Ed Tomkins, who lived east of Kingsbury in an ancient house he had inherited, had a lot of money, but no one would guess it to see the way he lived. He went around in scuffed, laced-up, tan leather boots, generally muddy, and kept bird dogs, black and white setters, who ran in and out of the house at will, had burrs in their coats and fleas to spare.
Sally, though she loved him, said she couldn’t live the way he did; though according to Kate her own house was a total mess, it was a mess, Sally explained, of a different kind.
After Kate’s visit, Sally telephoned Ed and drove out to see him.
There were woods out that way still, though the town was advancing on them, and new subdivisions were finally going to swallow him and his old hillside, thick with scruffy, twisty oak trees. A swing still hung from one big tree limb, down near the front gate. Sally had tried to live out there, but it was too lonesome for her. After the boys left, so did she.
Today she had called ahead because, for all she knew, he might have some drinking or hunting buddy living with him, or some business prospect. He dealt in tracts of land he had either inherited or started adding way back when: worthless scrub country, it was thought, wrongly. Sally and he let the children visit whenever and wherever they chose, both living in Florida now, though in different cities. Ed would put on a suit that smelled of mothballs and show up with traces of lather back of his ears. As a rule, though, he favored checked flannel shirts in winter, cotton ones in summer, no tie. Sally thought she’d do best not to pry into things. She imagined that at intervals he found a woman willing to stay with him for a while, but whether it was always the same one, or different ones, or none at all, she didn’t really know.
When Sally came up the front steps that June morning, Ed was waiting with his foot on the porch railing. He held a glass in his hand already, though it wasn’t but eleven.
“If it ain’t my one and only,” he said. A dog marched past him and stood on the top step until Sally approached near enough to have a forepaw placed on either shoulder and doggy breath in her face.
“Get him down, Ed,” she said, and came to exchange a kiss.
She sat down on the front porch to talk with him, having remarked on the dogwood.
“So Miz High-and-Mighty Harbison needs a little bit of cash. What’s the girl like?”
“You remember her. Pretty little thing. She’s always had this dancing craze. Now it’s come to wanting it for her career.”
“Dance like in clubs, shows?”
“Oh, where it may lead, who knows? But first it was ballet, and programs, now she wants something called ‘modern.’ I guess they give programs, too.”
“Is she any good?”
“Oh, definitely, yes, she is. I’ve gone to see her, made her costumes, of course. It’s a gift. You have to study, practice all the time like music, violin or piano.”
“She can’t do that in Kingsbury? What’s wrong with Kingsbury?”
“Well, this is special, some special teacher, famous. I never heard of him, but that doesn’t signify. I think myself that Kate wants her away from some boy she’s picked up with.”
“Now you’re on to it. I heard something about that.”
“Well, of course. He came to town with Ethan Marbell. Ethan’s into the anti-war business and Kate may even think—oh, I don’t know for sure—but she may think that he was behind the mess they made of her lab work. Ed, it’s gotten too complicated for her. Kate thinks if Mary Kerr goes, even if the boy follows her, at least he’ll be out of town.”
“Does she want shut of him for a son-in-law or not?”
“Oh, Lord, ask Kate. I’d say she was hoping it would blow over.”
“I got one solution to all that prancing around over this war. They want to rampage, let’s us rampage back. Police dogs and a drover’s whip. And if that don’t work, jail.”
“I guess folks have tried all that, down in Alabama over the race business. It didn’t stop a thing.”
“Then what would you do about it?”
“Oh,” said Sally mildly, and pulled up her stockings. “I see how they feel, you know. The world’s ignoring them. They’ve got a right not to go get themselves killed.”
“Hogwash,” said Ed.
Sally was quiet, not much for quarrelling.
“I heard from Patty,” said Ed, mentioning their daughter-in-law.
“So did I.”
“She and Jenks are going to stick it out for a while longer.”
“It’s what she said.”
“Kate Harbison,” said Ed, “is bound to have money. She’s got that whole family to fall back on. What they up to? Living too high on the hog?”
“Don never had very much, you know. What little he did have he couldn’t hold on to. It was that lumberyard. He borrowed to develop it, thinking those people were going to build a shopping center. Then they headed on out five miles and left him high and dry. He had to sell for a lot less, and lost—well, I don’t know what he lost, but a lot. He never was well.”
“He wasn’t the only Harbison.”
“Kate has to hold her head high. I understand that.”
“You understand too much.”
“Maybe.”
He went back to the kitchen to pour another little half inch in his glass. He came back sock-footed and sat down again.
“The main thing, then, is to scatter them? Get them the hell out of here, is that what Kate is saying, real polite, and not putting it quite like that, but really saying?”
“I guess she is. She feels like she’s a target. She said that twice. A target.”
“If this school in Winston can get rid of some of all that stuff around here—that’s what you’re saying.”
“I see it that way.”
“Maybe I’m for it…. Tell you what. Let’s you and me get all dolled up and go down to San Juan again.”
“I don’t know,” Sally said. “You know what happened the last time. You gambled all that away, and I couldn’t even find you half the time.”
“This time different. I promise.”
“Wait till the fall. It’s too hot there now.”
“Hurricanes.”
“Not after October.”
“Summer’s cooler than here.”
“Too hot to move. Or think, either.”
“Wasn’t asking you to think, Sal.” He pinched her arm.
“I’ll think anyway. I mean, I’ll think about it.”
Sally got the money. The check, more than adequate, was in her hand when she left.
She telephoned Kate when she returned to town, but Kate was away for the afternoon. These mysterious absences were adding up to one thing only: a man.
Why, of course, she thought, between second and third sessions of ringing Kate’s number. She wants Mary Kerr out of the way for that. She’s used me.
But then Sally put that thought out of her mind. It might have a fraction of the truth in it, but only a small fraction, she thought.
Sally was good.