Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [52]
They shook hands with Oliver and went away, walking fast. Oliver came back and stood smiling, behind Susan’s chair, pushing it so that she rocked forward and touched her toes and could spring back again against his hands. “We must go,” he said.
The young men were indignant, Mother Fall was hurt. Susan stood up obediently, unsure of what was happening.
“There was some talk about a charivari,” Oliver said. “I gave them money for a couple of barrels of beer. So now I’m going to take Sue home and barricade the doors.”
They protested. Nobody in camp would think of pulling any horseplay on the Resident Engineer’s wife. Even if they didn’t have sense enough to know that anything roughhouse would be out of keeping, they were all too scared for their jobs. Oliver should have told them to go chase themselves. Stay on here, maybe it would get lively. Get your health drunk in person.
That was just what he expected, Oliver said. He saw no reason Susan should be exposed to a bunch of beery admirers. Are you ready, Susan?
She shook their hands one by one. With some sort of inward shudder she let herself be clasped to Mother Fall’s faintly onion-smelling best dress. She expressed her thanks for all they had done to make things easy and pleasant, and she went away not sure whether they would pick her to pieces as being too high toned for mining-camp life, or whether they would be groaning with envy at Oliver’s luck. And what if those men did decide to play some drunken prank? She had heard of the most appalling things–kidnapped bride, imprisoned and humiliated bride-groom, Halloween destructions and practical jokes.
Walking back along the black lane, with Oliver’s lantern throwing blobs of shadow ahead of them and lighting the dusty roots in the bank, she had a few minutes of near-panic. Physically it was like any other country lane at night; it might have been the lane between John Grant’s and her father’s. But already, back of them, she heard the loud voices of men, and she knew that in a half hour or so they would be louder yet.
“Will they come, do you think?”
He put his arm around her. “Not a chance. They just wanted an excuse to bum a treat ”
“Why did we leave, then?”
“So I could have you to myself.”
He had her to himself so close that they lurched and stumbled in the trail.
2
For three more mornings she awoke in her bare room, breathing air strangely scented and listening to the strange sounds that had awakened her: once the bells of the panadero’s burro coming up the trail with loaves sticking out of the panniers on both sides, twice the distant beating of kettles and hullaballoo of voices yelling in a strange tongue–the Chinese arising in their camp under the hill. Each morning Oliver came in and kissed her fully awake and laid a wild-flower on her breast. Their breakfasts were interrupted by the seven o’clock whistle from the nearest shaft house, and they smiled because for these few days Oliver could ignore it.
Between the little jobs of getting settled, she added bits to her serial letter. Grandmother did not live in the local color period for nothing. Here, for instance, is the vegetable man:
Lizzie does the buying and I stand around with my Jap umbrella, very much in everybody’s way, and tell what we want. The man is an Italian named Costa. It is delightful to hear him say the names of common vegetables. When he asks me if I want cabbage, as he says it I feel that it must be a most tempting thing. And it is so amusing to hear him reckon up the account–‘One bit carrot–two bit tomato–four bit potato–3 bit apple–2 bit blackberries.’ Lizzie is washing this morning, and the baby sits in a drygoods box on the floor as happy as possible . . . Everything will be so easy that I shall grow fat and lazy. Three times a day we hear steam whistles, and here and there are columns of smoke rising. A heavily laden wagon drawn by mules passes a distant curve of the winding road,