GRANT GREW VERY tired of the conscientious customers who made a point of delivering the keys to one of us personally before leaving. It was annoying enough for us to have to interrupt breakfast or a bout with the razor or the dishpan to answer the bell and accept a key; but it was infuriating to be called out of bed unnecessarily in the wee small hours. Most of our customers, of course, sensibly left their keys inside the cabin, or sticking in the keyhole of their cabin door; but for the maddening few who insisted on seeing the keys safely home, Grant bought a silver mailbox and nailed it just outside the office door. He was in such a hurry to get the thing finished, now that he had actually started, that he didn't even take time to put exact, measured lettering on it. He simply dipped one of David's slender paint brushes into a bottle of black ink and wrote in shaky letters on the face of the mailbox "Please return keys here."
With a big safety pin Grant secured the front of the mailbox, so that people wouldn't pull it down and let the keys fall out.
Practically all of our customers put their keys dutifully into the little slot in the top of the mailbox when they were ready to check out, but there were always a few who were bewildered by the whole setup. This type would study the mailbox for a long time, read and reread the words on the front of it, ponder the safety pin, and peer into the slot to see whether there actually were any keys there--and sometimes, even after all these preliminaries, would ring the bell and hand one of us the key.
One morning I was dusting the Venetian blinds in the office when a plump woman in cerise slacks, with a hat that looked like a ring mold of feathers, minced toward the office door. A key was dangling from her hand, and I moved away from the window to watch her unobserved. She didn't look very intelligent, and I wondered how long it would take her to figure out how to dispose of the key.
She studied the mailbox, the words painted on it, and the safety pin, for several minutes. Then she moved her arm upward determinedly--and just as she did, Donna, in the living room, let out a piercing shriek.
By the time I had dashed into the living room, located Donna, whose head was stuck between the davenport and the wall, extricated her head and secured for her the ball she had been chasing, the cerise-slacked, feather-hatted woman was gone.
I was curious, though, to see whether she had put the key into the slot, so I stepped outside to look in the box. I was reaching for the safety pin so that I could let down the flap when I noticed something hanging from the pin. It was the woman's key!
There are people who can get into all kinds of difficulties over such an apparently harmless and simple an object as a key. Nearly every day some brilliant soul, after opening the door of his cabin and deposting one suitcase (and his key) inside, locks himself out when he starts back to get the rest of his belongings from his car. I have so thoroughly learned the expression that accompanies this predicament that when anyone wearing it comes into the office I hand him a master key before he speaks, and say "This key will open it."
Then there are the people who look at their key tags upside down. The key to cabin 2, upside down, can be mistaken for that of cabin 7, and vice versa; and, of course, 6 and 9 are always easy to confuse. Every once in a while a customer who has been assigned to cabin 7 comes to the office in a huff because he can't get into cabin 2.
The thirteen keys, one numbered for each cabin, were somehow the tangible symbol of our work. They were woven into the very fabric of our lives. Early in the morning, before daylight, Grant usually got up to see if anyone had left a key and checked out. If there were an empty cabin, he cleaned it up and rerented it.
It was the keys which absorbed Mrs. Clark's first attention every morning when she came to clean the cabins. A quick perusal of them told her which cabins were ready for her to go into. It was the remaining keys we surveyed each night as a quick way of knowing how many vacancies were left. Frequently a key that a customer had carried away by mistake would turn up in our post office box, having been dropped in "any mailbox" in accordance with instructions stamped on the metal tag attached.
And it was one early afternoon while I was hanging up the keys, after Mrs. Clark had finished cleaning the cabins and Grant had left to take her home, that there occurred one of the most frightening episodes of my motel career.
We kept the keys hanging on hooks on a large board placed under the office desk, where customers could not see them and where it was necessary to stoop only slightly, to slip one of them off its hook.
Just as I finished hanging the last key the office door opened and a pale, rabbit-like little man walked in. I smiled to myself at the whimsical notion that he seemed out of place in skin and cheap, striped shirt and trousers. He should have been clothed in soft white rabbit fur. He was probably, I thought, the type who would prove almost too timid to ask for a cabin.
I was to learn, though, that he wasn't too timid to ask for a great deal more than that.
"Yer husban' home, sis?" he squeaked, sounding like a smart-alecky, frightened child.
"No, he isn't," I confessed, "but he'll be back in about fifteen minutes. If you'd care to wait--"
"That's all I wan'ed t'know," he said, his nose twitching like the nose of an Easter bunny Hellwig had given me when I was ten years old.
"Gimme yer money," he said, standing directly in front of the desk and staring at me with terrified, pink-rimmed eyes.
"My--my money?" I repeated.
And now I was the one who sounded like a frightened child.
There was a hundred and fifty dollars in the house, about sixty of it in the desk drawer--too much money to be bluffed into handing over to a--
And then I saw his gun.
He held it in one trembling white hand.
My mind was suddenly a maelstrom, offering up weird, useless suggestions for tricking or attacking the man, reasons why I should or shouldn't hand over every cent quietly, and churning with totally unrelated thoughts and ideas--with a bit of a review of my past life thrown in for good measure.
