The Collected Stories of William Humphrey Page 5

  Laura got propped on her elbows and shook herself down and got to her feet. Dan moaned as she tried to raise him. Maybe moving him would make things worse. She looked around, half-expecting someone to see the trouble she was having and come over to give her a hand. She went to the house and got a quilt. She wrapped him in it and started for the car to go to the neighbor’s phone.

  Laura’s papa sat at the table and steadily cropped the shreds of his cigarette, his coffee saucered and blowed, being careful to swill it quietly, stiffly respectful, which consisted in not hearing anything that was said to him and looking as if, under the circumstances, words just didn’t reach him, trying to keep his own two good legs out of sight and not look any too well himself. Laura’s mama worked quietly over the stove and Harold sat in the corner he had hardly left all day, trying to make himself as small as possible, scared to death. He would not go into Dan’s room and Laura didn’t insist. The sight of him could only have made Dan feel worse.

  Laura pulled her hands out of the bucket of plaster and scrubbed them thoughtfully in the washpan. She picked up the heavy bucket and her papa looked like he would offer to carry it but he had had his own reverses lately and too much must not be expected of him. He rubbed a hand along a tender kidney and looked wistfully away.

  The doctor plastered the leg. “Well,” he said, “we might have waited till a little more of the swelling went down, but I don’t think it will matter too much.”

  It didn’t matter much to Dan. He looked at the leg with only the top layer of his eyes. He brought himself up with a bitter sigh and said, “He says I’ll be in bed six weeks,” and gave Laura a long defiant stare.

  She had already told herself it would be a long time but now her surprise showed and so did her pain. Dan’s tone hurt her. He didn’t have to throw it up to her like that. She hadn’t asked.

  “That at least,” the doctor said. “What I said in fact was six to ten weeks.” He gathered up his tools and laid them neatly in his bag, taking out a bottle of pills. “Give him these to sleep but never more than three a day. I’ll come out every day for a week or so. I don’t know just what time of day but I’ll get here.”

  “What I don’t know,” said Dan, “is when you’re going to get paid.”

  “Well, I’ll worry about that.”

  Out in the kitchen the doctor washed his hands, rolled down his sleeves, and drew on his coat while everyone watched. Laura’s papa nodded sagely at his movements and her mama stopped setting the table to pat her hair in shape and smooth the ruffles of her dress.

  “I wouldn’t leave him too much alone,” said the doctor. “Keep his mind occupied. Just don’t make too much over it. Course you can’t exactly act like nothing happened,” he smiled broadly, “but remember, it could have been worse.”

  How? How could it have been any worse, Laura wanted to know. He said that to everybody without thinking. Her papa registered with a snort that he thought it was bad enough.

  The doctor settled his things in his pocket and turned to the old man. “Well, John, how’ve you been coming along lately?”

  It was no time to feel well when a doctor was talking to you free, so the old man dug out his cigarette and got ready to give details. “Well, when you get my age, you know, Doctor, ever’ little thing—”

  The doctor pulled up his watch and glanced at it impatiently. He has other calls to make, thought Laura with some surprise, other bones to set. She got a glimpse of her papa rubbing up his rheumatic knee as though to polish it for show. She saw the fright in Harold’s eyes over all these broken bones and aching knees and cut hands. She saw her mother reach over and set the turnips aside to simmer and look at the doctor as though she would like to ask him to stay for a bite but was ashamed of what her daughter had to offer.

  Laura slammed the door and buried her face in Dan’s arm. He let her cry and then raised her to him. She hugged him and sobbed. He stroked her head gently and gently eased her back a little. She had shaken him and the pain in his leg was awful.

  V

  Mr. Johnson hung soggily on the barnyard fence while Dan stood stiff and uneasy before him, not knowing what to do with his hands that he was keeping respectfully out of his pockets. Not far away Mr. Johnson’s car rested in the shade of a tree, with Mr. Johnson’s wife in the front seat. Mr. Johnson took out his cigar, shot a stream of juice onto a flat stone, and watched it sizzle.

  “I ain’t been mean, have I, Dan?”

