Late the next morning, they went into Hilliard to buy supplies and propane tank refills.
It was another cold day, overcast and windy; the daylight had a dull, steel-gray quality. Alix drove, bundled up in her pea jacket, a wool scarf, and a pair of gloves. Even with all that clothing, and the Ford’s heater turned up high, she couldn’t seem to get warm. Last night hadn’t been bad, cuddled up with Jan in the big old-fashioned four-poster, but this morning… God, the watch house living quarters had been like an icebox when they woke up. The heaters did little to dispel the damp chill, and the woodstove in the living room had started smoking as soon as Jan lit the fire. And of course the stove in the kitchen had run out of propane before the coffee was even hot.
It had not been a good morning for those reasons and because Jan seemed to have lapsed into another of his depressed moods. It was odd, considering how cheerful he’d been yesterday, how exuberantly he’d made love to her last night. The only reason she could find for it was that he was suffering another of his headaches. She knew he was because of the way he moved, the pinched look of his face, the controlled wince she would catch now and then in his expression; but when she had asked him about it, he shrugged it off and refused to talk about it. He hadn’t said twenty words to her, and he sat silently now, slouched against the passenger door, rumpling his beard and wincing whenever one of the tires bounced through a pothole.
That’s what I get for marrying an academic and semi-genius, she thought, and smiled a little and then sighed. His depressions worried her, as did his headaches. For the past few years he had been seeing their friend Dave Sanderson, a neurologist on the staff at Stanford Hospital, for treatment of them. Dave had prescribed a variety of drugs-ergotamine, propranolol, codeine pain relievers, different kinds of tranquilizers-but the headaches and the depressions continued to recur. When Alix finally suggested he might want to consult somebody else, perhaps even a psychiatrist, Jan’s reaction had been negative. More than once she’d considered going to Dave herself, asking him to explain the problem to her. But Jan. if he had found out, would have considered it a breach of trust. Just as she considered his going to her father behind her back a breach of trust.
He worried her in other ways as well. While she knew that the dark side of his personality was caused by problems in his past-his mother running off when he was only a baby, the hideous murder in Wisconsin-she couldn’t believe they were the only factors that made him so often silent and unreachable.
For one thing, he’d come to terms with those problems; they’d talked them out before they were married. But still there was a part of him that he kept hidden; and even though she knew some of the difficulty was in her inability to understand it, it also seemed that he couldn’t or wouldn’t let her see that side of him, even after eleven years of marriage. A part he seemed to retreat into more and more of late, so that she seemed constantly to be reaching and tugging him back out of himself.
With the silence heavy in the car, she negotiated a turn near the rise where she and Jan had stopped for her first view of the Cape Despair Light. On the other side of the turn, she was surprised to see an old green Chevvy pulled off on the grassy verge. A youth of about twenty in a plaid shirt and jeans and a teenaged girl-no more than sixteen-were leaning against the Chevvy’s hood, staring at the station wagon as it came into view. Then they both seemed to relax and the girl waved casually; she wore a bold-figured blue-and-white Indian poncho, and her thick auburn hair was pulled back with a beaded leather headband.
Alix returned the wave as she drove past, then caught a glimpse of what the young man was holding in one cupped hand and understood the reason for their initial tension. It was a hand-rolled cigarette-marijuana, no doubt. She smiled wryly, glancing sideways at Jan.
“Oregon’s not so different from California, is it,” she said.
“What?”
“Those kids back there. Smoking dope out in the country just like they do back home.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
The silence resettled between them, remained unbroken all the way to the junction with the county road that looped off Highway 1 eight miles away, became Hilliard’s main street, then looped back out to rejoin Highway I further north. Most of the terrain here was flattish sheep graze, strewn with prickly broom, small stands of trees, and hundreds of placid black-and white-faced woolies. All the sheep, Alix supposed, belonged to the owners of the big ranch a half mile or so to the south, off the county road. There were no ranches out on the cape itself, no private dwellings of any kind; the land that didn’t belong to the one sheep rancher was controlled by the state.
A weathered metal sign, pocked with dents and holes made by kids (adults, too, for all she knew) out plinking with rifles and handguns, loomed to one side of the intersection. Alix glanced at it again as she turned north onto the country road.