I wouldn't give him the money. I'd pretend not to understand and he'd get exasperated and go away, to come again some other day, that was that old nursery rhyme I used to sing or something. The telephone, that was it, the telephone, if I could get to the telephone I could call the police and then stall him till they got here. I'd say excuse me, I have to make a phone call, and then ... His eyes. The rims are red, like he'd been crying, or rubbing them, or hadn't had enough sleep. They're funny eyes--scared to death. I'm scared to death too. Maybe I should give him the money. When people are scared and upset they're apt to pull the trigger. Maybe I should do what he wants. After all, it wasn't the brave-looking tortoise who finally won the race, it was the hare, even if he did look pretty rabbity and scared. He had a gun, after all, and who wouldn't win a race if he was carrying a gun? Or wait--wasn't it the tortoise who won? While I was trying to figure this out I saw far below me, as though through a mist of clouds, a pair of hands stuffed with money.
I watched these hands curiously as they thrust the money into one of the trembling white hands across the office desk. The trembling hand grasped it convulsively, thrust it into a pocket, and then fluttered nervously around its owner's twitching nose.
"Gimme the rest of it, sis," the little man piped. His nose was wiggling harder than ever now, the muscles around his mouth and eyes were jerking, and he looked as near to a nervous collapse as I was. The more he twitched, the worse I felt. If that twitching should get as far as his trigger finger . . .
It isn't a pleasant thing to look into a narrow tube of metal, at the back of which lies potential oblivion. I was relieved and numb when the little man put the gun into his pocket. Apparently he was in such a panic to get away that he wasn't going to argue or wait for more money.
I poked my head cautiously out the office door when he had gone, my terror ebbing. I hoped that I could get his license number.
His car, though--toward which he loped and bounded like a jackrabbit--was parked facing east, in front of and across from the Peacock, so far away that I couldn't read his license number. I did a little loping and bounding myself, certain that in his frenzy to get away he wouldn't notice me--until, as he was getting into the car, I was close enough to read his license number.
34X768.
Three-four-ex-seven-six-eight! 34x768. I repeated the numbers to myself, I whispered, sang and chanted them as I ran back toward our motel. I mustn't forget them; 34x768--34x--
"Pardon me, ma'am, could you tell me how far it is to Riverside?"
"Thirty-four ex seven sixty-eight miles!" I panted, brushing past the tall soldier who was blocking my path.
I rushed into the office, hunted frantically for a pen, and wrote the license number down on a registration blank. Then I telephoned the police department.
I was just hanging up the receiver and mopping the perspiration from my forehead when Grant returned. Abruptly all my resourcefulness and courage melted away, and I flung myself howling into his arms.
"A rabbit held me up and took all of our money!" I wailed.
It was about ten minutes before Grant could soothe me to a point where he could get a coherent explanation of what had happened.
The police caught the terrified thief before he was twenty miles out of town. When they stopped at the motel so that I could identify him, and to check on the money which had been stolen, I was busy writing the story of the holdup for the Banning paper.
Grant, of course, didn't know how much money had been in the drawer; and I had been in no condition to count the money as I handed it to the frightened desperado. I didn't know how much had been in the drawer because Grant's airy carelessness about money, once earned, had led me to put cash in and take it out from the drawer with as much nonchalance as his, and as little regard for amount. I was pretty sure, though, that it was in the neighborhood of sixty dollars that the little man had taken; and that was the amount they found on him. They gave us a little advice on keeping better track of the money we took in, which left me with a momentary glow of triumph, and an excuse for being on the delivering instead of the receiving end of one of those maddening, superior, meaningful glances--but I knew that neither the advice nor the glance would have any effect on Grant.
My career as a part-time newspaper reporter was thriving, and without my ever finding it necessary to go out looking for news. Highway accidents, which were an old, old story to us by now, occurred frequently in front of our motel. It was usually easy for me to get the names, addresses and ages of the occupants of the involved cars while the police were asking their routine questions. I simply wrote the facts, dramatizing them a little, and the editor of the paper accepted them eagerly.
The frequent wrecks, and the fact that in two of them the cars had come right off the highway onto our land, made me very glad that the front of our motel was sixty feet from the highway. A hundred and sixty feet would have been safer! And after a truck, struck by a car when it was trying to make a left turn into Moe's restaurant, rammed into the garage of cabin 16--which corresponded to the children's bedroom on the other side--I rearranged the furniture in their room, in such a way that neither David's bed nor Donna's crib was near the side of the wall that was closest to the highway.
Watering the calendulas and the roses that Oliv Snyder had planted in front of the office was, I felt, one of the most hazardous jobs connected with running the motel. The flowers in the tip end of the rock-enclosed triangle were only about six feet from the edge of the highway. And six feet from the edge of a highway where busses hurtle past and trucks roar by and there is no speed limit, and where cars are continually cutting in and out of traffic to go to the cafe or to the bar or to one of the motels, and where wrecks are a common occurrence, is a locality that not even Lloyds of London would care to insure against anything, at any premium.
