Four and Twenty Beds

CHAPTER TWELVE

BANNING'S WEATHER COMES assorted, like a box of chocolates. Some of the tidbits are sweet, some have a bitter tang; some, wrapped in glittering tinsel, turn out to be not as nice as you expected them to be. But they are all delicious, once you have developed the taste for them.

When winter is barely under way in Banning, suddenly it's spring. In mid-January, when the enclosing mountains are still shivering and huddled under their white fur coats, spring tiptoes through the Pass, breathing warmly upon the wind-swept grass and tossing handfuls of popcorn onto the branches of the almond trees. Vast orchards bloom, a paradox of nature, with the giant snow-covered mountains leaning over them.

I used to worry about those first frail, brave blossoms. I worried about them, and about the possibility of a frost, as industriously as though I were a mother almond tree.

One night late in January there was a shower of hail that lasted for about half an hour. The little hailstones splattered and clanked against the windows, and chattered on the little cement porch and on the door, pounding for admittance. When at last the shower subsided, we opened the door to look out, and saw that our entire driveway, even the islands of grass and the sidewalk in front of the cabins, were white with a thick layer of hail. It looked like snow.

The morning after the hail storm, when the solid layer of ice the hail had formed over the ground was melting, and crackling like a huge bonfire, we found that our neon "office" sign had a tiny hole in the top of it. About the time Grant was telephoning Oian Rosco, I happened to think of the almond blossoms. If hail could do this to our sign–and presumably it had been a hailstone, a particularly aggressive one, that had done it–what might it not have done to those delicate blossoms?

The next afternoon I drove to David's school, picking him up and bringing him home. Williams street, which led straight to David's school a mile away, was lined with almond trees. I looked at the trees anxiously. I was amazed to see that the branches were as fluffy as ever with their heavy load of bloom.

After that, I never worried about the almond blossoms any more. If the trees the following year had begun to bloom on Christmas day, and Christmas had been followed by twenty successive days of frost, I wouldn't have given it a thought.

Before our second summer at the Moonrise Motel Grant, by dint of much telephoning, exhorting, explaining, pleading, and even threatening, organized the motel owners in Banning into what started out as the Banning Motel Owners' Association, and later grew more inclusive and changed its name to the Banning Hotel and Motel Owners' Association. The purpose of this organization was to advertise Banning so thoroughly and so blatantly, principally by means of highway advertising signs, that even during the summer there would be more eager tourists than there were accommodations.

Banning had two small weekly newspapers, and ever since we came to the motel I had been toying with the idea of working for one of them on a part-time basis, if I could get the editor's approval. At least ninety percent of the wrecks that occurred in Banning happened right in front of the Moonrise Motel; there couldn't be any question about that. I could write up the story of each wreck for the paper; and maybe the editor would have some ideas as to further work I could do.

A few days before the first meeting of the new motel owners' association was scheduled, I bearded the editor of one of the Banning papers in her den. The story of the association's first meeting would be, I figured, a good opening wedge.

I had always had a yen to work on a newspaper. It had struck me that in nearly every biography of great writers there was a sentence or two testifying to the fact that the writer had at one time been a newspaper reporter. And since, of course, I hoped some day to be listed among the great, I should attend to that little prerequisite.

Reporting for a country paper would be an interesting experience, and with Grant home all the time, Donna would be able to spare me for two or three hours each day.

The editor of the paper, a pleasant-faced woman of about forty, with short, curly dark hair, was very interested when I revealed my background of magazine writing, and the fact that I had written a regular column in a Los Angeles newspaper until we left that city. Her present "reporter," the most literate she could find in this small town, was a recent high school graduate who used such sentences as "he capitulated through the air," and "the drunk driver was convicted of auto-intoxication."

We argued for about an hour. She'd like to have me work for her, all right, but she wanted me to work full time.

Her office was large, airy and cluttered. Two huge old desks stood against each other, their battered tops nearly obscured by a litter of papers, pencils and telephones.

A door at one end of the office led into a much bigger, still more cluttered room. From that room came the crash of machinery, and the voices of the men who were setting type, reading proof, putting the paper to bed, or whatever the technical terms are for whatever they do in such places. It was confusing, noisy, and somehow delicious.

By the time I had worn the editor down to a point where she was willing to let me work just part time, at a salary surprisingly large for a small town newspaper to offer, my natural laziness woke up with a start to the fact that I was actually about to let myself in for regular hours of extra, unnecessary work, and I took advantage of woman's privilege. I changed my mind.

"I don't want to tie myself down to definite hours after all, I guess," I said. "I'll work on sort of a free lance basis. I'll bring you several news stories every week."

I promised to be back with a story on the first meeting of the motel owners' association in time to meet her deadline.

