AN AMBULANCE WAS to take Mrs. Watkins to the hospital in Loma Linda, twenty miles away. A few phone calls put in by the doctor at Mrs. Watkins' request had ascertained that Eugene's "Gramma in Frisco" would come the following day to get him and the car, and that arrangements could be made for the boy to stay at the hospital with his mother this first night.
The ambulance would arrive in about an hour. In the meantime, Mrs. Watkins and the baby were sleeping, the doctor had gone home, and Grant and I were sitting on the davenport.
"Aren't you proud of me?" I asked, for the twentieth time. "But what delayed you so?"
"Dr. Adams' car broke down, when he was about a block from his home. He was working on it when I got there. He quick got into my car and we were halfway here when we ran out of gas. We weren't near any service station, so I had to walk about a quarter of a mile to get gas."
"If he had just started out walking from his house it wouldn't have taken him any longer to get here," I remarked.
I picked up the medical book, which somehow had found its way from cabin 3 to our living room floor, and put it into the bookcase.
"I never did get to the part in there about how to deliver babies," I observed. "I must look it up sometime."
When David and Donna were in bed I went back to cabin 3 and peeked in the door. Mrs. Watkins and the baby were both awake now; they lay against the white pillow regarding me with big, beautiful, identical pairs of dark eyes. Eugene was sitting stiffly on a chair.
"Cripes, honey!" Mrs. Watkins exclaimed, motioning me into the cabin. "Ain't it a fit, me havin' the kid in a motel! Wait'll I tell Rodney, he'll bust a gut laughin'! An' look at the kid. Ain't he a smart one? Wouldn' you swear he was lookin' right at you?"
Her huge arm curled protectively around the red, wrinkled thing beside her.
"Cripes, I think the whole thing hurt you worse'n it did me!" she exclaimed, as I sat down in a chair beside her bed. "But you sure did great, honey, and I wanna thank you."
I watched her big, moist tongue flapping as she talked. Her body, under the blankets, was almost as mountainous as it had been before.
"What are you going to name the baby?" I asked.
"Honey, I just been lyin' here thinkin' about that. His middle name is gonna be Moonrise. Yessir, Somethin' Moonrise Watkins. That's the least I can do to show how much I appreciate what you done."
"Well . . . that's very sweet of you," I said. "It really isn't necessary, but if you really want to--"
"Oh, I wanna, all right; An' I'm gonna, honey, so just forget all about it. I can't figure out what I oughta give the kid for his first name, though."
Mrs. Watkins withdrew her teeth and stared at them dreamily.
"Why not name him Rodney?" I suggested. "Oh--no, you've probably already got one named for your husband."
Mrs. Watkins jammed her teeth back into her mouth excitedly. "Cripes, no, I never thought of it." Her sudden laughter shook the bed, and I turned my head slightly so that it wouldn t hurt my ears. "I bet that's what he's been gettin' at all these years--he wanted a kid named after him, but he wanted me to do it without him suggestin' it! He ain't never said nothin', but I'll bet that's it! He's been around plenty an' he coulda been more careful if he didn' want more kids, but we just kept on havin'em! Well, Cripes, this'n'll be Rodney, and then maybe I can quit havin' 'em an' rest for awhile!"
My last glimpse of Mrs. Watkins was twenty minutes later, when two husky, white-clothed young men were hoisting her bulk, on a stretcher, into the ambulance.
"Lots of luck with Rodney Moonrise!" I called, watching Eugene clamber awkwardly in beside her stretcher.
Her dark eyes flashed. "Thanks, honey, thanks so much for everything! I hope I didn' scare you too bad!" She, and the stretcher, shook with thunderous laughter. When the doors of the ambulance clicked shut she was waving her teeth at me in a cheery gesture of farewell.
Grant and I seldom got away from the motel together. But toward the end of March we put the dependable Mrs. Clark in charge of the motel and the children, and took an overnight trip to Los Angeles. A group of our friends were going grumon hunting, and it sounded very appealing.
Grunions are a particularly stupid kind of fish that run for a few nights in the full of the moon during certain months. They swarm up in the surf, coming so close to the beach that a lot of them get stranded on the sand when the wave they came in recedes. They come near to the beach to lay their eggs, which has always seemed rather foolish to me, since years of sad experience should have taught them that a bunch of grunion-happy human beings will be waiting to catch them.
On our way back to Banning the next morning, through Riverside and Colton, we came through miles of highway lined solidly with big, round, sturdy orange trees. The trees were white with bloom; the long stretches of highway were banked solid with fragrant walls of orange blossoms. As we came into Banning there were little boys stationed at intervals of three hundred feet along the side of the highway, selling bouquets of immense white and purple lilacs, and brilliant California poppies.
After a brief and beautiful spring, while it was still spring everywhere else, suddenly in Banning summer had begun again. When I stood out at the clotheslines behind the cabins hanging up clothes, the dried wild grain and weeds in the field whispered and rustled in the strong, persistent wind. The mornings and evenings, before and after the midday assault of the sun, were as lovely as only mornings and evenings on the desert can be. I loved standing, after dark, leaning outside against the corner of the office nearest the highway, where I could see in all directions. The warm, sweet wind blew off the desert, playful, never ceasing. The neon motel and cafe signs, some blinking and some glowing steadily, studded the night with a glittering and colorful beauty, making the whole effect that of an enormous big-city theater marquee. Trucks thundered by, outlined with red lights that were like jewels, and always there were the pairs of bright flashing eyes gliding steadily along the highway from east and west.
The streaks of snow remaining on Mt. San Jacinto and Mt. San Gorgonio were putting up a losing battle with the power-drunk sun. The black widow spiders, after their winter disappearance, were beginning to show their shiny black bodies here and there again, and the newspaper carried warnings that there were rattlesnakes in the fields. California poppies and brilliant wild flowers were still spreading themselves through the fields and the desert itself, and the cacti proudly showed their rare blooms--orchid-like, exotic flowers. All the orchards were at a height of thick green splendor.
The desert area lost its appeal as warmer weather set in, and business began a gradual decline.
