Thea Devine (15 page)

For the first time Maggie felt a real fear. Was that her plan?
And
Reese’s purpose in having come to Colville?
Dear God, she thought, but the old hag never would have come right out and said it if that were her intention. It was stupid. It was a warning.

Yes, it was a warning, and Maggie felt it deeply as she was ushered into the elegantly appointed hotel office of Mr. Brown, whose offer to her could fend off every threat.

“Maggie Colleran.” He had the deep rumbling voice of an actor. His hands swallowed her and he pressed them with sincere welcome and motioned her to a delicate chair.

“Mr. Brown,” she murmured with irony; such a nondescript name for such a flamboyant presence.

“We have business to discuss.”

“You have business to discuss. I’m just not sure whether it is with me,” Maggie said pointedly, not allowing him to obscure his purpose with a lot of fancy words.

He looked nonplussed, then he smiled and she thought he was the oiliest man she had ever met. “We’ll cut to the core, Maggie Colleran. We need the land, and my sources tell me you could be in need of money.”

“Or they could be wrong.”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

“I’d call that cutting through to the core all right, Mr. Brown, except that the apples in your barrel are all rotten. Your offer is unacceptable, and before you say anything else, I will tell you that any offer is unacceptable.
My
lawyer must have told you I don’t want to sell. I haven’t changed my mind.”

Mr. Brown shrugged. “I suppose that’s the way it will have to be then, Maggie Colleran. I’m sorry we can’t do business.”

“Oh, but I know you
will
be doing business, Mr. Brown, and I’m sure you will spend your money very wisely.”

“It would give me great pleasure to spend it on you,” Mr. Brown said evenly. “Perhaps there will even come a day you might change your mind. But until then, I bid you good afternoon.”

“So nice to meet you, Mr. Brown,” she said, and was politely escorted out of his presence.

That couldn’t be the end of it, she thought; although she had not expected him to raise his offer at all, she had anticipated a great deal more harrassment. Mr. Brown’s abruptness dismayed her. She felt wary and pressured from a source she could not identify. It wasn’t Mr. Brown. It was something in the air, something unidentifiable, something that surrounded her.

Which, as she came into broad daylight on this balmy March afternoon, seemed like a horror story that she herself made up; looking for threats around every corner, and enemies where there were none.

It made Mother Colleran’s prediction all the more chilling. She had the brief sensation that she was indeed going mad and that nothing around her was really what it seemed.

Chapter Ten

When she returned to the office she went after the railroad full bore, ordering A.J. to strike everything from the editorial page while she rewrote her column, removed Warfield’s sodden prose to the back page, and added an additional article about the coming of Mr. Brown and what the motive of the railroad directors could possibly be in sending him as their emissary.

“This is too harsh, Miz Maggie,” A.J. cautioned her.

“I don’t like being bribed. And I will wager you the offer will go up within the week, especially after this edition appears.”

“This is asking for trouble,” Jean said, reading her copy over her shoulder. She looked up at him to see his troubled dark eyes.

“Am I going crazy? Is everyone suddenly convinced that we should not hold Denver North accountable for anything?” she demanded.

“Now, now, Miz Maggie, we just don’t want no libel actions on our hands. You’d have to sell out to fight the damn company in court,” A.J. said with a trace of humor. “And you’ve cause not to be too objective about what you’re putting in that box of copy. You’d be very prudent, Miz Maggie, if you’d just let me …”

“All right, all right,” she said abruptly, thrusting the page at him. “You tone it down. I’m ready to spit ems. We have to shift the layout on those two pages, Jean. Damn, I wish I could black out that ad. Why
can’t
I black out that ad?” And that, she thought, as she paced the room, was the one thing that blighted the whole. Because of her contract with the printing company, she was forced to run the supplement just as it was, and by damn, she was going to rewrite that contract tomorrow.

“Maggie.”

She stopped pacing. “Yes, Jean?”

“I do not like to see you so agitated.”

“I don’t like it myself. I don’t like it when someone else has control of what goes in these pages. I just never thought … it has to be deliberate … it has to be. Did you see those handbills? They’re all over the place, and when I left that lawyer’s hotel office today there was a line of people queuing up outside his door. Damn it, he’ll be paying them a portion of the money he offered me, and they’ll take it.”

“That’s right, Miz Maggie, because the town’s economics ain’t exactly what you’d call well-to-do,” A.J. put in, returning her page of copy to her, and she could see already there were neat slashes through the best of her excoriating phrases.

She thrust it into Jean’s hands. “You take it. I don’t want to see what he’s done to it. What else for tonight, A.J.?”

“We’re ready to go, Miz Maggie, as soon as Jean lays out the back page.”

Later there was silence as she and Jean worked side by side at the type desk. Jean set her article and laid it onto the plate, and they each took two pages and set them while A.J. inked the press and laid out the newsprint.