The meeting was held at the Auto Haven, the big, rather old motel about half a mile from us, farther toward town, where Moejy spent what part of his time he wasn't devoting to harassing us or David. Grant and I, having engaged Mrs. Clark to take care of the children and rent the one cabin that was not yet occupied, were the first ones there.

Mr. Bradley, our middle-aged host, motioned us to chairs. He was an ordinary-looking, likeable man; the only thing about him incomprehensible to me was his toleration–his apparent liking–for Moejy. Well, I philosophized, we all have our little eccentricities.

And then the motel owners began to arrive. Mr. Buxley of the Westward; Mr. Vernon of the Bon Ton; Mr. Featherbrain of the Palace; Mr. Renault of the Mountain Lodge; Mr. Dale of the Cherry; Mr. Anderson, of the Desert Breeze. All misters. It began to look as though I would be the only woman present. This bothered me a little, particularly after Grant's broad hints that this was to be a businessmen's meeting, and his slightly more veiled ones that women don't know much and should try not to get into situations where their ignorance will be conspicuous. It would have pleased me very much if the majority of the people at the meeting had been women, very intelligent ones who thought of and discussed and settled every problem before the few men present could get their inferior minds to functioning. However, such was not to be; after the last of the twenty-eight arrivals had come there was only one other woman, and that one was my plump, shabby friend Mrs. Barkin, of the Sylvan Motel, who had, obviously, no husband to come in her stead.

I couldn't help feeling rather superfluous. I sat there seething, as many feminist-minded women have done before me, at the age-old theory of masculine supremacy.

Assuming that I must feel out of place, the kind Mr. Bradley–who took charge of the first meeting, pending election of regular officers–remarked at one time during the evening, "Of course, we'll be glad to have the wives of the motel owners attend the meetings too."

This irritated me still further, and while the meeting progressed I considered drowning Grant, so that, like the owner of the Sylvan motel, I'd be treated as an individual rather than as the ineffectual shadow of another. (I decided, though, that there'd be too much work for me to do alone.)

"Or if ever one of the owners is unable to come, his wife can come alone to represent him," Mr. Bradley went on.

After that, I seethed much more violently. Why was it taken for granted always that the man was the owner, and that his wife was simply "the owner's wife?" But, while Mr. Bradley's remarks were accepted quite naturally, how unheard of an occurrence it would be for a remark like this to be made: "Husbands of the owners are invited to come to meetings too; or if necessary the man can come alone to represent his wife."

How unheard of, even, that it be assumed that property owned by a married couple is owned mutually, and that whichever partner attended a meeting, it needn't be in order to represent the other.

Equality of sexes, and equality of races, are two points about which I have carried on so many arguments and written so many articles–many of which have never seen print–that I have almost admitted defeat. Stupid prejudice is virtually invincible, and not worth battering one's head against. But it's very, very maddening all the same.

It was a subject I had discussed several times, heatedly, in the small bi-weekly Los Angeles newspaper, called "Now," in which, as I told the pleasant editor of the Banning paper, I had had a regular column. In this column I could disport as I pleased, provided I stayed within the bounds of propriety and common sense, and all my favorite subjects got a thorough airing. "Now" folded up its tents and quietly stole away into oblivion about the time we left Los Angeles. Writing for "Now" was my first venture from the medium of magazines into that of newspapers, and I have always felt a little guilty about its demise.

I had brought along to the motel meeting a little notebook and my fountain pen, so that I could record pertinent facts about the meeting for the newspaper article I would write. Trying to be as inconspicuous about it as possible, I opened the notebook and wrote in it the names of the men arriving as Mr. Bradley introduced them.

Mr. Bradley spotted my notebook and pen, though, and almost before I knew what was happening, he had me sitting beside him at the table in the center of the room, taking notes on the meeting and acting as temporary secretary.

At one point in the meeting, after many methods of advertising had been discussed and rehashed, and it had been my job as secretary to read aloud a great deal of explanatory literature from advertising sign companies, I became very thirsty. During a dull, lengthy free-for-all about the relative merits of the different companies whose literature had been read, I acquainted Mr. Bradley with the fact that I was nearing death from acute dehydration.

Mr. Bradley waved toward a doorway at one end of the big, people-cluttered living room.

"Kitchen's right in there," he informed me. "Go along the hall and turn left. Go on in and help yourself."

I weaved my way between the chairs toward the doorway. The smoky air was heavy and thick and reluctant to let me through. I closed the door behind me and found myself in a murky hallway. The only light was that which seeped under the door I had just shut, and the glow from a partly open door at the end of the hall.

There was an open doorway at the left of the hall, and I was about to enter the kitchen through it when I heard a whisper.

"Pssst! Come in here, in here a minute."

My curiosity was stronger than my fright. I tiptoed slowly along the hall toward the partly open door and toward the whisper. Outside the door, I hesitated.

Then I heard the whisper again. "Come on in here, in here."

