it, the way his throat was torn. But Sudley didn’t seem to hear him. He was going methodically about his business, helping the boy unhitch the disker and load it on to the truck. They were lumbering across the narrow bridge over the drainage run down into Plumtree Cove, going out Miss Fairlie’s lane to the old road, when the red haze blinding Spig finally dissolved and he found himself standing there alone.
He got back into his car and drove on to the pineapple-topped gate posts fifty feet along in the woods on the right. There were two signs, one saying “O’Leary”, the other, “Stanley S. Ashton”. He was conscious of a sort of basic numbness in his brain that seemed to transmit itself to everything around him. Superimposed on it was the shameful awareness of his own humiliation, the writhing remains of his self-esteem. O’Leary, the hot shot of the Eden Neck Home Owners’ League . . . He could see himself at the commissioners’ meeting Thursday night. O’Leary eloquent as all hell, and Sudley and the five other commissioners sitting there, courteously, gravely listening to him sound off on the evils of Devon Death Strip, a menace to our children and a curse to us, quoting the Governor, and the commissioners knowing all about the guy in the blue silk suit sitting right behind him. As Buck Yerby knew . . . and how many others in the crowded room? They think you’re as big a heel as he is a louse . . . thinking he was putting up a civic front for Stan Ashton to work behind. O’Leary, heel or sucker—which was worse?
He drove in to the fork where the Ashton’s fine new road cut off from the O’Learys’. Or the other way around—it made the O’Learys’ look like a mud track to an illicit still. A few yards along he put his foot on the brake, looking back at it, a smooth, white ribbon of oyster shell going off through the woods. In November, when the Ashtons were building their house, they used the O’Learys’ lane clear in to the dead chestnut tree. This new road wasn’t much over a month old. Spig drew his ginger brows together, trying to recall the way Stan had put it.
“It’ll give us both a lot more privacy, Spig,” he’d said, “if you’ll let us have a thirty-foot right-of-way closer to the entrance. I’ve got the deed drawn up, to save you the trouble and expense. We’ll give you back our rights to your lane in to the chestnut. And we’ll pay for the clearing and building, and keep it up, of course.”
“Big of you, old man.” Spig remembered thinking that, amused because old Stan had developed a slightly pompous as well as humourless attitude towards himself and his newly acquired wealth. It explained the businesslike efficiency with which he whipped the deed out of his handsome new pigskin briefcase. Or so Spig had thought. Now he wondered. The right to use the O’Learys’ lane had been friendly, never put in legal form.
He must have been planning even then . . . O’Leary caught himself sharply, rubbing his hands back over his head, kneading his skull under the short, ginger stubble, trying to think. He didn’t know that what Sudley had said was true. People didn’t like Stan Ashton very much, but a lot of it was prejudice. Kathy had made a lot of friends. It was tactless, bringing in a rich, new wife as he’d done it, and Anita’s giving most of Kathy’s stuff to the church rummage sale hadn’t helped. But now he stopped to think, it was obvious that the whole thing was a fantastic error of some kind. In the first place, there was the letter stipulation. Or second place, anyway. First place was Stan Ashton’s own name and reputation. That alone would keep him from selling out to the kind of outfit Sudley wouldn’t touch with the fork he used to spread manure. Because Stanley S. Ashton’s name and reputation meant more to him and anything else he had. The high priest of highway sanctity wasn’t going to show any cloven hoof that would kick his own face right off the television panel. Not old Stan . . . not if Spig knew him. And there was still the letter of stipulation in young Judge Twohey’s office.
Spig moved uneasily. It was eerie how clearly there for a moment the old judge’s voice seemed to come to him, almost as if it were recorded there in the whispering leaves of the oak trees. The old judge was gone now, but Spig could hear him speak again.
It is my duty to tell you that such a stipulation is not legally binding. At most it could be used to show intent.—Gratitude is highly volatile. It seldom withstands the impact of hard cash.—There must never be a threat to Eden in Miss Fairlie’s lifetime. I want your solemn word of honour, Mr. O’Leary . . .
“You have it, sir . . .” Spig O’Leary spoke back to him across the years, across the silent bourne, as if he knew some way the old judge could hear him, repeating his solemn word. Strangely, he felt calmer then, able to see the thing much more clearly, the fiery catharsis of his rage burned down to ordinary sanity again. There was no doubt Sudley believed what he was saying. But he was wrong. He didn’t know Stan Ashton. The cynic who said that all men were motivated by one of two things—vanity or cupidity—had hit the Stan Ashton nail square on the head, and cupidity was out. Anyone who had seen the fine flowering of Stan Ashton’s ego, watered by the life-giving rain of all the publicity he’d got, would know him better than to think he’d do anything to wither it.
“And the poor guy’s not a swine,” Spig told himself. “Or if he is, he’s not a fool. He’s not going to commit professional suicide.”
He looked at the clock on the dash. It was a quarter to seven, just thirty-five minutes since he’d stopped to talk to Yerby at the blue glass Three D. He started the car and drove on through the woods, past the old chestnut, towards what the O’Learys called the Home Farm, the five cleared acres where the house was, overlooking the Devon River. I’ll go see him. Right after dinner I’ll go over.
He rubbed his face hard to smooth away the outward and visible signs of any inward doubt, and creased his eyes and lips into a reasonable facsimile of the happy grin of the home-coming parent, hearing the kids shouting over in Tip’s garden plot as he made the last bend through the woods. He came out into the Home Farm, the grin dying automatically and at once.
The tree-shaded circle behind the house was full of cars. The Camerons’ and the Potters’ station wagons and the assorted conveyances of the not-so-well-heeled on Eden’s Neck . . . the ones Yerby said didn’t contribute except to live here and bellyache. And wait until they heard about the sign in Sudley’s pasture.
He felt a sharp jolt then in the pit of his stomach. They’d probably heard already, that’s why they were here . . . if not about Sudley, about Stan Ashton. Then he saw the foreign, yellow, midget convertible with red leather seats nosed in between the station wagons. It belonged to Arthur Dunning, one of the top-flight artists Anita knew and had down to work and be company for her, be a bit of leaven for the local dough-heads—and a black-bearded pain in the glutenus maximus so far as O’Leary was concerned. If it was a home owners’ protest meeting, Dunning wouldn’t be there. Or would he . . . always turning up where he was least expected. But the kids were shouting, streaking bare-footed in blue jeans across the field to the circle to meet him.
“Daddy! Daddy! I’ve got a contract, Daddy!”
Tip was yelling it at the top of his lungs. He and a visiting boy were racing ahead, Kitsy, nine now, red pigtails and braces on her teeth, behind them. Behind her was John Eden O’Leary, aged seven, an extravert edition of both Spig and Tip, delayed now because he had to wait for Molly Ashton’s chubby four-year-old legs to catch up with him. Mädel, the German shepherd, circled behind her to help her on.
“Daddy!” Tip’s freckled face was shining gold, but he pulled himself together with great sobriety. “Dad—this is my friend, Gregory Pappas. This is my father, Greg.” He nudged Greg’s arm. “Now you say, ‘How do you do, Mr. O’Leary?’ and shake his hand. We’re teaching him not to be so scared of grown-ups, Dad.”
Spig put his hand out. “How do you do, Greg?”
“How do you do, Mr. O’Leary?” Greg said shyly. His face was shining too. It was clear
