Holland Suggestions (18 page)

This was it, but it was the end of it for me. Somehow I eased backward from the cliff and squeezed my body into the hole. The cave swallowed the sunlight quickly, and I used the flashlight to guide my feet down the tunnel to the larger cave below me. Once I almost dropped the flash; it slipped from my fingers and banged against the wall. In near panic I rescued it before it could roll down to the lower level. I was a fool, a goddamn amateur fool, to come here alone with only one light. On the lower level I rested until I could stand without holding the walls. Then I scrambled down to the ground and got the hell out of there.

Another dusk over Taylor’s Gulch, and the gloom of early evening had settled into my soul as well. During the long trek back I consciously weighed it and made my decision: to leave Gold Creek in the morning. Enough was enough.
They,
whoever they were, could fight it out, whatever it was, without my help. Coming along the trail above the town, I saw Jill’s jeep parked in the same spot below the cabin. A light bobbed behind the cabin, and in a moment she came around and looked in through the broken window. She saw me as I started down, and she came down to meet me. At the jeep she waited for me to come to her. She had changed her clothes and tied back her hair; she was fresh and lovely, and angry.

“Just don’t speak to me, okay?” She hurled that at me across the valley floor. Softly she said, “I’m not talking to you.”

I came close to the jeep; she opened the door for me and I fell into the passenger’s seat “Thanks for coming,” I said; “I couldn’t have gone much farther.”

“You deserve to get lost. What happened to your face?”

“I took a spill; nothing serious. What I need now is a bath and something to eat.”

She was still quite indignant, but she closed the door gently and got in on the driver’s side. “There are some sandwiches and a thermos of soup in that bag; you eat while I drive.” With that we left the ghost town for the last time. By the time I thought to look back, the last light of day had gone and there was nothing to see. She drove the jeep with skill, following her own tracks into the long forest at the bottom of the mountain. There the snow had partly melted off and the potholes gave way to a heavy growth of weeds which threatened in places to choke off the road completely. A stream ran across the road and she plowed through that without hesitating. Then the road straightened and smoothed slightly and she used her bright lights.

“I guess you’re not going to tell me about it,” she said.

“About what?”

“Please don’t play stupid. It doesn’t become you and I don’t like it.”

I thought about that for a minute. “Then I guess I don’t have anything to say right now,” I said.

“At least that’s honest.”

“Say, are you mad at me?”

“I’m a little upset yes. I guess it never occurred to you that I might worry when you didn’t come down.”

I was surprised. “No,” I said; “it never did.”

The road twisted for another five miles and we took the rest of the drive without speaking. The jeep road dropped sharply and joined a graveled automobile road, which in turn hit State 96 just west of the Gold Creek turnoff. As she figured it, the total drive was just over an hour; it was after eight when we arrived at the inn. Jill got out of the car and walked briskly to the door, waving to me as I went quickly past her, through the lobby, and up the stairs. There was nobody around, and for that I was thankful. A shower took off the caked blood, but the nosebleed started again. I rested with my head down until it stopped. My head injury was a small but deep cut at the hairline; it too began to bleed and I covered it with a bandage.

Soon Jill came to the door, carrying a tray of food and apologizing for the sandwiches. She sat with me while I ate; an uncomfortable silence fell between us. I took my meal slowly because I wanted her with me and I couldn’t think of any other reason to keep her here. The events of the day had washed out the effectiveness of the night before. In my mind we had regressed; we had not slept together, and now that first-line communication had to be done again, the words said over, without the stimulations of a snowstorm and a bottle of bourbon. The bourbon was still in my backpack, but now it seemed so inappropriate that I did not mention it. That was just as well, for Jill did not share my need for communication. She took the dishes away when I had finished, but fifteen minutes later she returned, put out the light, and slipped into bed beside me.