  “No, Mr. Johnson,” Dan replied, “you been mighty patient and I appreciate it. But, Mr. Johnson …”

  “Now, Dan,” he interrupted, “you know as well as I do, not many men would have strung along with you as far as I have.”

  “I know it, Mr. Johnson. You been mighty patient.”

  “Well, these things just happen. I reckon everybody has a stretch like this some time or other.” Mr. Johnson waved a large chunk of charity at him. “I don’t want to be mean. I ain’t forgot you done well here before all this begun to happen. I don’t forget them things. But now, you see, prices is good. This here’s a good piece of land and with proper work we’d have us a whopping big crop off of it. Everybody else is doing good this year. You got one of the best sixty acres in the county right here, Dan, and you and me could both be making a killing if it was going right.”

  Mr. Johnson removed his big lazy Panama and mopped his forehead and the back of his neck with a sopping handkerchief. Dan shifted the weight from his aching leg slowly, trying not to wince. What was the good of all this? Why stand out here in the sun and jaw about it? He hadn’t done it on purpose, for God’s sake. Didn’t he know it was a good year, and who stood to lose the most, him or Johnson?

  “You’ve got a good head on you, Dan,” Mr. Johnson was saying. “You ain’t wild. You’re about as settled a man for your age as I ever seen. I knew your papa and I could see his boy would make a good farmer. I just mean to say I got faith in you, Dan. But you can see the fix this puts me in.”

  Dan nodded wearily and followed Mr. Johnson’s eyes down along the length of his stiff leg.

  “Jesus, it ain’t your fault. But it ain’t mine, either.” Mr. Johnson was getting hotter and his eye acknowledged an impatient stir from his wife.

  “Well, I don’t know what to say. We’ll just have to let things go on like this for a while, I guess. I don’t see nothing else we can do.”

  Neither did Dan. He stood helplessly, wishing Mr. Johnson would go on and not stop at those awkward spots.

  “I can bring in a team and make another alfalfa cutting. And we might get a stand of soybeans if the weather holds. But if anything else happens, God help us. Dan, you just got to be more careful.”

  Careful! It made him so mad he heard the insides of his ears pop. Careful! He raised his head, raised a forefinger, raised his leg to set it out before him in a stance, then thanked the Lord for the pain it caused him. Johnson would never know how near he had come to a good round cussing.

  Mr. Johnson turned to go. Reaching into his pocket he brought up a lighter for his guttering cigar. At a gesture Dan went closer. Mr. Johnson, with a show of lighting his cigar, slipped a bill into his hand and signaled his wife that he was coming, that only the lighting of his cigar was keeping him.

  VI

  When Harold’s summer vacation began Laura bent over backwards being nice to him. He’d been through so much, poor little fellow, had taken Dan’s accident so serious and she had scrimped him on so many things he needed. Most of all she was ashamed of being sorry to have him home. She even refused to call him down when she knew he was bothering Dan with his racket. And Dan was being so nice, even softened her when once or twice she did fly off the handle at the boy.

  Dan felt that his accident had done one good thing at least, brought him and Laura closer together than they had been since they were married, certainly a lot closer than they had been for a long time lately.

  Not that he wasn’t worried just about every minute. He worried over the look of thin
gs, what the neighbors were saying about Laura spading the vegetable garden and pitching manure out of the barn. They had seen her, all right, gone out of their ways to see her, and he worried most over how she felt about the loss of her pride.

  One Saturday after she had gone to town he found the washing machine gone. How she managed to get it into the car by herself he couldn’t guess and didn’t ask. Someday he would get her another one, meanwhile it wasn’t as if it was any comedown. It wouldn’t hurt her to wash a few clothes.

  Laura said, “How did you do it?” glaring down at the boy. She was worn out with chopping kindling and he had been going like a wild Indian since the break of day. She would have to leave off her cooking and trying to get in a few strokes on the churn and trying to clean up the place that had got to looking like a pigsty and having to move Dan around to sweep under his feet with him sitting there like he didn’t even know she was in the same room, much less trying to clean up where he was, have to break off and leave things to boil over and burn and come out to drag Harold down out of the mulberry tree or off the barn roof or out from under the house where all kinds of spiders and snakes were liable to get at him, a dozen times she’d had to come out and yell at him for something and now this cut thumb was the last straw.

