Richard Hudson drove by the house three times before he decided to stop. He could have called ahead, of course, and asked if he could drop by, but then he would have been committed, and at some point in the conversation he would have had to give a reason for his visit.
When he parked the car, he told himself that he still had all his options. This could be just a social visit, a welcome-to-the-neighborhood kind of thing.
He sat in the car with the engine off staring at the house, another ramshackle Victorian. Okay, he admitted to himself, he was nervous. Very nervous. He told himself that was because the lady was a minister. Funerals were the only occasions in his adult life on which he knowingly conversed with rabbis and ministers. As a general rule, members of God’s squad made him uncomfortable, although he had never bothered to try to figure out why that was so.
Aggravating his historic queasiness around the clergy was the fact that this minister was a woman. The truth of the matter was that he didn’t like women much, either. Oh, he talked to them, of course. Women were ubiquitious in American society; there was just no way to avoid them unless you lived in a cave in Arizona or an igloo in Alaska. Yet his contacts with them were superficial, in the line of duty, so to speak, and he liked it that way.
Perhaps that was why the Ice girls frightened him so. They were so…brazen, so up-front with their femininity. The “I woman, you man” approach gave him cold chills.
He wouldn’t go into that with Mrs. Carcano, of course. The problem, if he decided to discuss it, was how to get the Ice women out of his life. Without bloodshed.
Actually, shooting them wasn’t a bad idea. He would write in prison. A nice cell, peace and quiet, a computer…
And it might come to that. If Crystal and Diamond couldn’t be induced to leave him alone, it just might.
He whacked his head twice against the steering wheel.
Get a grip, man!
Okay. I’m a sane, sober, middle-aged misogynistic slob with a female problem. Two problems. I have been referred to you for consultation and advice. If you have any advice. If you don’t, forget I was here and have a nice life. See you at a funeral. ’Bye.
He opened the door and got out of the car. Closed the door. Marched through the gate and up the walk, climbed the steps, went across the porch and rapped sharply at the door. Like a house-siding salesman making a cold call, he thought.
He heard footsteps coming toward the door, which sent chills up his spine. His knees felt watery.
The door opened—and revealed a pleasant, well-scrubbed woman somewhere between thirty and forty, probably closer to forty than thirty, brown hair in a sensible style, wearing a dress. Don’t see many dresses nowadays. “Good morning. May I help you?”
“Uh… Mrs. Carcano, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Hudson. Richard Hudson. I live…uh”—he turned and gestured vaguely—“up the road. I was talking the other day with some friends—uh, acquaintances, actually—about a personal problem—uh, two problems, in point of fact—and they…uh…recommended that I stop sometime to see you and discuss…” He ran out of steam there.
“Come in, Mr. Hudson.” She opened the door wide.
“If you’re busy I could come back some other time. That might be best. An appointment for sometime…next week?”
“I’m not busy. I’ll be delighted to spend a few minutes with you now. Come in.”
So he went in. Against his better judgment. Actually entered the house of a woman of the cloth for the express purpose of talking about his personal problems. Both of them.
“I can’t believe they’ve reduced me to this,” he muttered to himself.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?” She was leading him along a hallway. The kitchen was visible at the end of it.
“Nothing important. Just mumbling. I do that from time to time.”
“Will you have some coffee or tea?”
“Why not?”
“Which would you prefer?”
“Whatever you are having.”
“Please sit down.” She indicated a chair at the kitchen table. He slid into it. Looked around the room. A white room, white paint over wainscoting. Old, neat and clean.
She puttered with cups and saucers and the coffeepot.
He reviewed how he intended to approach this consultation: tell her what he did for a living—after all, everyone else knew—and why he needed his privacy, then get delicately into the problem of the affectionate sisters. No gory details, of course.
She still had her back to him when she said, “Richard Hudson…There is a novelist by that name who writes science fiction. The Voyagers and The Survivors are his most famous works.” She turned and started across the room bearing coffee cups. “By any chance, are you that Richard Hudson?”
He cleared his throat. “Yes.”
She seated herself across from him and smiled. “I enjoyed both those books. I’ve read several more of your stories, but I can’t recall the titles.”
