Honeyville (26 page)
Two long days followed. Plum Street remained open for no business at all, and the state of emergency in Southern Colorado grew worse – quickly and considerably. The snipers and strikers brought their battle in from the hills and onto the streets. Nobody sane would be spending their evenings reciting lousy poetry and drinking bourbon in the Toltec now. The city was too dangerous.
I didn’t hear from Inez. I wondered whether she ever made it out to Forbes. I wondered whether she and Max had already left town. I wondered how the meeting had gone with Mr and Mrs McCulloch. Plum Street had a telephone, as did the McCullochs’. I might have called, but I didn’t, and nor did Inez call me.
Time crawled by. We grew tetchy and irritable in the house, Phoebe especially. And, in the background, the gunfire continued. I lay on my couch, with the fear always gnawing, reading the last French novel William Paxton ever sent to me.
And then Simple Kitty knocked on the door to tell me Lawrence was downstairs, crying.
I saw Max Eastman last night. He turned up at dinner, very late, apologizing to us all as if the entire evening had been on hold for his arrival. When he loped into the room, I’ll be honest: my heart stopped. And this morning, when I opened my eyes, my face was covered with tears. I’ve never experienced it before – to wake, from crying. Had I been dreaming? I can’t remember. But I woke with a hundred images swimming through my head. Of Trinidad as it was almost twenty years ago. Of Xavier, as he was then. Of myself. Of Max and Inez as they were together; and the blood drying on the old brick pavements.
*
But the blood in my dream can’t have belonged to Inez, because they killed her on the prairie, ten or so miles out of town. When Lawrence found her, twisted in her little heap, she was still warm, he said. The earth around her was damp and red. He carried her back to the auto and drove her home through the prairie. He drove directly to the town morgue.
He parked up in the side street by the entrance. The morgue was on Main Street, in the basement of the blessed Jamieson’s. For reasons of commercial sensitivity, its entrance was purposely hard to find, even for those who knew where to look. Lawrence carried Inez in his arms and banged on the basement door until Mr Adamsson the mortician let him in.
Faraway in Washington, the president was, at last, ordering in the National Guard. In New York, John D. Rockefeller was releasing press statements to explain why the bloodbaths in his frontier mining towns were not his responsibility, and all the while we lived in anarchy … When Lawrence came to the morgue door, Inez growing cold in his arms, the normal rules did not apply. Certificates of death and other such formalities were not a priority. It was more a question of getting the bodies off the streets, restoring some semblance of order.
So Mr Adamsson took Inez without the usual questions. When he returned to the front stall, paperwork in hand, Lawrence was already vanished. Lawrence couldn’t linger. It was too dangerous. But he loved her, poor man, and so nor could he leave her quite abandoned. He was on his way to Plum Street, to fetch me.
He arrived at the parlour house – our first visitor for days – and sent Simple Kitty up to fetch me. I was upstairs, lounging on the couch in my private sitting room reading William’s novel. It was doing an admirable job of blocking out the sound of the gunfire, the marching boots – my fear. Then came Simple Kitty’s knock.
‘Mr O’Neill wants to see you,’ she said. ‘He has blood over his shirt. And I think he’s been crying.’
‘
Crying
,Kitty?’
‘He’s making strange faces.’ She shrugged. ‘And there’s the trouble at the Forbes camp … Thirty or more dead, they’re saying.’
I brushed past Kitty, still in my breakfast kimono, and headed downstairs to see the evidence for myself. Sure enough, there he stood, alone in our glittering hall, cocooned by our damask, our crystal, our velvet and gilt, his felt hat bloody in his hand, his tears flowing freely. ‘Dora,’ he said, ‘something terrible …’ I was conscious of Simple Kitty lingering, but I did nothing about it. ‘She is shot through the throat, Dora.’
‘She is … what?’
‘I found her by the roadside – northward … She is in the morgue.’
‘In the morgue …’
‘Will you go?’
Something, because he hadn’t said the words, made me cling to the idea that she was in the morgue for some other reason. In the morgue and yet alive: shot through the throat and waiting for me. I clung to the idea as I dressed, as I hurried through the horrible streets. Until the moment Mr Adamsson ushered me into that small room at the back, I had imagined her sitting up, legs swinging, eyes shining with the drama of it all,
waiting
for me, as she had the day I fetched her out of jail. My beautiful friend, Inez. But she lay very still.
