The Ferguson Affair

any more. The same thing happened with me and my family, when I-when I married Dotery, and we came out here to California to live.” She added without changing her tone: “It’s some life he led me, with his Chinchilla rabbits and his doughnut spas and his variety stores. And all the time lapping up the liquor.”

“What happened to your other children?”

“Renee and June took off, the same as Hilda did. June picked up with a salesman staying at the Star Motel. A nylon-stocking salesman, he came to the door, a man old enough to be her father. When Dotery found out about it, he beat her with a hammer handle, but that didn’t seem to stop her. The last I heard of her, she was selling stockings from door to door in Compton. That grieved me. June was the one I thought would turn out best, I always favored her. But if it had to be Hilda, it’s the will of Providence.”

“What about Renee?”

“Renee went away and got a job, soon as she was legal age. She’s working someplace around San Francisco. Waitress. I heard from her at Christmas, only she forgot to put the address on the envelope.”

“And Jack?”

“He’s my youngest, just sixteen. I guess his age is a blessing, considering he’s in Juvenile. The policeman told me if he was a little older they’d of sent him up to the pen for stealing that car he stole.”

It was a depressing rundown. Coming on top of Mrs. Haines and her immense evasions, it left me undecided whether to laugh in Mrs. Dotery’s face or weep into her cola. I asked myself what I was doing sixty miles from home probing among the ruins of lives that meant nothing to me. I amended the thought: lives that had meant nothing to me until now.

Sipping the cola, lukewarm now, and watching Mrs. Dotery’s passive face across the rim of the glass, I had a sense of the largeness of the earth spinning in light and darkness, and what it meant to bring children into life. Something moved like an earthquake in a part of my mind so deep I hadn’t known it existed. It was an unspoken prayer for Bill Gunnarson, Jr.

“May I use your telephone, Mrs. Dotery?”

“Don’t have one up here. There’s one down in the store if it’s important.” She hesitated, and took the plunge. “You were going to tell me about Hilda.”

“Yes. She’s dropped out of sight, under suspicious circumstances. Her husband is deeply concerned about her. I represent him, by the way.”

“How do you mean, suspicious circumstances? Has she done something wrong, after all?”

“That’s not impossible. But it’s possible she hasn’t. She seems to be mixed up with a man named Harry or Henry Haines.”

“You mean to tell me she’s still messing with him!” A red flush surged up from her neck almost to her eyes.

“It looks very much like it. You know Haines, do you?”

“Know him? I should say so. He was the one that got her started.”

“Doing what?”

“All the things a girl shouldn’t do. I remember that first night she came home with liquor on her breath-a girl of fifteen-sixteen, so woozy she couldn’t walk straight. ‘Have you been lapping up liquor?’ I said to her. She denied it and denied it. Then Dotery came in roaring drunk and started in on her. They had a terrible scrap. He would of beat her bloody, but I went and got the butcher knife and told him to lay off of her. ‘Lay off of her,’ I said to him, ‘if you want to go on living.’ He saw I meant it, and he laid off of her.

“But it was too late, we had no control after that. Dotery he blamed me for being too soft. But I dunno, you can’t beat a girl to death. Or lock her up in her room. She would of jumped out the window anyway, that’s how wild she was. Drinking and tearing around in cars and shoplifting in the stores and probably worse. And Harry Haines was the one that got her started.”

“So they’ve been running together for quite a few years?”

“I did my best to nip it in the bud. They were in some show together at the high school, and he used to come in the doughnut spa. That was when we had the doughnuts, and Hilda and June waited on customers after school. June saw them smooching in the kitchen, and drinking vanilla extract out of pint bottles. The next time he come in, I was laying in wait. I tell you I sent him packing. And I told Hilda he was poison for her, poison for any girl. I know that lofty look that some of them have. They think that nothing’s good enough for them. They’ll take what they can from any girl and leave her empty-handed.” She seemed to speak with the bitterness of personal experience.

“Have you seen Haines recently?”

“Haven’t seen him for years. The last I heard of him they sent him off to Preston, where he belonged. They picked up Hilda, too-apparently he snitched on her-but they didn’t send her away. She went away on her own a year or two later, and that was that. Till she turned up here last month.”

“Did she mention Haines?”

“Not in my hearing. She talked a blue streak about this rich oilman husband of hers, but neither of us believed her. She seemed to be kind of flying, know what I mean? What sort of a fellow is he?”

“He seems to be a pretty good man, and a very successful one. But she likes Haines better.”

“She always was stuck on him. Sometimes I think a woman only needs two things to make her happy-a hatchet and a chopping block. She lays her head down on the block and gets somebody in pants to chop it off with the hatchet and then she’s satisfied.”

“Why did Hilda finally come home?”

“Show off her glad rags, I guess. She was disappointed none of the others were with us any more. There always used to be rivalry between the sisters. Seiberling rivalry. And, like I said, she wanted to see Frank. She got real upset when I told her Frank was dead. I thought for a while there she was blowing her top, crying and storming around and blaming us for things we never done. Frank wasn’t even driving that car, it was another boy name of Ralph Spindle.”

“Did Hilda have emotional problems?”

“How do you mean, emotional?”

“You said that she was flying, on the point of blowing her top. Was that a new development in her?”

“No. I wisht it was. She always had a terrible temper, back to when she was a little girl. Mostly she kept it hid pretty good, but then it would flare out. Frank was the only one she got along with. She never got along with the other girls. Like when June snitched on her that time in the doughnut shop, Hilda picked up a pan of grease and was gonna throw it in her little sister’s face. Boiling grease, you know how hot it gets, lucky I got there to stop her. The lady from downtown said she was severely adjusted.”

“Maladjusted?”

“Maladjusted, severely maladjusted. They said Hilda was going through like a storm, and maybe she’d outgrow it and maybe she wouldn’t. I guess she must of, eh? You don’t get to be a movie actress without plenty on the ball. Did she make many movies? We don’t go to the movies since we got TV.”

“I’ve never seen her on the screen, either. I think just one or two of her pictures were released before she retired.”

“It’s a young age for a girl to retire,” she said dubiously.

“How old is Hilda?”

“Let’s see, I was eighteen when I had her. That was some of your teen-age storm like they were talking about. I’m forty-three now. That would make her, let’s see-” She tried to count on her fingers and lost track.

“Twenty-five.”

She nodded. “Yeah. You got a good head for figures. Dotery has, too, if he’d only use it. He could have been a lawyer, with his brains. No disrespect intended, Jim really is a smart man. That’s one of the reasons he couldn’t stand the kids. They were all dumb, like me. I guess you couldn’t say that Hilda was dumb, but it sure looked like it for a while the way she handled herself.” Her mental detour converged with her original line of thought. “I still think twenty-five is a young age to retire. Or did they fire her?”

“No. I’ve talked to her agent. They’re eager to get her back.”

“You mean she’s really good?”

“She has what they need, apparently. But they don’t have what she needs.” Whatever that is or was.

“Hilda always was a good-looking girl,” her mother said. “You ever see her?”

“Not in the flesh.”