Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [197]
“Oh, Ollie,” Susan said, “why did you do such a thing? Why did you cross by yourself? You know you’re forbidden to.”
He said nothing.
“He’s safe,” Oliver said. “That’s what matters.”
But she was all to pieces, and her agitation came out as blame. “Have you learned a lesson?” she said to Ollie’s double crown. “Has it taught you something? Next time I might not be looking out the window . . .”
Then she remembered what else she had seen out the window. Her head turned, and there was Mrs. Briscoe, who must have stood in her tracks during the whole excitement, just starting toward them. Susan took Ollie by his thin shoulders and shook him. “What was it she sent you for? She did send you, didn’t she?”
He looked away, he said nothing. She shook him hard enough to rattle his teeth, furious at the stubborn wordlessness that was so exactly like his father’s. “Didn’t she!”
Held away and forced to glance up, he said, “Yes ma’am.”
“Why? What for?”
“Sue . . .” Oliver said.
She ignored him. “What for?”
“She’d left something on the other side. She was afraid to go get it herself.”
“That package you were carrying.”
“Yes. I . . . It slipped, Mother! When the bridge wobbled it just slipped and fell in the river, I couldn’t hang onto it. I could have come across easy except for the package. It kept slipping.”
“No you couldn’t. Don’t even begin to think you could. What was in the package?”
“Sue, can’t this wait?” Oliver said. “Let’s get you out of the sun.”
“What was it?” Susan said. “Was it a bottle?”
She cut her eyes aside to watch Mrs. Briscoe plowing through the gravel. She had sweated half-moons under her gingham arms, and her face, at a hundred yards away, was already fixing itself in an expression she obviously hoped was agitated concern.
“What kind of a bottle?” Ollie said. He was staring at her. So was Oliver. Nellie held Betsy off to one side.
“A whiskey bottle?”
“I don’t know,” Ollie said. “It wasn’t big. I could carry it easy, only it kept slipping.”
“Where was it? Where did she tell you to look for it?”
“On the poles over the shed door.”
“Yes,” Susan said, and straightened up. “Not exactly left by accident.” She pressed down on Ollie’s shoulders. “You shouldn’t have gone. You knew better. But it isn’t really your fault. It’s that . . .”
Bunion footed, wearing her look of a supposedly house-broken dog which is called upon to explain a puddle on the floor, Mrs. Briscoe labored toward them. Susan turned her back squarely and met Oliver’s eyes.
“Is that it?” he said “How’d you get onto it?”
“I saw her. She’s got another bottle buried down there on the beach. I saw her drinking from it.” She turned Ollie toward the house. “Come along. I don’t want to speak to her. You’ll have to take her back, Oliver.”
“Then who do we get?”
“I’d rather have nobody.”
“You can’t have nobody. It might take five or six hours to get the doctor out here.”
“Mrs. Olpen will come in an emergency.”
“She couldn’t stay. She’s got five of her own to look after.”
“Please!” she said, and pushed Ollie ahead of her up the path. The sun was like thunder on her head. Her hair, when she put up her hand, felt hot enough to smoke.
Oliver had her by the arm. “Nellie,” he said, “could I ask you . . . No, I’ll tell her myself as soon as we get Mrs. Ward to bed.”
“Don’t waste ten minutes,” Susan said. “I want you to clear the canyon of her.”
She shut her lips, she turned herself inward. All the way up the hill she was thinking of the difference between this coming childbirth and the first, in the comfortable cottage at New Almaden, with Lizzie and Marian Prouse and Oliver all building a protective cushion around her and the doctor only an hour away at Guadalupe; and the second, in her old room in Milton, where she could hear Bessie’s step in the hall and see her mother’s face look in the door every time she sighed or coughed. That time Oliver had been missing, already chasing his dream. Each child marked a decline in the security of their life. Now she would have her third child in a canyon cave, unattended, or attended by a rough-handed settler