John D. MacDonald

A Romantic Courtesy

When the plane’s port engine developed oil pressure trouble, John Raney’s pilot, SammyDowd, informed Raney that he was going to alter course and set the Twin Beech down at San Antonio and get it checked. Raney felt a mild annoyance at the delay. He was anxious to get back to his ranch north of Fort Worth early enough to take a long swim in the pool and horse around with the kids and relax from the tension of the past few days.

It had been a business trip, one of the important ones. Two days in Corpus Christi dickering with the bankers on the new oil deal had been wearing, but he had got precisely the terms he had hoped to get. On the way back, yesterday morning, he had stopped off at Lee Guthrie’s spread near Charco to select some new breeding stock for Lee to ship up.

He had changed to khakis and Lee had taken him on a jeep tour of the ranch after they’d decided about the stock. When they got back to the ranch house they found that mutual friends had flown in for an evening of poker.

After breakfast next day Raney had a strong urge to head back home. Because the trip was from ranch strip to ranch strip, there seemed no point in changing and shaving.

After Sammy had put the aircraft down, John Raney stuffed the oil deal papers he had been studying back into the briefcase and went off and found a phone and called Betty at the ranch and told her about the delay.

“Now don’t you let Sammy take off with that thing until it’s fixed up right, you hear, honey?”

He pictured her at the phone, wearing that worried look that put two vertical wrinkles in her pretty forehead, and he grinned fondly. “If you’d rather, I’ll walk, but it’ll take up quite a chunk of time, puss. Couple of months.”

“How did everything go?”

“Smooth and pretty, puss. Like I told you it would. Now I’m going to stake you to that new patio you got all drawn up.”

She squealed with pleasure, then gave him a report on the kids, and asked about the stock and when it would come. After the call he sauntered back to where Sammy was watching two mechanics working on the motor.

“How does it look, Sammy?”

“They’ve located it. I’d guess it’ll take about forty minutes.”

“Want to come get some coffee?”

“No thanks, John. I’ll stick here and see how it comes along.”

John Raney ambled over to the coffee shop in the main terminal building. He was a tall man, close to forty, lean and angular, slow-moving. His khakis were sweat-stained, and he wore his ranch hat tipped forward as a protection against the glare. There was tough ginger stubble on his jaw, and dust on his boots. He wanted a long soak in the big pool, and then some tall cool drinks and later, after the kids were in bed, a long spell on the patio watching the night and the stars. He would rest up over Sunday, tend to ranch business on Monday and Tuesday, and be off to El Paso on Wednesday with Betty to Dick and Dusty Fremont’s housewarming.

The money was piling up, much faster than he had ever dreamed. A few breaks, and a lot of hard work, and now he was in the clear and moving fast. No regrets.

He sat at the counter and ordered coffee. While he was waiting he looked in the mirror and saw the woman alone at a small table against the wall behind him. And he felt as though his heart had stopped. She had not changed. Not at all. Funny to have been thinking about no regrets, and then the next moment see her and have the sight of her take the lid off this one little hidden regret. Betty was all he wanted. She was good and honest and pretty. But Gloria had come first, and he had lost her.

When his coffee was served, he carried the cup over to the table where the woman sat alone. She looked up from her magazine with that very cool expression a handsome woman uses to fend off the unwelcome advance. Then her eyes widened with sudden recognition and she exclaimed, “John! John Raney! How wonderful!”

“Join you, Gloria?”

“Of course! But they’ll announce my flight any minute. I hope it’s going to be late. It’s been a long time. How long? Fourteen years! Isn’t that dreadful?”

He hung his hat on the wall hook and sat opposite her. “A long time ago and quite a way from here, Gloria. You look wonderful.”

“I must say you’re looking very fit, John.”

“But not very presentable. I wasn’t figuring on running into any old girl friends.”

“Were there so many of them?” she asked archly.

“Not many. Just the one, I guess.”

In a silence that had become suddenly awkward he sipped his steaming coffee. They had met when he was an infantry second lieutenant with a division training at Needles, California. She had been working in Riverside. Three of them, John and two of his friends, had been dating her. John had finally gained the inside track. They had planned marriage. But though Gloria had been in love, she had also been ambitious — and John Raney had had little to offer her. When Christopher Kimball, Major Christopher Kimball of the Philadelphia Kimballs, had come into the picture, Gloria had been quick to break the engagement.

