Castaways in Time by Adams Robert

But even with the door to the dining room firmly shut, still the pudgy woman’s strident tones penetrated.

“… in one ear and out the other. You’ve never heeded any advice I’ve ever given you, never stood up to people the way you should, the way a real man would. You’re always off in a fog somewhere, like you just were; allowing your own wife—a good, decent, Christian woman—to be compelled to be around degenerate dope addicts and fornicators and, for all we know, adulterers and perverts, and you didn’t open your mouth once. No, as usual, / had to be the one to protest these outrages against decency and God’s Law. You always, you have always …”

In unvoiced concord, both Foster and Krystal descended the three steps to the laundryroom-workshop and thence to the spacious den. The addition of two more closed doors finally made the noise emanating from the living room almost inaudible.

Krystal sank into the fake-fur double lounge, shaking her head. “Oh, that dear, sweet, gentle man. Bass, just think of it! Twenty-two years in hell! Christ, I’m ready to kill the bitch after only twenty-odd hours”

Foster shrugged. “Human beings have a bad habit of manufacturing their own hells, Krys, I’m sure Collier didn’t marry her at gunpoint.” He grinned. “He doesn’t strike me as the type.

“I just hope,” he went on as he seated himself beside her and placed a hand on her bare knee, “that your father doesn’t have a shotgun.”

She almost smiled. “Poor Poppa doesn’t know one end of any gun from the other.”

“Big, mean, nasty brothers, then?” he probed.

“I only have one brother, Bass, and he ran off to Canada to keep from getting drafted. He’s still there . . . living on the money Momma sneaks out of what Poppa gives her.”

“Oh, your brother was an anti-war activist?”

She barked a short, humorless laugh. “Baby Brother Seymour said that he opposed ‘the unjust, illegal war,’ of course, but that’s not really the reason he cut out. He was just afraid somebody might force an honest day’s work out of hinf, for the first time in his pampered, sheltered life, that’s all. The snotty little leech! If he wasn’t so goddamned lazy, he wouldn’t have flunked out of dental school and been liable to the draft to start out.”

“Not much love lost on your little brother, is there?” Foster chuckled. “Don’t you ever feel guilty about hating your own flesh and blood, Krys?”

Her short, softly waving dark-brown hair rippled to the shake of her head. “Brother Seymour’s not worth a hate, or a shit, for that matter. I don’t hate him, Bass, I despise him. He’s never ever tried to do one damned thing to please Poppa and Momma, while I’ve always broken my ass to make them happy» t° make myself into a person they could take pride in . . . that’s why I thought it so unjust, so unfair, that he should be fat and spoiled and utterly useless and alive up in Canada, while I …” She trailed off into silence, a sudden fear darkening her eyes,

“While you what, Krys?” There was all at once an almost-desperate intensity in Foster’s voice. “While your brother was alive in Canada and you what? What were you about to say?”

But Krystal maintained her silence. Arising, she took glass and jug with her when she strode over to the sliding glass door, opened it and took a step onto the concrete patio, then she half turned. Her voice low but as intense as his own, she said, “Please, Bass, let it go … let it go, for now. If things keep going as good for you and me as they promise to, I’ll tell you … I promise. But, please, just let me alone for a while; I have to think.”

Alone for almost the first time in the last full day, Foster faced the fact that he, himself, had some thinking to do.

Just what in hell had happened?

He remembered the big, beefy state trooper, soaking wet in the driving rain and shouting to make himself heard above the storm, the rushing of the near-floodstage river and the roaring of the ‘copter.