The rhythmic sorting of the type calmed her somewhat. The silence was peaceful, and she had the usual
sense of their work relationship running like a well-oiled machine; everything was done automatically and with precision.

This meticulousness was a pure pleasure to her, especially because she saw in it what she liked most about Jean and A.J. both. Jean had come from nowhere, and everywhere, and with his exactness and delicacy he had made a place here, while A.J. had run from the minefields when his luck ran out, and somehow Frank had seen his potential and had given him a home.

She was lucky to have them, lucky that the whole had not slipped away from her after Frank’s death. She was an elf fighting giants, she thought, and nothing magical would turn the tide. The only thing magical in her life she had to wave her wand and turn back to dust.

Colville would go on in spite of her, in spite of Denver North, and maybe even because of it.
That
was the epilogue to the story and nothing else.

“Well, Maggie, you say one thing and then you do another. How is one to know that you mean what you say? I hear tell there’s a Denver North ad right in this very week’s edition of the paper. Is that true?” Mother Colleran again, up early, too early, Maggie thought, and following her downstairs as she prepared to help A.J. bundle the papers.

“It’s true. It came from Denver and I had no say in whether it went in the paper or not, Mother Colleran. Does that answer your question?”

“Well, they just are not going to understand how you can take their money for your paper and not take their money for the land.”

“I understand it perfectly, and I have no quarrel with myself.”

“It doesn’t sound rational, Maggie. I really would
think about it, if I were you.”

Maggie froze. There was that insinuation again. The old bitch was going to spread it around, point it out, make sure everyone read it and knew that Maggie had been offered money by Denver North and turned it down. Was that sane? That was exactly how the old she-witch would put it, too.

Her fears were well-founded. There wasn’t one of her regulars who did not comment on the incongruity, and not without malice. She had been painted into a corner and the floor was still wet; her footprint would seal her guilt.

She almost did not want to leave the office that morning, but she knew she had to be seen and she could not be cowed by an incident that had to be a deliberate set up.

She walked Main Street briskly and bore the brunt of the derisive comments. The only thing that counted, she found out that morning, was the fact that the ad appeared. Nothing else mattered: she was compromised through no doing of her own.

She was exhausted by the time she returned. The crowd outside the counter had grown larger, and the voices deeper with disappointment in her.

“Maggie, how could you—and then write the things you did?”

“Yeah, Maggie, we heard they was offering you big money. You just tryin’ to up the ante now, givin’ and takin’ at the same time?”

“We always said there was somethin’ in it for her. Goes to show, now don’t it, if she’s puttin’ their advertisin’ right in the middle of her paper? I tell you, Frank wouldn’t have pussyfooted around at all. He’d’ve been right in the forefront of bringin’ the railroad to town and would’ve advertised ’em for free.”

She felt an intense pain at how easily those she
considered friends turned on her and immediately set Frank up as god again. Damned Philistines, bowing willingly to the golden calf of a locomotive engine.

She brushed by them briskly and closeted herself in the backroom. A.J. brought her coffee. “It’s real bad, Miz Maggie.”

“I know. We might just as well have put the damned thing on the front page. I don’t think anyone has read anything else.”

“That’s for sure. And there’s nothing to say you won’t find the damned thing right in the supplement again next week either.”

“No, we have to do something about that today. We can …”

“No, you ain’t thinking straight, Miz Maggie. They’re not going to refuse a Denver ad in Denver. They’re just not going to care about the politics of a railroad invading this town. They’ve got a hundred subscribers or more, they can’t run two hundred copies just for us minus Denver North. You understand?”

“I don’t want to understand,” Maggie said stormily. “We can’t do without it either. We need the newsprint. I hate this. I hate being tied up so I can’t move, hate having someone else in control.”

A.J. shook his head. “They’re doing it, Miz Maggie, and they probably are doing it purposely, just like you think. But it’s also good business. They’ll get a stock of workers just like me who want to run from the minefields to something easier and quicker. Some people like the idea—couple of weeks work, get a paycheck, they’re on the road again looking for the next best dollar.”

“I know, I know. It will kill the town, and it’s going to kill us because no one understands that we didn’t take that ad.”

“So we just keep on going, Miz Maggie, best as we can, and only you can decide whether we’re going to tussle
them down to the wire or whether we’ll let up and see what happens.”

“I don’t know,” she groaned, “I just don’t know.”

“Well, I’ll tell you something, Miz Maggie. Neither would Mr. Frank have either. He wouldn’t have known which way was the best road not taken, so don’t you fret about that.”

“No, A.J., you’re wrong. Frank would have gone exactly the opposite way from me. He was a salesman, A.J. He would have given the people just what they wanted.”

But even knowing that was no consolation. Frank’s name was invoked so often that day she was sure he had been canonized.

And then there was Dennis. “Maggie, are you insane?”