Even on a dull night, though, a stranger to the vicinity might have thought traffic heavy enough to justify us in hoping to fill up; what a stranger wouldn't know would be that every night, every motel owner must take a little jaunt in the car from one end of town to the other, inspecting all the signs to see if any have their "no" uncovered; straining to see into the garages, in order to know how many customers the motel in question has hooked. The parade of motel owners alone, if they all happen to go on their tours of inspection about the same time, is enough to make the highway look busy.
Grant is one of those who can't rest until he has made his nightly tour of the town's motels. And he calls me curious!
We didn't try so hard to spot "quickies" when summer approached, except on weekends, because we were sure to have one or two vacancies anyway. During the winter, Grant had made a regular practice of setting the alarm for about three a.m., and getting up to see if any of our customers had checked out. Whenever there were vacant cabins he cleaned them up, turned on the sign, and had the cabins rented again within half an hour.
The extra sleep he got by not having to get up in the middle of the night to clean and rerent cabins was canceled by the fact we could no longer go to bed at nine or ten with the "no vacancy" sign on. As long as our sign proclaimed that we had a vacancy, the doorbell might ring at any hour of the night. Grant had to renew his old custom of spreading his clothes at intervals between the bed and the outer office door, so that he could pull them on as he hopped toward the office when the bell rang.
During the winter, when we were turning away twenty or thirty cars a day, we had often commented that it was too bad there was no way of preserving some of this surplus for the lean summer months ahead. My pet idea had been to put all the extra winter applicants for cabins into a gigantic refrigerator, thus preserving them on ice until we were ready to use them. Now that we were having vacancies again, we could open the door of the huge refrigerator each day, take out the desired number of customers, and fill our cabins up.
Grant wasn't amused by such whimsy, though. To him, life was real, life was earnest; and the fact that we still owed forty-five thousand dollars on the motel, payable at seven hundred dollars a month, customers or no customers, might have had something to do with it.
I refused to do any more worrying. We had paid off all that we had borrowed to make the down payment on the place, and in the lush winter months we had saved enough to carry us through till the next winter if we didn't take in another cent until then. And business now was bad only by comparison to winter's business; actually, if we took in every month of the year what our present monthly average was, we'd be paying off the mortgage rapidly and having money to spare.
"Air conditioning . . . that's the answer," Grant said one night as I was getting into bed. He sat down on the foot of the bed, drumming his fingers against his knee. He was eating a thick sandwich, and I delicately looked away from the conglomeration of its ingredients.
"The answer to what?" I asked.
"Business. Not one motel in Banning has air conditioning."
"They don't need it. That perpetual wind keeps the place cooled off. 'Air-conditioned by Nature.' That would be a good slogan for one of your advertising signs, wouldn't it?"
"Uh," he said absently. "Mm--hmm. What's the first thing people think of when they get in off the hot desert?"
"A glass of beer?" I asked drowsily
"Of course not! A cool place to sleep."
"Well, that's just what Banning's got."
"Sure it has! But they don't know it. They take it for granted the nights in Banning are just as hot as nights on the desert. They look for 'air conditioning' signs, and they don't see one. We don't need air conditioning, but people don't realize it. If we'd get air conditioning once, and a big neon sign to let them know we've got it, they'd come pouring in here all summer long."
With business slowing down, we resumed our old practice of renting doubles as singles whenever it was necessary. If, after all our singles were gone, a couple appeared who wanted a single, we locked the back door of one of the doubles (so they wouldn't think they were getting twin beds for the price of a single, and use both beds!) and rented them the front room as a single. If it were a man alone, however, we didn't bother locking off the back room, as there wasn't much danger that one man would occupy more than one bed. Once, however, we got fooled; after renting a double cabin to a man alone, we found in the morning that both beds had been slept in. We never were able to decide which was more likely--that he had gotten up in the night to go to the bathroom and, becoming confused, had returned to the wrong bed; or that he was an exceptionally delicate and finicky person whose esthetic senses demanded a change of linen during the night.
We began getting "day sleepers" again--people who traveled the desert by night, to avoid the intense heat, and came into the motel at dawn or before to sleep in the daytime. We couldn't help laughing to ourselves whenever such customers had small children in the car. We knew, even if it hadn't occurred to them yet, that their children had been dozing in the car all night, and would be refreshed and ready to greet the new day with the leaps, yells, and fights that distinguish children from the young of any other species. Any sleeping the adults might accomplish during the daylight hours would be purely coincidental.
The bigger and healthier and noiser our own children grew, the more cramped and tiny our living quarters seemed. Expansion, though, appeared to be almost impossible. To expand in a northward direction, by cutting a door in the wall of our living room that would lead into cabin two, would be the simplest method of adding two rooms, but it would also be very expensive, chopping down our income by about one thirteenth. To expand south, to the front, would be illegal. All the buildings for about half a mile on each side of us were set back sixty feet from the highway, and none were permitted to be built closer to the highway. To go west would be to protrude into the wide, inviting driveway that was supposed to lure customers in, and would destroy the symmetry of the motel. To go east, toward Featherbren's motel, would be futile, since our land extended only four feet past the sides of the buildings. "There are just two directions left," Grant said. "Down, and up. A cellar, or a second story."
A second story seemed to be our best bet, but it would be expensive to add a couple of rooms upstairs, and it might necessitate strengthening the present ceiling and roof in order to make them support the burden. We decided to file the idea away in our minds for future consideration.
We alleviated the space situation to some extent, temporarily at least, by getting bunk beds for the children and moving our bed into their room. That left the living room as a living room, not a combination playroom, living room and bedroom. The bunk beds were along one wall and our bed was along the opposite wall, with the foot of it near the east window that overlooked Featherbren's new lawn and his row of oleanders. Between his cherished, thrice-daily watered lawn and our window was the four foot expanse of land that the building code demanded should be left at the sides of the land when the buildings were constructed.
Grant finally got around to carrying out a plan we had made whereby Donna wouldn't be underfoot all the time, and whereby she could go outside in the sunshine without constant supervision. He fenced the whole four foot strip, from under the bedroom window clear along the cabins from number 2 to 6. Out in the field behind the cabins, he let the four foot strip widen into a fenced yard about twenty feet square. Later, when Donna was big enough to need a larger yard, but not yet big enough to be trusted to run around loose, he would fence our entire field behind the cabins for the children to play in.
