Honeymoon for Three (20 page)

“You poor thing,” Mattie said. “How long
have you been married?”

“About a year. The first few months were
fun, but it’s gone downhill from there.”

“Well, come and have breakfast with us. It’s
the least we can do since you fixed our engine. Don’t just stand
there, Don, give—”

“Alfred.”

“Give Alfred a cup of coffee.”

“Hell yes,” Don said. “Mattie makes the
strongest coffee you ever tasted. Do you take it black or do you
adulterate it?”

“Black.”

“Good. We’re going to get along fine.”

***

Although Gary had done some writing in his
time, it had been mostly journalistic reporting, when he was in
school, and technical writing, both for school and his job with
IBM. Thus he had a hard time finding words to describe the beauty
of the Tetons while writing in the log.

Words like beautiful and gorgeous didn’t
fill the bill. He needed a new vocabulary to tell about the
soaring, snow-covered peaks that rose above the meadows and lakes
and were reflected in the mirror-like surface of blue water. Gently
waving grasses and the ubiquitous pine trees completed the
picture.

Grand Teton Mountain, at a little under
14,000 feet, was just one of a number of peaks that lined the
horizon. Gary had climbed some mountains, including a 14,000 footer
in Colorado, but you needed training and a guide to climb Grand
Teton. It was dangerous, otherwise. He wasn’t sure he was ready for
that.

“Wow,” was all he could say to Penny as they
drove the loop road, stopping often to drink in the view.

“This is the way I picture a paradise like
that described in
Lost Horizon
,” Penny said. “A place where
you would be perfectly happy and where the cares of the world
couldn’t penetrate.”

“That sounds good to me. May I quote you in
the log?”

“Only if you give me attribution.”

***

Mattie knew how to cook. Bacon, eggs, and
coffee had never tasted so good to Alfred. It beat his own cooking
all to heck. He gathered from what they said during breakfast that
they were outdoorsy people who actually enjoyed roughing it in a
campground. Don worked in a lumber mill, and Mattie was a nurse in
Crescent City. They didn’t have any children.

“Where do you call home?” Mattie finally
asked Alfred.

He had been working on an answer to that
question. “Los Angeles. We’ve got an apartment not far from the
beach. Of course, I don’t know whether I’ll be welcome there when I
get back. First I have to get back.”

“You’re a long way from home,” Don said.

“Yeah, and I don’t have a lot of money.”

“Well, you know what,” Mattie said. “If it
would help, why don’t you ride along with us to Crescent City?”

Don said, “Mattie—” Don said.

“No, it makes sense. You can sleep on the
top bunk. You can be our resident mechanic. If anything goes wrong
with this crate, you can fix it. And it’s a lot easier to take a
Greyhound bus from Crescent City to L.A. than it is from here.”

Don glowered into the distance, but he
didn’t say anything.

“That’s a very kind offer,” Alfred said,
“but I couldn’t possibly impose on you. I don’t know how I’ll do
it, but I’ll find a way to get home.”

“Do you play backgammon?” Don asked.

He had played a little. At least he knew the
rules. “Sure.”

“Okay, you can come with us. Mattie won’t
play with me. She’s a good wife. Best cook I’ve ever known. And
she’s a nurse—takes care of me when I’m sick. But she won’t play
any damn games.”

“After taking care of patients and taking
care of you, I’m too tired to play games.”

So that was settled. Alfred was elated. It
had been easier than he had hoped. He knew that Penny and Gary were
planning to drive down the coast, so they would be going through
Crescent City. He would be their welcoming committee. There was
another advantage to riding with Don and Mattie. It would ensure
that he would make a clean getaway from here. There was no way his
movements could be traced.

“Where are we going today?” Alfred asked
after he had graciously accepted their invitation.

“We’re going to stay in the Tetons tonight,”
Don said. “Most beautiful place in this whole fucked up world. And
it’s on our way. Then we’ll hightail it home.”

***

Penny and Gary were eating dinner at their
campsite in the Colter Bay Campground. A small black shrew played
in the dirt nearby.

“Well, that’s the smallest mammal we’ve
seen,” Gary said.