The contrast between this and our first time was remarkable. Now she just lay beside me until I fell asleep, and it was warm and good in an asexual way. She did not even undress. Sometime during the early evening she left me; she was gone when I awoke, and I could see by my clock that hardly two hours had passed. The hands stood squarely at ten-fifteen. I went to the doorway, looked out into the hall, and listened. Downstairs I heard voices; someone laughed. I moved to the head of the stairs, where I could hear them clearly. The three of them were there, having a nightcap in the den. I resisted the temptation to join them and returned to my room. I got out the telescope and for a time tried to scan the valley, but even the full moon helped little in this place and I gave it up. Bored with that but still restless, I thought of the balcony. I got the flashlight from my backpack, opened the window, and sat on the sill. Again, for a long time I contemplated the walk across the shaky boards to Jill’s room, and this time I decided to try it. The balcony creaked under my weight but held fast. Once committed to it, I walked the thirty feet to her window quickly, keeping to the inner edge and watching my step. I found the window cracked open slightly; I lifted it, parted the curtains, and stepped inside.

The room was completely dark. I debated risking lights, decided against it, and brought out the flash. A quick look around showed that her bed was made and the room was in generally a neater state than mine. The layout, other than the fact that I had two windows, was identical to my room. I moved to the dresser and played the light across the top. There were a few bottled cosmetics, a lipstick, and a hand mirror; nothing else. I eased open the top drawer and saw a variety of undergarments. The other drawers contained clothes, and I felt them without disturbing their arrangement, to be sure that nothing was hidden beneath them. Then I moved to the closet. It contained her hiking boots and some photographic equipment, an extra pair of shoes and a dress coat that I had never seen her wear. I closed the door softly and felt my way around the bed. I was kneeling on the floor when I heard the footsteps. They came so quickly that trying for the window was impossible. I ducked under the bed, pushing aside a large suitcase, and waited for her to enter. The steps stopped outside and I held my breath. A key turned in the latch and I realized that it was Max, going into his room across the hall. He was there for less than a minute, then he came out and returned to the lower part of the inn. I pulled myself from beneath the bed and dragged the suitcase out with my free hand. It was not heavy; I guessed that the clothes it bore were stored in the dresser. Still, it was locked, and that fact was enough to send me searching for the key. I felt under the dresser doily and along the closet shelving but finally found it in her purse in a drawer of her night table. The main storage compartment of the suitcase was empty, but in a slip pocket I found some papers and a little leatherbound book. The book was so familiar that I put it aside habitually, as though I had read it many times before. I looked through the papers, letters addressed to Jill either at her Bridgeport home or at some New York firm called Smith and Lorenzen. All of them had been slit open, and I was about to examine them when I heard another noise on the stairs. Quickly I put them in order and placed them in the suitcase pocket. Again, for an indecisive second I held the book in my hands. It was
so
familiar…and then I had to know. I could tell by the creaking boards that she had reached the top of the stairs, but I flipped open the book and scanned the first page from the bottom up. In the upper right-hand corner I saw the handwritten name
Robert Holland.

The fourth Holland journal.

Her footsteps passed the door and continued down the hall to my room. I knew she would return at once, but the Holland book worked a momentary paralysis on me and I was slow to react. At last I dropped it in with the letters, locked the suitcase, and pushed it under the bed. I heard Jill’s muffled voice call my name, then she came back up the hall toward her room. I tiptoed around the bed and replaced the key, then the purse, closed the table drawer, and hurried across the room to the window. I must have closed the window just as she opened the door, and I flattened myself against the outer wall as she turned on the light There was a moment of indecisive silence; she was absolutely quiet, and I wondered if I had left everything in order. Then I heard a bottle drop; she said, “Damn it,” and a few minutes later the light went out and she sat on the bed. There was a dragging noise, as though she had pulled the suitcase out from under the bed, then more quiet, for what seemed an interminable time. It was broken only when the front door of the inn opened, directly under my feet, and Gould and Max came out on the boardwalk.

They stood there for a moment without speaking, and I held my breath. Finally Gould breathed deeply and said, “Well, it’s your decision, Mr. Max, and I know I can’t influence it. But you won’t find nights like this back in Philadelphia.”

“I know it,” Max said.

