Part 24 (2/2)
J. Harker's eyes looked triumphant.
”Winning is everything to you, isn't it?” Amanda said. ”No matter who gets in your way, who you have to step on to get there, you have to win. You're not going to win this one. You may starve a few poor, uneducated migrant workers today, but tomorrow you'll lose. Your day is over.” She turned on her heel and left the room. She couldn't bear to be near the man any longer.
Taylor caught her on the stairs. ”Amanda,” he said softly, ”I didn't mean -”
”Yes you did,” she said, glaring at him. ”You meant every degrading, humiliating thing you've ever done to me. For years you've tried to make yourself just like my father. He has thousands of helpless pickers to tyrannize while you had only one isolated, lonely girl who was eager to please. Well, Taylor, just like those workers are fed up, so am I.”
”But, Amanda, I love you.”
”No you don't. You don't even know me. You love a wooden doll you've carved into what you think a female should look like. When you want me, you pull me out of my room; when you have no more need of me, you send me back to my room with a little list to keep me busy.” She didn't want to waste more time talking to him but continued up the stairs.
”Amanda,” he said, moving in front of her, ”what are you going to do? I mean, our engagement is-”
”Off,” she said, then halted and gave him a look of great patience. ”First I am going to do what I can to help the pickers. I will...” She paused, searching for an idea of what she could do. ”I am going to make them lemonade-free lemonade. And when the hops are picked I'm going away.”
”With him?” Taylor shot at her. ”I'm not as blind as you seem to think.”
She looked at Taylor as if she'd never seen him before. ”You may not be blind, but I have been. If Hank will have me, yes, I'll go away with him, but it's not likely he'll want me. Now, will you please move out of my way? There are people fainting from the heat even while we stand here arguing about inconsequential matters.” She moved past him.
”Inconsequential!” he half shouted up at her. ”My whole future is being decided by the whim of a woman l.u.s.ting after some two-bit-”
Amanda whirled to face him. ”You'll get the ranch, I'm sure of it. Where else is my father going to find a mirror image of himself? Neither of you men need me. But let me give you some advice, Taylor. You ought to leave here. You ought to leave today. Now. You should go get Reva and keep going and never look back. Reva will be good for you. She's just loose enough to counteract that piece of steel you call a spine. Now, I must go, and to tell you the truth, Taylor, I don't really care what you do.”
She hurried up to her room, tore off her heavy silk dress and put on the lightest-weight white blouse and dark cotton skirt she owned. When she was dressed, she pulled clothing from drawers and her closet. She had no suitcase, so she went to her father's bedroom and pulled his from the top of the closet. She stuffed her clothes into the case and went downstairs. She didn't look at the house, for there was no feeling of sadness at leaving it. There was only a feeling that there was freedom outside the door.
She set her suitcase down in the butler's pantry and went to the kitchen, where she borrowed a tall, lever-handled juice extractor from the cook and called the grocery in Kingman and ordered a truckload of lemons. ”Then send to Terrill City for them,” she said into the telephone.
She went outside, the suitcase in one hand, the juicer in the other when she stopped. She needed to say goodbye to her mother.
Amanda stood beside her mother's chair under the tree for a moment, and everything that had happened came back to her. She felt overwhelming anger at herself. Why had she allowed Taylor to deny her mother? Why had she followed Taylor so blindly?
Grace looked up at her daughter.
”Mother, I-” There were tears in Amanda's eyes.
”Planning to leave?” Grace asked, nodding at the suitcase.
”I have been a terrible person to you, and I-”
Grace interrupted her daughter. ”Mind if I run away with you? And what's that for? It's not a cudgel for someone's head, is it?”
Amanda held the juicer up. ”Father promised the workers lemonade and I'm going to give it to them. I figure it will be a day or so before he gets the bill for the lemons and stops delivery.”
”And the suitcase? Does that have to do with the pickers or one very handsome economics professor?”
”I...” Amanda knew she'd been so brave for the last few hours, but her newly found courage was leaving her. She fell to her knees and put her head in her mother's lap. ”It was so awful,” she cried. ”Those poor people are fainting from thirst because Father charges them for water, and I feel like such a fool. I have spent years in my room and-”
”Hush, Amanda,” Grace said sternly. ”Las.h.i.+ng yourself isn't going to help at all. You were a sweet little girl who wanted to please her father. Now dry your eyes and let's get to work. It's almost sundown, so the pickers will stop for the day, and the lemons will never get here before tomorrow morning. You wait here while I pack a few things, then we'll spend the night at the Kingman Arms and tomorrow we'll make lemonade. Now dry your eyes so you'll look pretty for your professor.”