“You’re not a sci-fi fanatic, are you?”
“Alas, no. I read science fiction from time to time, but I read other books, too, books from many genres.”
“That’s good. You should read widely, good books on many subjects.” Listen to him, yammering away as if he had known her all his life.
“Tell me about writing, about how you do it.”
“There’s nothing esoteric about it. I dream up a story, figure out how it will go, create the characters necessary to tell the tale, find a starting place and begin. Then I improvise as I go along.”
“There must be more to it than that.”
“No. All one needs is a half-decent imagination and the storytelling skills. The skills are the craft, acquired through study of successful, skilled writers, and practice. Lots of practice.”
Away he went, talking about the one great passion of his life. She filled the coffee cups; he talked on and on.
He heard a clock chime somewhere in the house and glanced at his watch. He had been here almost forty-five minutes, he realized with a jolt. “I’m sorry I’ve taken up so much of your time, but I must tell you why I came,” he said, and tentatively began explaining about the Ice sisters, the near-fanatical hero worship that threatened his solitude and his writing. “I hate to say this, Mrs. Carcano, but I need help. I’ve got to do something.”
“Are they interested in you romantically?”
“Yes.” He blushed.
“My suggestion, Mr. Hudson, is that you tell them flatly and unequivocally that you aren’t interested.”
“I’ve tried that.”
“Then put them to work.”
“They jump in without my saying anything. I’ve got the cleanest house in the county.”
“Do you like chicken salad?”
“Uh, yes, but don’t—”
She was already up and moving. As she took things from the refrigerator and bread drawer, she kept talking. “The other thing you can do is develop a romantic interest of your own, with someone else.”
“Well, I’m not interested in that. I like the way I live.”
“I know how you feel. I like the way I live, too.”
“I’ve never been married, you see. Always lived alone. Wouldn’t want to start courting when I know I don’t want it to go anywhere. That wouldn’t be fair.” Why did he say that?
He realized with a start that this woman was dangerous. A few minutes with her and he was ready to tell her everything.
“I was married,” Mrs. Carcano volunteered. “Twice. My first husband left me, and my second husband died, about two years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Life goes on, Mr. Hudson. Life is for the living.” She smiled wryly. “That’s a platitude. But it does reflect, I think, an underlying truth. We cannot live in the past. We must come to grips with it, then go on living.”
The chicken salad sandwiches were good, the milk cold and delicious. Richard Hudson ate two sandwiches and drank two glasses of milk.
She had a way of looking at him that was almost hypnotic. She kept her gaze firmly on his eyes. Sooner or later he would look away, but when he looked at her again, her gaze was still on his eyes. She had good eyes, wide and brown. They looked through your eyes and saw… Richard Hudson shivered involuntarily.
It was unconscious with her, he decided. She was interested in the human she was talking to, so she looked intently at the face, absorbed all the cues, heard what was said and saw what was meant.
She was dangerous—his first reaction was correct.
And yet…and yet Richard Hudson had the feeling that she wasn’t. The impression began to grow that she was one of the gentlest, kindest people he had ever met. Her aura surrounded him, warming him in a way that no fire ever had.
“It’s a sin to eat too much,” he said. “That’s one of my many sins.”
She smiled.
“How do you stand on sin, anyway?”
“I’m against it, Mr. Hudson, but I’m not bigoted about it.”
Hudson laughed, the first laugh he had had in weeks.
“That’s not original with me,” she confessed. “Damon Runyon said it first, about lawbreaking, I believe.”
“Damon Runyon, an American original.”
Hudson reluctantly said his good-byes and departed. And to think he almost didn’t stop to talk!
Her advice was sound. Tell them the truth and put them to work.
He whistled all the way home, vastly pleased with the world and his little place in it. Life is good, he told himself. You just can’t let the little problems get you down.
He walked through his front door and stopped, facing the Ice girls. “I am not in love with either of you and will never fall in love with either of you. You are not welcome here. If you won’t leave, stop sitting here like guests and clean the place up. Run the washer, do the ironing, clean the windows.”
Crystal and Diamond Ice gaped at him.
