Chapter 6
"William John," she began anxiously, "I think Martha's gone for the day. If you don't mind, pay it. I'll run up right away and take care of it. I need to get out."
Judy scrambled together a box lunch of sorts. She wasn't hungry, but she wouldn't have time to stop en route. And she was beginning to be afraid something might stop William John from paying the freighter.
"Martha's clothes are in that load," she reasoned, "and her television and goodness knows what else. She's more apt to go out and buy all new than pay off storage and cartage, and that would run to ten times as much."
Television, she groaned as she got underway. Down in that hollow, installation of an antenna that would bring in the picture would cost a mint.
She passed the freighter at the top of the road. She learned it had been stuck, even though William John had done his best to spread the load of gravel. An interstate vehicle carried more than one Martha Hubbard's load. They had had to unload and load again.
Judy wrote a check, with William John looking on, his brow furrowed.
"Judy hadn't you better let me collect direct from Mrs. Hubbard?"
Judy kept right on writing.
"She said she'd be depositing nineteen hundred early next week," he continued.
And Judy had quit writing. Her pen had skidded.
"Who fed the dogs last night?"
"There aren't any," William John reported. "She said she'd had to sell the breeders with the kennels."
Judy went on writing. If Martha had sold her beloved personal pets, that nineteen hundred wasn't cash left over from the property exchange.
"I'll make a deal," he continued. "I'll take the check and hold it. Something tells me I'll have an easier time collecting than you. Or, Judy, did you by any chance inherit from your brother?"
"No," she sighed, "my brother was an attorney. He specialized in wills. I guess, compared to his clients, he had so little to leave he didn't draw one for himself. But he didn't expect to be killed."
And then, in a final desperate effort to picture Martha back as the type of woman he'd want to marry, she went all out.
"You see, I was underage when our parents died. My brother was ten years older, so he inherited. The folks knew he would always do what was best for me.
"That's basically what is the matter with Martha. She's desperately anxious to invest in something that will assure a living income for me. As she never had to work, her judgment isn't always the best."
William John chuckled. Because Martha was really working for Judy, Judy felt she had to stand around and pick up the pieces. Well, he had an answer to that.
Meanwhile, "When Rosa Padroni heard you were coming, she started cooking. You'll have to come up for lunch, which will be dinner."
She couldn't refuse. Besides, she wanted to get out of the gloomy hollow which presented so many future problems to her.
Rosa Padroni had her arms out. She was a good head shorter than Judy, but went into them like a homing pigeon after a storm-tossed flight.
William John had looked on, amazed. Rosa had all the grimness of an immigrant whose first husband had died soon after they had been admitted to the States. She'd raised a brood of children before she married the second time. She still had not time for "the foolish."
He was diverted by the pounding at the door, went out, closed it behind him and was soon heading back down to the hollow.
Martha had started her bathroom. That is, she'd had the pressure pump delivered, along with a plumber to lay pipes. He'd be happy to work Saturday afternoon. Double pay, y'know. Oh yes, Mrs. Hubbard had arranged this. She'd said she need not be present.
On a hunch, William John lifted the hood of Judy's car, located an extra key in a magnetic holder and proceeded to drive the car to his house.
The longer Judy remained in ignorance, the more rest she'd have. Just what Martha was going to live on after the nineteen hundred whisked through her fingers, he didn't like to contemplate.
Martha was considering the same problem but not in the same way. Martha was being entertained with deference. Instead of failing, their Martha had maneuvered a coup. She was owner, complete owner, of a fruit ranch. It was a fabulous place, and everybody knew the ridiculous price of fruit.
"There will be plenty for all of you," Martha said happily, and thought it was a heavenly way to pay off past favors.
But then Martha had never seen people accustomed to paying from three to five dollars a box for such delicacies turned loose to pick them for nothing.