  “Drawing the knife towards you, I bet, weren’t you?” He made her mad the way he stood there so hangdog and she had a mind to grab him and shake a little of the nonsense out of him. Didn’t she have enough to do without this now and didn’t anybody care even enough to look after their own selves? “How many times have I told you never to whittle towards yourself? Huh? How many times? Well, just march over to that washpan and daub it good with iodine.”

  He twisted his face up at her with a plea. “Couldn’t I use monkey-blood just as good?”

  Dan put his paper down with a rustle and the boy looked at him with a slow flush of accusation, his eyes coming to rest on the leg stretched out under the table. He turned to Laura and began to whimper. She snatched him a turn and gave him a little whack, warmed up to it and gave him another.

  “Stop it,” said Dan. “He wasn’t doing that a bit. I saw him and he was cutting away from him.”

  Laura shut her arm off midway and turned the boy to face her. He turned himself back and stared at Dan in bewilderment. Dan ducked back into his paper and when Laura looked down at Harold she knew instantly it was a lie. But what should she do? Not ask him and have Dan shown up, or if he said it was so, why, she’d be just encouraging him to lie. He started to tremble and she knew he was thinking the same thing. Poor little fellow, what a fix to put him in. He shied away when she tried to hug him. Dan put his paper down and cleared his throat and limped to the door while they both stood and gaped at him. The thought in Laura’s mind scared her and made her ashamed. Her husband, the father of her child, and for a minute she had stood there and just hated him.

  Harold knew how bad he always got to feeling after he told a fib, so he thought Dan might use a little cheering up. He found him in the barn and said, “You know, that was a pretty deep cut I got,” thinking he would give him a little company.

  “It didn’t look like much to me,” said Dan.

  “Yes, it was but I didn’t cry a bit.”

  “Why should you have? It wasn’t nothing but a scratch.”

  Harold thought deeply. “I’m not as big as you are and for my size it was just about as much as your cut hand was for you.” After a moment he added gravely, “I don’t think it needs stitches, though.”

  “You look like stitches,” said Dan. “You couldn’t even stand the thought of a little iodine.”

  “Do you think I ought to lay off with it for a few days?” asked Harold.

  Why, the little smart aleck! Dan drew back his hand to fetch him a good one, then let it fall. “Get out of here,” he said, “and leave me alone. And the next time I catch you whittling towards you I’ll give you such a whipping as you never had.”

  VII

  Dan had been on his feet about two weeks when Mr. Johnson brought over a riding plow and an extra mule. Dan could not really make out now, he knew it and had for a long time, but maybe he could keep from getting quite so far in the hole with some late-maturing truck crop. He had the land for it, three acres, black as coal.

  “Now, Dan,” Laura pumped herself up to begin, “I hope they won’t be nothing else happen. And probably nothing will.” Lord, what else could? “But you never can tell and it’s better to be safe than sorry. I was thinking, what if something was to happen and you wasn’t able to get home. Here you are now still in that cast, I mean, and so you ought to have some way of calling me. Just in case, you understand.”

  Dan nodded. He couldn’t afford to seem mulish.

  She looked at him to see if it was all right to go on. “Now they’s an old cowbell hangs in the barn. Suppose we wrapped up the clapper and hung it on your plow, then, just in case—”

  She stopped. He was hopping mad.

  It made him madder every time he thought about it all day long and he wouldn’t have spoken a word to her when he came home if he hadn’t come with a big blue bruise like a windfallen plum over one eye where he had fallen off the plow seat and just laid there, unable to believe it, for half an hour. So he spoke just about a word and Laura didn’t urge him to any more. Herself, she hadn’t one. Next morning, without letting her see, he took the big brass cowbell off its hook in the barn, wrapped the clapper in a strip of burlap and hung it under the plow seat. It made him feel like a fool, like a clabber-headed heifer that jumped fences, but when he reached down to yank the thing off and throw it in a ditch the blood pounded in the knot over his eye and he left it.