CAP DES PERES LIGHTHOUSE
3 Miles
CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC
NO CAMPING NO PICNICKING NO HUNTING
Despite the rather forbidding wording, Alix thought it wouldn’t keep adventurous tourists from wandering out there for a look at the lighthouse. Most of them would come in summer, but a few would no doubt show up in the off-season months as well. A few hundred yards to the south of the turnoff was a rest area with public toilets and a pay phone; the lighthouse, clearly visible from there, would attract a fair number of those who stopped. She and Jan would just have to deal as politely as possible with any who grew bold enough to come knocking on the door asking questions.
The county road was reasonably well paved; it hooked downward toward the bay, past a weathered gray Victorian house and ramshackle garage set on a low promontory and a smaller, squarish building in the foreground near the road. The smaller building bore a sign that said Lang ‘ s Gallery and Gifts in ornate blue lettering.
Alix noted the sign with interest. She wondered who Lang was, and what sort of artwork Lang’s Gallery exhibited. When she came into the village alone she would definitely stop in and find out.
The road dropped down to parallel the shoreline at sea level, and other buildings appeared ahead, some of them flanking the road, others visible among the pines and Douglas fir that wooded the slopes rising above the village to the east. One of the latter, near the road, had a large screened front porch that bore a banner advertising antiques, driftwood, and shells for sale. Antiques, Alix thought wryly, was probably a euphemism for junk. Not that she minded junk; junkshops were a favorite haunt of hers. That was another place she would have to stop in.
They were into the village proper now-two blocks long and deserted-looking, despite the sign on the outskirts that announced Hilliard’s population at three hundred and eleven. Mike’s Bar amp; Grill. A launderette. Hazel’s Beauty Salon and Bob’s Barber Shop, two halves of the same building. Hilliard General Store. Sea Breeze Tavern. The Seafood Grotto, a smallish restaurant built out over the bay on pilings. A-1 Marine Supply. A big cannery at the north end of the harbor, with its name painted in faded black on the sloping metal roof: South Coast Fisheries, Inc. They all seemed to be made of colorless native wood and stone, or of clapboard stripped of paint by the elements and scoured to a uniformly dull gray. Even the cannery and the long pier behind it, the boat slips that stood adjacent, and the two dozen or so fishing trawlers moored there, seemed to possess the same shabby, scrubbed gray appearance. The only buildings of much color were on the hillside. One was a whitewashed church, its steeple rising above the trees; the other was what looked to be a good-sized old schoolhouse painted red, with its bell tower intact. Beyond the Sea Breeze Tavern, an unpaved road led up that way; a wooden arrow at the intersection indicated that the two structures were the Hilliard Community Church and the Hilliard Town Hall.
As she turned onto the gravel parking area in front of A-I Marine, Jan stirred and spoke for the first time in twenty minutes-an occurrence she took as a positive sign. “Not much to it, is there.”
“No. It looks kind of… I don’t know, depressed.”
“It is. Hard times around here these days.”
“How come?”
“Commercial fishing is Hilliard’s life-support,” he said, “and the main catch is salmon. Chinook and coho, the big ones. But the salmon runs have been poor the past three years; the trolling season that ended earlier this month was the worst of them.”
“Why?”
“Dry winters, dry rivers and streams. Salmon are anadromous, remember? Thousands of them couldn’t get from the sea to their spawning grounds.”
“Can’t the fishermen go after other species?”
“They do. Groundfish, mostly, but they don’t fetch the same high price. And their boats have to be re-outfitted for that kind of fishing.”
“What’re groundfish?”
“Flounder, perch, lingcod,” Jan said. “They use lines and nets to haul them up off the ocean floor.”
He opened his door and stepped out into the chill wind; she followed suit. The air had a brackish, fishy smell that was not unpleasant. Gulls wheeled out over the cannery pier and boat slips, shrieking hungrily. A few men moved around out there; a late-arriving trawler was just putting into one of the berths. Across the road, on a flattish strip of raised land, two yelling boys chased each other among six or seven dilapidated trailers-a sort of makeshift trailer park, Alix thought. Otherwise, there was no activity anywhere in the vicinity.
