Chapter 10
Judy arose early, had her car serviced, rushed to the office and gave thanks Stayton was there before his usual time.
But she didn't go to the country. Stayton was almost bubbling with joy. They had a ten o'clock appointment with the fishing craft representative. She was to sit in and absorb.
It was a harrowing experience. Here she was using her talent to maneuver some other poor man into the condition Benjy had been in the night before. She, who had indignantly told William John advertising was no more than making prospective buyers aware of what was on the market; a shopping service.
And if she didn't do a good job, there would be no weekly paycheck, which she was going to really need if she couldn't stop the orchard deal.
She'd tried to call both William John and the realtor during each free moment, with no success.
"Get out where you can't be got at," chanted Stayton with delight as they drove back.
Judy thought of the shack. If she ran a fifteen-foot fence around the two acres, she might be in such a spot. But she couldn't afford the fence.
He said, "You deserve a bonus, Judy."
She wanted to ask for another half-day but remembered what had happened the last time. She'd manage to live until Saturday morning. It would be more effective to appear in person.
Having never purchased property before, she didn't know how quickly some deals could pass through a title company at that time of the year. She had mailed her deposit to the bank, and a check against it to the realtor.
Judy arrived Saturday morning to find herself the tied-up purchaser of two acres and a shack.
The realtor wasn't in, but his secretary was. She said he was out in that vicinity;
Miss Hubbard would probably see him there if she had anything to discuss.
Judy's little car hurtled on, a little resentful of the speed she was demanding of it at its age. But in time it pulled up to two new posts which marked the driveway up through her land.
Obediently she turned in. The drive seemed newly graveled and rolled. The trees looked shorn; just short twigs thrust out from bare branches.
And there was the shack-unpainted, boards running up and down instead of sideways.
There were little squinty-eyed windows too high to look into.
Judy left the car and had reached a door just as the skies opened up and let go. She reached for the doorknob hopefully. It turned, and she was inside.
"Oh," she said.
The whole north end of the house was one vast picture window. Of course, an artist would want north light.
There was the fireplace on the east side, a fire laid and matches in a glass tumbler on a ledge.
And there was a chair, an ugly old rocker revarnished as often in so many shades it resembled one of the trees outside.
Judy struck a match, sank into the chair and stared out of the window, laced with long slanting lines of rain. Overhead she heard the steady thrum of it beating on the low roof.
Um, that heat felt good. She eased back.
In a very few moments all of the little nerves that had been standing up like the fur of a frightened cat lay down. She rocked a little. Then she looked around. She'd like to investigate.
"Well, this is mine, isn't it?" she demanded aloud.
She began tiptoeing around. There was clean linoleum. Everything was remarkably clean. The tiny kitchen was more like the galley on Benjy's fishing craft. A door led to a wood house, close in and with yet another inner door. The bathroom had a tin shower.
She tiptoed back, put a log on the blaze and settled down.
Maybe William John hadn't oversold her. She didn't have to put in a new bathroom or even lay tile in the one there. As for furniture, she could buy a few pieces at a time, second-hand, naturally.
The storm had abated. Now she could see through the big north window, and what a view! It looked up through the valley that rose in a series of rolling hills, each higher than the one before, mounting like waves until held back by a great dark-blue bulk that was a piece of the coast range.
Judy heard a blasting sound, shuddered, then laughed. Only Rosa Padroni and her car could make that much noise.
Rosa came in beaming. "We see your car. Maybe you stay tonight? Luigi he say he got the truck, you wanna buy some few furniture. You ride with him."
Judy began withdrawing, but Rosa didn't see her.
"This is a good thing. The roof she all paid. Just the tax. You not spend too much for the furnish, you fix all right."
Still Judy held back. Except for the contour chair, the only furniture pieces with which she was familiar were those she copied in sales layouts.
"Rosa," she said firmly, "I simply haven't money for furniture. Actually, I have only fifty dollars I dare spend, and I refuse to go into debt."
"Fifty dollar!" Rosa's arms went up. "You buy lots for that. My Luigi he take you second-hands place. Clean, everything defect."
"But I don't want anything defective."
"Na-na-na, defect like in make clean." Disinfected, thought Judy. Well, she'd buy a couch, and maybe she could learn to brew coffee in the fireplace. After all, she'd be there only weekends, until she could sell the place.
