He shrugged and stared ahead at the blackboard.
What’s bothering you?
Nothing’s bothering me.
Something must be.
He looked up at her. Then he lowered his head and took up the pencil on his desktop and started to work at the math problems she’d assigned them to do. The teacher watched for a moment and returned to her desk at the front of the room. When she looked at him again a few minutes later, he’d already stopped working.
At noon when they were released from school for the lunch hour he began immediately to run. He raced home through the town park and across the shining railroad tracks and didn’t stop until he got to the house. He paused in the kitchen to catch his breath, then walked down the hall to his grandfather’s room. The old man was still in bed, coughing steadily now and spitting into the dirty handkerchief. He hadn’t drunk any more of the coffee. He looked up when DJ entered the room, his face very red and his eyes wet and glassy.
You look worse, Grandpa. You better go to the doctor.
The old man had lowered the window blind during the morning and the room was dark now. He looked like someone who had been put away in a dim back room and left there to his own devices.
I ain’t seeing no doctor. You can just forget about that.
You have to.
No, you head on back to school and mind your own business.
I don’t want to leave you.
I’m going to get out of this bed. Is that what you want?
DJ left the room and went out in front of the house, looking up and down the empty street. Then he ran across to Mary Wells’s house and knocked on the door. After some time she opened the door wearing an old blue bathrobe, and the pretty grown-up woman’s face he was used to seeing, always made up with pink rouge and red lipstick, was now plain and bare. She looked haggard, as though she hadn’t slept in days.
What are you doing here? she said. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?
Grandpa’s sick. I just came home to check on him. Something’s wrong with him.
What is it?
I don’t know. Could you come over and look at him?
Yes, she said. Come in while I get dressed.
He waited for her near the door but didn’t sit down. He was surprised to see the newspapers on the floor and the various magazines and pieces of mail scattered around. Two half-filled coffee cups were set on the side table next to the couch, and milky coffee from one of the cups had spilled out in a gray pool on the polished wood. In the dining room last night’s dishes were still on the table. It was clear she had troubles of her own. Dena had said so when they were out in the shed, but she wouldn’t talk more about it.
Mary Wells came out of the bedroom in jeans and a sweatshirt, and she had brushed her hair and had put on some lipstick, but that was all. She didn’t say anything and they went outside. They started across to his grandfather’s house.
How long has he been sick? she said.
I don’t know if he is sick for sure. But he seems like it.
How long has he seemed sick?
Since yesterday. He keeps coughing and he won’t get out of bed.
They crossed the vacant lot and went into the little house. She had never been beyond the front door, and he felt embarrassed for her to see the inside, to see how they lived. She looked around. Where is he?
Back here.
He led her through the hall to the dark bedroom that smelled of sweat and stale coffee and his grandfather’s sour bedding. He could smell it now in her presence. The old man lay in the bed, his hands outside the blanket. He heard them come in the room and opened his eyes.
Are you sick, Mr. Kephart?
Who’s that coming in here?
Mary Wells from up the street. You remember me.
The old man started to sit up.
No. Don’t move. She crossed to his bed. DJ says you seem like you’re getting sick.
Well, I don’t feel too good. But I ain’t sick.
You look like you are. She felt his forehead and he looked up at her out of his watery eyes. You’re hot. You feel feverish, Mr. Kephart.
It ain’t nothing to talk about. I’ll get over it.
No, you’re sick.
He began to cough. She stood over him, watching his face. He coughed for a good while. When he was done he cleared his throat and spat into the handkerchief.
I want to take you to the doctor, Mr. Kephart. Let’s see what he says.
No, I ain’t going to no doctor.
Well, you can just stop that now. I’m going home to get the car. And while I’m gone you can get dressed. I’ll be back in five minutes.
She left the room and they could hear the screen door slap shut. The old man stared at the boy. How come you ain’t in school where you belong? Look here what you done. Now you got the neighbors all worked up.
You’ve got to get dressed, Grandpa. She’s going to be here.
I know that, goddamn it. Meddling is what you been doing. Sticking your nose in.
Do you want me to help you get out of bed?
I can still do that myself. Goddamn it, give me a minute.
The old man came slowly out of the bed. The long underwear he wore was yellowed and dirty, the bottoms sagged in the seat and were considerably soiled in the front where he’d fumbled at the fly. He stood while the boy helped him into his blue workshirt and his overalls, pulling them on over the underwear, then he sat down on the bed and the boy brought him his high-topped black shoes and knelt and laced them. The old man stood again and went into the bathroom and swiped a wet comb across his white hair and rinsed his whiskered face and came out.
Mary Wells was honking at the curb. They went out and the old man climbed into the front seat and the boy got in back, and they drove out of the neighborhood over the tracks, going up Main Street. There were half a dozen cars parked at this noon hour at the curb along the three blocks of stores and a few more cars and pickups parked in front of the tavern at the corner of Third. The old man seemed lifted in spirit to be riding in the car on a bright day, heading up Main Street in the fall of the year with a young woman driving him. He seemed almost cheerful now that they were going.
Inside the clinic next door to the hospital they waited for an hour and Mary Wells decided to go home so she’d be in the house when the girls returned from school. She told DJ to call her if they needed a ride home. After she left, he and his grandfather sat without talking to any of the other patients who were waiting, and didn’t talk to each other. They sat without reading or even shifting from their chairs. People came in and left. A little girl was whimpering across the room on her mother’s lap. Another hour went by. Finally a nurse came out to the waiting room and called his grandfather’s name. The boy stood up with him.
What are you doing? his grandfather said.
I’m going with you.
Well, come on then. But keep your mouth shut. I’ll do the talking.
They walked back along the hall behind the nurse and were led into an examination room. They sat down. Across the room a diagram of the human heart was taped to the wall. All its valves and tubes and dark chambers were precisely labeled. Next to it hung a calendar with a picture of a mountain in winter, with snow on the trees and a cabin bearing up under the deep snow on its pitched roof. After a while another nurse came in and took the old man’s pulse and his blood pressure and temperature and wrote the information in a chart, then left and closed the door. A few minutes later Dr. Martin opened the door and came in. He was an old man dressed in a blue suit and starched white shirt with a maroon bow tie and clear rimless spectacles, and he had blue eyes that were paler than his suit. He washed his hands at the little sink in the corner and sat down and looked at the chart the nurse had left. So what seems to be the trouble? he said. Who’s this boy with you?