Timidly, I pushed the door open farther. The room was illuminated by a big, old-fashioned lamp that stood in a corner, its shade dripping with fawn-colored fringe. There was a large four-poster bed covered with a patchwork quilt, an old wooden rocking chair, and a heap of clothes on the floor beside the bed. The heap of clothes turned out to be a wizened old lady. Her frail body was swathed in layer after layer of garments, and her small head was covered by a black cloth, under which her bright eyes sparkled up at me.

"Come on in and close the door, come on in," she hissed. I closed the door and stared at her. But I knew I shouldn't just stand there and stare; I had to say something.

"What on earth are you doing down there on the floor?" I asked. It wasn't the type of thing I had intended to say, at all.

The old lady proudly smoothed the thick layers of material that surrounded her. She reminded me of a hen preening, fluffing out her feathers.

"I'm going to have a baby," she confided, still in a whisper.

"Well–" I gulped. "That's–that's fine. Motherhood is so–" I felt behind me for the doorknob. "Motherhood is so–well, so–"

"So broadening! Just like travel!" Her loud, sudden cackle was startling. "And how it is broadening!" she hissed. "But not the way I'm doing it. I've got a better way. Chickens have a better way than humans. All they do is sit on eggs. That way they don't get fat, they don't suffer, it's very simple. So I'm profiting by their example. See?"

The old lady half rose, lifting her voluminous skirts, revealing skinny, knobby legs and–an egg!

The egg, a large white one that looked almost as though it were made of china, rested on a pile of old dresses. After allowing me one quick glance, the old lady ruffled her clothes about her again and sank down gently onto the egg.

By this time I had found the doorknob, and I hurried out of the room. The old lady's stage whisper followed me: "I'm Mrs. Bradley. You must come back to see me soon, when my baby is born."

The election of officers was held later that evening. Mr. Cruz of the Rosarita Motel was to be president and I, it developed, was to be permanent secretary. I was relieved to hear that the next meeting was not to be at the Bradley's motel.

Every evening while we are eating dinner we keep the light turned out in the living room. My chair is placed at the end of the kitchen table nearest the range and sink, so that I am in the most strategic position possible for mopping up whatever food Donna spills, for catching David's plate on one of its sudden trips to the floor, and for serving hot second helpings from the covered pans that are simmering on the stove. (I never put all the food on the table; it would just get cold before we would be able to finish eating it, because of our many interruptions.) My position at the table is strategic in another way, too. I face the door to the living room and the moment a car drives in its lights shine through our Venetian blinds and form stripes on the wall of the darkened living room. (Months of experience have taught me the difference in angle and appearance between the stripes cast by the headlights of cars going into Moe's and those driving into our driveway). When a car drives in I tell Grant, who sits in the chair nearest the doorway, with his back toward the living room. As long as we have been at the Moonrise Motel, I don't believe Grant has eaten one evening meal without having to get up and rent a cabin or talk to someone, while the food on his plate loses its heat and its savor.

As for me, I don't believe I have ever washed dishes after dinner without having to stop once or twice, dry my hands, answer the doorbell and be a gracious landlady, and then go back and dip my dry hands into the unappetizing dish water again. Grant usually chooses this period of the day to shave, and it is easier for me to go to the door in the middle of dishwashing than it is for him to wipe off every trace of shaving cream and go.

The actual work connected with the motel seems easier now than it did at first–and, of course, that isn't surprising, since we do very little of it ourselves. Mrs. Clark cleans the cabins thoroughly every day, and after she has stripped all the beds Grant and I whisk through the laundry, getting it sorted and ready to go in about half an hour. About once a week Grant works with Mrs. Clark, and they give the cabins a very thorough cleaning, vacuuming under the beds, washing windows, and doing all the other little jobs that don't have to be done every day. Occasionally he does a little redecorating, painting a bathroom or repairing the damage done to the side of a garage when a car was backed out carelessly–and on such days it is my job to get the laundry out alone.

Watering, a big job in the summer time, can be practically forgotten about during the winter.

The last task before bedtime is to go around and check all the license numbers, to be sure that we have the correct ones. This is a safeguard in case of theft or damage to the cabins.

A typical day, with enough work of different kinds to keep us busy, but seldom enough to make us tired, and with the opportunity for meeting people from all parts of the country, is very interesting. The typical customer, however, is not. He is, in most cases, rather boring–not through any fault of his own, but because I know in advance exactly how he is going to behave and what he is going to say.