But it wasn't only highway accidents as prospective items for the Banning paper that clamored for my attention. Things happened all the time, with our motel usually the geographic center. There was the civic news picked up from gossip around the motel and at meetings of the motel owners' association. There were the miscellaneous odds and ends about fires, sicknesses, promotions, and so forth, that drift naturally through a busy, public place like the office of a motel. And there were the trivial "personals" so dear to the heart of a country paper editor. I had developed such a nose for news that I couldn't let any of these pass by without dashing to the typewriter and slamming out a few paragraphs about it. If David so much as mentioned that a certain playmate of his had to hurry home from school because an uncle from Michigan was coming to visit, I had to find out about it, even if it meant tracking down the child's parents through his address at school, and asking them point-blank if they had a visitor--and if so, how about a few details. At first I fought against this compulsion to track down every potential however-minor story. But, for hours after I conquered the urge to follow a certain lead, I would feel a gnawing sense of guilt, a feeling of having left something unfinished. It was a familiar feeling; I have experienced it many times after failing to turn back a page of a magazine to see whether that ad read "You must try Whippersnapper's Mange Medicine" or "You should try Whippersnapper's Mange Medicine." I've experienced it after failing to count the exact number of stairs I climb in a given flight. I always experience it if, after idly making creases in one side of my skirt, I neglect to make an equal number of identical creases in the opposite side of my skirt. Psychologists call it, I believe, a compulsion neurosis.
Whatever it is, I've got it.
I always give in finally and go back to count the stairs, check on the exact wording of the ad, or belatedly crease my skirt in the required manner; and I always wind up by tracing the news item to its lair. Sometimes I wish I had never heard of newspapers.
Tyrone Power had once stayed at the Peacock, and I waited eagerly for him, or some equally famous personage, to spend a night with us, so that I would have a really worthwhile story for the paper--one that would make Banning's citizens sit up and gasp--and, incidentally, give the Moonrise Motel a little good publicity. I turned over in my mind the few famous people I had met, wishing I knew them well enough to be able to write a casual note suggesting that they take a vacation in Banning. I had interviewed Margaret Lee Runbeck and Rupert Hughes, before we left Los Angeles, but of course neither of them would remember. And I had met Dick Powell one Sunday afternoon. I was introduced to him by Virginia Gregg, a radio actress I was interviewing who was working with him on that afternoon's broadcast of "The Rogue's Gallery." Dick Powell, I'm sure, will always remember the day--not because of meeting me, but because of the fluff he made. Closing the drama in a narrated summing up of the afternoon's story, he let the radio audience in on the fact that the villain had been convicted of "robbery and murdery."
A green coupe drove into our driveway with a swish of gravel. I sighed. I felt almost too tired to cope with customers. Grant, with his usual lack of system, had started the big job of washing all the soiled bedspreads, doilies and dresser scarves--forgetting that he had an appointment with the dentist in half an hour. Remembering the appointment just in time to keep it, he left me to finish the job he had started.
The spreads, scarves and doilies were hanging on the line now. I opened the office door and walked wearily out toward the green coupe.
The middle-aged driver reached onto the seat beside him for his hat, put it on quickly and removed it with a courtly gesture. His narrow brown eyes were amused.
"Mr. Hawkins!" I exclaimed. My first impulse was one of joy at seeing him again, but then I remembered the blanket he had made me think was stolen, and the apple-pie bed he had made for the new occupants of his cabin the day he left on his honeymoon.
Miss Nesdeburt's plump little body was already halfway out of the car. She hugged me, tears running down over the fine wrinkles around her eyes.
"Ma chere amie!" she exclaimed, dabbing daintily at her eyes with a lace-edged hanky. Her fair skin was flushed with emotion. "It's simply terribly good to see you again, and to be back at the sweet little motel where I first met my Herbert! We just thought we'd drive out this way for old times' sake! After all, it's only a few miles from Burbank, n'est-ce pas?"
When we were all seated in the living room Mr. Hawkins caught my eye almost guiltily and said, "I apologize deeply, madame, for any unpleasantness that may have occurred during my stay at your charming motel. I seem to recall something about--ah--a blanket, wrongly supposed to have been stolen, and--ah--"
"An apple pie bed?" I refreshed his memory.
"I'm sure," he said gallantly, "that you are too sweet and fair-minded a young lady to hold grudges. Let's let bygones be bygones, shall we?"
"I'm willing," I laughed. And he held out a big, strong-looking hand for me to shake.
I shook my head, instead. "I'm willing to let bygones be bygones," I said, "but that doesn't mean I have to trust you. I'm afraid if I shake hands with you I'll either find a spider in my hand, or glue all over my fingers, or maybe you'll try some kind of a jiu-jitsu trick on me. We'll be friends--but at a distance, if you don't mind."
Mr. Hawkins laughed and sat down again. "All right--but you must at least let me thank you for the cockroach you sent me. You'll be happy to hear it's in perfect health, and we've made quite a pet of it. We named it 'Ermintrude.' A neighbor is taking care of it for us today while we're away from home."
Miss Nesdburt was quivering with eagerness to get into the conversation.
