Guestward Ho! (22 page)

Having survived my mother's grand tour of inspection,
we now had to prepare for the once-over from Bill's people—and a lot more of them—who had been every
bit as skeptical about the venture as my own parents.

There's something about Christmas that I simply adore—
the bustle and hustle, the smuggling of packages from
one hiding place to another (once I hid a present for Bill
with such diabolical cleverness that it was Easter before
I found it), the smells of good things cooking and fir
trees and wreaths, the cards coming and going. Well, I just love it.

Since there's never been even a hint of in-law trouble
on either side of our family, I was dying to see all the assorted Hootons and Trumbles and Brummitts and have
the biggest Christmas ever. I wanted the house looking
its beautiful best, the food tasting its delicious best, and
the routine running its efficient best. For the first time in
my life I'd been able to go out into the hills, see the
tree I liked the most, say, "That one, Bill," and have it
installed in the living room. Our tree was a beauty, twelve
feet tall and perfectly shaped. We'd gone all-out on orna
ments and the house was looking like one of those model
home affairs by the time the holiday-makers started piling
in.

Still, I was a little nervous. Bill as the disciplinarian hadn't proved too effective with our household treasures so I decided to take matters in my own hands and appeal
to the good natures of James B. and Lee. "Now, please,"
I said gently, "remember that we have a houseful of peo
ple, and it
is
Christmas, and there's a lot of work to be done. We all want this to be a
merry
Christmas, now don't we?"

"Oh
yes,
Miz Barbara," they said, bobbing their heads
in unison.

"So if either one of you feels the temptation to get . . .
well, to have a few drinks, or if either of you feels that
the
other
is beginning to weaken, I want you to come to
me and we'll see if we can't fight down the temptation—
or at least
postpone
it until Mister Bill's family has gone.
Now, doesn't that seem fair?"

"Oh, yes indeedy!" Lee said.

"Oh, that's jes' grand, Miz Barbara," James B. caroled. "You'll
be such a help to us!"

Feeling like the singlehanded saver of souls, I went to
join my sister-in-law, Betty Trumble, at making artistic
Christmas cookies.

Christmas is a time not only for family, but for friends to drop in at all hours for a visit and a cup of Christmas
cheer, and we had plenty of bottles of Christmas cheer on hand—so many, in fact, that storing them all became a problem. So, after putting one bottle of everything in the liquor cabinet, I stashed away the extras in the bathroom of a vacant bedroom beyond the office. I had a couple of reasons for doing this, 1)1 didn't want the ranch to look like a package store in front of the Trum
ble children at Christmastime; and 2) It seemed wiser to
remove temptation far out of the reach of James B. and
Lee, even after we had come to our perfect understand
ing. So I chose this bathroom as a cool, convenient
cache—out of the way, but handy in case we needed the
liquor cabinet replenished, and also as the last place in the world where James B. or Lee might think of look
ing, since that part of the house was officially closed.

Two days before Christmas, however, James B. asked
me for a word in private.

"Well?" I said, mystified.

"Miz Hooton," he said, "that Lee's no good."

"What do you mean, James B.?" I asked.

"She's no good, I tell you. She's been drinkin' your
liquor again," said James B. Smith, whose loyalty to any
one woman was a fleeting thing at best.

It might just have occurred to me that James B. was
not totally sober himself while he was squealing on Lee,
but I was so upset, what with Bill's family in the house,
that I paid little attention.

"She
. . .
she seems perfectly all right to
me,"
I said
nervously. "But I'm glad you told me. I'll warn her again."

"You don't need to warn her," James B. said. "I got her
fixed good. We'll
kitch
her at it this time."

"How do you mean?" I asked.

"Come with me, Miz Barbara, I'll show you."

He led me straight to the bathroom where I had
hidden the liquor less than a day before. "Now look."

James B. had rigged up an elaborate booby trap. It in
volved a long piece of cord. At one end of it were twelve
fifths of Scotch, strung together and placed on a high
shelf. The other end of the cord was to be attached to the
door knob, so that when anyone pulled open the door, the
twelve Scotch bottles would be yanked off their shelf
to crash onto the floor. "We'll kitch that no-good closet-
drinker," James B. chuckled.

"Hey!" I said, "liquor is expensive—especially in New
Mexico, and most especially Scotch. Why, that's almost a hundred dollars' worth!"

"That's why I picked it. Because if we kin kitch Lee
breakin'
all those bottles, then you and Mister Bill will
make her pay for them and
that's
what's gonna cure her."

"Well . . ." I said uncertainly, "I'd much rather you used
empty
bottles, but if you think . . ." .

"Oh, I
know
this is gonna cure her, Miz Barbara," James B. said. At that point Mother Hooton and Betty were ready to brave the brisk out-of-doors and I went
along with them, becoming so engrossed in conversation
that I forgot all about James B.'s booby trap.

It was terribly late when Bill and I got to bed that
night. As luck would have it, I got to our bathroom first
and indulged not only in a good, long, hot soaking but
also a Yuletide shampoo. Since my hair falls to my waist,
this is no mean chore.

After I'd been in the tub for what seemed to me a very
short time, Bill began yammering on the other side of the door. "Aren't you ever coming
out
of there, Barbara?"

"Eventually, dear," I said blissfully, admiring the new
lengths to which my nails had grown once again with James B. and Lee doing all the drudgery.

"Well,
when?"

"Well, when I
finish,
silly."

"Can't I get in there—for just a second?" Bill asked
waspishly.

"No, you can't. The door's locked and I have no inten
tion of getting out into the cold, just so you . . ."

