Free Fadeout by Joseph Hansen Page B

dream, far as them and the McNeils and their crowd are concerned. They think one of these mornings they'll wake up and find me gone. Used to be a lot of Japs out here before the war. Never looked down on them like they do on me. Hell, I own half this valley. I could buy and sell the lot of them. But let me show up out at their God damn country club and they scatter like pullets when a skunk gets in the henhouse. . . ." It was a big jug of bitterness but now he tired of pulling at it and set it down. "What was it you asked me?" 
    "Why wouldn't Chalmers get the contracts even if Fox Olson became mayor? Fox wasn't in the building business." 
    "His son-in-law is. Starting." 
    "Phil Mundy? Is he capable? He's awfully young." 
    "Twenty-three. But he's already Chalmers's chief accountant. Started building an apartment before he even married." 
    "Ambitious," Dave said. "Do you like him?" 
    Loomis's smile was one-cornered. "I never feel real easy about a man that's too smart with figures. My granddaughter Gretchen come to me for a loan. I told her no. Not for Phil Mundy." 
    "You didn't like her marrying him?" 
    "You seen that mother of his, that crippled kid?" Loomis snorted. "Feeling sorry for a man's a piss-poor reason to marry him." 
    "Did she get the loan from her father?" 
    "He couldn't give it to her. Thorne managed the money." 
    "Wouldn't she lend it?" 
    "She wouldn't even speak to Gretchen. She liked her marrying Phil Mundy the way I liked her marrying Fox Olson. That's something, ain't it? Life plays funny tricks." 
    "Sometimes not so funny," Dave said. 
    Loomis's muddy eyes regarded him wisely. "Them are the ones you got to laugh at hardest." 
    I never will , Dave thought, not about Rod dying . He said, "There was somebody you wanted Thorne to marry. She told me. But she didn't tell me who." 
    "Hale McNeil. It started when they was in high school. He took her out three, four times. Thorne had to sneak to do it. She was too young, only fifteen. When I found out about it, I told Charlie McNeil unless he stopped Hale I'd horsewhip the boy. McNeil didn't like it coming from me, but I had right on my side. Hale laid off—" 
    "And married someone else," Dave nodded. 
    "Mildred Fisher. Cheap tinsel. Things went all right till the army camp come. She couldn't keep away. Not from the honky-tonks either. Dozen of them on Main Street then. So ... Hale shucked her." Mouth a wide, sad line, Loomis shook his head. "No surprise the boy turned out like he done." 
    "McNeil seems bitter about him," Dave said. "Why?" 
    "Ten, eleven years ago, local doctor got caught with the boy. Sex. Course Hale wanted to believe it was the man's fault. Wasn't. Come out at the trial. One high-school kid says Tad serviced the football team regular on the bus com.. ing home nights from out-of-town games. There was half a dozen other stories. Shame of it killed Charlie. Hale—well, you don't mention Tad to Hale. Pima folks know that. You hear a joke about queers, don't tell him. He won't laugh." "What became of Mildred Fisher—McNeil?" 
    "Story goes she was pregnant. Softhearted fellow by the name of Vince Mundy married her. He had a little place on the edge of town. Walnuts, some citrus. Real pretty. He'd been all right in time, had a good head on him. But Mildred finished that off. Finally he took to drinking as much as she did. And when that second baby—his own—was born a cripple, he walked out and never come back." 
    Dave blinked. "Then she's . . . Phil Mundy's mother?" 
    "Not much of a beauty now, is she?" Loomis snorted. 
    "No ... But wait. There's something I don't understand. It was after the divorce that Hale McNeil came back for your daughter?" 
    Loomis nodded. "Soon as Thorne graduated from high school, he asked her to marry him. She turned him down. I know she liked him. Loved his baby too. It was Pima she hated. When I tried to talk sense to her she flared up about rich men's sons being no account and a whole lot of