"There's so much to tell you, I simply don't know where to begin," she said. "We've sold my car, and we've moved into Herbert's lovely little place in Burbank, and we had a long, wonderful honeymoon. We camped in the mountains near Big Bear Lake for a few days--we got a tent and Herbert put it up all by himself. He's so strong and wonderful. One night we woke up and heard something scratching at the flaps of the tent. We were miles from anywhere, and we were simply terrified. I thought maybe it was one of the big bears the lake was named for. It was pitch black outside, no moon or stars, and we got out of the tent and started to run. One shouldn't become so frightened, of course, but anyway we ran--for miles, it seemed, and all the time this bear, or whatever it was, was right behind us. And then, of all things to encounter in the mountains, we ran up against a fence! It was really dreadful, with the big old creature gaining on us and ready, for all we knew, to kill us the moment he caught us. We scrambled over the fence as best we could, with dear Herbert risking his life by helping me over. It took us quite a while to get across, and we were all scratched up by wire and frightened half to death. The animal had apparently given up in the meantime, because we didn't hear him any more. We didn't dare to go back to our tent, though, so we stayed out there until morning. We were half frozen."
"Well, that was quite an adventure," I exclaimed. "When it was daylight, did you climb back over the fence and go back to your tent?"
Mr. Hawkins and Miss Nestleburt exchanged rueful glances.
"No," she laughed, one of her tiny white hands fluttering up to adjust a blue brooch at her neck. "We didn't climb over the fence when daylight came. We simply walked around it. You see, it was just about five feet long--a remnant of an old fence that had apparently been torn down for years."
When I could stop laughing I said, "What about the animal that had been chasing you? Did you ever find out what it was?"
"No--o," Miss Nestleburt said. "But we looked at the tracks, and Herbert said they couldn't have been made by anything else but a cow!"
"Speaking of cows, my dear," said Mr. Hawkins, brushing a speck of dust off one neatly pressed, striped trouser leg, '"Why don't you give her the present we brought for David? And then we must leave."
"Mais oui! I must go out to the car and get it! I almost forgot all about it!" exclaimed Miss Nestleburt. "Where is David?"
"Grant went to the dentist, and he was to get David from school as soon as he was through. They should be here any minute," I said.
Mr. Hawkins sprang to his feet and held the door open for Miss Nestleburt. Then he closed the door and sat down again.
"Ah, my dear madame," he said to me, "marriage is indeed wonderful. Since Miss Nestleburt did me the great honor of becoming my wife, I have been the happiest man alive."
His brown eyes were full of laughter, as they had been every time I had seen him.
"You never struck me as being a particularly unhappy type," I said.
"No, how true that is, madame! I'm full of joie de vivre, as my dear wife would say."
Just as Miss Nestleburt tapped lightly at the door and came in again. Grant drove up with David. They came in behind her, David making as much noise as a calliope.
"I have a present for you, little David!" Miss Nestleburt said; and she handed David what she was carrying--a large, soft black cat.
David was ecstatic. "Is it really mine? Can I really keep it?" he demanded.
I eyed the cat's bulging sides askance. "I think it's about to calve," I whispered in an aside to Grant.
"Yep, you can keep it," Grant said good-humouredly. "We'll quick fix it a bed in one of the garages."
"Is it a boy cat or a girl cat?" David asked.
"A girl cat, dear," I replied drily.
Miss Nestleburt's blue eyes sparkled as she watched David's joy in his new pet. "Let's go out now and see where the cat wants his bed to be," David cried, pulling a dried piece of gum off his cheek; and Grant and Mr. Hawkins followed him outside.
"Such pretty black, curly eyelashes the boy has!" Miss Nestleburt exclaimed.
I was about to ask her where she got the plump cat when I remembered that there was something else I was curious about.
"A long time ago Mr. Hawkins did something that embarrassed you--one of his practical jokes, I suppose--and you said you'd tell me all about it when you'd known me longer. Do you remember?" I asked. "And do you think you've known me long enough now?"
Rosy color flooded her fair skin, and I saw that she remembered what I was talking about.
I knew I shouldn't have brought up the subject again, but I reasoned that I would suffer more from curiosity if she never told me than she would suffer from embarrassment if she did.
Her bright blue eyes darted around the room, to avoid meeting mine.
"Yes, I remember. Of course I've known you long enough. It's just that one has difficulty in talking about such things ..."
"I suppose he played a rather crude joke on you?" I prodded.
"No, it--it wasn't a joke. It was something he gave me. It was--oh, dear, I don't know how to say it. I suppose he meant well, but it was really a most embarrassing gift . . ."
She clasped and unclasped her tiny hands. "It really shocked me, especially since it had been only a few minutes since we had met. You see, he gave me a little undressed--that is, actually nude--ooh!" Miss Nestleburt gasped. Her eyes, in their uneasy jaunt around the room, had caught sight of the bookcase and what was on top of it--the perfume atomizer Mr. Hawkins had given me.
"He--he gave you one too?" she asked weakly. I nodded, and we dissolved into helpless laughter.
Our merriment was cut into abruptly by a loud crash and splintering outside.
"A wreck!" I exclaimed, dashing through the door and forming the first catch sentence for the story as I ran.
It wasn't exactly a wreck. A heavy truck, loaded with grapefruit, had been parked on the highway in front of Moe's cafe while the driver went in to eat. The brake had failed to hold, and the truck had slid backward, gaining momentum until it crashed heavily into one of the small cabins across the highway behind Mr. Bertram's grocery store. Fortunately, no one was in the cabin, which was half destroyed.
