The beast v1 0, p.14
The Beast (v1.0), page 14
Dearest Bo,
She can’t find the one She’s looking for yet. But
She’s getting ready to change. I won’t be here then.
I’m so sorry, my darling. Goodbye. I love you always.
Lilly
His hands shook as he read the message over and over, trying to make sense out of it, trying to get more meaning from it. He looked at the tiny print at the top left side of the card: “Salt Lake City boasts wide avenues and spacious parks, and is the home of the University of Utah, It is placed in a splendid setting of the picturesque Wasatch range which rises to 12,000 feet above sea level.”
He read the message again; what did she mean about getting ready to change? The Beast was changing? Or, more probably, the Beast was going to put Lilly aside and change into somebody else. But why would She do that? That was a stupid question when he didn’t even know why the Beast existed at all—or sometimes if it did. The whole thing was so fantastic—but there was Lilly. And she was real. He knew she was as real as he was, more than he was, because she was so loving and beautiful and kind to everybody. He felt anger rising in him for the first time since he had been back home, anger at the Beast, who had saved him from death and now was consigning his sweetheart to oblivion through some unthinkable process it was going through. Why couldn’t it just leave her somewhere, just go off and be somebody else and leave Lilly an ordinary human being like anybody in the world? Maybe he could find them, plead with the Beast. It was intelligent, though not in a human way. He was moving even before his thoughts were completed, packing his clothes again. Lord, he thought, as he went about stuffing things into the suitcase again. I hadn’t left Whitethorn for fifteen years or more, and now I'm running off at a minute’s notice. Old Kneipe is going to have a fit, be thought, as he trudged through the snow to the drugstore to use the phone. In two hours he was sitting in the St. Louis-bound Rock Island Rocket thinking out plans for finding an impossible beast in a city he had never seen before. But he kept feeling the edge of the card in his breast pocket, thinking: She’s in Salt Lake City, and that’s where I’m going. I’ll find her.
For some time now she had forgotten her own troubles, the sense of doom that held her stiffly away from people on the train. They had gone more and more slowly through the mountains as the snowdrifts on each side grew higher until the train seemed to be traveling in a tunnel of dazzling white. Once, as they crawled around the flank of a mountain, the drifts dropped away and they saw beyond the precipice a vast and distant world of snowy mountain peaks and valleys filled with conical pines set so close that they seemed a nubby green carpet far below. Then they entered the drifts again and more snow descended around them as they kept climbing. On the downgrade they stopped more and more often until word came back through the cars that they were stuck in huge drifts and would have to wait for the plows to come up from Raton to get them free. The conductors had been busy reassuring people for the first hour or so, and then when the heat began to leave the cars, everyone stopped worrying about getting to Santa Fe on time and began worrying about staying alive. It was cold enough after three hours on the mountain in the unheated cars to freeze the water in the tanks, and they had been cautioned against using the toilets more than absolutely necessary. Lilly had taken charge of three children whose mother was ill, and now they were huddled together under their coats and a blanket the conductor had brought them. The boy had a bad cold and kept coughing an her neck. She was telling them stories, the warmest ones die could think of. While she told them the story of Beauty and the Beast and the two little girls were already asleep, she was thinking with a part of her mind about he riddle that occupied the hours and days of life she night have left to her. When the boy began to nod and even stopped coughing while he slept against her, she asked her own private Beast why it was not possible.
Why must you change into someone else?
You are not suitable.
How can you have so little care? I thought you liked people.
I find people necessary to my transformation, and I like them.
You are going to take everything from me.
You had already experienced a life before l called you up.
Then why did you call me? She felt despairing again and close to tears.
The choice is dictated by the necessity of occasion.
I was suitable then? Why not now?
The time of transformation is difficult. Hard things must be done.
But I am able—
You will be in your own fate once more when I release you.
You mean I’ll be dead again.
If you wish to say that, yes. But you are a Person and do not perish.
At that moment the train gave a sudden lurch back ward, and a surprised cry came from the ranks of passengers, most of whom had been asleep or nearly so. The plows had dug through to them now, and they would be on their way in half an hour. The conductor, blowing white plumes of his breath, came through smiling, saying the heat would start up again soon. The three children slept around her body, and Lilly stopped asking. She could not understand the answers, except for the part about her going back to death. That was what mattered, after all. It was hard not to write to Bo again, but he would only be chasing across the country in the dead of winter and she would be gone. Well, she was over being hysterical about it. A sort of apathy had taken hold of her mind, preventing any strong action. She suspected the Beast was controlling her, but she could not feel how, nor could she fight back. It was as if she were under some kind of drug most of the time. She lay back, hugging the children to her, and after a while she slept.
