XVTUCSON
Hewas sitting up when Cal and Slim came again. That was the day of the telegram that his father was leaving the East and would be in Tucson in three days more. Also there were more Tucson and Border papers with a lot extra to say about Vallejo’s attack on the San Pasquali oil wells; of the rescue of the American party by Mexican government troops; but especially of the motor drive of one white man through the rebel’s lines—seventy miles north, clear through to Nogales—how the car had been found at dawn at the edge of town, the driver close to death from a gunshot wound in his left side, two American girls unconscious in the car, and another unhurt, but too scared to talk.
‘Not a drop of gas in the tank or you’d have rammed right into the Border, Elbert,’ Cal said.
‘You sure stepped on the oats,’ said Slim.
‘We didn’t get to stay in Mexico,’ Elbert complained after a time. ‘We had to come right back.’
Cal and Slim looked at each other, faces long and grave.
‘He didn’t get to stay,’ said Cal.
‘Only one horse went over back with him,’ said Slim. ‘Only one powder magazine blew up. Only hit by one forty-five—’
‘Had to come right back,’ said Cal.
‘I thought I’d get to ride,’ said Elbert, ‘but I had to drive that car—’
Cal inquired after a moment: ‘Do you reckon we might take Elbert along again sometime?’
‘I ain’t a well man. I ain’t ready to state as to that right now’,’ said Slim. ‘I need to be babied along at Heaslep’s, where they ain’t rough, and talk gentle—’
‘He wants to hear about old hoof-and-mouth,’ Cal suggested.
‘They’re going to let me out of here to-morrow,’ said Elbert. ‘I’ll be goin’ up to Tucson—to meet my father.’
Elbert was clear of the hospital before he began to see things straight. In fact, he was standing with Mamie in her box stall the next day in the livery stable at Nogales, on the American side, when some perfectly useless frictions and pressures fell away. In the first place, here was Mamie safe and sound, and the future opened with a new chance to begin over again at the bottom. Had he lost the mare, there could have been no real beginning over, at the bottom or anywhere else. Secondly, he hadn’t divulged his secret, even indelirium. Certain time had been lost, the fault his in deciding to stop at Heaslep’s for a friendly call on the way from San Forenso to the Border.
Beyond doubt he must travel alone from now on. He was breathing easier. A bit weak on his legs—too long in bed—but ready to begin again. Queer, how it all cleared up for him standing with Mamie like this. ‘Stand around and talk to her,’ Bob Leadley had said. ‘She likes to be consulted on family affairs. It won’t do you no harm. She’s one more listening mare.’
‘I’ll just leave you right here, Mamie,’ he whispered, ‘while I go up to Tucson for a day or two. These people seem to be treating you right—and it’s handy to the Border. Take it easy till I come back, because we’ll be losing ourselves in work after that.’
... A queer, embarrassed half-embrace, neither knowing just what to do or say, and a swift look into his father’s eyes after several months—really the first exchange that had the beginnings of understanding in it. Elbert finally grasped what a son is so slow to find out—that his father was not merely a parent, but a separate human being, with his own struggles, silences, dilemmas, like the rest of the world. It was Elbert’s first understanding of his own house, and the man of it, from the attitude of an outsider. Anothermoment of a fresh beginning in life, he realized. Meanwhile sentences like this were passing:
‘Got yourself pretty badly shot up?’
‘It was a bad jumble for a minute—’
‘But you saw them through—’
‘I had to. I don’t even remember, most of it.’
‘Come on, let’s go in to dinner.... No, Nancy isn’t married yet, but the house feels as if news might break out any day—likely by the time I—we—get back—’
The last was nothing like a foregone conclusion, but phrased tentatively, with questioning look.
‘No, I won’t be going back just yet,’ Elbert said.
He felt the silence; also suddenly he felt his father’s side as well as his own. A man accustomed to a houseful of daughters might really want to have his only son standing beside him very much. It was an entirely new angle.
‘Haven’t got enough?’
‘Not quite through—’
‘Going back to Heaslep’s?’
‘Oh, no—’
No resistance from his father. Elbert hardly knew how to handle this new man-to-man acquiescence—no tampering. He had braced himself, but no strength was required; and now for amoment he was unnerved by friendliness. Was his father changed, because of things the newspapers said about his drive to Nogales? A whole lot of stuff had been written which no fellow could pay any attention to, about himself. Elbert began to feel an almost irresistible impulse to tell the whole story to his father.
‘Not going back to San Pasquali?’ the latter asked.
‘No.’
‘I was hoping you didn’t mean to tie up with this man, Burton—’
‘Oh, no.’
‘And those friends of yours—those cowhands—’
‘I’m planning to be alone for a while.’
Elbert’s answers were automatic. A fight was still on in him, not to divulge about Bob Leadley and the gold mine. It seemed almost that his father had the right to know—but Elbert kept his mouth shut.
Toward the end of dinner the elder man said with a laugh: ‘You’ll be needing some money—’
‘No, I’m all fixed, thanks.’
Elbert couldn’t follow his father’s reaction to that. Mr. Sartwell said nothing, but seemed both glad and sorry at the same time. After that he spoke with even a little more care, not to impose his will. It was like two men talking in a club,about anything in the world, except what each meant to the other.