The biggest complication now, of course, was that there was no back door through which Donna could go into her four-foot runway. Grant could have taken out the east window and substituted a door for it, but it would have been a lot of work and expense.
"She can climb up on the foot of our bed," I suggested, "and then---"
"And then what? Jump out the window?"
Grant has a low opinion, not only of my capability, but also, I'm afraid, of my common sense. I suppose in a way his attitude is justified: he is so capable, and his ideas are so good, that my feeble little brain children seem to him very poor by contrast. However, this time I felt that I had a good idea, and I elaborated upon it, in spite of the sense of helpless inferiority he always inspires in me.
"Well, there could be boxes outside for her to climb onto," I said. "You know, a big box on the bottom, with its closed, solid side up; another smaller box sitting right in the middle of it. You know, sort of steps."
They were "sort of" steps when Grant got through with them, all right. He followed my basic idea, nailing and pounding out there for about an hour, and finally he called me to look out the window at the finished product.
When I looked out the window it wasn't wooden boxes, nailed firmly together into the shape of a short stairway, that I saw; I saw blessed relief from the constant, demanding presence of a sweet little tyrant who was happy only so long as I was giving her my full attention.
"It's absolutely beautiful," I said fervently.
Donna learned very quickly to navigate on her new steps. For the first few days she came in the window and went out, over and over again, gurgling with glee at the unconventionality of this means of entrance and exit. After the novelty of that had worn off, she began making daring excursions along the entire length of the four foot strip, which Grant had cleared of weeds and covered with gravel. David's kittens usually scampered along with her.
My principal worry, after she had reached the point where she was playing out in her little yard for hours daily, was that she would see a black widow outside and pick it up. I tried to teach her to be afraid of all insects, but somehow the idea became twisted in her mind.
"Bug scarda Donna!" she would exclaim. "Bug see Donna, bug run way!" And she would rush ferociously at whatever bug had, by its appearance, inspired her remarks. Usually the insects could escape her small clumsy fingers, but occasionally she caught an unwary slug or ladybug.
I thought of warning her, "Bug might bite Donna," but it occurred to me that she might get that warning, too, twisted.
Anyway, the one crowning virtue of black widows is that they're as much afraid of people as people are of them; and I didn't think there was much danger that she'd ever be able to catch one. A glimpse of a child with a face apparently made of brown hair should have been enough to send any bug scurrying for cover, I thought. Donna's hair, although it was growing longer and thicker rapidly, was still too fine and soft to hold a bobby pin, or to submit itself to any kind of confinement that I had yet been able to discover. One day, though, I found that the front part of her hair--the part that screened her eyes from sight most of the time, the part that I had refused to trim into neat bangs--was long enough to braid. Since then she has had a prim little pigtail right in the middle of her forehead--drawn back and secured at the top of her head with a pert bow. She looks very chic now, and her nickname--Little Chief Hair-in-the-Face--has been tucked away into our mental chest of souvenirs.
Grant decided that a big window in the front of the office would do a lot to attract business. The south wall, facing the highway, was solid, and the occupants of cars coming from the east couldn't see the light inside the office until they had gone a little past, where they could see the window in the west wall above the driveway. For the daylight and early evening hours the proposed window wouldn't have much value, but Grant figured that the extra nighttime business it would bring would pay for it in a week's time. Around midnight or later, travelers hesitated to disturb motel owners unless they could see that they were up anyway. The advantage of a window would be that Grant would be able to lure customers in by sitting comfortably in the office reading a paper, instead of having to run outside whenever a slow car approached, so that its occupants would be sure to see him. One summer of that had been enough for him, and I knew exactly how he felt. The idea of a huge window facing the highway appealed to me, too; never again would I have to perch on top of a typewriter case set precariously on a chair, while with one eye I watched out the kitchen window for slow cars from the east, and with the other eye tried to read.
Grant hired a man to cut away the wall and put in the window. He helped the man and watched every move he made, and if ever again in the course of Grant's life it becomes necessary for a window to be installed in a building that belongs to him, I know that he will install it deftly, correctly, and without assistance.
It was like stepping straight from a one-room prison on a desert island, to the geographical center of Times Square. I had never realized how much had been going on, or that we had been missing so much. When the window was finished, we could stand at the office desk and see life whirling by us on wheels; we could see life pulsing and throbbing in the accidents, quarrels, and petty encounters that were an inevitable part of a fast highway neighborhood; we could see life a trifle in its cups, staggering in and out of the bar across the street. We could see busses, cars, motorcycles, trains (on the track parallel with the highway, a block away) trucks, highway maintenance equipment, bicycles, and an occasional weird departure from conventional methods of transportation such as a covered wagon drawn by burros. Horseback riders cantered or galloped past daily, and it was a common, pleasantly exhilarating thing to see the great planes drifting down toward the airport, outlined against the sky and then silhouetted against the crowding mountains.
Even from the living room we could get a clear view of what we had, except when we were outside, been missing. I had never realized how many east-bound cars that had exceeded the speed limit going through town, were stopped almost directly in front of the bar, or how many minor fights originated in the bar and continued after the participants were outside. Major fights, of course, we would have gone out to see anyway, as they would have been announced by the customary loud threats and insults. But now we were able to enjoy the pantomime of these quieter fights also, which we would have missed entirely if the office window hadn't been there. It was like a movie, where the spectator is safe and comfortable as he watches gunfire and robbery or people struggling against blinding snow. In the office, we were close enough to get a good view of what was going on, but far enough away to avoid any danger of connecting with a poorly aimed left. It was better than a movie in one sense: it was real, and the angry expressions on the faces of the performers weren't assumed for the sake of a camera. But there was one thing which even the lowiest B movie has that I missed--explanatory dialogue. It was maddening to watch the quarrelers gesticulate and utter tantalizingly elusive sentences which were, even when I opened the door of the office in hope of eavesdropping, swallowed up in the roar of traffic.
"Why don't you shout?" I wanted to prod them. "If you're really mad, then yell, so you can hear each other--and so I can hear you, too!"
I guess I ought to take up lip reading.
Business did make a noticeable upswing after the window was installed. It wasn't much of an inconvenience for one of us to be in the office, reading or writing, until quite late every night, and the very visible presence of either of us seemed to act as a magnet to undecided drivers.
