He looked at me and I said I had heard the idea expressed.

He tossed his second drink off. I passed him the bottle. A bluejay went up a pine tree hopping from branch to branch without moving his wings or even pausing to balance.

“Yeah,” Bill Chess said. “All these hillbillies are half crazy and I’m getting that way too. Here I am sitting pretty, no rent to pay, a good pension check every month, half my bonus money in war bonds, I’m married to as neat a little blonde as ever you clapped an eye on and all the time I’m nuts and I don’t know it. I go for that.” He pointed hard at the redwood cabin across the lake. It was turning the color of oxblood in the late afternoon light. “Right in the front yard,” he said, “right under the windows, and a showy little tart that means no more to me than a blade of grass. Jesus, what a sap a guy can be.”

He drank his third drink and steadied the bottle on a rock. He fished a cigarette out of his shirt, fired a match on his thumbnail and puffed rapidly. I breathed with my mouth open, as silent as a burglar behind a curtain.

“Hell,” he said at last, “you’d think if I had to jump off the dock, I’d go a little ways from home and pick me a change in types at least. But little roundheels over there ain’t even that. She’s a blonde like Muriel, same size and weight, same type, almost the same color eyes. But, brother, how different from then on in. Pretty, sure, but no prettier to anybody and not half so pretty to me. Well, I’m over there burning trash that morning and minding my own business, as much as I ever mind it. And she comes to the back door of the cabin in peekaboo pajamas so thin you can see the pink of her nipples against the cloth. And she says in her lazy, no-good voice: ‘Have a drink, Bill. Don’t work so hard on such a beautiful morning.’ And me, I like a drink too well and I go to the kitchen door and take it. And then I take another and then I take another and then I’m in the house. And the closer I get to her the more bedroom her eyes are.”

He paused and swept me with a hard level look.

“You asked me if the beds over there were comfortable and I got sore. You didn’t mean a thing. I was just too full of remembering. Yeah—the bed I was in was comfortable.”

He stopped talking and I let his words hang in the air. They fell slowly and after them was silence. He leaned to pick the bottle off the rock and stare at it. He seemed to fight with it in his mind. The whiskey won the fight, as it always does. He took a long savage drink out of the bottle and then screwed the cap on tightly, as if that meant something. He picked up a stone and flicked it into the water.

“I came back across the dam,” he said slowly, in a voice already thick with alcohol. “I’m as smooth as a new piston head. I’m getting away with something. Us boys can be so wrong about those little things, can’t we? I’m not getting away with anything at all. Not anything at all. I listen to Muriel telling me and she don’t even raise her voice. But she tells me things about myself I didn’t even imagine. Oh, yeah, I’m getting away with it lovely.”

“So she left you,” I said, when he fell silent.

“That night. I wasn’t even here. I felt too mean to stay even half sober. I hopped into my Ford and went over to the north side of the lake and holed up with a couple of no-goods like myself and got good and stinking. Not that it did me any good. Along about 4 A.M. I got back home and Muriel is gone, packed up and gone, nothing left but a note on the bureau and some cold cream on the pillow.”

He pulled a dog-eared piece of paper out of a shabby old wallet and passed it over. It was written in pencil on blue-lined paper from a note book. It read:

“I’m sorry, Bill, but I’d rather be dead than live with you any longer. Muriel.”

I handed it back. “What about over there?” I asked, pointing across the lake with a glance.

Bill Chess picked up a flat stone and tried to skip it across the water, but it refused to skip.

“Nothing over there,” he said. “She packed up and went down the same night. I didn’t see her again. I don’t want to see her again. I haven’t heard a word from Muriel in the whole month, not a single word. I don’t have any idea at all where she’s at. With some other guy, maybe. I hope he treats her better than I did.”

He stood up and took keys out of his pocket and shook them. “So if you want to go across and look at Kingsley’s cabin, there isn’t a thing to stop you. And thanks for listening to the soap opera. And thanks for the liquor. Here.” He picked the bottle up and handed me what was left of the pint.

SIX

We went down the slope to the bank of the lake and the narrow top of the dam. Bill Chess swung his stiff leg in front of me, holding on to the rope handrail set in iron stanchions. At one point water washed over the concrete in a lazy swirl.

“I’ll let some out through the wheel in the morning,” he said over his shoulder. “That’s all the darn thing is good for. Some movie outfit put it up three years ago. They made a picture up here. That little pier down at the other end is some more of their work. Most of what they built is torn down and hauled away, but Kingsley had them leave the pier and the millwheel. Kind of gives the place a touch of color.”

I followed him up a flight of heavy wooden steps to the porch of the Kingsley cabin. He unlocked the door and we went into hushed warmth. The closed-up room was almost hot. The light filtering through the slatted blinds made narrow bars across the floor. The living room was long and cheerful and had Indian rugs, padded mountain furniture with metal-strapped joints, chintz curtains, a plain hardwood floor, plenty of lamps and a little builtin bar with round stools in one corner. The room was neat and clean and had no look of having been left at short notice.

We went into the bedrooms. Two of them had twin beds and one a large double bed with a cream-colored spread having a design in plum-colored wool stitched over it. This was the master bedroom, Bill Chess said. On a dresser of varnished wood there were toilet articles and accessories in jade green enamel and stainless steel, and an assortment of cosmetic oddments. A couple of cold cream jars had the wavy gold brand of the Gillerlain Company on them. One whole side of the room consisted of closets with sliding doors. I slid one open and peeked inside. It seemed to be full of women’s clothes of the sort they wear at resorts. Bill Chess watched me sourly while I pawed them over. I slid the door shut and pulled open a deep shoe drawer underneath. It contained at least half a dozen pairs of new-looking shoes. I heaved the drawer shut and straightened up.

Bill Chess was planted squarely in front of me, with his chin pushed out and his hard hands in knots on his hips.

“So what did you want to look at the lady’s clothes for?” he asked in an angry voice.