He hadn’t changed much since the last time I’d seen him. Still the clear, fragile china skin, the light blond hair that waved a little, and with a few locks loose to the breeze. A few more lines were about his eyes, and his mouth was beginning to develop some of the steel-trap qualities of Papa Joe’s.
He was a magazine illustrator, a successful one. Periodically he would send little notices to the Asheville papers when his work was appearing in one of the big national magazines. Now and then nice old ladies and aspiring young artists from the local art club would drop around to ask for Harold’s address.
“It’s nice you could get away for a while,” I said to him.
Whatever was between Papa Joe and myself, I had lived a portion of my life with this man like a brother. We had never been close, though, and in school while I’d been getting a collar-bone broken playing football Harold had been on the debating team. Yet there was bound to be a sort of feeling between us in spite of the fact that we were only foster brothers, and nothing Papa Joe said or did would affect that.
“You should have written that you were married,” I said, “and were coming down. We’d have given you a reception.”
“The past three years haven’t given me much time to write,” he said. “I don’t care for parties, anyway.”
“Liar!” I laughed.
He turned on me suddenly. His eyes got hard. His voice was harsh. “I mean it, Steve! No parties. I didn’t come down here to fool around with a lot of people.”
“It’s your trip,” I said.
He hesitated. “Well, look, Steve. I didn’t mean that quite the way it sounded.”
“Forget it. I met your wife. Was she a model?”
“No. A secretary to a magazine editor.”
“She know how come I’m a Martin in a family of Cranfords?”
He nodded. “I sketched the details when I told her about you.”
I watched him go into the parlor. I’d been tense, talking to him. But he hadn’t asked about Bryanne, my own wife.
Chapter II
I walked upstairs. But I wasn’t in the house. I was back again in a USO club and it was the time of the big war. I was fresh out of OCS, a green as grass ninety-day wonder in the infantry. A crowd of brass was gathered near the punch bowl. As a rift appeared, I saw her. She was dark, smoothly tanned by the sun with black hair and eyes as merry as chinkapins. She was wearing white.
“North Carolina?” she said to me as we danced. “At last the Army is improving.”
“What part?” I asked.
“Greensboro,” she said.
I should have known then, but I just didn’t pause to think. Bryanne Quavely. North Carolina. Cigarette factories.
Later, it didn’t seem so important. There were too many other matters to be settled in the world at the moment to allow a little thing like a few million bucks to stand in the way of quick marriage when you know it’s your last leave, and she knows it too.
She lived all the way to the Rhine with me, in my heart. Mrs. Steve Martin. Who were the Quavelys?
A stealthy footfall behind a closed door in the upper hall brought me back to the present. I opened the door. It was obviously the room Harold and Vera were occupying.
Wilfred was standing near the closet, his fat shaking as if he were afraid to look over his shoulder. A pair of pliers showed its snout over the lip of the hip pocket of his jeans.
I walked across the room, spun him around. Then I made a quick grab and tore the revolver out of his hand.
He wiped his nose sullenly with his forefinger.
“Where’d you get this?” I balanced the gun.
“It’s his — Harold’s.”
“You found it in here?” I demanded.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t going to take it. I was just looking at it.”
“You know what Mr. Cranford told you the last time he caught you snooping.”
“I wasn’t snooping! I was just starting to straighten the room.”
“That’s Ellen’s job.”
“She’s busy with this cooking — for them, him!”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing.” He was sullen.
“You’d be better off to talk to me,” I advised. “You’d get more understanding.”
He raised his eyes. Surprisingly they were swimming with hot tears. “I hate him! I hope he gets hurt. Ellen’s always trying to smooch him when she gets him in a corner.”
“Ellen wouldn’t do that. She knows Harold is married.”
“She wouldn’t care!” he said defiantly. “To her he’s a big New York artist. She’s always felt that way. A wife wouldn’t matter. She said once she wouldn’t mind having a baby, if it was Harold’s.”
I’d known for a long time that Ellen had carried a torrid crush on Harold. I’d expected her to outgrow it. Now, seemingly, his absence and success had made her heart grow fonder than ever. I would have to suggest to Harold that he have a talk with Ellen, convince her that if her love was strong enough she would carry it in noble silence to the end of her days. It probably would appeal to the martyr in her.
“What makes you think Harold will get hurt?” I asked Wilfred. “You’re not getting any foolish notions, are you?”
“Naw. But I know he’s scared, and running. And when a man’s like that he’s in danger of getting hurt. He’s got a gun, too. He wouldn’t if somebody hadn’t followed him down here.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” I said calmly. “A lot of people keep guns on their premises. Some even carry them when they’re taking a trip by car. Now put the pistol back where you found it and get downstairs about your business.”
I thought it over after Wilfred was gone. The big question in my mind was the man who’d been across the street watching the house from the shadows of the tree. I wondered who he was and why he was following Harold — if he was. It was possible that Wilfred’s imagination was exaggerating things. If something really serious was afoot, Harold should — and was able — to go to the police.
Mind your own knitting, Martin.
I went back downstairs.
Dinner was a quiet meal. I saw that Vera noticed the way Ellen hovered at Harold’s elbow to serve him. The beautiful blonde smiled quietly. She was pretty sure of her man.
Papa Joe related incidents out of Harold’s childhood in an attempt to bring humor to the dinner. Nobody laughed much. It was obvious that Papa Joe was pleased with his son’s marriage. Vera brought an air of sophistication, poise, charm, even into a dining room that seemed to have been designed for glum eating.
Papa Joe was no less expansive about his son. “He was touched with something different, perhaps near genius, from his boyhood,” Papa Joe told Vera. “Not much like Steve, who cut classes when he got the chance and seemed determined to get mixed up in one scrape after another.”
I met his eyes with a smile. I hadn’t eaten much of his bread since I’d been able to shift for myself. But less than a month ago, after grogging myself up and losing my job in Charleston, I’d returned to Asheville. I hadn’t figured I was sponging on him, for I believed myself just about even with Papa Joe. Money that I’d saved during the war had been partly responsible for keeping his business from going under, and I’d been paying my own way since I’d come back this time for a visit.
And this would be the final time. I knew I would never return. Already I felt that heavy sense of loss that comes with any final departure. I had spent a good part of my childhood in this house. I had shoveled snow from the front walks, and careened down the hill before the house on my first bicycle. From its rear upstairs windows I had potted at sparrows with a bean-shooter.
Papa Joe’s wife had been my mother’s dearest friend. She had taken me in after I had lost my mother, and she had loved me like her own son. I’d eaten cookies baked by her in the same range that Ellen used today. When she, my foster mother, had died the soul had gone from Papa Joe’s home.