And that word again.

“I beg your pardon, Dennis?” Polite, she had to be polite, and she had to make everyone understand that she was taking nothing, that the ads were not hers, that she was as opposed as ever to Denver North, and that there was no amount of money that would make her give in.

But she knew: his copy of the
Morning Call
was open to the insert, where he had encircled the Denver North ad with a bold black pencil.

“
And
you turned down their offer!” He was incredulous.

“Say it louder, Dennis. Everyone thinks I’m about to sell out to them because my supplier accepted their lousy little ad.”

“Let’s go upstairs.”

“I do not want to go anywhere. I’m tired of defending this. It is and it will be and I can’t do anything about it.”

“Then you’ll do the right thing and curb your criticism before we get hauled up before a magistrate for
defamation or some other such charges.”

“God, you’re all so afraid of what Denver North can do. Obviously they’ll railroad me and get what they want anyway, am I right?”

“You’re too flippant, Maggie. You don’t wield the same kind of power as …” His voice trailed off, and she finished in a clipped voice, “… as Frank would have, if he were still alive.”

“I didn’t mean to say it quite so baldly, but yes, you don’t.”

“Then tie me to the tracks, Dennis, and let them run right over me.”

“Look, Maggie, it doesn’t have to be so black and white.”

“But this is a newspaper, Dennis. Of course everything is black and white.”

“Maggie …”

“Dennis, I can’t listen to much more.”

“Fine, I’ll end it, but I don’t want you to think that that ad has pushed everything else out of the limelight.
I
read what you wrote about Mr. Brown and his offers, and I swear Maggie, it is just short of libelous.”

“Or right on target with the truth,” she countered.

“Only if the majority agrees with you, which they don’t, and it’s a sure thing that Denver North is going to put a lot of money into promoting the positive aspects of their building here.”

“I see,” she said slowly. “
That’s
Mr. Brown’s purpose.”

“No, Maggie. Mr. Brown’s purpose is to buy land, short and simple. Your land first, the Mapes’ and Logan’s land if he can get it. That is it. And I think you’re losing your mind if you see ulterior motives where there are none, and if you refuse to see the advantage in selling your property.
I
think that is as much as I have to say about it today.”

“And it is more than enough, thank you, Dennis,” she said so dismissively that he turned on his heel and marched out the front door. He didn’t want to take care of her today, she thought broodingly. He looked ready to strangle her for being so obtuse.

She felt a thickness in her throat, almost as though there were hands around her neck, slowly slowly choking the life out of her. But it was almost the same. She could really begin to think she had enemies everywhere.

With all that, she was not thinking of Logan at all, and she was hardly in the mood for Reese’s company either when he joined her in the back room late that evening.

“Hiding again, Maggie?”

“No, repositioning type. Want to help?”

He waved her suggestion away, but he thought he might have stayed if she had been dressed the way she had been the previous night. “You’re very good at it.”

“I’ve been doing it since I can remember. My father taught me, you know. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent in this room. I love it.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “no one will run you out, Maggie.”

“No, I don’t think so,”

“I’m on your side, Maggie. I hope you know that.”

“That’s nice to hear,” she said noncommittally, without looking at him. “What about your mother?”

“I have a feeling she always takes the line of least resistance. She wants everything to be easy for her and she never counts the cost for anyone else.”

“I suppose that’s true. She certainly has a fine old time haunting me with all her rude and suggestive comments. I have never heard a word of gratitude that I didn’t throw her out into the streets after Frank died. Believe me, she was impossible enough to live with then.”

“Maggie, you have to understand, she’s had such
disappointments in her life.”

“Me too,” Maggie said shortly.

“All right. I’ll talk to her again. I will, Maggie. Between us, we’ll get
her
to understand.”

“I think that’s too much to ask, Reese. I’m not sure she has the mental capacity for understanding.”

“Maggie, she
is
my mother.” His voice took on the faintest tone of censure.

“Of course, Reese. To you she must be heart-warmingly lovable.”

“You
are
in a mood, Maggie.”

“It’s been a gut-wrenching day, if you don’t mind.”

“It must be wrenching to turn down twenty thousand dollars.”

Her hands stopped their constant motion for a fraction of a second. “Ah, I see. Well, I’ll tell you, Reese, when they offer you an equivalent sum for your property, I’m sure you will snap it up faster than you can toss a drink down your gullet. And quite rightly too.”

“Sorry, Maggie. It’s just so crazy.”

Another pause of her fingers. There wasn’t a thing she could say that wouldn’t sound like an agreement or a defense. “Are you on your way out, Reese?”

He looked startled. “I guess I was.”

She looked at him without a word. He grimaced and left her without any further comment.

At least her oldest friends did not desert her. The next day, she saw the Mapes’ wagon hitched up in front of Bodey’s store as she walked up for her usual Sunday morning visit.