Part 4 (1/2)

”Come in-come in,” he said. ”What would you like? Beer? Coffee?”

Nothing was too good for me. He hustled me into the kitchen. Nothing would do but I pa.s.s the time of day with him. I never knew a man to be so hungry for talk. In about half an hour there we covered every subject but love and literature.

And then his wife came in, all charged up for a new scene, the biggest scene yet.

”I've ordered the Rolls-Royce,” she said, ”and a new battery for the Chevrolet. When they come, I'm leaving for New York City in the Chevrolet. You can have the Rolls as partial compensation for all the heartaches I've caused you.”

”Oh, for crying out loud, Elsie,” he said.

”I'm through crying out loud,” she said. ”I'm through crying any which way. I'm going to start living.”

”More power to you,” he said.

”I'm glad to see you've got a friend,” she said, looking at me. ”I'm sorry to say I don't have any friends at the moment, but I expect to find some in New York City, where people aren't afraid to live a little and face life the way it really is.”

”You know who my friend is?” he said.

”He's a man who hopes to sell storm windows,” she said. And then she said to me, ”Well, you sold 'em, Junior. You sold an acre of 'em, and my deepest hope is that they will keep my first husband from catching cold. Before I can leave this house in good conscience, I want to make sure it's absolutely safe and snug for a man who lives in his pajamas.”

”Elsie-listen to me,” he said. ”This man is one of the few living creatures who knows nothing about you, me, or the book. He is one of the few people who can still look upon us as ordinary human beings rather than objects of hate, ridicule, envy, obscene speculation-”

Elsie Strang Morgan thought that over. The more she thought about it, the harder it hit her. She changed from a wild woman to a gentle, quiet housewife, with eyes as innocent as any cow's.

”How do you do?” she said.

”Fine, thank you, ma'am,” I said.

”You must think we're kind of crazy here,” she said.

”Oh, no ma'am,” I said. The lie made me fidget some, and I picked up the sugar bowl in the middle of the table, and there underneath it was a check for one hundred and sixty thousand dollars. I am not fooling. That is where they had the check she'd gotten for the movie rights to her book, under a cracked five-and-ten-cent-store sugar bowl.

I knocked my coffee over, spilled it on the check.

And do you know how many people tried to save that check?

One.

Me.

I pulled it out of the coffee, dried it off, while Elsie Strang Morgan and her husband sat back, didn't care what happened to it. That check, that ticket to a life of ease and luxury, might as well have been a chance on a turkey raffle, for all they cared.

”Here-” I said, and I handed it to the husband. ”Better put this in a safe place.”

He folded his hands, wouldn't take it. ”Here,” he said.

I handed it to her. She wouldn't take it, either. ”Give it to your favorite charity,” she said. ”It won't buy anything I want.”

”What do do you want, Elsie?” her husband asked her. you want, Elsie?” her husband asked her.

”I want things the way they were,” she said, clouding up, ”the way they never can be again. I want to be a dumb, shy, sweet little housewife again. I want to be the wife of a struggling high school teacher again. I want to love my neighbors again, and I want my neighbors to love me again-and I want to be tickled silly by dumb things like suns.h.i.+ne and a drop in the price of hamburger and a three-dollar-a-week raise for my husband.” She pointed out the window. ”It's spring out there,” she said, ”and I'm sure every woman in the world but me is glad.”

And then she told me about her book. And while she talked she went to a window and looked out at all that useless springtime.

”It's about a very worldly, virile man from New York City,” she said, ”who comes to a small town in Vermont to teach.”

”Me,” said her husband. ”She changed my name from Lawrence Morgan to Lance Magnum, so n.o.body could possibly recognize me-and then she proceeded to describe me right down to the scar on the bridge of my nose.” He went to the icebox for another quart of beer. ”She worked on this thing in secret, understand. I had no idea she'd ever written anything more complicated than a cake recipe until the six author's copies of the book came from the publisher. I came home from work one day, and there they were, stacked on that kitchen table there-six copies of Hypocrites' Junction Hypocrites' Junction by-good G.o.d in Heaven!-Elsie Strang Morgan!” He took a long pull from the beer bottle, banged the bottle down. ”And there were candies all around the stack,” he said, ”and on the top was one perfect red red rose.” by-good G.o.d in Heaven!-Elsie Strang Morgan!” He took a long pull from the beer bottle, banged the bottle down. ”And there were candies all around the stack,” he said, ”and on the top was one perfect red red rose.”

”This man in the book,” said Elsie Strang Morgan, looking out the window, ”falls in love with a simple country girl who has been out of Hypocrites' Junction just once in her life-when she was a junior in high school, and the whole junior cla.s.s went to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., at cherry blossom time.”

”That's you,” said her husband.

”That's me-that was was me,” she said. ”And when my husband married me, he found out I was so innocent and shy that he couldn't stand it.” me,” she said. ”And when my husband married me, he found out I was so innocent and shy that he couldn't stand it.”

”In the book?” I said.

”In life, in the book?” said her husband. ”There's no difference. You know who the villain is in the book?”

”No,” I said.

”A greedy banker named Walker Williams,” he said. ”And do you know who, in real life, is the President of the Crocker's Falls Savings Bank?”

”Nope,” I said.

”A greedy banker named William Walker,” he said. ”Holy smokes,” he said, ”my wife should be working for the Central Intelligence Agency, making up new, unbreakable codes!”

”Sorry, sorry,” she said, but she sounded way past being sorry to me. Her marriage was over. Everything was over.

”I suppose I should be sore at the school board for firing me,” said her husband, ”but who could really blame them? All four members were in the book, big as life. But even if they weren't in the book, how could they let a famous lover, a ruthless woman awakener like me, continue to instruct the young?” He went to his wife, came up behind her. ”Elsie Strang Morgan,” he said, ”what on earth possessed you?”

And here was her reply: ”You did,” she said very quietly. ”You,” she said.

”Think of what I was before I loved you. I couldn't have written a word in that book, because the ideas simply weren't in my head. Oh, I knew grubby little secrets about Crocker's Falls, but I didn't think about them much. They didn't seem so bad.”

She faced him. ”And then you, the great Lance Magnum, came to town, swept me off my feet. And you found me shy about this, hopelessly old-fas.h.i.+oned about that, hypocritical about something else. So, for the love of you, I changed,” she said.

”You told me to stop being afraid of looking life in the face,” she said, ”so I stopped being afraid. You told me to see my friends and neighbors for what they really were-ignorant, provincial, greedy, mean-so I saw them for what they were.

”You told me,” that woman said to her husband, ”not to be shy and modest about love, but to be frank and proud about it-to shout about it from the housetops.

”So I did,” she said.

”And I wrote a book to tell you how much I loved you,” she said, ”and to show you how much I'd learned, how much you'd taught me.

”I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for you to say one small thing that would indicate that you knew,” said Elsie Strang Morgan, ”that the book was as much yours as mine. I was the mother. You were the father. And the book, G.o.d help it, was our first child.”

I left after that big scene.