Free The Plot by Evelyn Piper Page A

motives. He said, “You realize, Ethel, that this is the one and only time?”
    â€œI know, Louis.”
    â€œEven if I wanted to, it would be no good trying to do another of Jamey’s plots. Do you remember Three Men on a Horse? The guy who could pick winners in races? Remember that he guessed them every time while he wasn’t betting himself, but when they forced him to bet on his own hunches, the magic was gone?” He told himself that by saying, “This is it, this is the one and only,” he was pulling out, pulling up short.
    Ethel pretended that he had pulled out; she said solemnly, “I remember, Louis.” She asked him idly, as if it didn’t matter one way or another, “Is your conscience so very delicate, Louis?”
    Louis remembered Jamey asking him whether he was “intensely moral.” “Not my conscience, Ethel, my subconscious, my subconscious would keep me from writing anything decent, so no more of this!”
    â€œJust as you say, Louis.” She submitted. “What are you writing, by the way? I see your light on at all hours.”
    â€œJust stuff.”
    â€œStuff?”
    â€œJamey’s been giving me a lot of stuff, his life, what it’s taught him, from childhood on. I decided to get it all down to use for that interview, but it will be a four-hundred-page interview if I keep going, more like a biography.”
    Ethel spoke very quietly. “Have you told Jamey about writing this?”
    â€œNo, I haven’t.” He didn’t want to tell Jamey that he considered his every syllable worthy of putting down for posterity. He was ashamed of his real affection for the old man, his real respect. Because he was also ashamed of having Ethel discover his respect and affection, he changed the subject. “Talking about my writing, Ethel, I would like that longhand manuscript of the story.”
    â€œLet me keep it, Louis. I want to keep it with me.”
    â€œFor a souvenir?”
    â€œFor a souvenir.” She thought: You won’t give me anything else to remember you by. She thought: If you go, you’ll forget me, you’ll never think of Ethel again.
    â€œOh, come on, Ethel! I looked through your room for that ‘souvenir.’ Where is it?”
    She hugged her body with her arms, pretending a sudden chill, thinking: I know you looked through my room, darling. You touched my pillow, my blanket. I’ll never let that pillowcase be laundered, darling. Oh, Louis, Jamey is a fool not to help you to go, but it’s different with me. Her body, hugged by her arms, felt strong, felt stanch and bold and warm. She let her arms drop to her sides. “I hid it because it wouldn’t be safe keeping it around.”
    Louis didn’t believe that for a minute, but he didn’t know what he could do about it. She had her “souvenir,” all right, tied in blue ribbon. He could only hope that she intended to keep it to show her grandchildren.

CHAPTER SIX
    May was over. One by one, the old houses closed in the city of Charleston. Everybody who could afford to, and some who could not, moved away for the hot season, to the beaches and to the cooler high places, and this was not for comfort only. Charleston in June, in July and August, is tropical. The tropics are dangerous places to feel the passions that, in more temperate climates, are controllable. In the heat, in the damp, they grow like any tropical plant; you cannot walk temperately through these growths; you must cut with a knife, hack your way through them.
    Maum Cloe, cool in the heat, shook her head and sent her grandson on an errand to Charleston. “Go for get Miss Alex, Joseph Reas. Go for send Miss Alex a telegram.”
    Joseph Reas did not ask why he had to send Miss Alex a telegram; badevil hung from the rafters.
    Ethel watched Louis and knew that desperation was growing in him. When she handed him the mail, and saw his mother’s shaking