Grant's idea factory, however, was still producing; it was never slowed down by success. "Why don't we get a big picture of a man," he suggested, "life size, and hang it behind the office desk once? People will see it from the highway, and I'll bet a horned toad they'll think it's a real man. We could have a little calendar at the bottom, as an excuse for hanging it there. After the people ring the bell and we get up and let them inside the office, they'll see their mistake--but by that time we'll have them, so it won't matter."
He mulled over that a while, grinning, and then came up with something even better.
"Grandma's dress form!" he exclaimed. "Have her quick send it to us, and we'll put some kind of a head or hat on top of it and stand it behind the office desk." (Grandma's dress form has been through so much already that a little more wouldn't hurt it. Every few weeks its bolts and screws are loosened and Grant hammers it from a size forty down to a size twelve--or vice versa--depending on whether it's Grandma or I who wants to make a dress.)
"I know what we could do that would be a lot less trouble," I said. "Every night late, when all the motel owners around here are asleep, why not sneak out and take the covers off the "no" on each of their signs? Then this will be apparently the only motel that has a vacancy, and all the cars will come here. Then, after we have filled up, you can sneak out again and put the covers back on the signs, so that in the morning the other owners won't know they have been tampered with."
During the winter rush season, whenever we invited friends from Los Angeles to stay overnight at our motel, we always stipulated that they must come on a Sunday night, since even during the height of the busiest season there were almost always vacancies on Sunday nights. For most of our friends it was difficult or impossible to be away from home over Sunday night, since work, school, and the regular routine of living must begin again on Monday morning. As a result, very few of our personal friends had been to see us, except the several who came out the first summer. Now, though, with at least one vacancy every night except Saturday, we let them know that we would be "at home" any night except Saturday, and that they could have the use of a spotless, modern, new and well-furnished cabin--on the house! On an average of one couple or one family per week, our friends began making the pleasant, just-far-enough trip out to see us. This was very nice, but I couldn't pretend that it lifted the monotony or relieved the boredom, because around a motel there isn't any of either.
For months I had been resisting the mercenary advances of men who wanted to install coin-operated radios in our cabins. Grant and I had agreed that the commercial, cheapening effect of such radios would not be justified by the small revenue they would bring in.
One day, though, one of the salesmen whom I had turned away tackled Grant while I was downtown. For all his caginess and shrewdness, Grant becomes as limp and compliant as gelatin under the pressure of a good sales talk. And this man, a short, wiry creature with very intriguing mannerisms, was hard to ignore.
When I drove into the driveway the radio man was installing the last radio. He lifted his cap to me and wiggled his ears mockingly as I stalked past the cabin where he was working and into the house.
I sat down, seething, and mentally prepared some blistering hot coals to rake Grant over.
Having the radios installed turned out to be a pretty good idea, though. Our customers seemed to be pleased with the convenience of them, in spite of the fact that reception is poor in Banning because of the surrounding mountains.
The radios were attractive, with a walnut finish that blended with the maple furniture in the cabins. Each radio had a slot in the top where the noise-hungry customer could put his quarter for one hour of music, drama, comedy, quiz program, news or soap opera. Every two weeks the owner of the machines would come around with his keys, take off the backs of the radios, and unlock the coin boxes inside. Three fourths of the money he would keep; twenty-five per cent of it--"enough to pay mosta yer utilities"--would be ours.
As it turned out, our share of the take--about twenty dollars a month--was barely enough to pay for one utility, the electricity. But that, as Grant pointed out, with more spirit of self-defense than originality, was something.
And the customers did like having the radios in their cabins. We always gave them their change in quarters now instead of in fifty-cent pieces, so that if they wanted to play the radios they'd have the proper coins. And often a customer would come to the office and ask us to give him quarters in exchange for a fifty-cent piece or a dollar.
Our own little radio, that we had been renting out for fifty cents a night, was no longer in demand. And sometimes I pointed out acidly to Grant that eight separate quarters, for eight full hours of playing time, had to be dropped into the slots of the coin-operated radios before we'd make as much as by renting our own radio once.
The man who installed the radios in our cabins and came every other week to get the money out of them, became simply "the radio man" to us. I suppose he had a name, but if he did, I never discovered what it was.
"That radio man's the funniest guy I ever saw," Grant remarked, after the first time he had come to get his money. "He points his finger at you, with his thumb up in the air; then he quick bends his thumb, and the knuckle cracks, and it's just as if he's shooting at you."
"I know," I said. "He did that to me several times, to emphasize his arguments when he was first trying to make me let him install the radios. But," I added pointedly, "I didn't fall for it."
"And," Grant hurried on, "did you notice there are hinges tattooed on the insides of his elbows?"
"Mm-hm. I wouldn't be surprised if he had hinges tattooed on the backs of his knees, too. He's just the type."
The small cement block building that was being erected across the highway from us, west of the bar and the Blue Bonnet motel, turned out to be a bakery. "Purtel and Purtel" announced their big neon sign. "Doughnuts, pies, and pastry."
Grant went over to buy a pie the first day they opened. After talking to the Purtel brothers an hour--his absolute minimum for a conversation--he came back and reported that they had a nice place, that they were old men with beards, and that he had promised them that I would come over soon and meet them.
We demolished the pie at dinner time, and after I had washed the dishes I decided to return the tin.
The front part of the bakery was clean and delicious-smelling. One of the Purtel brothers was putting things away, getting ready to close for the night. When I introduced myself he dashed away to call his brother, who was in the rear part of the building.
The brothers confronted me together then, the first beaming with friendliness and a tail-wagging anxiety to please, the second smiling in the manner of a movie actor meeting the president of one of his fan clubs. They were almost identical in appearance, and looked as though they had been cut off a cough drop box.
There was a long, uncomfortable pause then, while we all tried to think of appropriate remarks. I felt an insane impulse to murmur, "What nice big beards you have," and an equally insane fear that they would reply "All the better to tickle you with, my dear."
At last I said lamely, "Well, I brought your pie tin back."
"But I must introduce you!" exclaimed the first brother, clapping his hands together with energy. "This here is the wife of the nice young man who stopped in and talked to us for awhile this afternoon. We are the Purtel brothers."
