Chapter 7
Judy sat for a moment, stricken, then looked up. Stanley Stayton stood in the doorway.
"If it wasn't the Padronis-" she exclaimed.
"An emergency of some kind, Judy?" He glanced around. Everyone within hearing distance was watching.
"You'd better come into my office. Maybe we can work this out."
Maybe, she thought hopefully, followed him in, sank into a chair and burst out, "I have to have a thousand dollars cash, and the bank is closed, and I've less than three hundred in my checking account."
"It's that important?"
"Think of those poor men without money for their Thanksgiving if I don't-"
Ah, the key phrase.
"You're not being coherent, Judy. If you'll begin at the beginning-"
She did, and when she was through Stayton nodded. "I think I can arrange a loan for you. I know Hammil of your bank quite well." He'd co-sign, and have Judy under control for a long time.
"But I don't need a loan," she protested. "I need only to reach my safety deposit box and then cash a bond."
At that, she'd be indebted to him. Stayton pulled the telephone to him and dialed the bank.
"Judy," he said thoughtfully when he was through, "I think it would be advisable for me to run you up there. We can make better time in my car, and you do have some work to finish."
Before she was through trying to explain Martha to Stayton, his sympathies were all with Martha. She had been Martha Dane, had she not? Everyone (that is everyone who counted) had been amazed when she had married Hal Hubbard. He was not quite U-C; just middle class, though with prospects. But Martha was upper class enough to carry him.
"Judy," he reproved as his car shot across bridges and up freeways, literally airborne, "Martha has vision. You're taking a very plebian attitude toward this."
"If you mean I don't plunge into debt without money to meet my obligations, then I'm glad I'm a plebian," she flared.
"No, no. Martha has made an investment. Naturally she has to have the orchard in prime condition to reap the best harvest. You wait; she'll have a proper explanation."
Perhaps she had, but she wasn't there to give it. Fortunately Stayton had seen service in Italy and was able to comprehend the buzz of words hurled at him.
"Your sister-in-law," he interpreted to Judy, "seems to be spending the holiday weekend with the Hamiltons. The Curtis Hamiltons," he added, savoring the name. "She had to leave, not knowing we'd be here."
One of the younger men described her method of leaving. It had to do with a winged rodent who flew at night and seemed heading for a region not mentioned in his society in front of ladies.
"But how do I know what to pay them?" Judy worried. "I show," Luigi offered eagerly, and drew forth his copy of the contract.
"Me, I don't care. Them-" he waved at his crew-"need the money."
The men had departed when a fusillade of sound proclaimed the advent of Rosa Padroni.
"See, I show you," she urged with only a brief nod at Stayton.
They went to the house, Rosa waving to the new pressure pump en route. She took them into the bathroom, the kitchen, the dining room and the living room, arms waving.
"She has to pay the retain'," Rosa explained. "That nineteen hundred dollars, she go fast."
Stayton was nodding solemnly. "She's making a charming place of this, Judy, but perhaps her expenditures should be curtailed the first year. I suggest you take a mortgage on the property."
Rosa Padroni's arms shot straight up. "Already they lean on the place. First leaner he's crop credit; second leaner-"
She meant lien, of course. Judy's spirits dropped with each one listed.
And to think she had meant simply to step out and let Martha face this fiasco alone. Well, she would from now on. If tradesmen and artisans were fools enough to give credit where credit wasn't due, let them collect.
Fools enough! She was out fourteen hundred dollars herself. Now she'd have to see it through to win back her savings.
"I am sure if you talk to your sister-in-law-"
"Talk to her?" Judy's voice sounded like a toothpaste commercial. "I can't get within talking range of her. Rosa, did she know I was coming?"
"I think she made the-how you say-bolt when these men, they demand the money she's not got."
Rosa nearly wept over Luigi's acceptance of his fee. They'd planned to take most of it in fruit for drying.
"Just be glad you have the cash," Judy sighed. "The way things are going, somebody else may own this before the fruit is set."
Stayton was striding around, looking the place over, standing off and viewing it.
It was not, he confessed, his "cup of tea," but lovely.
Lovely it was, with a winter sun drenching it in an apricot reflection from overhead clouds.
But that apricot meant it was sunset, and she still had a layout to finish. Why did holidays ever come on a Thursday?