Lilly was dreaming as they crossed the Continental Divide and began the long downward slope toward the Southwest, off the mountains and down toward the deserts, where, in a freezing hogan made of logs and earth, a young Indian woman panted hard to keep her breath coming. She felt the coldness of death in her legs under the blankets and the coldness of winter in the ground she lay on. There was no one else in the hogan, and for days she had lain there alone while the fever ate at her flesh. The last spasm of shivering left her, and she felt it take the last flicker of body heat. She tried to feel anger at the one who had left her here to die, but she could not And the energy even to think bad thoughts against him. And then, as the cold began to creep into her chest, she saw her grandfather standing beside the pallet of skins and blankets upon which she had lain for two weeks. His face seemed younger than when she had watched him die many winters past, and he wore the amulets and the holy shirt he had always used for the chants of healing. Now the old man held out the prayer sticks for her to see, put them back in the deerhide case that hung around his neck and held his hands out, palms up, arms spread wide. He smiled and looked upward as if accepting the blessing of the sun. At that moment the young Indian woman felt no more cold and rose to stand beside her grandfather. They raised their arms together.
The spacious sidewalks of Salt Lake City flowed with a bitter cold wind as Bo walked suitcase in hand, down from the station toward the business district where he might find a hotel. Before he found one, he had come across a tall pillar dedicated to a seagull and got a glimpse of a gigantic cathedral with a gold-plated angel on top that seemed to be nodding in the winter wind. Bo thought it must be an illusion because he was so tired and it was near dark. He stood gawking up at Moroni with his trumpet, and it certainly looked as though that angel was moving in the wind. Bo shook his head and resumed his march.
After three days he moved to a furnished room farther out, and although that made it harder to get around to the bus and train stations he was checking, he knew his money would not last more than a week at the rate he paid downtown. He tramped through the snow to five railway stations, two bus depots and an airport, asking each clerk in turn who might have been on duty in the past two weeks if he had seen a woman who looked like the picture in his wallet Most said they saw so many people they hardly could remember one of them unless it was a freak or a bathing beauty. Bo felt she was not in the city, but he continued asking, hanging around the stations until police officers approached him more than once. When he told them his story, they listened sympathetically but continued to watch him. After eight days he returned to his furnished room and slept for twelve hours. When he got up on the morning of the fifteenth of February, he decided to look for work. She had been here, maybe was still here, he thought. He might even see her on the street. But something inside him felt empty, and he did not expect to run into her. Still, there was no sure place to go, and he had asked Bud back home to keep his mail for him and to let him know if any letter came from her. He dressed and walked out into the cold again, this time looking for a jewelry store.
He tried the downtown shops as he came to them, knowing each one as he walked through the door: this one had an excellent watchmaker, and this other one specialized in gem-setting and rings, and this one sold mainly silver and plate. The ones he did not recognize were the Indian curio shops, with their strings of heavy silver bracelets and chains of turquoise hanging in the windows. He stopped once to look at some of the work, hunching his shoulders against the frosty wind. The work was primitive in its weighty masses of metal and uncut stones, but there was a gracefulness to it that caught his eye repeatedly as he looked more closely at the rings and bracelets. It gave Bo a shiver almost of delight as he saw the unabashed simplicity and repetition of design. He had not felt such interest in design since his early days in the profession, those days when his imagination leaped for the impossible in metal, the spirituality of gothic captured in a simple engagement ring or the solidity of eternal love in a polished wedding band. He looked up at the sign: Navajo Smith.
He walked on to the next shop, the kind of jewelry store he was familiar with. As he entered, a silvery bell rang somewhere in the back and a short, bushy-haired man with round, gold-rimmed glasses came from behind a curtain. The shop was smaller than Bo had thought, and he almost turned to leave again, knowing it would be a one-man setup.
The bushy-haired jeweler caught his hesitation.
“What? Not leaving already? You just got here,” he said, smiling so that his glasses seemed to rest on his rounded cheeks.
“I’m afraid I’d just be taking your time,” Bo said. “I’m not buying. I’m selling.”
“Well, so you’re selling,” the little man said, motioning with his hand as he walked toward the back again. “Come back here to the desk and let’s see it.”
Bo walked back slowly, sorry he had come in. The man misunderstood him, thought he was a salesman. “No,” he said apologetically. “I mean, I’m looking for work.”
“I didn’t think you were with one of the big lines. Where’s your sample case?” The small man sat behind a display table and motioned Bo to sit in the customer’s chair opposite him. “If you come into my store, you are welcome to try to sell whatever you like. We are all salesmen, is that not so?”
Bo was put at ease by the man’s smile and his easy manner. And it was obviously a slow morning, bright and cold outside this late February day and no other people in the shop. He sat down and put his hat on the floor beside him.
“There,” the jeweler said. “That’s better.” He offered a surprisingly slender and muscular hand. “My name is Solomon McArdle. And you are?”
“George Beaumont.” Bo took the hand, felt the strength in it and liked the man immediately. “I hope you aren’t disappointed that I’m just in your shop looking for a job.”
“I’m not disappointed yet, Mr. Beaumont, but then I don’t know what you do, how much money you want to do it or if I will like it.”
“Well, I see you’ve got a one-man operation going here, and I was thinking of getting into one of the larger places, really,” Bo began. The little man’s eyes were remarkably bright and protruded somewhat so that he looked almost comical when he was being serious. Perhaps that’s why he smiles so much, Bo thought.
“You are so apologetic,” Mr. McArdle said. “What you have to sell is not good?”