She unlatched the rear door and helped Jan carry the empty propane cylinders into A-1 Marine. A taciturn man in overalls traded them full tanks, charged them what Jan grumbled was too much, and didn’t offer to help them take the full tanks out to the car. Friendly natives, she thought, and the thought depressed her. The whole village depressed her in a vague sort of way. Or maybe she was just reacting-overreacting? — to Jan’s moodiness.
They left the Ford where it was and walked down past the Seafood Grotto to the general store. Its interior was cavernous; opaque globes suspended from long metal conduit cast dim light over the rows of shelves, old-fashioned meat case, dark wood checkout counter, and the partitioned-off cubicle adjacent to it, near the door, that contained a barred window and a sign reading U.S. Post Office, Hilliard, OR. The look and smell of the place caused a bittersweet wave of nostalgia to wash over Alix. Her corner deli in New York’s Greenwich Village had had the same black-and-white linoleum squares, the same aromas. Now, thousands of miles and over a dozen years away, she could still conjure up the warmth and coziness that had made Greenberg’s a haven for the twenty-three-year-old artist who had been so eager to take on life in the big city. Eager, yet secretly so afraid…
“Help you, folks?”
The gruff, mannish voice came from a woman sitting on a stool behind the grocery counter. Her hair was short and gray, in a style that Alix automatically labeled “home chop job,” and she wore a heavy red-plaid flannel workshirt. The expression on her seamed, weathered face was neither welcoming nor unfriendly.
Alix rummaged in her purse for the list she’d made the night before. “Thanks, we have quite a few things to pick up. We’re the Ryersons, the new caretakers out at the lighthouse-”
“Take your time. When you fill a basket, bring it up and leave it on the counter.”
There was a stack of vari-colored plastic baskets on the floor next to the produce section; Alix picked one up. Jan had already wandered off toward a far comer of the store that appeared to be stocked with hardware and household goods. The woman behind the counter had picked up a magazine and was leafing through it; her disinterest struck Alix as odd. She didn’t seem to care what sort of people had moved into the vicinity, had chosen to live in isolation on Cape Despair. Well, maybe she was a friend of Seth Bonner’s. That might explain it. Or maybe she was just plain disinterested-the exact opposite of the stereotypical small-town busybody.
With her list in one hand and the basket in the other, Alix went down the first aisle to the left. That was where the bottled water was; she loaded the basket with that and took it up to the counter. The older woman didn’t even glance up from her magazine. Alix was surprised, and mildly amused, to see that it was Sunset, a publication whose offices were located in Menlo Park, Palo Alto’s neighbor to the north, and for which she occasionally did freelance illustrating. Sunset was a glossy paean to the refinements of living in the western U.S.-such refinements including an indulgence in gourmet food and wine, redwood decking and hot tubs in the backyard, and spacious homes with lots of cutely concealed storage space. The magazine’s presence in this backwater store was a contradiction that pleased Alix, as life’s inconsistencies often did.
She was loading a second basket with meat and poultry when the bell above the door jingled. Alix glanced that way. The woman who came in had stringy brown hair that hung to her shoulders, wore a soiled and stained quilted coat. Despite the bulkiness of the quilting, she looked painfully thin. She went to the grocery counter and began talking to the storekeeper in low tones. Alix couldn’t make out the words, only the rhythm. The thin woman had an accent. Texas, perhaps-someplace like that. Her voice faltered and trailed off; then the storekeeper spoke in gruff tones that carried to where Alix stood.
“I told you the other day. No more credit. You and Hod are two months behind.”
“I know that, Mrs. Hilliard.” The words were soft, helpless.
A pause. Then the Hilliard woman said, “Can you give me something on account? Twenty dollars?”
“Ten is all I have… ”
“Oh, hell. What do you need?”
“Milk. Bread. Eggs-a dozen.”
“All right. That all?”
“We can get by on it. And I’m grateful-”
“Just give me the ten dollars, Della.”
The thin woman, Della, fumbled in the deep pocket of her coat and produced a pair of crumpled five-dollar bills. Alix’s basket was full again, so she moved toward the counter. At close range she could see that Della’s complexion was sallow, her fingernails nicotine-stained and bitten to the quick.
Mrs. Hilliard took the two five-dollar bills, rang open the old wooden cash register, and put them away. Then she said to Della, “Go pick out your groceries. And take some oranges, too-they’re cheap, and good nourishment.”