Judy pl-edged Rosa to secrecy. She was not to let Mrs. Hubbard know the men had been paid (not that that did any good; one workman returned for pruning shears he'd left in a crotch of a tree and told all).
As Stayton's big car swished in to a stop on the secondary highway, another car neither so large, so new nor so beautiful turned in on the road they had left.
There was a startled exchange of glances, a lifting of hands, a "Hi." But by then Stayton was on his way.
"That man looked familiar," he observed.
"Urn," mused Judy, "William John-"
"William John?" he asked. "Oh, you mean Bill Jones of Jones and Hadler. Haven't seen him for four years, at least."
Before Judy could gather her wits about her, Stayton had made the crossroad and was heading up the ramp to the freeway. No back roads for him.
Deftly he cut into the freeway traffic. Judy breathed a little hard; then, as she caught her breath to ask her question, he settled down to a swift cruising speed, center lane, and began a lecture.
"Judy, we must do something about your attitude. Your perspective handicaps us."
"Perspective?" She was getting ready to do battle. "Now I will concede Martha doesn't always have balanced judgment; yet her future graph shows an alert faith in our economy. First the vision, you know."
Judy opened her mouth, but she hadn't a chance.
"Take your car. You are driving an old model, right? Yet you have the means to drive the best. Now cars-reduced to their intrinsic values represent transportation, right?"
What else?
"If you were riding a bus or a surface car, you wouldn't be looking forward to the day it would be yours by right of money paid out for transportation."
She was all ready to tell him that neither would she expect to pay for power, repairs and labor, when he was off again.
"Transportation is like utilities, like the electric power you use: something to be paid for on a monthly basis, not paid off and owned."
Judy's mouth opened again, all ready to tell him anytime she made sixty to ninety dollar monthly payments for electric power, she'd start using kerosene lamps and a wood stove.
"Now watch," Stayton ordered. "I am offering proof it pays to drive the best on the market. See how other drivers give way as I approach? They don't impede my progress. They recognize a superior vehicle and do not try to compete."
Ha, she thought, and clung to her biting retort. She couldn't afford to tell Stayton the truth right now. Those smaller, less glamorous cars weren't giving way to anything superior; their drivers were simply determined to reach home in one piece, and without a repair bill.
Then she grabbed for something to steady herself. There had been a loud report; the car had slithered while heading for the opposite lane, though a low fence ran between the two. Now with a mighty effort Stayton had it under control.
But my, how the other superior cars in this choice lane were talking to him.
He tried to ease over to the middle-class lane, but those drivers had a date with the dinner table. Finally he gave up, and they banged along on the flattest tire a car could suffer.
A traffic island appeared ahead, and he eased the car in, stopped and pulled out a handkerchief.
"This," he announced savagely, "is what comes of taking a car on such a confounded road. Those workmen of your sister's are careless. Must have been a nail or a wire."
Judy sat thinking of her own modest car, which would have been rolling along at a comfortable speed, ready to absorb the emergency of a blown-out tire and tube without endangering herself or other drivers.
Well, she supposed Stayton would find a lesson in this. His superior car had traveled a low-class road. Ergo, a puncture.
A state patrol car eased up, checked on the damage, and the officer nodded. "You may have to sit this out. All nearby garages are flooded with calls. Some super job riding the inner lane lost a heavy glass window when he didn't stop fast enough for the car ahead. You rammed right past the man trying to sweep up the glass, you and fifty other cars."
Stayton made an icy remark about efficient highway patrols setting up roadblocks at a scene of disaster. It didn't go over too well.
"The roadblock went in just as you passed," the officer, equally icy, replied. "You failed to see us signal. I suggest you change your own tire. This island may be needed."
Stayton looked at his Brooks Brothers suit and shuddered.
"You give me a hand; I'll do it." Judy sighed. "One thing about wearing LMC clothes; the replacements are less."
He wouldn't hear of it, yet somehow he did. Judy simply took over his problem as she'd taken over Martha's. This lower-middle-class dress she was wearing had come off a bargain rack, and she was tired of it anyway.
Stayton had planned to take Judy to one of the better spots for dinner. He said so. Judy, hands and face begrimed, said she'd prefer he have something sent in to the office.
She wanted that layout on its way tonight. She was having Thanksgiving dinner with Benjy on the morrow, on his craft. The way things had been running for her, she wanted plenty of time to give to it.
