“My brother?”
“Have you forgotten Charles?”
Adam laughed. “You are a devil,” he said. “But do you think I could believe that of my brother?”
“I don’t care what you believe,” she said.
Adam said, “I don’t believe it.”
“You will. At first you will wonder, and then you’ll be unsure. You’ll think back about Charles—all about him. I could have loved Charles. He was like me in a way.”
“He was not.”
“You’ll remember,” she said. “Maybe one day you will remember some tea that tasted bitter. You took my medicine by mistake—remember? Slept as you had never slept before and awakened late—thick-headed?”
“You were too hurt to plan a thing like that.”
“I can do anything,” she said. “And now, my love, take off your clothes. And I will show you what else I can do.”
Adam closed his eyes and his head reeled with the rum. He opened his eyes and shook his head violently. “It wouldn’t matter—even if it were true,” he said. “It wouldn’t matter at all.” And suddenly he laughed because he knew that this was so. He stood too quickly and had to grab the back of his chair to steady himself against dizziness.
Kate leaped up and put both of her hands on his elbow. “Let me help you take off your coat.”
Adam twisted her hands from his arm as though they were wire. He moved unsteadily toward the door.
Uncontrolled hatred shone in Kate’s eyes. She screamed, a long and shrill animal screech. Adam stopped and turned toward her. The door banged open. The house pimp took three steps, poised, pivoted with his whole weight, and his fist struck Adam under the ear. Adam crashed to the floor.
Kate screamed, “The boots! Give him the boots!” Ralph moved closer to the fallen man and measured the distance. He noticed Adam’s open eyes staring up at him. He turned nervously to Kate.
Her voice was cold. “I said give him the boots. Break his face!”
Ralph said, “He ain’t fighting back. The fight’s all out of him.”
Kate sat down. She breathed through her mouth. Her hands writhed in her lap. “Adam,” she said, “I hate you. I hate you now for the first time. I hate you! Adam, are you listening? I hate you!”
Adam tried to sit up, fell back, and tried again. Sitting on the floor, he looked up at Kate. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It doesn’t matter at all.”
He got to his knees and rested with his knuckles against the floor. He said, “Do you know, I loved you better than anything in the world? I did. It was so strong that it took quite a killing.”
“You’ll come crawling back,” she said. “You’ll drag your belly on the floor—begging, begging!”
“You want the boots now, Miss Kate?” Ralph asked.
She did not answer.
Adam moved very slowly toward the door, balancing his steps carefully. His hand fumbled at the doorjamb.
Kate called, “Adam!”
He turned slowly. He smiled at her as a man might smile at a memory. Then he went out and closed the door gently behind him.
Kate sat staring at the door. Her eyes were desolate.
Chapter 26
1
On the train back to King City from his trip to Salinas, Adam Trask was in a cloud of vague forms and sounds and colors. He was not conscious of any thought at all.
I believe there are techniques of the human mind whereby, in its dark deep, problems are examined, rejected or accepted. Such activities sometimes concern facets a man does not know he has. How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing what causes the travail, and in the morning a whole new direction and a clearness is there, maybe the result of the black reasoning. And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy, and nothing in the thoughts to justify it or cause it.
Samuel’s funeral and the talk with Kate should have made Adam sad and bitter, but they did not. Out of the gray throbbing an ecstasy arose. He felt young and free and filled with a hungry gaiety. He got off the train in King City, and, instead of going directly to the livery stable to claim his horse and buggy, he walked to Will Hamilton’s new garage.
Will was sitting in his glass-walled office from which he could watch the activity of his mechanics without hearing the clamor of their work. Will’s stomach was beginning to fill out richly.
He was studying an advertisement for cigars shipped direct and often from Cuba. He thought he was mourning for his dead father, but he was not. He did have some little worry about Tom, who had gone directly from the funeral to San Francisco. He felt that it was more dignified to lose oneself in business, as he intended to do, than in alcohol, as Tom was probably doing.
He looked up when Adam came into the office and waved his hand to one of the big leather chairs he had installed to lull his customers past the size of the bills they were going to have to pay.
Adam sat down. “I don’t know whether I offered my condolences,” he said.
“It’s a sad time,” said Will. “You were at the funeral?”
“Yes,” said Adam. “I don’t know whether you know how I felt about your father. He gave me things I will never forget.”
“He was respected,” said Will. “There were over two hundred people at the cemetery—over two hundred.”
“Such a man doesn’t really die,” Adam said, and he was discovering it himself. “I can’t think of him dead. He seems maybe more alive to me than before.”
“That’s true,” said Will, and it was not true to him. To Will, Samuel was dead.
“I think of things he said,” Adam went on. “When he said them I didn’t listen very closely, but now they come back, and I can see his face when he said them.”
“That’s true,” said Will. “I was just thinking the same thing. Are you going back to your place?”
“Yes, I am. But I thought I would come in and talk to you about buying an automobile.”
A subtle change came over Will, a kind of silent alertness. “I would have said you’d be the last man in the valley to get a car,” he observed and watched through half-closed eyes for Adam’s reaction.
Adam laughed. “I guess I deserved that,” he said. “Maybe your father is responsible for a change in me.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know as I could explain it. Anyway, let’s talk about a car.”
“I’ll give you the straight dope on it,” said Will. “The truth of the matter is I’m having one hell of a time getting enough cars to fill my orders. Why, I’ve got a list of people who want them.”
“Is that so? Well, maybe I’ll just have to put my name on the list.”
“I’d be glad to do that, Mr. Trask, and—” He paused. “You’ve been so close to the family that—well, if there should be a cancellation I’d be glad to move you up on the list.”
“That’s kind of you,” said Adam.
“How would you like to arrange it?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I can arrange it so you pay only so much a month.”
“Isn’t it more expensive that way?”
“Well, there’s interest and carrying charge. Some people find it convenient.”
“I think I’ll pay cash,” said Adam. “There’d be no point in putting it off.”
Will chuckled. “Not very many people feel that way,” he said. “And there’s going to come a time when I won’t be able to sell for cash without losing money.”
“I’d never thought of that,” said Adam. “You will put me on the list though?”
Will leaned toward him. “Mr. Trask, I’m going to put you on the top of the list. The first car that comes in, you’re going to have.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll be glad to do it for you,” said Will.
Adam asked, “How is your mother holding up?”
Will leaned back in his chair and an affectionate smile came on his face. “She’s a remarkable woman,” he said. “She’s like a rock. I think back on all the hard times we had, and we had plenty of them. My father wasn’t very practical. He was always off in the clouds or buried in a book. I think my mother held us together and kept the Hamiltons out of the poorhouse.”
“She’s a fine woman,” Adam said.
“Not only fine. She’s strong. She stands on her two feet. She’s a tower of strength. Did you come back to Olive’s house after the funeral?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well over a hundred people did. And my mother fried all that chicken and saw that everybody had enough.”