Judy drove off with Luigi and an empty pickup truck. She drove back with the truck piled so high the contents had had to be roped in.
Luigi had taken her to a permanent rummage sale maintained by a religious order. And Judy had gone, Luigi told Rosa, "hog wild."
For fifteen dollars she had bought an old divan, clean and spring-tight but faded; a tiny drum stove for the kitchen. Tables-Luigi shook his head-so whipped up they no color. Even curtains.
"Chairs?" asked Rosa, and Luigi's hands went out imploringly.
"Outside chair, the canvas she most gone."
"Where is she? You tell her come to dinner?"
Again the arms went out. "Back to the city."
Judy was definitely going back to the city, in a hurry. She didn't know when she'd been so skylark happy. She had bought the divan to fit slipcovers she'd had to buy for her first apartment. She'd bought drapes that wouldn't fight the slipcovers.
Tucked away in her "something box" were cans of enamel. Fresh canvas she'd have to buy. And in her hopeless chest were linens and bedding. She'd have plenty of time to replace them, one at a time, before Benjy was out of debt.
Then she had that set of dishes a pleased client had given her; she'd wondered how or when she'd ever use anything that shade-rusty red. Now that was to be the motif of that chill north room.
A pad on the seat beside her, she scribbled items as she drove. On her return trip they were all checked off.
Twilight came very early in December. The Padronis and William John saw headlamps cutting through the dusk, but didn't see the shack blossom.
Tiptoeing, they walked up the hill and found a broad band of yellow light reflected to the north.
Rosa walked around to investigate. She returned, shaking her head and motioning the men away. "Already she make the home."
"How about Martha; that is, Mrs. Hubbard? Has she-"
"To the city weekend." Judy sat in blissful contentment. She didn't see the disorder in the big room, blinds without rollers tacked up on the squinty-eyed windows, scratchy tables, faded chairs. She saw it as it would be when she was through with it.
Later, bed made up on the "defected" couch, she lay looking at the embers of her fire.
Morning was a time of sheer delight. Even the hearth fire picked up to burn briskly. Coffee and juice and dry cereal; then, for fun, she tried to toast bread on a twigged stick.
Maybe some day she and Benjy would build a larger place here, though she doubted she d enjoy it more. It was like coming into a kingdom of her own, she thought.
But kingdoms like hers had doors. When the knob didn't give, there was a sharp rap at the door and Martha called her name.
"Oh, you poor child," Martha cried, looking around. "Don't tell me you slept on that awful couch; dear, is it safe to sit in this? Judy, why didn't you go on down to the house? As soon as I learned you were here I came home."
Fourteen hundred dollars earlier Judy would have been thrown on the defensive; now she smiled indulgently. "Considering you have been here a month and visited the city each weekend without giving me a call, why should I presume on your hospitality?"
"If you had any idea how busy I've been-"
"Oh, but I have good reason to know how busy you've been; also reason to wish you'd been less busy and more analytical."
Swiftly Martha changed the subject. "This buy of yours was sheer genius; now we have this whole corner with road frontage. Dear, do get dressed. I want you to see the house and pick out a room of your own; I have so many guests coming down over the holidays. We'll have a family dinner, you and Benjy and maybe that nice Mr. Jones."
Judy returned to the city much earlier than she had planned, all of the zest of her small kingdom gone. Martha had had the old Cody house "done" by Maitins, and Judy knew what that elegant young man charged merely to give an estimate.
Martha was assuming that just as she was investing in an orchard for the Hubbards, so did Judy's acres automatically become "part of the spread."
I wish she were really mean so I could hate her, she groaned.
She wasn't. She was more giving than grasping.
Judy looked up from an Easter bunny that had just landed on a moon blossoming with new and enticing Easter bonnets, to find the receptionist at the door.
"There's a man and his family waiting for you," the girl said. "Something about a bill for a cupboard. He brought the family down to do their Christmas shopping. Do you want me to take him a check for a hundred and fifty?"
Judy nearly made the moon on her rise. She passed the speed of time reaching the reception room.
"But, Miss Hubbard," the man defended himself, "the cupboard is built on your land right there at the entrance. It's a beauty, too. Never did see a fruit stand so fetching."