I knew Mr. Bertram would take time out from his snuff-chewing to get all the details about the incident, the name of the truck driver and everything else that I'd need in order to write up a story for the paper. I didn't have to wade into the mob of curious people that had collected. I'd just go over and talk to Mr. Bertram in an hour or so.
Someone had called the truck driver's attention to what had happened. He came dashing out of Moe's, his eyes wild, a doughnut clutched in one hand. He went galloping across the highway toward his truck.
"And look at the bar across the street!" Miss Nesdeburt cried, her little hands going to her mouth in dismay. "The front of it is smashed in a little bit too!"
"Oh, that happened last week," I said airily. "A man who was going to go in for a drink couldn't stop his car in time. We're so used to accidents like that that we hardly notice them any more."
Grant and David and Mr. Hawkins appeared from the direction of the garages, where they had been arranging for the black cat's living quarters.
Grant went across the highway to see the excitement and, I suspected, to get a few of the crushed or slightly damaged grapefruit that the truck driver would have to discard.
I was right. Miss Nestleburt and Mr. Hawkins had a big sack of slightly crushed grapefruit in the car with them when they left, and as for us--for three weeks we dined on sliced grapefruit, halved grapefruit, peeled grapefruit, grapefruit salad, grapefruit a la mode and grapefruit au gratin.
One morning as I placed grapefruit halves before Grant and David, Grant caught my expression. He said something that sounded like, "Don't feel that way. Grapefruit is good for hales."
"What?" I asked.
"I said you shouldn't feel that way. Grapefruit is healthy."
"No, that isn't either what you said. You said something that sounded like 'Grapefruit is good for hales.'"
"Well, I don't remember exactly what I said, but that's what I meant. Grapefruit is healthy."
"I knew what you meant; what I wanted to know was, what did you say?"
Grant sighed. I know my curiosity exasperates him, but it annoys me for hours if I can't discover exactly what a word was that I didn't quite get.
"Why do you always have to change the wording of what you say when I say 'What?' instead of actually repeating what you say, which is what I want you to do?" I railed at him.
This argument of ours, which has come up over and over again, grows very involved if we don't drop it in its earliest stages--and sad experience has taught me that Grant can't, or won't, recall and tell me the exact word he used, anyway.
I was clearing away the remains of the sugar-sprinkled grapefruit slices we had had for dessert one evening, and Grant was in the office assuring some man that we hadn't found his toupee in the cabin he had occupied the previous night, when a lanky, thin-faced, big-eyed boy opened the living room door and walked into the living room.
"Oh, I guess I musta got the wrong door," he said, twisting his dirty handkerchief nervously between skinny fingers. "I'm sorry, maam, but I thought I oughta tell you--I guess my ma is gonna have a baby."
I remembered renting a double cabin, number 3, earlier in the day, to an extremely pregnant woman and her son.
I stared at the pale boy. I must have been rather pale myself. "You mean--right now?" I gasped.
He nodded shamefacedly.
"Oh, dear. Well, sit down on the davenport there. Don't be nervous. What's your name?"
"Eugene."
"Well, well. And how old are you?"
"Ten."
"Ten? Well. That's a nice age. And what kind of work does your daddy do?"
"He's a salesman. He travels. On'y gets home once in a while."
"And do you have any brothers or sisters?" I asked. It was as though, by stalling and refusing to face what was happening in one of our cabins, I could postpone it, or make it not so. I was coming out of my first condition of shock and realizing that I must call a doctor, and tell Grant what was happening, immediately, when the boy answered my last question.
"Yes, ma'am," he said. "I got six brothers and five sisters. My littlest sister is still a baby. On'y one and a half. My oldest sister is takin care of the kids now while Ma and me was gonna visit Gramma in Frisco. Ma didn't think she'd have this new baby for awhile yit. But I guess she's gonna, though. She's got pains somethin' awful."
Numbly I seized the telephone book and looked up the number of one of the town's three doctors. There was no answer when I dialed his number. I dialed the number of another; he was, a crisp feminine voice informed me, out on a call. I dialed the number of the residence of the third doctor. I heard a ringing sound, and I prayed that this doctor would be avail able. The suspense of waiting for someone to lift the receiver at the other end of the line was terrible, and I tried feverishly to occupy my mind. Doctors ... doctors . .. how many famous ones could I think off? I kept my mind off what was happening in cabin 3, and concentrated on doctors. Famous doctors; well, there were the Mayo brothers, of course, and Dr. Kildare. He's pretty famous, I mused, even though he is just a figment of someone's imagination.
Imagination .. . some philosophers think everything is a figment of people's imagination--or would it be figments? Figments, pigments, pudding and pie; babies are cute, but they sure do cry. And here I was back on the subject of babies again.
The ringing at the other end of the line stopped (although the ringing in my head continued) and the doctor himself answered. I said,
"I'm calling Dr. Kildare! I mean--" I laughed apologetically, "I'm calling Dr. Adams. Is this Dr. Adams?"
When he gave me a curt, affirmative reply, obviously bored with what he considered my facetiousness, I told him what was going on; and he said he'd be over at once.
