A. Fair - Gold Comes in Bricks

“Are you going to let your back hair down and tell me secrets of sex?” I asked.

“Yes, if you have to be told,” she said with a half smile. “You’re old enough now to know the facts of life, Donald.”

“All right, tell me.”

“The people with individualities,” she said, “are just the same all the time. They won’t resort to all the little sneaky tricks of character-changing that the hypocrites will. Women of that type simply show themselves. They show themselves as they are. A man can either like them well enough to marry them or not.

“Then there’s the other type. They don’t have any personalities of their own except disagreeable personalities, and they know enough to keep those defects of character covered up. Well, Dad’s present wife found out that he was lonely, that he wanted a home, that his daughter was out traveling around the world and would probably get married. She invited him out to her home for dinners.

“Bob was swell, gave the picture of man-to-man good-fellowship, and she was nothing like the way you see her now. Dad never heard about her blood pressure until after he married her. She was just a sweet, home-loving thing who didn’t care about going out, who wanted to make a home for someone, who would stroke Dad’s forehead when he was tired and play chess with him — oh, she just adored chess—” Alta’s eyes glittered. “She hasn’t played a single game of chess with him since they were married.” She raised her voice so that it mimicked her stepmother. “ ‘Oh, I’d lo-o-ove to, Henry. I miss those games so-o-o-o much, but my poor head! It’s my blood pressure, you know. The doctor says I must have things very quiet and easy.’ ”

Suddenly she stopped and said, “There you go. You got me started. I suppose you’ve been waiting for this opportunity, figuring that some time you’d get me when I was mad enough to tell you the whole damn thing.”

“On the contrary,” I said, “I don’t care a great deal about it. I wanted to know about what financial arrangements you’d had with your brother.”

“That’s gratitude for you,” she said with a little laugh. “I bare my soul, and you say you didn’t want to hear it.”

I grinned at her. “Had anything to eat?”

“No, and I’m ravenous. I kept waiting around, thinking perhaps you’d come in.”

“I think they roll the sidewalks up in this town about eight-thirty, but we might find an all-night place on the highway somewhere.”

“Know something, Donald?”

“What?”

“That garlic breath of yours—”

“Offensive?” I asked.

She laughed and said, “You’re a nice boy, Donald, but you do drive the damnedest cars. Here, take the keys to my car and let’s go out in search of adventure.”

“When’ll your dad be here?”

“Not until midnight. You certainly have made a hit with him.”

She opened the car door and jumped inside.

I fitted the ignition key to the lock and switched on the motor. There was a smooth rush of purring power that ran as silently as a sewing machine and had as much power as a skyrocket. I put it in low and stepped on the throttle and nearly jerked our heads off. Alta laughed, and said, “This isn’t that old heap of yours, is it, Donald? You start this thing in second gear — unless you’re on a steep grade or stuck in the mud or something.”

“So I’ve found out,” I said.

We found a little Spanish place, and she ate her way down the menu. “Let’s drive around for a while in the moonlight,” she suggested when we got out.

I figured there’d be a road that would come out on the flat lands above the river. I finally found it, and we left the pavement when we were about a thousand feet above the valley, to drive out on the dirt road that led to a spur where we could look down over the country below. From that height, the tailing piles didn’t seem hard and glittering. The moonlight was soft, and the whole panorama of the valley was a part of the night, of the stars, and of those mysterious rustling noises that emanated from wild life.

I switched off the motor and the lights. She snuggled over to me. A cottontail hopped across a patch of moonlight directly in front of the car. An owl swooped down on a mouse. The shadows were dark blotches in the canyons. The ridges were splashed with vivid moonlight, and the valley below bathed in tranquil brilliance. I could feel her body close against mine, could hear the even sound of her regular breathing. I looked down at her once, thinking she was asleep, but her eyes were wide open, drinking in the scenery.

Her hand came over and took possession of mine. Her pointed fingernails traced little designs along the edges of my fingers. Once she sighed, a tremulous sigh of deep content, then suddenly she looked up and asked, “Donald, do you like this?”

By way of answer, I leaned over and brushed my lips gently against the side of her forehead.

For a moment I thought she was going to put up her lips to be kissed, but instead she snuggled closer and sat perfectly still.

After a while I said, “We’d better go, and be there in the camp when your father arrives.”

“I suppose so.”

We had driven down the curving ribbon of concrete to the outskirts of Valleydale before she said anything. Then she said simply, “Donald, I could love you forever for that.”

“What?”

“Just everything about it.”

I laughed. “I didn’t make the view,” I said.

“No,” she said, “and there’s a lot of other things you didn’t try to make. Gosh, Donald, you’re a nice kid.”

“What,” I asked, “is all this leading up to?”

“Nothing. I just wanted you to know. It wouldn’t have been the same with anyone else. Other men I know would have talked too much, or pawed too much, or made me fight. I just relaxed with you and felt that you were a part of the scenery, and it was all a part of me.”

“In other words, I’m something of a non-combatant. Is that it?”

“Donald, stop it! You know better than that.”

“I know that a man is supposed to consider it a dubious compliment when a girl says she feels perfectly safe with him.”

Her laugh was nervous. “If you knew how utterly unsafe I felt with you, it would surprise you. What I meant was that it just all fitted in — oh, why did I try to explain it? I’m no good at that stuff anyway. Can’t you drive with one hand, Donald?”

“Yes.”

She took my right hand off the steering wheel, slipped it around her shoulders, and cuddled over. I drove slowly through the deserted streets of the little city, a city of ghosts, of memories, with houses that needed paint, with shade trees catching the moonlight on polished green leaves and shimmering it back into the night, while the dark blotches of shadow below seemed to be pools of Indian ink which had been splotched on the ground with some big brush.

Henry Ashbury was waiting for us at the auto camp. He’d chartered a plane and then hired a car to take him the rest of the way.

“Beat your schedule, Dad, didn’t you?” Alta asked.

He nodded and looked us over with thoughtful eyes. He shook hands with me, kissed Alta, and then turned to look at me again. He didn’t say anything.

“Well, don’t be so serious about it,” Alta said. “I hope you’ve got some whisky in that bag of yours because this town is closed up tight. There are some saucepans in here, and I could make a nice little toddy as a nightcap.”

We all went into the double cabin where Alta had registered for herself and her father. We sat down, and Alta made some hot whisky drinks, poured them in cups, and came in and joined us.

“What have you found out?” Ashbury asked me.

“Not very much,” I said, “but enough.”