Talmage Powell
Biers for Two
The boathouse was a long, rotting hulk of a building standing out over the water like an overgrown bug on stilts. The old man’s cabin was set fifty yards away from the boathouse, on the hillside. I saw him standing in the cabin doorway when I got out of the coupé and slammed the door.
I stood waiting while he came across the clearing. I remembered him. Mac something-or-other was his name. Gnarled, beefy, with a chest that made him look top-heavy, and a wide, pleasant face with warm eyes, he moved toward me with a hint of rheumatism in his gait.
The day was warm and clear, the mountain air just brisk enough to put a tingle in your veins. Insect life made a soft, humming rhythm. The mountains were shaggy and majestic, the gorge down which the river flowed a thing of vast, high grandeur. I was looking out over the softly rippling water of the river, when old Mac came walking up to me.
“Howdy. Looking for some fishing?”
“Could be,” I said. “A friend is letting me use his cabin overnight downriver. I’d like to get a boat.”
He nodded, moved toward the boathouse. I was trailing him.
“Got a nice little hull with a kicker,” he told me. “Just caulked her a day or two back. Say, ain’t I seen you around here before?”
“You might have,” I admitted. “Now and then I get in from the city for a breath of clean air.”
“Well, you can’t beat this air around here. No, sirree.”
He vanished through the creaking boathouse. I heard an outboard motor give out with a couple of popping gurgles. Then the motor came to life with a steady hum, and a moment later he tooled the boat out of the far end of the boathouse and drew it up to the low, sagging pier.
I met him on the pier.
“You got some baggage?” he asked.
“No, my friend has everything I’ll need in his cabin. But I’ll want you to keep your eye on my car.”
He nodded. He seemed about to ask me which cabin I was heading for, but evidently thought better of it. I climbed down in the boat. He stood looking out over the river for a moment, loving it.
“Can’t help but envy you younger fellers,” he said. “Don’t get on the river much myself any more. I get the misery in my legs from the dampness. Sort of hurts me, too. Always wanted to follow this old river clean to her end. Yes, sir, I always intended to find out just exactly where the river flows.”
“All rivers find their way to the ocean,” I said.
“Says so in books,” he acknowledged. “But rivers are like people. Some hurry to beat the band. Some take things quiet and easy. Maybe they all do end up the same place. But I always had a partic’lar love for this old river. She’d sure see plenty of country before she ever got to any ocean. I reckon I’d still give my eyeteeth to know where this river flows.”
He broke off, gave a laugh that carried an undercurrent of embarrassment. “Trouts have been striking good the last couple of days. Sure your friend’s got plenty of tackle?”
“Sure.” As far as I knew my friend didn’t have any tackle of her own. At least not the kind to catch fish with. But I didn’t intend to do any fishing. I might as well tell you — I was going downriver because another man’s wife had phoned me. “Pay you for the boat now, Mac?”
“When you get back.” He grinned warmly, spat on the pier, watched me until I was out of sight around the bend of the river.
It was hot out on the river, only the gurgle of water and the hum of the outboard breaking the deep silence. In less than a mile I tried to turn the boat around and go back three times. I couldn’t. It had been the same way with the coupé. I’d tried to turn the car and go back to town half a dozen times. But the coupé had seemed to have some power of its own. Just as the boat had it now.
I didn’t want it to, but the river was sweeping me down to the lodge, where she was waiting. Glenville Grayson’s wife. I’d told myself that, too, when she’d phoned this morning. I’d told myself she was a dirty little rotter. I remembered the way she’d married Grayson when she’d found out he had money. She’d used me for all I was worth — then Grayson.
Those tender moments we’d had together must have been a laugh to her, after she got Grayson. But knowing that didn’t stop me from losing sleep lots of nights, eating my heart out. And when she’d phoned this morning, I’d known that I’d never be able to turn the coupé or the boat around...
The lodge was a little over three miles down river. A rambling, rustic two-story building of logs, it set snugly in the hillside. If anybody wanted privacy, it could be had here, in style. Glenville must have spent thirty thousand on the acreage, building, and its rustic furnishings. More properly, he must have talked his fat uncle, Roland Grayson, into spending the dough.
I wondered how it had set with her, with Darlene, when she’d found that Glenville’s money was tied up under the administration of his uncle. It probably hadn’t been too big an obstacle when she wanted a new mink. As long as it was male, Darlene would find her way over any obstacle — though old Uncle Roland must have been her toughest problem to date. He was wily and a cruel, hard-boiled business man.
I cut the motor, drifted the boat to the pier. I didn’t see any sign of her anywhere. No sign of any kind of life at all. The whole, desolate countryside was so silent that when a jaybird chattered in a nearby thicket suddenly, I jumped.
I stood on the pier a moment, staring up at the lodge. Its windows, set behind the wide, rambling porch like eyes under heavy, beetling brows, stared blankly back at me.
No smoke from the chimney, no movement. Nothing except the growl of water under my feet.
Maybe, I thought, she was taking a nap.
I wiped off my face, pushing the handkerchief in my hip pocket, and started up the hill toward the lodge. The tall shade trees were wide umbrellas over me. The breeze beneath them was cool. But I was sweating, and my pulse was a little thick and fast in my throat. I hated her for still having that effect over me, but I could never make the hatred strong enough.
I was pretty close to the house when I first heard it. The soft sound of sobbing. That stopped me in my tracks for a second. She’d said over the phone that she was alone, that she would be alone, but she was sobbing in a horrible kind of way, as if somebody had done something terrible to her.
I pushed my way up to the front porch. Through the wide, open doorway I could see her slumped in a chair. She heard me, and her head rose from her palms, slowly, gradually, streaked with tears. She knew how to create an effect, all right.
“John!” she said breathlessly. She was rising, still with those slow, gradual motions. Then she rushed across the living room, flung herself against me, twining her arms around my neck. I could feel her trembling.
“John, you came! I thought you’d never get here!”
“Take it easy! What’s wrong?”
She looked up at me, so damned trusting and little-girlish and helpless I wanted to curse at her, because I’d seen the act before.
She said in a small voice, “John, something awful has happened! I’m so glad you came — you’ve got to help me!”
I looked over her shoulder. I saw a thirty-eight revolver lying on the table beside the chair in which she’d been sitting.
“I was afraid, John. I was sitting there with the gun beside me in case he came back. He didn’t have guns like you usually find around a place like this — Glenville never did any hunting, you know. But isolated as the place is, he kept a pair of revolvers around.”
I moved farther into the room. She was clinging to my arm. “What is this?” I said. “This talk about guns? This wondering if he would come back? If who would come back.”