He comes in saying, "Got a vacancy?" After seeing and approving the cabin, if he wanted to look at it, he fills out the registration blank, omitting everything but his name and city and state. Prodded, he adds his address, fuming with belated alarm over the fact that he has written his home state immediately after the name of his town, in the blank left for "city," instead of putting it in its own blank space, labelled "state." Assured that it doesn't matter, he proceeds to the greatest hurdle of all–his car license. Laughing apologetically, he fingers through the papers in his wallet, trying to find it recorded on one or the other of his papers. Giving up at last, he darts outside, looks at his license, darts back in and writes it down quickly before he can forget it. Then he comments at some length on his persistent inability to remember his car license. I always smirk and assure him that I've never been able to remember ours, either (a lie). Having paid and obtained his key, he lingers a few minutes to comment on the travels he has made, the distance he has covered, and how tired he is; and to ask where's a good place to eat.

That's the typical customer. But there are a lot of unusual, amazing, intriguing, uncouth, and even frightening customers, and it's in the hope of encountering one of these that, when neither of us is busy, I fight to beat Grant to the door when a car drives in.

One night after we had gone to bed, expecting a night of good, uninterrupted sleep guarded by our bright "no vacancy" sign, someone rattled the knob of our door and then began to knock furiously. Grant pulled on a robe and went sleepily to the office door, so that the person who had been knocking on the living room door would go to the office to talk to him.

A few seconds later he was neck-deep in argument with the possessor of a shrill, strident, powerful voice. Prodded by my seldom dormant curiosity, I crept out of bed and slightly moved the curtains that hung over the window of the door to the office. I peeked into the office; there, confronting Grant, stood a behemoth of a woman who matched the voice in every respect. Her massive chin stuck out aggressively; and she was the possessor of a bosom that, if it could have been divided up among the female population, would have put several falsie manufacturers out of business.

"You get out of that bed!" the woman shrieked–a rather pointless command, since, obviously, Grant was not in bed. "Get your clothes on," she went on relentlessly, "and get out of that bed, and out of this cabin. They rented it to me and my husband, less than an hour ago, and I paid for it, and I intend to stick up for my rights. We rent a place, and then go out for a malt, and drive around a little, and what happens? They rent the place to someone else. I suppose they think they'll get double rent. Well, I hope they'll give you your money back, and of course you can't be blamed for renting a cabin when you didn't know it was already rented, but I'm telling you, I won't stand for it, so now hurry and get up and get out."

The woman folded her arms, with difficulty, around her jutting bosom, and stood waiting for Grant to slink away. When he didn't slink, but began to explain to her in a reasonable tone that she was mistaken, she howled with anger.

"No excuses," she screamed. "And I don't care if your wife has ulcers and can't be moved, or whatever corny excuse you're going to pull."

"Look," Grant said patiently. "We live here. We own this motel. Nobody rented us a cabin tonight, and what's more, we didn't rent you a cabin here at all. Now, if you'll excuse me once, I'll go back to bed–my bed, not yours."

But the woman's huge body remained planted in the doorway. She was quivering with determination. "My husband and I are going to have our cabin," she bellowed. "I'll call a cop."

"Fine. Would you like to quick use our phone?"

I leaped back into bed, just in time. The woman came into the room like a rhinoceros on the warpath, and glowered at me until I was almost ready to get up, apologize for sleeping in her bed, and creep away.

Grant handed her the telephone.

She glanced toward the kitchen. "I didn't–I didn't notice before that the place had a kitchen." Her voice was a little less like a foghorn.

"Nope. You've never been here, before," Grant said. "The number of the police department is 3322."

Her bosom seemed to shrink a trifle.

"And I don't remember any Venetian blinds in the place. Maybe we got twisted, driving around in a strange town, you know, when we got our malt. Maybe it was the front cabin of another motel. I–well…" She eased her bulk back toward the door. "I guess I made a mistake."

"Yep. But not such a big one as your husband made," Grant said, as he shut the outer door.

My first story for the newspaper was an account of the initial meeting of the Banning Motel Owners' Association. (I omitted the encounter with the host's wife!) The editor, Grandma, Grant, and most of the members of the association were pleased with the quality of my first venture into newspaper reporting.

I had closed the article with a list of the names of the motel owners who had attended the meeting, and it turned out that one member of the organization was not in the least happy over the situation.

I found that out the afternoon of the day the paper was published. Mr. Featherbrain stormed into the office, spluttered for a while, and finally came to the point.

"Durned old paper," he raged. "Durned old article. Who writ it, anyways?"

I still remembered acutely l'affaire de water faucet. "I wrote it," I replied coldly. "So what?"

He towered above me, thin and menacing, his chin quivering with violent emotion. "So what!" he repeated. "So what? Ain't it bad enough to have a name that sounds like 'Featherbrain' without spellin' it 'Featherbrain'?" His bony hand rasped across the white stubble of his beard. He seemed about to break into tears.

"It's too bad, all right," I said, softening a little. "But lots of people have funny names."

"I don't have a funny name!" he wailed. "You're just a-tryin' to make evvybody think I have. I oughta–why–" he paused, trying to think up an awful enough fate for me, and finally fell back on his old standby: "I oughta bust evvy bone in yer head!"