“I don’t know what’s the matter with him,” he said. “Some chronic thing.” Since the two of them were regarding him intently he said, “I don’t know him too well; he’s a business acquaintance.”
“You better find out what it is,” the man said. His wife nodded.
“I guess so,” Bruce said.
“Go ask him what it is,” the woman said. They exchanged glances and she said, “Find out from him if it’s contagious, will you?” She and her husband followed him to the door of the office.
“I know it’s not contagious,” he said. “It’s a kidney ailment.”
“There’s contagious kidney ailments,” the man called after him, from the doorway of the office.
As Bruce walked back up to the cabin he could hear the two of them behind him in the office, talking in low tones.
They’ll probably tell us it’s against the law to have him stay here, he thought to himself. They’ll probably make us leave.
Of course, there were other motels. If Milt was well enough to be moved.
He did not feel like going back inside the cabin, so he stood outside on the porch. Along the highway one vehicle after another passed. From where he stood he could not see their wheels; they appeared to be sliding. Like metal toys pulled along on a string, over the pavement, faster and faster. The sight filled him with uneasiness and he opened the cabin door.
“Hi,” Milt murmured from the bed.
“Do you know how I can get hold of Cathy?” he asked.
“Why?”
“I want to get her advice.”
“There’s nothing she can tell you. Don’t you think I know what’s wrong with me?”
After arguing with him he managed to get the name of Cathy’s office at the Pocatello City Hall, the city tax assessment office.
“I don’t want you to call her,” Milt said, sitting up in bed. His face showed that he had begun suffering a great deal of pain; the flesh below his eyes had sagged downward and become twisted and creased. “I’ll be okay after I get some rest. I just have to be off my feet and lying down. Probably by tonight “I’ll be back in shape.”
“Tell me exactly what’s wrong with you.”
Milt said, “Nephritis. I got it because of an attack of scarlet fever when I was a kid. Bright’s disease, they usually call it.”
“How bad do you have it?”
“It comes and goes. It’s the son of a bitch pains in my back that get me. There’s nothing you can do. So don’t call Cathy. Don’t worry about it. We’ll be in Seattle by tomorrow night.” He lay back in the bed, his arms at his sides.
“You’re positive I can’t get you anything?”
“Go on out and get yourself some breakfast.”
He left the cabin and roamed around, across a field, past a fenced-in pasture in which a pair of horses cropped grass. The air smelled of dung and hay. Under his shoes the ground crumbled away as he stepped onto a rodent burrow. Bending down, he watched big red ants at work. Far off, on the highway, the cars moved along.
One day, in July, he had broken down outside of Wendover, Nevada. Pulled over on the shoulder of the highway he had fussed with a broken oil line from ten in the morning until one-thirty in the afternoon, knowing even as he fussed that he had no chance of repairing it. What he had been trying to do was show the cars going by that he was okay, that he would be back on the road soon. During that whole time he had kept his back to the road and his head down under the hood where the motor was, ashamed and filled with rage, but hoping that none of the cars would stop. Finally a tow truck had appeared from Wendover; a motorist who had noticed him had gotten hold of it. Why had he felt so guilty to be stuck on the shoulder? I don’t know, he thought now. He had not known then. But here once more he was stuck, and for a much longer time. The thing he most dreaded.
Do I think they’re laughing at me? he wondered.
He thought, Like Old Man Hagopian when I was buying the box of Trojans. Everybody getting a kick out of it.
Remembering that, he found himself blushing.
Christ, he thought. What was so funny about that? Anyhow everybody has to buy them sooner or later. Until they get married, and then the woman buys something instead that comes in a tube. More like a medicine.
One day he had seen a little colored boy who had found a discarded rubber, probably in the gutter. The colored boy, as he strolled along, was blowing the rubber up like a balloon.
God, and it undoubtedly had been used. He hadn’t known whether to laugh or be disgusted. Or knock it out of the kid’s hands. Anyhow he had gone on straight-faced, pretending not to notice.
It really was funny.
Wouldn’t anybody laugh at a thing like that?
I really have to get out of here, he thought. Even if Milt was a blood relative, like the lady thought, I’d still have to leave.
But it sure would be dirty to leave him here. Somebody had to be with him.
He recrossed the field, back to the motel, to the office. The lady and her Oklahoma husband were not in sight. At the pay phone he laid out the slip of paper with Cathy’s number and put a dime into the phone. The operator told him how much to deposit and he dropped in the proper amount. The connection was made. A woman, not Cathy, answered the phone. He asked for Mrs. Hermes, and after an interval he found himself talking to her.
“This is Bruce Stevens,” he said.
“How is he?” Cathy asked, without a pause, aware at once why he had called.
“He’s in bed,” he said. “He’s worn out.”
“How far did you get?”
“Pretty far,” he said. He knew now that this was Washington, just outside a town called Pasco. “But we’re off the road now at this motel. We stayed here overnight. I didn’t realize until this morning how bad he was. I recall that you warned me, but anyhow here we are. What are your feelings?” he asked her.
“I can’t do anything,” she said.
“You have his car. You could drive out after work.” He began to tell her where the motel was, but she broke in.
“I don’t have the key. I threw it to him.”
“It’s in the driveway,” he said.
“No it isn’t,” she said. “I looked this morning and I didn’t see it. As a matter of fact I was late to work because I spent so much time looking all around for it.”
“I know it’s there,” he said. “He didn’t pick it up.”
Cathy said, “I know it’s not there.”
“Could you come out on the bus, then?” he said.
“No,” she said.
“I have to drive on to Seattle,” he said. “I have to settle this business.”
“Are you telling me the truth? Would you actually drive off and leave him when he’s flat on his back sick in bed in a motel?”
“I have to,” he said. When she said nothing he said, “Anyhow it’s my car.”
She said, “I do have the key to the Mercedes.”
That did not surprise him. “Then drive out here,” he said. He gave her a long complicated set of directions.
“It’ll take me a long time,” she said, in a balking, frantic way. “I can’t drive that far in one hop. I’ll have to stop along the way; I don’t think I can get there until the day after tomorrow. Ill have to arrange for time off from work. I don’t even know if I can do that. Does that mean he’ll be alone until then, or will you stay with him until I get there?”
“I should leave now,” he said.
Near tears, she said, “Then there’s no point in my coming. Suppose you leave him, and then while I’m trying to get there he leaves?”
“He can’t leave because he won’t have any car to leave in.”
“That’s so,” she said. “No,” she decided. “I won’t do it. You have to stay with him. It’s your fault anyhow.” The phone clicked. She had hung up.