She turned surprised greenish eyes on him.
“I have a dog of my own, a setter,” said Sweet simply and falsely.
He had intended to put her under obligation, and he succeeded. Mrs. Balsam tried to insist, and then said that he must at least let her pay for his gas, and—a fragrant aroma had begun to waft out of the kitchen— have a cup of coffee.
From the living room, Sweet studied her as she moved lightly about on sandalled feet. She was in her sixties, he guessed, but not the kind of sixties he was familiar with: either stringy or mountainous, with babysitting for grandchildren the social event of the week. She was tanned and slender, her hair more silver than white. Her left hand dazzled when she moved it. As if aware of his scrutiny, she paused fractionally when she had turned, holding a pair of flowered pottery mugs, and cast an inspecting glance into what was obviously a mirror in the inner wall.
It was nearly midmorning and there he sat, casual and unhurried in striped jersey and jeans. Mrs. Balsam asked with friendly curiosity what he did, and Sweet said, more accurately than she could guess, “Just about anything. As a matter of fact, I did some work on this house when it was built.”
Here, because it was scarcely a standard feature, she would make some reference to the bomb shelter—but she only arched her eyebrows at him. “Really? That is a coincidence. It seems like a very solid house, although of course winter is yet to come.”
Her brilliant gaze was absorbed and in-turned; Sweet could almost hear her trying to think of some work to give him by way of repayment. The dog, having finished the first wild rummaging in its dinner bowl, came and placed its long golden head on his knee, plainly regarding him as the agent of deliverance. Mrs. Balsam said suddenly, “I don’t know whether you do this kind of thing, Mr. Sweet, but . . .”
She was, she said, going to board a mare for friends later on, but although horses had obviously been kept here at one time—there was a stable capable of holding two—the corral did not seem particularly secure to her. Perhaps he’d take a look at it.
She led the way along the hall to a door which opened on a side patio. Sweet, instinctively cataloging his surroundings as he followed, threw an examining glance at the carpeting which covered the entrance to the shelter. How much of a problem to loosen it, peel it back, replace it—not once but a couple of times? It didn’t really trouble him, now that he had actually gained access to the house.
The corral, partly shaded by a giant cottonwood tree, was very insecure indeed. Sweet pointed out a couple of rotting posts that would have to be replaced, and yanked at a strand of wire which broke in his hand. He agreed to shop around for materials and give Mrs. Balsam an estimate even though there was no hurry; the mare would not be arriving until the first of December.
The Afghan accompanied him dotingly to his truck. Sweet drove away, exhilarated, the first hurdle cleared. He had a strong suspicion that Mrs. Balsam had never so much as changed a faucet washer in her life and that before long he would be doing minor odd jobs. Inside the house.
When he returned home with the length of clothesline which Mrs. Balsam had meticulously handed back to him, Teresa was cleaning the kitchen with shattering force, furious because she was sure something was being kept from her. Like most people given to easy rages, she had an impetuous tongue.
“I hope you got paid something for keeping that animal and then driving all over creation with it.”
“I did it as a favor,” said Sweet, suddenly bemused. Was it possible that Mrs. Balsam did not even know about the steel-reinforced concrete room beneath her feet? No, that couldn’t be.
Teresa refused to leave it alone. She flung around from the sink, tossing back her long black hair, placing her hands on her hips. “That dog wasn’t something to do with Claude, was it?”
Claude, the much younger half brother of whom Sweet was fiercely protective, was at the center of most of their frequent quarrels. After their marriage Teresa had discarded all pretense of liking him, resented her husband’s occasional financing of some small venture which always turned out to be useless, shuddered at Claude’s looks, gone so far, on one disastrous evening, as to say, “If you ask me, there’s something wrong with him.”
From a physical point of view, it was difficult to believe that the two men had had the same mother. Whereas Sweet had an appearance of straightforwardness and quick intelligence, a hand seemed to have been passed lightly over Claude’s features while they were still malleable, flattening the nose a little, drawing the dark eyes to a narrow unreadable length, creating wide sullen cheekbones. With his peculiar litheness, and the hair he wore at a shaggy length, it would not have been surprising to see him at the edge of a forest clearing, blowgun in hand.
Sweet, pleased with his own looks, had always felt troubled and obscurely guilty about Claude’s, and championed and indulged his half brother as a result. He had occasional moments of uneasiness about the streak of unpredictability which was beginning to show itself at closer intervals—and would then attribute this disloyalty to Teresa’s influence, and turn upon her the more furiously.
Now, however, he only said, “Are you out of your mind? Claude’s scared to death of dogs,” and drank a quick beer and drove into town to shop around for posts and wire. The next day, he started work on Mrs. Balsam’s corral.
Contrary to his usual practice, Sweet did not cheat his new employer out of a penny,