He went on to the study and closed the door behind him. He flipped on his computer. Okay, Ziad, time to cut and slash. He was tapping away when he heard the vacuum sweeper roar into life in the bedroom over his head.
Sheriff Arleigh Tate locked his door before he opened the large manila envelope from the state crime lab. Hoo boy, those telephoto lenses gave you a ringside seat on the action, and the lab technicians had blown up the photos into eight-by-tens that were so hot they almost sizzled.
Diamond Ice—now there was a woman! Too much woman for Junior Grimes, Arleigh Tate felt, and about fifty times more woman than Delmar Clay could handle on the best day he ever had. She was something to dream about.
Tate went through all the photos, examining each one, then went back through the stack again, separating it into two piles. Finally he took the more promising stack and examined each photo closely with a magnifying glass. When he was finished, he had settled on six pictures. The ones he chose had at least two things in common: Diamond Ice was totally nude, and Delmar Clay was easily and positively recognizable, beyond a shadow of a doubt. In two of the shots Delmar was partially clad.
From his desk drawer he selected a black magic marker. He used it to black out Diamond’s face in the six photographs. While waiting for the ink to dry, he consulted the telephone book. When he found the listing he wanted, he copied the address onto a large white envelope using block letters, inserted the edited photos, and sealed it.
He didn’t want to hand the envelope to a postal clerk who might remember it, so he rooted in his drawer until he found some stamps. He wasn’t sure how much postage would be enough, so he licked ten first-class stamps and glued them in place. That should do the trick, he hoped.
Sarah Armbrecht was remembering snow. The breeze had a bite to it that made her think of snow under a cloudless blue sky, the chill wind coming in gusts and whirlwinds that picked up the granules and swept them along in waves only inches deep, like sand in the desert. The wind sculpted the snow, made ridges and depressions and hummocks that looked so perfect that you sighed over the beauty of it. And the impermanence.
She wished she could see it again, could watch the winter wind play with the snow just one more afternoon. Just one. But she couldn’t see very well anymore, hadn’t been able to see much for years.
She had so many memories, so very many. Of winter, spring, summer, and her favorite season, autumn, when the leaves turned. She hadn’t seen much of this past autumn, either.
Trapped in this old, old body, blind, frail, with only her memories, there wasn’t much left to live for. Not that she was ready to go, because she wasn’t. She loved life too much. Loved it, savored it, reveled in it. These young people who still had perfect health, many of them saw life as drudgery, as something to be endured, which was so very sad.
The key, she decided, was perspective, a proper perch from which to view life’s parade. The view Sarah’s ninety-five years gave her was rather extraordinary, although lonely. There weren’t many people to share it with.
She remembered her great-grandfather, an old man with a long white beard and only one arm; a minié ball had shattered his left arm near the crest of Missionary Ridge during the battle for Chattanooga. The surgeons amputated the limb at the shoulder. That was in November of ’63—1863. Yet Sarah Armbrecht could see the old man and hear his deep voice telling her of the battle as if she were again ten years old and had seen him only yesterday.
He never forgot the experience that turned out to be the high point in his life, an epic day of fear, exhaustion, nervous energy, shooting and killing and running, tidal waves of noise, men screaming, shouting, taking bullets, stabbing, crying, laughing, dying…He never forgot the blood or the pain, the nearness of death and the exhilaration of life. So sixty years later he could tell youngsters who gathered to listen, tell it as his eyes danced, his voice rising and falling like a musical instrument, tell it as if he had lived it just yesterday. The events of his youth became the children’s reality and now, eighty-odd years later, were an essential part of Sarah Armbrecht’s past that somehow defined who she was and how she ordered her life.
She was letting her mind drift, watching that young man who would become her great-grandfather as he scrambled up the steep side of Missionary Ridge with Rebel bullets whistling around his ears, when the day girl said, “Mrs. Armbrecht, shouldn’t you come in? There is a definite chill in the air.”
“A little longer, dear. The porch season is about over. Let me enjoy it while I can.”
“Ring your bell when you’re ready.”
“Yes.”
The porch season, life, the sweet and not-so-sweet moments, all would end too soon. If only these young people knew.
When she heard the car coming, she rang the bell. “I’ll see my guest in the living room,” she told the girl.