”But, Mother, you can't leave Father just because I'm leaving.”
”What's here for me? Your father and I haven't had anything between us since he punished me for what he saw as a betrayal by taking you away from me. I have just been waiting until you either married Taylor or came to your senses. I couldn't leave before; we couldn't all desert you. But now I can leave.” She stood. ”Stay here and I'll be back as soon as possible.”
Amanda sat on a chair, her hands clasped in her lap. ”If Hank will have me,” she'd said. It wasn't difficult to see that she'd loved him for a long time. With a grimace, she thought that if nothing else about her was strong her willpower was. She'd willed herself to love Taylor, and in spite of his bullying her, in spite of his patronizing kisses and his punishments, she'd remained loyal to him. Yet Hank had shown he cared about her, had treated her as a person, but she'd willed herself to despise him. She'd almost willed herself into a miserable life that she would surely have had with Taylor.
Her first concern was the pickers, but when they were gone she'd go to Hank and beg his forgiveness on bended knee if she had to.
Her attention was taken off herself as, through the trees, she saw about ten men approaching the front of the house. At the head of the group was the man with the distinctive hair, Whitey Graham.
Amanda was on her feet instantly. This was no doubt the presentation of the grievances that Hank had said he was going to give to her father. She began running and reached the house just as Taylor, J. Harker and two of Bulldog Ramsey's deputies came out to stand on the porch. Amanda stood in the deep shade to one side. She didn't feel that she fit completely with either side.
”We have a list of grievances,” Whitey said. ”We ain't happy about things in the fields.”
Harker didn't give any indication that he heard the man. He just glared, his eyes like coals.
Whitey stepped up on the porch so he was an equal height level with Harker. Taylor started to protest this insolence, but Harker pushed him aside.
”Say what you came to say,” Harker grunted.
Whitey read a list of seven complaints that included a need for field toilets, camp toilets, drinking water delivered to the fields, pickers appointed as inspectors, lemonade made with lemons and, finally, one dollar and twenty-five cents paid for one hundred pounds picked, with no bonus.
Everyone held his breath as Harker made up his mind.
Please, Amanda prayed, please agree to this.
Harker at last spoke and he agreed to more toilets, water delivered three times a day, real lemonade, and even to pay two dollars and fifty cents a day to inspectors chosen by the pickers. But he refused to raise the wages.
It was Whitey's turn to be stubborn. ”You have just dug your own grave,” he said quietly.
Harker smacked Whitey across the face with the back of his hand. ”Get off of my land.”
In the next moment all h.e.l.l broke loose. One of the deputies lunged at Whitey. Whitey ran down the steps, while the nine men with him didn't seem to know whether to run or fight. The second deputy yelled that Whitey was under arrest, to which Whitey said there was no warrant for his arrest. With that, Whitey and his men ran from the property.
Amanda leaned back against the porch railing. It was done now. The ball had started rolling down the hill. No humans could stand the conditions in the fields for very long without exploding.
Suddenly, Amanda stood bolt upright. Where was Hank? He said he was going to present grievances but he hadn't even been among the presenters. Did he decide to keep out of it? Had he at last come to his senses and realized it wasn't his fight?
She almost laughed at the idea. Hank Montgomery didn't have a cowardly bone in his body. He'd single-handedly taken on J. Harker Caulden, a man who terrified his own family yet Hank had always stood up to him. Hank dealt with crazy men like Whitey Graham. Hank set up a Union Hall in the middle of Kingman, California, and when the citizens had painted GET OUT OF TOWN on the building, Hank had just shrugged and had Joe paint over it.
No, the cause of Hank Montgomery's absence from the grievance committee wasn't cowardliness or disinterest. So what had made him stay away? Something awful must have happened in the fields.
Without another thought, she started walking rapidly toward the fields. Her mother caught her arm before she was out of the cool, shady garden.
”Decide to leave me behind after all?” Grace asked, trying to sound lighthearted, but her voice betrayed her concern.
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