Within a few minutes, Della had finished gathering her meager groceries and was bagging them herself, under Mrs. Hilliard’s watchful eye. When she’d finished, the storekeeper held out the copy of Sunset to her.
“I’m done with it. You want it, you can have it.”
Della started to reach for it, then withdrew her hand and put it into her coat pocket. “Thank you, Mrs. Hilliard, but I don’t think I want it.”
“I won’t charge you for it.”
“It’s not that. I’d just rather not.” Delta picked up her grocery sack and quickly left the store.
Now what was all that about? Alix wondered. The woman wasn’t averse to buying food on credit, but she wouldn’t take a free magazine
…? Oh, of course-it would be painful looking at all that rich food, all that affluence, when times were bad.
Della, Alix decided, was a sensible woman.
Jan had emerged from the hardware section carrying a handful of tools, glass cleanser, and metal polish. He motioned at Alix’s list. “Help you with that?”
“Sure.”
She tore off the bottom half and handed it to him. The faintly surprised look on Mrs. Hilliard’s face made Alix smile. The woman might not be curious about their tenancy at the lighthouse, but their domestic arrangements seemed to hold a certain interest for her. Apparently the men in Hilliard didn’t share the household duties with their wives.
When the last item on the list had been crossed off, their purchases filled six large cardboard cartons. Jan took the first and went to move the car closer, while Alix counted out twenty-dollar bills into Mrs. Hilliard’s square, blunt-fingered hand. Just as she finished, the bell above the door tinkled again and two men-a lean one in a brown parka and a stockier one in a pea jacket similar to her own-came inside. A medium-sized dog-red, like an Irish setter, but obviously of mixed ancestry-followed them, circling and jumping up on its hind legs in an effort to get some attention. The men’s faces were ruddy from the cold, and they gave off a faint fishy odor. Fishermen, probably, already done with the day’s work.
“Pack of Camels, Lillian,” the lean one said.
The lines around Lillian Hilliard’s deep-set eyes had tightened. “Mitch Novotny, I told you before about that dog. Get him out of here.”
The man brushed limp brown hair off his forehead and smiled disarmingly. “Now, Lillian, Red’s not hurting anything.”
“Not yet, but any minute he’ll have that produce all over the floor. He’s too rambunctious for his own good. Yours, too.”
As if to prove her point, Red lunged against a bushel basket and sent potatoes flying in all directions.
Mitch rolled his eyes ceiling ward. “Okay, okay, you’re right as usual.” He snapped his fingers at the dog, then pointed toward the door. Red ran over there, and the stockier man held the door open so the animal could go out.
“Now, you pick up after your dog,” Mrs. Hilliard said. To the stocky man she added, “And you help him, Hod Barnett. Your wife was just in here wheedling more credit from me, so it’s the least you can do.”
The man called Hod Barnett-Della’s husband? — scowled but bent and began helping Mitch pick up the potatoes. Alix glanced at Lillian Hilliard and saw she was watching him with a smug expression that belied the compassion she had shown earlier for the woman. Probably enjoys dispensing charity because it gives her power over people, Alix thought.
When the two men were done Mitch turned back to the counter, counted out change for the cigarettes Mrs. Hilliard handed him. Then he and Hod went out past Jan, who was just returning.
Jan took the largest carton, and Alix followed him outside with a smaller one. The two fishermen were standing in the gravel parking area nearby, lighting cigarettes in cupped hands. They glanced at Jan and Alix, their expressions neither hostile nor accepting; rather, their looks were ones of apathy and indifference. The dog was once again frisking around, begging for attention, and Jan gave it a nervous look. He was afraid of dogs, the result of a childhood misadventure with a German shepherd in which he’d been painfully mauled. Where larger dogs were concerned, his fear was almost a phobia.
As Jan started to where the station wagon waited with its tailgate lowered, Mitch’s dog turned playfully and went after him, nipping at his heels. He pivoted in alarm and shook his leg, trying to push the animal away. The groceries shifted dangerously in the carton; he came near to losing his grip, staggered as he tried to maintain it. Red closed in again, teeth snapping at Jan’s calf.
Alix stifled a cry. But Mitch just laughed. “Hey, Red,” he called, “don’t bite that fella’s leg off.”