By that time Grant, having convinced the man that we hadn't found his toupee, came back into the living room, and I told him about the impending blessed event. His complexion took on a hue to match mine and that of the skinny boy.
"I've called the doctor," I said. "What do we do in the meantime?"
Grant, the ever resourceful, the maddeningly efficient, was stymied for once.
"Well..." he said uncertainly.
"That's how I feel about it," I said. "But we can't just--sit here."
"You're a woman," Grant pointed out cruelly, passing the buck to me. "You've had two babies."
"Yes," I came back at him, "but I just had them--I didn't deliver them."
"Well, you won't have to deliver these either. I mean, this one. The doctor will be here in a few minutes."
"I know, but--what about in the meantime?"
"Well," Grant said uneasily, "I suppose you should go in once and see how she's getting along. Maybe you can give her some aspirin or something."
"Aspirin!" I snorted.
Donna was playing contentedly in the bedroom, stacking blocks, knocking them over, and stacking them up again. David was outside adding another worn-out baby blanket to the bed he had made in the garage of cabin 6 for his new black cat. With the children occupied, and the dinner dishes done, obviously I couldn't claim any pressing domestic duties.
"Well... come on," I said.
The door of cabin 3 had never looked so forbidding. While we were standing in front of it, wondering whether or not to knock, little Eugene brushed past us and opened it. He went to stand beside the bed, where he looked from his mother to us with big, dark eyes.
"You had the baby yit?" he asked her anxiously.
"You don't see it nowheres, do you?"
Grant and I edged into the cabin. "How do you do," I said. "We heard--that is, your son said--you were--well, having a little difficulty."
"That ain't the half of it, honey," the woman remarked, biting her lower lip until there was a row of neat little white teeth marks printed upon it.
She was a huge woman, broad-shouldered and big boned, and her body rose like a small mountain beneath the blankets. Her greying hair was long and untidy on the pillow. Her dark, beautiful eyes were like jewels in a crude setting; they were surrounded by flushed, large-pored flesh, and complemented by a large, misshapen nose. Her teeth were pretty, but they were too much in evidence when she talked, as were all the other details of the interior of her mouth. The brazen display of such an expanse of gums and tongue made me feel ill.
"I'm Mrs. Watkins, you prob'ly know that. Cripes, I'm sorry if I was rude when you come in, but I was havin' a pain. Say, didja call me a doc?"
I nodded, and she went on, "Ain't it a fit, me havin' a kid in a motel? I never thought I'd have it so soon, but you sure can't tell noways, can you?"
She took my feeble smile for agreement that you sure can't tell noways, and laughed heartily, slapping a swelling under the blankets that was presumably her thigh. Her laugh was of a size to match her body; it boomed and bounced through the room until the pictures on the walls quivered.
Grant and I were so relieved at finding her in good spirits and not in much pain that we began to giggle, too; and a moment later the three of us were laughing uproariously at nothing, while Eugene stared at us with wide, solemn eyes.
Mrs. Watkins was the first to regain control of herself.
"I'll bust a gut if I don't quit laughin'! Ain't it about time for the doc?" she asked, dabbing at her moist eyes with a handkerchief she took from under the pillow.
"Yes," I said. "He lives only about a mile and a half away. He'll be here any minute."
"I wouldn't care," she said, "On'y I have my kids pretty sudden. It'll be that way for you too, honey, after you've had eleven, like me."
I couldn't think of an appropriate reply to that one. Grant looked at his watch anxiously, shook it and held it to his ear.
"Eleven!" I exclaimed after a moment. "You've had twelve, haven't you? At least that's what Eugene--"
"Sure, ma, you know, there's Ruthie, and Lyon, and Ernest, and--"
"Well, I guess I know my own kids' names!" she interrupted. "Yeah, that's right, twelve. So many I can't remember noways! My husband don't git home very often, but he sure gits home often enough! I musta forgot about the littlest one. Seems like I ain't got used to havin' her yit."
I couldn't keep my eyes off Mrs. Watkins' large, flapping red tongue when she talked. The crease down the center of it seemed to separate two smooth pieces of raw meat.
Suddenly her teeth clamped down on her lip again and she turned her face away from us, moaning.
I looked at Grant. He looked at his watch again. We were still standing, stiff and uneasy, beside the bed.
When Mrs. Watkins' pain had ebbed, she put one hand into her mouth, took out her false teeth, and stared at them.
Grant and I stared at them too, fascinated. They were even and pretty, a fragile pink-and-white toy in her big, roughened hands.
"Seems like it makes me feel better to look at 'em," she confessed. "Makes it so I ain't so lonesome for Rodney. That's my hubby. He gave me these teeth, for our tenth weddin' anniversary. I was gonna get some cheap old ugly things, but he said no, the best wasn't none too good for his girl, and so he bought 'em for me. They're the--the nicest thing I ever had in my life!"
Tears were pouring out of Mrs. Watkins' lovely dark eyes, streaming over the flushed, coarse skin of her cheeks. "Cripes, I wisht Rodney was here!" she sobbed.
