There was only one person up here that Evelyn knew, and that was Aunt Patricia, Harrison’s wife. She stood against the rear railing of the platform, a tall and stocky fifty-eight-year-old woman dressed in severe and expensive black. Aunt Patricia was always dressed well and expensively and conservatively, and yet her hair was always terrible. She did it herself, at home in Brentwood, in a fiercely compact and ringletted style that had been out of date since the Second World War. Her hair, and the permanently grim expression of her face, distracted from her clothing and ultimately gave her a look of dowdiness. Howard had once said that Patricia Lockridge looked like the sort of woman who hits bus drivers with her purse; put such a woman in a two hundred dollar original dress and he was right.
Evelyn couldn’t have said she liked Patricia, but she did respect her, which was more than she could say for Harrison. Still, respect was not enough to make her want to endure Patricia’s forbidding manner, so Evelyn kept to herself, back near the wooden steps up from the ground, holding Dinah in close to her legs. Toward the front of the platform, they were finally getting ready to start.
The ceremony was boring, but not very long. Bradford gave a speech, a few stock paragraphs about progress and an ever-growing America. Two other men made speeches. Perhaps two hundred people stood around on the brown dirt where some day the City Hall lawn would be, and they clapped politely at the end of each speech, the sound of their applause frail in the clear sunlight, barely reaching across the open space to the platform. Bunting flapping in the slight dry breeze sounded more clearly on the air. The people were mostly family groups standing there, with children who grew restless and began running around amid the patient pillars of the adults before the ceremony was finished.
There had apparently been some trouble deciding what the symbolic act should be at the climax of the ceremony. Cutting a ribbon would have seemed somehow inappropriate, and there was nothing to break a bottle of champagne against. For a finish, therefore, they asked Bradford to raise an American flag on the temporary flagpole attached to the platform. He smiled his agreement, and pulled the rope, and the flag fluttered up the pole. When the breeze took it at the top, Evelyn saw that it had thirteen stars.
v
Afterward, there were drinks in the manager’s office in the temporary City Hall. The businessmen and their wives who had been on the platform stood joking together and holding drinks. Bradford was naturally the center of attention, and sooner or later everyone in the room managed to assure him they had voted for him both times, and to announce fervently that the country was a worse place for his having lost that second election. Bradford was long since used to this sort of thing, and went on smiling and nodding and making small talk throughout. He’d told Evelyn once, “I just go on automatic pilot. Inside there, my mind is fast asleep.”
So was Dinah. The excitement of the day had finally become too much for her, and Evelyn had had to carry her down from the platform after the ceremonial flag raising. There was a brown leather sofa in the manager’s office, and Evelyn sat there now with Dinah stretched out beside her, the little girl’s head cradled in her lap.
From time to time one or another of the businessmen came over to chat, being curious about her, not sure whether she was Bradford’s relative or secretary or mistress. Of the choices, relative was the most boring, naturally, so no one chatted very long. Evelyn didn’t particularly care. Bradford had brought her a gin and tonic — the one justification for this trip, she could have her favorite summer drink in February — and she sat there sipping at it and stroking Dinah’s hair and watching the faces.
The little party lasted less than an hour. This was a Thursday, after all, a business day. The couples trailed out, only two of them bothering to detour to the sofa to say goodbye to Evelyn. And the wife of one of those gushed over Dinah till she woke her, and Dinah awoke cranky. The woman glanced sympathetically at Evelyn, as though to say, “Too bad you have one of those.”
“She didn’t have her nap today,” Evelyn said defensively.
“Of course. Poor little thing.”
Finally they were all gone, leaving only members of the family. Harrison was seated behind the manager’s ornate desk, leaning back in the swivel chair, hands folded on stomach, pleased smile on face. His wife, the silent grim Patricia, stood at the windows behind the desk, looking out at the dusty brown landscape and its mock-New England buildings. Evelyn and Dinah were still on the sofa, and Bradford had seated himself in a matching brown leather chair in front of the desk.
There was a little silence, as though the echoes of the strangers’ voices had to be allowed to fade completely away before family members could converse, and then Harrison said, “You know how I appreciate this, Brad. It’ll do us a world of good.”
“I hope so,” Bradford said, and Evelyn looked at him in sudden interest, because his voice all at once had that slightly hesitant quality that meant he had something on his mind and was about to bring it into the open. But not directly, that had never been his way. He would approach the subject, whatever it was, on a long curving line.
Harrison apparently hadn’t noticed the change of tone, because he went right on with the conversation, saying, “I know it will. You saw them taking your picture, they were from the Los Angeles papers.”
“Yes, I noticed them,” Bradford said. He’d given up cigars five years ago, but occasionally he still forgot and dipped into his jacket pocket for one. He did so now, and frowned in brief self-annoyance, and said, “You know, we still get reporters at home sometimes.”
“Well, of course you do.” Was Harrison really presuming to condescend? “You’re still an important man, Brad.”
“Had a reporter just yesterday,” Bradford went on. His hand, without a cigar, was resting again on the wooden chair arm. “From out here, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh?” Harrison was only pleased, still not wary. “Wanting to know about this place? We didn’t make any secret about you coming out here, you know.”
“He did ask me about it, yes.” Bradford glanced over at the nearest window, then looked back at Harrison. “Asked me about water, mostly,” he said.
Harrison sat up, suddenly frowning. He put his hands on the desktop. “No matter what you try to do,” he said angrily, “there’s always some damn fool spreading rumors. I hope you put him in his place.”
“I wasn’t sure exactly what his place was,” Bradford said quietly. “Particularly since he told me there’s talk the state may look into the situation here.”
“That’s poppycock. The county government has checked this whole—”
“I believe,” Bradford said, his voice quiet but nevertheless effective in shutting Harrison off, “I believe most of the county government was just in this room.”
Harrison’s eyes shifted, and his hands came up to make vague gestures, palms up. “Not most,” he said. “Naturally, there are some—”
“The strength of the county government,” Bradford said. “Shall we say the clout?”
Harrison was very much on the defensive now. “That only stands to reason, Brad,” he said. “You know that better than I do, for God’s sake. My partners were the chief land owners in this county, and anywhere you go the chief land owners are going to tend to be involved in local government. Look at Dad, back in the old days in Pennsylvania. The fact that a man is a county commissioner and a successful businessman doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a crook, you know.”
“Harrison, tell me the truth. Will the state find things the county government for one reason or another didn’t notice?”