Peyton Place Page 8

  Lucas Cross was different from many woodsmen in that he had a trade which he practiced when coaxed with liquor or bribed with outrageous sums of money. He was a skilled carpenter and cabinetmaker.

  “Never saw anything like it in my life,” Charles Partridge had said, soon after Lucas had been persuaded to make some kitchen cabinets for Mrs. Partridge. “In came Lucas, not drunk, mind you, but he'd had a few. He had this folding yardstick that looked about as accurate to me as a two-dollar watch. Well, he sat and looked at our kitchen walls for a while, then he started in measuring and cussing under his breath, and after a time he began sawing and planing. The next thing I knew, he was done, and if I do say so myself, there are no finer-looking cabinets in any kitchen in Peyton Place. Look.”

  The cabinets were made of knotty pine and they fitted perfectly in the spaces between the Partridges’ kitchen windows. They gleamed like satin.

  Over a period of years, Lucas had done much of the interior “finish” work in the houses on Chestnut Street, and most of what he had not done had been done by his father.

  “Good cabinetmakers, the Crosses,” said the people of the town.

  “When they're sober,” they amended.

  “My wife wants Lucas to make her a buffet for the dining room when he gets through working the woods next.”

  “She'll have to sober him up first. Whatever money he makes in the woods, he'll spend on one helluva drunk before he starts looking around for work again.”

  “They're all alike, those shackowners. Work for a while, drunk for a longer while, work and then drunk again.”

  “They're all right, though. Don't do any harm that I can see. They pay their bills.”

  Seth Buswell, in a rare philosophical mood, said, “I wonder why our woodsman drinks? One would surmise that he hasn't the imagination to invent phantoms for himself from which he must escape. I wonder what he thinks about. Doubtless he has his hopes and dreams the same as all of us, yet it appears that all he ever dwells upon is liquor, sex and food, in that order.”

  “Watch that kind of talk, old feller,” said Dr. Swain. “When you talk like that, the old Dartmouth education shows through.”

  “Sorry,” said Seth elaborately and reverted to the patois of his people, the one hypocrisy which he consciously practiced. It might not be honest, this omitting of r's and dropping of final g's, but his father had made a barrel of money in spite of it, and had gained many votes because of it.

  “Mebbe they're a harmless crew at that, our woodsmen,” said Seth. “Sort of like tame animals.”

  “Except Lucas Cross,” said Dr. Swain. “He's a mean one. There's something about him, something around the eyes, that rubs me the wrong way. He has the look of a jackal.”

  “Lucas is all right, Doc,” said Seth comfortably. “You're seein’ things.”

  “I hope so,” said the doctor. “But I'm afraid not.”

  ♦ 8 ♦

  Selena Cross lay on the folding cot that served as her bed and which was pushed against the wall on the kitchen side of the one-room Cross shack. She was thirteen years old and well developed for her age, with the curves of hips and breasts already discernible under the too short and often threadbare clothes that she wore. Much of the girl's clothing had been inherited from the more fortunate children of Peyton Place and passed down to Selena through the charity-loving hands of the ladies from the Congregational church. Selena had long dark hair that curled of its own accord in a softly beautiful fashion. Her eyes, too, were dark and slightly slanted, and she had a naturally red, full-lipped mouth over well-shaped, startlingly white teeth. Her skin was clear and of a honey-tan shade which looked as if it had been acquired under the sun but which, on Selena, never faded to sallowness in the long months of the harsh New England winter.

  “Put a pair of gold hoops in her ears,” said Miss Thornton, “and she'd look like everybody's idea of a perfect gypsy.”

  Selena was wise with the wisdom learned of poverty and wretchedness. At thirteen, she saw hopelessness as an old enemy, as persistent and inevitable as death.

  Sometimes, when she looked at Nellie, her mother, she thought, I'll get out. I'll never be like her.

  Nellie Cross was short and flabby with the unhealthy fat that comes from too many potatoes and too much bread. Her hair was thin and tied in a sloppy knot at the back of her not too clean neck, and her hands, perpetually grimy, were rough and knobby knuckled, with broken, dirty fingernails.

  I'll get out, thought Selena. I'll never let myself look like that.