He leaped toward a chair, sat on it and bounded up. He made wild gestures of apology and self-reproach and indicated that I should sit on the chair.
The second brother said languidly, "His name is Purtel, if he so chooses. But my name is Purtel. Please remember that." Mr. Purtel laughed heartily, wrinkles fanning out from his eyes across his cheeks. He smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand.
"Usually it's women that change their names when they get married, but Si here changed his when he got married. Always before, he was satisfied with Purtel, but ever since he got married it's had to be Purtel. That's why our sign says "Purtel and Purtel" instead of "Purtel Brothers"--so people can pronounce it Purtel and Purtel."
"Purtel and Purtel," corrected the second brother, brushing a speck of something daintily off his shirt sleeve. He lit a cigarette, and I watched in fascination as the flame curled near his long black fire hazard.
Mr. Purtel disappeared into the rear part of the building again, but Mr. Purtel gave me a refund for the pie tin, and then asked me if I had any children.
"Yes, two," I told him. "A boy and a girl."
He reached into the show case. "Take this for the boy," he said, bringing out a huge sugary doughnut. "And this for the girl." The second gift was a luscious cream puff. My mind's eye presented me with a swift foreglimpse of Donna, her hair stuck into thick strands, her face covered by whipped cream and a blissful expression.
I told Grant that one of the brothers was nice, but that I didn't care much for the other. And until bedtime I wondered why Mr. Purtel's marriage had caused him to become dissatisfied with the name he had grown up with.
At last, just as I was getting into bed, I thought maybe I had it.
"I'll bet," I thought happily, "his wife's name is Myrtle."
WHEN BUSINESS SLOWS down for Banning motels due to the scarcity of tourists, it naturally slows down for the service stations and highway restaurants as well. Moe, the beak-nosed owner of the cafe next door, was very annoyed because business was so seasonal, and he decided to sell his place and take his family back to Los Angeles, where the demand for restaurant meals was more the same all year around, and where it wasn't necessary to comb the want ads and employment agencies for enough help part of the time, and the rest of the time to fire perfectly good employees because there wasn't any work for them to do.
The day after Moe put up a big "For Sale by Owner" sign in front of his restaurant, he stopped in at the office, and told us the place was sold. He was holding the sign, which he had just taken down, in his thick fleshy hands.
"Sold it just like that!" he exclaimed. "Fellow stopped in an hour ago, looked it over, liked it, and gave me a check for the full down payment. Just one catch--he insists on taking over right away tonight, even though we won't put it in escrow until Monday. I said okay, I didn't want to louse up the deal over a little thing like that. So me and the wife's going on a weekend trip, and he can run the darn thing all by himself."
It was five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon then; by nine o'clock that night Moe was gone, the new owner had taken over, and big hand-made signs tacked up all over the outside of the restaurant announced: "Opening Night. Everything on the House! Come in and have fun!"
People, in flocks and bevies and droves, were thronging into the place to see if the signs really meant what they said. Apparently they did, because the people who went in stayed in, and reinforcements kept pouring in behind them. Cars that were speeding along the highway stopped and spewed out occupants who only a few moments before had been intent upon faroff destinations. The habituees of the bar decided to see the fun, and the customers of all the surrounding motels, having heard rumors of the gala--and free--opening night, straggled toward the restaurant.
I straggled toward it myself, after getting the children to bed and extracting a martyred statement from Grant to the effect that nope, of course he wouldn't mind in the least if I wanted to leave him all alone and go away and have fun without him. For moral support, I joined Mr. and Mrs. D'Aura, a quarrelsome couple who were celebrating their tenth anniversary with a short vacation in Banning. They had been renting one of our cabins for three days. From their attitude toward one another, it was hard to understand why they considered an anniversary an occasion for a celebration.
They were a medium-sized, rather nondescript couple. His main claim to distinction was the fact that nine or ten long coarse black hairs grew out of the very tip of his nose; and the only things outstanding about her were that her eyes did not seem to focus correctly or in unison, and that she had extremely broad, well-padded hips.
The night they first rented the cabin, they were arguing about her figure while he signed the registration card. "I tell you I've lost ten pounds," she crackled.
"Yeah?" he asked, casting a skeptical glance over her. "Where?"
"If I knew where I lost it, it wouldn't be lost, would it?" she snapped. "At least that's what you always say when you've lost something."
He chortled while he finished filling out the registration card. "Witty, ain't she?" he asked me. Reflectively he pulled the hairs on the end of his nose while he searched his memory for his license number. "She ain't much to look at, but she's smart, and she's got a well-rounded personality." He laid the pen down and smacked her hard, in the region of her lower back. "And that ain't all she's got that's well-rounded, bless her heart!" he roared.
I wondered if she was going to let him get away with that. I should have known that, being a woman, she'd have the last public word. She did, and it was rather a subtle last word. "My attitude toward you," she said icily as they went out the door, "is that of nature toward a vacuum."
I caught up to them now as they were opening the door of the cafe.
"You're certainly developing a beautiful head of skin," Mrs. D'Aura was saying scathingly to her husband just as I joined them.
"Bless her heart, she's clever, ain't she?" Mr. D'Aura asked me as we went in.
The air inside the restaurant was heavy with smoke and loud, hilarious conversation. Every available seat in the dining room and around the shining black counter was occupied by a thirsty, voracious human being; food and beer and wine were disappearing at such alarming rates that I wondered if the new owner wasn't regretting his impulse to throw an impromptu party.
I saw him standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen, beaming and genial, slapping waitresses and guests alike in hospitable good fellowship. His stance and expression proclaimed him to be the new owner, and he seemed to be having as good a time as any of his noisy guests. His plump face was red and his small eyes were shining. He saw me staring at him, and he waved at me over the sea of guzzling heads as though we were old friends.
Two men, making vulgar noises of satisfaction, left the restaurant, vacating two rickety chairs that were near the door. Mr. and Mrs. D'Aura slipped into the empty chairs and began to quarrel in low, intense voices.
There were no other empty seats, and more people kept crowding in behind me all the time. Having satisfied my curiosity as to what was going on, I decided to leave.
As I went out I met a plump, whiskered gentleman who stepped aside for me courteously and a little unsteadily. His bright beady eyes held me with an intent regard. I wondered how many of me he saw, and I smiled.