"Oh, for . . ." Bill began ranting.

"Well, use another one, silly. What have we got twelve
bathrooms
for?"

I could hear his bare feet pattering impatiently out of the bedroom and into the darkened house. "Men," I
began saying philosophically to myself, "really just little
boys at . . . Oh,
no!"

I lunged out of the tub like a walrus, wrapped a towel
around me, unlocked the door, and raced hopelessly after him. "Bill!" I called, "don't use the bathroom in . . ." There was a crash that sounded like Armageddon and I knew that my warning had come too late.

The still Christmas air was blue with Bill's profanity as I flew through the house like the nymph errant, the bath
towel fluttering immodestly behind me.

There stood Bill, up to his ankles in broken glass and ninety-some dollars' worth of Scotch whisky, and bellow
ing
with anger and pain. His feet were quite badly cut
and so, very shortly, were mine. He was all set to rage,
footsore and bleeding, out to the quarters and fire both
James B. and Lee right then and there. But he really couldn't have done it. It was, after all, nobody's fault but my own.

It was three o'clock before we got the mess cleaned up
and the floor mopped, and from then until Twelfth night
the whole house smelled like a distillery. Wounded, and
thoroughly chastised by my husband, I wrote a thumping
check to the liquor dealer for a new case of Scotch,
which I kept right out in plain sight, despite the innocent
Trumble children
and
Lee. By March the aroma of whisky had more or less been purged from that rarely used bathroom, but we always called the place Vat 69.

The next day was the Smiths' day off. They went gaily
off in their secondhand car, speaking rhapsodically about
a bit of last-minute Christmas shopping and what a lovely
dinner they were going to cook for us the next day.

"Now, remember," I said darkly, still smarting from my defeat of the night before.

"Oh, Miz Barbara," James B. said, hurt to the quick,
"you don't think Lee an' I would let you down, do you?"

"Yes," I said flatly, "I do."

"Oh, Miz
Hooton,
we'll be home right after supper
tonight to join in the carol singin' and see those dear little
Trumble children."

" ' 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through
the house . . .' " Lee began reciting as they drove away.

It was the night before Christmas, all right, and all
through the house not a creature was stirring—least of all James B. and Lee. Nor was there any evidence of those
wretches the next morning. Bill and I fell out of bed, cooked the breakfasts—and badly out of practice
we were, too—and then started in on an ostentatiously
elaborate dinner, which wouldn't have been nearly so
elaborate if I'd had any inkling that we'd be cooking it
ourselves.

Owing largely to the culinary genius of my husband,
dinner got onto the table and was delicious as far as
everybody but Bill was concerned. Bill, poor man, was
summoned to the telephone just as soon as he'd carved
the turkey. "Mister Bill," James B. wailed, "Lee ah' me is in
trouble!"

This time they were stuck in Bernalillo, some fifty miles,
away, without gas and without money. Bill had to fling down his napkin and set off on an empty stomach to rescue them once again. Statistics tell us that the suicide rate is highest at Christmastime. There is no mention of how popular murder is at that festive season, but Bill and I would have gladly swollen the ranks of killers right then and there.

James B. and Lee got back well after dark, with Bill seething in the station wagon. They were cold and hungry—having been without food for twenty-four hours—and full of contrition and apologies and explanations about the uselessness of their secondhand car. I was so angry I could hardly speak, and when Bill said to me, "They're a bad lot, Barbara. You never should have hired them," I slammed off to our room and had a good long sulk.

Everyone else left after the holidays. But James B. and Lee lingered on.

While James B. and Lee still worked like dogs out of shame over their most recent lapse, the lapses increased in both size and frequency so that Bill and I simply
expected
to have to go and bail them out every Thursday night or Friday morning. One Friday Lee showed up with a black eye. (James B.) The following Friday James B. had a shiner. (Lee.) Once, in teaching Lee how to drive their secondhand car, James B. managed to get the infernal machine stuck in the sand out in the Tesuque lands and they were gone for two days. Another night Lee called up from Albuquerque to tell us that they were once again in trouble. James B. was in jail.

Since it was after midnight and Albuquerque is a good seventy miles away, we told her that nothing would be done until the following morning, but Lee continued calling—every hour on the hour—and each time a little more intoxicated and a little more anguished.

That was the end, I was convinced. But when Bill went off to fire them it turned out not to be the end—just the time
before
the end. I don't know what strange hold James B. and Lee had over my husband, but he just never was quite able to kick them out. This occasion marked their hundredth "one more chance."

To
make
things still worse, we had absolutely
no
guests
in the house. All the ski clubs that had been so devoted to Rancho del Monte in bygone years seemed to have
taken up chess or needlework that winter—anyway, they weren't coming to the ranch. The deficit began mounting
alarmingly and it felt for a time that we never
would
have any more guests. The snow came and the snow went and still there wasn't a soul in the house except
for us. I was getting nervous and edgy and we were both
getting fat from the rich treatment shown to us by James B. and Lee—whenever they were able.

Maxine and Gale Collins took to coming for one long week end each month (usually the week end following a major toot in the Smith family) but they were spending those long week ends inspecting houses, as they had become absolutely sold on Santa Fe as a place to live. Another couple who had stayed with us the summer before also fluttered in, fluttered out, found the home of
their dreams, and fluttered away to pack up and move in.
The Santa Fe realtors were getting richer and richer and the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce was getting happier and happier, but the Hootons were getting poorer and
poorer, lonelier and lonelier, and it seemed that we were
losing guests faster than we were winning them.