Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [194]
“I’m giving you the chance to do something besides wait.”
“What if we’d rather wait than do something else?”
Oliver threw a stick at the fire. He had the ground around him cleaned down to the gravel. His hand went on absently feeling for other scraps of things to pick up and throw. “These are the years you should be establishing yourself, instead of bogging down in a stalled project.”
“Shoot,” Wiley said, “don’t you believe in this project? I do.”
“So do I,” Frank said.
Oliver said patiently, “There’s no place for you to live, Frank. Even if you two were crazy enough to go on working for nothing.”
“Crazy?” Susan said. “Oh no, loyal!”
She embarrassed them. They sent her way wags of the head and depreciatory smiles. “What’s the matter with the tent?” Frank said.
“Through the winter?”
“Don’t think you’ll be much better off in the shack. Would you say, Art?”
“She gets a little fresh,” Wiley said.
“We’ll have to fix it up. Tarpaper it, something.”
“Look,” Frank said, and sat up straight against the log, “I don’t think Mrs. Ward is going to enjoy that shack whatever we do to it. That’s just not good enough for her and the children and Nellie. Why don’t we build her a house? We won’t be doing anything else.”
Oliver looked amused. “Out of what?”
“Logs?”
“Sure,” Wiley said.
“Too late to get ’em cut,” Oliver said. “No water to float ’em down.”
“Rock? There’s plenty of that.”
“What do we do for roof, floors, framing, windows, all the rest of it? I’m telling you, the company’s broke and so am I. You’d better line up something else. If we ever start again, and you want to come back, you’re hired, at a good raise.”
It seemed to Susan that he dealt callously with their loyalty and their faith. They had been in it together too long to break up now like casual travelers after a train ride. She said impulsively, “But Oliver, we will have some money. I’ll be getting a check from Thomas for The Witness.”
Right back to their old argument. She saw his face go wooden. His hand groped for something to pick up, found a piece of stick. His fingers broke it absently, broke it again. “Which is not for building houses,” he said, and warned her with his eyes.
But she threw back the sheepskin collar and leaned forward into the fire’s heat, pulling the rebozo tighter around her head. Mexico had taught her what such a shawl could do for a pretty face. As I imagine her, bright-eyed and intense, she might be by Murillo.
Lightly she said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll put up the money to build a house, and I’ll retain title, and when the time comes I’ll sell it back to the company for a construction headquarters. And I’ll charge you twice what it costs.”
She made him laugh, which was much. His stubbornness seldom lasted through his laughter. To the juniors he said, “Boys, when you get married, marry a Quaker. They can buy from a Scotchman and sell to a Jew and make money.”
“Is it a bargain?” Susan said. “Then we can stay together. We must stay together! Isn’t that what you want, Frank? Mr. Wiley?”
She saw her enthusiasm light them, but they wouldn’t come out with the resounding word she wanted. They hemmed and hawed like embarrassed bumpkins, their eyes slid toward Oliver, estimating their place in an argument that was none of their business. “Is it a bargain?” she said again. “Please!”
Oliver sat a minute or two looking into the fire. Without speaking he leaned and reached the lantern close, levered up the glass, snapped his flint and steel at the wick, and waited while the flame spread from a point to a line. The wind sighed and crept and cowered along the cliff. Up above, Wan’s tent had gone dark, and if there was a light in the shack she could not see it for the bulge of the hill. She watched her husband’s face, intent on the lantern’s flame. Was he going to condemn them to a breakup none of them wanted, simply to gratify his masculine notion that a man did not make use of his wife’s money?
The lantern, held close, threw the shadow of his mustache across the side of his face. Then he lowered it.