Jan half stumbled to the station wagon and thumped the carton down on the tailgate. The dog nipped at his leg again, this time catching the cloth of his jeans. Jan’s face was pale with fear. He swung around in reflex and kicked the dog solidly on its rump-not hard enough to hurt it, but hard enough to make it yip and scurry backward. It stood at a distance, tail down, eyes accusing.
“Hey,” Mitch said angrily. “What the hell’s the idea?”
Jan had leaned a hand against the Ford’s roof. He looked up, said blankly, “What?”
“I said, what’s the idea, kicking my dog?”
“It was biting me… ”
“Red don’t bite. Nips a little, that’s all.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
Mitch tossed his cigarette onto the gravel and took a step forward, his jaw set in tight lines. Hod Barnett looked uneasy now. Alix felt an uneasiness of her own, one that deepened her concern for Jan. Out of the comer of her eye, she saw that a pair of women who had been approaching the store had stopped to watch.
“You can’t just kick a man’s dog, mister.”
Jan straightened, frowning. “I told you, I had no way of knowing the dog was harmless.” He made the mistake of enunciating each word, as if speaking to one of his slower students. “Why don’t you keep him on a leash?”
“That dog never hurt nobody,” Mitch said.
There was belligerence in his voice, and Alix’s fingers tightened on the carton she was carrying. God, he seemed to want to fight! That was the last thing they needed as newcomers to Hilliard. And Jan, never a physical person, was in no shape to take on these two; he wouldn’t back down-he wasn’t a coward-and that meant he might get hurt.
She hurried to the car, set her carton down, caught hold of Jan’s arm. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get the rest of the groceries.”
“All right.”
But he hesitated, because Red was back near his master, circling again, his tail sawing the air, and both Mitch and the dog were between the station wagon and the store. Another man had joined the two women, Alix saw, drawn from Bob’s Barber Shop next door. She also saw Lillian Hilliard watching through the front window of the general store. The woman had been firm with the two fishermen earlier; why didn’t she do something to defuse this?
Mitch sat on his heels, put one hand on the dog’s collar. But his eyes were still on Jan. “You hurt my dog, damn you.”
“No I didn’t. Look at him. Does he act as if he’s hurt?”
Surprisingly, as if he felt as Alix did about avoiding a fight, Hod Barnett said, “He’s right, Mitch. Hell, Red’s not hurt.”
Mitch was silent, glaring. His hand moved protectively over the animal’s somewhat shabby coat. Alix watched him tensely-they were all watching him that way.
The frozen tableau lasted another three or four seconds. Then Mitch let go of the dog and stood up in slow movements. Some of his anger, Alix saw with relief, seemed to have dissipated.
“Yeah, all right,” he said to Jan. “But you listen, mister. Maybe where you come from it’s all right to kick another man’s dog, but not here, not in Hilliard. Don’t ever do it again, hear?”
Jan said without inflection, “I hear.”
Mitch turned abruptly and went across the street toward the Sea Breeze Tavern; Hod Barnett and the dog followed, Red now nipping at his master’s heels. The other three locals also stayed where they were, their expressions watchful, cold-accusing. Lillian Hilliard had vanished from the window of the store.
Alix let go of Jan’s arm. He bent over the tailgate and pushed the cartons inside with agitated movements that belied his calm exterior. Then he said, “I’ll get the other things,” and walked off to the store in a stiff, jerky stride.
Alix went around to the driver’s side. The three watchers moved then, too; the man returned to Bob’s Barber Shop and the women continued on to the store, their glances sweeping over the imitation-wood-paneled length of the new Ford. When they were past, one of them pointed at the rear license plate and said in a voice obviously intended to carry, “Califomians.”
Everything was said in that one contemptuous word. Some Oregonians, Alix knew, resented their neighbors to the south, looking scornfully upon the Golden State with its urban sprawl, its fast-paced and often eccentric lifestyles, its prosperity. It had never bothered her before; even the rash of bumper stickers a few years back-DON’T CALIFORMCATE OREGON-had amused her more than anything else. But this was different. This was personal.
When Jan returned with more cartons she slipped in behind the wheel, sat huddled inside her pea jacket. The overcast sky seemed even bleaker now, the village’s shabby buildings more uninviting-part of a foreign and incomprehensible landscape. And the wind, gusting in across the bay, was a bitter, icy cold.