  He plowed along and tried to forget it was there, but it might just as well have been strung around his neck. He couldn’t be mad at her, she meant well and he was past pretending she didn’t have reason for fear. He had got to feeling like he ought to have a bell, not to call anybody to him, but to warn them he was coming and they’d all better hide so they wouldn’t catch whatever it was he had. People already looked at him like they would rather he didn’t come too close, like he had caught something nasty, not to be spoken of. He didn’t imagine it, no more than he imagined the look on Mr. Johnson’s face the last time he was over, like he just couldn’t see how a man could change overnight and go so completely to the dogs, shaking his head as much as to say, I don’t see how you could do it, a man with a wife and family. Then again, half-awake in the morning, aching all over and dreading the clang of the alarm, he would see a long row of backs all turned his way and hear sniggers, “You know, he ain’t no good to his wife any more. Ain’t been for months. So just keep your eye on her for the next little spell.”

  He knew people talked about how tacky he dressed them, too, her and Harold. It looked like every dress she owned had a way of coming out at the seams under the arms and though he knew she had a lot to do, it did seem she could keep her things mended a little better. Not that she left those holes there to make him feel bad, but she ought to have seen they did.

  Then her mama and papa would come over and the old woman would sit with her nose stiff and her eyes loose, looking behind and under and atop things as if what she saw before her, bad as it was, wasn’t bad enough, and she was sure they had worse things hid away. And the old man would sit and rub his belly, ducking his head, pumping up a good long belch that rumbled like an indoor toilet, letting everybody know what a good dinner he had left home on and how little he looked forward to getting here for his supper.

  The old man was the only one didn’t think he had a nasty case of something. He just thought he was lazy and he had a sly steady look for him: I know what you’re up to, tried it myself, but hell, they’s a point to stop at and you passed it long ago.

  And now, even Daisy, turning round with a long disappointed look at him. He pulled the team up, thinking he would eat, but he couldn’t get a bite down.

  He thought how Laura’s mama shook her head over Harold every tim
e she laid eyes on him. Dan couldn’t see anything wrong with him. Kids were supposed to be a little dirty and wear old clothes around home. But to her he was such a pitiful sight, maybe he was just closing his eyes to all that was wrong with the boy.

  He thought how long he had let that twenty-dollar bill Mr. Johnson slipped him stay in the cupboard, how he vowed to go over and give it right back the very next day but hadn’t got around to it somehow, and instead come to say he’d let it lay there and never use it and return the very same one when he had enough for sure never to need it, and then, how he had turned it over to Laura and away it had gone. Gone fast, too, and he wondered was Laura really being careful of her spending. How he had stood around hemming and hawing and looking far-off when Mr. Johnson came again, waiting for him to slip him another, and then being mad when he didn’t. Being mad when you didn’t get charity—that was a pretty low comedown.

  He leaned back against the tree, worn out, his leg thumping with pain, and let the team stray off down the fencerow. He lay down to rest a while but the sun shifted and bored through the branches as if it wanted to get a look at him. He tried to doze but he could hear that cowbell ringing in his head. Each of his hurts came back to him and he tried to recall the day it happened, hoping to remember something that might seem to deserve such punishment. The details of his troubles began crawling up over the edges of his mind and grew thick, like a gathering swarm of bees. It was not his family nor the people on the street—he was the one who had changed. Other men had troubles but they were separate and unconnected, each came and stung and went on. Something was wrong with a man when they came and did their hurt and then stayed, waiting for the next, until they’d eaten him hollow. He didn’t have any troubles any more, he just had one big trouble. For a moment that gave him a sad thrill. He had been marked out. But why? He started to raise himself to see if the answer didn’t lie somewhere near at hand, and halfway up was caught and held by the thought that nobody knew why, nobody could tell him. He lay back heavily and said aloud, “I probably have it all coming to me.” It made him sad that he couldn’t remember whatever he had done to deserve it.