From inside I heard the sound of the bedsprings. She came to the window and I pressed my body as flat against the wall as I could get. I saw her fingers on the sill, then touching the bottom of the window frame, as though she intended to raise it. I braced myself for a confrontation, but instead she moved back into the room.

Softly I let out my breath.

“My time here always goes too fast, Harry,” Max was saying. “I wish I could have got to know your other guests better. Especially Miss Sargent.”

“She’s lovely,” Gould said.

“Ryan too,” Max said. “I’m afraid I put him off that first night with all my talk of extraordinary achievement. Now that I look back on it, that all sounds stuffy and pretentious.”

Gould laughed. “Always a student of people, aren’t you?”

There was another short silence, then Gould excused himself, with more regret at Max’s planned departure. For a time Max stood alone on the boardwalk; when he did move, it was not back into the inn but out along the street. He stopped at the old corral, still sipping his drink. His back was turned to me and I took advantage of the break, quietly crossing the balcony to my window.

My mind was so full of the discovery of the Holland journal that I hardly thought of my narrow escape. I flopped into bed, but an all-consuming restlessness forced me to the window again. Max was gone, but that hardly mattered now. The Holland journal was the most startling break I had had; it dominated my thinking. And yet my mind could not settle on any single aspect of it or on any possible answers. My thoughts just churned around it and gave me no rest. At last, still feeling miserable from the long day, I went downstairs and rifled the refrigerator. Before I could settle on anything Max came in.

“Jim,” he said from the doorway, “I’m glad you’re here. I have to leave tomorrow and I was hoping you’d join me for a nightcap.”

I could not refuse him, though I did not feel at all like making small talk. A quick one, then, and I would beg off and try to somehow get some rest. I mixed myself a very light drink, not really wanting that, and Max adjusted the den lights at a very low level. That suited me perfectly. We sat facing each other in the same chairs Jill and I had used two nights ago, and I waited for him to say something.

“You got a bit banged up.”

I brushed that off.

“Climbing can be like that. I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk more. I’m afraid I make a poor first impression.”

“Not at all,” I said.

“Be that as it may, I wanted you to know that I’m not really the stuffed shirt I sometimes seem to be. You asked what I do for a living—I’m an architect.”

I shrugged and smiled, wanting to put it aside. “And now—you’re leaving?”

“Early tomorrow. I can only justify this for so long, then I have to get back to my life. Christine—my wife—is planning some social thing in Philly next weekend, and I think she’d be unhappy if I stood her up.” He puffed at his pipe. “I take it you’re not married?”

I shook my head. “Not any more.”

Almost to himself he mused, “All things considered, I’d rather be here than in Philadelphia. There’s an old story that W.C. Fields put that on his tombstone. If it’s true, I think I understand it.”

“If you feel that way, why don’t you move here?”

“It would mean the end of things that I’m not prepared to give up. My marriage, for one. Children, civic responsibilities, things like that. Things I enjoy until I’m around them too long. Besides, if I lived here, where would I go for my two-week getaway?”

I saw his point, and I decided that after all I did like him. His initial coldness wore off quickly as our second talk progressed. His smile, on a one-to-one basis, was friendly and warm; in a group of strangers it had been somewhat disarming. Willy Max was not a man of crowds; I understood that now and I knew why his mountains were so important to him.

“I’m leaving too,” I said softly.

“But you just got here.”

“I know, but the country is a bit too much for me. I had a few narrow escapes today.”

His eyebrow arched and he sat forward in his chair.

“I almost tumbled into a mineshaft,” I said.

“Jesus, didn’t Harry tell you about those?”

“Oh yes, he warned me, all right; I just forgot.”

“That’s a bad mistake—but I guess you realize that, now.” He emptied his glass and stood. “Well, it’s too bad anyway; you’re going to miss a lot of fine country by leaving so soon. Now I guess I’ll turn in. I’ve got a long trip tomorrow.” He offered his hand and I took it. “It wasn’t much, but I’m glad we had this talk, Jim. I hope I’ll see you again sometime.”