“I’m a manufacturing jeweler,” Bo said, realizing he was making a terrible impression. “I have done everything: engraving, lost-wax casting, cutting and setting gemstones of all qualities. I can do any of the usual things and do them well.”
“My goodness, and all this walks into my shop one cold morning and offers itself to me.” Mr. McArdle lifted both his hands in mock surprise. Before Bo could take offense, the little man smiled again. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Yeah, I would,” said Bo, who was conserving money by eating only two meals a day now.
As McArdle got up, he said, “You are not in the Church, then.”
“The Church? Oh, you mean the Mormons?”
“The Saints, they call themselves,” McArdle called from behind the curtain. “They are all Saints out here.” He reappeared with two cups of coffee and set them on the table. “1 knew you were a stranger by your coat and your voice,*9 he said. “Cigarette?”
“No. I gave that up. I dont usually have coffee, either,” Bo said. “But it’s cold and I been walking quite a while.”
“So, you are looking for work in this depressed country, eh?” McArdle made slooping sounds over his coffee.
“I had a good job back in Whitethorn, Illinois …” Bo began, but he stopped and tried to look busy with the coffee.
“But you ran off with a tray of diamonds, and now you are in Salt Lake City,” McArdle said, but he was smiling.
“I got a divorce,” Bo said. “I, ah, wanted to just get away and start somewhere else. 1 came west.”
“Yes, the marriage problems,” McArdle said. “It makes us run around like squirrels in their little wheels.” He smiled again. “And so, we make the world turn, is it not so?”
Bo liked the little bushy-haired man and felt a pang of good feeling inside, realizing he had not sat and talked with a friend for a long time. But he also decided discretion was better than a quick emptying out of his whole purpose in life right now. It would not do for a prospective employer to think he was on the verge of running off at the first sign of the woman he was looking for.
“Yeah, that’s the truth,” Bo said. He looked around at the small, neat shop, the familiar smells of rouge and solder coming from behind the curtain. He felt he would like to get back to work, to work hard and not to have so much time to think. “I’d really like to get back to work.”
“I can see that, Mr. Beaumont,” McArdle said, with a new, kindly note in his voice. “I will tell you what the situation is here,” he said, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. “I have two shops in this city, and this one is the small one where I sometimes come to do custom work. I am not usually here in the morning, since my woman,
Mrs. Wright, opens for me and takes the trade until early afternoon.” He watched Bo’s surprise and smiled. “You thought this was a little bitty shop, like a corner grocery?”
“Yeah, I know a guy has a shop like this in Rockford. He has a hard time making it.” Bo was puzzled now because the appearance of the man seemed to say that he was a small-time operator.
“We all have our hard times in these days, but it is getting better now.” McArdle slooped his coffee again. “I think you might be a gold nugget that I am about to pick out of the street, Mr. Beaumont Will you do something for me on trial?”
“Sure, anything,” Bo said, grinning suddenly.
“Ah, that’s better. You do want to work, I see,” McArdle said, smiling back. “Well, there is this little engraving job, the usual thing on silver plate, cups, the loving-cup thing for the Church society, you know?”
Bo nodded. “I’ve done lots of that done it for years. It’s just the kind of thing I need to get back in.”
“You have your tools?”
“Yeah, I got them a couple of days ago. I sent for them when I decided to stay.” He paused, embarrassed. “About references, you see Mr. Kneipe, my boss in Whitethorn, was pretty upset about me leaving when I did, I was really sick and had to go to a specialist in the East, and I had to leave just when the Christmas trade was high, and—”
“And so he will not send you recommendations now,” McArdle said, standing up, his hands holding the corners of his vest. “How long did you work for this Dutchman?”
“Fourteen years,” Bo said, counting up. He had not realized he had been with Kneipe that long.
“Well, you couldn’t have been ruining his shop for fourteen years, could you?”
“I’ll guarantee my work,” Bo said, reaching for his wallet
“Of course you will,” McArdle said. “But we won’t talk about that before you get those cups all scratched up, will we, ha?” And he came around the little table to take Bo’s hand. “And now, we are about to have a customer.”
Before Bo could turn, the little bell tinkled. He looked at the jeweler with surprise.
“They were standing outside looking at the rings,” McArdle whispered. “Love. The world goes around some more.” And he walked briskly to the front
In the days that followed, Bo found himself sinking almost with pleasure into the work McArdle laid out for him. He began with the simple things and put his heart into the least little jobs, not because he wanted to impress his boss and new friend but because it comforted him. He felt each morning a little better, able to feel human again, to walk out in the large park near his furnished room and around Temple Severe at night when they turned on the floodlights and it looked like a castle in the clouds. He felt some purpose moving again in his mind, and, while he never stopped thinking of Lilly and never stopped looking for her in every way he could think of, waiting for news of her from somewhere, he began to live again. By the beginning of March, he felt more at home in Salt Lake City and looked forward to each day’s work in the basement of McArdle’s big store, The Ritz, on State Street. He was known as a loner, and, although he occasionally went to a movie with Tom Tingley, his fellow worker, or was invited over to McArdle’s beautiful house on East Bench for dinner, he did not do much to cultivate friends.