“How is the Major?” John asked.

She made a face. “Ancient history, John. Unfortunately. He got to be a colonel. After the war he got some very curious ideas. He wanted to retire from life and hole up in some grim little mountain town in Colorado that he thought was delightful. We were divorced, and I went to New York. I might as well tell you the whole grim story, darling. I married a very sweet boy named Jerry Cobbler, but that was all he was, a very sweet boy who utterly refused to grow up. So number two went kaput too, and he went back to his mother. But don’t think I’ve made an utter botch of everything. I’m married to Wendell Cowliss now, and have been for three years. Surely you’ve heard of him.”

“Sorry.”

“He’s a very talented and wonderful man. He’s quite a bit older than I am, but he’s young in spirit. He’s the producer and director of some of the biggest television shows in the country. It makes a hectic life, believe me. We’re on the run every minute. Wendell likes to get out and get the feel of the country. I’m meeting him in New Orleans tonight. It’s a fabulous life, John. It’s like being in the heart of things every minute. I’m really happy.”

John Raney, looking at her more closely, did not think she had the look of a happy woman. There were tiny lines of tension at the sides of her mouth and under her eyes. There was a nervous brittleness in her voice. The dark hair was as glossy as ever, the soft mouth as provocative, but she seemed to be under a strain.

“But I do want to know about you, John. Did you get the little ranch you used to talk about?”

He grinned at her. “I sure did.” He was about to tell her it was twenty-six thousand acres but she interrupted him.

“Married? Children?”

“A little blonde wife named Betty and three husky boys.”

She looked at him wistfully. “Gee, you know, sometimes I wish...” She made a face. “I’ve gone this far. I might as well say it. Sometimes I wish you and I had... done what we planned before Chris came along. Wendell can buy me almost anything in the world I want... but if I could have been with you on some little ranch, working hard, raising kids, entering stuff in the county fair, riding into town on Saturday night in the pickup... I think I would have made a good ranch wife, don’t you?”

John Raney realized, with sudden amusement tinged with annoyance, that he was being patronized. Until that moment it had not occurred to him that she would regard him as a sort of grubby semi-failure. He was used to being recognized at once as John Raney, no matter how he happened to be dressed.

“Hard work,” he said, “being a woman on a ranch. Chop wood, run the tractor, feed the hogs. Lonely life.” He knew just how he would set her up for the revelation of a success which at times seemed, even to him, to be gaudy and incredible.

“You work hard,” she said, “but you can see the results of your work. It’s something concrete. And you look happy, John. I’ll bet your wife is happy too.”

“Want to see a picture of her?”

“I’d love it, really.”

He took out his wallet and held it under the edge of the table to make the selection of a picture. He was grinning inside with anticipation. There was a little folder of color photographs. He looked through them quickly. Betty in that Dior thing in front of the enormous fireplace. Betty and the kids the day the Mercedes was delivered, with the big ranch house in the background. He decided on the one of the barbecue, with Betty and the kids, and the plane parked off the strip near the horse barn, and the flamboyant bar under carnival canvas. Anticipating her embarrassment, be looked across at her and saw in her eyes an unexpected warmth and vulnerability.

So he put that picture back and dug into the wallet and found the one he had carried for so long, a black and white one, creased and cracked. Only one kid, the first boy. A toddler. Betty, in faded jeans, leaned smiling against the corral fence, squinting into the sun, with nothing in the background but the drab contour of the land. He handed that picture to Gloria.

“She’s pretty, John. And she looks awfully nice.”

As she handed it back, her flight was announced. He walked out with her into the white heat of the sun. and he stood with his thumbs hooked in his belt, hat tilted forward over his eyes, and watched her climb the stairs and turn at the top and wave at him, a dark, slim, handsome woman, smartly dressed, hurrying back into her fabulous life, tense and brittle and not fully aware of her own discontent.

After her flight left he sauntered back to the repair apron and found they were bolting the cowling back in place. After the take-off he sat and looked west at the hill country and the silvery loops of the Guadalupe River. He felt a deeper contentment within himself. The last buried regret was gone. The dark girl of Riverside was now a poised and superficial stranger.

He decided he would tell Betty about meeting her, tell Betty tonight as they sat on the terrace under the starry sky. And in telling her, he would be telling her something else, something beyond words. He knew Betty would understand about the picture.

Content

John D. MacDonald
A Romantic Courtesy