Elbert was waiting in the reception room of the Finishing School. It was the summer season and only a few of the girls were staying over—those whose families did not live in Tucson, possibly. The place was shaded and flowery; blossoms on all the tables, and one great basket, shaped like a French hat of an old day, on the piano, filled with young pink roses. He heard laughter and whispering in the hallway. It wasn’t exactly clear to him what he must say or do. He felt his wound right now, a sort of general breakdown. The door he was looking toward—the direction the voices came from—didn’t open. Her step sounded from behind. He saw her first among the vines at the window, facing the porch. Her lips moved, her hand lifted, the door opened, but everything was stiller than one could imagine.
‘I would have known you—’
‘Of course—’
‘It’s probably because I saw you before—I mean before dark that night—’
He felt a vague surprise in himself that he caught the drift so readily. ‘At the barefooted woman’s—’ he finished.
‘Yes—’
‘It was different, after supper that night,’ shewent on, ‘but I’m glad I would have known you, as you are to-day. Reading the papers was so confusing.’
‘They never know when to stop.’
‘They didn’t tell it nearly all, either—’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t have known it was the same story by reading it in the papers.’
‘I see—’
She was changed—less glitter somehow, as if her light came from deeper in, a light more delicate. She had on a creamy dress, no folds in it, but not tight anywhere. This meeting wasn’t like the first time in the Señora’s house; nor yet, was it like the sense of her which had come in the hospital, from so many hours of pondering over the separate sentences of her letter. Suddenly he knew he must never tie himself to any particular moment when with her, because she wasn’t going to be the same the next time. Tying to one meeting would keep him from catching on to all that the next held in store. His mind clung for a moment, however, to the memory of the alabaster bowl at home, while she was still going on about the newspapers.
‘They didn’t see you. They didn’t know what we did—what we tried to do. They sort of laughed at us, and talked of your great bravery, but there was something no one saw—’
She was standing at his left—a hush between the sentences. ‘... They didn’t know that somebody was helping us—’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean it wasn’t just your strength. Why, you were like one dead; and yet you still drove. It was only when we were safe that your hand relaxed—’
‘A case of knowing I had to, wasn’t it?’
‘More than that. That helped, of course, but there was something more—’
He said: ‘I didn’t know much of what was happening at the time—that is, to remember, but I had a feeling you were helping—’
‘Did you know that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Really, did you know that?’
‘I had the feeling you were helping,’ he repeated. ‘First I thought your hand—you know, I thought your hand would come up and help—’
‘It couldn’t.’
‘I didn’t know then.’
‘It was because it couldn’t, don’t you see?’
‘No. I don’t understand.’
‘When I found I couldn’t lift my hand, I knew I had to help another way!’
‘You mean you—you prayed?’
‘I never did before,’ she laughed. ‘Yes, it was like that—’
It was as if the windows were all thrust open into a wide silent summer, like the stillness of mountains, where there is not even the rustle of a wing. A clean perfume came in, and there was a clear seeing in Elbert’s brain, as if an arc-light were burning, where only candles had shone before.
‘It was so dreadful, because I had promised,’ she said.
‘How was that?’
‘You had asked me to help you, and I had promised. Then I found I could not even lift my hand. It was then I kept saying, “I have to help him, please. I have to help him, please—”’
‘I see,’ said Elbert.
‘And then it was as if I could see the car below—see right through into it, and I could see you and me, sort of little and broken inside, and I could feelourpain, but we were really together outside and above, and we knew it would be all right—’
Now he could actually help carry out her picture. ‘I remember in the hospital,’ he said quickly, ‘when they gave me an anæsthetic, I could look down at myself like that. I wouldn’t tell anybody—if I were you.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t for worlds! They’d call it being out of the head!’
So she had kept all this, until he came. Just now he turned to her, and there wasn’t a soundfrom the halls. The light was easy and flowing in the room. Everything was like a slow movement. His right foot raised to take the step toward her, but suddenly he knew if he took the step, it would be next to impossible to remember clearly that he must find Bart Leadley; quite plain, it was, that if he took this step toward her, he wouldn’t be able to go down into Mexico alone and keep his mind to the allegiance he had entered with Bart’s father. His foot settled back to the floor.
‘... And the later part—all different—I’ll never forget!’ she was telling him. ‘It was when the dawn came—the time we were in the awful cold—and they found us, and you were hanging forward on the wheel—your face was like stone—eyes open, but no life. Oh, I’ll never forget! It was as if the skin of your face were pulled back over the bones from behind ... and they lifted me out to an ambulance, before they lifted you, and I saw your left side—all wet and stained dark ... and then I knew I wasn’t helping—so frightened from your look—and I knew I must not fall into fears, nor pay any attention to your wound, but help more—from higher up, and never stop—’
It was getting harder and harder to think of the work ahead. Elbert plunged into the inevitability of it right now.
‘I’ve got a work to do,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go away. I’m glad I came to-day. About all this—I won’t forget any of it. I’ll know more about it—when I come back—’
The most astonishing thing of all, she seemed to understand even that—no resistance whatever from her, as there had been none from his father. Was it always like this—when one was sure of himself?
‘I have work to do, too,’ she told him at the window. ‘We’ll know all about everything, when the time comes.’