“Be sure to put that in the log.” Penny
voiced the thought that had been worrying her more and more as
bedtime approached. “Do you think we’ll be safe here?”

“I think so. The whole world’s looking for
Alfred. How can he get away? If he steals a car, they’ll know who
did it and figure he’ll be following us. The police have our route.
They’ll keep him away from us. Maybe they’ve caught him
already.”

Maybe, but somehow Penny didn’t think it was
likely. He had given them the slip so far. He was smarter than
she’d given him credit for, and he was certainly obsessed with her.
Enough that he wanted to kill her because he couldn’t have her. He
wanted to kill Gary, too, apparently because Gary did have her.

They had been shocked this morning when they
saw the sleeping bag. The stuffing was coming out of the slits made
by the knife that Alfred had wielded. What if they had been in the
tent instead of the hotel? Penny shuddered at the thought. She
didn’t hate Alfred. She was more puzzled by his actions than
anything else. What had she done to lead him on? She had been nice
to him in high school—but then she had been nice to everybody. She
had barely seen him during the last six years.

She didn’t know whether she would sleep
tonight. She had thought of asking Gary if they could stay at one
of the lodges, but their supply of traveler’s checks was dwindling.
She couldn’t go through life being afraid. Alfred couldn’t risk the
noise of a gun, and he’d lost his knife. Even if he somehow found a
way to get there, she knew the odds were stacked against him trying
to attack them tonight. She was trying to think rationally, but
rationality and emotion often didn’t see eye to eye.

She mentioned her fears to Gary.

“I’ll rig up some of our cups and utensils
on a string and hang them from the front of the tent. If Alfred or
anyone tries to get in they’ll hit each other and make a noise.
We’ll hear it, and, hopefully, it’ll also scare him off.”

He also tied the back of the tent to a low
tree branch, enabling him to free up a vertical tent post, which he
placed inside the tent to use as a weapon. Penny felt a little
better after seeing their defense system, which also included her
screaming, if necessary, to arouse neighboring campers.

When they went to bed, Penny couldn’t feel
the rips in the sleeping bag as long as she didn’t move, but she
knew they were there. The first breeze started rattling the
utensils. When she heard this, she started, but eventually she got
used to the noise, and it became a comforting background sound,
lulling her to sleep.

***

Alfred had to admit that the Tetons were
beautiful. He took Don to be a crusty guy who didn’t show a lot of
emotion, but that man enthused over them. Mattie obviously loved
everything about the scenery, as well as campground life. She
didn’t mind the dirt and cold water and problems with the weather.
She would have made a good cave woman.

Alfred was alert when they pulled into the
Colter Bay Campground. There was a very good possibility that Penny
and Gary were camping here tonight. That is, unless they had been
so scared by what happened last night that they had decided to stay
indoors—or if the condition of the tent had completely freaked them
out and they had abandoned their schedule and gone straight
home.

If they did that, Alfred wouldn’t get
another crack at them until he returned to L.A. He would like to
know what their decision was, but he didn’t want them to see him.
First, because they could identify him. He wouldn’t try anything at
this campground, because he didn’t want to jeopardize his ticket
out of here. He also wanted them to forget about him, as much as
that was possible, so they wouldn’t be watching for him behind
every tree. Then, when their paths did cross, the surprise factor
would make it that much easier for him.

He spotted the green Volkswagen Beetle as
Don drove the VW camper through the campground. The honeymooners
had decided to tough it out. He was pleased to see that Don took a
site far enough away from Penny and Gary’s that he should be able
to steer clear of them. Still, he wanted to make sure. He was
cautious when he used the restroom. He sat where he could check
anybody coming from the direction of their campsite as Mattie
served them a mouth watering steak dinner.

After dinner, he helped Mattie clean up the
dishes, using water heated on the Coleman stove. Don had gone off
to the restroom.

Mattie said, “Don believes that doing dishes
is women’s work.”

“I need to do something to help. I’d like to
help pay for the food, too.”

“Nonsense. I’m just glad to have the company
and someone to talk to. Don has these moody spells when he doesn’t
talk. Of course, he doesn’t say much even when he’s feeling tiptop.
Not that I’m complaining. He’s a good husband in many ways.”