The caller was Cecile Carcano, who introduced herself to Mrs. Armbrecht as the new pastor of the Eden Chapel. “I’m calling on my parishioners whom I haven’t yet met, Mrs. Armbrecht. I haven’t seen you in church.”
“I don’t get there often, I’m afraid. Too much trouble for an old woman.”
They were sitting in the living room drinking tea. Mrs. Carcano said, “One of my parishioners, Mr. Junior Grimes, has offered to transport people who need some assistance to church on Sunday mornings. Do you know him well?”
Mrs. Armbrecht chuckled softly. “You may find this hard to believe, Mrs. Carcano, but Junior calls on me regularly to check up, see how I’m getting along. Comes sometime during the first week of every month.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I’m not the only elderly person Junior visits. In fact, I do believe he calls on everyone in the area who has trouble getting around. After every snowstorm he plows my driveway. And he runs errands. On several occasions he has picked up prescriptions and done some postal business for me. He knows I can afford to pay; indeed, I would prefer to, but he refuses to accept a penny. Ah, yes, I know Junior Grimes.”
“I saw some entries in the church ledger, gifts from you in Junior’s name.”
“Sssh! That’s a secret. Junior would be embarrassed if he knew.”
Mrs. Carcano smiled. “As you can see, I am still learning my way around my parish, still sorting out the personalities.”
“You will find them no better and no worse than people anywhere else,” Mrs. Armbrecht said. “They struggle to earn their livings, to do what they believe to be right, to raise their children properly, just like people everywhere.”
“Tell me about yourself, Mrs. Armbrecht. I would like to know you better.”
The old woman laughed and asked the day girl to bring more tea.
Cecile Carcano was ready to leave a half hour later when Anne Harris arrived. “Anne is my grandson’s wife,” Mrs. Armbrecht explained to the minister. “Marrying her was the smartest thing Ed Harris ever did.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Harris,” the minister said. After a few pleasantries, she brought up another subject. “We’re having a meeting tonight at the Eden Chapel, Mrs. Harris, and I wonder if you could come? The hymnals are wearing out and need to be replaced. Perhaps you could help us with some ideas on fund-raisers for that purpose?”
Anne Harris agreed to come. Cecile Carcano kissed Sarah Armbrecht, then shook Anne’s hand.
When she and Sarah were alone, Anne said, “You didn’t have to say that, Granny Sarah, about Ed. You know I’m not living with him right now, and you must be loyal to your grandson.”
“I am loyal to him,” the old lady said firmly. “I was simply telling the unvarnished truth. At my age, I’ve found that people expect it.”
“I hadn’t met Mrs. Carcano before.”
“I like her. She asked if I would like to join her in prayer. I told her yes, if it wasn’t too long. So we said the Lord’s Prayer together. I thought it very touching.”
A few moments later Anne got around to the point of her visit. “The last time I was here you asked me why Lane gave me half the bank stock, and I didn’t know. I still don’t, though I have been thinking about it. Would you care to hear my thoughts?”
“If you wish to share them.”
“I think Lane liked me, but he also pitied me.”
“Pity?”
“He didn’t think I was very resilient. Or not resilient enough. I believe that he thought I didn’t understand life very well, so I was probably not going to do a very good job living it. Consequently he gave me the bank stock so I would have something to fall back on.”
“I see.”
“One can never be sure, of course,” Anne mused. “But looking back from this vantage point, I think that is what motivated him.”
“Was he correct?”
“There is some truth in all opinions.”
“The battle to understand is never won,” Sarah Armbrecht said. “Take me, for instance. Last week I had the strangest dream. My mother came to me, sat beside my bed and talked to me. I haven’t dreamed of her in, oh, so many years. She died when I was just fifteen. She was in her thirties then, a beautiful woman. Naturally I got over the loss as the years passed and other things filled my life.
“Then last week she came to my bedside. Her hair was done up the way they wore it back then, and she was wearing a long, ivory-colored dress that came to her ankles, long sleeves with lace, a high collar…I can still see her, even now.”
“What did she say? In your dream.”