She was sorry, but nobody could visit the house until it was decorated. They all knew how tempera mental a decorator could be-quite capable of walking off with his crew. But she could have them out, she thought, a few at a time, when the trees were in blossom.
That meant feeding them. Well, she'd establish credit. And surely there'd be some money left over. She'd pay just so much down on each project. Everyone in that area knew ranchers were carried until the current crop came in.
Judy was having a wonderful time. She felt so "cared for." Automatically she had set the table and helped Rosa Padroni serve. When William John thoughtfully delivered her car, she beamed.
She really overate. With each dish Rosa would stand over her with "You like?" and she did.
"Next time, you let me know, I make ravioli. Three days she take."
She plopped down a dish Judy couldn't face but did. It was sheer ambrosia.
"Your sister's orchard, these apricot. More taste."
William John explained, "When we can, we buy fruit from the Cody place for drying. More flavor."
Judy went to her car, protesting at the food being carried to it, but was told that was a country custom. And happily she drove off. She'd learned something good about the orchard.
William John watched her leave, then turned when Rosa asked, "What this merger mart? Miss Judy say her sister's papa he was one before he die."
"Oh, merger martyr." William John's spirits fell. He'd hoped Martha Hubbard had parents to underwrite her venture if the going got too rough.
"That's where big companies combine, merge to cut down running expenses. Men get squeezed out top and bottom because not so many are needed."
Rosa shrugged. "They save money, they no care."
"They can't save, Rosa, if they're executives. They have to rent the best houses in the best districts."
"So they buy."
"They can't buy, because they're subject to transfer. They have to entertain at home."
He told her of a friend who had unexpected company and had dared serve meat loaf. The guest said it was the first dinner that had rested easy on his innards, but the friend had received a bitter letter from his general sales manager.
"The guest had raved about the meat loaf. Now the man was told from then on he was not to serve cheap food to top brass; he was to take them out to dine at the proper places."
"This America I love," Rosa pronounced, "but sometimes I thinka she crazy. All the time pretend to got to make the show. Me, I like to get and keep."
"Not all, Rosa; just a few, the ones you hear about. But take Miss Hubbard. I imagine she makes a fine salary, yet look at the car she drives. No pretense." Rosa beamed.
Judy had lots of salary saved. Rosa intended it should remain in the bank.
"I get Luigi to do the pruning. Luigi wait till the crop for the money." ' "Couldn't have a better man," William John agreed thoughtfully, and began to line up a promotion campaign on Martha.
He went down early the next morning, hoping to forestall all-out improvements on the house by presenting the freight bill.
"Oh, dear," cried Martha, "why did you pay that? I would have taken care of it when the money was deposited."
"Plus double handling and storage," he reminded her, then explained carefully, "and while you waited, I imagine you'd have had to purchase duplicates to see you through."
From that he went into pruning.
"Oh, that. She waved an airy hand. "I'll prune after the trees blossom. So much prettier, and my friends can have simply armloads to carry home."
"I can't think of a quicker way to kill your trees." Then he went into a simple explanation, ending by saying Luigi Padroni would prune and accept part of the apricot and prune crop as payment.
My, how relieved she seemed.
Luigi, driven by Rosa, was pruning when the loan company's field man drove down for an appraisal. Luigi, again impressed by Rosa, went all out to explain this orchard had the best-tasting fruit in the whole valley. He himself grew apples. Always he came there for other fruits.
Martha was brisk and charming. While the loan was to be on the crop, the house and the land were the company's collateral.
Crops could get nipped in the bud by an untimely frost, or cooked by a furious sun. This year anything could happen to the weather.
This Martha Hubbard seemed enterprising, the field man thought. The bathroom was finished except for painting the upper walls and the kitchen. Two good selling points if his company had to take the place over.
Good roof (the last owner had had to re-roof) and sturdy foundations. Old houses seemed better built, and this was an old one.
Martha apologized for the other rooms. She knew a bit about decorating. And he assumed she would use her spare time up a ladder, putting that knowledge to practical use.