Don returned and got out the backgammon set.
He asked Alfred whether he wanted to play at the picnic table or on
the small table inside the camper. It was cooling off, but Alfred
didn’t want to act like a wimp. He suspected that Don would be just
as happy outdoors in the elements. There was another factor. If
Gary and Penny should take a walk through the campground, they
might spot him if he were outside and concentrating on the
game.

“Do you mind if we play inside?” he asked.
“I get cold easily.”

“No problem.”

They set up the board on the camper table.
Mattie sat on the backseat of the camper and knitted. Don also sat
on the backseat, in front of the table. Alfred sat on a small seat
on the other side of the table that faced the rear of the camper.
Don pulled a couple of cans of beer out of the camper’s tiny
refrigerator and offered one to Alfred. Alfred had never drunk
much, and the taste of beer didn’t appeal to him. However, he took
it to be companionable and sipped the bitter-tasting brew
occasionally.

He soon found out what he suspected—he was
out of his league playing with Don. When Don suggested playing for
small stakes he accepted. He figured that if he lost five dollars a
night, it would keep Don interested. It would be a lot cheaper than
traveling on his own.

CHAPTER 22

The breakfast ride was Penny’s idea.
Although he had lived for awhile on a farm owned jointly by his
father and his aunt, Gary could only remember riding a horse two or
three times in his life. The name of his horse was Goldie, while
Penny rode Chic. Some of the other riders appeared to be not much
more experienced than he was, but the horses were gentle.

Penny, on the other hand, had told him
stories about how she and her girlfriend mucked out the stalls in
exchange for an hour of riding. Why was it that girls liked to ride
horses so much? He didn’t know the answer to that. Of course there
were a lot of boys who liked to ride, too, but many of them lived
on ranches and were born in the saddle.

They followed an old road and then a horse
path. As they walked slowly along the path, Goldie decided that he
wanted to climb the almost vertical cliff beside them. As he
started up the slope, Gary tried to figure out how to convince him
to return to the path. The wrangler had said to let the horse know
what he wanted him to do, but Gary must have missed the lesson on
how to accomplish that.

He tried not to panic as he pictured Goldie
falling over with him underneath. He didn’t want to become a
paraplegic on his honeymoon. Just about the time he was wondering
whether it would be less risky to jump off the horse than to stick
it out, Goldie came to his senses and made his way back down to the
path. As the tension left him, Gary contemplated what people did
for love.

Penny and the others were smiling as if the
whole thing were a big joke, but Gary was never so glad to see
their destination, a table at a cove on Jackson Lake, laden with
all kinds of good food—breakfast. With a backdrop of blue water and
snowy mountains under a cloudless sky, they couldn’t have picked a
more scenic place to eat.

***

Alfred had been promoted to the front seat
of the camper. He protested, saying that the front seat belonged to
Mattie, but she said she’d rather sit in back and knit.

“You men can talk about male things. I have
to finish knitting this sweater for my niece. You can read a map,
can’t you, Alfred?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, you’re the navigator.”

So Alfred became the navigator and front
seat companion for Don as they headed over Teton Pass toward Idaho.
He wasn’t sure what to talk to Don about. That man had proved to be
taciturn last night as he lined up his empty beer cans on the table
of the camper and methodically whipped Alfred at backgammon. Alfred
only managed to get through one beer during the evening.

Alfred did find out that Don had been in the
navy during the Korean War and was wounded—he was vague about
exactly what part of him—but he didn’t receive the wound in
battle.

When it was time for them to go to bed,
Alfred struggled to get himself onto the top bunk, which didn’t
have much headroom. Once there, he was pretty much sealed in for
the night, but the bed was a lot more comfortable than trying to
sleep outdoors or in the car—and a lot warmer too.

Don didn’t have much to say about his naval
experiences or about the lumber business, and he didn’t ask Alfred
any questions about his life. By trial and error, Alfred found that
the best topics to discuss were where they were going and how to
get there. Don also opened up a little and talked about the places
he and Mattie had been. It appeared that they had camped
practically everywhere in the western United States, including
Alaska.