Mr Adamsson, stout and grey, didn’t much care who I was. He needed a name for the body, and a name of someone to take responsibility for it. So he stood close to me as I gazed down at her, unwilling to leave my side.
The bullet hole was neat: ‘right through the jugular’, he explained. The blackened marks around it, he said, were where the gunpowder had scorched her skin; and the thick crust of blood which coated everything – the bottom half of her face, the top half of her slim body – was only to be expected. He pointed to the wound, his finger scuffing it carelessly. ‘She bled to death in just a minute or two,’ he said. Her once-white shirtwaist, her coat, her skirt – the pantaloon skirt she was so proud of: all had been drenched, stained, ruined. ‘Your friend found her lying out by the road to Forbes. I guess she was caught up in the gunfire … But whatever was she doing out there?’ he sounded plaintive. ‘A young lady on her own. At a time like this. Why wasn’t she home safe? You have to ask yourself.’
‘Are there many dead out there today?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘Forty or more, I heard … I can’t take them, anyways. They’ll have to go on to Walsenburg. Maybe Pueblo.’ He bent over the wound, his nose so close he seemed to sniff her. ‘She would have had to be near to it, you know. Slammed up real close … You can see.’ He prodded. ‘The bullet’s gone right through…’
He was slammed up too close to her blanched face. I longed to yank him back. ‘Can I please have a moment with her, Mr Adamsson?’
He continued as if he hadn’t heard me. ‘Her shooter would have been right
there
, you understand. Right beside her, you see? Like … Almost, she might’ve shot the thing off herself …’ He picked up her hand, caked in blood, frowned, gently laid it down again. ‘I’m guessing they robbed her. She didn’t come in with nothing.’ He glanced up, seemed to remember my question. ‘Well, Miss.
Ma’am
. I guess I can leave you for a second. But you mustn’t run away. I need the papers done. I can’t do nothing with the young lady until I got the papers done … You kin?’
I shook my head.
He looked me up and down. ‘Didn’t think so.’
‘But I can give you the names. Her uncle and aunt live nearby. And she has a brother. I only need a minute, sir. She was my friend.’
There was only one exit from the room, in any case. I couldn’t have slipped away if I’d wanted to. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘You stay right here, mind. And I’ll fetch the papers.’ He held up a finger – the one that had scuffed at her wound. ‘Don’t go running away now.’
He left me, resting the door ajar, and Inez and I were alone together. Rather, I was alone. She was gone. I whispered my goodbye. But it was too late and I felt absurd. I looked at her still face. She was a stranger now, peaceful in a way that affronted me.
I tried to imagine the moment she was shot: the terror that would have run through her. They took her jewellery: the little gold bracelet she wore and the golden locket – both gone. She’d not died a martyr to any cause, as Lawrence wanted me to believe. She’d been robbed in the crossfire – nothing more. A victim of the chaos, who shouldn’t have been there at all.
I wanted a memento of her. Something, before the McCullochs swooped, and our friendship was brushed into a corner. I scanned her body, arms, fingers, neck. The thieves had indeed taken every trinket. I remembered her pantaloon skirt had a hidden pocket inside the lining. ‘For carrying the sorts of things that modern ladies aren’t supposed to carry,’ she had said to me once. And when I’d asked her
what
‘sorts of things’, she didn’t know or care. ‘
Heavens, you are boring, Dora!
’ she’d said. ‘What does it even matter? Cigarettes, perhaps? French letters?’ and then came that magical, happy laughter. ‘I shall think of something! You can’t have a secret pocket without putting
something
inside!’
At first I couldn’t remember quite where the ludicrous pocket was located, and I hesitated to delve too deep. I patted the lower half of her, crusty with all the blood, and then, gingerly, half lifted the outer skirt. There it was, not so hidden after all, sewn between lining and outer fabric: a neat little pocket – with the bloodied corner of
something
peeping out.
I smiled to myself. A French letter? A cigarette pack?
It was a sealed envelope, smeared with blood, addressed to Max Eastman. I slipped it into my coat pocket, and waited for Mr Adamsson to return.
