Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [158]
He had out his knife again, digging at his horny palm. She saw the V between thumb and forefinger thick and yellow with callus. In the absence of money to hire a crew, he and Frank and Jack Hill had been mucking in the mine like common laborers, hoping to turn up something that would persuade the New York office to commit itself and its money. Carefully, without looking up, he said, “Would you consider Mexico?”
“Consider it?” she said suspiciously. “Why? Have you had an offer?”
“Not exactly. But I could, I think.”
“Where is it? Off on some mountaintop, like Leadville or Potosí?”
She saw his forehead pucker. His eyes returned from outdoors and met hers steadily. His head was up so that the pupils sat in the middle, riot up against the upper lids, and there was not that sinister half-moon of white below them. “Sue,” he said, “it’s my profession.”
She was contrite. She hadn’t meant to sneer. “I know. Tell me.”
“Letter came a week or so ago–ten days, two weeks, I don’t know. The Syndicate’s given up on the Adelaide until the suit’s settled. We’re just sitting here. They’ve got an option on a mine in Michoacán. There was this sort of question, if it worked out that way would I be interested in inspecting it.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’d come back here, assuming the Adelaide wins its suit.”
“What about Ollie?”
“He couldn’t go, not on this inspection trip.”
“Back to Milton?”
“Milton or Guilford. Milton’s more his home than anywhere else.”
“How long?”
“How long?”
“You say you’d have to inspect it. How long would that take?”
“I don’t know. Two months, maybe more.”
“Could I go along?”
“I wouldn’t go otherwise.”
Absently her hand came out and settled on top of his. He was being scrupulous not to influence her, he simply laid out possibilities. “I hate to think of Ollie,” she said. “Just barely well, if he is.”
He said nothing. He watched her.
“I wonder if I could get Thomas to commission an article,” she said. “Mexico might be exciting to draw.”
He sat inert.
“If we didn’t go there, we’d just mildew here,” she said. “When will that suit come up, do you think?”
“Not before winter. Maybe spring.”
“And Frank could hold the fort here, if we went.”
“Why not?”
“If Thomas would commission an article, we might make more by going there than by staying here. We could leave Ollie with Mother and Bessie, I know they’re better for him than I am.”
“You mean you could make more,” Oliver said, steadily watching her.
“Oh, Oliver, please!”
“Two questions. Will you leave him? And would you like to go? If the answer is yes to both, I’ll write Ferd. He has to pay me whether I stay here or go there. I imagine he’d just as soon get some work out of me.”
The dove cooed again, distant and sorrowful, and was answered from a great distance by another. She laughed shakily and stretched the salt-stiffened skin of her cheeks. “Oliver, let’s! I keep thinking it’s morning. I keep thinking it’s a fine sunny morning after a spell of bad weather. I feel like popping out of bed and being energetic and cheerful.”
“All right,” Oliver said. “You pop out of bed and be energetic and cheerful. I’ll go down to the office and see how Frank’s doing, and maybe write a letter.”
“What if I wrote Waldo Drake too? Would that help?”
“I don’t know. Would it?”
“It might. I’ve known him a long time.”
He looked at her. He shrugged. “O.K., if you want.”
“Would it seem like . . . taking advantage of a connection?”
“I suppose it might.”
“Even if it does!” she said. “I don’t care.”
V
MICHOACÁN
1
My mother died when I was two, my father was a silent and difficult man: I grew up my grandparents’ child. As those things went in Grass Valley, I also grew up privileged, son of the superintendent of the Zodiac and grandson of the general manager. Every child I played with came from a family that worked for mine.
Grandmother deferred to my father, seemed almost to fear him. Certainly she assumed the blame for the taciturnity that made him formidable