FREDDY JAMISON TRUDGED SULLENLY along. He carried a walking stick fashioned out of a witch hazel branch. Periodically he used it like a scythe, swiping viciously at a weed or a wild flower, as if it were his mortal enemy. In his wake he’d left a ruin of decapitated flora, their heads lolling at the stems like heads visited by the executioner.
The color had returned to his rather handsome, pasty, pitted face, but he was still visibly shaken from his little encounter with Leo Garvix shortly before.
Up ahead Gladys Garvix sauntered along and between vicious swipes at flora, he’d glance up to admire a view of her from behind—those slim, hard, wondrous legs laboring up a shallow acclivity, stooping beneath branches, stretching, climbing, striding. Then the thought of Garvix would intrude itself again and he’d start once more to rage and lunge at flowers.
“Aren’t you talking?” he cried up ahead to her and felt a stabbing pain in his stomach.
“I’m not talking,” she said, her back to him. “I’m seething.”
“Well, then, seethe out loud so I can hear you.”
“Son of a bitch!” she shouted into the wilderness.
“Beg pardon?” Freddy panted forward toward her.
“I said, ‘That son of a bitch.’”
“Oh,” he laughed. “Quite agree. Keep talking. I’m so sick of just hearing the goddamned crickets.”
“That pig!” she ranted on, suddenly liberated. “Bullying everyone! Blabbing about his property. I could puke when he starts that crap about his property.” She suddenly corrected herself. “No—not property. ‘Properties.’ Isn’t that what he always says? ‘Properties’?”
He looked at her and thought how anger made her more alluring. That surly petulance of hers, the funny pugnacity. She never meant it to be funny yet it always seemed to come out that way. Funny—and devilishly pretty.
“Properties,” said Freddy, imitating Leo’s pompous nasalities. “Properties, plural.”
“Hah!” Gladys ripped off a harsh, triumphant laugh. Then he came abreast of her and silently they plodded forward, correcting their direction at the sound of the surveyor’s voice booming up ahead.
“How has he been lately?” Jamison asked after a moment.
“Vile. Impossible. Still convinced he’s dying. Takes his pulse every ten minutes.”
She stooped beneath a branch and he watched the purple serge of her skirt spread and grow taut about her seat.
“What does old Hartley say?”
“He says, ‘No such luck.’” She laughed once more with that fierce, funny mordancy, then swept forward, carried by an angry momentum.
Jamison, puffing like an ancient boiler, had to double-time in order merely to keep her in sight.
He was about to shout something at her. Tell her to slow down. Wait for him. But in the next moment the low branch of a birch sapling, ablaze with small white blossoms, swung back and lashed her face. Jamison, rushing forward, caught a glimpse of her on one knee, bent over, cradling her head. When at last he came huffing up, she was swatting furiously at the branch.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” Hissing like a serpent, her arms churning wildly. “Goddamnit. Shit. Why the hell did I have to come out here anyway?”
He knelt down beside her, prying her fingers forcibly away from where they covered her face. Then he examined the small purplish welt that rose star-shaped just beneath her eye.
“Just to see the fucking properties?” she fumed on.
“It’s nothing. Just a bit red,” he whispered for some curious reason, then poked the welt tentatively with his pinky finger. She winced and in the next moment he put his lips to the spot. She recoiled abruptly, leaving him jaw thrust forward, lips slightly puckered in midair, looking like a goldfish feeding.
“That wasn’t nice,” he murmured reproachfully.
“Tough. Don’t mess around.”
“Not nice at all.” He was deeply grieved. He stood up and reached back for his canteen, unbuckling it behind his back. When he’d twisted the cap off he looked at her slyly out of the corner of his eye. He appeared to be weighing some action very carefully in his mind. In the next moment he thrust the canteen toward her with a waggish grin. “Have a spot?”
“No, thanks.” She stared at him coldly.
He shrugged, bowed slightly from the waist, then tilted the canteen back and drank deeply.
She watched him for a moment, an air of impatience and distaste about her.
“I don’t see how you stand up,” she said at last when he’d finished.
“I take it so I don’t have to stand up.”
In the next moment he placed his palm flat and hard against her breast.
“Oh for Chrissake.” She beat the hand off as if it were an impertinent fly. “You disgust me.”
“I know,” he said, suddenly morose and apologetic. He drank again deeply from the canteen.
“No wonder your stomach’s a mess,” she chided.