Stayton was willing. Of all times to have his sound theories thrown back into his face by a freak of fate!
Judy ate Thanksgiving dinner in solitary splendor. Occasionally someone opened the galley door, thrust in a head, sniffed, groaned and tore off for the nearest deck railing.
Red sky at night might be a sailor's delight as far as overhead weather conditions were concerned. It did not take congnizance of a ground swell, forerunner of a storm working its way north.
So Judy ate standing up, having a slice of this, a dab of that, as she dished up a tasty assortment for the pilot.
She carried a plump drumstick with her and sat in the door of the pilot house, looking out on the not-so-blue Pacific.
"I'll put back as soon's the tide turns," the pilot confided affably. "If I did it now, your party'd jump overboard and try to walk in. You seafarin'?"
"No," Judy sighed. "I guess I've just been so doggone upset over other things this seems like smooth sailing."
It was more than that. It was, she thought, "getting out where I can't be got at." Now there was a sales idea; she'd bet a thousand of the Stayton Agency's friends and accounts would buy it.
A still-green Benjy drove her home. Occasionally he apologized, or tried to. He'd apologized to his guests so fluently he was about out of words.
"Cheer up, doll," Judy said slightly, "this is one Thanksgiving they'll never forget. I'll bet the country holds few as thankful as they are this evening; thankful to have made port."
Later, the question which had been pricking her for hours jabbed.
"Benjy, did you know Jones and Hadler?"
"Umm." He groaned a little.
"What happened to them?"
"Never knew. Top-hole business; then the partnership dissolved and Jones went into hibernation."
Hibernation? Judy thought of the big veranda with its many-miled view below, and the hard-working William John.
"Benjy, what business-"
The car swerved to the side of the highway, and Benjy swerved over its side. When he returned he was in no mood for talking. About Jones, especially. He had remembered the farewell banquet they'd given Bill at the club.
"What became of Hadler?" Well, she'd waited a long time before she'd started digging again.
"Hadler? Oh, he got mixed up in something, lost his license, moved away."
Then, rather frantically, he began talking of other things. Judy must not judge his fishing craft by what had happened today. Now that he knew, he wouldn't plan trips too far ahead. Weather, he informed her, was antagonistic to all ventures. One had to outwit it.
"Urn," muttered Judy. Lost his license. Now what had Jones and Hadler been to have needed one? Accountants, lawyers, doctors, realtors? Ah, realtors, she'd bet.
Benjy left her at her apartment and made no offer to come up. Nor did he, as usual, plan a future engagement of any kind. Why, he hadn't even brought up the subject of marriage again. Ah, well, he had another she in his life: his boat.
And that she, she realized as she opened the apartment door, was rougher on him than I've ever been.
Judy sat down and began counting her blessings.
She was ah, thankful for her steam-heated apartment; for the view, though the view was a bit futuristic right now, seen through steel scaffolding; for the friendship of Rosa Padroni, though that was running into cold cash. She was also thankful for her paid-up car.
And she'd better be thankful for her job, or she'd be starting a new trend: housekeeping in a sedan. Maybe Stayton was right. Maybe if she bought a station wagon and he then blew up to the point of discharging her, she'd at least have sleeping room.
But no. She would lower the boom on Martha. She would pay nothing more. And she would drive up and make Martha remember Judy was no longer a young teenager to be talked down.
Not this weekend. If she knew Martha's crowd, and she did, Martha wouldn't return to the orchard before Monday.
Neither did she see much of Benjy. They had dinner together the next night, but he was, he sighed, taking a party out late Saturday. The storm was due to have blown itself out by then.
Judy did a lot of thinking that Sunday. It was restful and just a little lonesome. She wasn't so dedicated to her job she wanted to give her life to it. She'd enjoyed Benjy so much she'd withdrawn from other friends.
Well, she'd look them up.
A determined Judy Hubbard appeared at the agency on Monday morning. A few moments after her arrival there came a telephone call, and the moment she heard Rosa Padroni's voice Judy's shoulders drew together.
"That sister to you she's crazy. She come Luigi, tell him rebuild the barn for the eagle-"
"The what?"
"She grow the eagle. Luigi he say, 'Pigeon she breed, all right; duck is okay; even the pheasant, si; but who wanta buy the eagle after she raise?' "