They came into the quiet street and he pointed out the little house.
Is this where you live?
Yes, ma’am.
Really? I used to live near here. Before I had Katie. This was my old neighborhood. Do you like it here?
He looked at her. It’s just where I live, he said. He opened the car door and started to get out.
Just a minute, she said. I don’t know what you’d think of it, but maybe you could come out and stay with us tonight. So you wouldn’t have to be here alone.
Out with you?
Yes. Out in the country. You’d like it out there.
He shrugged. I don’t know.
All right, she said. She smiled at him. I’ll just wait until you’re inside and get the light on.
Thanks for the ride, he said.
He shut the car door and started up the narrow sidewalk. He looked very small and much alone, approaching the dark house with only the streetlamp shining from the corner illuminating the front of the house. He opened the door and went inside and then a light came on. She thought he would come to one of the windows and wave to her, but he didn’t.
AT THE HOSPITAL THE NURSE ON NIGHTSHIFT CAME INTO the room and Raymond was still awake. She was a good-looking woman in her late forties, with short brown hair and very blue eyes. She bent over the old man in the bed next to the door, who was asleep on his side and still breathing the oxygen through the prongs in his nose, his face red and damp. She checked the level of the fluid in the plastic bags hanging from the stand, then came over to Raymond’s bed and looked at him with his head raised up on the pillow, watching her. Can’t you sleep? she said.
No.
Is your leg hurting you?
Not now. I reckon it’ll start again directly.
How about your chest?
It’s all right. He looked up at her. What’s your name? he said. I thought I knew all these nurses in here by now.
I just came back on duty, she said. I’m Linda.
What’s your last name?
May.
Linda May.
That’s right. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. McPheron. Is there anything I can get for you right now?
I could take some of that water there.
Let me get you a fresh pitcher. This isn’t very cold. She left the room and came back with a pitcher filled with ice, and poured water in the glass and held it out to him. He drew on the straw and swallowed, then drew again and nodded and she set the glass on the bedside table.
He looked across the room. How do you think he’s doing over there?
Mr. Kephart? All right, I think. He’ll probably recover. Older people get pneumonia and don’t do well sometimes, but he seems pretty strong. Of course I haven’t seen him awake yet. But when we changed shifts they said he was doing okay.
She smoothed the blanket, making sure to keep it free of his casted leg. Try and get some sleep now, she said.
Oh, I don’t sleep much, he said.
People are always coming in and waking you up for one thing or another, aren’t they.
I don’t like that light shining.
I’ll shut the door so it’s darker. Would that be better?
It might. He looked at her face. It don’t matter. I’m getting out of here tomorrow anyhow.
Oh? I hadn’t heard that.
Yeah. I am.
You’d have to ask the doctor.
They’re burying my brother tomorrow. I won’t be in here for that.
Oh, I’m sorry. Still, I think you’ll need to talk to the doctor anyway.
He better get here early then, Raymond said. I’ll be gone before noon.
She touched his shoulder and crossed to the door and closed the door behind her.
Raymond lay in the bed in the darkened room looking out the window at the bare trees in front of the hospital. Two hours later he was still awake when the wind started up, whining and crying in the higher branches. He thought about what the wind would be doing out south of town and he wondered if Victoria and the little girl had been wakened by it. He expected they hadn’t. But out in the south pasture, the cattle would all be standing awake with their backs to the wind, and there would be dry little dust storms blowing up in the corrals, shifting across the dry clumps of manure and the loose dirt around the barn. And he knew if things were as they should be, he and his brother would step outside in the morning to begin work as usual and they would stop to smell the dirt in the air, and then one or the other of them would say something about it, and he himself might comment on the likelihood of rain, and then Harold would say that a blizzard would be more likely, this time of year, given the way things were going of late.
18
WHEN THE DOCTOR ENTERED THE ROOM IN THE MORNING he was of a mind not to allow Raymond permission to leave the hospital, but when Raymond said he was going to leave regardless the doctor relented and said he could go for half a day but would have to return after the funeral. Just past noontime at the front desk Raymond signed the papers and they released him into the care of Victoria Roubideaux. She had put Katie with Maggie Jones, and earlier that morning she’d brought him the clean clothes he’d asked for. Now she pushed him in a wheelchair out to where her car was parked at the curb in front of the hospital. One leg of his dark trousers was slit to the knee to accommodate the cast, and he wore a blue shirt with pearl snaps which she had pressed freshly that morning and he had on his plaid wool jacket and the good Bailey hat that he wore only to town. Balanced across his lap were the aluminum crutches the hospital had loaned him.
When he came out of the hospital into the fresh autumn air he looked at the sky and looked all around and breathed in.
Well, goddamn, he said. It feels about as good as church letting out, to get shut of that damn place. Now you’ll have to pardon my language, honey. But by God, it does.
And it’s a good thing to see you come out of there, she said. I believe you look better already.
I feel better already. And I’ll tell you another thing. I ain’t going back in there. Not today, not ever.
I thought you agreed to go back this afternoon. That’s why they let you out.
Oh hell, honey, I’d say anything to get them to release me from that place. Let’s get going. Before they change their minds. Where’s your car at?
Down the street here.
Let’s go find it.
AT THE METHODIST CHURCH ON GUM STREET TOM Guthrie was standing at the curb in the bright sun waiting for Raymond and Victoria. They pulled up and Raymond opened the door and Guthrie helped him climb out. He stood up onto the sidewalk, but when Victoria opened the wheelchair behind him he refused to use it, telling them he would walk. And so with Victoria on one side and Guthrie on the other he fit the rubber cushions of the crutches under his arms and hobbled across the wide walkway into the church.
Inside, the organist hadn’t started playing yet and there was no one in the sanctuary. They moved slowly down the carpeted center aisle between the rows of glossy wooden pews toward the altar and pulpit, Raymond stepping carefully with his head down watching his feet, and they reached the front and he shifted sideways into the second pew. Victoria went out to the nursery to see if she could find Maggie and Katie, and Guthrie sat down beside Raymond. Raymond appeared to be exhausted already. He removed his hat and set it next to him on the pew. His face was sweating, his face was even redder than usual, and for some time he only sat and breathed.
You all right? Guthrie said, looking at him.
Yeah. I will be.
You’re not going to keel over, are you? Tell me if you feel like you’re going to.
I ain’t going to keel over.
He sat breathing with his head down. After a while he looked up and began to survey the objects in the high silent sanctuary — the outsized wooden cross attached to the wall behind the pulpit, the colored windows where the sun streamed in — and now he saw that his brother’s casket was resting on a wheeled trestle at the head of the center aisle. The casket was closed. Raymond looked at it for some time. Then he said: Let me out of here.