April 1933
Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, California
I am lunching with Max at the Ambassador today. He left a message to tell me he had reserved a table by the swimming pool. It is a beautiful day, and I suppose, in spite of everything, I am fond of him. I can’t explain why – he was a lousy friend to Inez. But then again, maybe we all were. He is attractive and excellent company and, from the way he spoke about Inez at dinner last weekend, there is no doubt in my mind that he adored her, just as we all did.
Aside from which, if I’m honest, it’s quite a thrill. Who knows what Hollywood star I may spot, roaming past the table in his bathing pants? I’ve been living in Hollywood long enough, by now I should have outgrown such cheap thrills. Well, too bad, because I have not. When a woman is tired of sitting poolside at the Ambassador, spotting Hollywood movie stars in their bathing trunks, she is tired of life. And I am
not
tired of life. I am looking forward to lunch – and to life – quite enormously.
I am wearing a yellow silk crepe two-piece for the occasion, made to measure, and a fedora tilt hat with matching silk brim and if I say so myself, the outfit suits me well. I look elegant and rather demure. Fit for the Ambassador.
When I arrive at the table, Max is already waiting for me. He is sitting, hunched and scowling, over something in the
Los Angeles Times
– a posture in which I imagine he has spent much of the past week. In front of him, beside a full glass of white wine, and an ashtray with smoking cigarette, he has a small book of poetry with several tabs sticking out of the pages. He too is looking elegant and respectable. Dressed in linen suit and panama, Max is as handsome as he ever was. As handsome as the devil himself.
As the devil himself
, I find myself muttering, as I kiss his cheek, smell his cologne, and settle myself into the chair opposite.
‘What’s that about devils?’ he asks, laughing. He has placed himself, gentleman that he is, with his back to the view, so that I can gaze out over the beautiful people of Hollywood, splashing in the giant pool, and he, poor man, can only gaze at me in my yellow suit, or at the vast pink building behind me.
‘You look very well, Max,’ I say. ‘As ever.’
‘You too.’ He pauses. ‘Really, it’s hard to believe it’s been almost twenty years.’
A waiter arrives, deferential and uniformed. We order a couple of martinis, and the wine menu.
‘It’s still such a thrill, isn’t it,’ I say to Max, ‘to be allowed to order our hooch right here at the table. When do you suppose the novelty will wear off?’
‘Never,’ he says. And, for a moment, I fear he is going to launch into one of his political dissertations – about the importance of individual freedom and the American constitution, or some such – and I don’t want that. It’s not why we have met today. He can save all that for his speeches.
Fortunately, Max being Max, he seems to read the lack of interest in my face. He changes tack and, instead, says: ‘I’m in no particular hurry. Are you? I do hope not. We have so much to talk about!’
I tell him we have the whole afternoon.
A silence between us. He fiddles with his wine glass, and I wait for my cocktail to arrive. He offers me a cigarette – I decline. He lights his own. He looks unhappy, boyish. Under the table, his foot jiggles; and I am torn. It’s almost impossible to look at him without wanting to take care of him, ease his anxiety. But before I left this morning, I reread the letter Inez wrote him. Actually, I have reread it ten or fifteen times this week, having not looked at it for years. It’s infuriatingly difficult to read. But I know it almost by heart. Opposite me, Max looks wistful and sad, here at the poolside, twenty years too late; but the words of her letter, brimming with her childish, hurt feelings, and stained with her blood, are still fresh in my mind. So I leave him to his anguish, his jiggling foot, his tobacco, and wait for him to speak.
Max had not even realized she was dead. When I told him at the dinner last Saturday, he was dumbstruck. He simply had no idea. He kept asking – it was all he could think to say – if I was ‘absolutely certain’ about it. For a clever man, it struck me as a slow response. For a clever man, it seemed to me to be extraordinary that he couldn’t have known it already. After all, wasn’t she supposed to have joined him in New York that same week? They were meant to be taking the same train out of Trinidad. But he swore on his ignorance again and again, and from the way he insisted, it was impossible not to believe him.
My cocktail arrives, and he looks up at the waiter with puppy-like gratitude, as if the waiter’s presence might have let him off some imagined hook. But the waiter doesn’t stay for long. He says he has forgotten the wine menu and will be back.
