Build My Gallows High by Geoffrey Homes Read Free Book Online Page B

too,’ Caldwell said. ‘I’ve always wanted me a fireplace in the kitchen ever since I was a kid.’
    Despite herself Ann began entering into the spirit of the thing. They discussed curtains. They discussed light fixtures. They went upstairs and figured out where the bathrooms should be. No need to touch the bedrooms. They were swell great big rooms with plenty of windows and you wouldn’t have to get new furniture. Just new mattresses and pillows and curtains and stuff like that because the bird’s-eye maple fitted the rooms. Maybe some bright pictures like they had in early American houses in the American Home magazine.
    A porch ran across the side of the house upstairs.
    ‘We’ll screen her.’ Caldwell said. ’A swell place for kids to sleep in the summer. Screen her and fix some good heavy shutters to put up in the winter. Boy, I’ll bet you could sleep out here all year, once you got used to it!’ He looked down into the yard. ‘Over there a swimming pool,’ he pointed. ‘Won’t that be something! String lights up and have parties at night. We’ll get us a Delco system, or maybe dam up the crick and put a wheel in. Can’t do it all at once though.’ He slid one arm around her. ‘Jeez, Ann!’ he said in a choked voice. ‘Jeez, I love you!’
    She was going to tell him she didn’t love him. She was going to say, ‘Jimmy, I love him so very much I can’t live without him. I lie awake most of the night thinking how much I love him.’ But she said nothing. She stood there on the upstairs porch of the old Carlisle place that was now the Caldwell ranch and looked across the great meadow at the towering Sierras. A quail whistled m the meadow. A hawk slid down the sky.
    ‘I must go back,’ she said, not looking at his eager, loving eyes.
    Caldwell sighed. ‘That’s right.’
    They went downstairs and out. He locked the door, followed her across the yard, stopping once to look proudly at his house. He must be careful when they painted not to hurt the rosebush. That was one thing he wouldn’t change, that rosebush climbing up the porch. He wanted to yell, he was so happy. Like a young stallion he ran after Ann, opened the door for her and lifted her in, then ran around and jumped under the wheel of his station wagon. As he drove away he whistled. But he stopped whistling when they hit the outskirts of town. Red Bailey’s service station crouched by the highway and Ann asked him to stop for a minute. The Kid came over to the car, grinning.
    ‘Hello, Kid. Is he back?’
    The Kid shook his head, took a pencil and note pad from his shirt pocket and scribbled on the pad:
    ‘Got a letter. He won’t be back for two weeks. He’s in New York.’
    Seeing the hurt in her eyes as she read the note the Kid took the pad back and wrote: ’He wrote you too, he said.’
    Ann read what he had written. ‘Thanks, Kid.’ With nervous fingers she found her cigarettes, gave him one, lighted one for herself. She put one hand on his arm, squeezed it.
    ‘So he ran out on you,’ Caldwell said angrily.
    ‘Shut up!’ Ann said in a cold little voice. ‘Shut up, you stupid—’ She let the sentence trail off.
    Caldwell drove, staring at the road, not seeing the people in front of the stores, not seeing anything, thinking. Oh that dirty, big bastard! That stinking, ugly, red son of a bitch! Will I fix him!
    In front of the realty office, he jammed on the brakes and opened the door for her. Ann turned to him.
    ‘I’m sorry, Jim,’Ann said.
    ‘Okay,’ Caldwell said. ‘You’re sorry. Okay, okay.’
    He slammed the door and drove away.

Six
    Some kids on roller skates were playing hockey in the street. They skated back and forth, whanging a chunk of asphalt with sticks whittled out of pieces of old lumber. If a car came along to break up the game momentarily, they told the driver what they thought of him. It was a dreary neighborhood. There were a couple of halfway decent apartment houses in the block but the rest