a good boy, you’ll feel better in the morning.”

He stumbled in my direction. His eyes came up to my face, with a flash of the unquenchable anger that kept him almost young. But he went out without speaking.

The woman smoothed her dress down over her bosom. Except that her eyes were a little darker, the scene had not affected her.

“Dotery is a hard man to live with,” she said. “Lucky for me I’m easygoing myself. Live and let live is my motto. You start pushing too hard, and what happens? Everything goes to pieces in a nutshell.”

I didn’t quite follow the sentence, but it seemed appropriate. “You were going to show me some pictures, Mrs. Dotery.”

“So I was.”

She took a handful of pictures from the carton and shuffled them like a fortune teller’s deck. With a sudden gleeful smile she handed me one of them. “Guess who that is.”

It was an old snapshot of a girl just entering adolescence. Her budding figure showed through her white tulle dress. She was holding a broad white hat by its ribbon, and smiling into the sun.

“It’s your daughter Hilda, isn’t it?”

“Nope,” she said. “It’s me, taken back in Boston thirty years ago, the Sunday I was confirmed. I was a good-looker for a kid, if I do say it myself. Hilda and June took after me.”

The rest of the pictures illustrated this, and removed any possible doubt that Holly May was Mrs. Dotery’s daughter. She said nostalgically: “We used to pretend we was sisters, me and the two oldest girls, until the trouble started in the family.”

The trouble in the family had not yet ended. Dotery called through the wall in a voice that trembled with self-pitying rage: “You gonna stay up all night? I got to get up in the morning and work, even if you don’t. Come to bed now, hear me?”

“I guess I got to go,” she said. “He’ll be out of there in a minute, and God knows what will happen. Anyway, Hilda’s a lovely kid to look at, isn’t she?”

“So were you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Dotery raised his voice. “Do you hear me? Come to bed!”

“I hear you. I’m coming, Jim.”