He bristled. "You think I'm half drunk, don't you, lady?" he charged. "Well, you're wrong, absolutely wrong." He paused, for dramatic effect. "I'm not half drunk, I'm completely drunk!"
He bent double with laughter. "I jusht had to come out here for some fresh air. The air in theresh so smoky, itsh so crowded, itsh enough to drive a drinking man to sobriety!"
Seeing that I was about to go on, he clutched the sleeve of my dress. "You know what I am?" he demanded. "I'm a walking binge!"
He called after me, "That'sh pretty good, now, isn't it? A walking binge! You remember that and maybe sometime you can say it yourself and make people think you thought it up yourshelf. Yesshir, a walking binge. Pretty good!"
There were a lot of walking binges in and around the cafe before the night was over. Some of them, in fact, could hardly stagger. The supply of beer and wine must have outlasted the supply of food.
We had two reasons, though, to be glad that the cafe had changed hands. The first and most important reason was, of course, that we would at last be rid of Moejy--although actually the obnoxious little creature spent so much of his time at the Auto Haven visiting the Bradleys, that we weren't much bothered by him. The second reason was that our business, for this one night at least, was greatly improved. A lot of travelers who had been bent on making a hundred miles or more yet before stopping for the night, decided, after relaxing and eating and drinking in the restaurant, that Banning would be as good a town as any in which to spend the night. And, since our motel was next door to the restaurant, we got most of the extra business.
Sunday the cafe was closed--no doubt because everything but the furnishings had been consumed Saturday night, and new supplies couldn't be obtained until Monday.
Monday morning it was still closed. Monday noon we saw Moe unlocking the door and going in, walking as though thirty years had been added suddenly to his heavy-set shoulders. Grant went over to talk to him, and when he came back he told me what had happened. The check for the down payment on the restaurant had bounced. The man who had given Moe the check had disappeared after the hilarious opening night. The restaurant was a shambles, with everything eatable or drinkable gone, and Moe's large stock of beer and wine completely demolished.
When Grant left, Moe was sitting at the circular counter, rubbing his bald head and completely unable to see the funny side of what had happened, trying to figure up just how many hundreds of dollars his trusting nature had cost him.
In spite of Banning's superlatively healthful climate, and her own stalwart frame, Mrs. Clark was besieged and temporarily conquered by a horde of influenza germs--or viruses, whichever they are. Although we were having a few vacancies now, the new window in the office was keeping most of our cabins occupied, and the lush, idle winter had so accustomed us to loafing that we were horrified at the idea of doing our own work, even for a week.
A pretty Mexican girl had been applying, about once a month, for work. I had her name and address on a slip of paper in the cash drawer.
"How about this Veda Gonzales?" I suggested to Grant, pulling out the slip and showing it to him.
We knew it would be a lot of trouble breaking in someone new to clean the cabins--but it wouldn't be as much trouble as cleaning them ourselves!
West of the Blue Bonnet Motel, west of the new bakery, was a bunch of little brown shacks clustered forlornly on the edge of the highway like ragged children gazing into a window bright with toys and tinsel. It was in one of these shacks that Veda lived.
I showed her what her tasks would be, and she learned readily.
The first day she came to work her brown cheeks were rouged, her dark eyes were sparkling, her lips were cherry red. Her black hair was caught back by a white ribbon, and she wore a white peasant blouse, which drooped at the shoulders and had a low neckline.
I accompanied her through the first two cabins, advising and observing--and smoothing an occasional sheet. Veda went about her work willingly and efficiently, and after a while I strolled back into the house.
I picked up my copy of "War and Peace" which I had borrowed from the library on four different occasions, without yet having had a chance to read it. This time I was up to page fourteen.
I was so accustomed to frequent interruptions that I was becoming unable to concentrate even in their absence. Donna had gone outside her window and was playing; David was in school, and Grant was gone--talking, no doubt, with some motel owner he had found who was willing to listen to him for a while. In the unusual silence I felt my mind drifting away from Tolstoy's closely packed pages.
The wheels of a car churned the gravel, and paused while the driver got out and dropped the key into the mailbox. I got up and stood by the window, watching wistfully as the car merged with the traffic on the highway. Every morning cars pulled out, full of people on their way to excitement and joy. Well, maybe they were just on their way back to dull jobs or nagging mates, but anyway, the whole process had the tang of romance and adventure. I always felt a little prick of envy, watching a car leave--a prick heightened, no doubt, by the rarity of our opportunities to leave the motel.
It was a beautiful morning, clear and sunny--the kind of weather that made people stream to the beaches, avoiding the desert and Palm Springs and the Moonrise Motel. Long stretches of good weather, coming in the Spring when there could just as well be lots of bad weather, are disastrous for business. Desert motel owners are among the very few people in business, besides umbrella manufacturers and salesmen of anti-freeze mixtures, who consider good weather a tragedy.
Still standing at the window, I glanced around at the different garages. Across the driveway, there were still cars in 16 and 14; and at the end furthest from the highway, there were cars in front of two of the singles--9 and 7. Two salesmen, I recalled, had rented those cabins.
As I stood there, Veda came out of 11 with her bucket, her mop, and her basket. She headed for cabin 9. I started toward the door, although I knew there wouldn't be time to warn her of the obvious fact that that cabin was still occupied; but by the time I got to the door, she was talking to the salesman.
After a moment she went inside cabin 9, leaving her cleaning equipment outside.
I closed the door slowly, deep in thought. Could it be he just wanted her to remove his used towels, or do some minor cleaning job? Or help him pack his suitcase? Or--?
Half an hour later the salesman came in and tossed number 9 key on the desk.
"I'll remember this here place," he said, winking broadly. "This here is what I call deluxe accommodations."
I watched out the window again. Veda was cleaning cabin 8. When I thought she must be about through, I strolled out in that direction. In a few minutes she came swinging out of the cabin, tossed her basket down beside her bucket, and raised her hand to knock on the door of cabin 7.
"Just a minute," I said. "There's still someone in that cabin."
"I know there is; a man," she said, speaking with that peculiar upswing at the end of her words that is characteristic of many Mexicans. "I just thought I'd see if he ain't about ready to leave."