"I'd settle for Doctor Adams," Grant said. He glanced again at his watch. '"He should be here by now. I wonder if his car could have broken down?"
"Maybe--maybe you should go look for him," I said hesitantly.
"I think I will." Grant moved toward the door. "I'll call his home first, and if he's been gone awhile I'll start out looking for him."
Mrs. Watkins replaced her teeth, wiped her eyes, and beamed at me.
"I'm awful moody, an awful sentimental," she admitted.
Eugene edged to the door behind Grant.
"I'm gonna go with him, ma. 'Bye, ma'am."
"The kid's gittin' scared," Mrs. Watkins remarked, chuckling, when the door had closed behind them. "So's your hubby. Men are all alike, ain't they? Pantywaists, when you git right down to it. Pantywaists!" Her great booming laugh filled the cabin, while I tittered politely and wondered where she got the idea that men had exclusive rights to the term. My legs felt as though they were made of jello that hadn't quite set, and my hands were useless, quivering hunks of ice.
"How long do you think it will be," I began; "I mean, you've had so many, maybe you can almost tell..."
"How soon I'm gonna have the kid? Cripes, it ain't gonna be long, honey, I can tell you that! Wouldn' it be a fit if I had it before the doc come?"
I collapsed onto a chair.
Mrs. Watkins looked at me sympathetically, and clucked her huge red, wet tongue. Her tangled grey hair formed a rough halo around her face.
"Don't you worry none, honey," she comforted. "The doc'll git here all right."
Then she had another pain.
Watching her, I thought I had never felt so alone in my life--dreadfully alone, although there was one human being in the room with me and strong indications that there would very soon be another.
I began to review the pitifully little I knew about officiating at births--just in case. First, you had to be sure the baby cried, so it could start breathing properly. Second, you had to tie its umbilical cord. That was as much as I knew.
I wiped my forehead and glanced at Mrs. Watkins. She was gazing at me now, her dark eyes full of compassion. I had a feeling that if a stove and a pan had been handy, she would have climbed out of bed to make me some hot tea.
For her benefit, I summoned what I hoped would pass for a brave smile. "I'll be right back," I said. "I'll just get some string and--can you think of anything else I might need?"
"You look like you might need a good stiff snort, honey!" Her merriment thundered behind me as I slipped out to the linen closet.
On the bottom shelf of the linen closet was a pile of string, salvaged for months past from neatly wrapped and tied packages of clean laundry. I gathered great handfuls of the string, thrusting it into the curve of my arm. Then I happened to notice the heavy, folded rubber sheet that we lend to customers with small children. That, I reasoned, might come in handy.
A large round head appeared in the doorway of the garage, announcing itself with a cough. "You the lady that rents cabins? I want a cabin. How about renting me a cabin?"
"Not now!" I snapped. "I'm busy! Can't you see I'm having a baby?"
After the head had disappeared I surveyed the linen closet distractedly, wondering what else I should take. There were stacks and stacks of snowy sheets, pillow slips, towels, bath mats and wash cloths. There was the untidy pile of tooth brushes, pajama tops, slippers, hot water bottles, blouses, and odds and ends that customers had left and failed to come back for. There were extra blankets, pillows, boxes of toilet paper and soap, coat hangers and water pitchers. None of it seemed especially appropriate for the occasion.
I went back into cabin 3. I threw the string onto a chair and held up the rubber sheet, not knowing how to suggest, in a delicate way, that it might be wise to put it on her bed.
She got the idea immediately. She replaced her false teeth, from which she had been deriving solace again, and said, "I'm glad you thoughta that, honey. I don't wanna cause you no more trouble than I got to."
She heaved up her mountainous body while I slipped the rubber sheet under and adjusted it so that it would be smooth and comfortable for her to lie on.
A horrified expression shot over her face. "Cnpes! I hadnt ought to've pushed myself up like that. I'm afraid we're in for it now. I--oh, cripes!"
My heart pounded in my throat as I realized that I was about to become a midwife, whether I wanted to or not.
"Oh, wait!" I pleaded. "Please wait! The doctor will be here in just a few minutes."
"Honey," she gasped, "I can't wait. You oughta know that. Cripes, I wisht Rodney was here! That man ain't never around when I want him, only after the kids is born, and then all he does is git me that way again!"
"Can you wait just one minute?" I beseeched. "I'll get my medical book--I didn't think of it till just now--please, oh, please wait!"
I staggered out the door and along the sidewalk until I reached our door. I threw myself into the living room, tore open the door of the bookcase, and snatched out our heavy, important looking medical book.
I was starting back toward cabin 3 when I heard the anguished shriek of a very young human being. I froze in horror.
"Already?" I must have said it out loud because David, who had appeared from nowhere, said, "Huh? You better take care of Donna, Mama. She's sure crying--don't you hear her?"
"Oh, is that Donna?" I was so relieved I could have kissed him. I hurried into the children's bedroom, David jabbering about something loudly and excitedly behind me.
Donna was holding up one small fat hand. "Donna hurta finger!" she wailed. "Mama kiss it."
Apparently she had hit her finger with one of the blocks she was stacking into piles. David was still talking excitedly.
"Oh, be quiet!" I said. "Whatever it is you're talking about, it can wait. I'm very, very busy. Now hush and go play."