  But hopelessness was always at her elbow, ready to nudge her and say, “Oh, yeah? How will you get out? Where could you go, and who would have you after you got there?”

  If Lucas was away, or at home but sober, Selena would think, optimistically, Oh, I'll manage. One way or another, I'll get out.

  But for the most part it was like tonight. Selena lay in her cot and listened to her older brother Paul snoring in his bed against the opposite wall, and to the adenoidal breathing of her little brother Joey, who slept in a cot like her own. But these sounds could not cover the louder ones which came from the double bed at the other end of the shack. Selena lay still and listened to Lucas and Nellie perform the act of love. Lucas did not speak while thus engaged. He grunted, Selena thought, like a rooting pig, and he breathed like a steam engine puffing its way across the wide Connecticut River, while from Nellie there was no sound at all. Selena listened and chewed at her bottom lip and thought, Hurry up, for Christ's sake. Lucas grunted harder and puffed louder, and the old spring on the double bed creaked alarmingly, faster and faster. At last, Lucas squealed like a calf in the hands of a butcher and it was over. Selena turned her face into her moldy-smelling pillow which was bare of any sort of pillowcase, and wept soundlessly.

  I'll get out, she thought furiously. I'll get out of this filthy mess.

  Her old enemy, hopelessness, did not even bother to answer. He was just there.

  ♦ 9 ♦

  Allison MacKenzie had never actually visited at Selena's house. She was in the habit of walking down the dirt road to where the Cross shack stood, and of waiting in front of the clearing until her friend came out to her. Many times Allison had wondered why none of the Crosses ever invited her into the house, but she had never quite dared to ask Selena. Once she had asked her mother, but Constance had persisted in saying that the reason was that Selena was ashamed of her home, so Allison had never discussed it with her again. Constance could not seem to understand that Selena was perfect and sure of herself, and that it was only she, Allison, who ever had feelings of shame. But still, it was odd the way no one had ever invited her into the house. Most of the time Selena came right out the shack door as soon as she saw Allison, but once in a while she emerged from the enclosed pen that was attached to the side of the house in which Lucas kept a few sheep. Whenever she had been in the sheep pen, Selena always yelled, “Wait a minute, Allison. I got to wash my feet,” but she never asked Allison to come in while she did so. Usually Selena's little brother Joey tagged along behind his sister, but this Saturday afternoon Selena came out of the house alone.

  “Hi, Selena,” called Allison warmly, her antisocial mood of the previous afternoon forgotten.

  “Hi, kid,” said Selena in the oddly deep voice which Allison found so intriguing. “What'll we do today?”

  The question was rhetorical. On Saturday afternoons the girls always sauntered slowly down the streets of the town, looking into shop windows and pretending that they were grown up and married to famous men. They studied every piece of merchandise in the Peyton Place stores, carefully picking and choosing what they would buy for themselves, for their houses and for their children.

  “That suit would be adorable on little Clark, Mrs. Gable,” they said to one another.

  And, nonchalantly, “Since I divorced Mr. Powell, I just can't seem to work up much interest in clothes any more.”

  Together, they spent every cent Allison could beg from her mother on
junk jewelry, motion picture magazines and ice-cream sundaes. Sometimes Selena had a little money which she had earned by doing some odd job for a local housewife, and then she and Allison would go to a movie at the Ioka Theater. Later, they would sit at the soda fountain in Prescott's Drugstore and eat toasted tomato and lettuce sandwiches and drink Coca-Cola. Then, instead of pretending that they were married to motion picture stars, they would play at being well-to-do local housewives out for an afternoon stroll and stopping for tea while their infants slept peacefully in perambulators parked outside Prescott's front door. Allison held a drinking straw, ripped in half as if it were a cigarette, and carried on what she considered a grown-up conversation.

  “When Mr. Beane decided to start up the movie theater,” she said, “he didn't have enough money, so he borrowed from an Irishman named Kelley. That's why the theater is named the Ioka. It stands for I Owe Kelley All.”