"Mm. And if he 'ain't' about ready--?"
She tossed her head. "Well, there ain't any law against a girl picking up a little extra money."
There was no law, either, against motel owners' cleaning up their own cabins, so for the rest of the week Grant and I went back to the old routine of mopping, dusting, stripping beds, and making them. Mrs. Clark's dark skin was a little pale when she reported for work the following Monday morning, but to us she looked positively beautiful.
Meetings of the Hotel and Motel Owners' Association of Banning took place every other week. The organization had accomplished a lot before it had been in existence long, erecting signs at strategic points along the highways, advertising in magazines and newspapers, and in general calling the attention of the public to Banning as a health resort, vacation spot, and a pleasant place to interrupt a trip for a night's pause. Grant and I attended most of the meetings together, leaving Mrs. Clark in charge of the motel and the children. One meeting night, though, when Mrs. Clark was expecting company and didn't want to leave home, I drove alone to the meeting. It was held this night at the Linda Vista Motel; and after the meeting had been opened and I had read the minutes of the previous meeting, I looked over the assembled group while a committee member made a rambling and boring report upon a related meeting he had attended. Mr. Featherbren, his tall form draped over a straight chair, caught my eye and winked at me. After a bad start and a few misunderstandings, we were now the best of friends.
I was surprised to see Mrs. Bradley huddled snugly in one of the chairs in front of the table at which Mr. Cruz, the president, and I sat. She had never appeared at any of the meetings; in fact, I had never seen her since the night of the first meeting, when she showed me the egg she said she was planning to hatch.
I learned later that when Mr. Renault of the Mountain Lodge Motel had stopped in, a little earlier than planned, at the Auto Haven to pick up Mr. Bradley, Mrs. Bradley, announcing that her husband was out of town and that she was going to the meeting in his stead, hopped into the car. Actually, though, her husband was taking a shower, and she had seized the opportunity to leave him home while she went to the meeting.
I didn't realize at the time how it happened that she was at the meeting, but I did know that she shouldn't be. As far as I knew, I was the only one present who knew of her eccentricity, and the fact made me feel an obligation to keep anyone else from detecting anything unusual about her.
The wizened, wrinkled little creature was almost buried in layer after layer of clothing that might have first been worn by Noah's wife. A black cloth over the top of her tiny head served as a hat, and her small eyes sparkled brightly as she glanced from me to Mr. Cruz to the speaker, and back to me again.
"Come on over here beside me, come on over!" she hissed, catching my eye and motioning toward the vacant chair on one side of her. The chair she was sitting in was at least ten feet from the table where I sat, and her stage whisper was clearly audible to everyone above the long-winded, dull report that was being given.
I shook my head reprovingly at her, frowned, and feigned an intense interest in the speaker. To my horror, I heard the old lady cackling with amusement. I was relieved when she turned her attention from me, but my relief lasted only for a moment. I noticed that she was whispering to Mr. Dale, the owner of the Cherry motel, who occupied the chair next to hers. Whatever she was whispering, I knew it would be something that shouldn't be heard. I was embarrassed at attracting so much attention to myself during a meeting, but I got up, as quietly as possible, and went to Mrs. Bradley. I told her, in a low voice, that I had to leave now, and that I'd like for her to come with me.
She got up with alacrity, her dark skirts falling in heavy layers down to her ankles. Just before stepping away from her chair she turned and whispered loudly to Mr. Dale, "I didn't finish telling you about my baby. It will be born any day now--and how, it will! You must come to see it. But I have to go now and find out how it's getting along--you see, I left it home in the oven!"
Mr. Dale was aghast.
I hustled Mrs. Bradley out, into the car, and back to the Auto Haven. I knew that Mr. Cruz would finish taking the minutes of the meeting for me, or arrange for someone else to do it. Getting the old lady away from the public, with its cruel curiosity, was more important than taking minutes, anyway. It was a warm night, and after I had seen Mrs. Bradley to her door I drove back toward the Moonrise Motel. I decided not to go back to the meeting; it was too nice out. The meeting would be half over by the time I could get back, anyway, and my reappearance would be anticlimactic.
I stuck my head in the door to tell Grant I had left the meeting early, and that I was going to water the lawn now. Grant was reading, and eating a graham cracker with sliced onion on it.
I was sprinkling the front island of grass when Grant came out and got into the car, calling to me that since I was home anyway, he was going to attend the last half of the meeting. I turned the nozzle of the hose so that the water came out in a steady stream. I flopped the stream up and down idly, trying to catch in it a reflection of the neon lights.
My mind drifted to an amusingly shocking window display I had seen at the opening of a new butcher shop downtown. On the opening day crowds had stood in front of the big window, gaping at the man inside who was operating a big, complicated machine. Into one end of the machine, up a little slanting ramp, walked small dogs--and out the opposite end of the machine popped neat, tautly-stuffed sausages.
The exit for the little dogs, and the point where meat was fed into the machine to be made into stuffed sausages, was concealed behind draperies. A few of the less imaginative people in the crowd were horrified and indignant.
Laughing over my recollection of the scene, I sat down on the edge of the grass island, adjusting the nozzle again until the water came out in a fine spray of mist.
All at once, I stopped laughing. I stood up gingerly. The back of my skirt was soaked. The water from the hose, coming out in a solid stream, had formed a huge puddle right in the spot where I had chosen to sit.
Just then a car drove into the driveway, stopping in front of the office, its merciless headlights on me.
I put the hose down and walked toward the car, keeping out of the beam of the headlights. With one hand behind me, I wrung some of the water out of my skirt, in what I hoped was an inconspicuous manner.
A very young, self-conscious couple sat in the car. They were too absorbed in their own embarrassment to notice mine. I guessed instantly that they were newlyweds.
The groom, a thin, blue-eyed fellow of about twenty, cleared his throat and asked, "Have you got a--can you put up me and my wife for the night?"
"I sure can. Would you like to take a look at the cabin?" In the glow reflected from the neon signs, I could see him blushing.
"Naw, naw, it'll be all right."
He climbed out of the car, and if he hadn't been in such a fog of bliss and confusion, would probably have wondered why I backed away from his presence as though he were royalty. I preceded him, backward, into the office, and ducked behind the desk.