I kissed Donna's upraised finger and, turning to leave again, noticed that she had been stacking more than just blocks. Her soft, stuffed dolls and teddy bears formed the base of a pyramid of toys that culminated, two feet up, in her little rocking chair.
I charged back to cabin 3, clutching the heavy medical book.
As I opened the door Mrs. Watkins shoved her teeth back into her mouth. "Did the doc git here?" she gasped.
"No!" I snapped. "Now just don't be so impatient. I've got this medical book. We'll get along without the doctor." I was unreasonably angry at her.
I snapped on the light and opened the book at random. I tried to concentrate on the print that swam and bounced before my eyes.
Mrs. Watkins was breathing hard, and grunting spasmodically. I decided to read aloud, to keep Mrs. Watkins' mind off her troubles and to reassure her that I was capable and efficient, that I was doing something, that I wasn't just sitting idly by.
A few of the words finally detached themselves from the swirling pages. "Whenever material from the bile, called bilirubin, gets into the bloodstream, it is followed by a yellowish discoloration of the skin." Maybe, I thought, there was some bilirubin loose in my blood right now. Goodness knows I felt bad enough for there to be quarts of it coursing around through my veins. And since yellow symbolizes cowardice and fear, what could be more appropriate than for my skin to take on a virulent shade of that color?
Mrs. Watkins grunted, and caught her breath. "There ain't no use worryin' about anything like that now, honey," she panted.
She gave a longer, sustained grunt, and then she began to laugh weekly. "There ain't no use worryin' about anything. It's all over, honey."
"Over!" I threw the book onto the floor.
Mrs. Watkins pulled back the blanket, uncovering herself. For the next few minutes I was a very reasonable facsimile of a whirling dervish.
There was a tiny, obscenely red and gooey creature, howling till I thought my ear drums would break. Fighting to think in spite of the noise and Mrs. Watkins' uncontrollable laughter, I clung to the two things I could salvage out of the chaos that was my mind. The baby's umbilical cord must be tied and the baby must be made to cry so that he would start to breathe.
Well, there was no use in worrying about his breathing. His lusty howls were shredding the air all around us. That left only one urgent task--the tying of the umbilical cord. Throwing fastidiousness and delicacy to the winds, I seized the heap of string and tackled the job.
By the time I had finished, the baby was literally swathed in string, but his umbilical cord was tied. I wasn't exactly sure why a new baby's cord must be tied, but in order to be certain that I had accomplished whatever purpose the ritual serves, I had tied it in four separate places.
Just as I was washing my shaking hands in the bathroom, David burst into the cabin.
"Mama! A customer's waiting for you. And Donna's all bloody. I turned on the light and she's all bloody."
"I'll be right back," I told Mrs. Watkins, rushing through the door.
Judging by the wreckage and her bleeding upper lip, Donna must have tried to sit in the chair that was perched on top of the pyramid of her toys.
"Donna hurta mouf!" she wailed, when she saw me. I picked her up out of the mess and tucked her under my arm, heading for the bathroom to wash her lip. I glanced into the office on the way. A young man with a pale, quivering mustache was standing there. His expression stated plainly that he had been standing there for some time.
I was afraid I'd begin to gibber if I tried to explain the delay to him, so I waved my free hand at him in a ghoulish attempt at cheerfulness.
"Let's wash Donna's lip," I suggested, when we were in the bathroom. Donna sent up an immediate howl of protest, and I applied psychology--although I was tempted to apply something less abstract and more painful.
"Oh, yes," I crooned, "we must wash Donna's lip, and her hands, and her feet."
"Wash Donna's feet?" she repeated, her round blue eyes interested behind their veil of untidy wisps of brown hair.
I nodded, looking more closely at her lip. I decided the cut wasn't very serious. It had bled a lot, but it wasn't bleeding now. I'd wait on the impatient young man and get him out of the way before I took the time to wash her lip.
I left Donna in the bathroom and hurried back to confront the quivering mustache.
The prim, thin-lipped mouth beneath the mustache was opening to speak, when David hurtled into the office and clutched my dress.
"Mama!" he yelled. "She's having another baby!"
"Twins?" I shrieked. "Oh, dear, what'll we do?"
The mustache was twitching with shock now. "You'd better rent a cabin somewhere else," I said. "I'm--" I paused. What was that splashing noise?
I deserted the mustache and ran into the bathroom. "Donna washing hands and feet," Donna explained. She was standing in the toilet.
I looked at her dumbly, too confused to be able to decide whether to take care of her or to rush out and get to work on the second baby's umbilical cord.
David, who had disappeared, came excitedly up to me again. "I was just out there again," he cried, "and now she's got another one! And this newest one is solid black!"
I pulled Donna out of the toilet. Then I lowered the seat cover and sat down heavily.
"Black?" I repeated in a whisper. My lips felt dry, and my head was throbbing. "Oh, no, it couldn't be black. You must be mistaken."
"Nope, it's black, all right. And you should see the second one--all white, with black legs and ears! Well, I'm going back to see if she has any more. Gee, won't Miss Nestleburt be surprised when we tell her the cat she gave me turned into four cats?"