“I can’t recall exactly…now. She sat beside my bed, my mother, young and beautiful as I remember her, and I was old, very old, and we talked and talked…of woman things, I believe…I am not sure, and perhaps it doesn’t matter. But she was mother and I was daughter, although she was young and I wasn’t.”
Anne Harris realized the old lady was weeping.
In a moment Sarah spoke again. “Here I am, all these years later, a great-grandmother many times over, and I miss my mother.”
Later she whispered, “Life is too complex to understand completely. Too rich.”
When the driver unloaded the horse from the trailer, Jirl Ice’s heart sank. He had paid a thousand dollars for the horse—a gentle, sixteen-year-old chestnut gelding that would make a good riding horse for his daughters—three days ago, and he looked fine then.
He didn’t look good now. His head was down, he showed no curiosity in its new surroundings, he refused handfuls of sweet hay—in short, he just stood listlessly, like a sick horse.
Jirl telephoned the seller, who sounded surprised. “The horse was fine when he left here an hour ago. Maybe he’s carsick. He’ll probably snap out of it in a few hours.”
Jirl wasn’t so sure.
“Wouldn’t hurt to call a vet,” the seller suggested. “But he’s your horse now. It’s up to you.”
A thousand dollars was a thousand dollars, so Jirl Ice called the veterinarian, who arrived in the late afternoon. The horse looked no better, Jirl thought.
The vet examined the horse in a stall in the barn. “This animal is sick, Mr. Ice,” she said. “I’m going to give him an antibiotic and take some blood samples, but I’m not optimistic.”
“How sick is he?”
“Very sick. A horse this old…”
“How old?” Jirl asked suspiciously.
“Twenty-two or -three, I should say.”
A thousand dollars gone, poof, just like that. Plus the vet’s bill…Jirl Ice was so depressed that he could scarcely eat his dinner.
“Go to church this evening,” his wife advised. “The new minister is holding a meeting about the hymnals.”
“I don’t have money to donate for hymnals.”
“It’ll take your mind off the horse. Go.”
So at seven o’clock Jirl was sitting in the Eden Chapel with a dozen or so other people listening to Cecile Carcano talk about hymnals. She passed the books around and asked people to carefully examine the bindings and pages.
“We will need five hundred dollars to purchase new hymnals,” Mrs. Carcano said. “The suggestion has been made that we hold a raffle. What do you think?”
They discussed it. Naturally the question became, What would be the prize of the raffle? It was here that the idea occurred to Jirl Ice. At first he dismissed it as foolish, but when no one offered to donate something of value as the raffle prize, he scratched his head and pondered and finally gave in to temptation. “What about a horse?” he asked.
“A horse? That would be good, if we had one.”
A murmur of approval greeted this remark, and all eyes turned to Jirl.
He cleared his throat before he spoke. “I have a horse. He’s a gelding, chestnut, very gentle, and he’s worth a thousand dollars. I’d be willing to donate half his value, but I’d need five hundred for him.”
More discussion. A horse would certainly be a nice prize, everyone agreed, but the mechanics of funding a payment to Mr. Ice merited some thought.
Mrs. Carcano cut through the controversy with her usual aplomb. “Perhaps we can sell a thousand tickets for a dollar each. The first five hundred dollars in sales will go for hymnals. All the money in excess of five hundred will go to Mr. Jirl Ice in partial payment for his horse. Would that be acceptable, Mr. Ice?”
Feeling more than a little guilty, Jirl agreed to this proposal. Several people shook his hand after the meeting. Mrs. Carcano gave him a warm smile.
“Very generous,” Richard Hudson told him at the door as he shook his hand. “I’m going to buy a hundred dollars’ worth of tickets myself, even though I don’t need a horse.”
“I don’t need him, either. But he’s a good horse.”
“I know your sisters very well, Mr. Ice.”
“Hmm,” said Jirl, who was anxious to be on his way.
“Too well,” Richard Hudson muttered, and glanced back over his shoulder at Mrs. Carcano, who was talking to Anne Harris and Matilda Elkins.
After Jirl departed, Richard Hudson waited alone outside the chapel in the hope of getting a few minutes alone with Mrs. Carcano. She was deep in conversation with Anne and Matilda. Richard Hudson walked to his car lost in thought.