When the young pair had gone to their cabin, I changed my dress. Going out to turn off the hose, I saw the groom driving away, and the bride standing in the doorway waving to him rather mournfully.
"Just one, now, remember," she called after him.
It was almost midnight when there came a timid tapping at our door. Grant, who had just returned from the motel owners' meeting, was in the bathroom getting ready for bed. I pulled my robe over my pajamas and went to the door. It was the bride.
"My husband hasn't come back," she said hesitantly. "He went out for a drink, to celebrate. I don't drink so I stayed home. I--I guess maybe he had more drinks than he should have. We--we just got married, this morning. I was just wondering--you haven't seen him anywhere around, have you?"
I assured the tall, pretty girl that I hadn't seen her husband. Her soft brown eyes filled with tears.
"He always drinks a little too much and then he can't find his way around very well. I know that's what happened tonight--he had too many drinks, and then he couldn't find his way back to me!"
The girl still stood there. "I wonder ..." she said uncertainly.
"Yes?"
"Well, I've always lived with my family, and I've never spent a night alone in my life. I'm sure my husband just gave up looking for me, and rented a cabin somewhere else. I wonder--would it be asking too much--I mean, I'm really scared, back there alone. I looked outside the window toward the mountains, and it's so black and uncivilized out there. I even heard some wolves howling up there in the hills."
"Coyotes," I corrected.
"Well, that's almost as bad. Anyway, I'm not used to being alone at night. I wonder if--well, if you'd let me sleep on the floor in here with you tonight?"
When Grant came out of the bathroom I explained the situation to him, and he set up the rollaway bed in our living room for the bride to sleep on.
Toward morning I heard muffled sobbing, as she apparently held the pillow against her face to avoid making too much noise. I stirred, and she whispered, "Are you awake?"
When I whispered back that I was, she lost control of herself, and began to sob audibly.
"For months," she wailed, "I've been dreaming about my wedding night, imagining it, trying to picture how it would be, but--ooh!--I never thought it would be like this!"
In the morning the wandering groom came back to claim his bride, and the marriage probably got off to a good start in spite of that first minor catastrophe.
To avoid any possibility of Jill's becoming a dull girl, I frequently go shopping or visiting when things at the motel are well enough under control for Grant to manage without me. I don't like the idea of going places alone, but it's better than staying home night after night. When I go shopping, though, I am very glad that Grant cannot be with me. He seldom approves of the occasional frivolous purchases I make, and never makes any attempt to conceal his opinion from salespersons, customers, passersby, and whomever else it doesn't concern in the least. One time when a new little curio shop opened in Banning, I browsed happily and thoroughly through it, and finally selected a small item made of what looked like beautiful, glossy petrified wood. It was shaped like an hour glass, with mysterious strings and turrets. It was a bargain, I thought, at three dollars.
Grant didn't see it that way, though. "But what's it for?" he demanded. "What is it?"
I don't see how anyone with such a prosaic, practical nature can get much joy out of life.
I couldn't figure out, myself, what the thing was for, though, so I set it on top of the bookcase beside Mr. Hawkins' nude perfume atomizer.
"It's an ornament, of course," I told Grant haughtily.
Whenever I help out with cleaning the cabins, I have a faintly guilty feeling about being in the cabins in which someone is staying over. The presence of clothes and suitcases, the casual disarray of magazines and cosmetics make me feel as though I am entering a private dwelling in which I have no business to be. And I, like Mrs. Clark and Grant, have often thought about the precarious position we would be in if any of the stay-over guests should complain that possessions left in the cabin while they were gone had disappeared. We are more fortunate than most motel owners, in that we have a maid whose complete honesty is as stanch and unassailable a fact as the existence of the Pyramids. If a guest should tell us that something of his is missing, we never have to deal with the nagging possibility that the maid might have stolen it.
Besides the many trivial things that have been left in the cabins, there have been a few things of real value, including a wallet containing six hundred dollars (which Mrs. Clark turned in to us the instant she found it) and a silver fox coat. We are always glad, in one sense, when such valuable things are left behind; the owners, when they get them back, are so grateful and so impressed with our integrity that they will probably patronize our motel loyally for years to come. The woman who came feverishly back for the silver fox coat was so overwhelmed with gratitude that she promised Grant a job, at whatever time in the future he might need it, at her husband's sanitary belt factory. So in case we ever go broke in the motel business. Grant will be able to go right to work.
One of us accompanies the radio man--at his tactful insistence--when he goes around to take the quarters out of the coin boxes in the radios. It's a task that wastes time, but in a very enjoyable manner. He always wears his shirtsleeves so high that the hinges tattooed on the insides of his elbows are visible, and he talks continually. This time, as we made the rounds of the cabins, he was telling me about a motel in Palm Springs where he had installed some of his radios.
"Ya oughta see the way the dames run around, there in Palm Springs," he said, busily taking the back off a radio. "They wear things they call brassieres with their shorts, see, but it don't do no good. What you can't see sure ain't worth lookin' for. An' most the guys runnin' around in shorts, they're such fat slobs, they need brassieres worse'n the women do. I been around a lot, see, but damned if it don't embarrass me to go to Palm Springs!"
The wiry little man unlocked the coin box and extracted a handful of quarters, dropping them into the cloth sack he carried for the purpose.
"At least, they've given up that silly 'sun time' they tried out a while back. They tried to cheat people out of an extra hour, see, or maybe they was tryin' to give 'em an extra hour, I never figured it out, but anyway it didn't work, so they gave it up."
He pointed his finger at me abruptly, popping the knuckle of his thumb. "Got ya!" he chortled, when I jumped.
He started fitting the back of the radio into its proper place again.
"There's a trailer camp right behind this Palm Springs motel, see, the one where I've got my radios, an' it's full of all these ritzy guys and dames, see. In the morning when they get up--an' that ain't early--you oughta see 'em, lined up to go to the bathroom. They just stand there an' talk, see, an' sometimes they get so interested in what they're sayin', that they just keep on standin' there for a long time, talkin' and talkin'."
The radio man got into his car to go, after all of the money had been divided; I glanced at him, on my way back to the house, when he didn't start up his car immediately.
He had a small can of oil in his hand, and, apparently assiduous and intent, he was oiling the hinges in his elbows.