And the loan went through. If Martha Hubbard's orchard didn't produce a crop, the company could sell the place for what they held against it.
Martha promptly went up to use the telephone at William John's. She must have one installed, and the company was being derelict in its duty. Something about a line being run at so much a foot. It was ridiculous.
"Did you discuss this with Judy?" William John ventured.
"The silliest thing," Martha confided. "I went down to have a cozy weekend with Judy, and guess what happened? I let a few friends know I was in town, and I caught only a glimpse of my little sister-in-law."
"Hm," said William John.
And him, Judy had thought when Martha telephoned from her last stop to say she simply had to hurry on home.
"She's up to something. She didn't want to talk to me, answer questions."
Judy went to work the next morning in a chastened mood. She had to change her attitude toward her work, be grateful she had such a well-paying position. And it was such a beautiful office.
She could be working in a gloomy factory with ear-splitting sounds, making half what she received now. Instead she worked in a quiet, low building, the walls painted to induce eye comfort. There was shrubbery outside, potted plants and truly wonderful co-workers. Take Benjy.
"Why so low?" he asked.
"Thoughtful," she corrected him. "Just appreciating my good luck in working here. How was your weekend?"
He was off. He talked her right into her office and was still describing, with gestures, the wonder of owning a craft of his own when Stanley Stayton came in.
"Either of you any ideas on moving campers?"
Now there was a thought. If she bought a camper she could save on rent. Maybe all people in her business should have one, as sort of a shelter should a process server remove their split-level.
But that was negative thinking. "I heard a couple of women fussing because their husbands wouldn't take them hunting," she mused. "How about: Buy a Camper For The Family Christmas Tree; look forward to fishing and camping with loved ones near to share your fun."
"Wonderful." His fingers snapped again.
"Jack overbought, and the hunting season's about over. Foresight; buy for next year; a Christmas present. Give me a rough draft."
She turned out such a beautiful piece of copy Stayton thought maybe he should marry her to insure her remaining with the firm.
"Why do you look so pleased?" Benjy asked darkly. "Thinking about that rancher, I'll bet."
"You are so right," Judy agreed happily. "I'm seeing him come in from a hard day's work in his orchard, sitting down and trying to find a railing on which to rest his feet."
"No railing?"
"With Martha his wife?" she cried, and Benjy was mollified.
But Martha was one up on her. Martha, Judy might have thought, was getting practice. She'd learned Luigi was a cement man before he'd retired to an orchard, and Luigi had been taken from his pruning job to do something Martha considered of greater importance.
Down would come the ugly narrow verandas and in their place rise broad terraces, with maybe a pergola on the east side.
She could just see the housewarming party she would give: the orchard in full blossom, and on the terrace gay tables and lovely lounging chairs and all of her friends cooing and asking why they hadn't thought of something like this?
But Luigi was proving stubborn. Martha had studied Italian, but to every carefully intoned phrase she received only, "Che cosa dice?"
"Now I do the orchard," he insisted; "then I do the parterre."
Having a woman like this to handle, he went to a friend in town and returned with a carefully worded document to which Martha affixed her signature. And Luigi called in a chattering group of men, all of whom scrambled up and down ladders like monkeys.
Luigi said nothing of this to Rosa until the day before Thanksgiving. Then having asked a question of Martha and not receiving a right answer, he went home to erupt before his wife.
Rosa trotted out to her car and went bucketing uphill to William John's telephone. He wasn't home but he had Judy's numbers, both of them, pasted on the telephone book.
"Judy, Rosa Padroni. You come talk to your sister? Only fifty dollar an acre Luigi charge when seventy-five it is. Men he bring in to prune fast so he lay the piazza with the cement. Now she no pay. You come make her pay the men?"
Judy grasped her desk with one hand. Fifty dollars an acre; twenty acres. And this was owed to Rosa's husband for men he had hired.