“Whatever you want, just say it.”
“You know first aid, don’t you?”
“Not really, no.”
“Oh yes you do, I could tell. From all you said out there. From how you took charge and all. I want you to fix me up.”
“Mrs. Val, you need a doctor.”
“Duke, I can’t have it known, what happened to me. It’s bad enough to be this way, just a sideshow freak. And it’s bad enough when things happen, as they do all the time. But to have it talked about — to have a holy show made out of it whatever it is that happens — to have your heart cut out — like there was something I could do—”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“You will help me, won’t you?”
“After the way you’ve helped me?”
“How have I helped you, Duke?”
“Treating me human.”
“Everybody’s human.”
“Not everybody remembers it. You and your brother and sister-in-law kind of helped with a pretty bad day. Say what it is and I’ll do it.”
“...I want it done in the cottage. So I can shower off there, and in the big house leave nothing to show, like drops of blood on the rugs. In my bathroom are Band-Aids and things, and in my bedroom clothes. You bring it all to me here, and while you’re doing that, I’ll be figuring out what happened to me, and the rest of what has to be done to remove every last trace. Of my unfortunate mishap.”
The big house, when at last I was in it, was just as nice inside as it was out, being furnished modern, in yellow maple, tan rugs, blue upholstery, and copper lamps. I found the stuff she said get, took it into the cottage, and lit the kerosene heater so her shower would be hot. The plumbing and stuff out there was interior, but not up-to-date like what was in the big house, which worked at the snap of a button. When I went out again, she said get the take-out, as it would have to do after all, and I could have it while the water was heating. So I ate while camped down beside her, there on the patio grass, and she said it would all be simple, just a matter of filling the hole, dumping some sawdust on, cutting the tree up in such a way that branches were piled on the sawdust and the stump fell on them. The power saw, she said, would plug right into the cottage and, except for a little shoveling, I wouldn’t be put to much trouble. When it was all done, she said I could pour on some gasoline, toss a match on top, and everything would go up in smoke, “down to the last twig.”
Not quite a political job, at least as I sized it up, but if that’s what it took to please her, I meant to do it her way. I drank from my Thermos of coffee, told how my heart had stopped beating when I saw the death trap I’d dug, assuming there’d be a taproot when nothing was down there but dirt, and we both shivered to think of it, and relived each horrible moment. But whatever we said always led back to the fat. She kind of chanted it: “It’s glandular, glandular, I know it. There’s no cure, none at all, none, and I’ll never live to be thirty. I don’t complain, I speak no word of that kind. I do what I can, my small mite of good, so I leave this earth a little bit better than I found it. But can’t they leave me alone? Do they, do they all, do they every last one — have to talk?”
I was so flabbergasted, since I had supposed her middle-aged, maybe fifty or more, that I was a second late answering: “...Why... O.K., but don’t you talk.”
“You told me to.”
“Out there. Here now, take it easy.”
Her face beaded up, as it did when flashes hit her, and I dried it off with a face towel, wrapping it on, then patting it soft. Then again, pretty soon, she was off: “And, Duke, talking’s not all they do. They laugh. That’s the worst, as it’s meant to be mean. And they turn away, or close their eyes, or make a face, as though you were a mess on the pavement. That cuts into your heart. Maybe they can’t help it, but you’d think they could if they tried. Why do they do things like that?”
“People are funny.”
“You didn’t.”
“I don’t really know what you mean.”
“That’s not true but it’s nice. It’s nice because it’s kind. Duke, I want you as my friend.”
“Mrs. Val, can I say something?”
“Please, Duke. What is it?”
“I was in jail.”
“I didn’t mention it.”
“I spent a night there, and if you ever looked at the moon shining at you through bars, it puts a scar on your soul. And when you didn’t mention it, when you treated me human, it healed that scar — just a little. I’m proud to be your friend, and I want you for mine.”
“The afflicted, Duke, they know.”
“You bet they know.”
“We could say one thing more.”
“Yes, Mrs. Val, what?”
“You being so gentlemanly.”
That kind of shook me up, and for some little time we said nothing. When the time came for the wash-up, I worked through the shower curtains, a one-inch slit I pulled open, but to me she wasn’t sickening any more. I could see her, and the fat rolled and dappled and shook. But all I noticed was her slim, pretty shanks, and all I thought was what a shame they should tremble so, under that mountain of meat!
Chapter III
Mr. Val was a tall, thin man around forty, with gray hair, sallow skin, and a pious stoop, who got on my nerves, I didn’t exactly know why. Part of it, maybe, was how he rubbed his hands and jerked his head as he talked, reminding me of a waiter. And part of it, I’m sure, was his everlasting ant-pantedness, which had even annoyed the girls in the Marlboro courthouse. He cut in on everybody, hustled things up, listened to nothing at all. I owed him my freedom, it was only sense I should like him, and I tried to, don’t get the idea I didn’t. And yet, in the half-hour it had taken for him to drive me over, I don’t think I finished one answer to the questions he popped at me. He’d cut in, blow his horn, feed gas, or do something that made it impossible to talk.
He was that way tonight, soon as he got home. She’d called him, so he knew she was there, and the lights were on very friendly. You’d have thought he’d have lingered with a young wife who had been away, going inside with her when she stepped out the kitchen door. But he had no sooner spoken to her than he was calling to me that I should help him unload. I was back of the cottage, splitting the wood I had sawed, and was perfectly willing to help with whatever he had. But I hated to leg it, while he stood snapping his fingers and slapping his luggage compartment. Thermos buckets were in it, that he said went to the kitchen, and hams in muslin bags, that he said went to storage. She took the buckets from me and set them down. Then she led on to the cold room, which was a low brick building across the patio from the cottage. It had a Yale lock, which she opened, and steel racks inside with rows of hooks, where I hung the hams as she told me.
When we came out he was off in the field, looking at my tree. It was easy to see in the dark, looking like a fire in a Western oil field; I’d done it all as she said, using plenty of sawdust, as it turned out they had a lot of it, stored for smoking the hams. So you could have read the print in a newspaper when I stepped up beside him and said: “I’m sorry it took so long, sir. One whole day to get out just one tree. But—”
“Could you get it out at all — that’s what I wanted to know. Naturally it had to take time. I knew that. But you did it, and you did it right. Filling that hole, burning the stump — just right. I hadn’t expected it, but the ash’ll be wonderful fertilizer. We’ll plow it in, then disk it, with lime and the regular stuff. We’ll be set by the first of May to put in our corn. I’m well pleased, Duke. Now I know you’re my man.”