Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [130]
“Other people might.”
“Not any of those people.”
“You mean they’re incapable of learning?”
“I mean they already know anything I could tell them.”
“You could have told them something about integrity, when that subject came up. What was more to the point than your experience with Kendall or Hearst?”
He barked once, incredulously. He heaved over in the cot to face her. “What should I have said? ‘Speaking of integrity, let me tell you about the time I told George Hearst where to head in?”’
“Of course you’re right. I should have told them.”
“If you had, I’d have died right there.”
“But they ought to know you! You sit so silent they’ll all think you’re nobody, and it isn’t true. You don’t want to seem like Pricey.”
Now surliness did roughen his voice. “You can always tell me from Pricey because I don’t rock.”
“Oh, Oliver,” she said hopelessly, “be serious. Those are some of the most important people in the world in your field. You owe it to yourself to make a good impression.”
“Did I insult anybody?”
“No, you just never say anything. Mr. King and Mr. Emmons won’t have any idea how good you are at things, and how much you can do.”
He said something muffled by the pillow.
“What?”
“I said, They know what I can do.” ’
“How could they, possibly?”
“If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have asked me to join the Survey.”
For a moment she lay completely still, with her face turned toward his shadowy shape. The room snowed slowly with flakes of luminousness. “They did? When?”
“This afternoon.”
“But you didn’t say anything!”
“No,” he said with a little laugh. “I never do. Matter of fact, I never had the chance. Everybody else has been talking seventeen to the rod.”
“But why didn’t one of them say something tonight?”
“I suppose they’re waiting till I’ve had a chance to talk it over with you.”
“And you were going right to sleep!”
“I didn’t want to keep you awake all night thinking about it.”
“Oliver,” she said, “they must think very well of you. If we can believe Mr. King, it means he’d trust you with his life.”
“King’s got a literary side. What it means is, he’d trust me with the Public Domain. Or with a job.”
She slid out of bed and sat on the edge of his cot. His arm curled to hold her there, and she bent and said quickly into his neck, behind his ear, “Will thee forgive me?”
“Sure. What for?”
“For wanting to make thee over. I’m a foolish woman, I’m too much in love with talk and talkers. Talk isn’t that important. What’s important is thee. Thee is dear to me.”
“I’m awful glad to hear it,” he said. “Come inside, you’re shivering.”
Obediently she slid in beside him. The sagging narrowness of the cot jammed them together. “Will thee take it?” she asked.
“That depends on you.”
“Thee’d be happier.”
“Maybe. I hate all this lawing and claim jumping and swearing to false affidavits and all this playing expert in a game where both sides are crooked. It’d be nice to do a job that just expanded knowledge.”
“Thee could, I know thee could.” She lay still, then she said, “That’s almost the first thing thee ever said to me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was drawing in the library at the Beaches’. Thee said It must be nice to do what you like and get paid for it.”’
“All right, I don’t take it back. Look at Emmons, as relaxed about Leadville as if he didn’t give a hoot what goes on in it, or who owns what, and yet he practically made it. Everybody in the place, even the pick and shovel man at the end of a drift, consults his book. That ought to make a man feel good.”
“What would Frank and Pricey do?”
“They could have the office. Frank’s got a degree from MIT, which is more than I’ve got. He could handle it right now.”
“I’d hate to see them left out, they both admire thee so.”
“I’ll see they’re not left out.”
His hands were moving on her. Often, when he was in that mood, she put them away, but now she let them come under the nightgown, all over her. She laughed a little because there was no room for his elbows, it was like making love inside a culvert.