“What mess? A tiny ulcer here and there? A bit of blood in the stool? What does it mean?” He laughed and tilted the canteen elegantly to his lips, drinking from it with his pinky extended. When he’d finished the draught he wiped his bluish lips with the back of his hand and hiccupped. “Causes a bit of woe every now and then, but one of these little beauties sets it all straight.” He held up a thin white wafer for her to see, eyeing it covetously as if it were a priceless gem he was scrutinizing through a jeweler’s loop. In the next moment he popped it into his mouth, grinding it there between his jaws with an amused and even spiteful grin.
The surveyor cried from somewhere up ahead. She turned abruptly and resumed the trek. Freddy watched her go with the numb, dense feeling that gin always produced in that part of his brain just behind the forehead. In the next moment he lost sight of her wavering figure. Something like panic seized him and suddenly he began to trot out after her.
It didn’t take him long to catch up. When he did he tried to take her arm, but she snatched it away. “I looked for you last night at Hungerford’s,” he said.
“I got stuck as usual,” she replied brusquely, ploughing forward, her eyes set resolutely before her. “He ate too much supper and drank too much wine.”
“Ate too much and drank too much? The dying man?” He laughed. The thought of that amused him.
“The dying man,” she said. “At nine o’clock he belched and went to bed. Did I miss anything?”
They both laughed at the thought of what she might have missed at the Hungerfords’. They had both spent too many such nights to have had any great regrets.
Off to the left of them Rogers’ voice was pealing forth a new set of directions.
“32 degrees north-northwest—5 degrees six minutes south—”
They paused to take their bearings from his voice.
“She knows, you know,” Freddy said when they had resumed again.
“I know she knows. I’m not a fool.”
“What are you snapping at me for?”
“I’m not snapping,” she snapped.
“Oh,” he said, a trifle stricken. And on they went.
“Not that it matters to her,” he said after they’d gone a bit further. “Just as long as we’re discreet. Don’t worry.”
“Worried?” She laughed contemptuously. “Who’s worried? I’m just bored to tears.”
“I would’ve hoped it wasn’t quite so boring,” he said. She turned instantly, hearing the injury in his voice.
“Oh, for pity sake! Don’t look that way. I’m sorry.”
“Gage doesn’t bore you to tears,” said Freddy, all cold-eyed and staring when he’d reached her. “I can see that.”
“Gage?”
“Yes, Dr. Pious-priggish-self-importance.”
“What about him?”
“He doesn’t bore you. I can see that.”
“Oh, for Christ sake,” she moaned despairingly and flung her hands upward. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
“Well, he doesn’t, does he?”
“Bore me?” She gave a short, brutal laugh. “He’s as big a bore as all the rest. Worried about his properties and all that. Just like them. And besides—” her voice trailed off.
“Besides what?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Something about him. Something a little off.”
Freddy’s eyes glinted merrily. “Know what Leo thinks?”
“I can imagine.”
Freddy snickered. “Leo thinks he’s a fag.”
“Leo thinks everyone’s a fag. He’s got a thing about that.” Gladys stalked forward, flailing her arms at the indifferent foliage. “Nothing wrong with fags. Wish Leo had a little fag in him. At least give him a bit of style.”
Freddy stopped dead in his tracks, stunned by her words. But only for a moment. Then suddenly he threw his head back and started to laugh—a full, rollicking therapeutic laugh—a laugh that annihilated all of his present apprehensions.
She turned abruptly and started back up the path, he right behind her.
“Gladys,” he said, reaching after her.
“Leave me alone.” She swept his hands away. “Not here. Not now.”
“I can’t help it.”
He reached again. This time she slapped his hand. “Quit it.”
“I love you.”
She winced at the whine of his voice. “If you do, then for God’s sake, don’t paw me.”
“15 degrees south-southwest—10 degrees 8 minutes—”
The sound of the surveyor’s voice had a dampening effect on his ardor. “Can you get out tonight?” he whispered hastily.
There was a mixture of boredom and exasperation on her face. But she wanted to assuage him. “If he goes to bed early.”
His eyes glowed hotly. “At the boat house?”
“If he goes to bed early.” She repeated the words with tension tightening her voice. She tried to get past him but he detained her with his hand and a rueful stare. “If you don’t, I have to spend the night with her. Pruning delphinium. Delphinium cheilanthum,” he added, imitating Sybil’s iron-jawed, finishing school nasalities. “The Wrexham strain, you know,” he said full of snarling ridicule, and suddenly they were both roaring, hooting laughter.
The next moment he was all grim and serious again. “You will come?” he asked.
“I’ll try.”
“You promise?”
She looked at him pityingly. That mournful, pleading thing in him she despised.
“I promise,” she said very softly.
Jamison reached for her again. This time she glanced around cautiously, then slipped half-heartedly into his arms.