  She drew a great deal of satisfaction out of knowing these little town anecdotes and from repeating them, with her own embellishments, while she picked imaginary shreds of tobacco daintily off her tongue. Selena was always an appreciative audience, never mean or stinting with her “Oh's” or “My goodnesses,” or her breathlessly disbelieving “No's!”

  “Oh, my goodness. Did Mr. Beane ever pay Mr. Kelley back?” asked Selena.

  “Oh, sure,” said Allison. And then, after a moment's pause in which a better answer occurred to her, “No, wait a minute. He didn't. No, he never paid Mr. Kelley back. He ascended with the funds.”

  Selena slipped out of her grown-up character long enough to ask, indignantly, “What do you mean, ascended?” She always considered it as hitting below the belt when Allison used words which Selena had never heard of, and oftentimes she thought that Allison made up her own words as she went along.

  “Oh, you know,” said Allison. “Ascended. Ran away. Yes, Mr. Beane ascended with all the funds, and Mr. Kelley never got any of his money back.”

  “Allison MacKenzie, you're making that up!” protested Selena, the grown-up conversational game now completely forgotten. “Why, I saw Amos Beane right on Elm Street just yesterday. You're making the whole thing up!”

  “Yes,” said Allison, laughing, “I am.”

  “Absconded,” said Mrs. Prescott severely from behind the soda fountain. “And he never did. That's how gossip gets started, young lady. Outrageous lies, multiplied and divided and multiplied again.”

  “Yes, ma'am,” said Allison meekly.

  “Gossip's just like amoebas,” said Mrs. Prescott. “Multiply, divide and multiply.”

  Allison and Selena, struck with a sudden fit of giggles, ran outdoors, leaving their half-finished sandwiches. They clung together on the sidewalk, laughing hysterically, while Mrs. Prescott looked on disapprovingly from behind the plate glass window.

  When these long Saturday afternoons were over, the two girls went to Allison's house where they spent many enchanted hours making up each other's faces with minute quantities of cosmetics which they had obtained by sending magazine coupons to companies who offered free samples.

  “I think this ‘Blue Plum’ is just the right shade of lipstick for you, Selena.”

  And Selena, with lips that looked like swollen Concord grapes, would say, “This ‘Oriental #2’ is swell on you, kid. Gives you a swell color.”

  Allison, studying the reflection that looked back at her and which now looked rather like that of a pallid Indian, would say, “Do you really think so? You're not just saying that?”

  “No, really. It brings out your eyes.”

  This game had to be over before Constance arrived home. She had a withering way of saying that make-up looked cheap on young girls so that Allison, listening to her, would feel the shine of pleasure rub off her lovely Saturday afternoon, and would be depressed for the rest of the evening.

  Selena always stayed to supper on Saturdays, when Constance usually made something simple, like waffles or scrambled eggs with little sausages. To Selena, these were foods of unheard of luxury, just as everything about the MacKenzie house seemed luxurious—and beautiful, something to dream about. She loved the combination of rock maple and flowered chintz in the MacKenzie living room, and she often wondered, sometimes angrily, what in the world ailed Allison that she could be unhappy in surroundings like these, with a wonderful blonde mother, and a pink and white bedroom of her own.

  This was the way the two friends had always spent their Saturday afternoons, but today some restlessness, some urge to contrariness, made Allison hesitant to answer Selena's, “What'll we do today?” with the stock answer.

  Allison said, “Oh, I don't know. Let's just walk.”

  “Where to?” demanded Selena practically. “Can't just walk and walk and not go anywhere. Let's go down to your mother's store.”

  Selena loved to go to the Thrifty Corner. Sometimes Constance allowed her to look at the dresses which hung, shimmering gorgeously, from padded white hangers.

  “No,” said Allison decisively, wanting to go anywhere but to her mother's store. “You always want to do the same old thing. Let's go somewhere else.”

  “Well, where, then?” asked Selena petulantly.

  “I know a place,” said Allison quickly. “I know the most wonderful place in the world to go. It's a secret place, though, so you mustn't ever tell anyone that I took you there. Promise?”

  Selena laughed. “Where's this?” she asked. “Are you going to take me up to Samuel Peyton's castle?”

  “Oh, no! I'd never go up there. I'd be scared. Wouldn't you?”

