Gary Amdahl - The Daredevils

He felt no remorse the following morning. His head ached, and he was embarrassed by some of the things he had said, but on the whole he believed he had released something in himself that had been imprisoned. But when he arrived — riding a horse — at the shop to pick up Vera for their date, he found the unnamed woman standing in the shade under the awning. She started to say something, but stopped when Vera tapped on the glass behind her and waved at them. Charles waved and smiled at Vera, then returned his gaze to the woman, not so much encouraging her to say what she had to say, as daring her. But the woman said nothing. She refused to look away, but would say nothing.

The Minot party was once again parked at the end of a long line of limousines on a dirt road that led to a clearing deep in the Presidio. Charles arrived with a woman nobody knew and whom nobody sought to know — apparently one of his actresses. Even if she hadn’t had stitches and bruises on her face and been the subject of rumors relating her to terrorist factions within San Francisco’s radical labor organizations she would have been ignored. His family had attended opening night and been wholly caught up, they said, in the enthusiasm — and Mother had been quoted in the Chronicle saying she was “delighted but not at all surprised” at her son’s accomplishment. Amelia had been quoted in the Examiner, where she insisted that he could not be more proud of her brother, while her husband laughed off suggestions that theater had no place in a social gospel. Alexander and Andrew assured the critics from the Call and the Bee that everyone in the capital knew about what a treat the production was, and how there was serious talk of bringing it to Sacramento. Al, who was Governor Hiram Johnson’s Chief of Staff (they had come together in ‘08, when Father took a bullet in the Ruef and Schmitz graft prosecutions and Johnson took over the lead, and stayed together when Al helped run the VP side of the 1912 Bull Moose run — and he had Huguenot blood as well, endearing him to Mother), Al went so far, with enthusiasm he admitted was somewhat calculated, as to say that “The American” exemplified everything progressive politics in California stood for. And Charles’s younger brothers had been at nearly every show the first two weeks of the run, putting their arms around the shoulders of all the actresses, hanging on them, resting their heads against their necks while they applied their makeup, staring raptly into the mirrored eyes and quickly becoming part of pre-show superstition. Little charming rich boys: How long would they last in this pristine state? But it was pointedly not spoken of during either breakfast or dinner. Mother had made it clear that she had neither the time nor the inclination for any conversation along those lines, she hadn’t the strength, and that had been that.

Meanwhile an incommunicado, possibly sequestered Vera had broken cover and asked to be taken to a Preparedness Day cavalry drill. Charles dismissed out of hand a feeling on his part that he deserved to know where she had been and simply stared at her with baffled longing. If he had understood her in the least way, he would have pressed her, but he did not. He believed he loved her.

“Why in the world would you want to see a Preparedness Day cavalry drill?”

“I want to actually see this man Keogh. The man who represents United Railroad. I’ve hated him blindly for so long. I want to make a man out of him.”

Vera smiled.

“You won’t roll a bomb under his carriage, will you.?”

“I am not a violent person. Surely you have understood that much.”

She let her fingers play lightly, as they might have when they were exploring the pseudo-Delsarte, over her wounds.

“If I recall correctly, you took the name ‘Vera’ in honor of—”

“I was foolishly attracted to the idea of frail little women murdering tyrants when I was younger. I have changed my mind. And look, if you want to the know the truth—”

“Why in the world would you think I wanted anything but to know the—”

“—Vera is my real name, my given name.”

“Well that is just very strange that you should tell me it was assumed, then.”

Vera sighed and smiled. Hadn’t the strangeness of things been apparent from the very beginning? And who, after all, was Charles to speak disparagingly of such a condition?

Charles felt like Hardy’s obscure Jude, confronting the nervously enigmatic Sue Bridehead, and was reminded of the literary opinions of the tall, fair man at Vera’s salon.

“Who was the tall, fair man attending your evening? Hates Hardy.”

“I don’t know. A visitor from New York. He’s come to help with. with something I don’t know enough about to speak of. I didn’t meet him. I don’t know what he does.”

Charles felt even more like Jude, and it surprised him: to think of himself as one who did not, could not understand, who was obscure for all his charm and wealth.

Charles had promised her a show and said that his family pretending to not see her was just the beginning. They watched Amelia as she went into the trailer they’d towed behind the Mountain Wagon, and backed her horse out, taking no nonsense from him though he was clearly in a mood for much nonsense, hopping about like a big cat and chuckling and bumping people around. She saddled him and said his name softly and sweetly over and over again, just for the pleasure it gave them both, then mounted him, and trotted off. The drills were again taking place at the far end of the clearing; occasionally a band of cavaliers would thunder toward them, turn as if barrel racing, and thunder back.

The drills looked, at that distance, formless, an amateur polo match, and Charles tried to interest himself and Vera in the picnic food, opening several bottles of wine and wondering if he might drink a little, or a lot, of it. He could clearly feel that within himself some kind of wall had been breached. Because Vera was nervous and increasingly awkward in her gestures and speech, he poured them each a big glass. They walked a few steps away to the shade of a big spreading tree and drank the wine slowly, Charles saying a few inane things about its character, Vera agog then outraged at its price, drinking it defiantly as if it were water. When they were done, he returned to the basket, refilled the glasses, and walked back to the tree. They clinked glasses and smiled at each other. His brother-in-law, the robust, handsome Thomas, man of God but manly man as well, a man for genial living as well as serene acknowledgement of the life to come, was back in town for a brief stay, and was quick to demonstrate that his calling in no way prevented his being judicious about the quality of wine his family and friends might moderately, or even a little immoderately, indulge in. Had not Jesus spent a good deal of miraculous force in changing water to wine at the wedding feast in Cana? If some now wanted a savior who would change wine to water, he, the Reverend Thomas Grant Ruggles, was not among them. Many friends streamed past, enjoyed a glass of wine, and complimented both Thomas and Charles — pointedly or casually ignoring Vera according to their social skills — on their accomplishments, so different in nature and practice but so similar in purpose, as the nation moved toward war.

Amelia cantered back and forth across the clearing, getting Jolly to rear up once or twice when people she despised came too close — friends who, she suspected, frowned not only on her husband’s carefree indulgence of wine, on her brother’s theater — on her and Mother’s theater, as they had each contributed significant sums during the fund drive — no matter the beneficial effect it was clearly having on the spirit of the city, but who she suspected thought terrible things about her after she had fallen from Jolly and been seen in the arms of Durwood Keogh. Keogh was one of her great and dear father’s most certain enemies! No one need to be told that again! And while she supported Father’s wish to put all that behind them and unite as the country joined the European war, she had made her feelings plain to the gallant captain, and extricated herself from his ministrations as soon as he had been able. If she had been seen laughing, that was because her nerves were bad — had always been bad and were getting worse, after what seemed like decided improvement when she had been working so hard in the city’s hospitals.