  “No,” said Selena flatly, “I wouldn't. Dead folks can't hurt you none. It's the ones that are alive, you have to watch out for.”

  “Well, anyway, it's not the castle I'm talking about. Come on. I'll show you.”

  “All right,” said Selena. “But if it's somewhere silly, I'll turn right around and go downtown. I've got a dollar and a quarter from doing Mrs. Partridge's ironing, and the new Photoplays and Silver Screens are in down at Prescott's.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Allison impatiently.

  Arm in arm, the two girls walked, Allison leading the way through town and into Memorial Park. She felt excited, the way she often did just before Christmas, when she had a special gift to give to someone, and she felt, too, the particular happiness that comes from sharing something precious with a dear friend.

  “Here comes Ted Carter,” said Allison in a whisper, although the boy was at the opposite end of the park walk and could not possibly have heard her. “Pretend you don't see him.”

  “Why?” asked Selena aloud. “Ted's a good kid. Why should I make out not to see him?”

  “He's after you, that's why,” hissed Allison.

  “You're nuts.”

  “I am not. You don't want anything to do with Ted Carter, Selena. He comes from a terrible family. I heard my mother talking to Mrs. Page once, about Ted's mother and father. Mrs. Page said that Mrs. Carter is no better than a hoor!”

  “D'you mean whore?” asked Selena.

  “Sh-h,” Allison whispered. “He'll hear you. I don't know what Mrs. Page meant, but Mother's face got all red when she heard it, so it must be something terrible, like a thief, or a murderer!”

  “Well, maybe it is, in a way,” drawled Selena and burst out laughing. “Hi, Ted,” she said to the boy who was now almost abreast of the two girls. “What're you doing here?”

  “Same thing you are,” said Ted and grinned. “Just walking.”

  “Well, then, walk with us,” said Selena, ignoring Allison's elbow in her ribs.

  “I can't,” said Ted. “I gotta get back and get groceries for my mother.”

  “Well, if you can't, you can't,” said Selena.

  “Come on,” said Allison.

  “‘Bye, Ted,” said Selena.

  ‘“Bye,” said Ted. “‘Bye, Allison.”

  The girls walked on through the park and Ted continued on his way toward town. When he reached the end of the walk where it eme
rged into the street, Ted turned to look back.

  “Hey, Selena,” he yelled.

  The girls turned to look at him and Ted waved his hand.

  “I'll be seeing you, Selena,” called Ted.

  “Sure!” Selena called back, and waved.

  Ted turned out of the park into the street and was out of sight.

  “See!” said Allison furiously. “You see! I told you so. He's after you.”

  Selena stopped walking to look at her friend. She looked at her long and hard.

  “So what?” she asked finally.

  The afternoon was not a success. For the first time during their long friendship, the two girls did not see eye to eye.

  What's wrong, wondered Allison, not able to understand a person who remained unmoved by the beauty of the land.

  I wonder what ails her, thought Selena, unable to imagine anyone for whom “going downtown” was not a thrilling experience, gaining in new joys with every trip. But then, Allison had a lot of queer ideas, thought Selena. Like when she wanted to be all by herself, or when she got to mooning over her dead father.

  After all, Selena reasoned, her own father was just as dead as Allison's father, but no one ever caught her mooning around over some dumb picture the way Allison did. Selena had no idea at all of how her father had looked. He had been killed in a lumbering accident two months before she was born and Nellie had had no framed photographs to show her daughter. Lucas Cross was the only father Selena knew. He had been a widower with one son by a wife who had died in childbirth, and he had married Nellie when Selena was six weeks old. Paul was not Selena's own brother any more than Joey was but, thought Selena, she didn't bother to think of that much. If Allison were in my shoes, mused Selena, I bet she'd always be talking about half brothers and stepfathers and that kind of stuff. I wonder what ails her all the time.

  Allison wondered incredulously if Selena could possibly be approaching the stage which Constance described as “being boy crazy.” She was certainly in an awful hurry to get downtown. Maybe she hoped that she'd see Ted Carter in one of the stores. Allison frowned at this thought, as she began to climb the long, sloping hill behind the park, Selena at her heels.